MJ BIZ FLOOR MAP (studying strategy over a glass of wine) / December 2019
The MJ Biz Conference / Las Vegas, Nevada 12/10-12/14/19
To the Group:
The MJ Biz Conference ((https://mjbizconference.com/vegas/) is coming to Las Vegas in a few weeks (just two weeks before Christmas and an important birth, perhaps appropriately). I spent last weekend between football games looking at the website for the show. I’ve done a lot of large trade shows in my marketing career, but the MJ Biz Conference site was the most sophisticated I’ve ever seen. Maybe it represents what modern trade shows have become.
In our era of digital communication rather than face-to-face communication (of teleconferences, Skypes, emails and social media) trade shows have become the last refuge for those who want to meet in person with the people they want to do business with. Or people they might want to do business with. People they need to buy things from for their own business. People who might buy what they are producing.
Trade shows are always business-to-business, that link in the supply chain rather the end of the supply chain with the final link to the consumer. Businesses exhibit and attend trade shows because they are looking for both for products to make their product better and stronger and sales stronger. Sometimes these “products” are in the form of other companies perhaps ready to consider a partnership or merger with a company. And there are the markets for the companies own products.
Harvesting Hemp / The Ten Dollar Bill / Make Hemp Great Again / Its Long American History
I haven’t had a chance to go through the 1,700 + exhibitors at the MJ Biz Conference. Of course, Drew and Jacob will pick a lot of exhibitors to see. I know a few names like CannaSystems from Toronto (who build a new type of corticator for hemp we need to investigate). The founder of Canna Systems is a hemp pioneer in Canada and is behind the Canadian Hemp Association. Unfortunately, though, I don’t see CannaSystems on the exhibitor list. So, there you go. Sometimes the people you want to meet are at the show and sometimes not.
It’s said to be perhaps the fastest growing trade show in the nation. Not hard to believe. The key publication of the industry MJ Biz Daily is behind the trade show. There are expected to be 35,000 attendees. Size of booths at trade shows tell a lot about the industry and the real up-and-comers. So, not surprising that the company Hypur has the largest booth at the show. It is like a great square island on the conference floor plan I’ve been looking at. Rising above all the other little rectangular exhibitor squares on the map.
There were so many exhibitors, it was impossible to see them when I printed the floor plan onto my office computer. So, I took a PDF of the exhibitor floor over to Staples and had an 18” x 24” print out on architect’s paper. I’m still thinking that even this is not big enough and might go back to get a larger copy. So, what does Hypur do? They offer banking services for all in the industry (https://www.hypur.com). A bank with, so far, no competition. How long will they stay in business? Will they become a new type of modern banker? Providing the final impetus to an industry waiting for this final impetus?
Need to stop by and say hello (and probably apply for an account and meet the CEO/Founder of Hypur) and tell him what we do. His name is Chris. We need to tell Chris who we are, what we believe, what we do. Our story. Our pitch deck (to Chris way before the VCs). Pitch decks are never for just VCs and financial people. They are also for the founders/heads of other companies in your industry. They are basically promotions of your company to its industry rather than to VCs outside the industry.
So, I’m going to spread out the 18” x 24” chart of the Central Area of the Las Vegas Convention Center for the MJ Biz. Again, there are so many tiny little booths even on this chart, we might have to blow the thing up to 36” x 48” so we have some real map on the wall to show the targets of our strategy at the conference.
MJ Biz Show Floor Recently
Going through this whole process with the MJ Biz Conference, I think a great app for growing industries like the hemp industry is an app that compares what you want to do with others via an AI relational database that compares content on websites with other sites. The app would return those most important contacts you could make at this point in the cycle of your start-up business. I noticed, as sophisticated at the MJ Biz site was (https://mjbizconference.com/vegas/) is still required the real time input of attendees to the conference. One was offered up a data base of all the exhibitors which you marked if you wanted to visit. A list of all the sites you have chosen will be held/viewed as your List. Perhaps I could convince my nephew, a senior engineer at Google, to come aboard.
What if AI could relate the actions of one company to other companies through content of particular websites and social media. In other words, find match ups with other companies in a quickly growing, emerging industry, like MM and hemp, the importance of matching in fast growing industries is much a sociological question of that function or set of activities called “business.” Matching sociology/psychology of business founders/CEOs in emerging industries.
Wish this was available now in planning the strategy for LV.
A very bright marketing company. Founded by a woman named Farrington. Now, passed onto a male running it. But a key nexus of an industry. Much more of a key than other phony keys in industries. The publication and promotion efforts of MJ Biz are so much more spectacular than anyone else in the industry. There success has been through establishing an industry source for communication. Through one publication and then branches and segments of this publications as the industry grows into new segments.
Below is a PDF of all the speakers at the Hemp Forum the day before the conference begins. A photo and short bio on each of them along with their websites, phone numbers and email addresses.
I think we need to get an email out to all of these people. A general letter. The same we would send to others we want to meet at the conference.
Happy to review or come up with something to toss darts at.
We need to study this site. It contains names of leaders of our industry. We need to find the ones we need to connect with it seems to me.
Essentially, it’s a mini battlefield inside a convention center. Yet, perhaps these daily battlefields of businesses are what modern “warfare” has become?
Anyway, see the speakers below and send them an email if you feel like it. I think it might be a good idea to send them all an email from all of us. Or, the ones you suggest. Take a look at the list below.
John
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See the list we created for the Hemp Speakers Forum in Las Vegas.
Hemp Forum Speakers : MJ Biz Com. 2019