Carrots are good for your eyesight, they really are, and people love to eat carrots, at least compared to cauliflower and broccoli.  Carrot Juice however is a different ball game; I mean you have to be a die hard fan to enjoy a glass of carrot juice, even though I promise you, well worth the return on investment.

Ah yes the return on investment. If you happened to attend a conference lately and walk about, you would see one exhibitor booth after another with Guaranteed ROI, or immediate ROI or some ROI promise. If you are a customer walking buy, you should be smiles ear to ear, your business is set for life, all you need to do is implement all these products sometime competing and you are on your way to ROI bliss. Of course many of these are empty promises that never materialize, no wonder customers increasingly are shying away from the exhibit floor.

If you find your self on booth duty, and are told to scream ROI and cost cutting from the top of your lungs, I have some advice for you, you are going to annoy the heck out of everyone. Want to have success at the exhibit floor? It easier than you think, all you have to do is, connect with people.

Now that you have had your carrot juice and can spot a customers badge a mile away just walk up to them, introduce your self, and talk about things they care about and you care about. Talk about your kid or dog, about the city your in or a baseball team. Talk about the weather, talk about monkeys, whatever, just don’t recite ROI propaganda. See once you establish some sort of a relation with a prospect, you don’t have to pitch, they will ask, and you can then figure out a way at working together in a way that has positive ROI for both of you.

Do you attend or exhibit at tradeshows, what are some of your positive experiences?

Are you a “great thinker” ? Have you heard this term before? Sexy ain’t it.

You may have no idea who they are, but for me, the Bernoulli Family is a bunch of real “great thinkers”. No doubt like most real “great thinkers” they where a bunch of weirdo’s. The father hated one of his sons, and wanted to kill him, but loved the other son, so much so that he actually slept with him. The uncle created a prediction engine that computed the day he will die, and when the day came and he was feeling healthy like an Ox, he killed himself, all so that his algorithm proves true. If you read about this family, 8 of them, what they achieved is monumental. Without them, no trips to the moon, no internet, no advancements in medicine, etc… Their work in Mathematics so revolutionized the science, that with out them we will be in the science dark ages.

Great thinkers, Plato, Socrates, Newton are some. What they thought about in seclusion and in obscurity for years made a change to the way we live to this day.

Someone who comes up with a one liner on twitter is not great thinker. Someone who knows the ins and outs of wordpress is not a great thinker. Someone who can get you page rank on SEO is not a great thinker, they are people with experience or whit, they are people with opinion, they are to be respected for their work, but they are NOT great thinkers. Please, please, please, enough with the great thinker label. What have all these “great thinkers” collectively achieved? anything life changing?

I am sure there are some real great thinkers today, Who are they? Help make a list.

I’ll get you started.

Nassim Taleb.