Our own Bethany “Reware Vintage” Nixon was in Flint yesterday attending the Indie Biz Chicks conference. We asked her to report back on what she took away from the event, and ended up stealing this post from her blog 😉 And now, for your consideration, we’ve cut and pasted it here on Handmade Detroit:

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the Indie Biz Chicks Conference hosted by The University of Michigan on their Flint campus. I met several inspiring women, ran into a few friends I wasn’t expecting to see, and learned a lot on how to promote myself and my lil’ business (RewareVintage.com). I attended an excellent presentation by Crissy of IndieBizChicks.com and Sharon of The Betty Brigade (a really fantastic service!) on “Professional Surfing”, and a Q & A session on Crafty Businesses by my Flint peeps Crystal from Flint City Handmade and Leanne from Dorabean (whose crafts I LOVE!) which was a lot of fun to participate in. I even freely admitted that I was “the lone smoker” when I am in social situations in the networking workshop (something I really need to work on).

The real highlight of the day was attending Crissy’s “Power Publicity” presentation. Although I help in publicity and marketing for Handmade Detroit and all of our many events, I really lack the drive and know-how on how to market my own business, especially using the web to do so (concentrating more on that was one of my New Years Resolutions this year). Crissy’s website has opened up new ideas to me on how to promote myself, and meeting her in person and hearing more from her on the topic yesterday really inspired me to get out there and do it even more! I highly recommend checking out her website, IndieBizChicks.com, to anyone else looking for ideas and inspiration in this very crucial aspect of being an entrepreneur.

Thanks so much to U of M for putting this free event together and to everyone who helped and presented! It was a fantastic day, and so helpful to everyone who attended!