Episode 419: Personal lessons from HCBC 2024

This is the second podcast episode about the Heart-Centred Business Conference 2024.

Last episode, I shared my big lessons from each speaker at the Heart-Centred Business Conference – you can catch up on that one at tashcorbin.com/418.

In today’s episode, I’m sharing some observations of what happened at conference, and my personal lessons from hosting conference and the cool things that happened there. This will give you another little insight into conference and behind the scenes in my business, and whether you run events yourself, or you’re just interested in the changes I will be making, I think you’ll find it particularly insightful.

If you haven’t yet got your ticket to 2025 Conference, jump in sooner rather than later – it looks like we will be sold out in the coming weeks!

Tickets are at www.heartcentredbusinessconference.com  – if you cannot attend our in-person event, we also have our Virtual Conference in March 2025, and tickets are available at www.heartcentredbusinessconference.com/virtual.

Let’s dive in!

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Let’s start with what happened at HCBC 2024:

One of the juiciest things about this conference was listening to Leonie Dawson speak. You may not know this, but I actually asked Leonie to speak at the very last minute for this conference. We had lunch a couple of weeks prior to conference and I was experiencing some health challenges. Leonie made an off-hand comment that she would be happy to run a workshop if I needed her to step in. I ended up sending her a message that day to say that hearing her offer to run a workshop created this deep sense of relief. So I said yes.

Normally when I introduce each speaker at conference, I put up a slide with the speaker’s name and topic. But the slide for Leonie literally said:

Welcome to the stage: Leonie Dawson talking about whatever the F she wants.

I am so grateful for the way it all happened, Leonie ended up stepping on stage, and rather than talking about business strategy and making jokes like we would normally expect, she shared that she had this message from the angels to share with us. It was a very vulnerable kind of moment – she cried, we cried, and it was deeply moving and powerful.

I’m so so glad she ended up having it professionally recorded, and she has shared it – leoniedawson.com/heart.

I feel so humbled and so honoured and so grateful that Leonie felt comfortable to speak the way that she did, in our conference room.

There was a sexy chair dance-off

Yes, you read that correctly. On the final night, the dancing ramped up, and we ended up witnessing the most amazing sexy chair dance-off between three conference attendees. Of course, they were all dancing to Pony by Ginuwine – it totally made my night. The contrast between those two different events, but both of them being perfectly reasonable to expect at the Heart-Centred Business Conference makes me so happy, and it was just so much fun.

The dancing on the final night was just an absolute highlight for me.

Tina Tower gave us the most spectacular free gift!

I won’t say too much about it, because I don’t want to create too much FOMO, but when Tina told us what she was giving us, I saw people looking at each other in disbelief, and squeals of delight rippled around the room.  It was just one of those moments where you’re like, oh my gosh, this is so fun and so cool… I AM SO GLAD I AM HERE!

Guest appearances from Charlotte

My niece Charlotte actually came to conference a couple of times. She came to help out with my exhibition stall on the second night, and popped in the day before as well. She just so happened to be there during Emma Veiga-Malta’s art journaling session, which was so joyful. Charlotte and I were sitting side-by-side creating art journaling pieces together, and listening to Emma talk about creativity. Charlotte is a first year Uni student, and isn’t 100% sure what she wants to do once she graduates, and I loved seeing the conference and presentations through her eyes.

It’s a big part of what we are doing as business owners – we are changing what it looks like and feels like to be a business owner, and challenging the assumptions people make.

Hanging in the Villa

For the first time ever, the conference team chilled together in our villa in the afternoon breaks. That’s because:

1. The team are so dang amazing and organised
2. Grace made sure everything was taken care of in advance, and nailed the logistics.
3. We set an intention to hang out in the villa together more after we barely set foot in the villa last year.

Both pitch fest winners rocked their presentations

Lisa Twohig and Emma Veiga-Malta were our pitchfest winners for the 2024 Conference – and they NAILED it. Normally, I select finalists for pitchfest, and then the winner is selected by a vote. But this year, I just decided to pick the winners, because Lisa and Emma’s pitches stood out so spectacularly.

I was personally excited to get to hear their workshops, so I followed my gut instincts and picked them both. Good job past Tash! And a massive thank you to Lisa and Emma, because they both just nailed it. I cannot express how much they nailed it.

