Do you remember what you wanted to be when you were a kid? Did you become one? Or did you follow another path? And how do one become a trade show expert? Because I don’t think anybody grows up planning to become a trade show expert. Amongst the ones I know, colleagues or competitors, no one thought of becoming “that”. But when you look at their life steps and you connect the dots, it becomes obvious.
Ever seen the speech from Steve Jobs (I added it below for your comfort) who said you can only collect the dots looking backwards, never looking forwards? So how did I get there?
The dots I could only connect looking backwards
I was the kind of kid who had to learn to build a safety net. Maybe it was because I was anxious, maybe it was passed down to me, maybe it was cultural due my family story, it doesn’t matter.
All I know is that I had to be good with people.
Many kids get bullied in school, I tell myself I escaped from it, but I also know the reason I escaped from it was because I learned to navigate the “room”pretty quickly. The schools I went to as a kid where violent as fuck (how often do you go to school to learn some of your teachers are in the hospital because they got beaten up - not by parents like it happens these days - but by “kids” themselves. Had a poor technology teacher who got several ribs broken when a kid he had told to leave the classroom came back with a baseball bat to get his revenge… Rival gangs fighting at recess, bringing weapons in the school for that…
See the picture? I wasn’t the head of a gang, was actually a pretty good student, and I didn't have the kind of body, strength or attitude that would have deterred these dangerous individuals. So I had to find a more diplomatic way to navigate this fucking inferno. It was really fucked up. So I scanned for threats, I calculated who was safe, who could be an ally, a protector, and who was a danger. And you had to do that in a split second if you didn’t want to end up punched, stabbed or ransomed every recess by some 15 years old delinquent and his group of friends.
Anxiety forces you to be hypervigilant, and when humans are the threat, you study people. You learn to read group dynamics and emotions pretty quickly. Even today when people are not reading the room, it boggles me, but I remind myself we didn't grow up in the same environment.
So, out of necessity, and at the price of constant anxiety for years 5 days a week, I was building the set of skills that will make me a machine on trade shows. Being able to read people in a split second. And here’s the beauty of this. When you are anxious because you are in a hostile environment, once the environment changes you can unleash the energy stuck inside. And in an environment as safe as a convention, both skills are not only necessary, but create the magic I will later turn into a method (the M.A.G.I.C. Exhibiting™ Formula to help exhibitors be successful at trade shows.
I was so much looking for allies that I learned to connect in a split second with strangers, cause that meant for my kids brain, the difference between dying or surviving.
And later on as an adult, from surviving to thriving in closed and safe environments, building connections like a spider builds a web.
That mechanism, built in a school corridor in Paris by a nervous kid who needed to feel less alone, is exactly what the best teams on a trade show floor are doing. They are not making conversation. They are building connections that can make their business survive or thrive depending on the moment.
I just had a thirty-year head start. But how did I end up in trade shows? Read on.
Building stands in Germany at 19
At 19, a temp agency sent me to build stands at a large trade fair in Germany. I got the job because I knew how to build things, DIY since childhood with my father, and because my CV said I spoke German. Germany told me I didn’t. But again, since I was wired with connection, I catch languages very easily, because I “need” to communicate (but don’t ask me about grammar, ok?).
Was that my beginning with trade shows? Not yet. But from this experience, building things, assembling panels, I discovered how (fucking) much companies paid for this booth (the job was very well paid). That detail will become the raison d”etre of my business 20 years later.
Club Med and being the host
A couple of years later, as I finished my master’s degree (in marketing and communication, what a coincidence right?) I ended up at Club Med as a mini-club entertainer. Corporate 9-5 jobs were too scary for me. If you never heard of Club Med, at that time it was the best holiday resort experience you could find, ON THE PLANET. People who went once to Club Med could never go back to other resorts. And it was because of ONE THING, the quality of the entertainment, of the relationship the Club Med resort team will build with their guests. They call it La culture Club Med, and it relies on a few secrets I have now transferred to trade shows. So not only do they recruit people who are good with people, they give them a frame to work with. This system allowed us to engage with complete strangers and within 90 seconds make them feel not only welcomed but home, like you are family (read what trade shows have taught me about trust). This atmosphere was what made Club Med stand apart in the tourism sector, and is a phenomenon few companies have managed to replicate up till today.
