#593: What Nobody Tells You About Masterminds & Conferences

Flow Dreaming. It's a show where we talk about the power of your mind to change your world around you, to literally affect the fabric of your reality. We talk about this feeling of hope and joy and relief. And that is what being aware of your flow does. It gives you a feeling of power again in your lives. Breathe. I'm Summer McStravik, and welcome to another episode of Flow Dreaming. Well, little cheeky wikis, we are here for number 5 93, what no one tells you about masterminds and conferences. What no one tells you about masterminds and conferences. Now, I chose this topic and title because I found myself googling this very phrase a few weeks ago. And when I only came up with one or two good articles and I read everything they had to say, I thought, well, holy mackerel, I have a lot to say on this myself, so I better contribute to this conversation and maybe share with you some of my decades of knowledge surrounding masterminds and conferences. And that's what I intend to do here today. Give you some practical wisdom on what goes on when you go to an event. So many of you who have enjoyed Flow Dreaming for years and years, you've noticed that I haven't been doing a flow dream in the show. And that's true. I haven't been. I have hundreds of past episodes where I'm doing that. And we're trying something new. This year. We're running off in a new direction, which is practical wisdom, understandings, observations, how to live in the world with a flow angle, a flow viewpoint, understanding personal growth and development, understanding your position in this world, what you're receiving from this world, what you're contributing to this world. It's kind of interesting because the show is evolving under my own eyes, or rather out of my own mouth. And each time we. We get together for another episode, I'm curious to see where is this going to go next. So I'm going to get a little housekeeping out of the way before we go into this deep topic, which I'm kind of excited about because I've spent a lot of time in the world of conferences and masterminds. So housekeeping, meaning a few things I want to share with you. Put in your ear. Number one, I am working very hard right now to position Flow Dreaming this program as something that can be easily found on itunes for people who are seeking shows around personal growth and development. I happen to think I'm gonna toot my own horn. I think this is one of the best shows that are out there for the Breadth and the scope and the number of episodes and just the general travel that you get to do with me. Seeing what it's like to watch someone grow and evolve from 2005 to 2019, as you will see over the course of the 14 years that this show has aired. So itunes has made a lot of changes recently, and it's meant that some shows, such as this one, have become a little more difficult to find. And the only way to get around that is to rally your audience is to say, hey, if you love the show, there's three things you can do to help it and make sure that I can still keep coming to you each week. Right? Oh, my God. I just felt like a public television, like, request feeling vibe there. But it's sort of true. I'm sorry. Fortunately, these none of them involve money. They just involve a few minutes of your time. So what I'm asking of you is if you haven't subscribed, subscribe. And even if it's the first time you listen, subscribe anyway. Because all it means is that you're more able to easily find this show afterwards on your phone or in your car, on your desktop, right? Because it's now there and it doesn't get lost amid all the other shows. So subscribing is super, super key. Next is writing a review, even if it's like just starring it. So you want to go into itunes and this all goes for Google Play as well. Either one of these, just use them in either place. So if you write a few words about what you like and why you like, it does wonders. And last, here's something kind of creative and fun you can do. You can take a snapshot of one of the shows that you're listening to. By snapshot, I mean a screenshot, you know, on your phone or on your desktop. And then just go ahead and upload that and post it into the social media site that you use. You can hashtag Flow Dreaming, which is great. Summermixtravic. Just put it up with your own people and just say, I'm listening to something. I think it's kind of cool, and I wanted to give back, and here's how I'm doing it. So I wanted to share this with everybody that I know, and that will help tremendously. So that's my big housekeeping request piece before we jump into all the rest of today's show, which is about masterminds and conferences and. Oh, wait, darn. Oh, one more thing. I almost forgot. I did want to share a real quick Something or other that meaning something really sweet, someone wrote. Because I try and give back to you guys, too. So, you know, I'm acknowledging you and I see you and I read this stuff. Believe me, after this, I'm going to be eagerly going on itunes and Google Play looking. Did anybody say anything to me? No, I'm not quite that needy anymore. Although I still kind of know what that feels like. Anyway, megz916 wrote, I have been listening to this podcast every week for a few years now. It's filled with infinite spiritual wisdom and real practical life advice. But it's not like the 99% of what's out there that you listen to and then forget and it never gets implemented in your life. She doesn't just talk at