SEVEN things I learned at the Annual Conference

Well it's been a busy old week, we've been manically working on a new consultancy project for a major British wallpaper company which has been lots of fun (despite missing all of the sunshine at the weekend), but it was all worth it today when we presented them with trends for Spring Summer 2011, which they seemed to be delighted with.

In addition to the mountains of work, I also had a fantastically inspiring day at the Entrepreneur's Forum SEVEN annual conference on Thursday, which was a generous prize to all the finalists in the If We Can You Can challenge. The EF team didn't miss a beat all day, many, many thanks to Victoria, Will, Hazel, Stephen and Rachel who all made a real effort to make sure I was looked after.

There were of course, SEVEN inspiring speakers at the conference, my favourites were Lord Kirkham, executive chairman of DFS, and chief economist of HSBC, Dennis Turner. As a trend forecaster specialising in home interior trends, you can imagine I was keen to hear about how Lord Kirkham developed the DFS furniture brand, and it was a truly fascinating story delivered by someone who was so infectiously enthusiastic and passionate about his brand. Dennis Turner was also a hit with the audience, giving us the low-down on what to expect in the ongoing economic uncertainty.

This was my kind of forecasting. I particularly loved his comment 'This will definitely happen...unless, of course, it doesn't...' Genius.

Aside from the great speakers, I managed to meet some new aquaintances and of course my fellow IWCYC Challenge finalists who were all really lovely and genuinely passionate about each of their businesses.

What I love about these events is that you get to meet people at different stages in their business- some very well established individuals who have built famous brands, medium sized businesses who are growing before our very eyes, and people like myself starting small ventures on what we hope will be a path to success. There's something to be learned from each of these groups, and I came away from the conference full of ideas.

So, what did I actually learn? Tons of stuff. But here are my top SEVEN (seemed fitting!)
1/ Rome wasn't built in a day. I hated this phrase, mainly because I'm so impatient for growth and success in business, but this week I feel like I really understand this much used saying. As I've mentioned, I met people who had been in business for 40 years, so I have been able to exercise a sense of perspective and pace that I didn't have beforehand, which makes me feel much calmer. Hurrah.

2/ Being flexible and agile in business really pays off. Many of the speakers mentioned their ability to adapt and change with the times which I thought was really poignant in our very uncertain financial and political climate.

3/ Every no is one step closer to a yes. I loved this phrase, coined by guest speaker Karen Darby of SimplySwitch. It had particular resonance with me as I've pitched to several potential clients over the last 16 months who have said they loved my product and service but haven't been particularly quick off the mark in actually commissioning work. Perseverance has paid off though, and I now have a 90% success rate for turning pitches into paid work. It made me realise that there are measurable ways of turning 'maybe' into 'yes'...

4/ If you can, I can. For some reason this week, as a result of talking to people at the event, I actually believe this now. At first it was just a sneaking suspicion, but now I'm pretty sure.

5/ Act on advice. We all do it, read a ton of business books, listen to inspiring speakers, and then do nothing with it. But this week I actually made stuff happen. One of the brochures I picked up at the event was entitled Lessons from Change, produced by event sponsors Ernst and Young. It had a really valuable breakdown of the results of a global survey of the world's best entrepreneurs. One of the questions asked was 'how have your business priorities around operations changed in the last six months?' and 62% of respondents claimed they had increased alliances. This reminded me of a conversation I had started over two years ago with a trend forecasting brand in the US, who strictly speaking ought to be my competitors, but whom I like to think of as allies! So I dropped them an email, on a Saturday, and got an immediate reply saying they would love to meet with me to discuss working together to generate some projects with US retailers. I'll be going out to New York to meet with them in August and see if we can arrange some mutually beneficial work.

6/ Mistakes are important. It's impossible not to make them, and each one helps get closer to creating the perfect strategy, the perfect process...the perfect mistake..oops no trying to avoid that...

7/ Enterprise is the way forward. Whether this is about true entrepreneurs, or people who demonstrate enterprising behaviours, most of the speakers talked about the role of innovation and enterprise as the key to emerging from the ashes of the recession. I'll be referencing this in a talk to students at a creative enterprise programme I'm sponsoring in the North East in a few weeks.