I sold out my first ever exhibition!

At the exhibition night, I decided to sell some of my pottery. Now, this has nothing to do with my core business, right?

But you might have heard me share, that in 2023 I started pottery classes, in particular the pottery wheel. Our house was starting to fill up with my dinky little practice pottery pieces. Mostly bowls, pencil holders, and smaller pieces. I mentioned to Davey one night in the lead-up to conference that I might pop some of my pieces into the exhibition night stand, and see if I could sell them. I was so sure that no one would buy them, because they’re just practice phases… Let’s just say that they’re perfectly imperfect.

I jumped up on stage and mentioned to attendees that I would have some pottery pieces on my stand, and that their purchases would not only clear the items out of cluttering our house, but also they would fund a lot more practice clay, which is what I need, because it takes a lot of failed pieces to get to the ones that you end up firing. I was going for the pity purchases, I admit!

Anyway, I took along 9 or 10 pieces, and they sold out in under 30 minutes. Emma Veiga-Malta pointed out, that this was my first ever exhibition, and I had sold out! That’s something that most artists and crafters only DREAM of achieving. Go me! Tee hee!

There were tears, hugs, laughter, high fives, and oh-so-many selfies

It was a really good mix of people at conference this year – there were some people who were first-timers, some who’ve been to every conference since it started, and some who were in between. I saw people who had met for the first time at last year’s conference sitting together and catching up. I saw small groups of people who had stayed in touch from last year’s conference to this year’s one. It makes me so teary even thinking about all the connections and selfies and hugs and friendships that are forged at conference, and rekindled at conference.

I love people connecting with people. I love creating a space for it!

I ended conference in agony

The day after the main conference is finished, we have an implementation day. People can purchase an implementation upgrade to get the extra day, facilitated by me. This year at the implementation day, my back seized up, and I had this painful, massive spasm in my lower back. I tried to stretch it out. I tried to lie down. I couldn’t physically sit to eat my lunch.

I was in so much pain, that halfway through the implementation day, I couldn’t go on.

I ended up sending a message to some of my friends who were attending conference, and asking if anyone had any stronger pain medication, because whilst the attendees were out in the restaurant eating lunch, I was lying on the floor and I could not get up.

A few minutes later, Kerry Rowlett came running into the room. At first, I thought it was because she had strong pain medication for me, but she took off her shoes and bag, and put her hand on me. I realised that she had come to ‘work on me’ with her magical healing powers, and I burst into tears. I have never felt so supported and loved and looked after in my entire life.

The substitute teachers sprung into action

Kerry Rowett, Clare Wood and Leonie Dawson, three of the conference speakers, were part of the group chat where I had asked for medication, and they came in and took over. Kerry worked on me for 20 to 30 minutes, until I could actually stand up so that I could shuffle back to my room to go and lie down. Whilst she was doing that, she asked about the intentions for the implementation day, and how they could ensure that this was a deeply valuable experience for the participants.

Then the three of them hosted the rest of the implementation day.

I couldn’t make it to my bedroom in the villa, so Davey made me a bed on the floor of the living room. The pain was so intense. I was able to get in to see a doctor the next day, and they prescribed a wild cocktail of medications. For 10 or so days after conference, I was medicated and basically flat on my back unable to move.

That’s a summary of some of the big things that happened…

Here are my personal lessons:

1. I am really good at business strategy and marketing

It might sound really self-absorbed, or weird that I learned this at a conference after running my business for over 11 years. I don’t know why, but it does feel like one of my biggest lessons – maybe it’s the first time I have felt it this deeply, or in such a grounded way. After my workshop on messaging in an economic contraction, several people shared that it was particularly helpful for them, because they realised they hadn’t adjusted their messaging, and couldn’t work out why things weren’t selling like they had previously. Denise Duffield-Thomas even came up to me afterwards and said that she had learned more from that workshop than in her entire marketing degree, and called me a genius, which helped as well. There was something about the way that she said it, that it actually landed. Then she said it on stage again during her keynote.

I guess I really needed to hear it. I even had a big sobbing cry to Davey about it that night. I mean, of course I knew that I was good at this stuff, but sometimes you do need to hear someone share their perspective for it to land. It has given me a kick in the pants to get back into creating content more consistently and remembering that this is my zone of genius.

