When we went all-in on M&A, I did not consider that we would become D List (C List? B List?) celebrities in our tiny niche. Yet it seems as if that is the case. In the majority of our initial conversations now, potential clients have already watched hours of our content. It makes for a strange dynamic: In some sense they already know us but we don’t know anything about them. That is the essence of a parasocial relationship, something that has really only come into existence in the wider culture in the era of YouTube and social media.

Last week in NYC, this was on another level. The majority of conversations I had with people whom I didn’t know already started the same way. Someone would approach me, tell me they’d watched some number of our webinars, and then launch into either a burning question they wanted me to answer or to tell me where they were in their process of searching for a business to buy. From one perspective, this was a great dynamic for my introverted self. From another perspective, the level of familiarity was slightly unnerving. I didn’t even have my pre-meeting call notes for these conversations so more than once I had to invert the normal order of conversation and ask someone their name only after answering their substantive question. That part didn’t bother me. It was the constancy of conversation that did that; more than once I had to sit down in a quiet corner for a quick reset. At least now I’ve reached the point where I actually take those energy breaks following the imperative to know thyself.

It is always hard to judge the success of an event in its immediate aftermath. As we quip internally, it’s all about winning the follow up. As we’ve already been in contact with almost everyone with whom I spoke, this is a slightly different task than at most conferences. Still, we added some notes to our quirky CRM setup and updated our follow-up sequences accordingly.