Business Development and Partnerships

I have to do my random rant to get this thing started. Last week I was in Orlando, Florida at a conference for the hospitality industry. While there I was able to meet a good number of people that we can hopefully be working with in the near future. Before I took this job I was excited to travel because I had this idea of what it would be like. I have to be honest--it's a bit different. Not in a bad way. I guess my point is, for me, traveling makes me appreciate my home more.

Ok, so on to the real meat. On Friday of last week we had a potential partner, who is a good family friend, come in and share with us what he does. I was really excited about this because I felt that we had a good fit. Now the pressure was on because I had our President and Co-founder in there along with our Marketing Coordinator. So if this guy came in and there was not even a small glimpse that we could work together, I would have wasted an hour and a half of his time and our Presidents time. I will admit I was a little nervous, but I felt confident that what we had was in the same industry, but different enough that we could help each other out. As he's going through his presentation I look over at our President--he is taking notes--this is good. But then I got to thinking...he is a big note taker so maybe he is doing it to be polite. But he just kept writing and writing, and kept listening to what he had to say about what his company does. I thought this couldn't be a better fit! He is the founder and CEO of a company that does branding. This guy has his Ph.D in rhetoric! Seriously, rhetoric!! How cool is that? Anyway, the hope is that as he is coming across these companies that are focusing on the brand experience and helping develop what they want as a brand experience our hope is that then he will refer us as they are going to need people to deliver that brand experience that he developed! Score!!!

In turn, when we have companies that are in need of someone to come into a restaurant or retail store, and help them develop what kind of brand experience they want, we will refer him. It was just cool to see what a match we are and I am way excited about the prospect of working together and having a lot of success.