The 9th annual IVAA conference was amazingly awesomtastic and I can’t wait to start moving on my business but I wanted to share some fun parts of the trip with you. As I began to write this post I realized that there were two major parts of the conference: the networking and friendship making part and the business growth and learning part. In some ways the two intertwined but I decided to split them up so that I didn’t end up with a ridiculously long post!
Part One: Fun and Friends
Image courtesy of CandyTX’s TwitPics!
Imagine you walk into a crowded room filled with men or women who are in the same business as you, they have the same ups and downs as you and they may all be just as crazy as you. That’s how I felt this past week at the IVAA Live Summit in Phoenix Arizona! I was so excited to meet all of these amazing women and realize I wasn’t the craziest one in the bunch! It was great to meet all of my friends that I had never met in person and even meet some new friends that I can’t believe I didn’t know before!
I’m not going to be able to recount every detail of the four days I was there but here are some of the highlights:
- Free drinks at the manager’s reception – Score!
- The convo pit where the wonders of the VA world were talked about and solved.
- The awesome omelet bar every morning. Seriously, a free cooked breakfast every morning. It was rather awesome.
- Dinner at Rustler’s Rooste and getting scared to death by “snake eggs” from Patty Dost – she’s not as nice as she appears but we love her anyway
- Dinner with the Online Summit team at Zinburger and watching Sherra Scott freak out the waiter by wanting to connect with him on Twitter and Facebook! He was a good sport but it still made us laugh uncontrollably for a good ten minutes! Good times…
- Getting to meet Jan King and some other Virtual Author’s Assistants at lunch one day – I might even get some SciFi clients out of it!
- Meeting Terry Green who literally lives 2 hours from me! Hurray for Ohio VAs!
- Meeting some of the great new VAs (Brenda Briley, Susana Sifuentes-Prieto, Theresa Nelson) there and helping them (I hope) by talking about how I started and what helped me during the first year.
- Getting cake from Justin Ryan of DuckDuckBlue for Administrative Assistants Day! It was SO yummy and a great way to get people downstairs at midnight!
- Update: I can’t believe I forgot to mention the Best roomates ever! Brenda Briley was so sweet and we had some great conversations over lunch and breakfast and even ended up on the same flight home! Cindy Opong is like a sister from another mother! We had way too much fun staying up until all hours of the night chatting about everything!
I know it sounds cliché but just being able to go and meet all of these amazing women and feel very included and part of the group has given me a confidence that I know is going to spill over into my business!
Next time we’ll discuss all the businessy business things I learned while at the conference and some ideas on where my business could be headed!
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Ok I'm sorry, you really are a sweet and wonderful person and I really am glad we connected at summit this year! : ) And I must say, if I had to be initiated with creepy snake envelopes, I'm glad it was by you. hehe : )
I am as nice as I appear Sara! I promise! I did have a great laugh with the *snake eggs* though. Miss you!
LOL Ok yes you are. ; ) I hope we can work out a way to meet up so we don’t have to wait until the next summit to see each other! : )