Expectations are something we all have, but seldom take the time to evaluate. That is, until our experiences throw our expectations right out the window, or worse, right in the garbage.

I just returned from David Neagle’s Breaking Free Live Experience in Palm Springs, California. And let me tell ya, my expectations for the event flew the freakin’ coop when I was unexpectedly forced to confront my own business practices head on, and in front of a few hundred people!

Now that doesn’t happen every day, does it?

A bit of background…
I went to David Neagle’s Salt Lake City event back in February. Both the content and the audience Neagle attracted were impressive, so I decided to sponsor his next event in Palm Springs.

I’d never sponsored an event before, so this whole thing was all very new to me. From the very beginning, I knew there was going to be a learning curve—but I had no idea what that learning curve would look like. You’re supposed to have goals for these types of things, so I wrote mine up and studied them beforehand. Sure, maybe my goals were a bit ambitious in retrospect, but I didn’t think they were out of line at the time.

Now we’ve all heard that it’s better to have a few qualified (hot) leads than a large quantity of not-so-great (cooler) leads. I practice this way of thought and I teach it to my clients. But when you least expect it, even the most knowledgeable people (who know better!) get caught up in the numbers game of quantity over quality—even yours truly.

The Lay of the Land
The Palm Springs vendor space was a huge, gorgeous foyer lined with approx. 20 vendors. Because David Neagle’s support team picked the space for each vendor, I wasn’t able to choose the location of my Spot-On Branding vendor booth. I found myself at the very end of the dreaded dead-end hallway.

Now don’t get me wrong, the first day I was excited, despite my less-than-ideal dead-end booth location. I thought, well, there are only a few handfuls of vendors, so surely people will at least make the rounds. Plus, in a sea of cookie-cutter tradeshow booths, I worked to make my booth stand out amidst all that blah. Surely the bright colors and sheer uniqueness of the Spot-On Branding booth would attract enough attention that people would make the trip down to my end of the hall.

Here’s the first point where my experience failed to meet all those optimistic expectations. Instead of adjusting for the California crowd, I had the Salt Lake City event layout in my mind—a venue that was much smaller and cramped, almost to a fault. That image held, illustrating my expectations: I pictured people moving through the California space in a similar fashion. But Palm Springs was large and airy, and it just didn’t have the same flow of traffic.
Some people ended up migrating to the Spot-On Branding booth, but we weren’t seeing the numbers I’d hoped. What’s worse, when I was mingling on the other side of the hallway, I was crushed to realize most people I talked with hadn’t even considered meandering down to my end of the foyer. Despite my best efforts, a lot of people didn’t even know my booth existed. Not cool.

A Series of Unfortunate Events
My expectations were smashed. My goals? Now seemingly impossible. All my expectations for the event just weren’t flowing like that ideal movie previously playing in my head. I knew if people just came down the hall, they’d be compelled to check out my neat-looking Spot-On Branding booth. They’d be hooked! But that wasn’t exactly happening to the volume I’d expected.

To be honest, I panicked. I expected a targeted audience that would notice my booth and seek me out. Now that they weren’t, I started trying to attract simply anybody—somebody, anybody who would notice my booth tucked away way down the dead-end hall. I lost sight of that targeted audience, and I was so caught up in the event that I’d hardly noticed.

The real kicker…
So I sat in on one of David Neagle’s sessions in which he was speaking about realizing your ideal skill set, to transform into your best self and achieve your goals. I was stuck on a particular concept, so I asked a question regarding my Spot-On Branding sponsor booth at the event.

Believe me, it can be scary to ask a question in front of a few hundred people. You surrender control, as you don’t know where the speaker might go with the answer.

To my absolute horror, David suggested my booth signage might not be speaking to the room. He said my promotional materials for the event were too broad, not focused on the particular market I serve. That’s right: David Neagle just told me, in front of the same crowd of people I was trying to attract, that as a brand identity designer, my marketing wasn’t effective. Yes, this actually happened. I couldn’t believe it.

I wanted to argue that it wasn’t true; he wasn’t right! …especially considering my booth was shoved back in a zero-traffic hallway at his conference. But I didn’t. You know why? Because the reason I stood up and courageously asked my question was because I needed an answer so I could learn and grow from this experience. And when I thought about it, it was something I needed to ask myself anyway, so I decided to take away the information and reflect on it.

The Aftermath: The Lesson…and a Disclaimer
I left the mike with more questions and more confusion than I’d had when I stood up. So I knew I should spend some time thinking about my messaging and my target audience. Who was I targeting with my signage? Who was actually in the audience? Were these two groups overlapping in the way I’d envisioned?

The Lesson: My booth and my sign messaging were attracting the right audience. However, that target audience wasn’t the entire room. I got sucked into believing (and expecting) that the sheer number of attendees meant that every attendee would pass by my booth, and would then choose Yay or Nay. It was this quantity-over-quality mentality that obscured my vision, making it difficult to target a smaller, quality group of people who were my EXACT target audience at the event. (And quite frankly, the mood of the audience was more personal growth oriented and not business growth oriented—so that didn’t help either.)

Disclaimer: Ok, so I had several business associates, plus strangers from the event I had yet to meet, come by my booth after that startling Q&A to tell me that my messaging wasn’t the problem at all. Many people said it was that dead-end hallway booth location, and that I got a bum deal. I had one person frankly state that my question was self-sabotage, but that I should learn from it. (And I got a lot of comments like, Boy, you sure were courageous for getting up there in the first place!)

Whatever the case, I have a lot to think about and process this week after that whirlwind experience.

This lesson was a hard one to contemplate and to learn. However, I think I’m better for the experience and I welcome the growth. It’s important to approach new opportunities with an open mind—having targeted goals without relying on what could be incorrect or damaging expectations. In the end, lots to think about—but life is a learning experience, right?