I can’t remember the last time I was so energized to work on my business! It’s such a great feeling and I love all the great info and goals I have now because of the conference!
The opening and closing keynotes by Marsha Petrie Sue were great and really brought the conference full circle by getting me excited about my business! One of the quotes that I will be printing out and taping to my wall is “Is this the best use of my time right now?” I love this and really need to start thinking about that as I inadvertently spend an hour tweaking a blog post or getting sucked into Facebook!
Yvonne Weld had a great session on how to start attracting more clients by working on your systems and your follow through. There was a lot of information in that session that I’m still sifting through but it was a great reminder that just because I build it, doesn’t necessarily mean they will come! I need to do a better job of preparing before a meeting and then following up after a meeting. I tend to only worry about how scatterbrained I look during the meeting so preparing beforehand will really help me not be as nervous!
Karen Gridley led a session on embracing your rights and creating an excuse free life. The one point I liked was kind of a Duh moment, “Quit Taking It Personally.” I know that I have a big problem with this and will really be working hard at being ok with who I know I am and not taking it personally when Joe Sixpack doesn’t want to work with me.
Beth Caldwell did a session on success strategies that basically walked you through how to envision and go forward with your ideal business. One point I took away from the session was the idea to look at what my existing clients thank me for and use that to build and grow my business. It’s hard for me to say I’m an expert at X,Y and Z but by looking to my clients to basically tell me what I’m good at breaks me from feeling like I’m bragging; I’m simply building on how I’ve helped my clients in the past!
Sally Kuhlman and Yvonne Weld did an excellent joint session on whether your business is thriving or just surviving. They talked about a number of ways to jump start your business when you’ve gotten to the point where your don’t even want to talk to your clients because you’re so burnt out. Thankfully I haven’t gotten to that point yet but I did really appreciate the section on how to set good goals and to follow through with them. Goals are a hard thing for me to narrow down so getting that conversation started in my head has really gotten the creative juices moving for me and I have some great goals now that I’ll share with you in just a moment!
Alyssa Gregory did a fun session on work/life balance and even though her PowerPoint slides didn’t want to cooperate it was a great time! It turned into a brainstorming session on how to separate your work and family time and space. I definitely realized that I need to start getting more organized because that seems like the key to getting peace when working from how with a 17 month old! I got another great quote to add to wall as well, “Do What You Can and Can the Rest!” LOVE that!
Coming back from the conference I had a lot to think about and a lot of things I wanted to get done in the coming year. Here are a few of my goals for the rest of this year. Some are easier than others but hopefully by putting them out there I’ll be more inclined to work on them!
- Create worksheets and walkthroughs to help Creatives organize their thoughts
- Create and FAQ for my website
- Create a referral program
- Create a personal database of agents, publishers and other necessary posse members for authors
- Start writing articles and submitting them to online magazine
- Create a new focus towards social media and internet marketing assessments. I want to be more of a partner for my clients going forward!
I am so excited to see how much I can grow this year and to see where I am next year at the IVAA summit in Portland, Oregon!
