 Well, good morning, everyone. Welcome to Monday. It is Monday, October 25th. I was away last week, so I did not do my Monday motivation live broadcast. I was in Toronto for my first business event of the post pandemic era, I suppose we're calling it. I went to Toronto to the Canadian Meetings and Events Expo and was able to see so many of my incredible colleagues there. It truly was an incredible experience. We needed to set a precedent in the Canadian Meetings and Events industry for coming back to events and gathering as a group, and we've been doing it in small populations coast to coast. This was really one of the bigger shows I think that we've had since the pandemic hit our industry, and it was fabulous. I want to thank everyone involved with the production last week, everyone from Newcombe Media who put together the Canadian Meetings and Events Expo, all of our destinations and hotels and other industry suppliers who took a leap of faith and set up a booth at the show so that corporate and association planners could walk the show floor and visit and learn more about your products and your offers. So super excited about everyone who showed up. I also wanted to give a big shout out to the other speakers who contributed to the show. I was quite blessed this year. I was able to present actually two sessions, and we're going to talk about that a little bit more in a few minutes, but there were some other incredible speakers there sharing their stories. People like Ron Tite who's a marketing genius, my friend Heather Reed who was talking about event contracts. We had Marnie McBean there, an Olympic medalist sharing her story, and there's so many other storytellers at the show, and I just want to thank you for contributing your education and at least leveling up my professional development game with your contributions, which brings me to the, I guess the big switch for me going to the show this year. Typically, I walk the show floor as an attendee, and that's when I'm wearing my site selection hat, my conference direct hat, and I visit with the destinations and hotels to learn about what's going on. But this year, I had the incredible opportunity to also present to people who were interested in learning about LinkedIn and personal branding. And so that was a goal of mine actually for this year, was to submit a proposal that would be accepted. And I did, and not only was one accepted, but I had two proposals accepted this year. So huge bucket list goal for me, and I hope that that partnership can continue into the future. But here's what I really want to talk to you guys about today is about opportunities for us to all build our personal brands. And a lot of us, of course, and with intent, we rely on social media to push out our branding messages. Be it LinkedIn, which is my platform of choice, but there's also Facebook and Instagram. A lot of you are starting to use TikTok to talk about your personal branding messages. Twitter is still a very popular platform, especially for the meetings and events industry. And so social media has always been that incredible place where we can share about our industry, share about our advocacy, and of course now share about our personal brands. But last week, I wasn't able to jump on social media as readily as I can from the comfort of my home office here. Being on the show floor and having conversations with people held me back from doing as much social media as I wanted to. And trust me, I really wanted to do more social, but I couldn't given the time constraints on my calendar last week, which brings me to what I want to talk to you about today. And that is, do we really need social media to amplify our brands? I came out of the show last week with some other future opportunities. And these are opportunities that I may not have discovered unless I had a one-on-one networking discussion with individuals. Okay, so I need you to circle back with me if you're multitasking. These are opportunities that I probably want to have discovered unless I had a one-on-one conversation with that individual. So it maybe wasn't about any of the content that I put on social media. In fact, I put stuff on my social media a few months ago about this particular piece of this particular offer that I now have an opportunity to explore with a potential client. It was that one-on-one conversation, which kind of brings me to today and how, especially in hospitality or other people facing industries and service-based or industries, where social media isn't the only thing that can help us grow our personal brands. We can grow our brands with other platforms. I call them interactive platforms. You can call it whatever you'd like, but these interactive platforms are things outside of the social that we can do to promote our brand. So the first one obviously is the networking opportunities. That's what we did last week at the Canadian Meetings and Events Expo. All of us there were able to have those one-on-one conversations and we were able to grow our brand and maybe even grow the opportunities for our organizations. So that was without social media getting involved whatsoever. So pretty powerful stuff. The second way you can do it is through volunteering. And now our industry is huge on volunteerism. Almost everyone I talk to at some point in their career has volunteered somewhere within our profession. So volunteering is an excellent way for you to meet new people, share a little bit about your story, and create connections that can help grow your personal brand. The third way is actually within your organization internally. And when you chat with the