A CONFERENCE REVOLUTIONIZED A BUSINESS

Sometimes you can salvage a good return even if an investment began as a disaster.

As a business owner, going to conferences became second nature to me. So when a seminar on Internet advertising in my area came up, I jumped on the opportunity and signed up. It was almost a big mistake.

The organizers were new to conferences and decided to invite speakers who were credible but didn’t actually know much about Internet advertising. While all the speakers that day ran successful businesses, they weren’t people actually managing the marketing departments. No one had the slightest idea about their online strategy.

We were instead bombarded with personal stories about how these people rose to fame and a history of their companies and a sales pitch of their companies’ services. The person beside me actually came up with a term for that event I will never forget: a pitch fest.

Almost everyone left early. Just as I was about to go home too, I bumped into a friend who introduced me to a business owner.

That changed the whole day.

It turns out that my new acquaintance runs an outsourcing business, and his clients are primarily Internet entrepreneurs like myself. We started talking, and not only did he provide services that I was currently looking to find help for, he even gave me ideas on how he can help me expand my Internet business.

Fast-forward to today, and I’m still happily working with him. Calculating ROI would give a ridiculous number because, as luck would have it, my business grew more than 100 times since we met, while I still maintained the exact same headcount.