I thought I’d recap a little of my time at Mom 2.0 last week, for those of you who aren’t familiar with this conference (I hadn’t heard of it until just a few months ago!) and wonder why I went in the first place! For starters, Mom 2.0 is a professional conference for influencers who create content related to parenting, entertainment, food, business, technology, design, etc. Bloggers, marketers and entrepreneurs all come together to discuss new ideas and help each other grow. The conference location this year in Laguna Niguel, California was just icing on the cake!
You know that I started Splendry back at the end of 2014 and I’m working really hard to turn it into a profitable business. Even though I’ve been blogging here for quite a while now I still feel a little out of the loop when it comes to knowing what steps to take to grow a website, engage with brands, etc. The JK Style blog was started as a companion to my styling work and even when I moved away more from personal shopping and style and focused more on the blog I wasn’t initially business-focused. After I left my corporate job (also known as a company lay-off, and also known as one of the happiest days of my life) I decided to focus more on the JK Style blog and began developing my idea for what would now be Splendry. Fast-forward a little bit and I’m still learning so much every.single.day. Which is great, of course, but not having a web or computer background presents challenges. :)
One of the things I was most looking forward to at Mom 2.0 was simply being around other people who knew what it is I actually do all day. (If you’re not in this industry, it probably sounds weird, I get it.) Since I work from home most of my days are spent alone in front of a computer typing, editing posts and photos, designing layouts, tweaking website design and function and planning marathon post sessions where I try to knock out several recipe or DIY posts all at once. Of course I talk to friends and family about what I do, but being in a room with hundreds of women (and a few men) who are doing the same thing, was worth the price of my conference ticket for sure!
I met women who have been in the industry for many years and others who were pretty new (one girl I met just launched a website a few weeks ago!). Some have experienced incredible financial success, others are still piecing together income and working other full-time or part-time jobs to stay afloat. While I’d say 99.9% of the women I spoke to had kids (in fact the only girl I met who didn’t have children was also named Jamie), no one shunned me from not being part of the mom-club. :)
Days were full from morning yoga classes and runs on the beach to amazing speakers like Rita Wilson, Soledad O’Brien, Alli Webb (founder of Drybar) and other amazing business owners, authors, producers, non-profit managers, and even an astronaut! Talk about an inspiring few days! Brands like Kia, Vanity Fair, Dove, Best Buy, and more set up booths and suites to provide services, samples and talk with influencers about new products and potential ways to collaborate.
Nights were filled with parties, mingling with other conference attendees and brands and one evening in Laguna Beach for dinner with a couple of girls I met. The closing event was the Iris Awards which celebrates the best in parenting blogs and was hosted by Alfonso Ribeiro (otherwise known as Carlton from Fresh Prince and a recent winner of Dancing with the Stars).
Not only would I call the few days in California a success, I already bought my ticket for the Mom 2.0 conference next year! (Next year we’ll be in Orlando!) Now I’m ready to try to decipher my conference notes and try to implement some of the information I learned!
