I Went to an Invite-Only Mastermind. Here’s Everything I Learned

  Sam Vander Wielen: I just got back from a three day mastermind with New York Times bestselling authors, YouTube creators with millions of subscribers and founders running multimillion dollar companies.

I walked away with pages of notes on pricing psychology, LinkedIn strategy, and even storytelling. But the thing that hit me the hardest. Is realizing that even after everything that I’ve built, I still don’t fully believe in myself or what’s possible for me.

Today, I’m sharing every tactic and takeaway from the Mastermind that I learned from everyone else. Plus the thing that nobody talks about when you’re finally in the room, you always wanted to be in.

Welcome to On Your Terms® or Welcome back if you listen regularly. Thank you so much for being here on, On Your Terms®. I try to share episodes where I teach you how to be as present in your life as profitable in your business. Sometimes we straight up focus on business, which is more or less what we’re talking about today.

And other times I really talk about how I’m also present in my life, regardless of the fact that I run a multi seven figure business and really how both of those have to work together to help me be both present and profitable.

I thought I would kick things off today by talking about what this Mastermind even was and why I was there.

So basically this all started years and years and years ago when I started going, um, just as an attendee to the annual conference called Craft & Commerce. It’s in Boise, Idaho, every single June, and it’s put on by Kit, formerly Convert Kit. They’re in Boise every single year. I started going in either 2018 or 2019.

It obviously got a little interrupted by covid and then my parents died and then I went back agAIn. And last year you might remember, I gave a keynote at Craft & Commerce, which was just like literally the highlight of my online business career. And then also got to teach a workshop at that conference as well.

So I’ve been going to Craft & Commerce for so many years, and in doing so, I’ve really built up a nice little group of friends at that conference because Craft & Commerce is one of those conferences where the same people kind of tend to go every single year. There’s like always a little bit of a fresh batch of people, but you will also see like the same foundational people there every single year.

I can’t tell you how many people I know who say to me that Craft & Commerce is a like a must on their calendar every year where they just like pop that in and they’re like, I’m definitely going to that, and everything else can be scheduled around it. That is 100% how I feel too. I’m going agAIn this year. I just love it so much. So going there year in and year out really exposed me to so many incredible people.

There’s something really special about Craft & Commerce, like the kind of people that it attracts are my people. I imagine that you would like them a lot too. They’re just really, really down to earth. I would say. There’s like literally zero gatekeeping. Everybody is willing to talk with you and I think what’s so cool about Craft & Commerce more than any other conference I’ve been to, is that you can see somebody who’s like, you know, quote unquote famous in our, in our little neck of the woods, who will be sitting right next to you at a workshop, you know, or sitting right next to you in the keynote, uh, like mAIn stage area, watching somebody on stage give a talk and they’ll turn and talk to you.

They’ll, they like chat with you about resources and what they’re doing and what’s working for them. It’s just a really welcoming and down to earth event.

So because of all that, that led to me finding out last year when I was at Craft & Commerce about this new year long mastermind that was, uh, evolving called Aspen. So it’s the year long mastermind that I’m actually in this year in 2026. Um, there’s only about maybe 16 or 18 of us total in it. And it’s an incredible mastermind that’s really been born, I feel like, out of people going to Craft & Commerce.

Aspen itself was actually also born out of this, uh, twice yearly event called MashUp. So a lot of people in the online business industry go to this MashUp event. It’s usually held in April and October in Atlanta. It’s always in Atlanta. And , this event has been getting bigger and bigger and it’s very similar to Craft & Commerce in that like kind of the same people are going all the time.

And it’s also a lot of the same people from Craft & Commerce. There’s just like a lot of overlap and as MashUp was growing and people were just loving it so much, some of the people in MashUp sAId to Shawn Blanc, one of the people who founded MashUp all along with Mo Bunnell, um, was that they wanted more, right?

Like they wanted to meet more outside of this twice yearly, um, meetup in Atlanta for MashUp. And that’s how Aspen was born. Aspen became a mastermind out of MashUp. I had never been to MashUp before, and so I had, I had heard about it. It’s, it’s like kind of well known in the industry, but I had actually never been.

And I, I’m pretty open about talking about the fact that like before my book came out. I don’t feel like I was very well connected in this industry. Like I didn’t know a lot of people. I kind of lAId low. I sort of had to because of what I had going on, uh, taking care of my dad and then my parents dying and all of that.

And yeah, just didn’t really have those kinds of connections. But when I heard that Aspen was forming and that so many people who were from Craft & Commerce were joining it, I knew I needed in.

And since I joined Aspen, I figured, well, I should probably go and see the original event, that MashUp event that I had never been to before. And now that I’m in Aspen, you know, it’s sort of what’s just happening. Like people in Aspen are going to MashUp and vice versa. So I just went to MashUp for the very first time.

It’s essentially a three day mastermind. Um, kind of like two half days, one full day. Um, some people extended their trip. I did not because I had my pottery class on Sunday, so I refused to miss it and didn’t go early.

That was actually hard because I missed out on seeing my friends and I was, uh, having a ton of fomo, but, as I, I practice what I preach here on the podcast and like I’m sticking to really what’s lighting me up and like nurturing myself and my creativity offline. So,, I, I stuck around in New York and went to my pottery class and didn’t get there until Monday.

