The suburban Florida county I live in is at the awkward middle between a rural community and a bustling city.

Close to the beach and yet affordable, the most common resident is retired, and the most common private profession is real estate.

It’s a county that is slow and likes it that way. This culture makes the youth and innovators of the area feel restless. Most young adults and interesting leaders leave, and when the change-makers leave, this further perpetuates the status-quo that this is an area that does not change.

I keep getting ideas for interesting events that have so much potential to be big successes. I see the need for social variety here—a need that is not being satisfied within myself.

Collaboration is the Key to Success

I’ve noticed that a lot of meetup organizers use the event-hosting website more like a scheduling tool for clients. I see this a lot with fitness and spiritual practitioners. They have a lot of time slots available, but most of these slots have only 0-1 attendees.

As a potential attendee, I ask myself a few things:

  • “Do I really want to make this drive just to __ for half an hour?” I am getting tired of seeing events that I am mildly interested in, and debating back-and-forth whether it’s worth it for me to make the long drive out to attend it or not. Whether it is to meditate or do yoga, usually making more than a half hour drive just doesn’t make the trip worth it to me.
  • “Do I really want to attend when it will be just me and the practitioner?” What if we don’t click? Then that will be awkward and that will definitely have made the trip not worth it.

I feel like my hang-ups on these questions are what is preventing wonderful local practitioners from making sustainable income with their services. But the solution is so simple.

Things would be radically different if practitioners in the same field collaborated together. If they did, events would be more interesting, last longer, would be more worth the drive out and investment for attendees. This would lead to greater present and future profits for all individuals who participate. Working together makes everybody stronger.

Realizing the need for collaboration is about changing gears. You can keep doing what you’ve been doing and get more of the same, punching out more 0-1 person attended meetups, or you can collaborate to do more planning up front so together you can hit the quality out of the ballpark. What would hundreds of attendees look like? What about thousands?

You are only limited by your imagination.

The vision I see is for the spiritual community in particular. I’ve seen many services offered in the area for this field: yoga, meditation, sound healing, aromatherapy, tarot reading, tai chi, the list goes on…

Even though I consider spirituality an important part of my life, I never attend these events. I end up debating if I should make the long drive to a meetup, but it usually isn’t worth it to me. But I would attend immediately if I saw multiple services being offered over the course of hours, or even days in the form of a retreat. I would buy tickets to that in a heartbeat!

These collaborative events could be a longer with more variety, or it could be set up like a conference with a schedule where people could select from the options available for each hour. It would keep people engaged by exposing them to a variety of topics. The resulting synergy would spawn more beneficial relationships, as an excited attendee who would have never stepped foot into a practitioner’s office otherwise, now finds herself paying for one-on-one sessions. Related merchandise or tools could also be sold during this time at a discounted price. Business would skyrocket.

I also see the potential for a spiritual team of practitioners to pitch the benefits of their combined services to the large corporate companies in the area. Yoga exercises could be taught specifically for people who sit at desks for long periods of time. Meditation could be taught as a way to aid decision making and more rewarding meetings. The spiritual team could even pitch the idea in order to get up-front investment to organize a longer *Professional Retreat* that the companies who sponsor it could attend.

Letting Go

I originally got this idea over a year ago. I shared it with a talented practitioner, but who ended up moving out of the county, and so none of this came to fruition.

When this idea came back to me this morning, it frustrated me. I want to see this happen so badly, but I am unfortunately not the person to do it. I wish I was.

I keep seeing the need for variety here, and from this need, I keep getting ideas for events. I have done my best to organize multiple large events, but none of them were successful, and I am finally starting to realize why.

There is a difference between seeing a need, and being the person to fill that need.

There is a huge difference between wanting to attend, and wanting to organize. While I want to see these kinds of spiritual events exist so badly, since I myself am not a spiritual practitioner, I am not the person to do it, so I am letting it go. I am going to pass on this idea to people in the area and hope that they run with it.

I’m looking for my community.

It’s interesting that I got the above idea and realized the importance of collaboration for success when I was working with my manipulative mentor—at a time when I never felt more isolated.

While I have found and nurtured such rewarding friendships, I now need a larger community that I can connect to, that I can grow with. I’ve spent the better part of the last four years working with people, trying to change this area into something that it is not—doing my best to spring up an oasis in a desert because I am dying of thirst…

It’s exhausting trying to force an area’s culture to change. I’m even starting to think that it’s impossible. It has to happen organically, and the trend-setters have to be happy and leading straight from the heart. You can’t make an area change in a way it doesn’t want to. You can’t change an area in a positive way all while you keep focusing on the negatives of how it’s staying the same. Letting go is the only answer.

Since pursuing self-love, I have realized the importance of only making decisions from a positive place. Any decision for me to stay and continue event organizing would be a decision from a place of desperation and feeling trapped. It’s time to prove to myself that I’m not trapped by walking right out the front door.

I finally realized that my two biggest problems right now, the feeling of social isolation and my lack of income, are connected. It’s impossible to get paid for adding value when you’re doing it in a vacuum. It’s all about people. A social network is the key to success just as easily as the lack of one is the key to failure.

I’m finally accepting that I cannot stay in this county and keep growing. Just as the spiritual practitioners here would be much more successful if they collaborated, I need to find my own people to collaborate with.

I’m now looking for the communities that I can integrate into—that I can add value to from a positive place. In alignment with my goals, I want to meet other content-creators: bloggers, YouTubers, and animators. I will likely be joining online communities.

But the monumental thing is that I have finally decided: I am moving to a city.

It’s overwhelming how much work needs to be done in order to move, (taking a deep breath now) but I’m excited to grow in the process. (exhale)

It’s time.