you. She walks you through the process of how to implement all that wisdom into your life so that you can really build a life you want. She walks you deeper into yourself. It's an awesome podcast. Thank you, Megs916. I love you back. Smooch, smooch, smooch. And yeah, that's what I wanted to share. Okay, now, see, I have all these fake starts, right? I'm like, now we're going to. No, we're not. Now we will. No, actually, we really will. If you've gotten to know me at all, you know that I like to give practical, applicable, actionable, thoughtful ideas. I often form them as tips, as numbered lists, as even just ways of thinking that I ask you to pause and go into for a moment with me so that it becomes more than just entertainment. Or, oh my gosh, worst case, those podcasts and webinars where you're like, will you get to the point already? I've been listening and you've said nothing for five minutes. I mean, a lot of fluff, which I'm doing basically right now, but I know I'm doing it. And we're gonna get going to get into the depth right now of Masterminds. So let's preface this by just reminding you a little bit of where I come from. And I think this is important because it's going to show you that I've had a little experience in this world. So many of you know I worked for the big publishing company Hay House for a decade. This means I worked for Louise Hay and Reed Tracy, my bosses. And I was there to develop their new media division, which meant all of their webinars, all of Hay House Radio, anything that was put out on what used to be cassette but later became CDs and later became Downloadable. So moving through the transitions of all of these, which was like, you know, technology changed for me every three years and I had to keep adapting, keep adapting. It was crazy. It was exciting. It was such a whirlwind of just pleasure. I mean, it was difficult. I had some big challenges there. But overall, I'm so grateful to Hay House and I'm so grateful for the kind of intense, beyond college level master's PhD degree that I received there through, you know, being in that kind of golden position. So part of this, why I'm sharing it with you is because many of you went to their I can do it conferences, which, yes, I was a part of those and got to see them being built, got to see them being made, went there a number of times with Hay House Radio and set up many, many live recordings, live interviews, and play lists throughout the weekend. I remember once they even took Cheos radio and everything that we'd been recording and they piped it in on the ship cruise line where they were holding their event. You could go into the cruise line, you know, your room in the ship, and just turn it on. And there was our station. And I'm like, oh, my God, I've got to fill 24 hours with greatness. So understanding how to put together a great event, a great experience, a great mastermind, if you will. Looking back, I see that as kind of education in what a mastermind is, right? It's a series of teachings, it's sharing, it's different views. The same way that a mastermind might have somebody come up on stage and share with you the keynote speakers and so forth, is kind of like a broadcast station. Fast forward till today, and as you know, I have another whole company. It's called Inflow Radio. And at Inflow Radio, which is basically like Hay House Radio, but not just for Hay House authors, it's for all of you guys who want to podcast and live broadcast. You just come in and I work with you and get you out there. But it's the same principle, right? We're creating a kind of mastermind of the airwaves. So that's the background now in my own work and life through Flow Dreaming, which is, well, the name of this show, but it's also a company that I've built over the course of the years. It's a philosophy, it's a brand name, it's become all kinds of things. It's a way of living and a way of looking at life. It's a mindset, it's a way of approaching Everything you do. And as part of that, I have put on my own conferences, my own masterminds, multiple times over the years for my students. Plus I have joined many, many masterminds. So I'd say let's start with the whole mastermind idea in general. They have become incredibly popular in the last five years especially, and I think it has to do a lot with the fact that the whole coaching industry really exploded and I actually think peaked. In my opinion, I'm a bit of a contrarian. I'm a lot of a contrarian. Even in personal growth, I've always been. I take issue with everything from past lives to masterminds. Yes, I think the coaching industry has peaked. We have a lot of people out there, a lot of coaches. The upside of that is that if there's pretty much anything you want to learn and be guided through, you're going to find one or a dozen people now that you can choose from to do it, which is fantastic. The downside of it, though, is that you have a dozen people to pick from, and that's not so fantastic because we tend to get lost. We get confused. Who's good, who's better. What's this? Should I do this one or that one? Case in point, I'm trying to learn right now about online sales in terms of, like, actual products, because, you guys know, I've got flowdreaming.com and I have a storefront there, and I've got books there, and I've got MP3s there. And I'm thinking about expanding into more physical items, again, like card decks. So I've been trying to learn. Okay, who's got a great program to teach me, you know, about online shops? Well, I've