Yesterday, September 13 2021, we held our first in-person taster session since early 2020. And it was MINT!
I was so nervous – like never before – to meet new people, engage face-to-face and actually be able to see our guests engaging before my very eyes. Zoom helped us transform our business during lockdown, but technology can’t replace real human interaction.
We had a fantastic turnout (we even ran out of tables and had to print more target-setting sheets) and those who attended got to take part in a masterminding session. In groups of four, with a MINT member or team member at each table, our guests were asked to speak about their businesses, their challenges and their celebrations for 15 minutes each.
After that, each guest was asked to write down a series of goals for the coming month, to take away and work on. And lastly, guests wrote down on a postcard “by Christmas I would like….” along with their home address. I’ll be posting those cards out to everyone in six to eight weeks time as a reminder – “this is where you wanted to be, are you making it happen?”.
What we do so well as a community is we keep each other – and ourselves – accountable. We wanted to give our guests a taste of that.
The event created a buzz you can’t get online and it made my heart skip a beat to stand there and take it in.
And what made yesterday even more poignant for me, was that it was two years to the day since our first ever MINT Business Club event – our launch party on September 13 2019.
What a couple of years it’s been
I’ve reflected, reflected and reflected some more on how the pandemic and lockdown changed MINT, the expansion of the MINT team, and how we’ve come out the other side with a whole new blended online and offline membership offering for self-employed people and small business owners. But it’s safe to say it’s been a roller-coaster 24 months.
And yesterday, I was PROUD – more than ever – to stand in front of new people, many of whom I’d never met before, and tell them… we are MINT!
It’s our members who kept us together in the year that was so incredibly difficult for many of them. It was our members who got each other through tough moments. It was our members who helped us evolve and grow and we’ll keep doing so as we take on more members and welcome new faces into the fold.
I’ve nothing more to say, other than LOOK…. look at the joy and the absolute MINTness of our first face-to-face event in 18 months…
Event photography by our lovely member Gavin Forster.