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January Recap of the Creative Educator Conference
Last month I had the incredible privilege to be able to attend two very different conferences – one as an attendee (the Creative Educator Conference), and the other as an educator (Conquer Live). Both of these experiences were nothing short of amazing, and I am still on cloud 9 a few weeks later because of them.
So, today I wanted to share a bit about each one of them and get them on YOUR radar. Because as I’ll share in this episode – there’s nothing more powerful for your business than an in-person event.
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- There are a LOT of different marketing strategies out there. from content to networking to speaking, to ads, and so many more. And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next – without seeing results. Especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies, when you aren’t seeing any from your own. After hearing from listener after listener wondering WHICH marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which will be best for you based on your current phase of business. Head to amandawarfield.com/quiz/ to take it, learn where you should focus your marketing energy, and start seeing results from your marketing! Again, that’s amandawarfield.com/quiz/
- This episode was brought to you by my book Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/book/
- Creative Educator Conference
- Conquer Live
- This week’s action step: Choose a conference and make it your goal to get there for the next one.
- This week’s book recommendation: The It Girl by Ruth Ware
- Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield
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Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!
Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!
*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate
Last month, I had the incredible privilege to be able to attend two very different conferences, one as an attendee and the other as an educator. Both of these experiences were nothing short of amazing and I am still on cloud nine a few weeks later because of them. So today, I wanted to share a bit about each one of them and get them on your radar.
Because, as I’ll share in this episode, there’s nothing more powerful for your business than an in person event. You’re listening to episode 198 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com slash book.
How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?
Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, Simplicity Focus content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.
I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.
When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.
If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.
Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming. So that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love Each week I’ll bring you transparent conversations actionable steps and judgment free community to encourage and equip you So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love support There are a lot of different marketing strategies out there in business from content to networking to speaking to ads and So many more, and with so many different marking strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next, without seeing results.
Especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies when you aren’t seeing any from your own. And after hearing from listener after listener wondering which marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which strategies will be best for you based on your current phase of business.
Head to amandawarfield. com slash quiz to take it. Learn where you should focus your marketing energy and start seeing results from your marketing. Again, that’s amandawarfield. com slash quiz. I want to start with the biggest lesson that I learned between going to these two different conferences, and that is to get in the room, get in the room.
I’ve shared this before on the podcast, but I spent years isolating myself as a business owner and I had this misconception that doing business online meant doing it alone. And it’s just not true and your business cannot and will not grow. If you’re not building relationships, if you’re not making connections and over the last several years, you know I’ve been meeting all of these really incredible people virtually and online and just with timing of things I haven’t had the opportunity to go to a ton of conferences And the ones that I have been to, either I wasn’t meeting people there that I had already connected with online, or I was there for a very short amount of time.
And these conferences were the first time that I really got to enjoy being in the room with people that I had connected with, and that I had talked to virtually, and over Zoom calls, and that I’ve interviewed for the podcast, or I’ve been on their podcast, and man, it was amazing. And And not only did it lead to new leads, I booked a new client at one of the conferences, I mean some really incredible things happened business wise, but it just felt so good.
Good. It just felt so good to be surrounded by people who get it and I can’t emphasize it enough I feel like there aren’t truly words to describe the way it feels and how incredible it is. But I Truly would really encourage you to find a conference. That’s your action step. Spoiler. I’m just gonna go ahead and share it Your action step is to find a conference and make it your goal to get there for the next one Whether that’s this year or next year, whether you have to start saving or you can go ahead and afford it, it truly is worth every penny.
It’s an incredible investment in your business and in yourself, and it really will fill your cup. And it’s going to help you grow your business. Period. You’re gonna learn new things, you’re gonna get new ideas, you’re going to make connections, get in the room with people who are your ideal audience, and who are people just doing this with you, side by side, in the same industry, in similar industries.
I, I cannot. share how much of a difference that it makes, and frankly, if there was only one thing you ever did to run a successful business, it would be that. So, that’s the biggest lesson that I learned. But I did want to share more about each of these conferences, because they were so different, and the experiences were so different, and yet they were both truly incredible.
And I know that when I’ve been researching different conferences or retreats in the past, I’ve always Googled, you know, this, the name of said conference reviews, and I’ve looked to see what other people have said about it. So, I wanted to kind of pass that on and do that for someone else who may be interested.
So the first conference I went to was Lili Amati’s Creative Educator Conference. It was in Dallas, Texas. And this was the one that I was an attendee for. So I was not speaking. I was just there as an attendee to learn. And there were roughly, I think, around a hundred attendees. And, um, I don’t remember how many speakers, quite a few, but it was absolutely incredible.
This conference is for creative educators. So whether you are creating courses or you’re simply putting out content that educates your audience in order to help them decide whether or not they need to work with you, whatever that may be, if you’re educating in some way, shape, or form. This conference is probably for you.
In fact, most of my audience, most of my listeners, if you’re listening, this conference is probably for you. Leili brings in incredible educators, but outside of that, she has a true gift for creating conferences. I mean, again, I haven’t been to a ton of conferences, but I’ve been to enough to know that when I walked into this conference, I knew it was different, and I knew immediately that Leili had a really, really special gift for this, from the way things were set up, to the intentional details, to the actual speaker topic, the speakers and the speaker topics themselves.
