The Comeback Conference 2026

The comedown from The Comeback Conference 2026 is real. 

After placing my business on pause in July last year I’ve spent the time since as an employee for my wonderful client V2R Projects and enjoying being back in a team and contributing my admin nerdery and tech stack streamlining skills in a Project Administrator role within the Construction environment. 

However after coming home in January from our family overseas adventure I have been feeling the pull to return to learning. Even though I’ve never been interested in being a social media manager I have always gravitated towards learning about social media and marketing (I did major in Marketing with my uni degree after all). As much as I am enjoying my role I have the rumblings of wanting to return to being a business owner in some capacity and so after attending last year’s conference I couldn’t help but feel like going again this year was what I needed. 

So in a  last minute decision (which for me is quite unusual) I decided to book a ticket and get myself to Melbourne. And as expected, The Digital Picnic team absolutely delivered. Even as an employee right now, the speakers and the content were spot on and I gained so many ideas, insights and inspiration not only to take into my employee role but also for future rebuilding my own business. 

Every single session and every single speaker delivered – which is rare across a two day event. Whether it was practical social media guidance, leadership insights or operational direction – every single session had something to take and use. So much so I had multiple lists running for my employee role and then for my business and then also for my personal life.

The Speakers

Usually I give a full blow by blow for every speaker but if I attempt that on this occasion you’ll be stuck reading a very long post. So firstly, I’ll list the full two days of topics and speakers because all of them deserve a mention as each delivered value in every single one of their presentations:

• Leadership lessons that’ll inspire a business’ comeback – with Cherie Clonan [The Digital Picnic]
• How To Make More Money in 2026 (with my Paid Ads Framework) – with Anaita Sarkar [Hero Packaging & Staje]
• Panelist Discussion with Winnie Wu [Papaya Clinic] , Michelle Abiatra [Outsourcing Crew] , Deanna Notice [Notice & Co]
• Clarity, capacity and the future: how to build a business that lasts with Ami Summers [Craft Coaching & Development]
• Brand marketer by day, oversharer by night with Melanie Sutherland
• How to turn AI into an (unpaid) co-Founder within your business with Elisabeth Jackson [Capacity Haus]
• Humanising content in a world of AEO the lessons we can take from traditional SEO with Jessie Zevaka [The Digital Picnic]
• How to Build Your Digital Ecosystem in 2026 (So your ads actually work) with Savannah Young [The Digital Picnic]
• What you lose when you hide behind your brand account: a personal branding masterclass with Cherie Clonan [The Digital Picnic]
• Your guide to data-driven decision making for organic socials with Zara Jarvis @zarajarvis [The Diary of a CEO podcast]
• The rise of the relatable brand with Nikita Crockett [The Digital Picnic]
• Stop treating your socials like a catalogue with Nadine Aridi [The Digital Picnic] and Joseph Rako [RAKO Media] putting an exciting spotlight on Altina Drinks
• From Founder-led operations, to Functional-led operations with Sarah Agboola [mtime]
• The ROI you need to focus on in 2026 is return on INTIMACY with Cherie Clonan [The Digital Picnic]
• Crafting influencer campaigns that look, feel and sound like the real world we live in with Sean Galway
• Burn it down, build it better – the strategic anatomy of a departmental comeback with Victoria Obieglo [The Digital Picnic]

My Lightbulbs – the Takeaways

And here are my own key personal takeaways and highlights from the two days. My head was exploding from the inspiration and my notebook was overflowing with notes and ideas. And truth bomb – this blog post has now taken me 3 whole months to write. My brain has been very slowly integrating my learnings and I have only now just been able to fully tease out the key messages that landed for me.

Shifting the question from “Why is this happening to me?” to “What can I create next?”

As someone who has zero (purposeful) aspirations to be a leader in any way, shape or form, you would think anything leadership related wouldn’t be on my radar. But Cherie’s keynote on leadership (and the subsequent episodes she has recorded with Steph on their podcast The Climb) really lit up parts of my brain that I didn’t know were there. 

My entire working life has revolved around the next move, doing the right thing, saying yes to challenges and doing my best to be a good human in every room I found myself within. As someone who has always been the “back of house crew” in all of my roles I have always prided myself in being the behind the scenes doer that gets shit done. 

