It’s that time of year! Time when EVERY post house, creative agency, freelancer and starving artist descend upon New York for the annual PromaxBDA conference. And if you’re a network creative director, producer, AP or PA, you’ve probably already been inundated with lunch, drink, dinner, coffee, and breakfast meeting requests. (SIDE NOTE: Seriously, who schedules a breakfast meeting at Promax?? Dude, do you even Promax? Have you tried to get up for one of those breakfasts after the opening night party? Yeah, not happening!).
Of course, I’ve been on both sides of this game. For the better part of 2 decades, I was on the receiving end of nice dinners, drinks, parties, etc. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot of fun! Exhausting, but fun! Now that I’m on the vendor side, it’s my turn to play the game. And yes, I’ve reached out to my clients and contacts in the industry and have worked to set up some meetings—because let’s be straight, business is business.
But my goal for Promax is to strengthen relationships and start new ones. Sure, I can show you my reel. But you could do that now while you’re on my website. You want to work with people you enjoy working with. This is a stressful industry. Nobody wants to be stuck on a project with someone you can’t stand dealing with. That makes the job exponentially harder, and certainly less enjoyable. And I’ve always found it’s much harder to be creative when you’re stressing about the person on the other end of the phone/email.
So let’s start something. I will be at PromaxBDA all week (enjoy the veal!), and I’d love to meet up. If we already know each other, I look forward to catching up. If we haven’t met yet, hit me up and let’s connect. We can talk business, we can talk sports, whatever. But let’s see if we can start something. Everyone has that core group of go-to people that you trust to call at a moment’s notice. I want to be on that list. I might not get the first call, at least not right away. But let’s start the conversation.
Every great story starts somewhere. And I’m looking forward to writing that first chapter.
See you at Promax!
– Jim