01 Mar What I Learnt at a Business Retreat

Picture this if you will….a tropical location, set amidst the hills of Ubud, overlooking forests as far as the eye can see, a pool and spa pool beckons, geckos ‘chirping’ and the tranquil taste of freedom calls us, as a group of 10 lifestyle entrepreneurs brainstorm, share, create and develop in an open Villa setting.

I feel compelled to share what I observed this past week, with the goal that it will help you create your path to creating the life and business of your dreams faster….

We 10, under the guidance and brilliance of our guide, Natalie Sisson, are literally in our element. Hanging out with like-minded souls, living our purpose, seeking ways to step further into our potential in a truly divine setting.

As the days unfolded I began to take note of the learning’s. Here they are, unedited, as they flowed. I suggest you make yourself a cuppa and settle in. These lessons could save you years…

FEARS:
We all have fears. Every single one of us. But we don’t buy into them. Or if we do, we have strategies to pull us out of them. First strategy – back yourself!

DREAMS:
We are ‘living the dream’ because we showed up, we said yes, even though we didn’t know the how, we often didn’t have the money at first, or we didn’t think we had the expertise. We took a no excuses approach to following our dream.

LEARNING:
We love learning. We love surrounding ourselves with like-minded people. We love adventure and experiences. We are all seeking mastery – of our business and ourselves. Even of our shadows. We love online learning, but have experienced that face-to-face is very powerful.

LESSONS:
We have sh*t happen but we have learnt ways to handle it. We have learnt the lesson of burnout in some form or other – every business does. There has been a turning point in our lives where it’s all gone belly-up and we have learnt volumes from this/these failures. Did I say volumes? It’s where the BIGGEST learnings have come! We continue to fail, but we don’t see them as mistakes, rather we see them as our greatest teachers. Ones that we have risen from.

SACRIFICE:
We have all left either love, family, jobs, or ‘stuff’ behind to be here but it’s a choice we made to create positive change. We got on a plane and travelled thousands of miles to be here. This was not a retreat that was ‘just down the road.’ We sacrificed things to be here. But we’re here and we’re so glad we are.

MARKETING:
We are seeking up-to-the-minute strategies to grow our lists, position ourselves as experts, sell our products and services. We market through many forms of social media. We have streamlined our businesses but to start with we’ve given away our services for free and we’ve learnt our lessons around that. Now we have created free stuff for our ideal clients and we know that our job is to make it super easy for our ideal client to say yes.

MASTERMINDING:
We love helping each other. We’ve all been told by our mentors the steps to take, but we acknowledge that everything happens when it’s meant to and that’s why it’s great to Mastermind as it inspires us for growth. We all started by being part of a Mastermind, an online community or being part of a group training, whether a live event or online. We lead Mastermind groups ourselves because we know it’s a great vehicle to help people at an affordable price.

GRATITUDE:
We are so grateful. We pinch ourselves daily.

PURPOSE:
Our purpose touches our hearts emotionally. We desire to live a purpose-driven life. So we are prepared to go with the flow and see where our purpose takes us. We started with our passion and many of us are now teaching others to find their passion too.

SUCCESS:
We get that ‘overnight success’ takes somewhere between 3.5-7 years, give or take. To us success is defined as having a freedom based business – we can travel, we can run our businesses where we choose, we know what our perfect day looks like and we are well on our way to achieving it (in fact right now we are living it as we sit in this mastermind experience in Bali!).

COMMITMENT:
We are not only interested in our business we are committed. Our business provides us with a lifestyle we want. We scale our businesses. We have gone through periods where we have felt suffocated by time and or money then we got that building a great team is the fastest path to continue the lifestyle business – but it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes commitment.

FACEBOOK:
We love Facebook but if Facebook went down, or took our pages down tomorrow we would be fine because we have other opt-in/marketing processes too.

WHAT MAKES US MONEY:
We create evergreen products and packages. We have a call to action in all of our work. We get the concept of ‘always be selling’ but we do it in authentic ways. We love to give. We monetise social media by bringing people to a website and getting their email then offering services to our ideal client.

RELATIONSHIPS:
We value the importance of building quality relationships with a few key people who can help us in business, and whom we can help.

MONEY:
It’s not about chasing the dollar. Money doesn’t motivate us. Money doesn’t entirely bring happiness. It’s the freedom that does. It’s helping people. Or it’s making an impact. But at the same time we know that making great money is our right, our destiny. (Napoleon Hill agrees…he says “Abundance is your birthright”). Our businesses pays for our adventures, our experiences, our training’s. Amazingly enough, we have all found it more economical to travel and run our businesses than run them from ‘home’. We have learnt the art of respecting money.

MINDSET:
We know our Mindset is so important. We acknowledge that life doesn’t have to be hard. We don’t believe working hard is the answer. We get that’s it’s OUR decision whether our business is easy or hard. It’s an old paradigm and it’s time to go. We desire to master the game of life. We work on our Mindset daily with affirmations, meditation and goals.

TIME:
We schedule time to work on the big picture – we know it’s a priority. List building is a priority. We are more productive when we are ‘on the road’ because we have deadlines and consolidated work times. We all struggle with distractions. Yes, we all do! But we’ve learnt to schedule ourselves so we can get the job done.

SELF CARE:
We give ourselves permission to take time out and know that our self care it important. We love massages, eating well and working out (like the yoga session we did this morning!). We know that when we are looking after ourselves we not only feel better, but we perform better.

OUR CLIENTS:
Our clients value us for our strategy calls because of the expertise we are able to share thanks to our own experiences, skills and knowledge. Our clients mean the world to us! Our desire is that they reap the benefits of working with us and are better for it.

HOW WE GOT AHEAD:
We got ahead by having coaches because we often can’t see the wood for trees in our own business. (Truth!). We get stuck in our habits too so we have Mastermind groups or Hubs we belong to and invest in to help hold us accountable. This has helped us create our revenue. We acknowledge that we can’t do it on your own.

WHAT WE GET:
We get that we don’t know it all, and we’re willing to be vulnerable enough to our ‘tribe’ so that we are still seen as human. We know that the key to building a great business is to get out of own way, to give ourselves permission.

THE GAME OF BUSINESS:
We realise that the secret is realising that business is really a game! It’s all about persistence! It’s all about winning more than losing. It’s about surrounding yourself with great people and a great team. But it’s also about knowing that sometimes you are going to have to lose to win. We have lost money. We have lost leads, deals, time, energy, clients, sleep and so much more. The trick is to play the game of business to win “not to lose”.

To win the game of business you need to be authentic, to come from service, and to not let ANYTHING stop you.

1. Start blogging or writing articles, or making videos or sharing your awesomeness.

2. Have an opt-in on your website.

3. Find out what your community wants and give it to them in the way they want it ie a challenge, an event, an online training.

Then all you need do is trust, because the best is yet to unfold.

Catherine x

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