Confluence: How to Create a “Map” for Your Next Level of Growth

Copy of 7FL - Dustin 0428
Dustin: [00:00:00] part of my business is to hang out with these people. Like, 'cause they're amazing people.
Dustin: And she's like. That's true, but Dustin, you don't just hang out with these people, you lead these people. And I was like, that is a great reminder. Right. that is a big part of my call in this business is not only to be a peer, I am a peer. I love these people as friends and colleagues. but I'm also a leader of this mastermind group and with that comes, a certain level of responsibility and depth
Intro: You are listening to the seven Figure Leap podcast. We're here to leverage rich relationships and smart strategies to take your business to the next level. Here's your host, Dustin Reman.
Dustin: Your business team goes way beyond the people that you might pay. [00:01:00] I am Dustin Reikman and welcome to a special edition of the seven Figure eight podcast.
Dustin: Today I'm gonna give you an inside look at our most recent in-person mastermind retreat. I think there's some amazing takeaways here I'm excited to share with you. one thing that I've been hearing a lot from listeners is you really enjoy it when we kind of go off the cuff and take you behind the scenes and, just share what's really going on in the business and give you some of those insights and the kind of the raw takeaways from.
Dustin: Doing this business day to day. And so I come to you at a time that I'm very, mentally drained and spiritually full. That's how I described it, to someone yesterday. And that is because we just came out of our spring retreat for our seven Figure Leap Mastermind. So you may be familiar with the Mastermind as a whole, if not, as a quick primer.
Dustin: The seven Figure Leap Mastermind is the highest level in our community. So we have 24 members in the Mastermind. we actually meet on a weekly basis. I lead this group [00:02:00] personally and it consists of experts, founders who have been through our core program, the podcast Profits accelerator. They're part of our larger community associated with that program, but they're also mentors to the community, and they are all.
Dustin: Scaling to seven figures and beyond in their business. So it's sort of that more advanced part of the community. So like I said, we meet every week. We have a private, portion of our community. So I'm in close contact with these individuals, on a regular basis. There's really nothing like these in-person experiences.
Dustin: So one thing that we've been doing for several years now is we meet twice a year as a group. the location has varied. We've done different formats and experimented with different, iterations of this. But the cornerstone here is spring and fall. We get together in person and we spend high quality time together for roughly three days.
Dustin: we usually meet midday on a Wednesday. We do a full session on Thursday, and we depart midday on Friday. And [00:03:00] we do some really fun stuff on the evenings in between. So most recently it was very special because. Our crew came into St. Louis into my hometown. specifically if you've ever been to St.
Dustin: Louis, we were in Old Town Historic St. Charles, Missouri. And that actually plays into what I'm gonna share here around the theme and sort of the energy of the event. So why don't we go through here? In summary for you is like the theme and like the setting, like how did we create the experience, for our members?
Dustin: Two, the structure, like how do we actually. Facilitate transformation in an in-person setting. And three, I'll just share some of my top takeaways from our time together. So, the theme in setting, as I said, we were in St. Louis. if you're not familiar with St. Louis, it's commonly known as the gateway to the west.
Dustin: This is where, the arch is. and St. Charles is a specific area of St. Louis. And the reason St. Charles is sometimes known nationally, is it is the place where [00:04:00] Lewis and Clark started their journey when they. Went up the Missouri River and they mapped the wilderness of the West. So they found passage to the Pacific Ocean.
Dustin: And they not only explored it for two and a half years, but they actually made it back. and they mapped that part of the west, which happened after Louisiana purchase with Thomas Jefferson. So this may take you back to grade school, social studies and, they were guided by Sia.
Dustin: They had a dog who's pretty popular in the region. That is actually relevant to the theme of the Mastermind. So you have this birthplace of Western expansion of the United States and exploration and map making. the other cool thing about our region is it's the confluence of three different rivers.
