Prestige Conference Speaker Interview: Erica Hanna

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It’s hard to believe that Prestige Conference is just around the corner — in only a few days to be exact! The whole team is here in Minneapolis getting ready and seriously, this is going to be a fantastic event.

If you haven’t get snagged a ticket, you can still join us in person and take advantage of the opportunity to speak directly with the speakers and sponsors and attend our awesome networking happy hour events.

Or, if you can’t make it to Minneapolis, you do the next best thing and participate via our professionally produced livestream sponsored by GoDaddy Pro for FREE with the promo code: GoDaddyPro.

Today we’re also excited to introduce you to another one of our speakers, Erica Hanna

Erica is an Emmy-award winning Creative “Preditor” (Producer/Shooter/Director/Writer/Editor), Speaker, and Content Strategist. After spending 9 years in the creative department at WCCO-TV, she was brought on board at BringMeTheNews.com at the Director of Digital where she helped quadruple website traffic in just 10 months.

Now…her company, Puke Rainbows specializes in video content, strategy, and also in leading workshops for businesses looking to “up” their video game. She’s had the chance to work with folks like Ellen DeGeneres, Lizz Winstead (Creator of the Daily Show), Harry Connick Jr., and Prince, loves karaoke, sarcasm, and is an expert at losing her keys.

In her spare time she concentrates efforts on raising funds for the non-profit @charitywater through social media. To date, she has raised $30,000 for water wells in Africa. Erica is also the 2014 & 2015 Top Twitter Personality in Minneapolis.

Puke Rainbows clients include: Mayo Clinic, Science Museum of Minnesota, WINGS Credit Union, Brightpeak Financial (Thrivent), University of Minnesota, as well as many Grammy and Emmy winning Musicians.

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Meet The Speaker: Karim Marucchi

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Karim Marucchi is the CEO of Crowd Favorite and Chairman of The VeloMedia Group. In the past 20 years, his career path has encompassed a variety of opportunities including founding startups, managing large clients and teams in multinational agencies and taking companies public. This wealth of experience in taking digital teams across the globe has provided Karim with the necessary foundation and institutional knowledge in leading Crowd Favorite into the growing multinational organization it has become today.

At Prestige Conference, Karim will be speaking about Running Your Project with Enterprise-Grade Account Management.

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VIDEO: You Are Never Done With Eric Johnson

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Every detail of Prestige Conference — from the convenient location in the heart of downtown Minneapolis, to the diverse range of carefully-selected speakers and topics, to the intimate networking opportunities crafted to maximize personal connections — is designed to deliver an exceptional business building opportunity.

In fact, in the video below Shane comments that while watching the Prestige Conference sessions that happened before his talk, he felt like he stepped into a grad class!

We want to you experience this must-attend event.

A small number of live in-person tickets are still available, or if you can’t make it to Minneapolis, you can take advantage of our professionally produced livestream sponsored by GoDaddy Pro for FREE with the promo code: GoDaddyPro.

On The Fence?

Have you ever wondered “How do I move from the mom and pop store into bigger projects that I see others working on?” Or thought, “I’m a freelancer or I have a small team, how do I manage growth and get bigger clients?” If so, this talk (and Prestige Conference) is for you.

Check out this video from Prestige Conference Minneapolis 2015, featuring Eric Johnson talking about how move from project management into product management.

Eric is the Director of Technology & Operations at GoKart Labs. They deliver digital innovation. We grow businesses through four practices: Invention & Business Strategy, User Experience & Design, Web & Mobile Software Development, and Digital Marketing. Their work sparks ideas, experiences, platforms, and business models.

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Meet The Speaker: Brian Messenlehner

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Brian Messenlehner, a former software developer for the United State Marine Corps, is the Co-Founder & CTO of WebDevStudios.com, a web development company that specializes in pushing WordPress to it’s limits.

He is the Co-Founder of AppPresser.com, a mobile app development company. He is also the Co-Author of “Building Web Apps with WordPress”, a book published by O’Reilly Media about using WordPress as an Application Framework.

Brian enjoys learning about new technology and believes open source software is the key to successful cost effective tech solutions in most situations.

At Prestige Conference, Brian will be urging you to diversify your income streams with his session on Don’t Put All Your Eggs In One Basket!

