I sometimes wonder what I’m missing, what knowledge I lack, what expertise I still don’t have….what’s the thing that I don’t have that everyone else seems to.
Let me explain…I just received rejection letter #5 from IDEA to present at one of their fitness conferences (or maybe 6? I don’t know, I’ve lost track) Every year I apply to various international fitness conferences, every year I’m rejected savoir plus. I even went as far as hiring a professional speaker/writer who’s on the fitness conference circuit to re-write my workshop titles and descriptions.
And yet I attend fitness conferences and I know my content is solid, I know my presentation ability surpasses most of the presenters I see and that my topics are ones that fitness professionals are really interested in.
I know they get a lot of applications and they don’t know me from Adam, I get it, it’s a game of who you know.
But here’s what starts to happen with me…I see other people I know in the industry who are presenting at various large scale fitness conferences, people that have little to no presentation experience (some who are just downright bad presenters) but who have a ton of technical and practical experience and I start to think maybe I need to get more technical. Maybe I need to leave this world of Life Coaching and the “Art” of Personal Training and go back into the technical side.
I start thinking about squeezing into someone else’s lane, someone else’s zone of genius. Luckily, I always catch myself before I start to turn the wheel.
You see…my genius is bringing the art back into personal training, the human touch, the professional relationship piece, the client experience piece. That’s my lane. And, I also happen to be a wicked presenter and educator.
So, what to do? Stay in my lane. Stay in what I know is my genius. Trust that when people are ready to hear my message on a bigger scale that the opportunities will come.
Until then, I’ll focus on the small steps that keep me moving forward, the small steps that keep me in my lane:
- apply to conferences – even the ones who reject me every year….
- facilitate workshops – this is where I test my content and know what works
- really listen to the struggles that my ideal client (ie. Personal Trainers) share with me – actively look for ways to engage with them to better understand their needs
- keep honing my craft
Are you in your lane? What are some things you’ll do consistently to stay the course?
That’s a wicked article, Brenda!! Sooooo well-crafted :-))