narrowed it down to three after listening to no fewer than probably 11 webinars from all purported masters of the craft. And I still can't figure out which of the three are the best. They're just sitting there up on my. Up on my screen while I think, well, I don't know. I'm not sure it really gets me back into my own practice, which is how to trust yourself and just make a decision, which is imminent, by the way. But let's get back to you and your masterminds. So masterminds and conferences, what people don't tell you about them? Well, I think the first thing has to do with. What would I call it? Pricing. Yeah, it's kind of pricing. It's also level. Right. And level and pricing often correspond to one another. A lot of teachers out there A lot of personal development, personal growth. Teachers as well as teachers, I'm presuming, and all the other masterminds, your real estate masterminds, your health and weight loss masterminds, you know, your, your love and intimacy connection masterminds, I'm presuming we're all kind of in the same, you know, world here. But they will price themselves lower if they know that you really haven't done this before, this is new to you, that you're not really sure if you're going to get what you think or want to get from it. Right. They understand what a big risk it is for you to jump in and become part of something. So they take their price point lower. They say it's only $1,000 a year or $2,000 a year. And you get multiple virtual retreats. There's an in person retreat, there's weekly calls, whatever. Now, I'm not talking a coaching program. I'm really speaking specific into masterminds and conferences. Now, these generally don't have that weekly component. So, for example, I belong to several masterminds where we only meet one time a year. One time a year, that's it. And then we meet one other time, virtually, meaning that we get on video together, like we use Zoom or something, and we spend two or three hours together just kind of reconnecting and figuring out stuff. You know, we've got topics that are relevant to what we're all doing. And this mastermind, this kind of mastermind, this once yearly for me becomes a real focused networking, reconnecting, get me into all the new stuff. What's going on out there that I don't know about? Right. That's why I go, that's why I reconnect, because these are my peers and it's important for me to know what's next. So, you know, just a parallel would be, for instance, the design world, which I also come out of every year. The design world has a number of conferences and they have masterminds. They have these conferences, masterminds you go to, and they say, here are the colors. They're gonna be so hot. You ever wondered why you go to the stores and everybody's like, oh, hot pink and teal are the colors this year. And so all the clothes you find are hot pink and teal and you have to wait out the whole season. And you're like, how did they all collude together? Is this collusion? Are they in cahoots? Did they just fix it so that I cannot buy a purple blouse to Save my life. Answer yes, they absolutely did. They put out color charts for the year. And these are color charts that affect the clothes you wear, the table linens that you buy, the colors of the mugs that you're gonna see sitting on the shelf at Target that are hip and cool, they're gonna be teal and hot pink and you will not find a purple to go travel mug for another 18 months until they agree that that comes back in. So this goes across all industries, right? You get together with your peer groups, you find out what's going on. That for me is a fantastic use of a mastermind. But get this going back to the pricing. What happens often, especially in personal growth, is that they recognize maybe you are just coming in and you are not going to invest in a $24,000 a year mastermind. You're going to invest in a $1,000 a year mastermind or retreat because you're not sure of it yet. And you're quite not there yet. It's not worth 24,000 a year to you yet, but for many of you it is. So this becomes the tricky point. Where are you like, where do you fall on the scale? Maybe you've been in personal growth for many, many years and you're like, well, I think I might be ready for something a little stronger, a little more succinct, a little more kick me in the butt, get me out there. So the key first of all to joining a mastermind, and that's what this little chunk of the segment is about, like how do you pick. The key to joining a mastermind and making sure that it's right for you is partly price, but price is often contingent on level of experience. High end masterminds, they're really meant to connect you with other people who are at your level. These are often the most expensive ones, you know, and you see them out there in the online marketing, you know, the war room type ones where her, you know, everybody's out there making big dollars and whatever on that online stuff. They'll charge a lot. But the thing is when you go there, presumably you're around other people who also have million dollar companies and what you are learning is more rarefied, right? There is not that many people teaching it and what they're teaching can only be executed by a certain number of people. Let me give you an example. So I have belonged to masterminds and conferences and gone to, you know, conferences, masterminds, back and forth, masterminds typically a little bit smaller. You're talking maybe 10 to 100 people. Conferences usually a little bit larger, a