Sometimes we just need a little reminder. I know it sounds silly saying it out loud, but I’m really good at business.

2. I have amazing friends

I am so grateful for all of my beautiful friends. But a big insight from conference was that I wasn’t leaning in and accepting the depths of friendship available to me.

I think part of that is because I’ve had some significant challenges since my surgery in 2021.

Super quick recap:

• In 2021 I had an explant surgery (removing an implant I had for 11 years which was reconstructive, and had been recalled)
• The wound site didn’t heal for 8 months and I ended up having two partial mastectomies
• The implant had been slowly poisoning me, so for 2022 and 2023, I was detoxing from heavy metal poisoning and rebuilding the baseline functions of my body.
• For almost 2 years I was unable to work consistently, and generally have been limited to 15 hours per week working (for the first year it was under 10 hours per week)
• Even now I am still recovering and rebuilding my wellbeing, and need to be careful how many things I commit to.

I think because that has been such a stretched out and extended period of time, and I’m someone who is uncomfortable with receiving, it felt like I was the needy friend all of the time. This meant I had stopped leaning in. There’s only so long that you can tell people you’re not in a good way before you start to feel like you’re always bringing the mood down, complaining, or something is always wrong.

I realised that I was keeping friendships very surface level because I didn’t want anyone else to have to hold space for me, because I had no idea how long it was going to take for me to start to feel better again. I didn’t want to be the needy, needy friend who couldn’t be giving in return.

I feel like there’s a lot of work for me to do on leaning into friendship again and feeling comfortable with being vulnerable and being open and honest about how bad things are when they are bad. I realised that I have these amazing friends and support network around me, and I was keeping everyone at arm’s length. o

It’s already started changing. I am now working with Kerry Rowett on a regular basis to work through a lot of what came up. There’s a lot that needs to be processed and cleared and some resilience and strength brought back at the energetic level.

3. Some people will not like conference

Now, this is a this is a bit of a weird one, but I accept that some people will come to conference once, and they won’t get it. They won’t see how valuable and amazing and spectacular that conference is. That’s been hard for me to accept, because before I felt that people just needed to be in the room. How could you not fall in love with this experience and want to come back every single year? If I found a conference like this, I’d be going every single time.

But different people see different things as being valuable. When I review the feedback forms from conference, I have to be very mindful that one person, for example, saying that they felt like everyone else is friends with each other, and they didn’t know enough people to be part of it, doesn’t mean that all of conference should be scrapped. Yes, we will experiment with a bit more structure to the way that we help people connect with each other, but both before and during conference, we already do a very good job of that. I also know if we go too far, that other attendees will find it stifling.

I also know that some people won’t see listening to a business mentor talk about a foundational strategy as valuable, when they are an established business owner. There are some people who listen to speakers through the lens of “I already know this”. And there are some people who hear a message they’ve heard before and can still have a learning mindset. And the second group of people is the group of people who come back year after year. It’s the second group of people who come back.

I accept that some people won’t see conferences as valuable as the way that I do, and that some people won’t be satisfied with the content or how it’s run. But I also know that not everyone has to love this kind of conference for it to exist. I have created the kind of conference I want, and I trust that there are lots of others who will see that as valuable.

4. This conference is a bigger asset for my business than I give it credit for.

You may notice that I hardly ever talk about conference, other than in the very lead up to conference and straight after conference. For the past few years, that’s been because it sells out so quickly. I don’t have to talk about conference to sell tickets. It sells out on its own now, and I just need to mention it here and there.

I don’t talk about it as much as I probably should or could, because I don’t need to to sell the tickets. But that’s part of the reason why I’m doing these episodes of the podcast, because people don’t need to come to conference to learn from it. I think I also felt weird talking about conference when it was sold out, because I didn’t want it to feel like I was creating FOMO. And then if people want to come, they can’t buy a ticket because it’s sold out.

The fact that I organise this conference, I host it, I pick the speakers to be on stage… that is a big asset for my business. I’m creating a stage for myself as well, and so I am going to talk about conference more consistently in ways that are going to be helpful to everyone, regardless of whether they’re coming or not. And there’s always Virtual Conference anyway!