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Thank You GoDaddy Pro!

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A BIG THANK YOU goes out to GoDaddy Pro, the Prestige Conference Livestream Sponsor!

GoDaddy’s mission is to radically shift the global economy toward small businesses by empowering people to easily start, confidently grow and successfully run their own ventures.

With more than 12 million customers worldwide and 57 million domain names under management, GoDaddy gives small business owners the tools to name their idea, build a beautiful online presence, attract customers and manage their business.

GoDaddy Pro is a brand new program that was developed to specifically serve web professionals and their needs. It is a one-stop shop for them to manage their clients and their clients’ products.

A lot has changed at GoDaddy since 2011, and we have created an entirely new set of technology, programs and support especially for web designers and developers.

Learn more at godaddy.com/pro

 

Meet The Speaker: John T. Meyer

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John T. Meyer is Co-Founder and CEO of Lemonly. Lemonly helps companies tell their story through visuals. Specializing in infographics, videos, and microcontent, Lemonly works with brands like Marriott, Major League Baseball, Netflix, Lego, Under Armour, Salesforce, the Green Bay Packers, and the United Nations.

John is a 2016 Finalist for EY’s Midwest Entrepreneur of the Year and in 2013 was named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top 10 Emerging Entrepreneurs. John loves to cheer on the Minnesota Twins, spend time with his wife Paige and daughter Margot, and write about doing work that matters with a weekly newsletter called Point Letter.

At Prestige Conference, John will be speaking about the Origin of Opportunity: How to Discover, Create, and Maximize Opportunity.

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Thank You Press75!

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A BIG THANK YOU goes out to Press75, a Prestige Conference Primary Sponsor!

Press75 has been delivering quality WordPress themes for more than six years and counting. Our themes are clean and efficient without all the unnecessary options that can be overwhelming at times. In short, you get everything you need and absolutely nothing you don’t.

We have a passion for creating, simple, elegant themes and plugins, using the power of WordPress. And with more than 30,000 customers actively using our themes for their client, business and personal websites, you can rest assured that you are in good hands with any theme you choose to use.

Super Helpful Documentation

With each Press75 theme, you gain access to our helpful library of theme documentation, WordPress usage and setup, and video walkthroughs. We want to get you up-and-running with your new Press75 theme in no time!

Knowledgable Support

We offer extremely knowledgable, world-class support for you to use. Our support team is available to answer any questions you may have. For special custom design or functionality customizations, we have a few recommendations you can check out.

Video & Multimedia

When it comes to video and multimedia we’ve always loved integrating these into WordPress themes. We build themes that are optimized for video, easy embeds, and a fast loading experience. Let’s face it, you need video and multimedia integration and Press75 themes can get you there.

A WordPress.com Partner

We work directly with WordPress.com to bring our wonderful WordPress.org self-hosted themes to the world of WordPress.com. Allowing our themes to be thoroughly tested, have the highest standards, and the most refined code.

Learn more at Press75.com

 

Thank You Freemius!

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A BIG THANK YOU goes out to Freemius, a Prestige Conference Primary Sponsor!

Freemius is a complete monetization & analytics solution for WordPress plugin developers. With a suite of developer-friendly tools to help increase plugins’ bottom lines, Freemius provides everything required to convert your users into paying customers.

— Freemius Revenues: The quickest and most intuitive way to sell your freemium WordPress plugins.

— Freemius Insights: Become a data-driven developer. Learn who are your users, and how they use your plugin in minutes. And it’s WordPress.org compliant.

Learn more at Freemius.com

 

Meet The Speaker: Michelle Schulp

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Michelle Schulp is an independent graphic designer, who moved to Minneapolis from Chicago. She was formally schooled in design including print, branding, packaging, etc., with additional education in Psychology and Sociology, all tying together in a love of How To Solve Problems. Lately she has been specializing in WordPress websites, infographics, and high-end presentations for her clients.

At Prestige Conference, Michelle will be speaking about Growth Without Scaling: Traveling an Independent Path.

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Should I Even Bother With The Prestige Conference Livestream?

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Today we shared some big news — that thanks to GoDaddy Pro, Prestige Conference is once again able to provide you 500 FREE LIVESTREAM ACCESS to all of the amazing Prestige Conference 2016 sessions. That means you get to enjoy all of the amazing business-building content delivered at our premiere Minneapolis event right from the comfort of your own home or office.

