 In a lot of my content, be it my YouTube videos or my blog posts, I talk about strategic projects, tend to strategic projects and carve time out of your day to work on your strategic projects. Well, I've had a couple of people ask me, what on earth is a strategic project? So today I'm going to tackle some ideas of what a strategic project might look like in your world in the world of meetings and conferences. Hi everyone, it's Leanne from LeanneColderwood.com and two of my favorite words in English language are strategic and projects. And when you put them together, magic happens. But I've been getting some questions about what exactly a good strategic project would be in the meetings industry. So I'm going to give you some examples, but keep in mind this list is not exhaustive. There could be a multitude of different strategic projects that you might want to tackle to either move your organization forward, move your own career forward, or move a program forward and make your conference the best conference it could be. So let's dive into a few ideas and hopefully that can act as a springboard for other ideas you might have for your strategic projects. To start with, the cover photo for this video was a picture of a mind map and sunscreen. You put these together and it's like rainbows and unicorns. There's no better time to tackle strategic projects than when you have some time disconnected from your laptops and from your phones, maybe sitting on the beach and working with a piece of paper and mapping out what your project would look like. So these are your tools for tackling any strategic project, but now let's talk about what some ideas for strategic projects would look like. Project idea number one is to beef up your LinkedIn profile. So LinkedIn seems to be the social media channel of choice for the meetings industry and by ensuring that your profile is not only complete but also very compelling. You're setting yourself apart from the competition in the industry. So take a look at your profile as well as my tips on completing your LinkedIn profile that can be found over at leandcollarwood.com and start working on your LinkedIn profile. Everything from updating your work information to the skill sets that you have, the groups that you belong to, as well as compelling descriptions and introductions to the things that you do in the industry for your organization and for the meetings industry. Project number two, and this goes along with the LinkedIn profile is to reexamine your social media and your social media channels. You might also want to do this hand in hand with the social media manager that helps out your particular organization, especially if your social media does promote conferences or the services that your organization puts out. You want to make sure that the messages are aligning, perhaps even creating a strategy around how they can piggyback onto one another to create a really robust strategy which of course creates a following and it creates momentum around your service or organization. So yeah, take a look at your social media and all the channels that you have out there and how they can best work for you. Idea number three, and I have done this for a few summers in a row. In fact, this might be the first summer I take a break from it is looking at your sales strategy and redefining your inbound marketing strategy. So that's everything from the strategy you use to prospect new business and if you don't have a strategy yet, that's your strategy now is to build a strategy for prospecting new business. What does that look like from the very first interaction, be it an email or phone call, all the way through to what some would call as closing the sale. What do those emails look like? What do those phone calls sound like? Map out a strategy where you're creating a compelling business case for your service or organization. So that's a fantastic strategic project. Idea number four, and I can't emphasize this one enough is to tackle your business plan. Now, if you haven't done a business plan for this year yet, it's never too late to start. In fact, you can download a free business plan template over at my website at liankhilderwood.com and you can get started on a business plan today. Now let's say you already have a business plan and now we're about six months later. Now it's time to revisit your business plan, make amendments as you see fit and add stuff. Add challenging pieces to your business plan that will carry you through to the remainder of the year. So yeah, business plans, the bomb, love them, love them, love them and you're going to learn to love them too. Idea number five, this one's a bit more fun is finding a really good nonfiction book and hitting the books. I wish I had more time to read in a day. So slower times of the season and down times in the summer and during holiday season is a great time to crack open a new title or even revisit some of my favorite old titles. So find a nonfiction book that you've been just dying to dive into and now spend this extra time that you have reading a really good book. Oh, and don't forget your sunscreen. Okay, where are we? I think we're at tip number six and that is volunteering. So finding either organizations that you are personally passionate about or giving back to our vibrant meetings industry. Having some downtime allows you to craft a really robust volunteer strategy. And you might think, well, how is volunteering a strategy? It's a huge strategy. You meet new people, those are potential prospects or clients, they're potential bosses, they're potential coworkers someday. But you're also exercising your skill set and growing in skill sets that you have identified that you want to grow into. So making volunteerism a strategic project is massive and the rewards and the return on your investment are tenfold. So grab that mind map and start to map out what you want to do with your volunteer hours this upcoming year. Tip number seven, the fun one is taking courses and going to conferences. And these don't necessarily have to be the conferences that we have to attend as professionals in the meetings industry, but attend conferences that you actually want to attend and that are going to teach you new skills and things that you want to learn. Perhaps it's a sales conference. It doesn't even have to be a hotel sales conference. It could be a sales conference. Or perhaps you want to learn how to use WordPress and start a blog and so you can go to a word camp. Or perhaps you want to go to a women's entrepreneurs conference. So many different times of courses and conferences that you can take. Find something that really speaks to you and some of the projects that you want to work on and this is the time to do it. Again, this has just been a springboard of ideas of things that you can do during some slower times of your sales cycle. Certainly more ideas and I want to hear about those ideas. So if you could comment below this video on some of the things that you would consider a strategic project in the meetings industry, I want to know about it. So please let me know. Hope you enjoyed this video and we'll see you next time. Bye for now.