leaders and the mentors that you have in your organization, an incredible way to share what it is that you're doing with your brand. And if it's with an internal leader, how your brand can partner with the organization's brand to create momentum. So those are other opportunities outside of social media. The fourth one is through an email campaign. Email is still opened by a ton of people. There was a rumor a few years ago you probably heard the same rumor that email was going to go away with the dawn of social media, especially with social media messaging functions. It hasn't. We are still using email is still one of the best ways to keep conversations organized, especially for the hospitality industry. So creating a compelling email campaign could be an incredible way for you to amplify your brand. So those are four ideas that you can use outside of social media to help promote your brand. So it doesn't always have to be about the social when you're doing that. So keep those ideas in mind. In addition to so the myth that we need social media to build our brand, that's one of the myths that I'm busting through later this week on my webinar, the five myths about personal branding. So that webinar starts on Wednesday and I'm speaking on Wednesday, and then I'm doing a repeat performance next Friday, and then another repeat performance next Tuesday. So if you are interested at all in learning more about the myths of personal branding and how you can flip them to work for you, I enjoy you. I invite you to join us on the webinar, and I'm going to put a link to the webinar below here. I forgot to do that earlier. So you just go to liankulderwood.com forward slash webinar to sign up for your preferred time. And and and we'll get you going in that webinar. I also want to have a couple other resources that I want to show you today. I'm getting ready for my year end or your beginning business plan retreat. It's my annual retreat that I do every year. It's usually just one night, although this year I'm toying with tacking it on to another business trip, believe it or not. So I might have the opportunity to do actually two nights just for my business plan retreat. But before I go, I'm powering through this book again. I have read this book before. It's your best year ever by Michael Hyatt. It's got some incredible actionable things that you can do, especially as you come into a new year about making it the best year ever. It is literally the five step plan for achieving your most important goals. So incredible book. I'm doing it again. And so if you haven't read this book, I highly recommend you pick up a copy at the library and and take it with you on your business plan retreat. Okay, so you've got the webinar coming up this week that where we're going to talk about the five myths of personal branding. You've got some reading material to keep you company over the next four weeks. The last thing that I'm doing this week that I invite you to join me for is a LinkedIn live session that I'm doing tomorrow morning. So that's Tuesday, October 26 in the morning with Edmonton all in talk about an organization that is willing to try new things and explore opportunities to connect with clients and prospects and other stakeholders. We're talking about carbon neutral events. Here's a conversation that kind of took a little bit of a backseat as we were all wrapping our heads around how to manage this pandemic and what this pandemic meant for the meetings and events industry. But now meetings are starting to come back, which means travel to meetings is starting to come back. And the use of our natural resources to ensure that our meetings run successfully is starting to come back. This was a conversation that event cross we're really having and diving deep into prior to the pandemic. And now it's time to look at it again. And that's how to create a carbon neutral event. For any of you attending the upcoming CanSpec conference, which is actually this week as well. I forgot about that. So CanSpec is doing a carbon neutral event. And so if you are an attendee of the CanSpec event, you're learning about how they are going to offset your carbon emissions for attending that event. But that's what we're talking about tomorrow with Edmonton All In. So it's a LinkedIn live that you can find on Edmonton All In's LinkedIn page. So if you are not following Edmonton All In, I encourage you to do so now and join us tomorrow morning, October 26th, 8am Pacific, 11am Eastern. We're talking about carbon neutral events, you guys. And we're talking about steps that you can take, whether this is your first carbon neutral event or if you're seasoned and you want a few advanced tricks for making your events more carbon emission friendly. So lots of resources this week because I was not available to chat with you last week. Drop any comments or questions about the upcoming events in the comments below. Would love to see you this week, either at the Edmonton All In event tomorrow morning or at one of my webinars this week about the five myths of personal branding. And remember, you guys, you don't need to be on social to build a brand. So if that's the thing that's holding you back, you have my permission to put social media aside and try your hand at some other ways of connecting with your ideal community. I wish you an incredible week and I do hope to see you at the next business meetings and events conference. Hopefully those will be coming up in 2022 and we can connect and network there. Have a great week everyone. I'm thinking about you all the time and wishing you well on your brands. See you soon. Bye for now.