Every little thing had been thought of and there was just so much intention and so much detail and so much planning that you can tell that Laylee did and she really brings together just Incredible people so that’s kind of my rough overview of what that conference was. I learned so much I have Pages and pages and pages of notes that I will be going through over honestly probably the next year because I’m gonna implement things slow and steady, but if you are someone who educates and You want to improve How you’re educating and how your education is growing your business This is a conference you’re definitely going to want to add to your list.
I’ve already, I’ve already signed up for my ticket for 2025, right? So, um, I truly mean it when I say that this one is absolutely amazing and well worth every single penny. The second conference I attended was Conquer Live, and this is hosted by Jamie Fisher and Heather Lacey. And this is a conference specifically for photographers, so if you’re a photographer, Add this one to your list.
And I was one of the educators for this one. So I wasn’t attending as an attendee, but as an educator. And what makes Conquer so different and why, if you’re a photographer, you should definitely add it to your list for 2025, is the The way that things are set up so with the creative educator conference again, it’s a hundred people at that one I don’t know how many 20 25 will be but a hundred people a hundred attendees and then all the speakers and everyone else and you You have to pay for your ticket to the event, which does like, there’s breakfast and there’s lunch and all of that, but you have to pay for your transportation, you have to do your own dinners, and you have to pay for your hotel.
Again, worth every penny. I’m not, that’s not. This isn’t a, this one’s good, this is bad. They’re just different. Um, there are a lot of really great pros to that, which, you know, I’m an introvert. I love having my own space. So for me, I love those kind of conferences. Conquer Live is different. And again, this isn’t saying one is better than the other.
They’re just different. But Conquer Live is different because it’s a much smaller group. There are only 15 attendees and I believe there were like 12 educators, something like that. 15 attendees, 12 educators. roughly 30 people in the house, give or take, and you’re all in one house together. People are definitely sharing rooms, you know, I had a roommate, everyone had roommates, some people had multiple roommates, um, but you’re all in the one house together.
You pay for your ticket, and once, you just have to get there. All of your meals are covered, and in fact, they They do catering, so you plan ahead of time. Okay, what meal do I want from this place for each meal? And honestly, the Google form was one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen. It must have taken them hours and hours and hours to put that together.
But you tell them ahead of time what you want. They order the catering. Some of the volunteers that they have go and pick it up and deliver it to the house for you. You don’t have to leave the house once you get there. Food is covered. Everything’s taken care of. It’s really incredible. But outside of that, because you’re all in one house together and you’re so, you’re just, you’re doing life together for a few days, right?
Um, The educators and the attendees got so much time together. As an educator, this was really, really incredible and I can only imagine the impact it made as an attendee. But as an educator, it was so nice to, you know, you, you go up and you speak and you share your presentation and at most conferences when you’re doing that you, you, You go up there and you really hope that you’re changing someone’s viewpoint, and you’re making, for me, like, making their marketing a little bit simpler for them.
And you hope that someone will come up and ask you questions, but otherwise, that’s just kind of it. You know, you’re there, and you mingle with the attendees, and you do what you can, but at Conquer, they take that to a whole other level. Where, as an educator, you’re truly there to serve. We quite literally, one morning, the educators Make breakfast for everyone and we serve the attendees and it just the heart behind that is so evident And you know, we each had a buddy where we were Connected with someone one of the attendees and it was kind of our job to make sure that they went home with an action plan and one that wasn’t going to overwhelm them.
And we got, you know, 10 minutes specified with each and every person, every single attendee, which I just thought was so incredible, where they could ask you as many questions as they could fit into those 10 minutes. And there’s so much other time and other things you’re doing with each other. We’re playing games, we’re doing karaoke, it’s all There’s all of these activities for bonding and all of that makes it so that the attendees are comfortable coming up to the educators and asking questions and whipping out their laptop and saying hey can you show me this thing real quick and can you help me work through this and it just it’s really powerful.
So if you’re a photographer put that one at the top of your list. Both of these experiences were so different, in fact, almost complete opposites, and yet they were both so incredible. I will 100 percent be going back to Creative Educator Conference as an attendee. I would be thrilled and honored to attend Conquer Live as an educator again.
I mean, these Our conferences that I, I, I fully endorse and I just can’t say enough good things about them. And so, yeah, like I said, I just kind of wanted to pass that on. I know that many, many, many of you that listen are educators and I also know that I have quite a few photographers in my audience and I just.
Wanted to share these incredible opportunities. I didn’t want to gatekeep them. Um, and if you have any questions about them, please DM me. I am, I would love to chat further about them. So again, like I said, your action step for this week is to choose a conference and whether it’s one of these or not, That doesn’t matter, but choose a conference and make it your goal to get to the next one.
Because like I said at the beginning, best thing you can do for your business is to get in the room. Now, your book recommendation for this week is The It Girl by Ruth Ware. This is a bit of a psychological thriller and I don’t want to give anything away, so I’m going to say very little, but as I always do, I feel like, but this one is about two girls that are roommates and one of them ends up being murdered and the book is kind of essentially solving for who did it.
So if you like psychological thrillers, if you’ve read any of Ruth Brer’s other stuff, I love all of her books that I’ve read. So highly recommend. And if you want the link to that, it will be in the show notes. And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.
Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.
Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time, now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.
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