Pioneer Nation

I can’t believe it’s nearly a month since I posted on the blog.  It’s been a busy time!

I’ve got so many store orders that I can hardly keep up, which is a great problem to have; I have events coming up in my day job as a Community Events Planner; my daughter has been busy with school activities (ie lots of driving for me); my husband has been traveling a lot. And finally, I went on an awesome trip to Portland, Oregon at the end of March to attend Pioneer Nation.

Pioneer Nation is a conference for small business owners and entrepreneurs organized by Chris Guillebeau (also founder of World Domination Summit). This is the event’s first year, and I hope it’s not the last – it was awesome.  I learned so much and met many extraordinary people, it was definitely worth the investment and the trip to the West Coast.

Some of the speakers and presenters were real heroes of mine and it was so fun to meet them and hear them speak, most notably: Chris Brogan, Brian Clark, Tara Gentile, Rena Tom, JD Roth, Laura Roeder and many more.

There were key note speakers, panels and classes throughout the three days. I took classes on selling products to the wholesale market, time management, creating information products, email marketing and much more.  I took in lots of practical advice, which I’ll use in my business, and I came away with was a much clearer path for my business.

Another huge takeaway for me was that while it was inspiring to be around really successful people – some with big companies, some earning large sums of money and some employing a lot of people – everyone at the conference was at a different place on their business journey and each one of them had different goals.  This is something that I need to remind myself of often:

My goals are my own personal goals and I should be pursuing those and not someone else’s goals. I’m creating my own business, my own path and my own future.  It’s pretty exciting!