Summer. One of the lasting impacts of our school years is the feeling that summertime is downtime. As children, every June, a young “Elvis” left the [school] building and we all joined him for a 10-week break. As adults, we wax a bit nostalgic and are tempted to switch the lever from “work” to “play” (or “off”) for the entire season, versus a bit of vacation time with family and friends. A break to recharge your batteries is a good thing, but don’t let the lulls of summer tempt you into inaction.
There are three key markers of summer: Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Labor Day. The first two have come and gone and most of us hope that Labor Day, aka “Summer’s End”, takes its sweet time to arrive. As I write this, there are about six weeks to go. Besides a vacation, from a business standpoint, what have you done and/or are you planning to do with your time? For us event marketers, the summer is traditionally a lull between the busy spring and fall event seasons.
- Is your Event Strategy set for 2015? Have you identified what events you will participate at as an exhibitor, sponsor or to which events to create to reach your target audiences?
- Have you and your team held a review of the first half of 2014? The summer offers you some “down time” to celebrate the successes of the year, as well as identify what you can do better for the second half of the year and next year
- Me time? This is a great time to do look inward and identify areas of industry knowledge that you can strengthen or develop. How can you improve your knowledge or your teams? What industry best practices can you learn or certification can you achieve?
Take time to “pause” this summer, but don’t “stop”. If your phone is ringing and chiming a bit less, use these extra moments to your advantage. Ultimately, summer offers a great opportunity to strengthen yourself, your team, and your company.