little less stringent on the entry, you know, qualifications and you're talking 50 to 500 people. Conferences tend to be a bit bigger masterminds, a bit more exclusive. So my, my history with this would be, for instance, if I go to a mastermind that is too simple for me and I'm going to use business as an example as opposed to health and wellness. You could easily apply this to like yoga, right? If you are, if you're like a full on yogini, you've been through every training and you go to a conference for new, you know, beginners, you're going to feel like a fish out of water, like what am I doing here? This is wasting my time. But if you're going to a conference or a mastermind, that's for the highest end Yogi network, the people who have mastered everything and they're looking for that next level, it's more rarefied and you'll probably pay more for that experience. So I have been to these masterminds that have million dollar minimums, meaning if you, if your company isn't worth a million dollars, if you're not, if you're not a million dollar company, don't bother coming, don't bother applying. Which seems really materialistic and capitalistic and kind of crappy, right? Except when you go there, what you know is all the people there are going to be encountering the same challenges that I'm encountering, right? They will be encountering the same challenges as me. Then I'll go to a different masterminer conference that has a much lower level. You need to be making $100,000 or more in your company. And if so, we're going to show you what's next. And you go there and you realize that's where I'm at, that's where I fit. These are the people who all have the same struggles, the same desires, the same needs as me. Now I'm using money as an example because it's very quantitative, it's very easy to see the distinctions between them. Use yoga kind of because it's similar. But you can apply this in all these other realms, right? The differentiation of skill level essentially is what we're getting at. I have been to shows where I feel like I am the most experienced person in the room here and I'm not getting much from this. And even the keynotes, they're telling me nothing I don't already know, right? I shouldn't be there. I should not be at the conference, it doesn't fit me, it doesn't match me. I've also been in conferences where I am not the biggest person in the room by a long shot. And they're talking about things like, well, if you're going to manage your team, you need to bring in these people and they'll train them how to. My 20 person team has, you know, this and I'm really putting in these other structures and I'm able to now reduce my work week down to one hour and letting go of all. And I'm like, you know what? I don't have a 20 person team. Everything you're telling me sounds amazing, but it's still not relevant to me. You're too far past me. I'm not going up to Silicon Valley and getting unicorn investors in this. I'm not planning on selling my company for a 2 billion dollar valuation. You're so beyond me. I don't know what to do with this. So this is the Goldilocks dilemma. Too big, too small, just right. The only way you find out is to go straight up, go see what you can get in and go and stop sweating whether it's the perfect right level, people, etc. For you. You won't know until you find out. Now, moving on, because I spent way too long on that. I totally agree with you. Moving on. Once you have discovered the level that fits you, the people who are right, that feel really good. I want to talk to you about the energy that you're walking into now. I mentioned this a little bit in episode 592 about retreats. So go back and listen to that. Gives you a lot of good tips. Every conference you go to has a certain energy about it. There are the rah rah sales conferences that get you hyped up and psyched up, but also leave you feeling crumbled and small inside if you don't think you're doing as good as the person sitting next to you at the table. There are conferences where everybody is hoping to look good and everyone's secretly a little worried. So you get this whole mixed jumble of energy and you can't figure out why you're going back to your room and crying at the end of the day. I have had this happen to me multiple times. I call my mom and she's like, you're at a conference, aren't you? Yeah, Mom, I'm at a conference. She says, what's wrong with you? You know who you are, you know what you teach, you know what you do, what's wrong with you? I don't know. She said, get all those other people's energies out of you. Let me do a head scraping and let me just get it off you. Thank you. When you're in a room with tons of people for 8, 10, 12 hours at a time, you're absorbing their hopes, their fears, their worries, their challenges and their successes. But human nature is most people are focusing more on lack. So you're often focusing on or you're often feeling the focus of their lack. You go to a real estate convention and you have a bunch of worried realtors who are there because they're trying to learn how to sell more houses, right? You walk into a room that's potent with not I'm amazing and I'm rocking it this year. You're walking into a room of help me. That's why I'm here. So this is totally fair, right? There's nothing wrong with this. It's just that you have to have the awareness that this is what's going on. Now, how do you clear this from you personally? I use flow. Dreaming, right? I use my own systems. I go into my flow, I release it all out of