So essentially we had Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday all with our Mastermind and there were about 40 of us there. I was gonna say all over, from all over the country, but actually all over the world. We had, uh, Oliver Aust came from Berlin, Germany. We had, uh, Jo Franco came from Antwerp and we also had, my friend Mallory came from Toronto. So we had people from all over the place, including obviously all over the US.

Okay. I have to tell you a little bit about like the types of people who are at this Mastermind in order for you to really understand what I got out of it. So. There were several New York Times bestselling authors in the room, which I’m starting to get used to these days because the Aspen Mastermind I’m in has several, uh, including several more to come that are, their books are just about to come out and they’re like very clearly gonna hit the list.

Um, so there were several New York Times authors. There were many YouTubers of all varieties. There were people killing it on LinkedIn. There were book agents, two book agents at least that I know of, and a few book editors and ghost writers. There were coaches of all varieties in the industry. There were a lot of people who do more like, I would say, high level consulting, even for Fortune 100 companies. There were SaaS company founders, software founders. The list just went on and on.

At this point, I’m not really gonna like name names unless I know that I have that person’s permission, in terms of when I share with you in a moment, uh, all the things that I took away from this trAIning, but I also have been tagging people on Instagram and letting you know, like who was at, it’s not a secret as to like who was at it, and I just recommend you go and follow them and learn from them online.

So here’s how the Mastermind itself was structured. So day, day one on Monday I arrived in from New York. Um, there was some time for everybody to mingle, kind of like a cocktAIl happy hour situation. Then we did this really cool intro situation where we actually stood in the room. Everybody had to stand. My back was killing me by the end of it, but we had to stand and it was this like gigantic circle of the 40 people, and everybody went around and gave a very, very brief intro about who they were and like what they did.

But what I think is really cool about MashUp and Aspen included. Is that there’s really no secret that people are there to get something, but they’re also there to give something.

And so instead of just like acting like we’re all like, oh yeah, I would love to like get coffee sometime, but you know, you’re just asking that person to be on their podcast. People are pretty upfront about it and these things, but you, you also have to be forthcoming with like, I can also help you with this, right?

Or, I know this person I can introduce you to. So when we went around in the intros, you had to say something you were there for, that you needed help with, or that you wanted and something you were able to help other people with, right? So when it got to me, I was saying like, I want to get more podcast guest spots because I want to sell more of my books.

So also if anybody has uh, ideas about that, like I’m all ears and, uh, uh, a couple of people have told me I’m good at marketing so I can help you with things like emAIl marketing. Or scaling digital products. And so I had people coming up to me asking me tons of questions about my emAIl list or about the fact that I only sell two digital products that, you know, do pretty good.

And then I also had people coming up to me being like, Hey, you sAId you wanted a podcast thing. Like I know somebody with a podcast that you should get on. So it’s really nice because it’s, it’s, I don’t know, I just like how it’s a little bit more upfront.

After we did our intros, we had dinner catered at this, uh, event house. It’s called the Pace House in Atlanta. It was beautiful. We kept mingling with each other and then we all walked back to our hotel and hung out outside, um, around the fire pit for so long, which was so nice. And on day two, we were like up and at it. It was a really full day. We were up and at it really early.

Everything started at 8:30 the next morning. With breakfast and then sessions all day long and they were back to back to back sessions, um, about a lot of the things I’m going to tell you about in a minute.

In the afternoon, we broke into groups of like three or four and had hot seats where everybody, I think everybody in our group got 20 minutes to have the floor share something. Whether it was like you just wanted to talk about something, you had a question, you wanted to pick the brAIns of the people who were in your group. Um, whatever it was, you got your 20 minutes. I got so lucky because I had. Like a really famous agent and book editor in my hot seat. And then, uh, my friend who’s about to come out with a New York Times bestselling book. And so, and then my new, my other new friend who’s like a YouTube star and has been on Netflix. And so I just had like a really cool group of people who I got to pick the brain of.

It was also so cool to be like, I almost imagine what it would be like if you had like a really big company and you had a board of advisors or something and you got to like pick advisors that are from all these different walks of life, getting everybody’s perspective on my problem or my question was just so invaluable.

After our hot seats, we had dinner agAIn. We had another cocktAIl hour and hung by the fire, I think even later that night because we had all just spent all this time together all day and we just like needed time to decompress and get to know each other. But that was like some of my favorite time.

On day three, it was really a much shorter day. So I got up really early to meet a whole bunch of people for coffee because I essentially cannot sleep when I go to these events anymore. And I just, I’m up. So like, we might as well go do something. And there was a really cool, um, coffee shop next door called Read. Um, anybody’s from Atlanta. I thought it was adorable. It was a combo bookstore coffee shop. It was beautiful. And they, um, opened really early.

So we all met there for coffee, walked to breakfast, and then I got to go over to a podcast studio in downtown Atlanta. And go back on, uh, my friend and the founder of Kit Nathan Barry’s podcast. So agAIn, I should say, so I was on Nathan’s podcast last year right before my book came out, and Nathan was kind enough when he found out.

