Welcome back to Season 4 of “A Season of Me Stories”! In today’s episode, titled ” Peaks and Insights: Lessons from Masterminds and Mountaintops  ,” your host Heidi Kleine shares two incredible experiences she recently had. The first one was a gathering of her Mastermind group, a community of women entrepreneurs led by the inspiring Diane Cunningham Ellis. Heidi reflects on the power of being surrounded by like-minded individuals and how it has positively impacted her business over the years.
But that’s not all! Heidi also embarked on an adventure with her husband’s siblings, hiking to the highest peak in the Southern Smoky Mountains. She reminisces on the importance of being prepared for both physical and business challenges, pushing oneself out of comfort zones, pacing, and the beauty of receiving help from others.

Join us as Heidi dives into the lessons learned from her mastermind and mountaintop experiences, and encourages us to find joy in the journey. Get ready for an episode filled with inspiration, motivation, and the power of personal growth. Let’s get started on this remarkable episode of “A Season of Me Stories”!

Episode Transcript:

Heidi Kleine:

Greetings, my friends, and welcome back to season 4 of a Season of Me Stories. This is episode 3, which I am calling Masterminds and Mountaintops. I am excited to be able to have this conversation with you today and to talk about a couple, amazing experiences, mountaintop experiences, that I have had, in the past week or so, a little over a week, with 2 different events that I participated in kind of back to back. The first one was A Gathering of My Mastermind. If you are new to the idea of a Mastermind and what a Mastermind It is, this particular mastermind is a group of women, entrepreneurs who all have businesses of various. Yeah, various iterations. It’s some service some brick and mortar Some online businesses, and we meet together with our coach. Our Head coach is, Diane Cunningham Ellis, and she runs this mastermind called the Braver Together Mastermind.

Heidi Kleine:

Now it’s had several different names and, different configurations over time, but I’ve been a part of it for well over a decade now, kind of right since the very beginning of my coaching practice. And it has made a huge difference in my business to be surrounded by women who are striving for similar goals, to understand what an entrepreneur mindset is. And so, this year, we were gathering in person. We try to do that once or twice a year, each year, and just had a wonderful time together, discussing our business, doing crafts together, some wild and crazy time of doing a little improv, just exploring how we can support each other in our businesses and, support each other in life. And so immediately after this Mastermind experience, I was headed up into the mountains. My husband’s siblings love to hike. They love adventure, and something we have participated with them on and off, throughout the years. As a matter of fact, when I first met them, was way back in 1989 when my then-boyfriend said, I’m gonna take you to the mountains to meet my siblings.

Heidi Kleine:

And so at that point, I met his siblings and their partners, and all of us I have been together now for since that time, and we have, between us, 9 kids and 3 marriages and lots of life that has happened. And we all met in the Smoky Mountains with the plan to, hike to Mont Blanc, which is the highest mountain in the Southern Smokies, and to stay at the Lacomte Lodge and to have some time together. And so as I have been reflecting on these kinda 2 back to back experiences. There’ve been several lessons that have kinda come out of this that I wanna share with you. As you think about mountaintop experiences in your own life the first thing I wanna just point out is one of my coaches talks about when you get stuck, go play. And while I wouldn’t Say that the exactly coming off the mastermind, I was stuck frequently when I’ve had an experience like that, and I get home and back to real life, sort of the reentry phase is hard. And I learned that doing something hard Call them Totally Unrelated, doing something playful, immediately after sort of this intense Mental time, and planning time for my business really gave me some Space to sort of digest the ideas that had come up, and I came home from the mountain experience Feeling really energized around the business time. So, you know, just note to self, if you’re going to have a really sort of intense You go away for a retreat.

Heidi Kleine:

I think we find this all the time, in businesses and with our General life, right? You go away, you have a vacation time, you’re planning the reentry. Think about finding a way to, sort of, distract yourself from The Task of Re-entering before you dive into that, and see if that helps. It definitely made a difference for me in this instance. So on to Masterminds and Mountain Tops! My first learning from this is being prepared matters, and, I will say I am super grateful to my gym, to the fact that I regularly work out 3 to 4 times a week. I had the leg strength to get myself up and down this mountain. I also Knew that it was gonna take a lot of that. Similarly, when I was getting ready for the Mastermind, Going in prepared with some things I wanted, sort of, the group to help me with, some things that I already had some clarity on some specific questions, and being ready to ask Questions that actually mattered. To ask for support around tangible things, rather than to just kind of show up and be present, it was interesting.

