The smarter they are... the more you will learn

Travel does different things to different people. As a person who loves travel, I rarely go anywhere that leaves me not feeling on top of the world and it is safe to say, I am a very happy traveller and an even easier travel companion. Nothing stresses me on the road!

My last trip was for a conference in Amsterdam. I heard speakers like Kofi Annan and Willem Sodderland, and met with hundreds of other inspirational entrepreneurs.

More than the speakers, the people I met and rekindling of old friendships, was what I valued most.

Some smart people that I learnt a few things from:

There was a guy from a business called FACT. from Singapore who asked me questions about how I would market his IT company in Asia. He asked a serious amount of questions to the point where I was almost at point of exhaustion. Learning: What I learned from that was by asking questions, sometimes you get answers that help your business and solidifies your thoughts on what you are doing right and wrong.

Another was from a US company called Efficience, who writes a blog and he taught me that promoting your blog wherever you are in normal conversation starts a word-of-mouth trail that is invaluable. When talking about who writes what blogs, I recalled his each and every time.

Then there was a gentleman from Equant, a Munich based company, who was an incredible listener and when we all returned back to our home bases, was someone every single person seemed to remember. Sometimes you don't have to talk too much to be memorable. Listening is powerful.

Senz entrepreneur from The Netherlands talked on his company's innovative umbrella which is designed so you DON'T GET WET. The lesson there is sometimes by looking at everyday products you can change an entire industry.

There were so many people there that I learnt things from that I am sure I will talk about over the next few weeks, but the moral of this story is go out there, engage with people and see if there is any take-home value. Sometimes the most obvious isn't the only message you should be recalling.