Warning: this is a super long conference summary post. I couldn’t help it – like I said, I’m a complete conference addict!

Last Friday, I attended my 4928394th conference – the Me Inc. conference for first and second year Sauder students. The conference informs students about the various specializations  (eg Accounting, Finance, HR) and gives them a better understanding of their potential future careers, and helps students discover what they’re passionate about.

The opening keynote this year was Drew Dudley, the former National Chair of Shinearama. Drew kicked off the conference with a motivational speech about leadership. When he asked the crowd, “Who here is a leader?”, only fifteen or twenty hands were raised. Many of us think we don’t belong in that category, that we don’t deserve to be called a leader because nobody has presented us with a gold plaque saying, “Congratulations! You’re officially a Leader.” In reality, most of us are leaders in our everyday lives; you never know when something you do or say can have a life-changing impact on someone, even if you think you’re not being a leader. Who you are as a person and as a leader isn’t defined by those extraordinary moments, but rather by your ordinary behaviour, those “everydays” where we’re just living our lives as we normally do. It’s no surprise that we think about leadership this way; our education system of having a final exam and two midterms has taught us to pay a disproportional amount of attention to those three days, but doesn’t really reward the ordinary days in between.

So how can you make sure that you’re being an effective leader in your everyday life? Luckily, Drew knew his audience (a bunch of profit-mongering, selfish, stereotypically greedy Sauder students, of course) and offered one key piece of advice: don’t make it your goal to earn money, or fame, or that promotion from Assistant Director to Director. Your goal, both for your ordinary days and for your life overall, should be to add value to everything you contribute to, whether that means putting in 110% of your effort to that fundraising campaign you’ve been planning for weeks, or by helping a classmate if they’re having problems. At the end of each day, you subconsciously check up on your goals and your daily performance. If you make it your goal to get rich, get famous or get promoted, each day your brain will ask, “Did I get a raise? Did I get that promotion? Am I famous yet?” and for most of those ordinary days, the answer will be no. If you make it your goal to add value and make sure that you make the world a better place every day, your perspective on life and your happiness are probably going to skyrocket.

Me Inc also offers a huge variety of workshops for you to choose from, with professionals from multiple careers and industries, such as Corporate Law or Transportation and Logistics. The workshops were great opportunities to hear from actual business professionals and to learn their insights about why they chose their specific career, and how they got there. My personal favourite was Jen Riley, the Communications Director at EA Sports. Like many other business professionals, Jen’s path to success wasn’t straightforward, but was instead filled with plenty of ups and downs, including being a beach bum for a period of time.

One of my favourite images from Jen’s presentation

The whole concept of “success” being a squiggly path is completely true if you think about it – and it’s also extremely reassuring, because it means you can mess up and fail a whole bunch of times but you can still end up where you want to be. Jen explained how you never know where life is going to take you next. One year ago, she went on maternity leave, thinking her career was taking yet another standstill, and yet that Friday she stood in front of us proudly launching her new app, Yogify, which she thought of, created, planned, made, produced, promoted…all in one year. Yogify launches tomorrow (Wednesday the 20th) – I recommend anyone from yoga beginners to hardcore gurus to check it out, because I was personally wowed by the app itself as well as the process that allowed it to come to fruition.

The conference also came with a three-course lunch (which was a lovely departure from the usual rez food) where student delegates got the opportunity to talk to business delegates from various industries and backgrounds ranging from delegates from the Big 4 firms to Lululemon to local entrepreneurs. It was definitely an amazing and valuable part of the conference, because being able to have those one-on-one ten minute conversations with business professionals allowed me to gain an even deeper understanding of what my future career might be like.

By the time the conference wrapped up, most of the delegates were drained, so the choice for the closing keynote could not have been better: Will Gadd, an ice climber and general adventurer, had every delegate hooked on his every word as he recounted stories of his pursuits in ice climbing, paragliding and iceberg climbing. The free Red Bull was a pretty good pick-me-up too. Motivational speeches are usually centred around positive self-talk and always being optimistic, so much so that Will argued that most people are experts at being positive – maybe too positive. As someone who’s been in the midst of multiple life-threatening situations before, Will taught us the importance of thinking negatively and making sure to be as careful as possible, and to preemptively get rid of any problems or risks.  Before you do something, make sure you have the confidence and the competence to do it. That being said, don’t be afraid to try something, fail – and then rinse and repeat.

All in all, I personally thought Me Inc. was amazing – if you’re still in your first year, make sure you go to next year’s conference, because it was an extremely valuable and inspiration conference. I thought it was well worth the humble price of $30 (which, by the way, included lunch at the Four Seasons as well as a bunch of free swag from Lululemon and Burt’s Bees, to name a few!)

Don’t forget to be awesome,
Olivia

TUNES

Every Teardrop is a Waterfall – Coldplay (I like Coldplay, deal with it)
Colombia – The Local Natives
King of Anything – Sara Bareilles
Son of Man – Phil Collins

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