Look, we know that attending an event in person will get you the most bank your your investment of time, resources, and money — but we also understand that sometimes it’s just not in the cards to travel to a business conference (even if it’s the coolest one in town!).

Through the generous sponsorship of GoDaddy Pro, Prestige Conference is bringing you a high-quality, professionally produced livestream option — for free! Well, FREE for only 500. Now you may think there’s no way all of these free tickets would get snapped up, but for the last Prestige Conference there were more than 1,000 participating in the event via Livestream!

If you’ve been in the digital space for any length of time, you know that often the video or livestream event options aren’t that great.

  • You get one static camera on a tripod pointed at the front of the room, so when a speaker walks around, they walk right off camera.
  • The video camera is way in the back of a huge room, so the speaker is tiny and it doesn’t feel very inclusive.
  • The video is on the speaker and not their slides, so often you don’t get the visuals that accompany their talk, missing critical data.
  • The audio cuts in and out, or isn’t very good, so it’s hard to hear even with your volume turned up all the way.

The Prestige Livestream Is Totally Different

We’re not trying to do it ourselves. Prestige is once again partnering with PixPro Media to provide you with a professionally produced livestream ticket option. PixPro Media actively manages the cameras, audio, and more, ensuring a high-quality experience for our livestream attendees, so you feel like you’re in the room with our attendees and speakers. Plus, not only is the video quality awesome, but the livestream brings you video of the speaker AND ensures their slides are easily viewable so you can see them throughout each presentation.

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VIDEO: Land the Big Fish With Shane Pearlman

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Every detail of Prestige Conference — from the convenient location in the heart of downtown Minneapolis, to the diverse range of carefully-selected speakers and topics, to the intimate networking opportunities crafted to maximize personal connections — is designed to deliver an exceptional business building opportunity.

In fact, in the video below Shane comments that while watching the Prestige Conference sessions that happened before his talk, he felt like he stepped into a grad class!

We want to you experience this must-attend event.

A small number of live in-person tickets are still available, or if you can’t make it to Minneapolis, you can take advantage of our professionally produced livestream sponsored by GoDaddy Pro for FREE with the promo code: GoDaddyPro.

Session topics include:

  • Don’t F&ck Up Your Business
  • Growth Without Scaling: Traveling an Independent Path
  • Running Your Project with Enterprise-Grade Account Management
  • The Lifestyle Business Concept
  • The Helpful Culture: How Giving Small Businesses A Hand Up Can Expand Your Brand, Build Your Business, and Fill Your Pipeline
  • Marketing WordPress Themes and Plugins: What Works? What Doesn’t?
  • Origin of Opportunity: How to Discover, Create, and Maximize Opportunity
  • Don’t Put All Your Eggs In One Basket!
  • The Importance of Estimating: An Exploration of Estimating Philosophy, Methodology, and Practical Application to Scalable Resource Planning
  • Consistency Establishes Reputation: Brand Platform Strategies To Ensure You Are Remembered, Respected, And Referred

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Tools and Resources To Help You Do Business Better

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There is so much clutter online. SO many people claiming to have the best tips and the most current information, but how do you know what websites to visit? How do you know who to listen to? What if the one resource you have been looking for exists but you haven’t found it yet?

We feel your pain! It’s one of the reasons we love live events and are thrilled to hosted the fourth Prestige Conference, a premium career and business development conference, back to Minneapolis. From the experienced speakers and Q&A sessions, to the networking events and hallway conversations, to the on-site lunch and ample breaks, there are so many opportunities to ask questions, gain valuable insights from others, and learn at live events!

But we also know that we can’t cover EVERYTHING at Prestige conference! So we asked our experienced speakers to share any websites or resources that they think would be helpful in your quest to better yourself, your skills, and/or your career or business.

Here’s what they had to say:

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Prestige Conference + WordCamp Minneapolis Is Business Building Nirvana

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Two important events are happening in Minneapolis this month! The events are back to back and right around the corner — and trust me, these events are a match made in heaven. Attending both will put you, your success mindset, and your career or business growth potential into a full state of nirvana.