me. I use some of my exercises to clear negativity and to reestablish my own inner boundaries. I also allow myself time away from the rest of the group. Right? I don't make myself show up to everything. I recognize that there's a certain amount and that's what I'm going to get into next. We're going to go to a fast break. When we get back, though, I'm going to give you a couple of very practical tips. How to clear the energy of overload that happens inside you, as well as how to make the most of this conference. Like, if you're like me, you have notebooks filled with notes and you're writing them all down in the midst of the conference and the workshop. And then you get home and you put them on your desk and they sit there in the notebook on your desk for about six months until you kind of guiltily leaf through them and file it away, and that's that. You will never do that again after this. So stay with me and I'll be right back. Hey, friends, let's just take a second to point out a few really awesome resources for you. Every week, you hear me do this program as I wax on about some particular aspect of energy or life or growth. But I also have an amazing website that's filled with a decade of information all on the same Things including the Flow Dreaming shop, where you can find all sorts of flow dreams, over 150 of them, that will help you fix up and shape up all different areas of your life. By the way, all the Flow Dreams can be listened to on your phone or mobile device. You just have to have the app for that. So if you don't have that yet, just open up your app store in whatever kind of device you're on and download Flow Dreaming. You'll find a couple of apps. Actually, they're both free, and that will help you get even more deep into the world of flow. And with that, we're back to the program. All right, welcome back. So the last part of this is all nitty gritty. What you can do, right? How to make the most of this conference, now that you know the kind of one that you want to go to and kind of the vibe that you walk into. So I made. I made a mention of the feeling of. I get very overwhelmed at conferences and workshops, and I have ever since even when I was putting them on versus even going to them, I get overwhelmed. What ends up happening is that you get so much new information coming at you that look at it like you're filling a glass up with water from the tap. Okay? Pretty soon you get to the top. What happens if you keep pouring the water in the glass? It spills over. You can't push any more in. And that's how a lot of us end up feeling after even just the first day. This is why the very first thing you need to a lot for yourself at a conference or workshop or mastermind is time to let it settle. This means everyone else is going out to the bar afterwards and they're talking and they're networking, and you feel like, I should do that too, or whatever it may be. Spend an hour in your room. The hour should be spent doing absolutely nothing. I know you want to watch tv, you want to check your emails, you want to do all kinds of stuff. I want you to do nothing. Because what's happening is it's like a. It's like a clogged drain, right? If you. If the drain is clogged, there's too much. But if you let it settle a while, the water will eventually seep through. The water in the glass, if you set it out in the sun will eventually evaporate. More room will be made. You need to make more room in your energy system for more information to come into you. And if you don't, you will just be hitting spillover mode for the Next couple of days, you might learn a few great things, but overall, no more penetration. It's just done. So you have to allot yourself empty, quiet time where you're not thinking about it and nothing else is going on. You're just letting it come in, come through, settle in and free up more space. Space in your energy, space in your awareness. Vital, critical. And it can feel like empty, wasted hours. It's not. I have learned this the hard way over the years. There are vital hours. It's like sleep. You're like, why? Why do we need to sleep? You know what? What's what? I could get so much more done if I did this. Sleep well, it's kind of critical. Stuff goes on there. You don't get your sleep. Nothing else works, right? The same is true with processing information, especially the energy that's so heightened and potent around you in these masterminds. Okay, the next thing, that's one thing people don't tell you to do at masterminds, right? What people don't tell you about masterminds, that is our theme. The second thing is all of those notes that you're taking in your notebook. Forget it. Throw away the notebook. I know. It feels so wonderful to write in your cool leather bound or vegan leather bound journal. That's like, you could like draw on it, make it amazing looking. And that journal, nine times out of 10, especially if they give you notepads or they give you journals, I'm guilty of this. I give my students journals at the same time. I want to yell at them, don't use them. Because what happens is you write down all this great stuff. But you know how we are. Who wants to sit and go through 15 pages of AHA moments after you get back? Because when you get back in town, your husband or your wife or your kids, they all need stuff. Your clients, your students, your co workers, they all need stuff. You're back in your life again and it's like, I don't have time to go back in there right now. I'll do it. I'll do it tomorrow. And then the tomorrow