Business event here I come!

I’m signed up

I’ve just booked an event! – Very exciting. It is an event for business owners and it is two days of focusing on who we are and what makes our business unique. Why do this?

All business owners get tied up in looking after their clients and the day to day running of their business, this is perfectly normal and acceptable to a point. However- for your business to sustain itself and for you to sustain yourself as a human you need to invest in the future of the business. This means focusing on yourself. Industries change, technology changes, what people want changes. So you need adapt, stop fire fighting and invest in you.

I’ve always liked the idea of swanning off to a business event to learn stuff and eat and drink and come back full of ideas. It has always been something other people do. This year AmberCouch has seen huge change and we’ve really upped our game. We’ve been focused on us and therefore the business and fallen in line. Our personal lives over the last 5 years dictated that we freed up some time in our week, it was essential to get through this phase of our lives and be there for someone else. When a situation is forced upon you, you deal with it.

The daft thing us humans do – is do nothing until these situations arise and therefore we are forced to make a change. Once this part of our lives changed and we moved on we found we had more time. This is purely because there was now a huge gap, one that had been stressful and put a lot of pressure on us as a couple and our business. So what to do – wait for the inevitable to happen and the gap will be filled with ‘stuff’ at some point or continue to force the gap to give us more time, time for us. Time to learn, relax and get outside.

Getting the balance right

For those of you that know us, you will know that we now work a 4 day week. We’ve filled our gap with walking, reading, getting outside, watching films, weekends away and generally having much more of a life that is defined by decisions we make for ourselves. The luxury of being able to do what you choose on your days off. It’s the dream for a lot of people, the 3 day weekend – I still can’t believe we’ve maintained it – but we have and we love it! No going back now.
It turns out that this decision to work less has also had a positive effect on our learning – we are learning at a rapid pace, our minds are less cluttered now and have more space for new things. New things such as a two day business event that is happening in November.

I signed up to an email series almost a year ago now and I’ve really enjoyed it. Vicky Fraser is a copy writer and she has successfully grown her business. She now has an email series, a book, a write your book course, an inner circle and a podcast – and now her first event, which I’m so pleased to be part of.
I don’t know Vicky and have not yet met her personally but she has nailed her target audience and I’m there, hook, line and sinker. Before I signed up to her email series we had begun our journey to get our business ship shape and step it up a gear so this fell into my lap at the right time. With a clear head and focus we’ve made changes almost every month and still going.

Ongoing learning

Everything we are learning from the podcasts we listen to, the books we read, the networking we do is all having an effect. It is good though to have someone like Vicky in my inbox everyday giving me a shove with a ‘you can do it’ approach. Her event in November already feels like something I’ve learn’t from, even though it’s not even happened yet. Firstly making the decision to go felt easier. I deliberate constantly about what I should do but this year has taught me that actually this is just a waste of time. Make a decision, move on. Done.

I’m not yet sure what this event has in store for me but learning and thriving off a room of likeminded people can never be a bad thing. I do know, I will enjoy it and I know I will learn something, not because I have amazing foresight but because I want to enjoy it and I want to learn something.