"Having an intention behind what it is you're putting any effort, energy and money towards is critical." - Jess Campbell

Playing big with Cindy and Jess (our reflections on AFP ICON)

In this episode of the Confessions Podcast, we will spill the beans of our experience at the Association of Fundraising Professionals International Conference (AFP ICON) in New Orleans. We went there with a mission: to create space for consultants! We dive into all of our reflections and learnings. But the real gem of this episode is our reflection on the importance of having clear intentions when attending conferences. It's not just about collecting business cards and free swag (which honestly isn’t all that good). It's about seizing opportunities to connect with people and build relationships. So, next time you attend a conference, don't just wing it. Have a game plan and make the most out of it. You never know who you might meet or what you might learn.

Highlights:

• Having a clear intention when attending professional development opportunities.

• The value of going big and standing out when creating a conference booth, as it can attract the right audience and lead to meaningful conversations.

• Attending conferences is not just about networking and standing out. It's also an opportunity to connect with people and build relationships.

Find Us Online:  https://www.confessionswithjessandcindy.com/

Connect with Cindy:

Cindy Wagman Coaching https://cindywagman.com/

The Good Partnership https://www.thegoodpartnership.com/

Connect with Jess: 

Out In the Boons: https://www.outintheboons.me

Transcript:

00:00:00 Cindy: Welcome to the Confessions Podcast. I'm Cindy Wagman.

00:00:03 Jess: And I'm Jess Campbell. We're two former in-house nonprofit pros turned coaches and consultants to purpose-driven organizations.

00:00:11 Cindy: After years of building up our separate six figure businesses from scratch, we've thrown a lot of spaghetti at the wall and have lived to see what sticks.

00:00:20 Jess: We're on a mission to help other non-profit coaches and consultants looking to start or scale their own businesses past the six figure mark by pulling back the curtain.

00:00:30 Cindy: Whether you're still working inside a nonprofit and thinking of one day going out on your own or you've been running your consulting business for years, you understand that working with nonprofits is just different. We're giving you access to the business leaders who serve nonprofits as their clients. You know the people who truly get it.

00:00:52 Jess: No more gatekeeping, no more secrets. This podcast is going to give you an inside look at what running a successful nonprofit coaching and consulting business looks like. Basically, we're asking people how much money they make, how they get paid, and what has and hasn't worked in their businesses.

00:01:11 Cindy: Listen in as these leaders share their insights, their numbers, and the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to building a nonprofit coaching or consulting business. We're gonna empower you to make the power moves that give you the income and freedom you set out to create from day one.

00:01:28 Jess: You ready? Let's go.

00:01:31 Cindy: Hey, Jess.

00:01:32 Jess: We're back. We're back.

00:01:35 Cindy: You are getting another Jess and Cindy episode.

00:01:40 Jess: Which I think the people like.

00:01:42 Cindy: I think so too. I've gotten.

00:01:43 Jess: You like our banter.

00:01:45 Cindy: Yeah. So we're here again and we're recording this right on the… off of the heels of us being together in person, which happens like at decent amount, but not nearly enough. But we were together at AFP Icon in New Orleans and we have thoughts.

00:02:06 Jess: Yes. So I have to just say, Cindy knows this. I didn't even know what ICON was until about 18 months ago in my career as a nonprofit fundraiser. I just skipped it. None of the organizations, big or small…

00:02:20 Cindy: Yeah.

00:02:21 Jess: We're apart, and so I went to my local chapter in January of 2021, I gave a little chat to the people and then someone came up to me and was like, you need to go to Icon. And I was like, what's Icon? And so it was so nice to have our veteran AFP attendee, Cindy, as my co-pilot in this endeavor.

00:02:48 Cindy: Yeah.

00:02:48 Jess: Because it's a beast. You know.

00:02:51 Cindy: It is.

00:02:51 Jess: There's 3,600 people there. It's overwhelming.

00:02:55 Cindy: So here's my confession. When I spoke at Icon, I think it was in 2019, in San Antonio. I really didn't go too much. I went to my session and then I skipped a whole bunch of it because I actually found it really overwhelming. And, you know, sometimes, when I travel for work, I'm kind of just like, okay, go and come home. I don't wanna be away from the family very long. You know, I didn't see my work was so different then anyways, but I just checked out. So this was even a different experience for me because I showed up with intention, we both did. And we're gonna talk about what those intentions were. But knowing what I wanted to get out of the conference and I think that that made a huge difference to how valuable it was for me to be there.