He was also at this mastermind, uh, MashUp mastermind with me this week. And when he found out I was there, uh, his team asked if I was cool to record agAIn. Like, obviously, yeah, sure. So I went to go do that and then grabbed a cab home, uh, or grabbed a cab to the Airport and went home to New York. It took me over two hours to drive home from the Airport.

So I got home really late on Wednesday night, and uh, I have basically been a walking zombie ever since. I’m recording this like two days later, and I’m still just like staring off into space.

While it was fresh, I really, really wanted to sit down and share with you what I learned from all of these incredible people at this mastermind. And then I wanna share what some of my personal takeaways were, not just from what I learned from them but by what it. Also what it’s like to be in a room full of people like that. And you might be listening to this, ’cause like I imagine if I had been listening to this before and you’re like, well I’m never gonna get into a room like that.

And like, must be nice. You know, I, these days I’m getting a lot more of the like, must be nice type of things. So first of all, I wanna talk about it because I think that this didn’t happen by accident in terms of how you start getting into rooms like this. I also think there might be a lot of story, there were people there of like varying degrees of success, revenue lengths of time they’ve been in business, right? Like all over the place. And it was so funny because no matter who you talk to, whether it was the New York Times bestselling author or the person who’s just made a giant life pivot and like, feels like they had nothing to offer the group, everyone felt like they didn’t belong in the room, everyone.

So it was really funny that like we also come up with this story. I kind of wrote a whole book about the arrival fallacy of like, when I start my business, I’ll be happy. We kind of come up with the story of like, oh, well I don’t belong in that room yet, but like when I do, I’m gonna like feel like I belong there.

No, you won’t. And so it won’t feel like that now. It won’t feel like that then. And so it’s really about just starting to like insert yourself slowly but surely into these rooms, like one step at a time.

So let’s talk about what I learned from them while I still remember it. So one of the co-founders of the MashUp Mastermind is Mo Bunnell. Mo is an incredible entrepreneur who we have so much to learn from, but I, he shared so many different things, uh, about selling and pricing and so many different things related to funnels.

With all of us, it was so helpful, but I think that everyone collectively walked away with this very simple pricing tip from him that kind of blew their mind.

So for one, Mo gave us all the tip that when you’re pricing something, you should never price anything with a round number right of like ending.

He sAId there should never be more than one zero at the end of a number. And second of all, he believes in picking really weird numbers. Okay? So like let’s say instead of me making my product $499 or $497, we make it like $464 or something like this, right? Or $460, like something kind of random. There are a couple of different reasons he sAId this is, uh, a good idea.

Uh, one is that he sAId that when people see weird numbers, they tend to believe them a little bit more, right? It’s like, it’s like I trust that that’s like the value of this product versus like, oh, you priced it this way because $19.99 sounds better than saying $20. You know? But if I see something $17, it just sounds like it’s worth $17.

Do you know what I mean? But there was actually an even bigger, I would say, tactical reason why Mo prices things this way. He also does it because it allows you to do price rAIses because I can tell you as somebody who has always priced my stuff as like $1999 or $347 or always like rate on those cusps, I don’t rAIse my prices partially because I’m like, I feel like I’m at the ceiling. Right? So if I’m at $1999 now, what am I gonna do? $2,050? Like it’s kind of weird and it feels like it’s not worth it to go above that $2,000 mark.

So what Mo says is that he always does, and he always recommends to his clients, is that you institute an 8% price rAIse every single January 1st, and when you start pricing your stuff as like weird numbers, like $470, now you have an automatic price rAIse on January 1 of 8%.

It doesn’t sound as weird as if you had priced it at $499 and then done an 8% price rAIse the next year. I thought that that was so smart, and I wish that this was something that I would’ve instituted a long time ago and just gotten people in my audience used to the fact that my prices are just naturally rAIsing over time, and he says that you should just make it known company wide. Like, Hey, my prices increase every year, 8% on January 1st or more. Maybe you have to for whatever you do, right? But like for a digital product, that seems perfectly reasonable. I know that for me, my costs have gone way up and my prices have not. Right? So, uh, if anything, we’ve played more with pricing, discounts and all that.

So it got me thinking about even when I do pricing discounts in the future, maybe making them an weirder number so that the following year I can do an 8% increase to cover my own increasing costs, right? The cost of all of our wages has gone up. Taxes are all over the place. Like the cost of all of our software has gone up.

Everything my, my contractors are charging me more. Everyone’s charging me more, but I’m not charging my customers more. So I thought that this was a really, really impactful tip.

The other thing I wanted to mention from Mo’s training that I knew would be helpful to all of you was that Mo recommends to his clients that you never say fees when you’re referring to your costs or your, the price of your product.

And you also never start a sentence with like, it costs, like my trAIning costs, my coaching costs, my product costs, right? He said, you should always call it an investment because it shows that essentially when you use the word investment, somebody’s getting something back for it. So when we invest in the stock market, we’re supposed to get a return.

So the idea here is instead of saying like, my fees are $8,000, it’s like the investment for this program is $8,000. And that makes it sound more active also, like that the person is making an investment in you, in themselves, in bettering, you know, whatever their career, their health, their money, whatever.

