I’ve posted about this on my personal blog, but I thought I’d also post here about the business side of the transaction for the organizers who read TradeshowStartup.com.

Deciding if it was time to sell this particular event wasn’t tough. One thing that I know about myself very well is that I love to start things. I love the part of the business where I go out and build something that some people support and some tell me will never work. I love going to the first event and seeing the excitement in the exhibit hall, in the hallways and in the workshop rooms.

Managing a business…not so much.

Something happens to me around year 4 of all the events and websites I’ve started and sold. It’s not like I wake up one morning and think, “It’s time.” It happens incrementally until one day, I’m sitting at my desk and I say to myself, “something’s not right.” The entrepreneur in me starts to feel like I’m managing a business rather than running in startup mode. And when it happened this time, literally within sixty seconds, I called my biggest competitor (and friend Rick Calvert) and asked him if he’d be interested in buying the show.

Could I have invested more money into the show and grown it for a few more years? Yes, but that’s not the type of work that gets me up in the morning. I’m simply not good at it. My forte and interests are creating something out of nothing and then selling it when I get just a tad bored. My “dream business” would be one that starts something brand new and sell it after three years (which is basically what I’ve done for the past ten years.)

But thank goodness there are folks out there that DO enjoy the growth and management phase. Without them, I’d have no one to sell to.

So, I’m on the lookout for the next conference or trade show to launch. It will probably be in some industry that people are just starting to talk about at this very moment. Somewhere, on some message board, someone is asking a question about a subject and is having a hard time finding others who share their problem or interest – and wishing there was somewhere to go where they could talk with others and learn.

Then, about four years from now, I’ll be sitting at my desk, saying to myself, “something’s not right…” and I’ll pick up the phone to call my competitor.