Tradeshow panic
Written by John Teel.
Something was seriously wrong. The water in my beautiful product display was turning brown—fast.
This wasn’t supposed to happen!
Here I was at a huge tradeshow full of retail buyers walking past my booth, and the one thing drawing them in—the giant glass jar filled with my glowing miniature lights called Pop-up Microlites—was now turning into a murky mess.
What the heck was going on? This was the last thing I wanted to deal with, and I was already stressed out enough.
I had to think fast…
Running a busy trade show booth wasn’t something I ever dreamed of doing. In fact, I’d say it is more aligned with something I might have nightmares about.
I don’t really like socializing on a large scale.
Beer usually helps—but unfortunately that wasn’t an option in this case:)
And in-person sales is most definitely not my cup of tea!
Yet here I was spending three days selling my product to hundreds of strangers.
Not exactly my idea of fun.
But, I did it anyway because I was willing to do whatever it took to succeed.
The first few hours were brutal. I was a stressed-out nervous wreck.
I was sweaty, my hands were clammy, and I was in one of the most uncomfortable situations of my life.
But something strange happened—people were crowding my booth.
Other exhibitors near my booth were even telling me they were jealous of how much attention I was getting.
Although, the booth near me with a famous actor helping to pitch their product was pretty busy too.
But suddenly, I had a much bigger problem than competing with Ed Begley Jr.
The water in my eye-catching product display was starting to look kind of gross!
At first, I thought maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me. But no—the color was shifting, and fast.
It turned out, a tiny spring inside my product wasn’t stainless steel and it was rusting.
I had tested single units in the water many times before and never noticed this.
But with so many of my tiny lights submerged together, there were more springs to rust—but more importantly I think each one introduced a small electric current into the water…
…initiating a process called electrolysis, which drastically sped up the corrosion.
Oops, I most definitely didn’t think of that ahead of time.
I had to make a critical choice:
Shut the display down and lose my biggest attention-grabber…
…or find a way to make it work, and fast.
So I did the only thing I could—I changed the water every couple of hours.
Which, as it turns out, was a lot of work.
The glass jar was massive and ridiculously heavy when filled with water.
Every time the water started turning brown, I had to discreetly drain as much as possible into another container to lighten the load before carrying it to the bathroom to rinse everything clean.
Then I had to carry it back to the booth and begin refilling it with clean water.
This process was exhausting, time-consuming, and a complete pain in the…back.
But I kept doing it.
Because the people stopping by my booth just saw an eye-catching display that made them stop and ask questions.
The key isn’t always avoiding problems—it’s adapting to them.
By the second day, I had settled in. The sweaty hands were mostly gone, and the stress felt more manageable.
But, each night I couldn’t wait to get back to my hotel room, hide away, and order room service.
I didn’t want to talk to anyone except my wife on the phone. I didn’t want to see another person. I just wanted to disappear for a few hours to recharge.
Then I woke up each morning and did it all again.
Because this is what success takes: Persistence, adaptability, and the willingness to venture into the uncomfortable.
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