From the Trade Show to the Courtroom

At a trade show, you control everything. The light, the sound, the sequence, the mood. You decide what people see and when they see it. You tell a story. And if you tell it well, they go home with a conviction they didn’t have before.

In a courtroom, you control nothing.

That was the most radical contrast I’ve ever experienced. From a system where perception replaces truth, into a system where only evidence counts. No gentle transition. A break.

At the trade show you say: Try it. In the courtroom the judge says: Prove it. And those are two completely different worlds.

In our world, everything was allowed that worked. Testimonials worked. Demonstrations worked. Celebrities wearing the product worked. Stories of athletes who suddenly got better worked. People wanted to believe, and we helped them.

In court, none of that works. No judge cares what a customer felt. No judge watches a demo and says: Convinced. A judge wants numbers. Studies. Evidence. Double-blind, controlled, reproducible. And if you don’t have that, you have nothing.

We had nothing.

That’s a strange feeling. You spend years building something based on effect. Thousands of people tell you it works. The market is booming. You have revenue, expansion plans, partnerships. And then you’re sitting in a room where all of that is worthless. Where the only currency is proof. And you don’t have any.

No more storytelling. Just bare numbers.

I don’t want to write about the trial itself. Not about the details, not about those involved, not about the outcome. That’s not the point. The point is the contrast. The experience of standing in two completely different realities. In one, you’re successful because people believe you. In the other, you’re exposed, because belief doesn’t count.

What stayed with me wasn’t the legal side. It was the question behind it: Which of these two worlds do we actually live in most of the time?

The honest answer: The trade show world. Almost always. We buy things because they feel right. We trust people because they speak convincingly. We believe stories because they’re well told. We live in a world of demos, testimonials, felt truths. And as long as nobody demands proof, it works.

The courtroom is the exception. It’s the only room I know where storytelling stops working. Where you can’t say: But the customers feel it. Where you can’t say: Thousands can’t be wrong. Where you have to deliver. Hard, sober, verifiable.

And that’s exactly what makes it so uncomfortable. Not because it’s unfair. But because it shows how thin the foundation is on which we normally make decisions.

After that experience, I started examining many things differently. When someone tries to sell me something, I ask myself: Would this hold up in court? Not because I’m paranoid. But because it’s a good filter. A judge asks: What are the facts? Not: How does it feel?

We don’t need a courtroom for every decision. But we could think like that more often. Could ask more often: What’s left when I strip away the storytelling? What’s left when I remove the demo? What’s left when I only look at the numbers?

Often, less than we think. That’s what I learned. Between the trade show and the courtroom, there’s usually more distance than between the earth and the moon. And we spend nearly our entire lives on the trade show side.