Connection? Correction.

I met her at a networking event. She was presenting, and what she talked about wasn't the usual highlight reel; she was honest about having ADHD, about what that's actually like to run a business with. I liked her approach and vulnerability.

I didn't approach her after the talk. I don't love crowding someone the second they step off a stage, and I prefer one-on-one conversations anyway. I reached out after complimenting her on the presentation, saying we have some things in common, and that I was actually wanting to learn more about public speaking, could we chat sometime.

She said yes. The day before we met, she sent a note framing our conversation as an "exploratory session"; something she said would always be complimentary in her upcoming business model. I remember reading that and thinking: weird, but okay. I hadn't expected a paid coaching session, I'd just wanted to connect.

That distinction turned out to matter.

We talked, and parts of it were genuinely good; she asked sharp questions. But it immediately felt like something closer to coaching me than talking with me. At one point she asked what my company name meant, then told me there was a lot of black on my website. She said she'd had a physical reaction to it; she'd been reading about colour theory, and apparently black is associated with sadness.

I felt myself start to defend it. I mentioned the new site would have more photos, that I'd been limited by my old template. I was halfway into justifying a choice I'd never questioned, to someone who'd never asked if I wanted her opinion on it.

It wasn't until later that the obvious thing hit me: an interior designer, of all people, should know that colour reads differently for everyone. Black isn't just one thing, it's the power suit, the little black dress. It's strength, precision and luxury as much as it's anything else. I didn't need her read on it to be wrong for me to be right, I just needed to remember I hadn't asked.

Curiously, I asked how her coaching was structured, what it would look like once it launched. She didn't really have an answer, a plan, a sense of how she'd charge for it. This landed strangely, given she’d spent the last hour angling to coach me, on a business that didn't exist yet, while critiquing the one I'd already built.

Here's what I actually took from it once I stopped replaying the colour theory part: I went into that conversation having read the room. I noticed she'd been vulnerable on stage, and I only reached out for a quiet, one-on-one hello. I asked her about public speaking because that's what I actually wanted to know. I wasn't fishing for a free coaching session, I was looking to connect with a person who was doing something I was interested to learn how to do.

She didn't read the room back. She had a frame already built; coach, client, exploratory session, and she ran it regardless of what I'd actually shown up for.

That's the part that's stayed with me, because I think about it in my own work. The best thing you can do for any relationship whether it be a client, referral partner, or someone you just met at an event, is figure out what they actually came for.

That's not just good manners, it's the whole job. It's how you run a good meeting, close a sale, build a relationship that holds. You ask, you listen, and you let what they need shape the conversation instead of filling the space with whatever you brought in your back pocket.

Funny enough, one thing I noticed in her presentation that didn’t resonate was all the colour, swirls, and how things were not positioned uniformly; definitely not my style. You could almost say I had a physical reaction to it.