 cried and I cried and I cried right in front of my new boss. It was one of the most embarrassing things ever to happen in my life but also one of the most defining moments of my entire career. I'm telling my story today of how this once corporate meeting planner gave up her planning career and embarked on a scary and new adventure in the meetings and events industry. Want to take a peek behind the curtain? Hey friends it's Leanne and the meetings and events industry knows me professionally as a site selection professional but that wasn't where my career started. In fact I was a corporate and association meeting planner for almost nine years before I embarked on a new adventure and decided to join the scary world of site selection. And while I was still in the same industry that change in my job description was a huge learning curve and quite scary at the time. And as I see a number of professionals from our industry trying to redefine who they are as they either seek new employment or their job descriptions are changing in their organization. I wanted to share with you some of the things that I went through when I had to make the huge switch from being a meeting planner to being in a sales position in the meetings industry. When I was a meeting planner I had a great job with a corporate company in downtown Calgary. It really was a meeting planner's dream come true job. But there were a few things missing in that role that over the months and the years it started to take its toll on me. I didn't have a lot of access to professional development dollars to hone my skills as a meeting planner nor was I provided any opportunity to join professional associations and bring back that knowledge back into the corporation. And to no fault of the corporation's own it wasn't a priority for their spending dollars to enhance the career of a meeting planner in one of their departments. But those challenges did take its toll and so I decided to leave that corporate job and go on a journey to really discover what it was that I loved about meeting planning and maybe even discover some things that I didn't like about meeting planning. First thing I did was I enrolled in some of those career training courses. You know the courses that teenagers and high school students take to learn what they want to be when they grow up. Well at 35 years of age I found myself doing it again and trying to redefine what it was I wanted to do with the rest of my career. And I also joined a professional association. Meeting professionals international had a Calgary chapter and I wanted to get involved and really see if meetings was the place for me. And so I joined right away. One of the biggest things I learned through that exploration of career options, the exploration of options in the meetings industry and through MPI was that as much as I loved being a meeting planner it was the post-event depression and the post-event feedback and forms and reports that really dragged me down. In fact I would fall into a depression for days even longer if it was a large event. I the build up to planning a big event and then have it all be over in a matter of hours was just too much and I found myself extremely sad and depressed and not looking forward to anything once that big event was over. So through that discovery I realized I needed to find a role that wasn't going to depress me at the end of a large event. But I wasn't sure how to do that in the meetings and events space. Then I started attending the MPI meetings in Calgary and I believe it was the second meeting when I found myself at a round table with a gentleman from Texas of all places who had come up to Calgary to try and build a team for his organization ironically in site selection. After chatting with him and chatting with my husband there were two things that really stood out about this potential opportunity. Number one it was the opportunity for me to build something from scratch. I was always an entrepreneur at heart always someone who loved to work from home and thrived in a work from home environment and this role provided both for me. But secondly it eliminated that post-event depression that I was starting to fear by going back into a full-time meeting planning role. So I decided to take the leap and I moved from being a corporate meeting planner into a full-time site selection entrepreneur. I was self-motivated, I was energized, I was excited about this opportunity. There was something that I just wasn't getting a handle on especially in those early days and it caused me to fall into an even bigger depression. You see prior to joining site selection I had never been a sales person. Even my roles as a young adult they were in the hospitality industry as a server at a restaurant but never as a full-time sales professional like our hotel sales professionals that you work with today. And so my training in sales began and my first experience was with my new boss down in the Houston office where we were doing some sales role playing and some flashcards about objections. We started a role playing exercise and I just stopped and started to cry. I felt in my core there was no way I was going to learn how to do this. It was so overwhelming. Now keep in mind for you ladies I was pregnant at the time so that may have been playing around with my emotional state as well but the point is it was terrifying and I was absolutely horrified at the thought of now trying to build a business using sales. I just could not do it and I thought I was going to quit but I'm not a quitter and so I came back to my Calgary home office and I started to hit the proverbial pavement and try and build this site selection business with no sales skills under my belt. But here's the thing about facing a career change and a challenge. It gives you opportunity to of course learn new skill sets and so as the days the weeks the months and now years have gone on I have honed my sales skills and I keep changing them and it's still a learning curve. Some things I try they work phenomenal some things I try they fall flat but the point is is that you need to keep trying and trying new things. So wherever you find yourself in your career journey during this incredibly weird season of life I'm hopeful that my challenge and struggle in trying to learn a new skill set and all the complexities that came with that even being in the same industry you might find yourself with a similar mountain to climb but the view at the top of the mountain is spectacular and I'm very hopeful that you do even have a mountain that you need to climb because there's no better feeling than adding another skill set to your resume and adding another challenge to your things that you've conquered in your lifetime and this is definitely one of these times. Stick around for future blog posts because I am going to explore how you discover your strengths your skills your passions in life and how you can weave them into your next career position. It's something I did 13 years ago but it's something I've also been doing through COVID as I've also redefined how I provide service and value to the meetings industry. Friends wherever you find yourself on your journey today and it may be polishing off a resume and hitting the pavement please be encouraged that you have an incredible skill set and you have the ability to change and grow and adapt to whatever challenges may come your way. Best of luck all of my friends please stay safe healthy and happy. Bye for now.