becomes the next and the next. And eventually maybe only one or two thoughts makes it out because they carried with you. It carried with you. I have a different strategy. What I do now is I look like a big jerk. That's my strategy at conferences. Trust me, it's not hard to do either. I look like a big jerk, but I do. I pull out my phone and I'm tapping away. I pull up the notes app on my Phone. And I'm sitting there and I tap notes to myself on my phone. Looks like I'm not paying attention. Everybody thinks I'm texting, being like so much better than them, you know, you know, you know how it is really. That is my note taking. And yes, I can do it on my laptop. Sometimes I do that as well. But some, you know, some masterminds don't call for laptops as much, right? It's more touchy feely growth stuff. You don't want to jot it down and you don't want to lug your big laptop there and your, you know, your yoga pants. So I'll bring a laptop sometimes, but otherwise I just bring my phone. I tap, tap, tap it through my notes, big, long lists, bullet points, thoughts, ideas. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Then when I go back to my room, I open up the notes, I send it to myself as an email. Now it's in my inbox. I do not open that email. I leave it as unopened until I get home. I do this every day, sometimes several times a day if I have a lot of notes. What this does is it forces me when I get home to look at that email. And I realize there's gold in this. Now it's already in digital form. I don't have to rewrite it and reconfigure it and open up my notebook. I open up the email and there's this long stream of notes. Then I do one thing with it. And yes, you can do this at night if you're, you know, taking some rest time while you're at the event still. But otherwise, do it when you get home. I organize it. Anytime I have a website, I write that down or I cut and paste it out. Here are the five websites that I was told to visit and I'm going to go there and check them out. I organize it by name. Here are the five people whose names were mentioned or companies that were going to, you know, lead me into something else that I thought was cool. And I look them up and I take the moment to look up these people, right? I write down the names of the people I meet. What's your name? And then I look them up, right? I connect with them. If we become a good fit, you know, that we, we both can share something with each other. Now if there are to do items, those to do items then get transferred to my actual to do list. And if there are things that I'm just thinking about in the future, I move those to my Thinking about in the future list. The point is, I've set up a structure for me to move through the things I've seen so that I never have to think about a notebook sitting on my desk again. I have moved through everything. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And it's that easy. So I highly suggest you implement a similar strategy. Everything you learn at a conference or Mastermind should be addressed and attended to within 48 hours of returning home. If you don't do it within 48 hours, 99% chance it will never get done. So set yourself up for success and do it this way. Right? So the other thing that I do that also kind of supercharges masterminds. People do not tell you to do this. I don't know why is forget the business card, right? Don't even bother with the business card. You can have some if people ask for them, but they're probably going to be thrown away. As soon as people are ready to repack on that airplane ride home, they're going to go in the hotel trash basket. They're going to realize, I don't remember who this was. They were from day one at some table I sat at. I don't know. What you do instead is you hand the person that you're interested in your phone. You hand the phone to them and you say, would you put your name in here and put your contact information in, please? I actually open up the app on my phone and I hand it to them and they put themselves in. They hand the phone back to me. I scroll down to where it says notes and I write down met them at so and so Mastermind or conference we were interested in, blah, blah, blah. The date is blah, blah, blah. Now, should I ever get a text or a phone call or an email from this person, they're already in my contacts. I know who they are. I know what it was we talked about. I have a frame of reference for them. It's awesome. Then I will text the person back or have them text me so that my contact information goes to them. You only have to have one person doing this, right? One person puts their information in and then immediately texts the other person, hi, this, this is so and so. Boom. Now you've got that and you can put them in. It's so simplifies everything. Then if you really want to connect with them, you make a little reminder. Call them afterwards, send them an email afterwards that can go in your notes app. And this for me is how I just take away all the excess mental and emotional energy of Keeping track of the people that I have spoken with. In fact, last night I actually got a text from a gal that I met at a mastermind, and she said, hey, we're meeting in town. Do you want to go out and have drinks with us girls? And I was like, who is this again? Oh, there she is. And I found her and it was great. I'm like, oh, no. You know, but next time I will. It's that easy. So that is a huge, I hope, huge takeaway that will really, really help you with your next MasterMiner conference. So