Are Conferences Worth It? Should You Attend One?

Are conferences really worth the hundreds or even thousands of dollars it takes for you to invest to go to them? I mean, there's the price of the ticket alone. Then whether you need to fly to it, drive to it, get the hotel, it all starts adding up. So is it worth it for you to put the money in to go to these conferences? I'm going to share with you my honest opinion coming up. Hi, welcome back. If you are new here, my name is Trina and today I'm talking about conferences. And in this online world, there are a lot of options from social media marketing world VidCon. There's just a lot of options. So is it really worth it? So I've gone to a few bigger name conferences and I've also gone to a few smaller conferences. Most recently in June, I went to the Creative at Heart conference. This conference is for creative business owners like photographers, wedding planners, social media planners, those types of businesses. And it's predominantly female based. This conference was in North Carolina, so it was drivable for me. It took me about 6ish hours to drive to it. And it's ran by the amazing Kat Schmoyer. She actually started this Creative at Heart community and the conference because she was lonely being an entrepreneur, which so many of us can relate to. So the ticket to this conference was a couple hundred dollars and then the hotel stay and the food to pay for. So it was quite an investment for me. And I was going on vacation the week before, so there was a lot of things going on. So, so why did I decide to go to this particular conference? Last year I had a sprint of conferences I actually attended. So I was at a conference in August, September, October and November. I did some of those big conferences and I was at some smaller conferences. Creative at Heart was one that I went to last November. And the reason why I decided to come back was because of my experience in November. Running a business as a female is a totally different journey. We have different things that we struggle with, like the confidence, the imposter syndrome, let alone trying to juggle mom life and trying not to feel guilty about working on our business while sending kids to daycare. So I felt Creative at Heart was going to be a great place for me to connect with similar women. And that's exactly what it was. And that's why it convinced me to come back in June. Some of the biggest takeaways that I got in June that I didn't necessarily see clearly back in November, but was the friendships. So there were some friends that I had met back in November. We had touched base a little bit between then and now, but at Creative at Heart, we were able to dig deeper into these friendships which allowed us to have amazing dinner dates, great talks about our business and the struggles that we are having. So you don't feel so alone because there are other people out there that feel the same way you do. When you're posting, posting to Instagram or creating video content, there are other people out there that feel the same way. Creative Heart allowed me to connect with these women that I probably wouldn't meet had I gone to some bigger conferences that are really scary, like Social Media Marketing World and VidCon. There are a lot of people at those bigger conferences, but Creative Heart just had around 150 people. So it was that more intimate feeling that wasn't so intimidating walking into a massive auditorium of hundreds of people. Here you could just walk in. It felt pretty comfy and cozy with 150 people. I'm going to swipe some of these photos from the actual Creative Heart photographer and I'm going to link her and credit her down below because I literally took no photos. I'll post a few of the photos that I took, but I took the time while I was there to just be present, to not worry about posting to social media, to not worry about getting the Instagram post. And it absolutely was worth it because those friends that I had touched base with back in November, I was able to build deeper relationships with them this time around. Like I said, we had some great dinner dates, we had some amazing late night talks in the hotel room. We were all on the same floor, so we were able to just hang out on each other's bed and talk about life, about business. We were able to start strategizing with each other and we were able to have different perspectives on our business that yourself get so zoned in on your business that you can't see from the outside. And having these new friends who think like you and know what you're working with and know what you're struggling with are able to give you such amazing feedback that it totally changes your perspective on how to do your business and that you are making a difference. Because again, it is lonely sitting in this room from 6am to 5pm every single day. But to see the actual people who are consuming your content, who are taking your advice and then they're giving you advice to help totally makes every single cry, every single pint of ice cream that you eat, every single glass of wine you drink worth it. The Second key takeaway that I got was invest in it, Invest the money to go there. I have two small kids. I had to take actual time away from them. I have clients. I had to take actual time away from my clients. I had to spend a couple weeks gearing up for the conference to spend, preparing my business to leave. So catching up on extra client work to make sure it was done, and just having the entire schedule planned out, getting my kids to where they needed to be every single day. It was a lot of work. Not just the money invested, but the time invested, but every single piece of investment that I put into it, again, was absolutely worth it. The keynote speakers that talked definitely were some of the best keynote speakers that I have ever heard. From Abby Grace to Shanna Skidmore to Laura Foote to Laura Casey and so many more. A lot of their messages were powerful in a way that makes you want to make a change. Yes, you could go to a keynote of some of these massive conferences and hear talks from, let's say, Gary Vee or some other massive social media person, but are they really going to be able to pull at your heartstrings and really make you rethink the way you think about everything? I haven't seen it from the larger conferences that I've gone to, but here at Creative At Heart, the keynote speakers were worth it because they definitely just hit you where it counted and allowed you to just really reevaluate the way you are doing business and the way you think about your business and the way you think about yourself. Because we are usually the last person we take care of is ourselves. And so hearing those keynote speakers and seeing their journey and the things that they did to change the way they were running their business, again, worth the investment threefold. And the third key takeaway is getting out of your comfort zone. Look, I absolutely was considering skipping the welcome party because I knew I was walking into this room full of lots of people, and that's just not my jam. I'm good one on one. I'm good in small groups. When we get hundreds of people in a room, I don't know where to go, who to talk to, how to start a conversation. I'm just like, I'm gonna hide in the corner. I'm gonna chill out right here. If someone comes up to talk to me, cool. But for me, yeah, not for me. But I had to get out of my comfort zone. I had a little pep talk with one of my fellow entrepreneurial friends, and she's like, trina, get to that welcome party, she even sent me a couple of icebreakers to use to walk up to people. She was checking in on me while I was there, pushing me to talk to people. And it was worth it. I met some great new friends again. I was able to connect with the older friends that I had from the previous conference. And it allows you to see that you can grow as a person, you can get out into the world, even though it's scary as crap to walk into that conference, not even on the welcome party, but the next day when you walk into this room of chairs and just pick somebody to sit beside. And that's something that I definitely made an effort to do because even though I had friends there that we went to dinner with, I still made an effort that when I walked in that I sat beside somebody that I didn't know because I wanted to create more friendships and I wanted to create more connections instead of just staying in my little circle. And it was important for me to try and meet as many people as possible. Again, that is absolutely out of my comfort zone. But being at a conference like Creative at Heart, that is small enough that it's intimate, but is able to bring in the speakers and the keynotes that it did, again, worth the investment. Three, six, ten fold, really. So are conferences worth it? I think it depends on the conference you invest in. There are going to be great conferences like the big ones, to get a lot of information. And then there are going to be those conferences that are going to kind of change your life and the way you think about things. And that's what Creative Heart is. So when you're deciding whether a conference is worth your investment or not, dig down deep into that conference, do a little bit of research and decide where you are at and what you want to get out of that conference. If it's connections and friendships and just a sense of having somebody on your side, definitely Crave at Heart is an amazing one to pick. Now, if you want to see behind the scenes at some of the stuff I was doing to prepare my business to be gone at that conference, I actually filmed an entire day in my life where I show you how I batch my content. You can click on the video that's on your screen right now to see exactly what a day in my life looks like when I'm preparing to leave for a conference. I'll see you over in that video.