This is where my skills, the ones built as a kid, found an outlet. In such a safe atmosphere, my social skills became like oil in a machine. Finding the crack in someone's guard, the right energy to get through it, and steer it to create a relationship was something that got me to make a lot of friends there.
The anxious kid in the school corridors became the life of the party. I just didn’t know it could be useful outside of a resort on the red sea, and a real professional, business, application.
I did not know at the time that this is exactly what the best exhibiting teams in the world do on a trade show floor.
A jewellery business owner who gave up after two shows
There was a woman at Club Med, a jewellery business owner who became a friend. I was taking care of her 8 year old daughter, Yael, at the mini-club and I soon became part of the family. After I left and came back to Paris, she reached out. She was heading to a large show in the city and wanted to save money by buying booth furniture rather than renting it. That furniture is still in my parents' basement.
What I witnessed here again got stored in my memory. She came twice. Then she stopped. The trade show participation was too expensive for what she got out of it. Too little return on investment? She and her business associate gave it up.
I had no idea back then to explain what had gone wrong. But I knew then how much shows could cost, not in terms of price, but in failed efforts. The price to pay is more than money, it is emotional.
How a Montreal workshop introduced me to a trade show expert
After being a Club Med entertainer, I spent a few years as a political advisor for a local politician that used to be a minister.
I organized 87 events for him in a few years. Anywhere from ten people in a town hall meeting room to thousands on Bastille Day. Protocol, logistics, speechwriting, the whole shabang. Most of what I did in this job was, again, to build trust, a safety net. The type of safety net you need in politics for when shit hits the fan, and it trust me, like in life, it eventually does. And my skills again saved some asses.
Then I left for Canada.
I arrived in Toronto as a new immigrant. Every recruiter said the same thing: interesting CV, but no Canadian experience, go get one first then come back. No hard feelings, people want certainty, right? What actually bothered me was “what is it that I’m actually good at that could serve others the best. The one thing I had always been genuinely good at, was walking into a room full of strangers and leaving with new friends. But I had no idea which job it could serve the best, especially in this new cultural context.
Then came the Christmas break and I headed to Montreal for a few days. Over the Christmas break I found a three-day workshop for new immigrants. How to sell yourself on the Canadian market. I registered thinking why not.
It was early January. A Montreal winter. If you haven’t lived a Canadian winter, here’s how it feels: I stepped out of the metro station this day and my nose started to tingle. From the inside. It was my nose hair frozen. Tiny stalactite in it. Canadian experience they say.
The workshop started. It was brilliant. And over three days I connected with everyone in the room. I even came up with the idea for a networking club to link new immigrants with companies that needed them. A net, once again. That club still exists today.
But it’s what happens next that changed the course of my professional life. The trainer asked me to stay, he wanted to talk to me. I thought I was in trouble. Because on day 2 he asked for a volunteer to do a simulated recruitment interview. I do not remember if I volunteered or was chosen. What I remember is blanking completely during it. Like an actor on a theater scene that has forgotten his text. Nothing going out. I went back to my seat.
His name was Julien, Julien Roy. He turned out to be one of Canada's top trade show experts and he told me: "Have you ever thought about working on trade shows? I watched how you connected with everyone in this room. You didn't know a single person. That is the kind of skill I need for my clients." I looked at him as if he had suggested I move to Mars. A trade show expert? What the hell was that? I did not even know that was a job.
He gave me his card and said to call him back. Now I was planning to go back to Toronto.
But I gave him a call anyway. And he gave me an invitation to come see him speaking at the International Chamber of Commerce of Quebec. Since it was early morning, far from Montreal, I was required to arrive the night before, but not to worry about the costs. He told me: "I'll book you a room in a hotel nearby, and email me your train or bus ticket, it’s on me". You know when your habits conflict with something happening but you see it as a sign? So I went and when I arrived, he handed me a reimbursement check on the spot. I still have it today.
Four years training on North American floors
What followed was four years of training and shadowing one of the best trade show and sales specialists in North America, while keeping a sales job on the side. I don’t remember how many training sessions I attended, learning everything Julien knew about trade shows. And then when he believed I knew enough, he started to put me on his clients' booths to act as… a greeter. It was like being back at the club med, minus the swimming pool, but with an understanding of sales I never had before, even as I worked as a salesperson. I helped them generate leads and close more business engaging in split seconds with strangers. I made extra money on top of a day job, and reinvested it in my own training.