00:03:39 Jess: Let's like, put a pin in that. For anyone listening and as you are thinking about your professional development opportunities, marketing opportunities. I think what Cindy said is so spot on that having an intention behind what it is you're putting any effort, energy, money towards is critical. You know, you can basically show up and do what you see others doing, fine. But if you don't have any intention behind it, it's almost pointless. And I think that, you know, kudos to us for really setting that before we went because, as a newbie to this world, I did what any normal elder millennial does, and I searched the hashtag on Instagram. And for example, I was underwhelmed.

00:04:43 Cindy: Yeah.

00:04:43 Jess: By what I saw, as the exhibition arena went. And so, you know, I said to Cindy, like, I would rather die than go all that way and spend all that money and do that. And so that was really kind of the baseline of what we had to go above and beyond.

00:05:09 Cindy: Yeah.

00:05:11 Jess: So, yeah. Should we walk through?

00:05:12 Cindy: Let's dive in.

00:05:12 Jess: Like what our intentions were?

00:05:14 Cindy: Yes.

00:05:14 Jess: And like how we pulled this off and all the things.

00:05:18 Cindy: Yeah.

00:05:18 Jess: Maybe back up and say what it is we did.

00:05:21 Cindy: Yeah. Well, so we decided we wanted to exhibit at the booth or have a booth in the exhibit hall. And to Jess's point before, and I wanna say no shade to all the other exhibitors, but if I'm being honest, no shade, no shade. Most exhibitors do a really terrible job of creating a space that welcomes their audience. And just today, I got an email from one company where I think they scan your badge, your conference badge to be entered into a contest or something like that. And then they spam you with email for the rest of your life and that is so common. So like we were in a sea of b lue, like, everything around us was blue and you know, traditional setup. You can all picture, I think, most people can picture a conference.

00:06:23 Jess: Convention center.

00:06:24 Cindy: Yeah, like.

00:06:26 Jess: Massive.

00:06:27 Cindy: Massive and everyone, like, it was boring. It was boring. And so then our intention was to take up space for consultants specifically. So both of us have parts of our business where we serve nonprofits and parts of our business where we serve consultants. And this was intentional around serving consultants. I wanted for us to own that. Right? To be the only ones there doing this thing and to stand out doing it. Would you say that's true for you too?

00:07:01 Jess: Yes, absolutely. And we did.

00:07:04 Cindy: We did.

00:07:05 Jess: I mean, there's so many consultants at this conference and there was no one, but us catering to that audience.

00:07:11 Cindy: No one. No one.

00:07:12 Jess: No one.

00:07:13 Cindy: And the interesting thing, this is a total side note, but I find it interesting cuz a lot of the tech companies there came up and started chatting with us because they want access to consultants. And it almost felt like, real, a little bit achy because it just, yeah. No, because I don't wanna say we're a target, but you know, all the tech companies see it as, you know, we can get more… get in front of more charities if we don't focus one-on-one on the charities, but if we focus on the consultants that serve them. So there's this really weird dynamic. But for the consultants who found us, and this is my favorite part, I mean, I'm gonna let you talk about the booth design, but when someone… when we started engaging with someone and we said, oh, yeah, we're a podcast for consultants. You could see the sigh of relief and joy of them. Yes.

00:08:11 Jess: Like the clouds have parted. Yeah.

00:08:12 Cindy: Yeah. And that was like actually the coolest part, where people just felt connected so quickly. So do you wanna talk about what the booth looked like?

00:08:23 Jess: I mean, yeah. Before I do though, I also wanna say what it repelled because a lot of people in the room were nonprofit fundraisers and we were not there to serve them. And so they would walk by and they would be like, what is this? And then we would say, and they would kind of like, you know, mossy on away and like that was great.

00:08:43 Cindy: Cool. Yeah.

00:08:43 Jess: Because that was not the people we were trying to get in front of.

00:08:46 Cindy: Yeah.

