Excellent ideas from my market

Last Friday I took the train up to Boston for the day to give a brown bag lunchtime talk at Sun Microsystems for a couple of their affinity groups: Asian-American Diversity Network and Women@Sun.

This was not a gig I pursued. It came directly from my market. One of the readers of my tips responded to one of them with a request to speak. I don't even know how he got on my list (he couldn't remember either) but it didn't matter. He'd been receiving my tips for a while and felt the material was relevant to him and his colleagues: an audience I didn't even know existed.

So I tailored my "Networking Nuts 'n Bolts" for his group of IT professionals. It was a 90-minute session and I didn't even get through all the ideas, they were so engaged in the hands-on workshop and the actual networking. So I may "need" to go back and give a half day or full day session.

This is what's possible. But that's not all.

After the event, I was approached by a woman in the audience who asked how my mentoring works. She wondered if I could work with her on her networking skills. "I could make it part of my professional development plan for next year."

Yes, what a great idea. Another one I would not have thought of. Helping employees as part of their professional development.

I love it when ideas for new services and new markets come from the market itself. That's what I mean when I say, "everything flows from the market."

Has anything like that happened to you lately?