Dustin: So the Illinois River, the Mississippi River, and the Missouri River all meet in the St. Louis region. It's one of the reasons, that St. Louis was settled the way it was. Actually, the theme of our retreat was Confluence, and I thought that was really cool. And the crazy thing is we rented a coworking [00:05:00] space where we held a lot of our working sessions and we walked in the morning of, and I had no idea the name of the room that we were meeting in was called Confluence.
Dustin: and why Confluence well is the confluence of all this experience and expertise and this unique moment in time, coming together. In person. And that confluence is sort of our starting point for our own exploration of what's next, right? And not just exploring what's next, but actually creating a map.
Dustin: So, it was really cool. We created some like artifacts and these like compass points. And so as we were working through the retreat, people had very tangible things to document and the whole idea was they could create ultimately. I have one here, if you're watching the video. like a one page.
Dustin: Map. and it goes through the structure that I'm gonna share next, but this theme and setting of let's meet in the place where Lewis and Clark started their exploration. Let's explore. [00:06:00] And create a map for your business is really important.
Dustin: something that was unique about this experience, it was the first time I've done it in St. Louis, so that was really special to me because, I got to welcome people to my hometown, but also my wife Bethany, got to be involved. she is a full-time special ed teacher, so she was not able to be there during the day, but each evening she was able to be there and participate in our various activities, which was amazing.
Dustin: She finally got to meet. People that mean so much to me and the people that mean so much to me on the business front. Finally got to meet, my better half, who, I've been married to for 25 years. So that meant a lot to me. The other thing that was unique about this is for the first time ever, we really tried to make it like an all-inclusive experience.
Dustin: So we ate all of our meals together. we covered all those costs for everyone. Everyone was welcome with a custom swag bag. they all got custom journals. If you're not seeing the video, we had some cool challenge coins. we had seven figure leap branded quarter zips. Every person got their own favorite snack.
Dustin: I was really proud of that and [00:07:00] I felt like it really added a lot to the experience. the other thing that we did this time was we made sure that we were like multi setting, meaning we were in a few different locations, so we got outta the hotel, right? So people were in the same hotel. That was great.
Dustin: They got to collaborate there. But we actually rented a co-working space that was really cool. It had a lot of open space and it had the boardroom, the Confluence boardroom that we got to be in. there's the Katy Trail, which is a really, Kind of historic trail that runs along the Missouri River.
Dustin: So we had some walking sessions and things like that on the trail. And then the last day we actually had a pavilion on the river. and I'll talk about kind of what we did there through our pitch tank exercise. But that was a really neat outdoor setting. kind of out and about a lot of people active on the trail and the river and barges.
Dustin: And that was just a cool, Moment and then we, of course were at numerous different restaurants and, the first night when everyone was in town and settled after our first half session, we went to a place called Chicken and Pickle. And, we [00:08:00] played pickleball together and we had a lot of fun, kind of had, lots of different variations of chicken and hot wings and chicken fingers and Nashville hot chicken and all the things.
Dustin: But we played pickleball together so we were able to be active. a different night we had a sit down, more fancy, formal state dinner. So the point there is multiple settings, lots of different environments. We kept people moving. it was a very walkable location that we were in.
Dustin: and that walking time in between way points in the retreat I think is super, super important because it gives people a chance to be shoulder to shoulder and have conversations, which is a posture, that really opens people up. So. That was awesome. The final thing on the sort of setup here that was unique is, as I mentioned, these retreats are included in our Mastermind and,even the all inclusive version, I've not charged our members anything extra to come.
Dustin: So they pay their normal monthly, membership. fee right investment. And, and so we always have, we have typically around [00:09:00] 24 members. this time we were supposed to have 19 people in person, which is remarkable. 16 actually made it because several people had like health and family and travel snafus.
Dustin: but what was really cool this time is we opened it up. To allow two at large, individuals to come. So these were people that aren't part of the Mastermind, but they are part of our community. Right. And that's really important. So these weren't just random people, they're people that are graduates of our podcast Profits Accelerator.
