Attending a conference on female entrepreneurship offers a great deal of opportunity, information, and substantial potential value. By the end of the conference, you will have made meaningful contacts, found a fresh perspective, and learned something new.
- Networking has been identified as one of the most effective ways to boost business growth, with 80% of professionals reporting that networking has been essential to their career success.
Why Should I Attend an Entrepreneurship Conference?
According to the Stanford Research Institute, a business’s success depends on 87.5% on the ability to connect to people both externally and internally and 12.5% on the management’s and employees’ experience and knowledge.
Networking and effective contact management are essential skills for you as a businesswoman and will significantly assist your company’s growth in today’s modern business world. Seeking out an environment where you can network with other female entrepreneurs can empower you to grow as a person and a business.
Let’s Break it Down:
1. Learn from the Best
No business owner can be an expert on everything, no matter how skilled. Why not take some pointers from the best? A conference is an incredible opportunity to get into a room of influence while learning from entrepreneurs you admire.
Participating in a conference with highly-skilled, knowledgeable speakers can also allow you to study their successes and costly business mistakes. They can advise you on avoiding making the same mistakes by sharing their experience, which could save you money and a lot of time!
2. Make Connections
The journey of a businesswoman can be isolating, especially if a supportive community does not surround you. One way around this is to network outside of your usual local circles.
A conference allows you to expand your professional network greatly. All you need to do is meet the right woman, and you may have a lifelong business partner!
Recent conference attendees shared that the most valuable benefit they got was the connections they created. Building a network of motivated, like-minded female business owners instantly increases your company’s potential.
3. Learn About Your Industry
When major disruptions occur in an industry, it is common for entrepreneurs to be entirely caught off guard. When you’re an entrepreneur, it’s easy to become obsessed with your niche and ignore the larger industry.
A conference lets you look at the larger industry and step outside your bubble. A wise businesswoman surveys the larger landscape and plans for multiple possible outcomes.
You can learn valuable perspectives from attending an entrepreneur conference that you might not have otherwise known.
4. Find Inspiration
The opportunity to be inspired by what you see is perhaps the most valuable benefit of attending a conference! Your creativity may become stale if constantly exposed to the same network and professional issues.
Conferences frequently allow people to focus “on” their business for a day or two rather than be stuck “in” their business.
Attending a conference can expose you to a wide variety of inspiring people while also re-awakening your creative mind. Many businesswomen have returned from a conference with a renewed sense of purpose and a long list of exciting ideas.
5. Build Recognition
Building brand awareness is among the most difficult challenges for new businesses. Attending a business conference can allow you to meet prospective clients or partners while also increasing brand recognition.
Many conferences allow vendors to host a booth near the entrance to interact with attendees and create hype about their products and services.
Our Tips for Making the Most Out of Your Conference Experience:
- Step outside of your comfort zone! Engage with other female entrepreneurs to make lifelong contacts. When it comes to business success, who you know is often more important than what you know.
- Clarify your mission statement. Prepare an impressive one- or two-line company summary that you can easily say when asked, “What does your company do?”
- Create a memorable first impression by carrying physical or digital business cards.
- When the event comes to an end, make sure to stay in contact with the connections you created!
- Make a good impression on the women you met by following up with them on LinkedIn, Social Media, or by email after the conference.
- Finally, remember that these conferences are intended to be empowering and engaging; try not to take them too seriously! Be yourself, and you will have a great time.
Apply What You Learned to Your Business
Don’t just talk the talk; walk the walk. Ensure that you put the valuable connections, knowledge, and creativity into practice when you return home.
1. Turn to the Conference Resource Page
Reviewing your favorite speakers’ shared resources is a quick way to re-energize after a conference and think about what’s next. This is a great way to review critical things you heard in person and check out material from sessions you wanted to attend but couldn’t.
A week or two after the conference, the resource webpage will often have even more content than during the event, as many speakers provide additional posting materials after the conference.
2. Share What you Learned with your Local Network
Sharing what you learned at a conference can be a great way to keep your motivation up and stay on track with your goals. This can look like a presentation to the rest of your team, or you may also want to take a more personal approach.
Coffee with coworkers or local business partners is an excellent opportunity to discuss what you learned and decide how to apply it in your work. When it comes to implementing your ideas, they can help you think of new ways to approach them.
3. Think Outside the Box
Conference-inspired ideas may not be as simple as you thought they would be. Experimenting and tweaking your skills, projects, and strategies is okay until you find what works best.
Even better, spread the word within your company about your new ideas by having others also try out the methods. The people you share with may be able to help you perfect the new technique, and you never know what you can inspire in others!
Who We Are at Black Women Talk Tech:
There wasn’t a roadmap to billions designed for us, so we created our own. That’s how Black Women Talk Tech began. We started a tech conference designed specifically for Black women tech entrepreneurs to create a space where black women could be seen, heard, and have their ideas invested in. Our conference is now the largest convening of Black women tech entrepreneurs and technologists.
Today, our mission is to help Black women dream big and build the next billion-dollar tech or scalable company.
Our support is unapologetic because we believe Black is worth the investment. It’s time we are heard and seen because we know different perspectives bring new opportunities. Together, we’re building community and profitable, scalable businesses for self-identified Black women in tech.
Former Bank Executive – Award Winning 2x Serial Entrepreneur – Black Women Talk Tech Co-Founder
