New Powerhouse Team Member
Shelley is a visual designer and front-end developer who has had worked for over 12 years on projects that support 
the development of water and transportation infrastructure internationally in developing countries, support and encourage the professional development of physical therapists, provide American diplomats in training with digital textbooks, and support the marketing and design vision for a variety of nonprofits. She is passionate about understanding what drives people to information, exploring innovative strategies, designing user-friendly deliverables, and learning new skills. She graduated from Belmont University in Nashville, TN in 2006 with a BFA in design communications and currently resides in Arlington, VA.
When she’s not working, you can almost always find her exploring the Washington, D.C. area; planning her next travel adventure; in the kitchen experimenting with a new recipe; or simply enjoying the company of her boyfriend, friends, and (last but not least!) dog, Liam.
New Powerhouse Team Member
Meghan Traynor is excited to join Powerhouse Planning as a Social Media Specialist. She is a proud Coast Guard spouse currently residing in Alameda, California with her husband and their newborn son! Meghan graduated in 2015 with a degree in early childhood education. She started out as a teaching assistant and worked her way up to be the assistant director of a preschool. While Meghan loves teaching and all the rewards that come with it, she has decided to start down a new path as a freelancer so she can stay at home with her son and still be able to help support her family and her husband’s career.
Nurturing Small Businesses and Small Humans
By: Lakesha Cole
I caught myself this morning putting on makeup with one hand, the other occupied with a toddler whining because she can’t wear red lipstick to school, all the while remaining fully engrossed in a foreign conversation about anime with my STEM-loving 13-year-old daughter. I’m a work-from-home-mom, author, speaker, and retail entrepreneur. These post-military days, I raise my kids in Tampa, Florida and run businesses in North Carolina and Virginia. Are you exhausted yet?
Moms everywhere are making it happen and “having it all,” concurrently starting and nurturing small businesses and small humans—both of which are never-ending jobs.
Meet Tiffany Eve Lawrence, mommy and founder of Covered Cubs. She’s a Marine spouse and mom to twin 6-year-old daughters, Lyla and Ava. She’s known among her friends as the outgoing and outspoken one who makes friends easily. Her interpersonal skills suited her well for military life and led her to start her own business. Tiffany is hands down one of the most genuine and inspiring examples of mom entrepreneur success I could share with you today.
DID YOU KNOW?
It’s our anniversary! Powerhouse Planning turned six years young in 2018, and CEO Jessica Bertsch has big plans on the horizon. When she launched her entrepreneurial vision in 2012, she did so with a plan to lean on the skills of an untapped resource: military spouses. As Powerhouse experienced upward mobility, Jessica’s team expanded to reflect a unique talent pool transcending geographic barriers. And that means delivering more services to small business owners at a budget-friendly cost. Whether you’re looking to plan a large-scale event or revise branding in 2019, Powerhouse’s suite of services covers it all.
Learn more about how Powerhouse Planning is giving opportunities to freelancers around the U.S. while also helping entrepreneurs grow: Powerhouse CEO Reflects on Company’s Growth, Defining Moment.
How to Create Buzz for Your Event
By: Kylie Hastings
The key to a successful event is to get people talking about it before it even happens. Orchestrating a good buzz for the venue, conference, gala, or whatever type of event you are hosting will increase ticket sales and attendance while also helping you anticipate the success. But where do you start?
Here are five steps for making your event the talk of the town—or the internet:
Put a hashtag on it.
Social media is your first stop when it comes to getting people to talk about your event. Create an event page on Facebook and LinkedIn, then promote on your own Instagram and Twitter accounts. You will also want to create an event-specific hashtag and include it on any social media promotion, including graphics.
This is where your team will come in handy, too. Assign specific tasks to your marketing team so that a strategy can be implemented. For example, acknowledge any posts or comments that are made in relation to the event. Someone should be responsible for monitoring feedback and questions. The better customer service you display on social media, the more interested those who see it will be in attending your event.
The Follow-Up: Tips for Not Losing Conference Momentum
By: Angela Caban, MHRM
There is nothing quite like the opportunity to get away from the everyday routine of your office and attend a conference to build up your career. The learning, networking, and professional lunches may have you feeling amped up, energized, and ready to share with the world everything you have learned.
However, conferences can also have a crazy period of nonstop meet and greets, to the point where your head is spinning from all the overwhelming connections being made. Plus, you are probably thinking about getting settled back into your office, tackling the emails waiting for you, and attending the meetings that will follow. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and lose the momentum built within a few hours of returning home.
How will you remember everything you learned, and, most importantly, how will you preserve the post-conference glow and maintain your revived energy?
Before heading home, there are a few must-do items that will help keep the momentum going and get you organized before you dive back into the mayhem of the office.
- Brain dump.
Have you ever arrived home to read over your notes and not understood one word you wrote? Somewhere between the overload of conference information and the hastiness with which you wrote down the ideas you wanted to remember, you may realize that this would be the perfect time to know shorthand. Two things to do before heading home, when everything is still fresh in your brain, are to review and to rewrite important notes. I typically carry two notepads with me—one for housing the scribbly day of notes and the other for rewriting any important ideas I want to remember and share with others. Here’s another tip: Search the conference hashtag online. Oftentimes, on the day I travel, I will dive down the hashtag rabbit hole and jot down anything I may have missed from other attendees and sometimes even the speakers.
