Keeping Perspective in Today's Economy
To kick off this week’s double-header of credWebinars, we welcome Nick Huzar, the CEO and Co-Founder of OfferUp. In this 45-minute interactive Q&A session, Nick discusses how you as a leader can gain perspective, grit, and help your company persevere.
5 Ways to Win Your Next Video or Conference Call with Heather Hansen
If you’re like many of us, your world has changed and suddenly you’re doing all of your communicating through video. Where you used to sell in person, you’re now scheduling meetings with customers on Google Hangouts. You used to meet with your manager (or those you manage) once a week in person—now you’re meeting daily on Zoom. How do we adapt?
Heather Hansen, CEO + Founder of Advocate to Win walks us through five ways to win your next video call.
Happy 4th Birthday, cred!
At times it feels like it was yesterday, and others like it’s been decades since the seed for cred was planted. I sat down to write this and decided to look at our first ever blog post. What a proud moment realizing that, even though we’ve changed over the years, at our core, we’ve still managed to keep the extreme focus and simple offering we started with 4 years ago; not many can say the same. Sure, our vision and mission have evolved, but our why remains intact: We believe that bringing knowledgeable, passionate speakers to engaged audiences builds awareness and excitement for you and your brand.
After 4 years and successfully placing 320+ speakers in 3,323 events all over the world, we’ve enabled ourselves to think more strategically and bigger about how a formal speaking programs impact a business’s brand and position in the market.
credTen: Top Ten Conferences for Entrepreneurs 2019
When building a business, raising capital and maintaining healthy revenue is the first hurdle—but not the last. In a recent study of 2,700 entrepreneurs, respondents also listed marketing and advertising, recruiting, and employee culture as top challenges when running a successful company. Entrepreneurship events allow founders, leaders, and innovators to connect and share lessons on all the aspects that create a successful entrepreneur growing and scaling your company’s business, presence, and culture.
In this edition of our credTen series, we’re highlighting 10 events celebrating the entrepreneurial spirit.
credTen: Top Ten Conferences in Female Entrepreneurship 2018
Here at cred, we pride ourselves on working with passionate and accomplished speakers. In particular, we work with a number of inspiring female founders who are blazing trails and creating lasting impact within their industries. From advertising to artificial intelligence and machine learning, women are disrupting, innovating and paving the way for female leadership.
In this edition of our credTen series, we’re featuring the top 10 events worth checking out for female entrepreneurs.
BlogHer Creators Summit
August 8 - 9 | New York
#BlogHer18 Creators Summit will gather 2,000 attendees to celebrate women telling their stories to inspire and educate communities across the globe. Focused on the blogging and social media industries, the conference will feature talks from Jessica Alba, Gabrielle Union, Uzo Aduba, and more.
Tickets: $350*
Grace Hopper Celebration
September 26 - 28 | Houston
Named in honor of Grace Hopper, an American computer scientist and pioneer in computer programming (she invented one of the first compiler related tools), the Grace Hopper Celebration is an annual gathering of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront.
Tickets: $1,150*
Yellow Conference
August 23 - 24, 2018 | Los Angeles
Hosted in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles, Yellow Conference is a gathering of 500 women who desire to fight for a better tomorrow; the ones who are willing to roll up their sleeves, step out in courage, and use their creativity for good. This year’s theme is “Our Ownership” and will explore what it means to own our stories, dreams, visions, passions, and abilities we have.
Tickets: $377*
Create & Cultivate
August 25, 2018 | Chicago
A one-day conference with a focus to entertain, enlighten, and inform women around key topics surrounding #sidehustle life, the ever-changing digital landscape, entrepreneurship, and the real talk that comes with being a modern working woman.
Tickets: $350*
Brit + Co #CreateGood
August 24 - September 24, 2018 | Los Angeles
October 17 - 21, 2018 | New York City
Brit + Co’s #CreateGood experience is a digital, social, and experiential conversation leaning into these needs and empowering women to be their best selves. Hosted in both LA and NYC, the event will feature talks by world-class speakers, creativity workshops, live performances, and more.
Tickets: $35*
Startup Grind Global Conference
February 12 - 13, 2019 | San Jose
With 5,000 founders and investors, more than 40 keynote and fireside sessions, and over 50 exhibiting startups, this is Startup Grind's largest event. Over two days of programing, the entrepreneurs in the audience will hear stories, tactics, and lessons learned from founders from companies like LinkedIn, Slack, and Tesla.
