Entrepreneur Magazine event

So this past Tuesday I attended an Entrepreneur magazine seminar event in Long Beach. Those of you who are the least bit interested in business and are not familiar with Entrepreneur magazine, (http://www.entrepreneur.com/) then you really should check it out. Lots of good stuff in there, and pretty inspiring too, for those of us who want to make it on our own.

Anyway, the event Tuesday was a winning business strategies seminar event, and although I don't have too much experience with these types of seminars, this one certainly set the bar high. First of all, it was free – which due to my cynical nature, I automatically assumed ulterior motives. There were none. No “gotchas” at the door, no “free with subscription” fine print or anything like, straight up free. It was sponsored by Verizon, so of course they had a booth there and their CEO for southern California spoke in between the key note speakers, but the whole event was pretty swanky with nothing out of pocket, and I was impressed.

The event brought out all manner of So-Cal business owners. Naturally, most folks were entrepreneurs or they worked for small startups, and it was a good group for exchanging ideas and networking. Much to my surprise, it was catered, and catered very well. The keynote speakers were during meals that easily would have run $30 a plate at a restaurant. Dr. Ivan Misner spoke during breakfast on professional networking – one of the best concepts that I got out of that was the concept that networking is farming, not hunting.

This was followed by several seminar sessions where the attendees could attend lectures on various topics depending on what they wanted to get out of the event. The two that I chose were a session on developing your personal brand, and a session on social media marketing. Both of these contributed greatly to my ultimate decision to start this blog and really move into the digital world beyond simply having a facebook page. Who knows, maybe Twitter will be next!

The lunchtime keynote speaker was Bruce Kimbrell from the Disney Institute, speaking about people management. This may have been new to some folks in the room, but I have known Disney takes care of their people for a while, and get paid back in kind with outstanding performance. Though it was nice to hear details about how they go about the vetting and training process.

My final seminar session was about raising money for a startup, and although it provided great information, I'm not anywhere near the level to begin raising capital, and much of what was said didn't really apply to me... it's good to know what I can look forward to though.

The event ended with an open bar for their networking mixer, and I was very impressed overall with the way the entire event was handled. Exchanged quite a bit of ideas and information at the mixer, and got a good overall impression of the people there. If I ever hear of another event in the area, I would definitely go again.