2018.

Take full.

She's why I sound like this on right now.

Everything's still getting set up, and it is quiet before store.

This weekend.

Just gone was the London Copy Festival, and as you can tell from my voice, I am in recovery mode right now.

Andi In attending it.

In participating in it, I learned three things.

I learned something about filmmaking.

I learned something about the festival itself.

I learned something about business.

Now.

My plan when I went was just to go take my camera, shoot a bunch of video and try and capture what's new and interesting at the festival.

In truth, there wasn't very much.

It's a big show.

There is a lot going on.

There's all sorts of kind of coffee equipment and technology.

There's obviously an enormous number off coffee experiences there, with roasters and other people just serving amazing cups of coffee and then also around the show.

That's just kind of all sorts of everything kind of connected to the show, a cz well as big coffee competition's going on, which is the UK but the championships in the coffee masters.

What I learned Waas.

That's not enough plan for a film.

There wasn't really anything there a couple of exceptions to talk about.

You know, my plan fell to pieces pretty quickly.

I learned that you really need to plan a little bit better than that.

And you can't just kind of wing these things and end up with something interesting during the show, have worked out something kind of important about exhibiting at these kind of very popular, very busy shows.

Your business coming here, I think it's a pretty bad place.

Now Try and grow your business through new customers.

I think a lot of people you're gonna meet and interact with here probably already know you, your brand, your company and they want to come and see you on have that decision to be a customer.

Reaffirm, right?

It's a great place to meet existing customers, but in amongst the chaos animals, analysts good, great experiences.

I think it's a terrible place to try and win your business to develop new customers because it's simply too much competition.

From our point of view of the show, we've seen loads of people who already buy from us.

You want to talk to us, put a face to a name.

Just just, you know, make it a little bit more real that we are people that were passionate that we're excited on.

I think deepening relationships is a much better and more possible outcome.

Sure, Like it's then creating a whole bunch of new ones is the festival.

This year kind of wrecked my head.

It caused me some mental anguish because I just I just couldn't understand it anymore.

It was so big, so unwieldy that it was just unapproachable.

So I can drink maybe maybe 10 12 coffees at an event like that.

I could taste a few things.

I can finish them drinks.

But I'm gonna tap out pretty quickly because I'm gonna feel sick.

There were probably 200.

Maybe maybe Maur Coffee experience is available at that show.

As an attendee, you're supposed to go on 1/2 day ticket.

I have no idea how you're supposed to get the best out of that show.

Sure you should.

Product plan.

If you'd done these things before, then you know that planning is a good thing on going to that thing.

I met a bunch of people actually who had a plan and they executed it and they saw what they wanted to see and they left.

But it doesn't leave much room for discovery, and I feel like the show got there in a very normal way.

And this is the lesson for me because it started out as a concentration of an interesting thing.

Coffee in London on there was an industry that wanted to do it on a consumer or a bunch of consumers that wanted to go and see it.

They sold a few 1000 tickets, and so next year go bigger, and every year it got bigger.

What tickets?

More stands.

More space, more tickets, more stands, more tickets.

More stands.

My tickets for stands on dhe.

Suddenly you're at this point we're at now where it's too big, and the lesson is, I think you have to be at all times, your own customer.

I think the people who organized the festival don't really think about what it's like to attend the festival.

They should go out.

They should line up in the street.

They should have that ticket stamp.

They should come in for half a day and see what they get done.

See what they see.

See if they felt like they missed out in a way that maybe wasn't very satisfying because even if someone exhibiting that like we can speak to a few 1000 people over the 34 days that were there.

But 30,000 plus people came through, we can barely scratch.

The surface will barely speak toe one in 10 who attend, so I don't need there to be more people.

I can't deal with more people, nor can anyone with a boost.

So that's the lesson.

Growth is good, but as you grow, you have to go back to being your own customer again.

If you're a coffee shop, you have to go on line up in your own line or the coffee.

Wait, get it, drink it.

Sit down, find a seat, see if the tables a dirty see if they're clean.

See what the service is like.

See if your seats a comfortable all these little things matter.

If you're a roaster, you should really buy a bag of your own coffee.

Online often regularly, isn't a fun.

Experience is a good experience.

We should always be our own customers I think that for me was a great lesson on a great reminder from the show.

So that's it.

That's what I learned this year at the London Coffee Festival.

Was kind of amazed how many people came up and said They're enjoying the videos.

So that's very, very motivating.

So thank you for that.

Thanks for watching.

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