After welcoming remarks the first speaker we heard from was Mica May of May Designs – their primary product is the may book which is a personalized notebook / traveler’s notebook insert. I’m just now getting into TNs and have never purchased any of their products so I didn’t think I would be that interested in this talk but I really enjoyed hearing Mica’s story of her path to creating her business and how it has changed and grown over time, at the end of her talk Mica had the swag fairies bring each attendee our own may book.
Next up was the Llamas Love Letting Workshop with Cindy Guentert-Baldo. I’ve already taken a calligraphy class and the worksheets are very similar but I feel like Cindy is a much funnier and organized teacher and I could totally see a first timer catching on quickly because she is really easy to follow.
After this session Michael’s sponsored pastries, coffee and drinks in the lobby for a break and the swag fairies delivered Design Pandemonium packets to our seats. During the breaks Michaels has a crafting lounge set up with their planner products on display, a candy bar and make and take washi coasters – it was a lot of fun!
After Michelle’s talk there was one more announcement – in addition to sponsoring the craft lounge and mid morning snack Michael’s brought goodies bags for each attendee – and by goodie bags they mean A LOT of swag including an instax mini 8 camera. My roomies and I might have spent a significant portion of our lunch time in our room looking through the bag and squealing with excitement!
To close out the day we heard from Whitney English of The Day Designer who talked about her story and planning method – unfortunately I missed most of this talk because I needed to call home. But I heard from other attendees it was great and I enjoyed the items Whitney gave out from her collaboration with Blue Sky.
After Whitney’s talk everyone brought up their planners one by one, or one by eight for some people to add their planner to one large display of planners so that our group could set the world record for the largest planner display. We wound up have 1,328 planners on display!
The roomies and I had planned on going off site that night but it was rainy and we were exhausted so instead we had pizza and got some much needed rest.
Mid morning we hear from the ladies of KIT Life , which stands for Keeping It Together. This session was packed with useful information on planning and goal setting and honestly I couldn’t keep up taking notes there was so much info, luckily they have a special go wild link with their presentation. One thing I really liked was the idea of adding a “power hour” to each day. With this presentation we received a notebook and special Kit Life stickers designed by KAD.
After the break had a creative planning workshop with The Planner Society which showed how to use the items in her kit (or you could use similar ones if subscriptions aren’t your thing) to decorate TN inserts and make shaker pockets and dashboards. At the end of the session the swag fairies brought out boxes with a Foxy Fix TN for each attendee – I received purple but my very kind friend Becky traded me for a pink knowing how much I loved it – thanks Becky!
To close out the speaker sessions the keynote speaker Erin Condren took the stage. Erin has a wonderfully warm personality and I really enjoyed hearing her story and how she balances her business with her personal life. It was fun to hear how the EC team really does take feedback from planner girls as they update planners and offer new types with each year’s release – this year’s will be on May 4th. To enable the attendees to select our own planner from her site Erin had the swag fairies make their final appearance of the conference to give each attendee a gift bag with EC goodies and a $25 gift certificate to her site.
Attending the event surprised me in many ways – don’t get me wrong all of the sessions were good but the sessions that had me most excited to buy a ticket wound up not being my favorite while others I thought might bore me really spoke to me. I’ll admit the swag was a big part of why I went and don’t get me wrong – it was AWESOME I also don’t plan on hoarding all of it and will be sharing some with a friend who could not attend. I thought I would be using a new Eric Condren planner after this and now I’m having a really hard time not seeing myself using that beautiful Happy Planner. I thought I would want to spend more quite time by myself but I never made it to the hotel pool to relax. I went into the event with a lot of expectations and by the end my experience was very different than what I thought it would be – in a good way.
My biggest take away from the event was hearing a common theme from many of the speakers about persistence and success. Almost every speaker we heard from had some kind of failure before she found success – Mica May had many business ideas that didn’t take off, Michelle Carter didn’t medal until her 3rd Olympics and had many health struggles along the way, Whitney English has a stationary company that went under, the KIT life girls had a huge business disaster they had to bounce back from, and Erin Condren used to have a clothing brand. Yet here these women were, very successful women I might add, ands they were very transparent in sharing their struggles and the path that led them to success. I think most people wouldn’t open another business if the had one that went under but these ladies reminded me of the old saying that if at first you don’t succeed try, try again. What separates these ladies from anyone else isn’t a rich family that funded them or good luck – it’s just plain old hard work and believing in themselves.
So yes, I left Go Wild with a lot of stuff (and I’m glad I drove so I could transport that stuff) but I also left with inspiration and new friendships. I hoping that next year’s event will wind up being good timing because it seems like these events only get better each year!