YA Romance Adventures!

This conference was a couple of weeks ago – over the weekend of June 24th. Why has it taken me so long to write about it? I’ve been asking myself that question every day since. The answer I finally came up with is that MY BRAIN WAS OVERLOADED. Yes, it was such an amazing, diverse, energetic, entertaining, inspiring, and intellectually stimulating weekend that it has truly taken me this long to wrap my poor brain around everything. And I’m still not sure I’ve really processed it all.

I’m sure that everyone of the 250 attendees gleaned something different out of every speaker, workshop, or social gathering. So, let me share some of my personal highlights of the weekend here in this blog.

I’ll start with Chase Reeves from fizzle.co. I learned three main things from his talk. The first is that we need to define our own success. Don’t compare other’s successes to what you should strive for. Figure out how YOUR success should feel to you. This is especially important when we tend to compare ourselves to others. Don’t do it. “Comparison is the thief of joy.”Secondly, always practice gratitude. Feel good about where you are right now and journal the gratitude daily. Lastly, Chase talked about courage and how scary it can be to follow your heart, and how you should work toward that passionate goal a little at a time. Since the room was full of crazy excited entrepreneurs, this one hit all of us hard. Some of us are just starting out, some have had several businesses going, but each and every one of us has had those moments of fear, of doubting ourselves.

James Clear spoke on habits: “Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.”  With habit formation, James told us that even if we strive for as little as 1% improvement everyday, it can add up to a lot of success in the future. I especially loved when he reminded us that we can be the architects of our own environment. This is a powerfully empowering statement, especially to someone like me who feels trapped and blocked from attaining dreams and goals. I don’t need to stand by and wait for something good to happen to me or for me, I can set about creating habits to change my environment in ways that will help me succeed.

Two speakers impressed upon us the idea of niching down, narrowing our business or blog focus. Mariah Coz started out doing something she was passionate about, but wasn’t sure if anyone else was. She restored vintage campers. Her blog became wildly successful, and now she enjoys, with the help of several blogs, to help others succeed in their businesses. She stressed the three perks of getting into obsessive niches (like vintage campers) and becoming a pioneer in it: 1) You’re a big fish in a small pond 2) You are accessing an untapped market and 3) Everything is exciting!

Cassidy Tuttle is another amazing woman who used a small, obsessive niche to grow her business. Her niche is focused on succulents – you know – those water conserving plants that are to some of us, the only plants we don’t kill off on a regular basis. Even after growing her business with something as niche as succulents, she showed us how focusing it down even further helped increase her business.

See what I mean? I’ve only covered a fraction of the amazingness that I experienced at this conference.

-Heather