Surround Yourself: Takeaways from #WDS2013
Why I Attend the World Domination Summit each year. I’ve written a fewtimes about my biggest takeaways from a particular conference that Chris Guillebeau puts on in Portland each year, but this time I wanted to share with you one of the few things in life I know to be true:
Surrounding yourself with awesome people is the best way to grow individually and as an entrepreneur.
Find Your People
During author Donald Miller’s keynote at this year’s World Domination Summit he said there are three main questions you need to ask yourself, but I’d go further and add two more in bold.
- Who are you?
- What do you want?
- What happened when you went for it?
- Who are your people?
- Where are they?
If you thought being an employee at a large company was lonely, try being a creative entrepreneur. It is so easy to get caught up in your work that you often forget to surround yourself with interesting people. That is why I go to conferences.
When I was first getting started with blogging and doing work online I didn’t know anyone. I might as well have been writing into a black hole.
But then I started commenting on the blogs of people I admired. I’d reply to their tweets. Send them personal emails. Mention them in my writing.
All of those things were great, but the biggest impact on me (and my first two years as an entrepreneur) came from attending World Domination Summit and spending time in person with them.
And slowly, I started to build my own community of entrepreneurs. Some would cheer me on, others would do their own projects that inspired me, and many would share what they learned along the way.
Day by day I slowly became friends with my heroes and mentors. I didn’t have some master plan to do so, but I showed up, worked hard, put myself out there, and now have the pleasure of working with them, joining their teams permanently for long-term projects and becoming super close friends.
But none of the above would have happened if I didn’t first figure out who my people were, where they were hanging out, and then surround myself with them.
That’s why I attend conferences.
That’s why I plan my work and life around when they happen.
That’s why I have dreams of my own someday.
And that’s why you should attend whatever conferences your people are at, because it can change your life.
(Note: This post was originally published on Medium. Photos by Armosa Studios.)