Picture this: You’re totally rocking your booth at the Business Expo. You can feel a monster headache crowding in, and your throat is killing you from talking almost nonstop for the last three hours, but you’ve met a lot of wonderful people, including the vibrant, personable reps in the booth across the aisle. You go to hand someone a business card and somehow it slices into your finger as you let go of it. Moments later you’re wondering how such a tiny cut can be so messy, searching for napkin or paper towel or something. You bend to see if there’s anything absorbent under the table and the button of your pants pops right off. It skitters across the floor into the aisle and gets kicked to who-knows-where by a toddler dribbling koolaid from a sideways sippy cup as he’s tugged along by an older sibling.
Disaster?
Not in the slightest!
The Cleburne Chamber of Commerce Business Expo is fast approaching (the first Saturday in October!), and NOW is the time to start planning! Today’s tip: Put together a kit with all the little things you might need but don’t always think about. Keep it small enough to slip under a table, and afterward, tuck it away for the next Expo.
After several years of doing Business Expos, we’ve come up with a list of items that have actually been useful in the past.
Many of these items can be (and were) obtained from the local Dollar store.
- Container to keep all this stuff together! (This one’s a $1 tool box)
- Rubber bands
- Bandaids — because that tiny paper cut is always a gusher when you don’t want to bleed on anything.
- Cough drops and/or hard candies — you’ll do a LOT of talking!
- Zip ties
- Safety pins — can be used to mitigate unforeseen mishaps with curtains, tablecovers, decor, even your own clothes.
- Twine
- Pain reliever/headache meds
- Tape — clear packing tape is multi-purpose
- Binder clips or spring clamps — these can be weights to hold down table covers, clips to attach signage to curtains, even hold a ripped banner in place!
- Scissors — needed to cut twine, tape, zip ties
- Emergency stash of business cards — because you really don’t want to run out
- Permanent markers and an emergency pen — imminently useful
- Wet wipes
Other items to consider:
- A plastic grocery sack for trash
- $10 in ones (to buy lunch)
- Paper clips
- Scratch paper (for jotting down others’ contact info)
- A travel-size packet of kleenex