Top Takeaways from 2023 Simply Business Summit
What a jam-packed 3 days we had last week at Simply Business Summit!
We had a beautiful location overlooking the beach in Byron Bay Beach and a room filled with 20 incredible women in business who’d all prioritised themselves for a few days of relaxation, rejuvenation and education… and I think we delivered just that!
In this week’s podcast episode I gave a full recap of the event but for the blog, I wanted to share with you the biggest takeaways that were shared with me from attendees after listening to each of our guest speakers.
And while we’re doing so, can we appreciate all of these fabulous photos taken by our Summit photographer, Lucy Humphries! Lucy also took new headshots of each of our attendees, which I can’t wait for them to see soon! Thanks Lucy. You are incredibly good at your job!
We of course have to start with our amazing keynote speaker, Lisa Messenger who gave us over two hours of her time and had us hanging on her every word.
KEY TAKEAWAY: There were so many takeaways from Lisa’s time with us, but the one that stood out to everyone was her focus on treating her business like an ecosystem where everything is interconnected. Often in business we operate in silos: customer service, marketing, payroll, HR etc. While having clear roles and responsibilities is important, Lisa encouraged us to pay attention to the “threads” that connect all the different elements of our business—and life—and the opportunities that can present themselves when we stay open to possibilities rather than closed off in our own silos.
I presented to attendees twice across the two days, with a strong focus on getting really clear on what we want out of our businesses, and how we can design a business that allows us to still have the life we desire at the same time.
KEY TAKEAWAY: As part of my presentation we wrote our own job descriptions and I had so many people tell me how powerful this exercise was. Sometimes as business owners, we really ask a lot of ourselves—more than we would ask an employee. When forced to write our own role and responsibilities into a formal job description, it became crystal clear to so many people how unreasonable our expectations were of ourselves. What followed were plenty of conversations around what it’s time to start outsourcing!
Susan Judd from HR Culture and Dare to Care gave us a fantastic, interactive presentation helping us to understand our personality types through DiSC Profiling, and then also understand personality types that are different to our own.
KEY TAKEAWAY: As we all got to know ourselves a little better, you could see so many lightbulb moments in the room as people realised “Oh, that’s why I respond that way when in a stressful situation!” or “That’s why my team members respond that way” and so on. When we’re more aware of how different personalities respond and interact, we’re better able to identify and connect with our customers and our teams.
Tahnée Sanders of The Strategy Studio shared two presentations with us across Summit. In her first presentation she focussed on why our websites might not be converting or generating leads for us, and in the second presentation she helped us develop a 3-month (achievable!) marketing plan.
KEY TAKEAWAY: It’s not the job of our website to help us find customers. It’s our website’s job to get people to make an inquiry once they’ve already discovered who we are through our marketing. In order for our website to do its job, we need to make sure we have a clear and powerful message through all of our marketing channels that drives traffic to our website in the first place. A clear and concise message begins with a great one-liner, which Tahnée helped us all write as part of her sessions.
Alli Garison from The Transformation Project talked to us about “the ripple effect” and how all interactions in our daily life begin with us.
KEY TAKEAWAY: Alli began her presentation getting us to each take 3 long, deep breaths. As simple as it sounds, it was a reminder of what a powerful tool the breath is and how we can use it to stay grounded in our daily life. Alli talked to us about using our breath to help move through the various transitions we need to make in our daily life, as we pivot from “business owner” to “mother” for example. She also gave us an eye-opening example of how subconscious self sabotage works, and how to begin being kinder to ourselves.
We wrapped up Summit with a presentation from Carrie Benedet of Global Leaders Thrive talking to us about what it looks like to flourish in our personal and professional life.
KEY TAKEAWAY: We all have the tools within us to live with a mindset of abundance. The only thing holding us back is ourselves. When we can learn to be present and focus on our uniqueness—just like our own fingerprint—our potential is limitless.
Finally, I need to give a huge shout out to Kristi Deacon, without whom Summit would absolutely not happen! Kristi facilitates everything behind the scenes and I’m endlessly grateful to have her by my side.
One last thing! We announced to our attendees that Simply Business Summit 2024 is going to be on the GOLD COAST! Attendees from this year’s Summit already signed up to join us again next year, so if you want to be first on the list to learn when early bird tickets go on sale later this year, make sure to join the WAIT LIST RIGHT HERE!