00:08:46 Jess: The other, I think, surprise element was this middle category of nonprofit fundraisers who have ambitions or plans someday, become a consultant. And then they found this again, like, holy grail resource of a podcast. And two successful nonprofit consultants that are showing people how to run and grow their businesses. They were like, you know, they didn't have to figure it… they don't have to figure it out on their own.

00:09:15 Cindy: Yeah.

00:09:16 Jess: So all of that I think just played out really well. And to, again, Cindy's point about the design, when she says it was a sea of blue, she is not exaggerating. It was blue, gray and white.

00:09:30 Cindy: Yeah.

00:09:30 Jess: Everywhere.

00:09:32 Cindy: So there were a couple like, rainbowy things too. So the big tech companies, I will say, had better booth, like Salesforce had a bunch of plants and their theme was Forest, but like.

00:09:46 Jess: Oh, it was?

00:09:48 Cindy: We're not competing or like playing in the same ballpark as Salesforce.

00:09:54 Jess: No.

00:09:54 Cindy: Like they're not even on my radar. And I hate Salesforce organizations. So, you know, there are those couple, like standout ones, but even those have like, really corporate structures. Like everything is super, you know, they rent all the same furniture from all the same things, or they… yeah. So it was very much like a sea of corporate.

00:10:21 Jess: Yes. and so when we were designing the booth, if you guys have seen the Confessions logo, we have blue. And so when we hired this company, I'll shout out, Nice Day out of New Orleans, who's fantastic, this install company, their first renderings were with the blue. And I was traveling for work and I sent a message to Cindy. I was like, it needs to be pink, yellow, orange. Like we need a reverse.

00:10:50 Cindy: Yeah.

00:10:50 Jess: And I'll just say, this quick story. When we got our first renderings, I was on a business retreat in Austin with Jordan Gill, who was my Q1 coach. She's speaking at Make It Happen or if by the time this comes out, she will have spoken at Make It Happen. She's a really smart marketer and she was talking to us about this conference she went to where, for the first two days, they basically teach you how to pitch sponsors for things like your live event or your podcast. And then they have a day and a half of exhibitioning, where you then go out and pitch the Amazons, the Targets, the Marriotts of the world. And she too said it was like 4,000 exhibitors, blue, gray, and white. And there was one company that was pink and yellow, and she's like, I'd be lined it to them because I was like, those are my people. And I and Cindy both wanted to command that. And what made it so great with this booth design that we had was that we didn't even have to work hard for people to come check out our booths. Like people.

00:11:48 Cindy: Yeah.

00:11:48 Jess: It called people from far away. People were like, what is this thing? You know?

00:11:53 Cindy: Yeah.

00:11:54 Jess: And so I just wanna emphasize that if you maybe have plans of doing something similar for your own business, like it is worth it to go big, go all the way, go all in because otherwise, what's the point?

00:12:12 Cindy: Yeah, and it didn't… I think a lot of people kind of get overwhelmed at that idea of trying to figure it all out. But we did work with someone locally and actually like it was the easiest conference set up I've ever had, ever. It was amazing and little things like we had… I wanna shout out our signage and also our just, very clever podcast name. Because people were intrigued. They came up with like, Confessions, what's this? And then we had a wall of key chains, like old school, motel style key chains. And it just said, take this on the top. And that drew people in. They're like, oh, what could… what am I taking? And it was interesting. I wanna talk about learnings too because we intentionally didn't brand the key chains. I would brand them next time, but that's another cover, right? That's a learning. But yeah, it was really… it drew people in and we haven't even talked about what I think is the best part, which is the phone.

00:13:24 Jess: Yeah, the phone. Okay. So I have a friend, she is a wedding coordinator, a producer, event planner, maybe coordinator's not the right word. And she sent me this link for this thing that I guess is all the rage with weddings these days where instead of writing in a guest book, there is an old school kind of dial tone phone where you can leave a voice message recording, and then the company then takes all those audio files, puts them on a disc, and then you have that as your wedding guest book versus the written form, right? And Cindy and I, again, she just talked about Salesforce. We're not trying to compete with Salesforce. We knew that there would be players there who run podcasts, big tech companies that run podcasts and have invited people who are very popular podcasters to come and host their space.

00:14:22 Cindy: They were our friends.

00:14:23 Jess: Our friends, yes. Becky and John. Like we're so proud of them, so impressed by them.

00:14:29 Cindy: Yeah.