Now I did some cultural faux pas along the way I learned from. Because North America is NOT Europe. Embarrassing moments. But Julien kept trusting me, and me trusting him.
And one day, Julien called me. He told me he had an event he couldn’t attend and that he needed me to replace him. It was up north in Canada. A small gathering of local business owners, he said. But he would need me to practice and record myself and send it to him, just to be sure. I did, for close to 2 weeks. Then I went. And when I arrived I found out that the attendance was two hundred CEOs. That was the middle speaker and that after me was a Shark Tank personality to close off the day. My slot was during lunch, the most difficult one. I texted Julien: “Why didn’t you tell me all this?”. He replied: "You would have chickened out if I'd told you."
I was so nervous I couldn’t stop sweating. I took three showers and changed my outfit between 8 am and noon.
After the talk I did not look at my phone for hours. I was certain I had been a terrible speaker and that my career, barely started, was already finished. I was expecting Julien to simply fire me. Then I turned it back on. An sms from Julien: “call me ASAP”. So I called: “Ruben, how do you think you did? Terrible, I said. No Ruben, you were voted best speaker of the day! The client wants you next year again, so I can plan my holidays in Florida already”.
That was my launch in Canada. But there was a crash waiting for me ahead. Wait for it.
Why I had to rebuild everything when I got back to Europe
A few months later I had to return to Europe. And that is when I hit a new wall.
What had worked brilliantly in North America didn’t work there. Not that what I was teaching and practising on shows was wrong. It wasn’t. Quite the opposite. But it was harder to sell and to teach. Let’s start with the latter. Americans are inductive: if it works, then extract a rule from it, and apply it. No explanation needed. Europeans are deductive: tell me why it works first, so I can trust you enough to try it. The practice was solid, but the explanations around it had to be rebuilt.
Luckily for me I was European, and I understood where it came from. It is cultural. Europeans are more risk averse and more theoretical than Americans. And with Covid hitting I had time on my hands to rebuild the whole training part of the business.
I took Julien's foundations, layered on my own experience across both continents, added my own research in psychology, behavioral science, and sales, and built something that explained not only what and how, but why it worked consistently, no matter the trade show. Something a sales team in Lyon or Madrid or Warsaw could learn, understand, and apply without me standing next to them.
About selling it, the same cultural factors apply. If you read Peter Drucker you probably stumbled upon “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” It is true. And in Europe, selling trade show training can face more resistance because the business culture is often less transactional and more relationship-driven than in North America, even if that is gradually changing. So when you sell “better results,” you are often also asking people to change habits, which creates cultural friction.
Europeans may be more resistant to anything that sounds like standardization, and more likely to assume that trade show performance comes from experience, the product, the brand, or the market rather than from a method. That said, this is a tendency, not a rule, and it varies a lot by country, sector, and company size and culture. But let’s say that in general I have to educate my clients first on this side of the Atlantic, for them to see why they should up their trade show game.
I learned that Americans prefer New Coke to old Coke, Europeans Old Coke to New Coke. It’s a metaphor, Americans hated New Coke.
The trade show methodology that came out of it
What came out of this necessary adaptation was a total make over of the method I’ve been applying in North America. And it gave birth to the M.A.G.I.C. Exhibiting™ Formula.
The formula has five ingredients. You can read more about it here.
Today I am the recurring trade show expert at trade shows like VivaTech, Europe's largest startup and technology conference, where I lead the startup masterclass and run in-person coaching sessions for exhibitors. I lecture at Sorbonne University CELSA. And had been interviewed in several newspapers or on several podcasts (Read more about it here). And I have trained hundreds of exhibitors from the 5 continents.
At a minimum, the ones who implement the formula by joining The Activator Program triple their results and cut their show costs by 20 percent.
Now what I provide now to my clients is more than the improved results they get from their shows, it is a new culture around how to run them.
If you are about to exhibit at a show and want to know what these exhibitors do to improve their results, you’re welcome to watch the Exhibitor’s Edge Masterclass.