Wow! What an amazing first day... I am so pinching myself as to what has unfolded. The participants absolutely blew my mind in what they have achieved and created thus far... It's been a big journey to get them here both for myself and them. Some committed to this program over 12 months ago and some only a few weeks ago. I speak to so many to discover the talent that turns up and qualifies for our retreats. It's humbling to see the groups and types of personalities that we get the pleasure to work with.
The day started with getting our kids off to the school and child care and getting ourselves packed and ready to head of to the airport to collect some of our interstate participants. We had packed most of our stuff the night before so it was easy to pack the car and head off. We had a 3 car procession organised so we can fit all the luggage and people coming with us. I love helping my authors get there easily and the chats we have driving in are always fun and insightful.
We stop over always for a big brunch so we can be full until afternoon tea. The excitement and nervous energy is all around us and what is ahead for the next 48 Hours.
We arrived at the venue at midday and with my awesome crew we set up the training room so that it suited the cozy nature we like to run our training sessions with all the product around the training room. The participants continued to arrive one by one and settle into their rooms. At 2pm we hit off the 11th Ultimate 48 Hour Author Retreat. Our first section was the Meet and Greet with feedback from all the authors on each others covers, titles and taglines. As we have a big group we kept each introduction to a Maximum of 5 minutes as with 16 women it can get out of hand :) We also introduced the 1 Minute rule this retreat - keep your questions, comments and quieries to 1 minute so that we can keep moving through the important content and learnings.
The first speaking hour was an interesting time for most, but I must say very well executed as far as 1st hours go in my experience. I was really astonished at the amazing people making up this retreat. I love their intellect, colourful lives and knowledge shared all around.
We had a lot of fun completing the potato exercise (which you can only experience if you attend one of these in the future). The second hour of speaking out chapters was even better. I know they are all getting a hang of it now and tomorrow they will be smashing out the rest of their books.
Our retreat song is 'This is it' by Dannii Minogue and its being sung and danced to every time we play it as we return in the training room. After the 2nd speaking hour we were straight into dinner and a 3 course meal which was super yummy. Great conversations were had around the 3 tables. I got everyone to write an Aha moment and Action from Day 1 and create a paper plane. Following dinner we stood in a round circle and threw the planes in all sorts of directions. People got the right message for themselves in the plane they picked up. It was really nice to see the insights they were already having.
As the venue is alcohol free we went to our suite and sneaked in a few drinks... Our authors to be were presented with thir Friday night challenge. They had their mock up covers, we wrote for them a pre-prepared post and we helped them create a Paypal button. They then had to post on their social media channels and start the pre-sales of their books. Within minutes of the first few people posting, sales were starting to come through. I love seeing them cringe at the thought of putting this up and then squeel with excitement when the sales start coming through. Here is an image of people in action.
Spa O'Clock arrived and we got ready for a warm up before bed.... Except it was not a warm up, it was a cool down - the spa was only half warm and not very comfortable - we jumped in anyway. We got ready and did some fun exercises to warm up. Tomorrow we must get this fixed with the staff... Instead we had a warm shower and had some more fun with everyone that was still hustling with their pre-sales. This is us pretending it was warm :) You can tell Tracey is a bit frozen...
So here I am now in bed just after Pumpkin Hour which is our limit so we are fresh for the new day. I will be up at 7am to run a 7 Minute exercise routine to get our day started. Lets see who joins me :) I am so happy how it is all unfolding and feel super blessed to have all these inspirational people around me. If you want to see some of the videos and other pics just follow me via my personal profile on Facebook. See you tomorrow night for the summary of Day 2...
Love Nat x
#BooksAreSexy