00:14:30 Jess: Not trying to compete with them.

00:14:31 Cindy: No.

00:14:32 Jess: And so we were like, originally we did have a really quick conversation about hosting a podcast booth in our space, and then we kind of scrapped it because we knew that there would be three, four, five of those going on. And so we had this dial up phone, which went so kind of, like so far the way old school, which was almost novel again, like people were so reminiscent of their teenage or middle school days, you know, and then the part with the Confessions, like it just fit really well. Because it was kind of tucked in a corner where you would pick up the phone, listen to a recording, and then you could say, you’re nonprofit confession. You could say a confession about working in the industry or as a consultant or starting your business. We haven't heard the answers yet, but many people said to us, like, I've never told anyone that before. And it was just so good.

00:15:33 Cindy: It was so good, so good. And I think that sparked conversation and it was engagement, right? Like the whole piece about, not just like people coming up to grab a freebie or to enter a contest, that we actually engage them in a meaningful way with our content that's relevant to them. Right. Our whole thing is like, we want, again. The intention was to create a space for people who were consultants or curious about consulting. And that just kind of drew them in and started the conversation, which is what we wanna have. So I thought that was so genius, Jess.

00:16:13 Jess: Oh, well shout out to my best friend, Mackenzie, from college. You were like, really? Sparked the idea. Sent me the link, all the things.

00:16:21 Cindy: How many Mackenzie’s do you know?

00:16:23 Jess: I know, though I have two very special ones in my life.

00:16:26 Cindy: But no, I don't know any Mackenzie's.

00:16:29 Jess: Yeah, she was, and it was fun to be in New Orleans because this particular Mackenzie, where there's like steamboats everywhere, her like, great-great grandpa invented it. And I was like, oh my gosh.

00:16:39 Cindy: What?

00:16:40 Jess: Yeah, I know. I know. It was like, all over the place, random tangent. Okay. Let's go back to lessons learned.

00:16:49 Cindy: Yeah.

00:16:49 Jess: A bit. Because I don't know if I agree with you on the branding. I'm like staunch though. I'm staunch.

00:16:55 Cindy: So here's what I would say. A lot of… there were times when the booth got really busy. And what I think we did well is, well, actually I would've printed out a postcard specifically to subscribe to the podcast.

00:17:13 Jess: With a QR code. Yeah.

00:17:14 Cindy: Yeah. Because we had other postcards for, like other ways for people to engage with each of us, but I don't think we anticipated that like rush where people were just like coming through and I mean, we joked about this at the time, like I felt like I was drawing people into a circus, like step right up.

00:17:34 Jess: I just have to pause for a second. Cindy said at the beginning of this conversation that, like she went to Icon in San Antonio and didn't necessarily go to everything or like this was Cindy in her prime. I've never seen someone so good at being around, I mean, hundreds of people, but so naturally like engaging them and listening, but then making the transition to like, well here, like scan the QR code.

00:18:05 Cindy: It’s because I went into retail.

00:18:06 Jess: [You follow up here, fun.] I mean maybe, but like I would just sit in the back and watch her do her magic. It was so amazing. She was so talented and good.

00:18:16 Cindy: Thank you.

00:18:18 Jess: It was really like, we'll have to have a side conversation about how you do more of that. No, really getting you live and in person cuz you're really good at it. Where I think I'm better at having longer one-on-one conversations, which this is a hard format to do that.

00:18:36 Cindy: Yeah. Yeah.

00:18:36 Jess: So, yeah, you're really good at it.

00:18:39 Cindy: Thank you. I do, chalk it up to working retail like most of my adult life before I became a fundraiser. But yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. But yeah, there were times where it was just like, whoosh. And so I think the idea for me is like having our brand on the key chain would've allowed someone to quickly grab it cuz they did like the key chains, quickly grab it and be able to follow up. I looked at, even my analytics of like, people signing up for the different things that I was promoting. It almost all happened after people got home. Right. Like, I saw a lot, like the postcard, where people were signing… what I gave people to be like, oh, yeah, sign up for this. They did that when they got home. Not even like when they got back to their hotel, but when they got home, home. And so.

00:19:28 Jess: Yeah, that makes sense.

00:19:28 Cindy: I think that for, to be able to come and be like, oh, yeah, this is what this is. But at the… on the other hand, we wanted the key chains to just be something people would actually use. And we also gave out Chapstick.

