I feel like I’m not even alive right now. You know when your bones hurt because you are so tired? Yah, that’s me. I just got off the plane & am finally back at the farmhouse with my man & fur babies after an amazing weekend surrounded by some lovely bloggers & entrepreneurs. I was so homesick yall! This farmhouse made it so hard to leave, so hard to be gone, & made coming home so sweet. I feel very lucky to have a homestead that makes it my favorite place in the world. BUT that being said, I would never take this weekend being in Atlanta at the Haven blogging conference back. I had the honor of being a mentor this year & leading a small group of bloggers that come from all different aspects of blogging & it was amazing. Between being a mentor, the classes, & connecting with other bloggers I could never even begin to blog all of my thoughts & feelings about the whole thing, but I couldn’t possibly say nothing at all. I am home now wanting to share the things I learned with you guys in case it can possibly help you in your journey no matter what you are doing. Here are some important things I took away from the blogging conference that really applied to all creatives & entrepreneurs that you may not think about often. Here are 4 ways to be a happier entrepreneur…

community is everything.

It’s so important. No matter what you are doing in life it’s important to have your people. Find your tribe & those that share in the same passion with you & keep them close. Learn from those people, help those people, & connect with those people. Why? Because community will build you up, support you, celebrate you, & pick you up when you are down. It’s so wise to find people that understand what you do & form deep relationships with them. You know how they say that it takes a village to raise a child? I feel like it’s the same for a business. It takes a village. I feel like us creatives are a special breed & community is extra important to us because we need to be nurtured & encouraged through our creative journeys. I am lucky to have found my tribe & I am thankful that I got to hang out with them at Haven this year.

Numbers mean nothing.

In this day & age it’s all about the numbers. How many likes did you get? How many followers do I have? It’s all about those numbers on social media. STOP THAT. Stop focusing on the numbers. It will either drag you down or give you a false sense of reality that drives a wedge between you & your authentic self. What’s more important than numbers? Being authentic. Being solely & truly yourself is the most important thing to form loyal relationships. You want to make sure that who you are online is who you are in real life. Sharing your journey & not focusing on your numbers or what others are doing will make you happier & those who follow you as well. It takes the comparison right out of everything & we all know that comparison is the thief of joy. Let’s do less numbers & more real life. Ok, so numbers do mean a little something as creatives because we want to reach our audience, but less focus on this is a great thing to really exercise being authentically ourselves.

Pretending is dumb.

Yup. This one was a slap in the face. We all do it. We all do things we don’t necessarily enjoy because we think others will like it, because we can’t see past the now, or we are just too afraid to show who we really are. Whether that’s in the way we dress, the way we decorate, the work we do, the things we say. We do these things even though we hate them because we feel like we have to, but why? When we busy ourselves doing things we don’t like that’s time we are not doing something that we love. When we continue doing things we don’t love we are not opening doors to new opportunities to do things that we love. Stop doing things for other people, focusing on what others are doing, & comparing our beginnings to other peoples middles. Ask yourself if you are doing what you don’t love just for the money, the views, the likes, & not because it makes you happy? If you do only what you love it will come off more authentic to you & your brand. You will be happier & have longevity in what you do. If you are pretending it will eventually show & neither you or your followers will be happy. Everyone’s journey is going to look different, not every part of the journey is going to be pretty, but you will make it to where you want to be if you don’t pretend to be something that you are not. Stop pretending & just be yourself. Do what you love, love what you do.

Listen to the negativity.

Say what? Yup. I spent an hour with Jeanne Oliver & learned so much more perspective on life than I ever have in the past. One of the things that struck me so hard was when she told a story about how a woman put her down for her work & while trying not to cry from how bad it hurt her she asked herself if there was any truth to the negative comment. & you want to know what? There was. She took the tiny bit of truth from the hateful comment & tweaked that part about herself & her business & it made her more successful. Mind blown. Negative comments suck & there is always a nice way to say everything, but when we get those negative comments we should look at them & see if there is any truth to them. If there is no truth then forget about it as quick as possible, but if we find a little truth to it we should work on fixing it or tweaking it to better ourselves. Turn that negativity into something positive to better yourself as an entrepreneur & a person.

I forgot to take many photos at Haven, but I wanted to share with you the 5 that I did. I was too soaked up in the moment to even think of my camera, but I know you guys understand that. I hope some of the epiphanies I had at the conference help you in some small way. I already had to apply the negative comment point to my life today & I truly learned something about myself I need to fix & threw the other 80% of the comment away. It really worked & it made me happier already to know I was on my way to fix something about myself that in my gut I knew was something I needed to change. Thank you so much for stopping by the blog today & if you are a blogger or interested in starting a blog I highly recommend going to Haven next year if not for the classes, just to meet and learn from other fellow bloggers.