My IINsight and IINspiration from the Integrative Nutrition Live Conference March 2013

Image Courtesy of yourwellnesswithwendy.com

WOW! What a weekend. The Integrative Nutrition Live Conference March 2013 was last weekend and as usual, it did not disappoint. Lots of IINsights and IINspirations for me both personally and for my business, some of which I’ll share in this article.

Earlier this week I did a couple of recap articles of each days events, so if you want more of a synopsis you can check out the Integrative Nutrition Live Conference Day 1 Highlights or Day 2 Highlights.

My apologies for anyone I missed in my recap articles. There was so much great information shared and at the start of the conference I wasn’t as organized with my note taking. I was busily tweeting and sharing all the great nuggets, but didn’t get into the groove until the 2nd or 3rd speaker. I know I totally skipped writing about Karin Witzig Rozell, of http://www.wellpronet.com/, who was the first speaker after Joshua Rosenthal.

Karin talked about being in alignment with what is right for us and The 4 Core Relationships of the Irresistibly Attractive Wellness Pro, Things become a lot easier when you upgrade your core 4 relationships:

• 1st Core Relationship…Your relationship with wealth.
• 2nd Core Relationship…Your relationship with business.
• 3rd Core Relationship…Your relationship with environments.
• 4th Core Relationship…Your relationship with self.

For me personally, my biggest take away from this whole weekend was the sense that a successful life and business needs to be based on service and generosity. I hear lots of people say these words, but many fewer actually embody it. Danielle LaPorte summed it up well by saying “Generosity is the next frontier in business.”

I know if you are anything like me, you got into health coaching initially either because you wanted to help other people heal or help heal yourself. We all want both of these things in one order or the other. We study and learn, experiment on our selves, our families, our friends. We find out what works and what doesn’t. Most of us go through the period of trying to convince everyone they need to eat and live like we do, but most of us mature past that state.

Then we get to the whole marketing piece and this is where we stumble. I know I have been guilty of this myself. Starting a business is hard work, and especially if you aren’t sure if you’ll be able to pay the rent sometimes the altruistic motivation goes out the window.

I am so glad I have had people in my life to remind me along the way about the greater mission, to help heal the planet. Facebook, twitter, blogs, squeeze pages, selling services, sometimes it all gets to be so overwhelming that we forget why we are doing all of this.

Now that I am starting to experience some degree of success in my business (it was great having so many people last weekend say “I read your newsletter every week”), I am starting to see more and more that this motivation of generosity and service are needed at every point in the business building process.

What IINspired me the most during the conference was when Joshua was talking about the vision of the school and all the charitable contributions to be made between now and 2020. I’ve never spoken personally to him about this, but I imagine there were some rough patches early in his journey to make this vision come to life so there is hope for us all.

Another big takeaway was around the whole money mindset. Almost every health coach I know wants to be able to give more (to their family, their community, causes, etc.) At the same time, lots of us struggle with the whole asking for money bit (I know I have been guilty of this). This is really a bit backwards thinking, since in order for me to give monetarily to causes and people I believe in I need to generate that income.

Lots of the speakers kept coming back around to this point in one version or another all weekend. Robert Notter’s quote summed it up pretty well for me “You can be a good person and create a great income…and have a greater impact.”

Speaking of service, another presentation that I know I missed was from semper fidelis health and wellness, at http://www.semperfidelishealthandwellness.org/. SFHW focuses on veterans assistance-providing health and wellness training, education and support to our nation’s wounded, ill, and injured warriors, their family members and care givers. They are doing great work for veterans and are looking for support to continue this work.

I guess what I will care the most from the Integrative Nutrition Live Conference is that any work I can do to help support health coaches to get their message out to the world in a bigger and better way is much more about being in service to my tribe than it is about making money. Thank you to all the great speakers for modeling this for all of us. It’s truly an honor to be part of such an incredible tribe.

Please share your IINspirations and IINsights from the conference in the comments below.