#101 Lessons I Learnt From Running Our Second Conference
I hope you enjoyed the last podcast and enjoyed listening to my testimony. I hope it’s inspired you and encouraged you on your walk with God.
We had our membership intakes last week and we had a wonderful response and I really look forward to getting to know our new members and encouraging them with their walk with God as they grow their businesses. We had such a great response that I have decided to keep the intakes open for another week. So if you’re on the fence and needed some time to think about it, it’s all good, you now have another week. Intakes will close this next Saturday. If you haven’t already done so, you can find out more info and apply through the Join page on our website.
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And we now have monthly options available with different levels. So there is an investment to suit all budgets.
Lessons Learnt From Running Our Second Conference… I am a firm believer that we should pass on the things we learn so today I want to share with you what I learnt from running our second conference and retreat.
The weekend was amazing… God certainly showed up! The women put 100% into it, they opened up their hearts, one even told me that she would pick this weekend next year over another big Christian women’s conference this year because it was so intimate and relational. We had a great response from the delegates saying they felt reconnected with God and filled so that’s great.
What were the big lessons I learnt this year, that if you’re thinking about running an event of any kind that hopefully you can learn from my mistakes….
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1. Marketing – Make better use of the early bird rates, think more about when you need to get the numbers in by and don’t leave it too late to realise. Trust in God that He will bring the perfect amount of people.
2. Bigger doesn’t always mean better – The weekend like we just ran wouldn’t have worked if we’d of had 200 people. The weekend was intimate, warm and beautiful connections were made.
3. Learn how to count properly – this was a big lesson of this year. And it is one of the hardest things to gauge running events. How much to charge. One would think that after passing maths at school and running a business for a few years one would know how to add up! About 2 weeks out when I was starting to do the numbers for next year I realised that this years number where out and I hadn’t charged enough and the invoice was due to be paid, I scrapped everything together that we could and have made adjustments to our spending for the next couple of months. This year I have had to put up the price to make sure I have everything covered and that the event isn’t costing the business money.
4. Giving myself more time to breath through the event. I am an introvert and an only child so I need a lot of time on my own to keep recharged during a normal week so running an event full of people for a weekend took a lot out of me. Giving myself space in the breaks to get some alone time and gather my thoughts is a biggy so I can last the weekend. If you’re an introvert I would recommend you having a room to yourself and in breaks if you need to go and eat by yourself (it’s not anitsocial, let the extroverts in your team take care of the breaks.
5. We had an event coordinator for this event which was brilliant. She helped keep everything running smoothly in the back ground and on time as much as we could.
6. Love your volunteers & team, espically to make up the things you’re not good at. They are going to be your back bone & they’re going to be the ones who help bring the event together.
And so these where the major lesson I learnt from running our second event. Maybe you’ve ran events and have had similar experiences, know that you’re not alone. We’ve all been there and made mistakes.
We had a quote out on SM that came from a podcast I was interviewed on, the quote is, Leadership is often about leading yourself then it is leading other people. So how do you recover from making big budget mistakes or getting something wrong.
1. You allow yourself some time (not much) to grieve and eat chocolate.
2. You call your go to friend and eat chocolate together, let them speak goodness over you, talk things through and pray together. If you don’t have that friend we have plenty of women in our community who would love to be that friend for you.
3. Wrap the chocolate back up. Get a pen and paper, write it all down and write out solutions to the problem. For me it was thinking out of the box – what could we market to sell to make up the extra cash, what affiliate money did I have sitting around that I hadn’t been paid yet, what are some unnessecary things you can cut out from the event that you can save on that won’t bring down the quality. Can you call people to ask for extensions on paying their invoices.
4. Make a plan for moving forward after the event for next years and double check your numbers making sure you have everything covered. Adjust some things in the short term to get you through the decifiency. Show up to the event with a smile on your dial.
We are all in this together, never feel like you’re alone and that if you make a mistake that that’s it. Getting things down on paper takes them problem out of your head and help you to then write out solutions and figure out how you’re going to fix it.
If you are feeling alone in your business and you’d like to join a community who get what’s its like to have families, to love God and that want to make a different for the Kingdom now is your time to join our Membership.
Founder Sarah-Jane Meeson was given a word to inspire women. Since then, Sarah-Jane dreamed about how she could inspire women and unite them together. She knew it was going to be for God and she knew she had a passion for business and just to see people thrive and be all that they can be: no matter what past they’ve had, no matter how much money or where they come from. It’s about them being the best person they can be for God and to help share their story of how God has worked through their life and business.
After chatting with a girlfriend and sitting on the idea for a while, God kept prompting her heart to bring this movement of women together. After some time, Sarah-Jane knew what she needed to do; she bit the bullet and now here it is. Christian Women in Business – a movement of Christian women pushing forward for God in their businesses … and it’s great!
