For many of you, living in a small town is a strategic part of your business plan. You’ve cornered the market, are the only tint shop in town and you’re doing quite well. Such exclusivity to your customers has allowed you to live the life you want, including raising a family. And while monopolizing a market may mean your business opportunities are limitless, it’s also important to make sure that isn’t limiting the lives of your children. Let me explain what I mean by that.

The San Antonio Riverwalk is sure to impress and entertain attendees.

I, too, come from a small town. Colonial Beach, Va., is a river-beach town of just more than 3,000 where driving a golf cart to the grocery store is normal. Rich with history, beautiful scenery and the best Thai restaurant in a 150-mile radius, what’s not to love? How about this: unless you want to wait tables the rest of your life, there are next to zero career opportunities. Yet somehow, even up to the age of 20, I was convinced that this town was where I was going to live the rest of my life.

This small-town mentality is tough to shake and, in part, it stuck with me for three more years—until I went to my first trade show.

Simply attending an international trade show opened my eyes to how the business world works. Talking with exhibitors and attendees from around the world lit a fire of curiosity in me.

Who makes this technology? How do these international companies compete with U.S. ones? What goes into the construction, marketing and sales of every product? Are the exhibitors seeing a return on investment from the money they spent on the booth space?

When they see the Tint-Offs™, your kids will gain a respect for how serious your profession is.

These are questions that I wouldn’t even know needed to be asked had I not attended a trade show. That’s why I want to encourage you to bring your older children to the 2016 International Window Film Conference and Tint-Off™ (WFCT) in San Antonio, Texas. The event, held October 5 – 7 at the Henry Gonzales Convention Center, is a perfect opportunity to show your kids how the business world works.

Let them meet the attendees and exhibitors from all over the world. Have them speak with sales representatives about the importance of networking for career purposes. Take them to see the Tint-Off™ and explain how it helps keep film installers at the top of their game. Show them around San Antonio, Texas, the nation’s seventh-most-populated city. Doing this will give them an idea of just how big the world can be, and if they’re anything like you (business-minded), it will cause them to think about opportunities beyond what’s available in a small town.

The official WFCT policy is that children 16 years and under are permitted on the exhibit floor during show hours. Legal guardians need to be present and supervising their children in order for a child to receive an entrance badge to the trade show only. Your children ages 17 and older can participate fully.

Maybe you’re grooming your children to take over the business someday—that’s great! You’re passing on more than you were given starting out. But make sure they have the opportunity to understand how much is out there—and an international trade show like WFCT, held in a world-class city like San Antonio, might be the best place for that.