Heidi Kleine:

This was one of the first times when, I really kind of felt like I wanted to sit back and be one of the last people to sort of share my individual challenges, because I was, absorbing the, the experience of everyone else at the Mastermind and really wanted to get the most out of it. So first things first, be prepared. That might mean you need Certain equipment, I was very happy to have good hiking boots and good poles. I was, prepared with a water bottle, or a mechanism for carrying water with me. Right? I had the things I needed to get up and down the mountain. Similarly, when I was at the Mastermind, I had the the tools related to my business that I wanted to explore, that I wanted to learn more about, that I wanted to use while I was there, and I was prepared to take advantage of the opportunities that came up at that time. The second learning is to plan To push yourself, and to try things that you’ve never tried before, to push past that moment when you feel like maybe you can’t take another step up the mountain or down the mountain, whichever direction that you are going. It takes getting out of your comfort zone, both when you are trying to build a business, trying to, be an entrepreneur, and when you’re trying to climb a mountain, Right? You have to be prepared for the times that you have to push through the Conflicts, you have to push through the challenges, whether it’s imposter syndrome or, just Being afraid of asking a certain price or of whether or not you can deliver a certain thing that you’re trying to do in your business.

Heidi Kleine:

Plan that you’re going to need to push yourself. Have an idea about what you’re gonna do when you need to push yourself. Do you need to pause and take catch your breath? And so, that’s my next thing is Plan to pause also, right? Pace yourself. For me, Going up and down the mountain was definitely an exercise in pacing myself, and I am super grateful that I had people with me who were patient with that. Same thing is true for business. Right? It’s things are gonna happen faster than you thought, and things are gonna take longer than you thought. Be prepared that it’s gonna require persistence, it’s gonna require, perseverance and kind of plotting through and pacing yourself. The next thing is be willing to receive help.

Heidi Kleine:

There is nothing that decreases the value of a time, like in a mastermind situation. Then when somebody there isn’t there to receive help, part of the beauty of this experience is that you ask for help and then you receive help, and this is not a time to come into things with very strong and rigid ideas about what you need to know, what you need to hear. It’s a time to be open to advice, it’s a time to be willing to let people carry you through some of the hard times. Climbing up that mountain, I was very grateful to have people who were encouraging me, have people who were, willing to give some advice, and when it came down to the nitty gritty, even people who were willing to carry my pack, that last little stretch, when It seemed like it it was not going to be possible, so go into your masterminds and your mountain tops with the idea that you might need to ask for some help, and you need to be willing to receive it, when it’s there for you. And lastly, and probably the most important thing in all of this is enjoy the journey. The power of a mountaintop experience is, is the journey along the way. It’s the beautiful things that you get to see for this trip in particular. It was the little pockets of wind coming up the side of the mountain.

Heidi Kleine:

It was the places where the fall leaves were starting to show. It was a little early for that, but every once in a while, we would find a tree that was showing its fall glory. It was the sound of the babbling brooks and the creeks as you heard them going past. And it was the feeling of the rest and the pause and the quiet as you observed, nature and kind of got away from all of the crazy in the hustle and bustle of the world. Similarly, with the mastermind, enjoy The time. The time with your peers. Enjoy the reality that there are people out there who are struggling with the same things that you’re struggling with, and celebrating the same kinds of things that you’re celebrating. Enjoy the differences between you, as well as the things that are similar, and just take your time along the way.

Heidi Kleine:

The process of climbing the mountain and achieving that peak, similar to the process of pursuing your dreams. It takes time, it takes energy, it takes Resources and all along the journey, there are places to celebrate. There are places to enjoy your, colleagues, enjoy your friends and family. There are places to simply be present in the process, and I encourage you, as you are looking at the goals that you have for your life in this season, What are the ways that you can create mountaintop experiences along the way? Who are the people that you need to surround yourself with in this season to get where you’re planning to go? What are the goals that you, will achieve, because you’ve made the choice to Be prepared to surround yourself with people who encourage you and support you and help you along the way. I just want to celebrate all of you for being here to hang out with me as we are on this journey and encourage you To reach out, tell me what’s going on in your season right now. What are you planning? What are you excited about? I would just love to hear from my listeners, and I’d also like to hear what it is you want to talk about as we come up towards the rest of season 4 and towards the end of 2023. What do you want to talk about in this space? I’d love to hear from you.