001: Post-retreat musings

Sharing my takeaways from the incredible retreat I went to last week, hosted by Alecia St. Germain and Jonathan Dugger of The Conscious Edge podcast. (Note, I mentioned Hello Audio in this episode, but actually ended up using Buzzsprout :-)

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Transcript

(Note: I mention Hello Audio in this episode, but actually ended up using Buzzsprout -- this is the fun of business experiments! Mostly unedited transcript below.)

Hey, everyone! I am fresh back from an in-person retreat. There were about eight people there. It was in Arizona, and it was so nice.

This is the first time I've gone to a retreat where I didn't know everyone. I knew the host. I knew one other person, but everybody else was a total stranger, so I was a little nervous but I know that when I'm in a room with people, I make friends and that was what I wanted to do most, was make friends, make connections, see who I could help, see who could help me, see what sort of collaborations would come out of this.

And it did not disappoint. This like whole experience made me want to prioritize doing this even more this year. And there is a cost to it. There's the cost of attending, there's a cost of getting there, you know, airplanes stuff and like Uber stuff or renting a car, all those things. But um oh man, it is so worth it.

I feel very connected to the people that I met. They were all super cool and this was the first time I was going to a retreat with people who have businesses that aren't like mine.

Like in the past, I would go to a retreat and it would be a bunch of people creating their own courses. Or it would be a bunch of people who are web designers.

And at this retreat, we had a much wider variety of people. There were real estate investors, yoga instructors. One woman owns her own bookshop. It was just so fun. If you have the opportunity to go and meet people in person, I highly recommend it.

I'm an introrovert. I don't love going places in person. I will make plans and then cancel them. But every time I've invested in a retreat, it has been really, really life-changing. It gave me an opportunity to show off my skills because there were people there saying, hey, I don't know how to describe what I do. And we were all asking them questions. Everybody was coming up with ideas and I was able to on the fly, come up with some copy to share with that person and other people were like, oh my gosh, amazing. How did you come up with that so fast? And honestly, it felt easy. And this just reinforced my confidence and my abilities.

Just fun all around. People gave me tips. There was a few things that I have had hangups on for years, some past experiences in my business that I was just holding on to as like, this is a failure. I can never try anything like this again. And then sharing that with the group, feeling a little cheeriy eyed about it, I had people telling me quickly, like they didn't even have to think for very long why it wasn't a failure at all. It was actually successful. It turned out really well for most of the people involved. and it gave me my freedom.

This was I had taken on a project. It was something that I didn't know how to do and I thought I would figure it out and I kind of dropped the ball on it. But I was able to step away from that when they said, hey, do you want to work on fixing this? I decided I didn't want to work on fixing it. I wanted to do something else.

And I was able to hook them up with my VA at the time who took up the reins of all the work I was doing and then has been working with them ever since, so two or three years now. And so it turned out really well for them, but I was holding on to this story inside that I had failed and just like five minutes of conversation in this group of people who we had all shared vulnerably over the previous two days.

And I feel like I can just let that go. It's really, really incredible. So good.

There were several conversations that are turning into collaborations later. We're already having some people reaching out to other people for connections and support.

I might be partnering with someone on their podcast as a guest expert. I'm going to hire somebody to help me with my finances from a consulting and kind of coaching perspective.

I was able to come up with some really cool ideas for the summit that I'm going to be in with someone who was there.

And all of this in like a warm sunny place over the course of several days with in a super cool house, which is amazing food. I can't even express how how cool it was.

So if you ever get a chance to do that, you should. I'm still kind of riding high after this, but I don't know about you when I come back from an event where I've been people peopling pretty hard, I need some recovery time. Like, I am not ready to step back into work.

I arrived back home in the morning from the airport and I slept the entire day and I just felt exhausted. And I thought, oh no, I've ruined my sleep for tonight, but no, I slept the whole night through and I still feel some lingering tiredness today the next day. But I built in sometime after this this trip to kind of recalibrate. So thankfully I'm taking advantage of that now.

But anyway, one of the many things that came out of that event is this idea, this hello audio podcast idea, and this wasn't even anything I mentioned to any of them there.

But one person who's there was a podcast producer and she was talking about all the cool things with podcasts. and I may still hire her at some point to do a public podcast for me, but I've been thinking about hello audio for years and I had been neglecting my newsletter list and I really think this is the best way to dip my toes back into sending messages because it's way easier for me to just drop a voice note and it's more fun.

This is the experience all of my best friends get. You do get more than one best friend. I'll go to the park. I'll be walking around. You might hear my feet crunching on gravel or me slipping in some mud. You might hear rain falling on me. or as I'm sitting in my car, you might hear the windshield wipers or cars driving by. But that's that's real life. That is what it's like to be my friend and hang out with me and I want you all to have that experience.

And and for me to know that maybe I'm I'm hanging out in your ears while you're out walking at the park or while you're doing dishes or laundry or driving some long distance place or riding on an airplane to a retreat.

So it's going to be fun. I'm super excited to see where this goes, but it is an experiment and I'm going to allow myself to try it out and if I don't like it to stop. So we're on the adventure together.

Need help with your copywriting or brand messaging? Book a discovery call on www.sarahdesign.com, and follow me on Instagram @sarahdesignagency Happy Selling!