Last Wednesday we went to the Women's Business Conference. We had made it through to the finalists of the Customer Excellence Award and attended a full day of the conference and here's our key takeaways from the day.
When we arrived we heard the starting speech from Angela de Souza which gave us the overview of the day and where to go. This led us into our first meeting of the day, the Investing 101 ran by Etoro. It's something both myself and Paddy are interested in and wanted to learn more. Being able to have a frank discussion about investments was a great way to start the day! A really valuable session in which a lot was learned for sure... apparently toothpaste stocks are a great investment during a recession!
We also attended the speed networking. Now I have never attended speed dating before but WOW is it exhausting! 1 minute with each person to describe your businesses and what you're looking for is no time at all. However, getting to see the variety of wonderful businesses was brilliant. We met an Interior Designer, Bespoke Gin Creator and 'Tinder' for businesses all within 10 minutes of networking. Amongst many other brilliant women.
After that we spent an hour in the cafe... When we had a spare hour for lunch we went to source some caffeine. It turned into a SUPER productive meeting in which we set the future of Virtual Diamond's path. A few new things were developed that are in the works now, including making our lives easier and increasing our offerings to clients. As we're always looking to add new skills to our portfolio we discussed the training opportunities over the next year and what we wanted to target to help our clients best.
After lunch we had an opportunity to talk to some of the speakers one to one. We spoke with Rupal Patel, the author of CIA to CEO. She champions the Do, Delegate or Dump method of sorting your activities and has herself both a part time PA and VA!
We then had the chance to speak to the Listening Detective, Sheryl Andrews. We spoke through our clients biggest fears with hiring a Virtual Assistant and the steps we need to go through to make sure we're effectively taking on feedback in our annual check ups. Focusing on how at each stage both the positive and negatives impacted our clients and how we can improve.
Then it was time for the awards ceremony! We were amazed to have stood out amongst much larger companies to come runners up in the Customer Excellence Award . At the core of what we do is the people we work with. Being a VA can mean being a friend, a confident and a listener. It's more than just taking things away from your busy day, it's finding our place in your company and working together.
The whole event was a mixture of learning, sharing and growing. It was a great day and we're honoured to have been recognised with this award.