00:19:42 Jess: [Truly loved].

00:19:44 Cindy: I use mine.

00:19:46 Jess: Yeah. I have a handful too that I've given to people. Shout to [Rach Bear Bauer], she got some goods.

00:19:52 Cindy: Nice. So I think that understanding that speed of transaction or yeah, I don't wanna call it a transaction, but that speed of interaction maybe?

00:20:05 Jess: Interaction. Yeah.

00:20:06 Cindy: To me, there were definitely, like, I think we… I didn't anticipate that, and I would definitely have things that would just get, like allow people to come and go quicker.

00:20:16 Jess: Yeah.

00:20:17 Cindy: Yeah.

00:20:17 Jess: Yeah. And I mean, looking back when I was first working with the team, shout out to States-Made, States with an S dash made. They are US made, union made merch company. I'm obsessed with them and I've already told Hannah, their founder, that she needs to be an Icon next year cuz she'd kill it. So they produced all of our swag when we were first working with them. I did have them mock me up, but confessionswithjessandcindy.com is really long. So the print, it was so tiny that it didn't seem worth it. So to your point, like maybe it is a QR code or maybe on that big, kind of, board sign we have in the front. Maybe we put the QR code straight on there. Yeah.

00:21:04 Cindy: Yeah.

00:21:04 Jess: Something to think about. But I think the whole point of why we're even getting into this level of nitty gritty, do you feel that sounds more like a debrief than a podcast episode, is to anticipate the speed at which some people do interact with your booth.

00:21:18 Cindy: Yeah.

00:21:18 Jess: Because sometimes it's quick and mighty.

00:21:21 Cindy: Yeah.

00:21:22 Jess: And then these like rush of waves.

00:21:24 Cindy: Yeah.

00:21:24 Jess: Yeah.

00:21:25 Cindy: But when things were quieter, we had great conversations. And I do, so one of the things that I love about our space was that people came and hung out. Right? Like people we know would come and it was this like a nice congregating space for them. So like [Sarah Ashley], Heather Nelson from BridgeRaise.

00:21:48 Jess: [Lacey].

00:21:48 Cindy: [Black and Holly], [Lacey]. And we kind of have fun.

00:21:52 Jess: Simon and Nikki.

00:21:53 Cindy: Simon and Nikki, John Lepp, like all of our…

00:21:56 Jess: All the Canadians. I was like, I was an honorary Canadian.

00:22:03 Cindy: So it even said Toronto wanna Jess's badge because I sat in the booth. Yeah. And people like our buddies were able to come and pop in. So, you know, we had some amazing visitors,oh my goodness. Like Tim and Anne and Jeremy, like people would come.

00:22:23 Jess: Jeremy.

00:22:24 Cindy: Yeah. Would come.

00:22:26 Jess: Zach, that was fun to me. I mean, that's the other thing about these conferences, right? Like we've both been friends on the internet with so many of these people for so many years, and it was so fun to be able to connect and chat and go to dinner with, and hang out with these people in real life. And as someone that you know, I love me, on online gathering. I host them all the time, but you cannot replicate what you do in person.

00:22:59 Cindy: Yeah.

00:22:59 Jess: It just cinch things up like so much faster.

00:23:03 Cindy: Yeah. And it really filled my soul. It really did fill my soul. Which I think, I mean any other, like, learnings cuz I do wanna talk about sort of just us showing up in that way was a big step for both of us and our businesses.

00:23:18 Jess: And an expensive one. Like I think we should talk about the money part.

00:23:21 Cindy: Let's talk.

00:23:21 Jess: Cause I know that's what holding people back in probably so many elements of their business is the money.

00:23:29 Cindy: Yeah. And both you and I think consistently invest in ourselves as business owners and invest in our businesses. So every year, I usually make at least a five figure investment in some of, like my learning, whether it's a program or you know, what have you. Sometimes it's, yeah, it can… you know, it's a big investment. But, honestly, it was so worth it.

00:24:00 Jess: Let's just talk about the numbers.

00:24:01 Cindy: Yeah.

00:24:01 Jess: Cause people are nosy.

00:24:02 Cindy: You know the numbers on this?

00:24:04 Jess: Yeah.