Dustin: They're active in our community. they're candidates for the Mastermind. They have the vibe of, the mastermind members, I knew they would be a good fit and I made personal invitations to two people and both said yes. And obviously they're not paying a membership fee 'cause they're not in the Mastermind.
Dustin: So they paid a, just paid a flat fee and they were able to come and fully participate and. It was no, no one would've been able to tell who was and wasn't an official member 'cause they were so well acclimated and, they did such a good job. and I think our members did [00:10:00] such a good job of welcoming them and from an economic standpoint, them paying to come helped me supplement some of these really cool.
Dustin: Perks that I was able to provide with the swag bag and events and state dinners and providing lunches and all those things. we still lose money on the event. to be clear, it's not cheap to put on the event. But we didn't lose as much money and I don't really think of it as a loss. I think of it as an investment anyway in, in our mastermind in retention, in, bonding and all the things it does for me.
Dustin: But, I know if you're listening to this, you might be curious about. So kind of how you, how you pay for some of these things. And so having the two at large members was just all around home run. So I think that's something we definitely wanna incorporate in the future. So that's sort of the theme, the setting.
Dustin: what made this unique? So number two, part two here I want to get into a little bit is the structure of the retreat itself. So every time we do a retreat, I work closely with Cassie Shea. She's one of our mastermind members. She's been featured here on the [00:11:00] podcast several times. She loves event planning.
Dustin: I hate event planning. I love being at events. I love the in, I love the facilitation in the room. I'm not a big planner, when it comes to events, so Cassie helps me create. The experience of the retreat itself. And then this time I actually hired someone, named Aaron, who's a tra like he's a professional travel agent, and he helped me actually with the facilities and those sort of plans.
Dustin: So again, that was part of that all-inclusive experience and I paid him a feed to do that. So anyway, back to the. Form and function of this. So we always have a theme. Our last retreat in the fall, was the theme, was simplicity scales. this time the theme was the leadership triangle and confluence, right?
Dustin: I talked about sort of like this, the unique geography and history of the place we were in. But the theme as far as what do we talk about? What's the focus of our. curriculum, if you will. It was the leadership Triangle. I actually did an [00:12:00] entire podcast about this, and so I'd welcome, I would encourage you to go back and listen to that.
Dustin: The Leadership Triangle is something I use to, it's a framework that I use to think about leadership for the types of businesses that we run. Leadership, team leadership, thought leadership, and so those three. Main topics became the foundation for three big blocks of our time together. So day one was a half day in the afternoon.
Dustin: That was self-leadership. Day two in the morning, team leadership day two in the afternoon, thought leadership. And then our final day in the morning was much more of a distillation reflection. we did our pitch tank competition, which I'll talk about a little bit. So that was the kinda the form and function.
Dustin: And on the same. Leadership, map, if you see the video. I mean, that's how this is broken out. So I loved it. I think that might be like the central form that we use in general, moving [00:13:00] forward. I like the. Symmetry of the three topics, the three blocks that we broke into, effectively four hour blocks for each of these topics.
Dustin: And then within each of those blocks, I really liked the flow this time. I think in the past, a mistake that we've made is over programming where it's it just, you just trying to get too much stuff done and people are context switching. In this case, we had a focused four hour block on one of these three pillars from the leadership triangle, and then.
Dustin: We had people in multiple formats there, but the formats sort of built on each other, and so the general flow was. I gave some instruction, told a story, gave context for one of the, like self-leadership for example. Then we gave people solo journaling time to, and we gave them reflection questions so they could journal on their own in silence, right?
Dustin: and they could go out to the river, they could go to different coffee shop, however they wanna do that. And then after they finished journaling, we put them in a dyad, it's a fancy word for a pair, [00:14:00] right? So we had two people, and they would basically share with each other verbally what they journaled about, and that could be sitting in the coworking space that could be out on a walk.
Dustin: Again, we gave them lots of freedom on how they wanted to do that. That was really cool. Most of us, it's a different modality to journal, but then to verbally process and let someone reflect and ask questions. And that was really valuable. And then we took multiple of the dyads and we combined them into a small group.
