I LOVE to learn. love love love love love love love it….( you would think that with my love to learn, I would learn how to use the English language in a way that I am not always stumbling over my tongue while talking and making an a** out of myself…. but no. I don’t think that will ever happen. Good thing I like laughing at myself 🙂… but back to the point…learning is amazing. I love that feeling when you go to bed at your mind is reeling because you just learned something new and you just want to go out and use this knowledge.
Well, I was able to feel that way last weekend at The Simple Plan Workshop. This was a two day extravaganza of learning. Business learning to be exact… business plan, marketing and financial plan learning to be super duper exact! And I loved it. Weird huh? You must be thinking that I have lost it. Business plan? Financial planning? I must be smoking something you think… but no, not at all.

I have to thank the lovely Michelle Loretta and Kelly Simants of Sage Wedding Pros who put on this workshop. (And for having a contest that offered a free spot at the workshop that I won! I wouldn’t have been able to make it without that and am super super grateful that that was an option because… wow! my business will be different because of this workshop) They managed to take something that pretty much no one could find fun, and put a spin on it. They brought together  about 20 wedding industry professionals to work together to hammer out  what our businesses are and how they can succeed, and by the end of day two I was spinning with the knowledge of how to bring my business to the next level and make it not just cool but AMAZING. Why try for something if you don’t want to aim to blow the ceiling off it in awesomeness right? Well, that is at least how I see it. 🙂 (if you can’t tell, I like awesomeness… I think it is, well, awesome )

So, now, not only do I know what it takes to run my business, like exactly how many weddings I have to shoot to be able to survive… talk about a good number to know!  I also have better marketing strategy, a brand and…. drum roll please…. a MISSION statement! wow! (I struggled here, that’s why there was a drum roll… I have to make it big somehow huh?)

Bringing photography to you, to create an experience of life, love and all the little things to be cherished forever.

The ladies at Sage Wedding Pros are planning on taking the workshop national, so if you are a wedding professional anywhere in the states, I would keep my eyes open for when these rockstar ladies roll into your town!

Every day I try and find ways to make my business better, but seeing that I have never taken a business class, and was basically figuring out the businessy parts of the business day by day, I feel a million times more confidant in what I am doing and where I am going since spending two days at The Simple Plan, and I remember looking at all the other participants when we left at the end of day two, that I was not the only one to be feeling that way. So, thank you to Michelle (who also owns mmm…paper) and Kelly (who owns Sweet Pea Events) for putting on an event that was so great! And to the lovely ladies Christy and Blair from Junebug Weddings for such great marketing info, and Wendy from Aspire To Plan for helping us understand the financial side of business a bit better!

I am a firm believer that there is always room for more good info and there is always room to grow, so never stop 🙂 I know I won’t

If you would like to see some fun shots of the workshop, check out the fantastic Barbie Hull Photography’s blog as she was documenting the whole event!