00:24:04 Cindy: More than I do, which is a weird situation.

00:24:07 Jess: I know. I know. Because they've written about it a couple times. So I think all in, not including the hotel stay, the flight, like food, et cetera, but including the booth space, the install, the swag, like the lighting, I mean.

00:24:25 Cindy: You had to pay for the electricity for your booth at this conference, which is a whole other conversation.

00:24:30 Jess: Yes. But all in it was like between $11,000 and $12,000.

00:24:35 Cindy: Yeah.

00:24:36 Jess: Granted, Cindy and I split that. Right. So that's between $5,000 and $6,000 for each of our businesses.

00:24:42 Cindy: US for those of you like me in Canada.

00:24:46 Jess: Yes. Sorry about that. So it's not nothing, but it's not inexpensive. This is not hundreds of dollars, this is thousands of dollars.

00:24:56 Cindy: No.

00:24:57 Jess: I think both of us came with the idea that if each of us got one writing client, one new fractional fundraiser, one anything, it would cover the expense and give us so much awareness, visibility in all like the downstream goods that come from being there.

00:25:16 Cindy: Yeah.

00:25:17 Jess: And I think as business people and as saleswomen, we were like, we can do that. Like that didn't… getting one of each of those of our business didn't feel intimidating. So when we, at the beginning, I think we originally set our budget for $5,000. You remember that?

00:25:33 Cindy: Something like that. Yeah.

00:25:34 Jess: And so more than doubled. And I remember when we got the second quote from Nice Day because the original thing was just not even what, we just needed it turned up a bit and it was more. I think it… I can't remember if it was you or I, but I was like, I'm in interferon, and you were, like, me too. You know? And I'm so grateful to have a partner. That would've been so awkward.

00:26:00 Cindy: Yeah.

00:26:01 Jess: You were like, no.

00:26:02 C: No. And that's why we play well together is because we both see the value of playing big and showing up without reservation. And I think that has allowed us to work well together and to have a kickass booth. And I really do think we had like the kickass booth. So I think that that worked really, really well. And yes, it was expensive. Like if it's 7,000 US, that's like just over 8,000 Canadian, right? It's not nothing.

00:26:41 J: No.

00:26:42 C: But it absolutely was worth it. And I also wanted to add like, 'cuz both, well I don't know about you, but I'm pretty good. Like I created whole separate opt-ins specifically for icons so that I could track everything. And I would say like, again, the immediate, because we didn't have it directly for like the QR code for the podcast everywhere, but like I did see what people were signing up for for my fractional fundraiser academy launch. And it was good, but it wasn't like it didn't blow my mind. But I also keep remembering that this is a long game too. I think we're so trained with Facebook ads, which we're gonna talk about in another episode and all these other like things that we can immediately track and understand that we forget sometimes that there's a slow build. And I think there's a lot of value in that, too. And you and I have talked maybe even on this podcast about when we've launched things, usually like half for me, half of my audience has been around for two or three launches before they actually commit. And so I think that that's also really important is showing up consistently in these spaces and playing the long game.

00:28:09 J: Yeah. You're making me think of another lesson learned that I wasn't prepared for or I hadn't thought through all the way, which is the after part. And it's just like in fundraising it's so easy to give all your time and attention to planning the thing and then hosting the thing, but then there's the after part. And for example, as we sat down to record, I just opened my notebook in case I wanted to take notes and literally like 12 of these like business cards flew out of people I connected with that. I have every intention of emailing and sending a LinkedIn invite to. But have I done it yet? No.

00:28:50 C: Ooh, Jess.

00:28:52 J: No, I know. And so, but I'm just saying like yeah. The post event, I think because I just had no idea what to even expect. I didn't have that post-event planned. And so like next time when we do something like this, having a little bit more thoughtfulness around like where the real work really begins. I mean we did both smartly think through some of the materials to pass out to be able to capture people's contact information. But like I said, I had I think a lot of really good one-to-one longer conversations, which totally warrants a follow up. And I just... I jumped back into like a mountain of work so I haven't prioritized that. Which you know, not the smartest move I ever did. I chose to go shopping on Magazine Street the Wednesday after the conference versus doing what I probably should have done, sue me. I caught a really, really, really cute dump suit though, I was and I'm excited about it.