Dustin: And that small group did a different version of sharing. And then we brought everyone back together, the full group into the boardroom, and we mined the room for insights, which I think was the highlight of each of these three blocks. Right. So people have had the chance to reflect and journal and share and get clear, and then you get into a room where people have had all different experiences and there's a high level of energy.
Dustin: It's a very. Abundant, space to be in. And we just gave [00:15:00] people the freedom to share with the room their biggest insights, takeaways, breakthroughs, commitments. Right? It was amazing. So that was the general setting. We basically repeated that three times over the course of the first two days. and it was amazing, the final day.
Dustin: And we spent some time again, totally different environment. We left the coworking space actually. Crowdsourced a bunch of chairs and we commandeered a pavilion that was on the river and it was really cool. So beautiful weather, fortunately. and we circled up in, in this pavilion and we did, we did some different sharing distillation of.
Dustin: After the, after three days of this, like who are we, what are we doing here? Right? And then we did our pitch tank. And so this has become a tradition. Every retreat we have a pitch tank competition. and the topic at hand varies by the retreat. In this case, we had just ended the third.
Dustin: Piece of the triangle, which was thought leadership. So every [00:16:00] person on a voluntary basis. I'm very proud that every person did this and every person was videoed doing this, which I think is really powerful and it speaks to the trust in the circle. But each person for two minutes got up and basically pitched the group on.
Dustin: What they wanna do with their thought leadership. Right? So I talked about the book I'm writing and basically made the case for it, pitch people on my book, right? Some people talked about the podcast guesting initiative they're taking, or the podcasts they're launching or. Just some deeper story that has been uncovered that they know they need to share.
Dustin: And that was really powerful. It's kind of our culminating event before we, hug and people found their way back for travel. But that is the structure. So hopefully that gives you just good, clear insight into like how we structured this. That was the working session structure. and then we had, we walked places to go to lunch together.
Dustin: As I mentioned, the first night we did the pickleball the second night was a steak dinner. and so we had other things mixed in here, but that was the [00:17:00] core, like mastermind time was, was in that form and function and I absolutely loved it. So we've talked about the theme and setting, we talked about the structure.
Dustin: Last thing I wanna talk about here are some of the takeaways. For me personally, but also, I think more than ever my takeaways were extremely aligned with the group's takeaways. I don't know if it was the theme or if it was the function, the form. Man, we were so united. it was so remarkable actually.
Dustin: it actually kinda makes me emotional, like how, we had basically about 17 people in the room. How just aligned we were, right? and it was, it created some major breakthroughs for me too. one of the big ones, I'll just kind of say is this theme emerged in day one, where we all realized, and I'm the leader of this crew, right?
Dustin: We all realize with me at the helm that. We are really smart and really good at what we do and [00:18:00] also overly humble. and so that may sound weird if you weren't in the room. And so we adopted this, realization. I guess we, this label that like we are in many cases. Overindexing for like being humble heroes, right?
Dustin: The, and I think my humility is one of my strengths, but then the shadow side of that is being overly humble, right? And not being bold enough and not, sharing our gifts and being, being good stewards and letting other people know about all the good things that we can do. so. The transformation that everyone in the room to a person desires is going from a humble hero to more of an audacious steward.
Dustin: This idea that God has given us such great time, talent, and treasure, and especially the talent part here, we have a message to share. We're on a mission. We can't be meek about that, right? We have to be bold. We have to be audacious, we have to be outspoken, take risk. We have to stand for something [00:19:00] and we have to do that, with excellence.
Dustin: And I do too, right? And I'm the leader of the group. And I'm like, yes. Like I actually wrote at one point, who's the model for this? And then I had to write under that. It's me. that is my call in this season is to lead in that way and to lead this group in particular as well as our whole community in that way.
Dustin: So this idea of going from humble hero to audacious steward was a really big takeaway. I think that was. Applicable to everyone. And I think that was what made that final pitch tank, thought leadership exercise so powerful is, it was literally seeing people step into a more audacious version of their thought leadership and stewarding, stewarding their gifts in a really unique and powerful way.