WordCamp Minneapolis

WordCamp Minneapolis brings you WordPress specific sessions, training, and presentations. It’s all WordPress all day, every day, and it is a great opportunity to expand your knowledge and understanding of the open source software, learn more about what the software can do, see how the software can be pushed, and learn new tips and tricks to improve how you use the software. There are even some business talks to get you thinking about business in a new way or with a fresh perspective. As a large multi-track event with hundreds of people at all experience levels, from noob to advanced developer, there is truly something for everyone.

Prestige Conference

Prestige Conference brings you a single track of highly-targeted, business-focused talks from experienced entrepreneurs, agency owners, and successful freelancers who work both with in-office and remote teams. All Prestige speakers traveling from across the country for this event are hand-picked, and the talks are carefully planned to deliver exactly what you need to move the needle forward in your career or business — and because all Prestige Conference speakers are compensated for their time, attendees benefit from invaluable content created specifically for them without pushy selling from the stage. With a limited number of in-person tickets available, Prestige Conference delivers an intimate, immersive environment for you to completely focus on your career and business.

WordCamp Minneapolis + Prestige Conference

If you’re already planning on attending WordCamp Minneapolis May 21-22 and you haven’t yet snagged a coveted ticket to Prestige Conference May 24-25, it’s time you did.

Seriously, if you’re doing business in the WordPress marketplace, the pairing of these two events back to back is a match made in heaven.

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Can’t Make It To Prestige Conference? Join Us Via Livestream!

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The entire Prestige Conference Planning Team is pretty excited to bring you some amazing news today…

If you’ve been more than a little disappointed about not being able to make it out to Minneapolis for this immersive business conference serving agency owners, entrepreneurs, freelancers, business owners, and professionals operating in the digital marketplace, we’ve got some news that you’ll love!

Thanks to GoDaddy Pro, Prestige Conference is once again bringing back a FREE livestream ticket (For ONLY 500 Of You!

We know that a livestream isn’t quite the same as being at the event live in person:

  • Joining in the “hallway track”
  • Making face to face connections
  • Enjoying lunch together
  • Bonding with other attendees at our two happy hour connection events at Hell’s Kitchen Far Side Pub and Kieran’s Irish Pub
  • Getting to know those sitting next you

But trust me, this livestream is as close to being in the room as you can get without actually being in the room!

The Prestige Conference Livestream is professionally produced and our video team is on hand all day long managing the cameras, the recordings, the audio, and more. This isn’t just one stationery camera setup pointing straight ahead (say buh-bye to speakers who walk around) and audio that cuts in and out. Our livestream puts you right in the room with the attendees, and as an active livestreamer, you can also participate in the Q&A.

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Real World Stories Of Overcoming Career Obstacles

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Every career, whether you’re a business owner, freelancer, executive, employee, or professional, has is own set of challenges, hurdles, and obstacles.
Some career obstacles are larger than others, but all have the potential to slow down and negatively affect success, happiness, satisfaction, and growth.

How you respond to the obstacles encountered throughout your career will define your path to greatness. Do you wallow, get frustrated, blame others, and play the victim? Or do you acknowledge the challenge, assess the entire situation, ask for help if needed, make a plan of action, and keep moving forward?

We’ve had our speakers share the lessons they wish they knew when first starting out and we’ve had them recommended books they love.

Today we asked them to share one big obstacle they faced in their career and how they overcame it. Here’s what they had to say:

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VIDEO: Cash is King: Options for Funding Your Business With April Downing

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Prestige Conference has one goal: To empower the digital community to achieve their biggest, boldest goals by providing insights, intelligence, and inspiration, as well as tools, strategies, and tactics from experienced industry leaders sharing provocative stories of success, failure, obstacles and challenges — and critical lessons learned.

To do that we’ve put together another incredible lineup of successful agency owners, service professionals, product owners, freelancers, and entrepreneurs to deliver one, comprehensive track of business-focused sessions to help you take your career and business to the next level.

Live in-person tickets are still available!