00:29:55 C: I know that was the one area I didn't get to go to when I was there. And okay, so one of the things that we haven't talked about, it's kind of a tangent but I think it's interesting is outside of the conference piece, you mentioned like going to dinner with people and stuff like that, but that was so valuable and I actually do think I would book a, an extra couple days again. I mean I got there a little early. I think I'd stay an extra day or two longer than I did because those conversations connecting with people, like I got to have dinner with a client and then I had to... I got to have dinner with a couple of our friends and you know, get to spend that time with people who we're not together with a lot. It was really, really was fantastic. And like I said, I think right off the bat, I have always booked travel in my business as like go do my thing and leave, right? I have two young kids, they're getting older and I think I can afford to spend a little bit more time away from them because I do think it's really worthwhile.

00:31:05 J: Yeah. I mean that maybe was one of the smarter moves that I made because I actually stayed in New Orleans. I was like never coming home. I stayed for eight days. My husband ended up coming to meet me and other consultants did made the same plan. And for example, Lacey from Balanced Good, her and her husband Eric and my husband Brad and I, we were like pals and we got to like go on a swamp tour and go to the best meal. I had the whole trip. And even the day the conference ended where we all met up and we went to a bar and we went out to this place called Mothers, which is this kind of old time diner where Martin Luther King and a lot of the freedom writers like went back in the day. Like we just got some really good quality time. And in a conference with 3,600 people, it's really easy to have quick time, not quality time. And so I agree, it goes back to the intention like what do you wanna get out of this experience? Is it business? Is it connections? Is it email subscribers? Is it visibility? Is it showing up as a big player in this space? Yeah, I guess I'm just thinking that it's worth having like a real conversation with yourself about that versus just like, I'm gonna go...

00:32:26 C: Yeah.

00:32:27 J: 'Cause you might not get as much out of it,

00:32:29 C: Do it well.

00:32:30 J: Yes.

00:32:31 C: That's like one of the biggest lessons. If you're gonna do it, do it well. Do it in a way that stands out. Play big, take up your space. It is easy to feel like you will get lost with those big companies there, but you can do it. And also wanna... go ahead.

00:32:46 J: I'll go ahead 'cuz I have one more thing to say too.

00:32:49 C: No, I have a closing thought, so.

00:32:51 J: Oh, okay. Well I guess the last thing I wanna just say is, you know, this in many ways was a marketing experiment for both of us. And you know, in a world where like every consultant under the sun is partnering with a lot of these tech companies to do webinars or you're playing in the Facebook ad space or you know, you're doing whatever marketing you're doing, I just wanna present that this is yet another opportunity, a different way that maybe you haven't quite considered yet and it could be very worthwhile. So I mean, I would encourage people to investigate what exhibiting at different conferences looks like, or being a sponsor at different conferences looks like because it could have some real payoff and it doesn't seem to be as competitive as some of these other more common spaces.

00:33:45 C: Yeah. Cool. All right. Well my closing thought was going to be, and it actually still is, like we'd love to hear from you if you're thinking about, I mean, what new marketing ideas or alternative marketing ideas are you playing with, but also are you thinking about going to a FP 2024, which is in Toronto? Now full disclosure, Jess and I are a little conflicted cause there's some stuff going on with AFP that makes it less appealing to participate in right now around anti-black racism. But we have one foot in the door hoping that things at least make meaningful progression and whether or not we participate next year, it is in my hometown. So, you know, we're gonna do something.

00:34:33 J: Cindy's gonna be the hostess with the Moses.

00:34:35 C: Yeah. You know, there's line happening whether or not it's in the conference or outside the conference. So let us know. And yeah, let us know how you're playing big or where you're playing big.

00:34:46 J: And if you haven't quite played big yet, like let this be your sign that you can play big, too.

00:34:54 C: Yes.

00:34:55 J: Go for it.

00:34:59 C: Thank you again for listening to the Confessions Podcast for nonprofit coaches and consultants. If you enjoyed today's episode, which I sure hope you did, you can show your support in one of three ways.-

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00:35:29 C: And of course, make sure you subscribe so you can get the latest and greatest interviews as they drop every Thursday.

00:35:35 J: And to our fellow non-profit coaching and consulting friends, remember we're an open book and here to answer your burning biz questions.

00:35:40 Cindy: See you next time.