5. I need to be in the room.

This year’s conference was the first time that I was in the room the whole time, and it was spectacular, and so much better. I need to get even better at relying on my team to sort the logistics. The team (mostly Grace) did that so spectacularly this year, and I have already decided that we’ll have extra team members next year as well.

I need to be in the room, because every speaker hit home with their message. Even though I’ve heard Denise Duffield-Thomas speak on stage 15 times in my life now, and I have listened to all of her audiobooks, I have attended most of her money boot camp calls, and repeated her Money Bootcamp program maybe 12 times… I still learned more and had more insights listening to her on stage this year at conference. I love that I’ve created an event that I’m getting so much value out of, just from being an attendee as well.

But it’s not just hearing the speakers, it’s being more present in the room. I just had more conversations this year compared to previous years. And every year it’s challenging, because I wish I could talk to every single person, and I do say in the attendees group before conference each year, please come up and say hello to me. Don’t feel like you can’t talk to me. I also made a special effort this year to go out in each break and mingle between sessions.

It’s really interesting though – we only have two sessions where we have allocated seating, and then people are able to sit wherever they want. But when we do that, I often end up on my own at my table. I sit at the front left of the room, and there are seven seats at that table. But even on the second night, it was just Grace and I sitting there for the first 15 minutes, and we ended up asking people to come and sit with us, so that we weren’t sitting on our own.

Next year I will do even more to be present, because although I did put in a lot of effort to try and talk to as many different people as I could at conference, I could still list off now 20 names of people that I didn’t get to speak to, or I only got to speak to for a very short period of time. I wish I got a chance to have a slightly longer conversation with them, or at least get a selfie together!

I think a lesson that I’d love to pass on for that is that I have gone to other people’s events and been the person who felt I can’t go and say hello to the speakers because they’re busy, or they’re sitting with their friends. I say be brave and say hello.  People said to me in breaks “I really want to go and have a chat to XYZ person”. And I had said probably 100 times throughout conference to someone, go and talk to them. Just go and say hello. Just go and ask for a selfie. Go and talk to them.

They are all amazing, because I don’t hang out with people who are rude. Honestly, everyone’s lovely.

6. Learn your own way is a THING

So many people in their feedback form said that it was the first time they were at a conference that actually supported them in their own learning style. People appreciated we had arts and crafts supplies on the tables. We had an encouragement at the start of each day to remind people “learn your own way”. We encouraged people to sit on the floor, to go and stand by the walls, to get up and stretch, to go and sit outside. We actually had the conference sound streamed out to the lounges outside, but just quietly. So if people were feeling a little over stimulated and they wanted to go and sit outside and listen to the speakers rather than sitting and watching they could.

We had people wearing headphones. We had people with little blankies. We really encouraged people to show up to the event to learn the way that worked best for them, and it was appreciated and noticed by attendees. That’s something we’re going to lean into even more. We started that at virtual conference because a lot of people say they can’t learn at a virtual conference. They can’t sit and learn at a virtual conference. But the way that I run the Heart-Centred Virtual Business Conference is not like any other virtual event you’ve ever attended. I would encourage you, even if you don’t like to learn at a virtual conference, to give our virtual conference a go. I’m very mindful of different learning styles and creating a learning environment that works for them. I think we do it really well for virtual conference compared to any other virtual event I’ve ever been to, and I’m going to lean into that even further

7.  We need spaces to talk more like this

By we, I mean marginalised business owners. We are normally very isolated, working at home, on our own, or only talking to our team and clients.

There’s so much that we need to process through talking, as a human being. The current environment is not conducive to lots of human-to-human chats. Especially not casual conversations… the things that pop up over a cup of tea. The combination of being a business owner, living in a post-pandemic world, the move for everything to be online, our obsession with our phones and doom scrolling…

What I’ve realised is that we just need to get together more often, and just talk for the sake of talking. I am going to restart the meetups that we had here on the Sunshine Coast. I’m going to attend more events, but also I’m going to organise crafting days, and I’ve already a friendship bracelet making day with a business friend. We’re both Swifties, and her kids are Swifties. It’s the little things like that: random opportunities to sit and talk to other humans, be in circle with other humans, connect with other humans.

I think it’s really, really powerful.

