Last week, I met for dinner with a longtime client
as they traveled through Los Angeles on a stop-over on their way back to Europe.
It was both by design and natural inclination of all involved, a working dinner where the main topic of conversation was the client's business model in all its permutations - new market penetration and geographies, new product development, prospective new hires, growth-by-acquisition opportunities, establishing Newcos to house new technologies, discussing the personal exit plans of the company's founders, and on and on and on...
It was also meandering, energy was fruitlessly expended on ideas without reasonable probability of success, and was distracted throughout (pleasantly so!) by more "prosaic" conversation around food, wine, travel, family, sports and more.
AND it was probably the most productive two hours any of us had all year.
Because while enjoying a tasty meal in a beautiful restaurant, we organically arrived at a killer marketing idea worth potentially tens of millions of dollars.
By organically I mean we came up with it through a classic “thesis, antithesis, synthesis” back and forth.
The company’s sales manager shared some remarkable research that showed that while the “conventional wisdom” was that the company’s market space was in free fall and under severe “legacy” pressure, in actual reality the market was experiencing solid, and in some areas, unprecedented growth.
As we digested these eye-opening statistics came the "after-the fact obvious" idea of sharing them in a way that would paint the company's seemingly legacy offerings in a future-focused light.
First, through featuring these insights across the company's various marketing platforms - in its marketing and sales collateral, its white papers and case studies, in its email newsletter, and potentially in the its tag line and logo.
And more excitedly, through the development of a new product with a market potential many times greater than the company’s current core offering.
To give some idea as to the power of this idea breakthrough, it had the company’s CEO and Founder - and note that is a 20+ year old, 8-figure in revenue and very profitable business - thinking about changing the name of the company to leverage it.
This was obviously a very high ROI outcome from a simple dinner, but there was another outcome that was arguably even more valuable.
You see this wonderfully animated dinner discussion inspired that most magical energy to be found in any gathering of humans - a sense of BIG possibility.
The possibility that the future will be better than the past.
The possibility that we, as a team, have the right stuff to win and do great things together.
The possibility that technology can just not be a threat to an older line business, but instead can open up avenues of new opportunity for it.
And the possibility that even if we don't have at hand all of the solutions to our problems, that we can put our heads together and find them.
It doesn't always work.
As often as not those ideas arrived at after the third glass of wine don’t seem so hot in the cold light of morning.
Or if they do hold up, actually acting on and making them happen falls by the wayside for the various excuses and reasons.
And sometimes the ideas just don’t work.
But my experience is that as the seriousness and earnestness of purpose of all involved in a brainstorming/ideation session goes up, up, up...
....the likelihood of these “false positives” goes down, down, down.
I highly encourage all executives of ambition to bake more of these kinds of sessions into their normal business days and nights.
To do so alertly, with great stamina, a strongly positive mindset, and with a firm faith that answers ARE out there.
These sessions can and should be as much fun as one can have in business...
...and lead to breakthrough ideas, strategies, tactics and initiatives unreachable through any other means.