I attended Scaling New Heights last week, which is always one of my favorite events as a ProAdvisor and a speaker.
While it’s still fresh in my mind, I thought I’d take just a few minutes to share my thoughts on the conference. Not so much about the keynotes, and what the speakers said; I’m pretty sure that was covered on social media during the speeches.
I’d like to point out some more personal stuff - things that really hit home for me, since that’s generally what I do here, right?
Perception truly is reality. When I got to the conference, I was exhausted. It was the last of 4 out of 5 weeks of travel for me, and I had been home for all of about 30 hours from the last trip before hopping on the plane to New Orleans. Boy oh boy - it showed. I wasn’t not happy, it was more being tired and preoccupied, but what some people saw was me being unhappy or even angry. I only heard this after the fact, from other third parties. I know I make the choices to travel or not, and sometimes I don’t get good sleep. Or maybe something happens that I obsess over that I can’t let go (you know you do that do sometimes!) that has nothing to do with what’s happening in the moment. I try to be wonderful and happy to everyone, but sometimes I’m cranky and and otherwise unpleasant. If I was around you, I apologize now, because I can’t go back to find you and explain what was going on in my brain. (And trust me, I doubt you’d want to go there anyway!)
Motivating through positivity always works. I feel like this is a no brainer, but then I run across situations where a person believes that some level of fear mongering is the best way to get adult professionals to perform - and it’s just not. When there is a group of strong willed, self employed people, it generally has the opposite effect of what was intended. It creates a backlash; a knee jerk “You’re not the boss of me!” reaction. Rather than “Do this, or ELSE”, how about “What can we all do to make this awesome?”
When you start from a place of trying to make those around you a success, you end up a success. The two Work/Life Harmony sessions were brand new this year. When Carol Oliver at the Woodard Group and I were planning them, my only goal for them was to make sure every person that walked into that room walked out with at least one idea to take back home to help make their life a little better. To hear so many people in those sessions tell me those were their favorites, (ever?) I was so proud of everyone in that room and each of the facilitators that made it happen.
Stuff happens. Scaling New Heights is a big event, and with so many moving parts, some stuff is bound to fall through the cracks. And I'd rather have it happen to a speaker, or behind the scenes in general, rather than an attendee. I feel like we can roll over a few bumps in the road, but if an attendee has a bad experience, they won't be back, AND they'll shout from the rooftops to everyone not to go. As speakers, we LOVE doing these events. Lord knows we’re not going to become millionaires doing them; we do them because we love it. We do them because of moments like the one I experienced after the last Work/Life Session. I had a woman tell me that for the last 2 months she’d been planning on selling her practice and the only reason she was at the conference was because it had already been paid for. After doing those sessions she decided she was going home and instead of selling her practice, she was going to rethink and redesign it.
I came home with all my body parts. Last year in San Antonio I ended the conference in the hospital having my gall bladder removed. I’m happy to report that despite my friend from Fundera.com, Meredith Wood, telling me that I might be aiming too high, I did in fact, make it out of Louisiana with each and every body part with which I arrived. So yay me!
It sounds cliche, but this year’s conference was a life changing one for me, both in and out of the conference. I found that I really do enjoy jumping in to uncharted waters to do sessions I’ve never done, and I’m looking forward to doing them again and learning from the feedback I’m getting from this time around to make them better. My perspective on motivating people has been solidified, and I’d rather the walls fall down around the people putting on the show - but behind the curtain, so the audience just has an amazing experience.