Dustin: Number two takeaway from me was just the power of proximity. I know it. Every time I experience it, I am taken aback by how powerful it really is. these are people I love and care about, I spend a lot of time with. there's nothing like being in person. There just isn't as expensive [00:20:00] and time consuming and energetically.
Dustin: Demanding as it is to create an event and host people and be present in a big way. So darn worth it, right? there's no replacement for it. this group was unique too, and half the people here were newer. it was their first retreat. a couple at large guests like I mentioned, and about half were more like veterans.
Dustin: they've been here for some, or even all of our retreats, unfortunately, a couple of our. Veterans who had been at every single retreat were the late minute scratches, because of health issues and family issues. So, but that created a really interesting dynamic where, it was the first time half the people had experienced this at all.
Dustin: And then some people had been back numerous times and. That there was a dy, there's a dynamic that formed around that. But this power of proximity, the multimodality being in different settings, being on the move. we did the morning walk club, which is something we always loved to do, where people meet before the official start of the day.
Dustin: in this case on the Kad Trail in the river, I was there and led a small group. [00:21:00] It's just something different, about doing that, breaking bread together, having lots of great meals together. Playing pickleball together and the competitive juices and the fun that comes from that. it's amazing.
Dustin: So I wrote a LinkedIn post recently and it basically, the headline of it was Find Your People. And I think that's the secret sauce. So I'll just say, if you haven't found your people. I really hope you do. It's worth investing in. it's worth pursuing. and if we may be your people, that'd be awesome too.
Dustin: but the main thing here is the power of proximity. Being in person, you just can't replace it. And so get yourself to more events, masterminds, conferences, meetups, whatever you can do. And if you don't, Nowhere to go, create one that'd be my encouragement just in your local community.
Dustin: create one because proximity is truly powerful. And then the final thing I wanna share as a takeaway is my expanded view of team. So I mentioned the three leadership triangle, components, self team [00:22:00] thought. I got expanded views of all of these for sure, being in this group, but the team was the one that really jumped out to me.
Dustin: And I kind of felt I put a lot of effort into building our team in that first quarter, one of our team members was actually there in the room, which was really powerful. and that's all that is true. I've, I have done that and I think I really felt for the first time just how I opened this podcast that your team is way more.
Dustin: Than the people you pay, right? Your employees, your contractors are certainly part of your team. I think I've been guilty in the past of limiting my scope of that's my team, right? I pay them, we work, whatever, nine to five and we get things done. I would really encourage you to think of an expanded version of your team.
Dustin: one of the big things for me was. Like my family and my wife in particular is a majorly important part of my team. My wife does not work at Seven Figure Leap. she does not have an official capacity there. [00:23:00] She's a special education teacher, like she's got her own career. But she's still a major part of my team because she's my partner, she's my spouse.
Dustin: We've been married 25 years, and I felt like that really came home in a deep way because she was able to be there in proximity in the evenings. that meant a lot to me and, it was really powerful. it was a really powerful reminder of just how important she is to the business and that she is part of my team.
Dustin: the same would be true of my kids. they're definitely part of the team, even if they're not on the payroll, because they're such a part of me and we share goals together and, your personal and business, goals and finances and ambitions. they all blend together, when you own your own thing.
Dustin: So. That's an expanded version of team. this mastermind is absolutely an expanded part of my team and one of my huge goals for this mastermind I felt like we really got much, we touched it this time, is we, I want each member to feel like an expansion of each other's team. I want this to feel like a fractional.
Dustin: resource a fraction. I want [00:24:00] each of us to be fractional team members of each other's business. 'cause we're all experts at different things. We have different lived experiences, we have different networks. And that happened, that, that really happened more than ever in this, in, in person retreat.