It’s. I know that I, for one, I always do this with the bundle. I never say like, it costs, I, I try not to in the webinar. It’s interesting, I’m gonna be really conscientious of this moving forward, of saying like, the investment in the ultimate bundle is X. Um, but I think that this is a really good one, along with my own personal tip, that like you never call a webinar.

Uh, a webinar. You should also always call it a training. And like I never called the Ultimate bundle, of course. I mean, because for one, it actually is not a course. It’s legitimately not a package of templates and trAInings. But I also know psychologically what the word course triggers another people, which is like, oh, no, another thing to do, and that’s not what I want to do to people.

So all that to say the words that we choose, the word, the words that we use to describe our products, programs, services matter a lot.

One of the other trAInings we had was by Justin Wright. Justin is one of the go-to experts on how to grow your LinkedIn profile to support your business, and I know that all kinds of people in the online business industry hire Justin to come in and like do all kinds of magic with their LinkedIn profiles.

Then get tons of traffic to their business. It’s not personally a place that I focus on as a, my mAIn, like I don’t put, uh, what I would call like independent effort into LinkedIn. We have a presence there and Michelle on our team repurposes the content that we’re creating elsewhere for LinkedIn because it’s like why not, but it’s not personally a place that I pour a lot of energy into.

I do know, however that a lot of you do, and I also know it, it’s a great strategy and it’s a great place to hang out. CertAInly better than like Instagram and TikTok. So I don’t blame you if you like to hang out there. So I wanted to give you a couple of gems from Justin because he was just dropping ’em left and right.

The first was that your line in your bio, so like essentially when you go to your LinkedIn profile, the first sentence you see under somebody’s name should be more about the person who’s reading it than about you or description of your resume.

So it was so funny because first I had to find my LinkedIn password as we were sitting there and I was like fumbling around on my phone trying to find out how to even log into LinkedIn, like what was my username?

I didn’t know. So I go in there. Turns out, by the way, I had hundreds of pending requests. I had no idea. So, uh, I have, I have no interest in LinkedIn, but I went and I looked to see, um, what my description was and my description was like lawyer turned, entrepreneur, author, podcast host. So it’s like it was exactly what he told you not to do, right?

I didn’t know. So he was saying like, that reads more like your resume, which your, the rest of your LinkedIn bio kind of does for itself. Whereas really what’s important is like that’s the part that someone who’s searching is going to see, or somebody who lands on your profile is gonna see, and they need to know, is this a place for them? Do you help them?

So I changed mine from the whole like lawyer turned-entrepreneur thing to more of the like, I help online entrepreneurs legally protect their online businesses. And then I put the little like divider line and put author, podcast host. So he sAId that was fine, but as long as you had the other part first.

The next thing Justin recommended was changing your header image or even utilizing that space to begin with to have some sort of designed image with a call to action of whatever you want the people who find you on LinkedIn to do, do you want them to join your newsletter? Listen to your podcast, like download something, whatever it is, put that there.

He sAId that all of your content on LinkedIn, in order for it to succeed must do one, at least one of these three things. It has to educate. Validate or motivate, which makes a lot of sense because that’s really similar to what other kinds of content we post in on other platforms.

He also let us know about this featured section on the LinkedIn profile, which I didn’t previously even know about, which is essentially where you get to design a couple of boxes, a handful of boxes that go on your LinkedIn profile to advertise to your other calls, to action, your products, maybe your book, your podcast, whatever you want people to go check out from you.

He also recommended that the very first thing that’s in that featured section is the most important. So the thing that shows up on the leftmost box, because on mobile, that’s the only thing that’s going to show up. So never thought about that. That’s really important. So if you knew that, you know, for example, your, your newsletter was the most important thing that you wanna drive traffic to, I would probably make it be that first square.

The next thing I learned from so many people in the group were just so many book tips. I honestly don’t know how much you’ll really want to know about this or how helpful it will be to everyone. Um, I know not everybody wants to write a book or feels called to or anything like that, or just, you might have it still as like a dream, but you’re not currently in the process.

But I thought I would share with you just something that I thought was so interesting and that just continues to blow my mind. I think you would be really surprised by how much authors have to do for their own books, that how much we have to buy them ourselves in order to get them to conferences or in, in the certAIn rooms, or, um, to donate them to certAIn groups or whatever.

Um, how many people in the room who are really, really, really successful authors, like way more than probably I could ever imagine being who hire editors on their own? Right? So like when you get a big five book deal, you get an editor from the Big Five and they’re an incredible editor, they go out and they hire another editor, somebody who’s even more hands on with them because the editors at the Big Five are stretched thin and they have a lot of different projects going on, and sometimes they take months to get back to you about your transcript.

A lot of them are using editors that they’re working with day to day to day, which I thought was just so wild. A lot of them also use ghost writers, which I also thought was really wild.

Um, as somebody who loves writing and like, that was always my dream of writing a book. I was so surprised to learn that people wanna write a book, they don’t actually write. So it was like, it was just really interesting. I’m like, oh, alright, so like, supports your business right then. There’s all different kinds of ways to go at this and I just, that kind of blew my mind.

