Last week Michelle and I had the privilege of attending Alt Summit in Salt Lake City. What an energetic, passionate, and amazingly talented community that we were in the presence of.  It was possibly the most collaborative, un-intimidating, “hungry to learn”, generous group of people at a conference that I have ever seen.

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Michelle also had a table called “Ask the Accountant” where participants could ask their Accounting/Finance related questions. It was fantastic meeting so many creative people and learning their business strategies and challenges!

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It was fascinating to learn more about the blogging industry.  Wedding and event professionals can learn so much from other industries – especially this one, because it’s in the creative field and runs parallel to ours in so many ways.  While there are so many similarities, there are also so many differences.  Expanding your horizon and learning from other people who are smarter than you is critical (see my post last week on this).

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For example, we learned about creating a scalable company from Christiane Lemieux, Founder of DwellStudio.  Talk about a SMART woman.  What started out primarily as a bedding line has now grown into various lines like furniture, baby, children, décor, rugs, and tabletop.  DwellStudio was recently acquired by Wayfair and that move will now give them a competitive advantage in the online home retailing world.  Plus, Christiane also mentioned she strongly believes in business plans and the importance of understanding your finances (and hiring someone to help)…music to our ears! 🙂

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Another amazing speaker to learn from was Ben Silbermann, founder and CEO of Pinterest. It was fascinating to learn about his start-up journey: the struggles, the growing pains, the challenges. And, it was inspiring to hear him talk about the future of this tool that so many of us know and love.

What a fantastic week of learning! (And super fun too!)

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