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Photo of the legendary Hamilton Island conference  Oneill Photographics

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RIP our industry conference

 

I’m kinda sad because I was meant to be at a conference today, catching up with old friends and finding out what’s going on out there.

I’m not, because our industry association went into voluntary administration and closed down in March after fifty years. And our industry is the worse off for that. I am the worse off.

One of our offices doubled in size last month, after we won a contract that took ten years to land. It’ll employ about a dozen full-time people for a long time.

We first met their client team at the association’s awards night in Adelaide in 2015, and we all stayed in touch. We’d see each other a couple of times a year at industry gatherings. By the time their tender rolled around late last year, both sides knew each other’s culture and values. Essential knowledge for a long-term working relationship.

It’s knowledge you can’t communicate from a standing start in a boardroom PowerPoint show when you’re one of four tendering.

Here’s the thing: I would have been happy to get to know them even if there wasn’t a large contract at stake, because they are quality people and I always enjoy spending time with them. And visiting their excellent city.

 

Forget more cowbell. The world needs more bouzouki

 

We also went to an absolutely joyous wedding last month, a friend who came through the association’s mentoring program.

A couple of us oldsters taught her a bit, but her skills and radiant positivity were obvious from the start and she was always going to be a star. She’s become a loved family friend.

 

She met a charming Greek guy at work. The wedding proved that life is better with more live bouzouki. You cannot hear it and not be happy.

If you brought a bouzouki player to your staff meetings, your corporate culture would improve 100%.

 

Recruitment through covers bands is effective

 

I wrote a little piece on LinkedIn recently to mark the tenth anniversary of a meetings industry conference on Hamilton Island. I put together an industry band for the after-party.

Andrew, a Melbourne competitor, wanted in as a guitarist. We already had two, but there was a bass player vacancy. So he bought a bass, learned how to play it, and played the gig in a black pleather unitard grossly unsuited to the tropics.

Six months later we made him our Melbourne business partner, because he had charisma and had proved his work ethic in a totally non-business setting. That story brought out a lot of responses from people who still think about that conference and go: I love my industry.

 

People who have made my life so much better

 

I could tell you dozens of these stories. People who have made my life so much better, personally and commercially. None of it would have happened without the periodic catchups that our industry association provided.

You can’t guarantee what’s going to happen when you get your tribe together. It’s an ecosystem of randomised behaviour that will change events a decade or more down the track.

Some results might come right away, but the real benefits are cumulative over years as trust builds up.

What you can guarantee is that if you don’t do it, you’ll get none of the benefits.

Without the existence of that industry association: no big contract, no joyous wedding, no charismatic business partner. The thought of that parallel universe where I didn’t get involved and not much happened is quite depressing.

Because it’s easy to choose “no” if you’re feeling a bit busy that week. Or you can’t justify the expense to your boss.

 

“What do I get out of it?”

 

I was on the association’s board for a while. It was rewarding but hard going. Small associations tend to run on a lot of voluntary work. Funding came from persuading people to join, then attend conferences, awards nights and training programs.

Money was always tight because you’re mostly selling the benefits of intangibles. People would say: what do I get out of this for my membership fee?

It was a pretty modest fee.

I’d always tell them:

“You get out of it what you put into it.”

The idea that joining an industry group should entitle you to a guaranteed funnel of proven sales leads is creepy, transactional thinking.

If you’re trying to force ROI out of every interaction, because your CFO believes that’s how you get results, people can tell. And they will avoid you.

A lot of ROI comes from not demanding ROI right now. This is the short-termism curse of big companies that have to report quarter-on-quarter growth for all eternity. It rewards desperation, perverse period sandbagging, and needy harassment of prospects.

Ironically, as a privately-owned business, we’ve done consistent growth every year since we started*, by never threatening our sales people with waterboarding if they don’t hit quarterly targets.

Partly because we don’t have quarterly targets. That’s a story for another time.

 

Impersonating an extrovert

 

The opportunity in industry associations is to build a reputation as someone who gives back. To be known as smart, kind, helpful, supportive, entertaining, helpful to newcomers and industry juniors, that sort of thing. You can’t be all of them, pick one or two and work at it.

People remember, for decades, the person who came and talked to them at their first industry event when they were standing there alone in a corner.

I’m not a natural networker or extrovert, but I worked out how to impersonate one.

Working a cocktail party full of strangers is nightmarish to me. So I went on industry committees and got to know people through meetings and projects. Just doing regular work together.

It gave me enough industry friends that I could navigate the cocktail parties and look like I was comfortable at it. Anyone can do this.

 

Benefits galore

 

There are so many benefits to getting together with your industry.

You’ll get to know your competitors. That’s helpful, because in internal meetings, it’s easy to get high on your own corporate fumes and think all your competitors are clowns.

It’s a special kind of complacency. The difference between you and your competitors is not the giant gulf you think it is. Meet them in person, and you realise you have to do better.

You get the opportunity to help out industry newcomers, and learning as much from them. You feel the pride of watch them grow into leaders in what feels like about ten minutes.

Most of all, you get reminded that you are not alone. That everyone else has the same problems and frustrations you do.

Even if you just get together to enjoy some drinks and snacks, and vent about your most annoying client, that’s valuable. It’s a deep human need we’ve had since the Stone Age.

“… and then the chieftain says, ‘I need a mammoth speared and delivered to my cave by Solstice’. And I’m like: does he think I can just whistle up a mammoth like it’s my goddamn Bonn-Oberkassel Dog? Fuck that guy. Can you pass the mead?”

(The Bonn-Oberkassel Dog, from 14,200 years ago, is the first recorded domestic dog, found buried next to its human masters. There’s some knowledge you don’t get from other business blogs.)

If you have an industry association, get out there and support that thing. It leaves a big, sad hole when it’s gone.

Thanks to everyone who put in for Meetings and Events Australia for so long, it was an honour to hang out with you in a wide range of bars.

Your efforts made so many people’s careers a little more vibrant than they would have been.

 

* Except for the COVID years when we had to shut down, then it reverted to the previous growth curve right away.

 

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