I went to the Key Person of Influence one day conference in Sydney on July 26, 2014 after my friend Andrea of Shine On Video recommended it to me. I had been working from home for a few weeks and the social isolation was killing me! I needed some social time badly and an entrepnentrepreneur-y inspirational day and an opportunity to network was a blessing when I signed up. My experience at the conference was entirely positive and I’m breaking it down here.
Why I loved the KPI one day conference…
Because of the lovely people I met
That’s the first and foremost reason why I loved the event. I met a newbie finance advisor, a midwife, a web developer, a digital marketer, a promotions company owner and a linguistics expert who also runs a part of the Writer’s Festival in Sydney! How cool is that? So many amazing people, so much creativity and talent, all open to talk and share and make new friends. It was genuinely nice to talk to ambitious and creative people who share similar dreams of being successfully self-employed as me. Some of the people I spoke to just wanted to talk and I was happy to listen to their ideas and challenges. Some others were there to be inspired so they were curious to hear my story. Others were there to form business relationships and I hope to link up with the web developer I met as well as the two lovely ladies below on some joint ventures. Here is a photo of my new friends Kim and Vanessa. Aren’t we cute?
Photo from my Instagram.
Because of what I learnt
The Key Person of Influence concept is entirely based on the 5 P’s of influence:
- Pitch
- Publish
- Product
- Profile
- Partnerships
The day started off with the Pitch portion of the formula with an entertaining presentation by Matthew Michalewicz who’s a techy + entrepreneur + author + speaker. He was funny and he just gave off an air of extreme intelligence. Seriously. He managed to keep his feet on the ground and show humility which made him even more endearing. This section was all about the importance of having the perfect elevator pitch – which is actually more important for you rather than your clients or customers. Knowing what you offer and being able to articulate it in 25 words or in under 30 seconds in MASSIVE CLARITY that you need. I have to be honest, I don’t have this clarity yet and that’s something I need to find and I intend to do it by getting my hands dirty and trying out everything I possibly can try.
[wc_box color=”primary” text_align=”left”]NEVER MISS ANOTHER POST! GET FREE UPDATES DIRECTLY IN YOUR INBOX!
[mc4wp_form id=”10457″]
[/wc_box]
The next bit was Publish. This is all about writing a book to build your credibility presented by Andrew Griffiths. I get this part and love it. It’s extremely difficult to write a book, I know because I’ve written one (a wee ebook but none the less) and just writing that raised my cred in my mum’s eyes which is huge for me! As you know, mums are the ones that love us most but also have the highest expectations of us. The best idea I learnt in this section is the concept of the 30,000 words in 30 days challenge. Force yourself to pump out 30,000 words in 30 days and you’ll be surprised how much great content you can come up with very quickly. I am going to take this challenge and let you know how it goes and what comes of it. Tweet at me if you want to take this challenge with me too: I want to do the 30,000 words in 30 days with @rituashrafi Thanks for the idea @akauthor. The photo below is of one of the KPI alumni who have just published a book. If writing a book is going to make me look like that, sign me up. Mmm hmmm.
Photo courtesy of Vanessa.
The next part is Product presented by Tim Dwyer. This is all about freeing yourself from the time for money equation in business and create products that make you money without you having to be chained to working all the time. It also shed light on the growing pains of a company because as a business grows beyond a certain stage, a whole new set of problems come up which you need to be prepared for.
After that it was all about Profile and this section was presented by super funny writer, journalist, angel investor, entrepreneur and cat blogger Valerie Khoo. She wrote about the importance of having web presence and a strong online profile. I’m lucky that I have a good online presence, check out all the places where I have a footprint online here on my personal site, but I recognize that I need to polish this up even more. Just having an online presence isn’t enough – it should all lead towards something, it should all position me as an expert in a certain niche and it should all build up my professional credibility. One way I can raise my online presence in a constructive manner is by writing and sharing content about business matters, may that be digital marketing for ad sales in which I have 7 years of working experience but have written about precisely zero times, or Quarter Life Crisis or meditation because those are somethings that I am genuinely passionate about.
Finally, it was all about Partnerships and Matthew Michalewicz came back to present this. What I learnt here is that partnerships actually take away a lot of the loneliness that self-employment can bring so I guess I came full circle in the end. I went to the KPI conference because I was getting lonely and the last piece of the Influence puzzle is to partner with others to work together, create bigger things, help each other and get a lot of social interaction as an added value.
The Catch
I can’t end this review without talking about the catch. The one day conference is designed to share a lot of learning and valuable information and also to inspire as well as position and pitch the full KPI 9 month program which is valued at $14K AUD. Is the one day conference worth it? At $39, absolutely yes. It is worth a fair bit more so this is a steal. Is the full program worth it? Since I haven’t taken it, I’m not the best person to assess. I would recommend going to a one day conference for sure because of the value in it and the fun you will have. 
NEVER MISS ANOTHER POST! GET FREE UPDATES DIRECTLY IN YOUR INBOX!
[mc4wp_form id=”10457″]
[/wc_box]
