Investing in Myself
I just spent the weekend in Seattle attending a conference for freelancing business owners and it was a pretty awesome experience! I always struggle with whether or not I should attend these types of things: it costs money, takes time out of my weekend, and who knows if the content will benefit me. Well in hindsight, I don’t know why I wouldn’t have attended! It was only $100 for both the evening kick off and a full day of refreshing activities on Saturday.
They covered topics like “Getting Clients and Keeping Clients” as well as “Personal Finance for the Freelancer.” Though I thought that the presentations were great, they were a bit more targeted towards someone getting started in freelancing. Of course there was information that I gained from each presentation but I’ve been running a production company for 9 years now, so I’ve been around the block a few times. So if you’re in the earlier years of your freelancing career, I’d heavily advise attending one of these events. I should mention though that I didn’t attend the event exclusively for the lecture content, I went to meet fellow business owners and to reconnect with my Seattle community.
I worked out of Collective Chemistry (the event host) for 3 of my 8 years in Seattle; it’s a fun and collaborative co-working space for creatives. There were roughly 60 business owners at the conference and I knew 15 or so because we all used to work out of the same office. Well from that perspective, it was DEFINITELY worth $100. If I scheduled lunch meetings to reconnect with everyone, not only would it cost way more money for all of the meals, it would also take a massive amount of time. This conference was an opportunity for me to reconnect with all of my friends in a hyper efficient way and if you’ve been following my journey at all then you know the power of networking.
If you want some solid stats on networking, check out my blog post 6 Months Freelancing in Portland, Oregon which dives into how the heck I’ve been getting work. Spoilers - your network is incredibly important when getting hired as a freelancer.
Was it worth it?
Simply put, I definitely think the conference was worth it. I was able to reconnect with my Seattle network, meet 40+ other business owners, and learn some insider secrets from people that’ve been freelancing for longer than me. For example, I need to start putting money aside for retirement because it will compound exponentially over time and it’s a write off on taxes!
I’m running a company at the end of the day and I’m willing to pay for future employees of mine to go to networking/learning opportunities so why wouldn’t I do that for myself? It was $100 which is so incredibly cheap for investing in my knowledge and network.
It was my first time taking the train from Portland to Seattle and it was nice being able to work along the way!
Who knew he’d miss me so much?
If you’re still reading this then I’m assuming you probably enjoyed this blog post! Subscribe for more blogs below and check out my library of existing blog posts that walk you through my experiences as a freelance cinematographer! Cheers!