I am using a young professionals journal entry about our time at the Minnesota CEO conference on Friday! Enjoy!
On Friday, we went to the SMSU Campus in Marshall for a CEO leadership conference. We started off with a Keynote Speaker, which was Desiree Petrich who owns Intentional Action. She talked to us about the do’s and don’ts of entrepreneurship, which were very helpful. We also wrote down things that we felt stuck on in our businesses, and things we could make a habit to move the needle, and feel less stuck. Then we had a panel with young entrepreneurs from around the area and we got to hear about their stories and they gave us advice for us starting our businesses. There were a few really good things I heard from these business owners that I just had to write down. The first one was "Amateurs built the Ark, professionals built the Titanic” resembling that professionals aren’t always better. Another one was “Success is a mindset, while goals are achievable” saying that you should continue to set new goals and achieve them if that is what makes you feel success. The last one I wrote down was a comparison to golf, and it was “In golf, you would never have a great shot if you never had that bad shot to learn from”, which really reflects on our businesses too, because not everything is going to be perfect and smooth sailing all the time. I really enjoyed that panel and I found it very helpful. We then ate lunch and it was really good. After lunch we had some of the students from SMSU guide us through an activity where we had to create a business pitch. We were split up into groups of about 15 people and then in those groups we were split up again into groups of 4-6 people, and that was the group we had to make a business pitch with. My group came up with a shoe that had changeable bottoms by the click of a button, so it could be like a 4 in 1 shoe. I thought it was kind of silly, but my group liked it so I just rolled with it. We had to vote in our groups of about 15 people on which small group had the best idea, and my group won that. Since we won that, we had to go on the stage and present our business pitch to the whole audience against the winners of all the other groups. My group didn’t win, but it was still pretty fun. After that, we headed back home, and we had a music party on the bus which was good bonding time for all of us. I had a really good time at the conference and I can’t wait to use all the new knowledge and advice I learned.