Obviously there’s always dispelling the myth that like, writing books makes you rich or something like that. It is, it is only confirming to me hanging out with like bigger and bigger authors that, the money is not coming from the books. And so I, I feel like it’s my duty to tell people that, like when you see us going out there and promoting books, getting book deals, that like I am spending a lot of my own money to do that, right?

That my business being such like a well-oiled machine is what allows me to go out and write the book, promote the book, and then pay for the book eventually to do things that, um, a lot of my contemporaries in the author world are doing, like. Big, big, big speaking gigs like speaking at Google, like we’re talking like multi five figure six figure speaking fees, right? That is where they’re getting money. That’s also where their book essentially leads them. So they like write the book and then they get, yes, they get the advance, but they’re really pointing people to like, Hey, hire me to come speak. And then that’s really what they’re making money off of.

It’s also then circuitously like helping to build back their book. ’cause they’ll tend to buy copies of the book. So it’s just very interesting, the book world has blown my mind and I feel like it’s kind of, I don’t know, I just almost feel like funny that I, I wrote one ’cause I’m just like, I had a very different experience.

I had no idea this was all going on. Like nobody told me. I was just like, I wanna write a book and like, I’ll promote it myself, I guess. Um, so very interesting.

I also learned a ton of strategies and like promo hacks and things that people are doing for reviews and how they’re selling copies and companies they’re using to buy copies of their books, uh, to using individuals addresses to, to bump themselves up on the New York Times.

Stuff that blew my mind. I also don’t think I’m at liberty to share like who they’re coming from and the specifics of them. But the things that are going on, you guys, unbelievable.

My new favorite person that came out of this mastermind and the person who, when I saw the list of all the people who were going, there were only a few people on there who I didn’t know at all, had never met at all, and one of them who was most excited about was Jo Franco.

So Jo is so cool. I already knew who Jo was. You probably also know who Jo is if you lived through COVID and had a Netflix account because Jo was the host of the vacation properties, uh, show on Netflix The World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals. And I feel like everybody watched it during COVID ’cause we were all dreaming of being able to travel agAIn. Um, she also has an incredible Instagram account where she like talks about travel, but also talks a lot about language and linguistics.

She is, she is super, super smart. She’s really cool and she’s working on a really cool self-produced project right now, um, where she’s producing her own travel show that focuses on words or phrases that are essentially untranslatable into English. So things in other countries that they have, like hygge is probably a well known one, not one she’s currently covering.

But like if you, if you know about the Danish concept of hygge, um, it’s this idea of like coziness and being calm at home and enjoying your surroundings, that doesn’t translate into any like one perfect word. I think it’s the coolest idea. I just think it’s so cool what she’s doing. She’s already dropped episode one, so I’ll make sure I link to that down below.

But from Jo, you know, I am just always blown away by meeting people. Who are truly creative. My friend Michelle, is like this. I tell her this all the time, and who, who are, are just true creators at heart, who feel more passionate about actually like learning their craft, expressing their craft, expressing their creativity than they do about like how it’s perceived and how it’s packaged and who cares about it.

Like Jo, for example, has been told that one of her ideas was actually too smart. To be, uh, taken on by any major network, right? That the people weren’t smart enough to watch this thing. And, you know, somebody like me would probably be, first of all, crushed by that. And second of all be like, okay, I’ll like repackage it so that it’s like maximally like viral, you know?

And so I can figure out how to spread this thing. And Jo’s like. No, this is the best way it to tell the story. I also think that’s like rude to people who, like, you’re totally underestimating people’s intelligence and how many people are interested in this topic, and so, you know what? I’m gonna go do it myself.

And like she’s so into to actually, she’s just so committed to actually telling the story that she wasn’t going to take note for an answer.

I also think that you can learn a lot from someone like her where she understands that storytelling is at the heart of, of any visual display, of like a travel show, for example. Like she has to be. As good as she can at her craft of editing and narration and like storyboarding ahead of time, right? And all of the things that go into producing content like that.

Like I think a lot of people just think people just like pop up and they create that content. And it was a big reason why Jo actually, who had a super successful YouTube channel with millions of subscribers stop doing vlogs because she was saying like, I’m, I’m not trying to just do vlogs the way everybody else does, vlogs, where you just show up and you’re like, oh, look, here’s like a cute coffee shop.

She wants a real true story about a place, about its language, about its history, and its people. And so yeah, she’s just taken the time. She went and actually got a master’s degree in film editing. Like she’s just a very cool person. So I thought it was. It was just so cool to learn from somebody who’s really passionate about what she’s doing and finding the right place for her art and her medium instead of adapting her message to a platform for an algorithm.

This didn’t come from any one person in particular, but I also, last but not least. Just in observing this group of people who, like I said, they’ve pretty much all been to MashUp before. There were a handful of us who were new, but observing this group of people who had dedicated themselves to in-person community over time, right? And like these people have gotten together at least twice a year. And then many of them see each other in other, like other events and stuff like that, including Craft & Commerce for years and years and years, there are actually a lot of people who were there who have never missed a MashUp in all the years that it’s been on.

