CanJam

A few weeks back I attended my first-ever CanJam ... a headphone conference.

Yeah. I'm a nerd.

Not surprisingly, the folks at Headphones.com were everywhere. They sponsored the event, they had a booth where you could try exotic headphones or the headphones they sold. You could interact with their staff (blue shirts above) ... the very people who lead their popular Noise Floor podcast / weekly video program on YouTube. Their hosts (you'd likely call 'em "influencers") led well-attended sessions about the science of the ear and impact on what you hear with your headphones.

I heard a headphone / amp combination (Meze Empyrian II ... available for just under $3,000 on Headphones.com ... paired with a $2,000 Ferrum Oor Desktop Headphone Amp) that, as I told my wife, was "like having God reach down and touch you in the brain".

The best voice I heard in a headphone? The ancient Sennheiser HD600 for just $349. Bonnie Raitt sounded like she was in my living room.

Conference organizers were expecting a comparable or larger crowd than the 2,500 who attended the two-day event in Irvine last year.

If you are in the Dallas area the first weekend in November, head over to the event.

I am not being paid to say this.

I am encouraging you, the humble business professional, to do "something". So many of you are telling me it is too hard to find new customers in 2024. Of course it is. This is where hard work comes in.

What stops you, especially if you are a $5,000,000 to $95,000,000 business, from creating your version of CanJam? Seriously, what stops you? If you sell widgets, spend a year building out a media division, become "the" community for widgets online, then bring together the widget community with your own events ... in person, online, I could care less ... do something! If you sell collectibles or gifts, be THE place on the internet people come to learn about collectables or gifts.

As I write this, I'm watching "You've Got Mail" ... a nearly 30 year old movie about the death of a local bookstore, run out of business by the big/bad Fox Books and their low-priced store across the street. I'll bet "The Shop Around The Corner" had a very difficult time acquiring customers before succumbing to Fox Books (who would have eventually succumbed to Amazon, and so goes capitalism). The Shop Around The Corner failed ... but all across America independent book stores somehow got through the transition. They built a community, and what they sold catered to their community. Don't compete against Amazon. Create your own market.

I mean, 70% of people who own headphones own an Apple pair or Bose Noise Cancelling headphones or Beats (also Apple). In the face of such steep competition, how in the heck is CanJam generating record attendance? How in the heck does Headphones.com stay in business when you can buy from Amazon tonight and have your new iems tomorrow ... the same ones you'd get on Headphones.com?

I spent much of tonight listening to my new Meze Alba iems. The only reason I bought them is because the Headphones.com reviewers liked them, the guys hosting the Headphones.com  podcast liked them, and the community on Reddit liked them. So I gave Headphones.com $159 of my money. They created the purchase (my first purchase from Headphones.com) with hard work and a lot of indirect selling, earning a newly acquired customer in the process. They didn't pay Facebook, they didn't pay Google, and they didn't give Amazon a hefty cut of the profit. 

They created the purchase out of thin air.

You, too, are going to have to do the hard work of creating purchases out of thin air.

You've got this. Get busy!

P.S.:  How do I stay in business? I pay nobody. Nobody. I create purchases out of thin air from you, the community reading this content.