The last couple weeks have been pretty busy in 10e20 Land, as we’ve been hopping from conference to conference (and Chris still has another one lined up for next week — WebCAM in Bend, Oregon). Now that there’s a bit of a lull for most of us, I wanted to wrap up some final thoughts about the Elite Retreat and SMX East and give proper kudos to the folks involved with both events.

Elite Retreat

The Elite Retreat was last Thursday and Friday. It was my first ER, but a lot of people attending (of the 35 total attendees) were repeat customers. One guy from Australia had been to 4 out of 5 of the past Elite Retreats — that’s a far way to travel for a conference, which goes to show how valuable he finds it. I don’t blame him — I must say that, having attended dozens of conferences in the past few years, I found the Elite Retreat to be the best of the bunch. It was laid-back and intimately sized, offering everyone the chance to get to know one another and make great connections. I met a lot of fantastic marketers and made some new friends.

The presenters at the Elite Retreat really brought their A-game, too. Neil Patel gave his best presentation I’ve ever seen (no slacking this time around!), Jon Kelly provided a lot of really interesting information, and Chris knocked it out of the park as usual. Seth Godin was a real crowd pleaser, taking tons of questions and engaging in a lively discussion with the audience about anything and everything. All of the speakers were fantastic and really went out of their way to answer everyone’s questions and provide sound business advice. I’d share some nuggets of information with you, but attendees are under NDA and can’t divulge the awesome ideas and tips we heard (plus, Shoe’s wife is an anesthesiologist, so I’m pretty sure she could easily dispatch a snitch and make it seem like an accident).

Special shout outs go to the following:

• Tigh Buckles, Shoe’s right-hand man who organized the event and made sure things were running smoothly
• Jeremy Schoemaker for inviting me to the Elite Retreat and for hosting the best conference I’ve ever attended
• William Barnes, who cracked me up with his ever-growing bromance with Neil Patel:

Love is a many splendored thing…

• Avi Wilensky, for finding the craziest and most randomly fun restaurant for dinner. We ate, we drank, we danced the Hora, we saw a man who bore an uncanny resemblance to Christopher Walken — it was an unforgettable night for sure!

If Shoe decides to do another Elite Retreat (he threatens to stop doing them in the same way that Cher’s been doing her retirement tour for the past 10 years), you absolutely must go. The ticket’s pricey, but you’ll have a great time, grow your network of business contacts, and learn awesome tips that are guaranteed to make you some major coinage.

SMX East

I didn’t attend the inaugural SMX East last year, so this the first of the “East” shows for me. It was a busy week but I was impressed by the quality of the presentations I saw. Everyone did a very nice job presenting good, actionable advice for the attendees. I was also pleasantly surprised to see so many new faces at the conference. When you make the rounds and speak at several shows a year, you tend to see the same people over and over again (which is great if you want to see your friends, but not as great for building new business leads). SMX East attracted a lot of different marketers, and I enjoyed meeting new people and making new connections.

Special shout outs:

• Avi (again!) — Our little Pastrami Boy gave a fantastic presentation for the Beyond YouTube Video Tactics session
• Outspoken Media, for doing a kick-ass job speaking at and live blogging the conference (and thanks for dinner, ladies!)
• Jen Lopez, for being all-around awesome
• The IMNY Charity Party, for raising a ton of money and providing all of us a place to drink beers and network
• Danny Sullivan, Michelle Robbins, and Karen DeWeese (and the rest of the 3rd Door Media crew), for organizing the event and making sure everyone had a good time



Danny gets feedback from an SMX East attendee

• Speaking of babies…special shout out to Vivienne for being the cutest baby ever (seriously, ever)

  

For some reason the opening song to The Lion King comes to mind…

My favorite part of the NY trip was finally getting to meet (most of) the 10e20 crew. It was fantastic seeing everyone I work with on a daily basis but don’t see because of that pesky remote location thingy (except for Rody — next time, chica!). After meeting most everyone in person, I can confirm that this is the best team I could ever hope to work with, and I’m glad to be a part of the family.

Next week we’ll return to our regularly scheduled blogging, but for now I want to give a huge thanks to everyone I met in the past week. These conferences can be time consuming and stressful (not to mention the work pile you often have to tackle once you get back), but they’re usually a lot of fun and provide awesome business opportunities. We hope to see you at the next one!

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