Blogger Xchange Xpo 2019

Four Days of Blog Oriented Fun

Happy Monday, Belles & Beaux!

If you follow the blog on Instagram, then you know I’ve been a busy little bee all weekend since about five o’clock Friday evening until Sunday evening when the 2019 Blogger Xchange Xpo wrapped up with brunch at Red Pepper. It has been a weekend full of fun, learning, and making all kinds of new connections with so many new bloggers!

Although the Xpo was for four days, the first day was actually a more intimate kickoff with those that had previously purchased VIP tickets. Next year, Jessica and I have vowed we are 100% doing this!

My first night was Friday night at The Ainesworth. I had heard a lot about the venue itself but had never been since I live on the south side of Nashville and don’t really venture downtown anymore. But I absolutely loved the space – especially with them showing the football game on almost every TV in the place. The guest speakers for the evening were the founders of Slim & Husky’s. It was great to hear their views on how to create something brand new from scratch as well as their advice on how to proceed with any dream that you might have.

The third day (Saturday) was full of learning, photo ops, and shopping at Nossi College of Art. I finally picked up my Nashville Looks Good On You tank top that I had been dying to get a hold of since discovering Nash^TN and I have absolutely no regrets because this is going to come in handy in the future for some photo ops! The amount of vendors and sponsors were all amazing and I can’t wait to do more shopping with them in the future because I made sure to get cards for everyone I was interested in.

The keynote speaker, Paris Chanel, was amazing and so honest about her journey in the world as an entrepreneur as well as hilarious with her blunt honesty. There were five breakout sessions through the day and I thoroughly enjoyed every single one of my classes. My absolute favorite was the first one of the day – I can’t really lie about this at all. It was Building a Distinctive Brand which was taught by Ashley Northington. Discussing how to slim down our brands and create our elevator pitch was amazing and I feel like I’ve really benefited from that.

My second class of the day was Writing with Soul with Brittney Oliver and Josh Paige. Now, y’all know I already talk to y’all as if we’re sitting down and having a glass of sweet tea on the porch together. What I really took away from this class was being more mindful about how I structure my sentences as well as trying to keep my runoff sentences to the utmost minimum. So, I make a promise to at least be more aware of when I do it!

After this we headed to lunch which was catered by Taziki’s Mediterranean Cafe. I won’t lie, this was my first time eating their food because I’ve never been a huge fan of mediterranean food. However, I was extremely impressed with this. Milo’s Tea was also there and I was so thankful because I love myself some sweet tea.

Following lunch was the last of our three break out sessions. Hustle Harder was my third class of the day and I’ve really started to make some decisions based on this class This is because I know I want to enjoy my hobby more as well as give y’all some more amazing content. This was taught by Meredith Boggs and Christy Hunter. Their insight into working a schedule to help you maximize your time was extremely helpful and I plan on using the information they presented to help me focus on balancing my time as well as creating more quality content for y’all!

Perfecting the Feed was my fourth class of the day taught by Nathalie Cram and Alex B. Now if you know me, I don’t like the idea of perfect pictures. However, I feel like there is a major change coming for me on the Instagram as well as here. But I’m going to be making it as smooth as possible, and I’m absolutely sure that y’all are gonna love it. And they both made some very interesting points that the first nine photos on your profile should definitely be just like your elevator pitch but without words. So we’re gonna try some new things!

My last class of the day for Beauty/Hair content planning taught by Kelly Schwartz and Erin Sanderson. I adored their advice on how to engage more with y’all as well as their advice on how to help myself grow and reach even more of y’all. Honestly, I can’t wait to put all of this into implementation more than what I already am.

The fourth and last day (Sunday) was a brunch afternoon with our closing speaker being Kenya Raymer of Halfie Truths at Red Pepper Nashville. She spoke to us about authenticity as well as how to create boundaries. Now y’all know me, I don’t have a filter most of the time. But I do have a few boundaries as to what I talk about and what I don’t. I try to use my platform to bring awareness to things I’m passionate about like organizations that help veterans as well as organizations that help animals. I loved her advice about the authenticity and will most definitely be really focusing on my boundaries more.

This weekend has been jam packed full of learning and all of this is was not just to give y’all better content from my end, but also to give myself more of a challenge when it comes to what I create. I love having this as a creative outlet, but I also want it to be more challenging every day. One of my favorite quotes from this weekend was that you are your own competition. This is something that I know will stick with me in this case as I go forward with the blog. It’s not a comparison game!

But ready or not, here we go into the future with creating killer content, making a space of empowerment, and enjoying each other’s company!