Last updated on January 31st, 2016 at 06:26 am
April has been one of those months where I have spent more nights in hotels than I have been home by about a 3 to 1 ratio. It started with the South Africa trip that I’ve been sharing updates on and then after a brief 4 days at home I’m now in the middle of a tour of several cities on the same multi-city ticket.
Sioux Falls for a Speaking Gig
Last week I took a 30 minute “elevator ride” to Sioux Falls, where I was a featured speaker and workshop presenter at the Now What Conference. This was an awesome experience for me and I really enjoyed my time in Sioux Falls, including a visit to the actual falls on the Sioux river.
The people I met in this conference were among the most genuine, down to earth and outright interesting people you’ll find in the marketing business. Talk about South Dakota hospitality! I would go as far as to say that Sioux Falls is probably the most surprisingly delightful city I have visited in a long time.
I know that most people come here to hear about travel, but I couldn’t help but share this picture that was taken of me during my presentation at the conference. I am definitely going to be using this in future presentations!
After 2 nights in Sioux Falls I made my way to Seattle for Frequent Traveler University.
During the trip to Seattle, I was upgraded to first class by Delta and treated to an amazing meal from their Luvo collection. Really good and healthy stuff.
Hiking Tiger Mountain in Seattle
Having spent the majority of 3 whole days working on my presentations and 4 hours talking about marketing, I needed some fresh air when I made it to Seattle. My friend and business partner Bill and I decided to do a quick hike up Tiger Mountain, which is 30 minutes east of SeaTac airport. It has been raining a lot in Seattle recently, so we were able to take some incredibly green photos along the way.
Everywhere you turned was beauty, so I’m sharing some of my favorite views from the hike.
Then it was back indoors to take in the presentations and awesome hallway conversations at FTU. I wrote about this briefly in my recap of the Launchpoint event.
Making my Way to Austin for another Speaking Gig
After a successful FTU, I woke up super early to make my way to Austin, TX for another speaking gig. This time it was at the Hero Conference, which is an awesome place to geek out with other Internet Marketers.
I had a connecting flight in Salt Lake City on my way to Austin, which always affords tremendous mountain views from the window.
Once I arrived in Austin, things were pretty low key – I just got to visit the football stadium where the Texas Longhorns play, moderate a panel discussion, participate in a selfie contest sponsored by Bing, eat Chicken and waffles while drinking a Lone Star tallboy and then present to an awesome group of attendees.
Tonight I am heading to the famous Alamo Draft House to watch the movie Office Space.
Tomorrow I will be heading home for a clothes dump before heading to the 140th annual Kentucky Derby this weekend in Lousiville.
One of these days I might actually get some sleep, but it’s not likely anytime soon… I still need to finish my South Africa trip report to make George happy!
Glad you enjoyed the trip to SD! Hope you didn’t get lost in the Sioux Falls airport :D
Somehow the airport was prone to delays on the way there and back, so I enjoyed a fine ale from the barkeep while waiting.
did you make it to the top of Tiger Mountain? I work right there in Issaquah and we go up all the time. Where did you get Chicken/Waffles in Austin?
We only had enough time to get about halfway. Many of the paths were closed off. I liked Issaquah and had some great food at the taqueria la venadita.
Chicken and waffles were at the 24 diner on Lamar and 6th I believe. Good times!
enjoyed the taqueria for lunch today. Jose (the owner, and front counter man) is the best!
I too am glad you enjoyed Sioux Falls! We certainly enjoyed learning more about Google Analytics and I’ve already taken some of what I learned during the workshop into real life while we are building our new website! (and I’m trying to use Google+ more personally as well :) )
That is awesome! It makes me happy that you can apply what you learned right away. Nice talking to you as well and hope you get the hang of G+ now. Feel free to email me for my presentations on G+ from Moz.