Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

A Tale of Two Seminars (And a Tale of Two Attitudes)
I went to a big seminar in 2006 and came back with lots of great information, but did very little networking. Everybody had niches that were very different from mine. I made little to no effort to interact with them because I felt like I had nothing to offer them and they had nothing to offer me.

I came home without a single person I wanted to keep in touch with. And while I have incorporated a lot of the knowledge I gained at that seminar into running my business, I still haven’t taken any tangible action on what I learned there.

The seminar I attended last weekend was an entirely different story. I made it a high priority to get to know people no matter whether their niche was related to mine or not. And I learned from the insights of every one of them.

I discovered a whole different direction for my business as I saw that people viewed me in a much different way than I viewed myself. I came home with a bunch of business cards of people I wanted to keep in touch with.

I still haven’t gotten in touch with all of them. I am part of an ongoing mastermind group. I have no choice but to take action on the things I learned because people are looking forward to me doing them and holding me accountable for taking action. And I’m getting much needed resources and encouragement from people I met there.

Was the content at last weekend's seminar that much better than the one last year? Probably not. Were the people that much more open at this one than at the other? The people at this one were amazing, but I’m sure there were some wonderful people at the other one, too.

The difference between what I got out of the two seminars is in a willingness to reach out to others.

I’ve come to a conclusion over the past year that there’s an amazing thing about human interaction. When you pour a liquid from one glass into another, one glass has less than it had before and the other has more. When people pour themselves out into other people, the one pouring and the one being poured into BOTH have more and no one has less.

Last weekend's seminar has reinforced that idea. I got a hundred times more out of this seminar than out of the other not because of the content, but because I poured and was poured into by those around me.

And unlike the other seminar where I came home with nothing but notes, the benefits of this seminar continue with ongoing friendships. And it call came out of approaching it with a different mindset.
Jeff

Labels: mindset, seminar

Wild, Wild Weekend (Plus)
Greetings, y'all. I'm back from an extended weekend in Atlanta at the recent Jim Edwards Infoproduct Creation Seminar, plus a bonus Outsourcing Secrets Revealed seminar.

Wow! Lots of great ideas, lots of great people I met (some of whom you can expect to get to know in coming months. I plan to start putting my advice about getting into audio and video marketing into action by creating some teleseminars with people I think you'd enjoy hearing from).

I experienced some big, eye-opening surprises at the seminar and after it. And I mean BIG. How big? They're likely to affect the direction of my business in several big ways. But all those plans are in the very earliest of stages. (Don't you love how much information I'm giving out in this post?)

Seriously, though, it was a weekend that still has my mind buzzing with possibilities. I'll share some of my discoveries in posts to come. But right now there's too much that I still need to process.
Jeff

Labels: seminar