Own Your Power Biz Conference to be held in New York

One major thing Simone Kelly-Brown, CEO of Own Your Power Communications (OYPC), said she’s learned from organizing retreats – first for friends and now for hundreds of guests – is that it’s best to start on a smaller scale.

This year’s Own Your Power Biz Conference will be held October 10 at St. John’s University in Jamaica, New York. This one day conference will feature motivational speakers and workshops on topics like public speaking and raising capital. Also as with any well attended conference, there will be networking opportunities.

Kelly-Brown, says the first retreat she organized in Miami was a four day affair. “Although it was extremely successful, I needed a three week retreat after it all,” said Brown in an interview with TNJ.com. “I learned a lot from that first event and although behind the scenes it was stressful, it was well worth it …Now I am working on one and two day events and hope to work back up to where we started at four days.”

The idea to start hosting retreats came to Kelly-Brown when she was still a corporate employee trying to find ways to manage stress. She decided to create a mini-retreat with friends who also needed some time away. “We couldn’t afford to go to a spa in Jamaica each time we wanted to escape from the daily grind,” Kelly-Brown said. “So, every other month, we’d pack up our bags and head up to the Poconos in Pennsylvania. I designed it as a real event with a workshop schedule and handouts, even though it was only four of us.” Upon reflection Kelly-Brown says she can see that her calling was staring her right in the face back then, but she didn’t realize it at the time.

“After each trip, we’d come back refreshed, clear-headed and focused on our goals. This feeling was too good not to share,” she said. The event which started out just for friends expanded into a quarterly workshops in New York City in 2004. After relocating to Florida Brown launched the first annual Own Your Power Retreat in Miami in 2007. The event at St. John’s University is the first full business conference Kelly-Brown will be hosting in New York.

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