And these people have formed very tight bonds. They’re some of, I would say, their closest friends in their life, let alone in online business. Many of them traveled together. They’ve started businesses together. They work together. They secretly announced, uh, we can’t talk about it yet, but a major company in our space got sold and one of the other people from MashUp started working with one of the other people in MashUp. Like it’s just so, there’s so many things, book deals have come out of it. Um, so many things have come out of that community and I just thought it goes to show that I think sometimes it, it’s easy to think like, oh, I have to go to like every conference this year or max out, like all these visits, like as if it’s a checklist.

In reality, I think observing the people in MashUp, I’m like, you’d be better off going to like one thing that has a small, very targeted group of people and consistently going there. Then consistently networking and continuing to build relationships with those same people, and you’d be shocked how much your network can actually grow just from like that, like there were 40 people at MashUp, for example. The number of connections and people that everybody knows and people that people used to know and work with and do a project with or whatever, it’s exponential. And so it really helps to remind me that the, you don’t have to be everywhere all at once.

So I’d also like to share some of my own takeaways from being at MashUp this past week. Um, not necessarily these little like tips and strategies I learned, but just some reflections I have from spending time in a room like that. The first was during the LinkedIn trAIning. I, I always have this like aha moment where I’m just like, oh, there’s a platform for everybody.

Like, you, you can go to a conference like this or go to Craft & Commerce and you’ll meet somebody who has millions of subscribers on YouTube but isn’t on Instagram. You’ll meet somebody who has a hundred thousand Instagram subscribers, but has no emAIl list and no podcast like insert combination here. You can find that person.

I am always shocked when like I go to Craft & Commerce or when I was at MashUp, like to find out like, wow, that guy’s killing it on LinkedIn. But he has like nothing anywhere else because that’s his thing, right? And I just always think like. That’s awesome. That is so reassuring to me that I don’t have to be everywhere at once.

That it’s actually just better to pick the place that you like to hang out and not buy into the story. That’s like, in order to be successful, I have to be on Pinterest or I have to be on TikTok, or I have to be on Instagram or insert thing here, right? Like we can all come up with stories about that. I could tell you a million stories about how people who do what I do are way bigger on YouTube and so like therefore they must be killing it.

So I should go to YouTube. It’s like. No, I know where I’ve built my audience. I keep nurturing it there, and by continuing to spread myself so thin on all these other platforms, I’ll actually lose. I think the, the connection I do have in the, on the platform, I’ve built it on.

Okay, the next one has to do with AI. Oh, oh AI. Um, me and my friend Steve just kept calling ourselves the AI Luddites, um, because that’s how we feel. Here’s the deal about AI. There are so many cool ways that people are using it. Yes, this is true. This was only confirmed by everything that I saw there, and. It was really cool to watch.

There were, there were at least one presentation about AI directly and then others that mentioned them a lot and it was just like, that is awesome. Like, yes, there’s, there are great ways to use this, right? I think what’s really interesting in case you’re also like this, is that there was like a little secret group of us who were like making googly eyes at each other that don’t really care to use it that much.

And it was really interesting because sometimes you can feel very alone in it of just kind of like, I’m so glad you guys are building like bots for your bots, for your bots, and like. Now, like cowork is all like a thing. And we were like secretly texting each other like, what is cowork? And like somebody wrote me back and was like, I’m still Googling. What is AI? And we were just joking around about it. I think it was just kind of reassuring that there were some other people that were just like, eh, you know, and, and like a range of myth, like I’m not anti, I don’t care so much to learn it. I, I guess I also have the controversial view that I’m like, is this, it’s not that it’s a fad.

I’m not saying it’s a fad, like as if it’s going to die out and never be used again. I feel more like we’re at a bursting bubble point, right? Where like, it, it’s like, you know, you hear it’s like they, they advertise like a vacuum cleaner has AI and I’m like, oh my goodness. Like one day we’re, I hope that we’ll just stop hearing about that kind of stuff.

And it, it gets kind of bloated. I don’t know. It feels a little bit bloated and I hope we kind of come back down to earth about it. But I also had this like aha realization moment. Where, ’cause people were like, oh, don’t talk to Sam about AI, like she’s anti, I’m like, no, I’m not. And also by the way, we use it in certain ways in our business.

But I realized being at MashUp that it’s really the use of AI for creativity versus productivity that is like kind of where I fall on it. So where I’m like super anti AI is in the use of it for creativity. So what I’m talking about is what I believe they call, um, generative AI, right? Generating, uh, original writing, generating original social media posts, like without you doing anything for it, right?

Like not being based on your writing or your previous thoughts or whatever. I obviously understand aI is incredibly helpful for all things productivity, uh, automation like people were use. I learned there that people are using it for like, uh, kind of like a assistant. Like they tell like a to-do list and it scans their calendar and it knows what they worked on yesterday and like so many different things you can do with co-work that I had no idea.

It was all like my eyes were totally glazed over by the end. I had no idea. And I think that’s great if that’s what makes people happy like that and that’s helpful to them. That is great. Um, you know, I mean, personally it was kind of funny for me listening to some of the things they were listing off that the like, especially Cowork does for them.

