APPO MasterClass 2018 – Come As You’ll Be – Photo by Nick Kelsh

Although my APPO MasterClass 2018 coaching was nearly two weeks ago, the residual joy and thrill are still with me.

The leaders of the nearly decade-old organization tasked me with spending two days facilitating a pre-conference intensive that would take 15 of its top producers and create an environment where they could interact with each other, share best practices and figure out how to continue to raise each other up.

As leaders in APPO, it is important that these women stay connected to each other and the association. So often longtime members get the skills they need from an organization and move on. Founder Cathi Nelson is transparent in her desire to harness the leadership of these successful and talented entrepreneurs and keep them engaged and committed.

I offered a variety of activities including breaking up into Mastermind Groups (my favorite tool for myself and all the women I lead), acting out scenarios, and brainstorming areas of desired growth including scaling their businesses, hiring and HR issues like creating and using Operations Manuals. Each one, though dry in nature, became lively and fun at the group level.

Our final session together was a celebration based on Jack Canfield’s model: Come As You’ll Be event. I invited each of the women to consider where they’d like to take their businesses by 2023 and to dress, move and speak as though it had already come to pass. Although it felt like a peculiar assignment to some, everyone played along with extraordinary results and not a few tears.

Photographer Nick Kelsh was on hand to act as one of the papparazzi capturing each member as she entered and was interviewed by my future Oprah-esque self. The members’ visions included empowering and running women’s conferences, finally getting a good night’s sleep, vacationing with the family in Hawaii and creating a foundation for women, among others.

One MasterClass member wrote to me after our session:

The Come As You’ll Be event was so much fun and surprisingly effective.  I am finding that tasks that I was putting off or otherwise found difficult are getting done with little effort.  It is as if I have glimpsed into the future and by seeing certain accomplishments, the “getting there” is so much easier.