In 2019, while working for ReadySet, I got an email offering us a sponsorship opportunity for From Day One’s upcoming event in San Francisco. ReadySet was based in Oakland, and we were eager to showcase our work, but we weren’t in a place to invest in the sponsorship with the ROI being unclear.
But where there’s a Will, there’s a way.
My friend Maurice was a DEI director with a substantial budget, so I pitched him on sponsoring the breakout and co-facilitating it with me. He was on board.
The breakout was well-received and well-attended—people were standing in the doorway and sitting on the floor in the aisle which of course wasn’t a fire hazard. Afterwards, Nick, the co-founder of the conference, asked me if I would deliver that same content at their upcoming event in Brooklyn. I agreed.
Nearly 200 people attended the Brooklyn session. The content landed, and so did my jokes. A colleague in attendance took me to lunch afterwards and tried to poach me. Something was happening.
I formalized the partnership with From Day One, and we took the show on the road. I served as the closing keynote speaker for FD1 conferences in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, and Seattle. I leveled up and business grew. The ROI was clear.
And then 7,000 miles away, something weird happened in China, and I stopped traveling, just like everyone else. Things got quiet for a few months, but after a police officer in Minneapolis knelt on George Floyd’s neck with the world watching, things got decidedly less quiet.
The seeds planted in those sessions across the nation bore fruit, and business exploded. We had more work than we knew what to do with, and I delivered two to three virtual workshops a day for weeks. Maybe months.
Looking back, the From Day One partnership was one of the most economically and professionally rewarding relationships of the past decade. It altered my professional trajectory in ways I’m still benefiting from. What a ride.
