We were a proud media sponsor of Baton Rouge Entrepreneurship Week over the past few days. 

As such, we were given the amazing opportunity to emcee a couple of panels, as well as interview well-known keynote speakers like Eddie Slowikowski and locally famous influencers like Jordan Basham.  ... but more on those interviews in an upcoming post. For now, we'll thrill and enlighten you with our (Jen, Mike and Lauren's) hastily scribbled notes in stream-of-consciousness form. 

The Kickoff: a crawfish boil held at the Nexus headquarters @ LA Tech Park allowed all participants to get to know each other in an informal setting, and what better way to welcome our visitors than with a keg of Abita Strawberry and a crawfish boil? Jen's notes:

• The Nexus Louisiana Tech Park on Florida Boulevard is super impressive and no longer looks like the spooky bones of Bon Marche Mall.
• I loved talking with Brandon Harris of Bloom Booking. In fact, every single entrepreneur I spoke to was passionate, intelligent and kind, and it was exciting to be in that space and learn about the big things *brew-ing* in humble Baton Rouge.
• Mayor Broome and Senator Barrow also made appearances, encouraging and inspiring attendees with their support of BR's entrepreneurs. They were both so approachable and kind, and Senator Barrow greeted me with a huge smile and threw her arms around me like we were old friends. It was rly nice  🥹

Day 1: 

Walked in to Mid City Tower and my jaw hit the floor. Ummmm, wasn't this place condemned at some point? Well, she got a glow up and is fine. But back to what we learned.
I missed Eddie Slowikowski's performance last year, and after a friend described it as "life changing...we laughed, we cried, we danced," I wasn't gonna make that mistake again.

• Eddie was the 169th American to break the 4-minute mile and is a renowned performance expert. He told us the story of the summer when he was 15, when he was fired from five jobs, and answered to the name of "Slacker" on his team. His dad, with fire in his eyes, called him into his den and told him the story of his hero and boss, who had ambition. That boss? None other than Ray Kroc himself. 
• The 5'6" former pro runner challenged Michael Jordan to a basketball game and tried to cheat. Jordan knocked him to the floor and called him a "little b***h." 😆

I hosted seven mini podcasts with a multitude of speakers, attendees and entrepreneurs, which will be released next week. 

Representatives from the Secretary of State's office had open office hours, and attendees could just waltz in and ask any questions on various aspects of starting and managing a business. Did you know that on the Geaux Biz site, you can fill in your info and it populates a checklist of permits and licenses you'll need? 😯

--
Day 3: THRIVING notes by Mike and Lauren; and, yeah, we missed Day 2 :/

Keynote presented by Dhiraj Mukherjee, explorer of the future and co-founder of Shazam, a music app that was sold to Apple for a whopping $400 million!

• "We never once envisioned failure--you're like a mother that needs to feed their child. You never once feel that sense of maybe you will fail," he said. 

--
A confused mind makes poor choices or no choice at all, says Felecia Hatcher, author of Genius Jam, who spoke about finding your genius. She explained that entrepreneurs and employees all have four zones:

Incompetence - Stuff we don't know how to do, and have no business doing, but try to figure out how to do to make things happen.
Competence - Stuff we know how to do, but we're not experts in and we probably shouldn't be doing.
Excellence - Good, not great. Our wheelhouse. The thing that keeps us comfortably successful, but maybe not thriving.
Genius - Stuff that truly sets us apart. The thing we were put on this earth to do. We can't know this until you figure out the previous three. This is where you should be vision boarding. What do you want to do as a result of this genius? Genius will create freedom, not jobs. Work life balance doesn't exist...the genius is enjoying the work and those that surround you during your work journey. 

Felecia spoke on finding your "genius" and leaning into it. Figuring out what you are truly made to do means you can do it at the highest level. This is the Zone of Opportunity. She also spoke about hiring people whose genius aligns to the role. Finding these geniuses and putting them in the right spot allows everyone to contribute at the highest level.

So if you're the genius car mechanic or surgeon or chef, but you do your own marketing or paperwork or bussing tables, you're robbing yourself of your genius, and you're doing a disservice to customers by not staying in your zone of genius. 🤯

She also spoke about doing a Body Compass. The average human makes 30,000 decisions every day!

The Body Compass helps you to listen to your body's response to different decisions so you can rely more on your gut and free up some decision-making power. 

Doing this exercise helps you to more forward and accept things that you otherwise might spend too much time hemming and hawing about.

Close your eyes and think about a time when you were happiest. Focus on how your body feels. Hold onto that feeling for around a minute and then take a deep breath and open your eyes. Repeat the process by focusing on times you felt anxious, disappointed, and innovative. 

Once you've done this, you now have a physical map of how different emotions feel within your body. The next time you're interviewing someone, and you get that disappointed feeling, you can quickly move on to the next candidate knowing that your body was telling you that this person wasn't the one with the genius you need for your open position.  

You can accomplish amazing things externally that don't align with you internally. You really can do anything--but it may not be what you need. 

Technically Speaking: Navigating Entrepreneurship in the Tech Space

Lauren's notes.
This session was moderated by our very own Mike G! He asked some great questions of the panel, and we learned a lot about what it takes to navigate innovating in the tech space. 

• The better you have things mapped out in your head before having a tech team start building the quicker and cheaper it will be. If you have to keep going back to get the details right, things are going to get very expensive, very fast.
• It's helpful to be (or hire!) a chameleon who can speak multiple "technical" languages across different domains. 
• Marketing matters more than you think. Have a solid marketing plan that explains how you're solving people's problems. Utilize word of mouth, micro-influencers, and local media (like us!)
• Be prepared for the App Store to give you some pushback. Getting everything into their specs is a back and forth process that can really slow you down and make you frustrated. Bake that into your plan.
• Don't be afraid of government contracts! Yes, they come with a lot of regulations and specifications, but the government is also very good at telling you exactly what they need from you which makes delivering it much easier.

Hit Me With Your Best Pitch: Mastering the Art of Investor Persuasion

Abbey Kish taught us how to master the art of presenting our ideas 

Abbey first helped us to develop our "aha" statement by having us think about the most important thing you want your audience to walk away from the conversation knowing. We wrote it down and then dug deeper and refined our message until it could be simply stated in about 10 words. For Porch & Parish that looked like....

We build community through engaging, local storytelling.

After we did the aha statement, Abbey explained how to tell engaging stories and what distractions can keep our audience from connecting with our message?

• Tone
• posture
• use of space
• speed
• mumbling
• weak openings
• too much/too little enthusiasm
• sloppy hair/clothes

That's a lot to take in, but thankfully Abbey has online and in person consulting to help you nail your pitch and take your communication to the next level. 

If you missed BREW this year, don't do it again! The energy and excitement in the room were electric, and the chance to meet so many entrepreneurs and accomplished speakers? Invaluable. Truly one of the best conferences we've ever attended. Kudos to Na'Tisha Natt and the entire BREW Krewe for hosting.