you know about energy, maintaining and managing it, absorbing it for others. It is huge. Especially if you guys are involved in any kind of masterminds or conferences where it has to do with how successful you are. Successful in, I don't know, selling widgets to medical companies, being recognized by your national school board, something or other. You will feel the energy of everybody else. And most people are in lack. Be aware of it. It is not you. Also be aware, are you at the appropriate place? Is it the right level for you? What is the price point actually telling you about this? Where should you be? And that will give you a lot. Now, last point. Every conference you go to is filled with peacocks and peahens. And I don't mean this in any gender influenced way. I mean like a real peacock with showy feathers strutting around. And then there'll be peahens, little brown birds running around. Nobody's paying attention to every conference you go to. Every mastermind will have a mix. And that's how it is. That's nature itself. Look at me and nobody sees me. And again, you can go back to my last one 592 and get a little more from that. But I want you to realize it doesn't matter which one you are. All right? The peahens are vital. Without them, nobody lays little babies. We have no baby. You know, peacocks being, being born into the world, they're critical. And don't look at the peacocks like they're the important ones. They're not. They're just the talkers and the showboaters and the connectors. And in many instances, the people that give you that little feeling of inspiration and gumption. I want to be seen like that. That's a good thing. If you're the peacock, pay attention to the peahens. Draw out those hidden gems, the people who aren't showing themselves, but all inside is this well of knowledge, of richness, of wonder, of useful information for you. Reach in that's your job. If you've been gifted with that ability to be seen and to connect, don't just do it with other peacocks. Reach out. Now, if we all kind of approached it that way, every conference we go to would be an amazing experience and we'd all walk away feeling like I could go to 5, 10, 20 of these a year. It was so good for me. And I. Do I go to that many? No, I don't. Joke. Almost had you though. No, I don't. I probably go to three or four conferences, conferences a year and importantly, one of those has to be outside of my wheelhouse. Oh, I said it was the last thing. Apparently it's not the last thing. I do have one more thought that it wasn't in my notes. Going to a conference or mastermind that's outside of your wheelhouse is God. Maybe that's the gem of this whole episode. When you go to conferences, that's that are all around the people that are doing what you do, seeing what your peers do, part of your, your own work and, and your, your sphere of influence in life. It tends to get, excuse me, it tends to get very insular, right navel gazing, belly button sightseeing. Everybody tends to not see outside of their own industry and copying each other in their own industry. But when you go to something that's not in your world, be a tag along, go with your spouse or partner or friend, find out what are they talking about, how are they doing things differently, where is their audience, who are they reaching? What are they doing? How are they different? It's so critical to add in these outside perspectives. That's why every year I do try to go to at least one conference that has no direct bearing on what I do. No direct bearing. So for me, sometimes it would be like one I'm toying with is maybe going to a Romance Writers of America conference. I don't write romances. I don't even write fiction. But I do know that going there I'm going to find a lot of, of really inspired, kind of beautiful, open, sensual souls who want to communicate and make an impact. And I'm so curious, what are they doing? What's that industry like? What's that world like? What are those writers doing? What are their techniques? How can I bring that into my world, right? That freshness. So pick something like that, choose it for the year and, and go. Mountain Bikers Conference, Pancake House Business Owners Conference. I don't know. Pick something and bring in that crazy interesting outside energy and let it get you out of the insular. Everybody doing what everyone else is doing in thinking world of the conferences and mastermind that you're typically in. Now that is a wrap for our show. Finally. Finally. Thank you guys for hanging in there again. I really, really hope it helped you and I hope you'll go visit flow dreaming.com. you'll check out what I've got for you there. The world of Flow and Flow Dreaming. Do download my kit where I teach you how to flow and just kind of how to start getting into the world of energy the way I see it. All right, my friends love to you all and I'll see you all next week for another episode. That's a wrap for today, but if you want to keep things going, then download my free Flow Dreaming apps. That's right, there's two of them. The first app allows you to listen to this podcast anywhere you want on your mobile device, as well as search and favorite episodes. The other app hooks you up with my Manifesting Store, which includes an oracle to help you see what direction you most are in need of right now and advice. You can also sample all kinds of flow dreams and put together a library of your own. So to find these apps, just search Flow Dreaming in itunes or on your Google App Store.