How Not Meeting Our Summit Goals Taught Us Where We Are Really Winning

The Fourth Annual Summit. Wow. The fact that I’m even saying “fourth annual” is a bit surreal to me, as this event started as nothing more than a dream to gather like-minded women to encourage and uplift each other in the path that we are all walking – busy, working women who have the desire to be successful not only in our professional lives, but also in our personal relationships.  

Let me start off by saying that this event is a dream come true, no matter what the outcome may be. If one woman feels seen, heard, encouraged, or just felt like it was a space she could be honest about the reality of where she’s at in her life, that is a win for me. However, this year, in particular, taught me and my team something I think we’ve needed to learn for the past four years.

Not meeting your goals does not equal failure.  

I know, that doesn’t feel like it makes sense, right? Let me explain.

We had a lot of goals as a team for this Summit. It’s our fourth year hosting the event and you would think by now we’d have it down to a science, that things would smoothly come together, and that we would see consistent growth each year, right? Wrong. We worked tirelessly, bringing in new minds to approach it differently, reframing our messaging, and going after our ideal audience like never before. We had a goal to sell 100 tickets, We had 75 people in attendance. From an outside perspective, it would seem as though we “failed” at reaching our goal, but something incredible happened instead. 

We realized the magic of this event is not in the amount of seats –
but in the intentionality of the day. 

We heard over and over again how the deep and meaningful relationships that came out of this event were one of the most valuable takeaways our attendees had. Can I tell you something? That didn’t come by chance. We sit down and think through the entire day; the seating chart, the order of speakers, the session topics, pairing people for lunch, placing intentional conversation starters on each table, and how we can cultivate a space where people let down their walls and truly get to know one another. 

The intimate nature of this event allows for that intentionality to take place, and it took a reframing of our perspective to see the beauty in not meeting our ticket sales goal. It took a changing of the narrative to understand that this is absolutely where we are winning. 

A lot of times as busy business woman, we’re constantly setting goals and striving towards them over and over again. We exhaust every effort and we’re disappointed when we don’t meet them or when things don’t look the way we wanted them to. I’m here to encourage you to change your mindset. While you may not have met a goal, look for where the magic was. 

What did you learn about yourself or your business that you can take moving forward and implement as a result? That’s where the true beauty is found.

Talk soon,

Heather