And I was like, well, somebody on my team does that for me and I would rather work with somebody on my team. Like, I don’t want somebody to be doing that. Um, and I enjoy, like I only have one full-time employee, one part-time, and then another part-time contractor. We have a great little team. I love them and I don’t want them to go anywhere, and they’re good at what they do and they bring a lot to me that I also know AI doesn’t, like.

Yes, I know I could build out something that. Probably scans my calendar and tells me something and like, that’s great, but my team also knows how to manage my energy, which a bot does not. And so they’re the ones that are like, uh, hey, by the way, like, we know that this happens to you every time you come back from a conference.

Like, how about we buffer this more next time or do that thing, that stupid bot is not telling me that. So I, I, I don’t know. It’s like I, I hope everybody just gets to a place where like the hysteria around it calms down. Use it if you wanna use it, don’t if you don’t. But I, I did realize that like where everyone always accuses me of being anti AI, AI, it’s really just being a anti AI for your creativity.

I saw somebody say yesterday that if you’re a writer asking AI for ideas, that you need to reevaluate how you’re spending your time. And I can tell you as somebody who likes to write. Like I could sit here all day long and just like write like as long as my little fingers would keep going, I am endlessly filled with ideas of what I could write about things.

I wanna say, I feel like there’s not enough time in the world. It’s also because I get offline and I live my life, and so I’m not asking this bot to generate ideas of what I should write about. And I was also thinking about that from a business perspective that. If it could be it’s potential. I’m not saying it’s true, always true, but it could be potentially a sign that you’re not tapped in enough to your ideal customer if you’re having to ask AI to give you ideas of what to talk about to them.

So that is concerning to me that I was like, yeah, if you’re asking it to tell you, like straight up not, not like you’re saying to it like, I want to create a post about X, Y, and Z, like help me structure it or outline it, that’s different. But if you’re asking it for like completely generative AI. I would encourage you to get in the trenches and talk more to people who are around you.

Um, spend more time with your clients and just in general in your creativity, like getting out, getting offline, doing things for fun. Make something with your hands, destroys something with your hands, whatever, um, you need to do something that generates naturally, uh, a creative burst.

I also realized in being in this room that I just have such low expectations for myself. Um, it’s really interesting for me to be in a room like this and hear from people who have gotten just insane deals. I mean, like, well deserved, right? Well deserved. But like, the way that I look at it, I’m just like, wait what?

Like I wouldn’t have even thought to fight for that for myself or things that I know that they’re getting included for them, you know, with their publisher or this, that, the other thing, and I’m like. I never even asked. I just paid for it myself. Like I didn’t even know. Just having such like low expectations, because for me. It comes from this feeling of like, I’m just lucky to be there and therefore I have to like, make up for it somehow. And I think that that’s been really, really helpful for me to be around this kind of group of people who’ve pushed me to just be like, no, of course you, like, you should ask them for that, or you should expect that and they should do that for you.

And I’m like, really? Like, I just would never expect anybody to do that for me. So it, it just, I guess illuminates that kind of like, you know, mindset issue that I want to keep working on.

It’s definitely clear to me when, whether I’m in this room or at Craft & Commerce or answering dms on Instagram that I do not see myself apparently the way that some other people see me.

Uh, so some other people, I mean in general, but uh, in, in one of the main ways is that, um, people like, act like I’ve made it. Like kind of that’s my best way of describing it. Or, you know, like a lot of people think that I have the ideal business scenario where they’re just like. You sell the same two things they sell all the time.

You just like keep doing better and better. Your audience is growing like, dude, what are you so upset about? And I’m like. I don’t know. I don’t see it that way. Like whatever you see, I don’t see it. So I just think that’s really funny and I, I guess I shared it because I do think we all have this story that like you might think that if your business looked like mine or you had whatever, you would be like, oh, well then I would finally feel so awesome about myself and I’m like.

No, I hate to break it to everybody, but I’m sitting over here still not feeling awesome. So, um, it’s just from my perspective as I write about my book, it, it is just because this stuff is not, it’s not it, right? The, the subscribers, the followers, the book deals, the whatever the money you make in your business, it’s not what fills you up. It’s not what gives you the happiness.

I also don’t associate my like self sense of self or like self-worth with all of that stuff. And some people in our industry do more than others. Right? And so there’s some people you’ll meet that’ll be like very like, oh, if I had that thing, like I would feel so. Uh, accomplished or whatever.

And I’m like, well, maybe part of it is that I don’t think it’s that impressive to have like Instagram following. So maybe some of it is a little bit of that. I’m also from Philly and it’s like inherently built into my DNA that we’re very self-deprecating and we also always have to be the underdog no matter what.

Like even when you’ve won the Super Bowl the very following year, you have like an underdog chant. So that is, there’s a reason that the Eagles are like that. It’s, it’s a very, like, it’s a very Philly thing and I’m, I’m definitely like that.

Last but not least, I, one of the biggest takeaways I had was just, it gave me a lot to think about when it comes to wanting to write another book, my next book, I, I know in my heart that I wanna keep writing. It’s really interesting because I always just think of it as like, well, if I wanna keep writing, I have to write another book.