Session topics include:

  • Don’t F&ck Up Your Business
  • Growth Without Scaling: Traveling an Independent Path
  • Running Your Project with Enterprise-Grade Account Management
  • The Lifestyle Business Concept
  • The Helpful Culture: How Giving Small Businesses A Hand Up Can Expand Your Brand, Build Your Business, and Fill Your Pipeline
  • Marketing WordPress Themes and Plugins: What Works? What Doesn’t?
  • Origin of Opportunity: How to Discover, Create, and Maximize Opportunity
  • Don’t Put All Your Eggs In One Basket!
  • The Importance of Estimating: An Exploration of Estimating Philosophy, Methodology, and Practical Application to Scalable Resource Planning
  • Consistency Establishes Reputation: Brand Platform Strategies To Ensure You Are Remembered, Respected, And Referred

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Three Things I Wish I Knew When First Starting Out

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Anyone who has a career for any length of time — whether you’re an employee, an executive, a freelancer, an entrepreneur, or a business owner — has at least one moment in their past they wish they could change. These moments also come with life lessons or tough lessons we learn as we’re growing and learning — lessons that we wish we knew earlier on in our lives and careers.

If only we have known this one piece of advice or information sooner, we could have avoided obstacles, skipped stressors, and saved ourselves grief and frustration.

With this in mind, we’re continuing our Prestige Conference round up posts, by asking our speakers “What are three things you wish you knew when you were first starting out?”

And think about it… if you Reserve Your Ticket now for our May 24-25, 2016 event in Minneapolis, you can learn more from these talented and savvy business folks, ask them questions, and talk with them about your business.

Here’s what they had to say:

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Recommended Reading To Expand Your Career, Business, And Mindset

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From dozens of books each week, to several each month, many of the most prolific business leaders in history are or have been avid readers, as reading is known to improve your mind, your spirit, and your body.

According to the Harvard Business Review:

  • Evidence suggests reading can improve intelligence and lead to innovation and insight.
  • Reading makes you smarter through “a larger vocabulary and more world knowledge in addition to the abstract reasoning skills.”
  • Leaders who can sample insights in other fields, such as sociology, the physical sciences, economics, or psychology, and apply them to their organizations are more likely to innovate and prosper.
  • Reading can also make you more effective in leading others. Reading increases verbal intelligence, making a leader a more adept and articulate communicator.
  • Reading novels can improve empathy and understanding of social cues, allowing a leader to better work with and understand others.
  • For stressed executives, reading is the best way to relax, as reading for six minutes can reduce stress by 68%, and some studies suggest reading may even fend off Alzheimer’s, extending the longevity of the mind.

With those facts in mind, we asked our speakers to share a book they read that impacted their career or mindset so we could give you a recommended reading list. Who knows? Maybe you’ll even have a chance to read one before attending Prestige Conference.

Here’s what they had to say:

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Haven’t Booked Your Prestige Conference Hotel Yet? Stay Here!

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Official Hotel For Prestige Conference Minneapolis 2016

If you’ve traveled to business conferences, workshops, events, or seminars, you know that staying at the event hotel is the way go to. When you stay on the conference hotel, you are actively putting yourself in the same location as all of the other like-minded business folk coming to the event — and when you’re all in the same place, magical things happen.

  • Attendees and speakers share Ubers or cabs to and from the airport
  • You get extra opportunities to talk with and get to know other attendees, speaker, and sponsors walking to and from the hotel to the event venue
  • There are always people from the event hanging out in the lobby or hotel bar — especially for the after-after party
  • You get to sleep in a little longer in the morning because you’re extra close to the event
  • If you forget something in your room, need to take a client phone call, or have to hop on a video call, it’s easy to go back and forth from your room to the event

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Why You Should Attend Live Business Events (Like Prestige Conference)

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From the earliest days of your career, you have heard that networking is critical to your success, and you’ve heard the old saying that business success is all about who you know. You know that networking is important, but you hesitate to invest in attending live events.

I know you’ve heard other event attendees refer to the feeling of being at a live event as “conference crack” — they’re referring to the inspirational and motivation high you experience after surrounding yourself with like-minded, driven, successful, motivated people in a focused environment. It stays with you and help propel you into action when you get back home or to the office. But still you may debate whether investing in a live event is right for you.

Prestige Conference is coming to Minneapolis May 24-25, 2016, and it is the perfect opportunity to get out of your day-to-day grind, to meet new people and expand your network, and learn something new. It is the perfect place to get focused on where you are right now, where you want to be, and how to get there.

Prestige Conference delivers:

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