Meet Dusti Reimer | Public Relations Professional and Avid Runner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Dusti Reimer and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Dusti, what role has risk played in your life or career?
Risk is everything when it comes to starting anything in life, especially a business. You have to be willing to step out. I would rather live my life knowing I tried and failed than have the regret my whole of life of never trying.

We started our nonprofit, Experience Education Foundation, on the risk of hosting the Initiate Conference. the Initiate Conference is the only professional development conference for marketing and communications professionals on the Western Slope of Colorado. We’re here to help education small business owners, non profits, and governmental agencies in marketing, advertising, social media and more. We believed that the risk of helping our communities with their businesses was worth the risk.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’m an accidental business owner. I never thought in my life I’d work for myself, but now having done it for many years, I can’t imagine not doing it.

This also provides me the ability to have a creative avenue for my passion of helpingn to educate those in our field of marketing, social media and communications and those who utlize those services.

Many times, in the course of starting out in my business, I would have a friend call up and ask me about a service that someone called or emailed them about. One friend even received some unsolicted mail charging them for an internet listing service they had never heard of or used, and was worried about paying this bogus bill.

I realized that a lot of smaller business could use some help understanding marketing and advertising, and how they could utilize the correct services that were either free or at a fraction of the prices that had been sent to them by out of state service providers.

That’s why I founded the nonprofit Experience Education Foundation. I believed that through education, we could help build up our industry, but also help to get rid of a lot of the bad information out there and some of the bad services that were also giving our indutry a bad repution.

We created the Initiate Conference in 2018, and launched the first conference in February 2019. With just a little over 80 participants the first year, we knew we were on to something special.

With us being our own company, we have the freedom to really create the conference into a fun experience. Every year we have changed the way we set the conference up. We believe in our mission statement of providing professional development education opportunities to the Western Slope, and we always stick to the core value words of Inspire, Create and Experience.

We host creative learning sessions that give our attendees an chance to apply the values they are learning in a hands on way. From having puppies brought into the conference for an experiential marketing experience from a local animal rescue, to doing Improv to learn how to be an active listener and creative participant in your workplace. Everything we do has intention, even though it may appear to see random. And of course, we make sure that all the sessions are focused on learning and building trust with the speakers. We advise against any sales pitches and really try to hammer home networking and friendship building.

We’ve heard several stories of someone getting hired from attending the conference, to love being able to connect with other professionals from across the Western Slope. That’s the hope-is the relationships that build up our community and help make us all better.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
In the Grand Valley, I’d say we’d have to start with breakfast at Dream Cafe in downtown Grand Junction. Great atmosphere and food-it’s awesome way to kick off the day.

I’d grab a coffee at Kiln for the road and then hike either Mt. Garfield (depending on the guest) or take them to Mica Mine.

For lunch, we’d head to Cafe Sol for the Cafe Sol salad and fresh menu items. And then head to Palisade for a wine tour for the afternoon.

For dinner, we’d head to Devil’s Kitchen at Hotel Maverick and enjoy dinner on the terrace.

If they were the adventurous type and liked to run, I’d take them for a run along the river front trail the following morning from Grand Junction Fruita, where we’d celebrate with Mountain Berry Bowls for breakfast!

Then spend the rest of the day relaxing with a massage.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My success comes from first my husband. Nicholas and I have been married for almost 18 years and he’s the solid foundation for our life. He’s always an encourager and supporter in me stepping out to start my own business and start a non profit.

Also, if it weren’t for my team of volunteers, we wouldn’t have made it this far. The Initiate Conference is put on entirely by volunteers-its blood, sweat and sometimes a lot of tears to make it happen.

Tamara Krizman, Dan Chermok, Zoe Dunn, Jackie Young and Heather Benjamin have been absolutely incredible in their support, knowledge, implemtation and execution for Initiate Conference. They are just as passionate about the event as I am and without their constant guidance and support, none of this would have happened.

One person might have had the idea, but it takes many hands to make the work light and happen. They believe in the dream of having a conference in the Grand Valley and they deserve as much credit as I do. No man is an island.

Website: www.initiateconference.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/initiate_gj

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Initiate_GJ

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InitiateConference

Image Credits
Photo Credits: Liv Divine, Sadie Kelley, Mikayla Olave, Callie June Photography