When I signed up my company to sponsor three dinner events in May 2016 in Austin, Texas, at first I was told that I would receive a ticket to the dinners as well as have the opportunity to stand up and say something about our products.  We had just received Whole30 Approval and I wanted to shout from the mountaintops that they believed in us and our products.  I didn’t love the idea of talking in front of large, industry celeb-filled dinners, but I knew it would be great exposure for the products and so jumped at the chance to do it.

Two days before the first dinner, I received an email from someone new saying that he’s sorry, there is no room for me for dinner, and I also won’t be able to speak. What?!?  I forwarded the email to my current event contact to say, very politely, that it was no problem that there was not space for me at the dinner (I was frankly glad that I wouldn’t have to eat catered food three days in a row!), however I really wanted the opportunity to announce that our products are now Whole30 Approved.  Could I still just come and do that?

I didn’t hear anything, not a word.  So the day of the event about an hour beforehand, I just showed up.  I came well dressed and with a short speech swirling in my head. Everyone working the event was running around like crazy, and I just played dumb.  I asked the event organizer, another person I had never communicated with, if he had found out about the sponsors being able to attend and speak, as I was originally told I could.  I again very politely said, ‘it’s really no problem if there is not enough food or space for me, but if I could just say a few words about our products and then leave that would be great!’

He went off and most likely talked to the head of the entire conference about what to do.  Everyone there being very nice, and with me standing there being very nice, he came back and said that it’s no problem for me to speak, and hey! there is even extra space for me to stay and have dinner.  It was a super casual buffet meal so I had a hunch that would be the case. So, with butterflies in my stomach and probably food in my teeth (I hate it when I have to talk at the end – eating on a stomach with butterflies is the worst!) I stood up in front of 75 accomplished paleo bloggers, entrepreneurs, and other industry leaders and introduced our products in just a few short but sweet sentences.

If I had taken their word for it I would have missed that opportunity to bring additional awareness to our products and get to know a important industry members. Yes, I would have gotten to choose where I ate dinner, ideally at an Austin BBQ hotspot with great reviews online, but that wasn’t really the point of the trip.  Instead I added a personal touch to the company by showing my face and linking our brand to a much more well-known one.