Dustin: And so I think that's really important. And then for me, it was a, actually a reflection. I had the very end on Friday morning. I was like, I've talked a lot this week about stewardship and. I talked about some of my own faith walk and, but I never actually said or clicked that God is my part of my team, like a central part, like the most central part of my team.
Dustin: Right? for me, my faith is a big part of the drive to do what I do, and it's a big part of. My mission right is to spread Christ's love and to do that through this amazing form we have of entrepreneurship and community. And I don't often. I don't often enough, I should say, tap into that source, right?[00:25:00]
Dustin: And rely upon God and bring my business to prayer and those sort of things. And so one of the big takeaways for me in this retreat experience was I have to continue to consciously put God at the center, of my business. Right? Again, we're not a. Faith-based group, people actually of all different faith walks and non-faith walks in this group, we all are on a mission.
Dustin: And because for me personally, a central part of my mission is my faith, my Christian faith. that's gotta be, that. Up there on my org chart in a sense, with my team. So that's my expanded version of team. My encouragement to you would be to really think about in your own life, in your own phase of business, like who is on your team, right?
Dustin: I hope you're part of a mastermind. I hope you consider ours. You know when the time is right? If you're not, but your family, your spouse, accountability partners, peers,People in your spiritual life and your faith journey, they really should be enrolled as part of your business [00:26:00] team.
Dustin: And I think that was a huge takeaway for me coming out of this most recent retreat experience among many other things. So, I hope this is helpful. there's so much to talk about here. I've spent 30 minutes basically talking about a couple aspects of what it was like to spend three days with some of the most impressive entrepreneurs that I have the pleasure of.
Dustin: and a, a really interesting thing happened and I'll close with this. We were leaving our sit down dinner, on Thursday night. My wife, 'cause she's awesome and likes to make me cringe a little bit, and we did a group photo at the dinner and it was awesome. And then she's Hey, Joe, come take a picture with Dustin.
Dustin: I'm like, eh, it's kind of awkward. Like I'm not a. Celebrity it's weird to have a one-on-one photo effectively, one of me with one other person. And then she had me do that with every single member and. It was actually awesome. And people, were very gracious and we had some good laughs and some funny takeaways and I was like, why are you doing this?
Dustin: [00:27:00] This is kind of awkward, right? and so her and I were walking out to our cars 'cause we had to drive separate and we're walking her out to her car after dinner and I said, Hey, can you believe I get paid? basically like part of my business is to hang out with these people. Like, 'cause they're amazing people.
Dustin: And she's like. That's true, but Dustin, you don't just hang out with these people, you lead these people. And I was like, that is a great reminder. Right. that is a big part of my call in this business is not only to be a peer, I am a peer. I love these people as friends and colleagues. but I'm also a leader of this mastermind group and with that comes, a certain level of responsibility and depth and, The good news is I felt coming out of this week more equipped and more accomplished as a leader, to kind of put down the humble hero and say audaciously we have a heck of a good group. We had an amazing experience. I did a great job [00:28:00] leading this, with a lot of great help, of course.
Dustin: but I'm gonna audaciously celebrate the amazing, Gifts that God has given me and my ability to steward them in this season with this particular group. So that's what I got for you today. I hope this is, helpful in some way, useful, inspiring. let me know. I'd love to hear from you. Send me a email.
Dustin: Shoot me a DM on LinkedIn. let me know if there's certain kinds of content you want me to cover. Are there aspects of this business that you would love to hear a little more behind the scenes on? and if you're interested in being part of this amazing community, pursuing. The Mastermind, maybe being an at large member at our fall retreat.
Dustin: 'cause we'll be doing it again this fall. easy way to do that. To talk about what we do and get some strategic help is just to book a call. And that happens@sevenfigureleap.com slash call. and you'll have a conversation with me or someone on our team. We can talk about your business, your goals, and point you in the right direction, whether that's something we offer or not.
Dustin: but seven figure leap.com/call. The way to, get on our calendar and have a, have an [00:29:00] amazing conversation so we can help you experience this amazing richness and gifts that come from relationship based growth in your business.
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