Tickets: $255*
Watermark Conference for Women
February 22, 2019 | San Jose
The mission of the Watermark Conference for Women is to promote, communicate, and amplify the influence of women in the workplace and beyond. The organization was founded 25 years ago and this will be their 5th year hosting the conference, with past events featuring motivational talks and educational programming from the likes of Amal Clooney, Hillary Clinton, and Diane von Furstenburg.
Tickets: $225*
Stand Up Lift Up - PBWC Annual Conference
April TBD | San Francisco
At last year’s event, PBWC convened 6,000 attendees for a sold-out and content-rich day of powerful conversations about equality, diversity and change. Keynotes included Rosie Rios, former Treasurer of the United States, Maria Shriver, author & activist, and Jane Fonda, award-winning actress.
Tickets: $TDB
Forbes Women’s Summit
June TBD | New York
Featuring keynote conversations, panel discussions, one-on-one interviews and speaker spotlights, the Forbes Women’s Summit brings together the voices and insights of a diverse range of female luminaries from the worlds of business, entertainment and politics.
Tickets: Invite Only- Request to Attend!
Inc. Women’s Summit
TBD | New York
Surround yourself with savvy female business leaders with diverse backgrounds, passions, and pursuits for a day of dynamic exchanges and innovative business ideas. Speakers will share their stories—and lessons learned along the way—about defying the odds and reinventing business their own way.
Tickets: $TBD
*Standard/general registration rates at time of publication.
Want to speak at these events? Get in touch to learn more about our speaker management services: speak@credpr.com.
Why Smart CEOs Are Social CEOs
These days, it’s a given that your company needs to have an active social media presence. But what about the members of your C-suite?
A recent Edelman study revealed 78% of the highest-rated CEOs were present on social media channels. Executives like Marc Benioff utilize social media to not only share company updates but also provide insight into aspects of their personal lives.
When used correctly, CEOs can use platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn to expand thought leadership and boost marketing efforts. However, the benefits gained by engaging on social go beyond boosting business. Compared to peers who are not active on social media, Social CEOs are 89% better at empowering others, 52% stronger at communications, 46% more influential, and 36% better at cultivating networks.
Here are four other reasons why CEOs should make time for social:
Connect with customers: Not only does social provide a direct line of communication with those who purchase your product, but it’s a practical way to always have a finger on the pulse of your company and industry. A good example is when Airbnb’s Brian Chesky took to Twitter last year to ask people what they wanted his company to launch in 2017.
Build trust: 80% of consumers are more likely to trust a company whose CEO uses social. Think of social as a place to share details that humanize you and prove your accessibility to the public.
Strengthen public perception: In the midst of a PR crisis, brands who put their CEOs on the frontlines see a significant boost in public perception. For instance, AirAsia’s CEO Tony Fernandes was lauded for providing updates via Twitter after an AirAsia plane crash in 2014.
Create brand awareness: John Legere builds time for social media into his day as CEO of T-Mobile. While sometimes controversial, he’s a prime example of the many ways you can use social to your advantage. He frequently engages in conversations with customers, and his public tweets help spread T-Mobile’s message and set the company apart as the “Uncarrier.”
For more insights about execs on social media, check out thesE articles, here and here.
Startup Grind Recap
On March 30, we stopped by Startup Grind Silicon Valley (hosted at Pivotal Labs in Palo Alto) and listened in on a fireside chat between Alex Austin, CEO and Co-founder of Branch Metrics, and Scott Nolan, Partner at Founders Fund and early employee at SpaceX. In this 50 minute-session, Alex shared the growth of Branch Metrics from origin to scaling the company to support 1.3B users.
Here are five things we learned:
Set a success criteria - know for yourself what success looks like.
If you’re having to sell your product too hard, it’s not a good sign!
Hyper customer service with early adopters of your product/service will pay you back in dividends. When scaling your product, invest in customer support.
Never get in the mode where you feel you can kick back and celebrate; there is always something on fire or broken.
Always think about macro trends, where you fit within them and the broader platform that you’re on.
Want more? Watch Alex talk about his story here.
About Startup Grind:
Startup Grind is a global startup community with a mission to educate, inspire and connect entrepreneurs. Every month, they hosts events featuring successful local founders, innovators, educators and investors who share lessons they learned on the way to building great companies. Since its founding in 2010, Startup Grind has hosted 2,000 fireside chats and helped millions of entrepreneurs find mentorship, connect to partners and new recruits and pursue funding.
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