Linda posted on January 18, 2009 16:14
Late last night I returned home after two days in Nashville, Tennessee with a group of colleagues from across the country. While the stated purpose of the meeting was to develop our marketing plans and compare what has worked and what has not in the current economy, there was so much more benefit than that!
All of the attendees run IT companies, so of course there was a fair amount of technology talk. One of the most exciting conversations was around cloud computing and what the benefits of such a solution might be for our clients. This is such an intriguing topic, that I will post an entire entry about it later this week.
The highlight for me was gaining one of the conference 'hot seats'. Not as ominous as it sounds, I had the opportunity to pose a question about an issue I have in my business and listen to advice from my peers. Writing furiously as I listened to their counsel, I was able to fill a page with ideas and I'm very excited about organizing everything that they told me and putting it into practice. Afterwards I had others tell me that they were struggling with the same issue and that they had learned much from my 'hot seat' as well.
Fresh from my third meeting with this group, I appreciate the opportunity that these meetings present more than ever and look forward to the conversations I will have with my accountability group (a group within the larger group) in the next few weeks and to our next meeting in April.
If you are a small business owner, I urge you to find a group in your industry that will help you in the same way that this group helps me. The benefits are enormous and far outweigh the time and expense involved with being part of the group.