The Business of Having Fun

Sometimes the best business relationships begin when we stop taking ourselves so bleeping seriously.

As you read this, I'll be in Punta Cana for our second land-based Promocations event, where a group of about 65 branded merchandise suppliers and distributors will spend several days connecting, collaborating, sharing ideas, and occasionally making complete fools of themselves.

All in the name of business, of course.

I realize that accounting departments probably cringe when they see a variation of the word "vacation" in the name of a networking event. I can practically hear someone looking at an expense report and asking, "Exactly how is a trip to an all-inclusive resort a legitimate business expense?" It's a fair question, especially if you judge an event by its name or location rather than what actually happens there.

The real answer has a lot to do with something we tend to overlook in business: having fun.

Think about how we traditionally approach professional networking. We schedule it, assign it a room, give everyone a badge, hand out a few drink tickets, and tell people to go build relationships. Then we wonder why so many conversations begin with the painfully predictable question, "So, what do you do?"

At Promocations, we've always taken a different approach.

Yes, there are structured opportunities to discuss business, exchange ideas, and tackle industry challenges. But there are also shared meals, excursions, spontaneous conversations at the pool, "singing" during the Japanese art of karaoke, "dancing" at a silent disco, and completely ridiculous competitions like the Punta Canalympics, where grown adults compete in fun, silly events.

Yes, I'm fully aware of how absurd that sounds, but that’s also exactly the point.

When people laugh together, compete against each other, or try to figure out how the hell to win an entirely unnecessary competition, something interesting happens: with apologies to John Mellencamp, those professional walls come tumbling down. The supplier stops being just a supplier, and the distributor stops being just a distributor. Instead, they become teammates, competitors, friends, and actual human beings who have something in common beyond the industry in which they work.

And when they do talk business, they're no longer starting from zero.

That doesn't mean every silly game results in a purchase order or every conversation becomes a lifelong friendship - although it has. The value comes from creating an environment where genuine relationships have room to develop without demanding an immediate return on every interaction.

We spend an enormous amount of time trying to make professional interactions productive. We measure appointments, leads, attendance, and countless other metrics. Those things matter, but they don't always capture what happens when two people develop enough trust to pick up the phone six months later, share an opportunity, or help each other solve a problem.

You can't necessarily schedule those moments. You can, however, intentionally create the conditions that make them more likely to happen.

That's what Josh Robbins and I try to accomplish with every Promocations event. The destination provides the backdrop, the agenda (and sometimes the lack thereof) creates opportunities, and the shared experiences give people something to remember long after they've returned home.

So, to the accounting departments wondering whether an event with "vacation" in its name can possibly be a worthwhile business investment, I'd suggest looking beyond the resort. The destination might be what gets people there, but the relationships – and the business that follows – are what make the investment worthwhile.

After all, perhaps the problem with professional networking isn't that we aren't taking it seriously enough. Maybe it's that we've forgotten how much business can happen when we stop taking ourselves so damn seriously.