At conference we have a big two-hour-plus break between the afternoon session and the evening session, so everyone can de stress, or go and hang out with friends or just chill. Some people had little parties, whatever they wanted to do. A group of friends and I had a cacao ceremony on the second day in the break. The conversations that we had in that tiny little hang-out were so sou-filling and so life affirming and so fun.

I laughed. I tear streaming down my face.

I had this epiphany over and over again at conference – we need this more often.

As I sat at FOUR different breakfast tables on the Friday morning (before our Implementation Day), so many people said that they would come to conference again next week, or next month. Someone said “I just need this. I need this in my life so often.” But it’s not just the conference sessions we need, it’s the conversation sitting at a table of four, eating food. It’s the impromptu cacao ceremony. It’s sitting around a big table working on art projects, and talking. A random group of six people, sitting on a big comfy couch, talking.

I’m going to try and facilitate as many of those and participate in as many of those as I can over the next year, because I recognise how much I need it. I think we all need it. (Yes, even the introverts!)

8. Trust the timing, and the little nudges

Over and over again, I was reminded at conference of things that were tiny, little butterfly wing flaps that turned into a massive wave of change that culminated at conference.

Event the fact that I had a little nudge to buy a ticket to another conference back in 2014, when I wasn’t making enough money in my business to justify it at the time. I just felt this nudge to buy a ticket and go. In going to that conference, I created some friendships and built a network. Then I saw that two of the people that I’d met at that conference were going to another conference about six months later. So I booked a ticket to that conference, and ended up having a conversation with an old friend and some new connections at that conference, that planted the seed that maybe I could run a slightly different conference.

It still took another two years before I finally had the guts to run my own conference. But all those little times I said yes, followed a tiny nudge, or someone else followed a tiny nudge led to huge changes and amazing results.

Someone came up to me in lunch at lunchtime on the second day of conference and said, “I just sold a $5,000 VIP package to someone sitting at the table with me this morning”. Which is so cool – but what’s even cooler is how she ended up BEING at conference. She saw that one of the speakers was coming to conference, but didn’t know they were coming to speak. She felt a pang of jealousy and told her husband that she was really jealous that this person was coming. It was her husband that suggested she come along as well. She said “I didn’t let him rethink it! I booked my ticket straight away, and now I’m sitting here at lunch, and I see a $5,000 payment has come through, and I have a new VIP client. All because I was jealous, and I said it out loud.”

Another attendee shared with me that in the pre-conference threads in the attendees group, they followed someone on Instagram, and then that person shared a post about another service provider with specialised virtual assistant services. They hired a virtual assistant for $500 from that post, and through that work, they had made enough money to pay for their flights, accommodation, AND their ticket for next year’s conference. In arriving at conference, the connections she had made had already paid off!

That’s the thing… sometimes it’s the timing. Sometimes it’s a little nudge… you need to trust them.

Final story about trusting the nudge: An attendee DM’ed me after conference that she wanted to go up and chat to a speaker, but was too scared. So in the end, she DM’ed the speaker AFTER conference to thank them for their presentation, and how it aligned with their own work. The speaker actually replied and said she had been looking for someone to do that and asked for information about her services. So now one of our speakers is her client. Boom.

I wanted to share that one, because if you did go to conference and there was someone you wanted to talk to but you didn’t feel brave enough, send them a little DM. Go on. Send a message and just say, “Hey. I wasn’t brave enough to talk to you at conference, but I just wanted to reach out and say hello.” Follow the nudge.

It doesn’t even have to involve a conference. I bet you can think of little nudges like that. The more I learn to tune into and trust those little nudges, the more I can see that they are my intuition, or they are my angels, or they are just my inner wisdom, or whatever it is that you want to call it. The nudging voice is never one that speaks out of fear, worry, anger or frustration. It’s the tiny, little quiet whisper. But when you listen to that tiny, little quiet whisper… you know in your heart that it’s right and that it’s true. That’s how I would describe intuition for me.

That is my final lesson from Heart-Centred Business Conference 2024!

I hope that you’ve got some value out of listening to me talk about all of this. If you want to join us at a future conference, you can come to Virtual Conference or In-Person:

Virtual – GET YOUR 2025 TICKET!

In person – GET YOUR 2025 TICKET!

Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.