Do you find that you can’t sleep or just wake up at 3 am and wonder what am I doing?

I’m one of those people who go to bed at a decent hour but find myself waking up in the middle of the night. What am I thinking about?

• HJMT clients — are they happy? what else can we do to make them happy?
• business development strategies — why are people taking so long to make a decision?
• staffing – are the right people on the bus?
• financial statements — are we spending too much and on what?
• and of course, family — where do the kids need to go next? do we need to go food shopping?

What keeps you up at night?

What do you think? Have you ever displayed your product or service at a trade show? What was your experience like?

At HJMT, we’ve exhibited on a number of occasions. Each time, we try to do something different to create a buzz. One time, at the NYS School Board Association, we had a life size image of Albert Einstein and had Superintendents and School Board Members pose with the card board image. We snapped digital photos and sent to their email addresses. Another time, we had a spinning wheel and gave away a number of items. And one time, we even had a spelling bee! (It was funny to see the Superintendents of some of the schools actually running away from our booth in fear of spelling the word wrong!)

Today, we exhibited at the NY XPO at the Jacob Javitz Center in Manhattan. Since our new tag line is “Creating Buzz Without the Sting,” we decided to do something with bumble bees. Staff members, Stefanie Topper and Ellen Heydt were dressed as bees and handed out business cards. The business cards directed attendees to our booth to play “The Singing Bee.” At the booth, Kristie Galvani and Allie Herzog quizzed attendees. If they guessed the artist that played on Kristie’s ipod, they could be eligible to win a free Ipod Touch!

Believe it or not, many people didn’t know a lot of the famous artists like the Jackson 5, Fleetwood Mac, Madonna and even Billy Joel! When I heard Kristie giving a hint to a couple of young businessmen, “they are five brothers who sing together from a famous family,” my eyes popped open! Could people be so unaware?

As a result, we had a nice group of people visit our booth, although we did get our share of solicitors. I couldn’t believe how many people were actually pitching us for financial planning services, mortgages, staffing needs, promotional item companies (even though our banner said that we do promo items!), Mary Kay cosmetics, and people looking for work!

The expo was supposed to have more than 15,000 in attendance with hundreds of exhibitors. We ordered 3,000 business cards for the bees to hand out. If we gave out 2,000 cards it was a lot. At one point, I saw someone with five cards in his hand! “I’m sorry I think I took enough,” he said to me when I tried to hand him another card!

There were definitely not thousands of folks in attendance. If there were a few hundred it was a lot!

The other thing about the show is that the organizers randomly placed exhibitors with no care who they were putting next to who! As a matter of fact, they put HJMT next to a competitor (who we actually never heard of with supposedly 35 employees in Garden City and Manhattan). Our booth drew most of the crowd, so it really didn’t bother me.

One more interesting fact about the show…. Since they let everyone and anyone into the show, we actually saw a few homeless people walking around taking the free stuff.

So was the show a business development tool for HJMT? I’m not sure. I do know that since we had the bees walking around handing out business cards, we did get tremendous exposure and visibility for the firm. In the long run, that’s the most important thing, because visibility and exposure = new business!

Check out this photo from Rochester…. Lisa Gordon sent this today. Although we had some flakes on Long Island, we got nothing like the folks did in Rochester…. Happy Snow Day!

Anyone have a good recommendation for a restaurant or a Broadway Show?

I have a few that I visited this weekend… Here are a few breakfast places….

• Barney Greengrass on 86th Street and Broadway is a famous breakfast place where people, from all over the world, go. There is nothing chic about this place. It’s actually kind of grimy and dirty but the food is outrageous! I had lox, eggs and onions. It was probably the best LEO I’ve tasted in years! It came with a bagel and delicious potato pancakes! They were better than grandma used to make! There was no wait at this restaurant since I got there a little late for breakfast, but usually the line runs out the door. Is it worth the wait? You betcha!
• Patis in the meat packing district is a French bistro that is noisy, crowded and the place to be seen! I tried the Eggs Benedict, which came with home fried potatoes which were amazing! The party I was with tried variations of the Eggs Benedict. The bread basket was delightful and the coffee was sensational. If you don’t have a reservation for brunch, you may not get into this place. Be sure to make a reservation at least one week in advance!

For Dinner, I tried the famous…

• Craft, located on 19th Street between Broadway and Park Avenue South. It had an eclectic mix of poultry, beef, fish and pasta. To start, my party ordered two appetizers — yellow fin tuna and escargot. I didn’t taste the yellow fin but heard it was good. I did try the escargot, which is one of my favorite dishes. At Craft, they prepared it with a fried egg on top. Although I liked the snails, I didn’t feel the egg went with it. As a main course, my party ordered a flat iron steak that came out in a frying pan. I ordered lobster. It came out soaked in butter and although the lobster was a little undercooked, it tasted very heavy! By the time dessert came, we were so full we couldn’t order anything else. They gave us four mini pumpkin muffins to go with our coffee and as we left, the Craft personnel sent us on our way with a cinnamon muffin. The food was good but wasn’t great.

And for Broadway….

• American Buffalo at the Ballasco Theatre in NYC, is a drama worth going to. The cast consisted of John Leguizamo, Cedric The Entertainer and Haley Joel Osment. The three men were outstanding! They played their characters so well that I felt as if I were looking through a glass window spying on my neighbors! I was very impressed. The whole play took place in Don’s Junk Shop…. (Don was played by Cedric The Entertainer.) It was well worth the tkts ticket price of $37.50, even if we sat in the “nose bleed” section!

If you have any recommendations, add them here… I’ll continue to do this as I frequent other restaurants and shows…

I didn’t win…. But, I will tell you, it did feel nice to get the recognition as one of four finalists for the Stevie Awards for Women in Business. These finalists were from around the world. Folks flew in from London, Australia, California and Texas! They included: SheFinds.com, Theglasshammer.com and Leading Workplace Change. The glasshammer.com won. Kudos to all the finalists and to the winner!

The event wasn’t as nice as I would have thought. There was a cash bar from 5:30 – 6:30 pm where they charged $11 per drink, even for a glass of wine! I didn’t really think this was right since they charged us $195 per ticket! The event itself wasn’t that great either. For some reason, they didn’t announce the finalists only the winners. That part was okay but when they called up finalists from out of state, that I thought was a problem! Either you call up everyone or you only call up the winners!

Some people thought that the worst part of the event was the “rubber chicken.” I think speaking for a few of us, our stomachs definitely hurt that night!

In any event, my staff and I went to Johnny Utah’s after the event. We had a few drinks, had a few laughs and Stefanie Topper, event planner, even rode the bull! Now that I’m out $100 bucks because I said to the staff “anyone who rides the bull now gets a $100 bonus!” (It was so funny, it was worth the $100!)

It was a great evening. It was especially nice to be with my extended family, my staff! What a wonderful group of people!

Thanks to all of you for your good wishes…. and you never know, maybe I’ll win next year!