[Wellness] Reach Your Goals & Realize Your Full Potential @ MogulX

On attending MogulX NYC 2019.

First of, what is Mogul? It’s a tech platform and mobile app that provides tools to individuals & organizations to achieve optimal productivity, learning & growth. You can google/wikipedia your heart out. I’ve known about the tools since 2014 but I always brushed it off as another female-centric, maybe too-rah-rah-feministic-millenial-app. I’ll be honest with you, I spent a decade in web and digital and I judge a brand by its website and it’s UX respectively. I originally felt lost on Mogul’s site (and still do), but hear me out: I’m starting with the negative to hook you in for the positive ;) — they successfully planted a curiosity seed and kept tabs over the years. Last year the marketing for their conference (and yes, the badass event website) had me at first scroll. Life happened and wasn’t able to attend, but pinned a ‘must go’ for 2019. And I went, and it exceeded all my expectations (and pre-judgements).

What I originally missed about Mogul and the founder’s brilliance was that the platform dot-connects women with jobs, events, content, conversations obviously personalized to your jam. From there you see content pouring in from other sources as well as the community contributing giving off this amazing networking and empowerment vibe. It’s hard to do this at that scale in person and on social media, so the platform solves a problem and serves and audience. Bravo. Now, the conference:

Exactly 1 month ago, I happily used their Via discount code to shuffle myself to a totally Queens hipster building to experience what they described as:

Mogul X is an innovative conference made up of transformative classrooms, immersive experiences, and networking opportunities — all of which dive into the key aspects of a Mogul’s life including Failures, Work, Relationships, Health & Wellness, Travel, Finance, and Entrepreneurship. Each class is taught by the best of the best: world-class CEO’s, top executives, celebrities, and professors — taking their lifetime of learnings and expertise and turning it into actionable lessons for you.

I can’t remember the last time I read, re-read, re-read and re-read a schedule as many times as I did that day. Every session sounded amazing and competing with another topic wanted to go to!

On top of that, you could book free 1:1 sessions with financial advisors, nutritionists, career coaches — you name it! Check out the Counselors list here if you fancy.

In short you learned, gained mentorship, were kept fed and hydrated (all the free things), you could look for a job (talent acquisition groups from IBM, Prologis, CBS and NYU Stern were there) or purely network your heart out. It didn’t feel forced (you could skip talking to humans if you wanted and just take in intel/inspiration), sponsors were not advertising aggressively and above all — NO KEYNOTE AND NO CLOSING CEREMONY. This is why this conference stuck with me. I didn’t need the founders to go up on stage, share their story, read off a long list of ‘thank yous and hi5s’ or wrap the day for me. Tiffany Pham was hanging out signing books and blending in with the rest of us. It was a conference for the attendees and the attendees toned the energy up or down as they pleased. I stayed ALL day. Yes, I’m an adult and have other things to do on a Saturday (and was catching a brilliant cold), but I felt so comfortable, welcomed, taken care of and gained SO much insight by being there. No, I didn’t get paid to write this and yes, I brought all my favorite women-friends to this event. And no, we didn’t take a selfie together to prove anything. We talked, chilled, talked some more and compared notes. We were texting our notes to each other while in other sessions to share the knowledge. So nerdy, I know — but when was the last time you engaged in a conference like this?

K, I’ll shush and share my fav takeaways now —

Finance: How to Invest your Money by Fradel Barber, CEO, World Financial Group. Learn how to make your money grow & work for you from experts in their field.
• Doing nothing with your money is a no-no
• Diversify your investments
• Dollar cost average: Part of your income could go into investments regularly vs once a year for example
• Purchase investments at different prices; consider a monthly investment, it offers a better average per market
• She mentioned 7702s, which I didn’t understand fully (even after some research), so I’ll ask my CPA and follow up here

Relationships: Negotiating Your Salary by Faye Penn, Executive Director, women.nyc. During this workshop, we learned how to define our worth, do the research and negotiate our next pay rise like a boss. You can also sign up for further workshops at https://salary.aauw.org/.
• Create a narrative around your own brand story when ready to thinking about salary bumps:
+ What are you proud of?
+What accomplishments and achievements are you most proud of?
+ What have you learned? What skills did you use?
+ Talk about your career like a story of growth

Relationships: Networking Your Way to the Top by Karleen Roy, Founder, The Vanity Group. From a caterpillar to a butterfly. Learn how to create opportunities and lasting relationships by expanding your network.
• Wow wow wow, one of the best storytellers of the day.
• Hustled in Career A while pursuing Career B; leveraged skills and resilience from CareerA to get her to shine in Career B. Now she’s designed her dream job and is amazing at it.
• Highlights of grit, resilience and adaptability
• Grab a snack, coffee/tea and indulge in her story: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dominiquefluker/2018/04/19/karleen-roy/#7d577452638b

Hustle: Working Smarter by Deb Bubb, Chief Leadership, Learning & Inclusion Officer, IBM. Learn how to make the most of your time and ramp up your productivity through these tips from our expert.
• Think about yourself, your time, your value across these 4Ps:
+ Purpose
+ Potential
+ Prioritization (fav line here: make a post-it note for your desk and add “What is my unique value?” and look at it everything you are asked to help/take on something, so that you can build your prioritization muscle for what you take on vs what you want to take and deliver value on)
+ Proactive resilience
• “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do”
• Design outcome-driven tasks for yourself

Finance: Mapping it Out: Creating Savings & Budgets by Kara Stevens, Founder of Frugal Feminista, Life Coach and Author. Treat yo’self! (in moderation). Learn about steps you can take to increase your savings in order to build your financial future.
• Best takeaway from this amazing human — pick the savings plan that works best for you
+ Plan A:
- Needs: 50% of your income
- Wants: 30% of your income
- Savings: 20% of your income
+ Plan B:
- Needs: 70% of your income
- Long term goals: 15% of your income
- Fun: 15 % of your income (cash only)

That’s all folks. Thanks for reading. Recap Video here: https://youtu.be/UCwqL-9j-kY

Stay tuned for my next post recapping the New York Leadership Summit I attended the week after MogulX.