However Cherie’s sessions highlighted to me the reality that as much as I don’t think I am, I have been a leader in my own way – and how I have shown up in the past has created my own patterns that I haven’t fully acknowledged along the way. 

Being unapologetically you and building in line with your core values and ethics

When I first started my business in the Virtual Assistance space in 2016 – even though I up until that point had never even clocked the terms VA, Virtual Assistant, Onshore and Offshore – I quickly discovered there was this uncurrent of offshore is bad and unethical and support onshore. And as the years have passed, I’ve learned there’s so much more to this than that simplification of things – and like everything in this world, theres the good eggs and the bad eggs and so many instances of it depends when it comes to introducing support into business teams. 

I’ve seen glimpses of Michelle from Outsourcing Crew here and there over the last few years, but listening to her and seeing her on stage as part of the panel made me instantly quietly fan girl over her in a big way. So much of her story and values resonated with me so much – along with her unapologetic willingness to tell things as they are (I mean, naps are amazing – I wish I could get myself to that point of being able to nap in the day). And I really tip my hat to her in what she has set out to build and maintain for her own business and supporting other businesses in a way that delivers a hand back to a community that she cares so much about. 

Working alongside AI as an operations engine tool, not a replacement human

I am a self confessed tech nerd – and so you would think I would be eyeballs deep in AI land. Confession time: I haven’t, I have been in burnout land and my capacity for anything outside of my current bandwidth has been zero. 

Enter Elisabeth Jackson from Capacity Haus, who managed to deliver the core of utilising AI within businesses in a way that connected the dots in a way that felt like an elevation of teams expertise and experience rather than an outright replacement of talent. 

In fact, I think as I’m recalibrating my brain I’m going to start to find my words to talk into this concept a whole lot more. But hands down, Elisabeth’s take on AI finally flicked my internal switch on how I could come back to my employee role and implement it within their business within my own role and then across various other parts of the business. And then also, utilising it in my own business (because, in all honesty, it may have been paused but my soul whispers are well and truly there to unpause). 

The Three Horizons Framework – The world doesn’t need louder leadership, it needs sustained, better leadership

Oh the irony that Ami Summers from Craft Coaching & Development hit the nail on the head for someone who was (and still is) in burnout with a gardening analogy and helping to unlock the thoughts spiral that I’ve spent the last good 18 months in. As someone who has completely ripped out her garden beds and stomped off to another paddock, the three horizons she spoke of were spot on and I’ve only just now (coming back to my notes) started to understand fully where I can rebuild from using her framework. And yet again, there’s the leadership theme that I have unconsciously avoided over my career.

Extra Shoutout – New Outlook – in the noggin and of the noggin

A special surprise on the networking drinks event was Dr Hayley D Quinn who did a short on stage chat around the idea of self compassion as women and women in business and it hit home in a number of ways at the time. So I instantly purchased her book and devoured it when I got home and there’s so many things she covers that are incredibly timely for me in this stage of where I’m currently navigating as a Mum, wife, friend, employee, wannabe business owner again. 

And extra special mention to the phenomenal Janet from Hyggelig Photography who put her hand up to do some mini headshot shoots over the days of the conference and I couldn’t not jump in and do one. I don’t know what it is, but I really enjoy the experience of getting my photos taken (maybe it is because I’ve always been the one taking photos of all of my adventures and everyone else over the years). And her shots she took were beyond amazing especially given the fact it is never easy to get in the moment shots in a busy environment in a small window of time. So if you’re needing some new headshots go check Janet out on Instagram @hyggeligphotography

What next – Comeback Conference 2027?

You can bet your bottom dollar I will be attending 2027 again. And that’s the beauty of events by The Digital Picnic. I have absolutely zero interest in being a social media marketing professional – I am in awe of anyone who does work in the space with their strategic and creative brains. But going to this conference delivers so many more learnings outside of just this space that anyone can attend and feel like you’re in a room of just genuine good humans who have the desire to do better and share their knowledge with others. There’s a reason that #KindGenius has become TDP’s point of difference – and I hope that I have some of the same energy within me too.