The other day a friend called me in the afternoon, “hey, this conference is about to start and you need to come check it out because it relates to your start up and it’s right by your place”.
I went there and after talking to a few people I was able to get the director of the conference get me a booth for the following day which was the actual start day. The location wasn’t the best for sure but the price I got was, that’s for sure as well.
At 9 am I showed up there with my recently appointed brand/education manager and all our paraphernalia, including 3 boxes of our product and a tripod I had bought the previous day to start recording video testimonials. The morning was so busy for the director that instead of charging me right away she asked me if I could pay later in the day. Since I like to be nice to people that are making me favors and I’m never in a hurry to pay I said “of course”.
The conference was extremely slow and the corner my booth was in extremely invisible. So at 4pm I shoot her an email letting her know that “I hadn’t even collected a single business card yet and that I’d rather put the payment on hold for now” –whatever that means, yes- I closed my email telling her that I would let her make the decision whether I’d come back for the second day of the conference or not.
She responded that if I picked up my things before 9am following day she forget about the whole thing and I wouldn’t need to pay.
I soon caught myself worrying that nobody would see me packing up my staff and leaving in the middle of the two day conference. I then realized how much embarrassment and guilt I was feeling about the whole situation that I wanted nobody to see me pack.
But then I decided I wasn’t going to hide, and of course wasn’t going to make a scene. I was just going to be natural about it. When I got there at 8:30 am the second day, people were actually talking about me in a good way because of the good impression I had made the first day and introducing me to other people they wanted me to meet. I said good bye to most of the people I had talked the previous day.
And instead of hiding away from the director out of shame, I went to her and thanked for “going out of your way to get me in and even more out of your way to get me out” and gave her one of my products. She wished the best to my business.
As my business coach says Life and business are simple, we just make it complicated.