Saturday was my first LWL LIVE event here in Los Angeles. It was a day full of great speakers, consulting with future clients*, shopping, hanging with the ladies and well, just a full day of everything. It was held at the Dermalogica headquarters down in Carson. They have a beautiful facility, very futuristic and quite Mode/Ugly Betty-ish. Good space and good energy.
I really enjoyed hearing Dermalogica’s founder, Jan Wurwand’s story. Even more, I loved her whole “I went to beauty school, not business school” success story. Very inspiring. Daryn Kagan, formerly of CNN and now creating inspirational news stories on the web was not only a guest, but an interviewer. I love how she was able to take losing her job and turning it into something beautiful. Paige Adams-Geller of Paige Premium Denim also had an empowering, love your body message that couldn’t be ignored; she wants you to be comfortable in your genes not just your jeans.
My favorite part of the whole event though, had to be the web savvy panel: the ladies from Ideal Bite, Ask Patty, Style Diary (and one more gal that writes for the Huffington Post – I didn’t get a copy of the program and the LWL site wasn’t updated with her info). I loved how they’re all web-based, yet all have different business and advertising models.
More importantly, I love who they all supported the idea of blogging, getting yourself out there on social networks, and even using blogs instead of launching an out and out site. Since this is what I help small businesses do, make a presence out on the web by utilizing blogging and the various social media sites I hope that the ladies got the message. Far too often people fall back on the “I’m too busy” and can’t seem to see how just a few minutes a day can really benefit their business. Hopefully, some of these ladies in the audience heard what these successful women were saying and will now step out into the Web 2.0 world and at least start poking around.
I only wish that someone had thought ahead to record the speakers since I missed parts of the web gals panel. Sometimes when you attend a conference there’s just so much information to be heard and learned that having an audio clip to go back to is great. Maybe next year. Overall, it was a great day, a well produced event and one I’d gladly do over – with a few small adjustments on my part 
* my biz site officially launched while I was there – so now I’m all official like. Thanks Rachael!