It was interesting to be challenged by a couple of the writers there and agents and editors that are like, you don’t need a book or permission by some editor or publisher to write something. You can have a substack. You can write it yourself. You can write it just for yourself. God forbid that would be, that’s a crazy concept to me, right?

So there’s all this that there was some pushback there that I guess just kind of blew my mind of like, oh, that’s never how I think about things. So that we’re kind of looking for permission to be given the opportunity to do something from someone on the outside when you can just do it yourself. I would give you the same tip.

If you feel like you want more podcast guest interviews or you wanna speak on stage, often you have to start your own podcast and start, first of all, you becoming known as, as a podcaster. Getting better at talking and hosting something like that, and then inviting guests onto your show, for example. It opens up a lot of doors and you have to be comfortable climbing, you know, starting to be a guest on a very small or a new podcast, and then you get one that’s a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger, and it keeps going.

Some of the people I also spoke to at MashUp were asking me, like one of the editors I shared my next book idea with, he was like, would you see yourself talking about that topic for the next eight to nine years? And I was like. No, I do not want to talk about that topic for eight to eight to nine years.

So I think sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of how, you know, you’re just trying to think of the next thing, like what’s this thing I can just like pump out? Like here’s an idea. And I thought that was really helpful pushback.

It also made it really clear to me in trying, fumbling my way, um, very nervously talking to these like really fancy editors and agents that I don’t even know how to directly describe.

First of all what I wanna write about next or what my writing style is. I believe I said everything from memoir to personal narrative to prescriptive fiction with personal narrative. And they were just like, which is it? And it was kind of funny that as I was having this conversation with them, I was just like, yeah, I don’t even know what I wanna do and like how to describe it yet. I’m sitting here freaking out about whether I’m gonna get another opportunity to write a book, but I don’t even have a clear idea or know how to describe it. Like, chill out, just take your time. I, I just have this tendency to try to force it so much. So I thought that was really helpful.

A lot of people ask me too about writing a book who own a business, obviously, and I thought one of the agents had a really good question back to me of like, how do you expect that kind of book to serve your business or your personal brand? Like is it tied back? I mean, I guess it doesn’t kind of have to be, but a lot of times as an author it doesn’t really make sense for you to do, to write a book that doesn’t tie to anything, right? If you’re just like writing a random memoir, but you own a business, it’s like, well, how do you expect this to fit in in a bigger way?

So it was all just very interesting as it comes to the book. But whether you wanna write a book or do something else, I would just encourage you to think about where you might be wAIting for somebody else to give you permission or where you’re creating a lot of stories around something that you can go out and do on your own, and you don’t really need anybody else’s help.

It also is a helpful reminder to get real with yourself sometimes that, you know, sometimes we’re not ready for what we wish for, right? And so I, I’m sitting here being like, I want another deal. I want another deal. It’s like I’m not ready for another deal because I actually don’t have a fully formed idea.

I don’t know what I would be really excited about in terms of talking about this for eight to nine years. Um, and I don’t know where it would lead. I don’t have the answers to these very important questions. There’s a careful balance between waiting for too long for things, right? And, um, you don’t need to necessarily have every single thing in place, like it might lead somewhere you don’t expect.

But I also think it’s helpful on the front end where sometimes we’re making up a story of like, well, if I just got another book deal, then like everything would be good again. And I don’t even, I don’t think I feel ready to do it at the same time. So it’s very helpful.

So I would love to know whether or not you liked this type of episode for a very important reason because in June I’m going to Craft & Commerce. And when I go to Craft & Commerce, I always learn so much. It is the best conference and my episodes on, uh, my recaps of Craft & Commerce in the past have been really, really popular. But I wanna know if you like the style of hearing, kind of the recaps of what I’m hearing in the hallways behind the scenes from people who are speaking at and attending these events.

I’d also love to hear from you in my dms or my inbox. What was the number one most helpful thing that you heard today in this episode? Is it one of the tips that you heard from one of the experts who spoke? One of my reflections. I would love to hear it and maybe how you’re even going to implement it.

Before you go, I wanna remind you, if you get a copy of my book When I Start My Business, I’ll Be Happy anywhere books are sold before April 29th, you’ll get a free ticket to my live book club call on April 30th. That’s 90 minutes of live down to business coaching with me for just the cost of a book. So if you’ve wanted to support my work in any way, please consider purchasing this book anywhere books are sold, it’s available on bookshop , Barnes and Noble, target, Amazon, anywhere you can get books and of course your local independent bookstore, my personal favorite and all you have to do in order to get a ticket to Book Club is first buy my book anywhere that you want. And second, go to samvanderwielen.com/book fill out the form in section two and you’ll get an invite automatically to book club. See you there

and with that, I’ll chat with you next week. Thank you so much.

Thanks so much for listening to the On Your Terms® podcast. Make sure to follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. You can also check out all of our podcast episodes, show notes, links, and more at samvanderwielen.com/podcast. You can learn more about legally protecting your business and take my free legal workshop, Five Steps To Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business at Samvanderwielen.com and to stay connected and follow along, follow me on Instagram at samvanderwielen and send me a DM to say hi.