The Wealth Spa

How to Prevent Seminar Overload

Posted on 26. Nov, 2007 by mompreneur in Life Balance

After back-to-back information overload and networking at the Glazer-Kennedy Info-Summit and Alexandria Brown’s Online Success Blueprint Workshop, it was easy to get overwhelmed.  Here’s what I do at the seminar and when I come home to make sure that the stack of business cards and lists of notes don’t get wasted. 

Business Cards

1. Write notes on the back of the cards.  Notes includes any distinctive facts (do they live down the street, have a little kid, love soy lattes?), what we talked about, how I may want to follow up with them.  Just a few words on each, like "used to live in Rose Garden, has a baby, interview on radio show?" 
2. Input contact info into Address Book / Plaxo.  Depending upon the number of cards, I input the contact info and my notes into my Mac Address Book, or I send the cards to my assistant to input into Plaxo.com (which automatically syncs with Address Book, which syncs with my iPhone). 
3. Send a quick email to each person, referencing what we talked about and how we might follow up.  Best if you can do it the next week or two.  But even if it takes me months, I still try to follow up — better late than never. 

Notes

1. Assign your notes to categories.  When I am taking notes at a conference or seminar, I leave a margin where I assign each idea or task to a category.  Examples:  GU Squeeze Page (changes to make to my new Grow Up! Strategies squeeze page), Traffic (ideas for generating new traffic to my website), or GU Biz Plan (ideas to incorporate into my business  plan). 
2. Reorganize notes to categories.  When I get home I make a list of the ideas for each category (all the squeeze page ideas on one sheet, etc.).  Then I can stick that sheet into the project file or pile, to use the next time I work on that issue.
3. Prioritize ideas.  When I review all my ideas, I pick 2-3 to implement right now that would give me the most bang for the work.  This time it was some changes to my squeeze page.  Then I pick a few more ideas to implement in the next few weeks, etc. 
4. Take Action!  As I said, I always pick a few items to implement right away.  Then I’ve made some progress, even if those are the only things I get to for a while.  **Sometimes I even implement a few ideas right at the conference itself (i.e., registering a domain name or making minor website changes).**

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Tags: productivity, Time Management