We are all guilty of this. Going to a great conference over the weekend, having a lot of new ideas, meeting some great people and coming home fired up with what we have learned! Only to look up 2 months later and realize that nothing was implemented, nothing has changed, and we have forgotten that person’s name that we really need to reach out to now. I have 3 easy steps to keep it from being completely lost.
This weekend, Twofold Marketing went to WordCamp in Atlanta, and it was an amazing time. On Monday, I woke up feeling all the expected things after a conference- tired, overwhelmed and playing catch up with my business and personal life. I was also struggling not to zone out in a post-event extrovert/introvert hangover. We met some AMAZING people and both work & personal friendships were formed that I really want to see grow. However, the danger of the post-event hangover is that we risk losing what we learned, before we ever get a chance to implement it. To prevent that from happening, here is what I suggest that you do.
First, I urge you all to take just a few minutes, shut off your devices, block out the world and process what you took in this weekend. Our brains can absorb so much information, but I find that I must take a moment to organize it all or else it quickly vanishes.
- Step 1- make a list of the ideas that you had for your business, and put them somewhere that won’t be overlooked or thrown away. Keeping them together enables you to periodically flip through and reconnect with your vision. I also use mine when I am having a design or writers block moment. Even if they do not pertain to the specific project that I am working on, the energy and imagination in the notes spark new ideas and helps me to get past it. If there are specific tasks or projects from your idea list that you can implement now, assign yourself a deadline for completion, put it on your calendar and hold yourself accountable.
- Step 2- Go through the business cards you collected and make notes on them like; “I had lunch with them on day 1”, “We talked about a Meet-up group”, etc. As much as you think you will remember these details, odds are that you won’t. A month from now, you will find yourself trying to remember who it was that invited you to their networking event, and it will be lost in the sea of faces & names. What will you do then? Call every card that you received -if you can still find them? Of course not. Who knows what opportunity you may have missed out on by not making those notes?
- Step 3- send a brief email to the people that you really connected with. It can be short and friendly, nothing lengthy is required. The objective is to reaffirm the relationship that you began this weekend and solidify the connection. Do it today or schedule it with a deadline in the next 2- 3 days. Why should it be so soon? Because when we put things on our mental to-do list with no deadline, it rarely gets completed. Also, you are not the only one in a post-conference haze, and you run the risk of them forgetting who you are. Business is about who you know, don’t take the chance of losing these connections that you have just made.
If you have followed these 3 small steps of my post-convention hangover cure, hopefully by now your brain fog is clearing a little. It helps by sorting through all the things spinning around in your brain, putting them onto paper and outlining a plan of attack. However, the most important take-away that I hope you get from all of this is- do it today. Tomorrow will have it’s own to-do list.
