Sunday Night Confessions. Feeding My Inner Cookie Monster

Last week I spoke and attend the Optimization Summit [now apart of Multifamilypro’s Brainstorming Sessions] in Dallas, TX. “OptSum” is primarily focused on multi-family real estate, a business category that I had no experience in. I want to acknowledge Tami Siewruk for some brilliant thinking on shaking up a single-category conference, with a heavy dose of us word of mouth–social media folks in a workshop format. When you look at the speakers and topics, ranging from Lionel Menchaca, Mack Collier, Jason Falls, John Jantsch, and Chris Penn (and that’s just off the top of my head)… you could have been at a Social Media conference. As I kicked off OptSum with an 8am workshop, I quickly realized the attendees came to be engaged. For some weird reason at the end of my presentation “Cookie Monster’” popped into my head. Cookie Monster has a passion bordering on fanaticism for cookies. Each individual cookie is a remarkable experience to Cookie Monster. That might be why I love him, because every cookie is followed by an exciting “Om Nom nom nom”, over, and over, and over. Oddly I have a similar habit. Being remarkable in your job is hard work, its hard to be up for every single day. No matter how much we love our jobs some days it’s just work.This is my own theory, so therefore it probably holds as much weight as a WWE wrestling title belt: Cookie Monster feeds his passion for cookies because, he simply enjoys each cookie like it was the first cookie he’s ever tasted. Cookie Monster feeds his soul with his mantra, “Me want Cookie.”I feed my soul last week… it actually wasn’t my doing, it was the people around me; the attendees, and the other presenters. Sometime schedules dictate that you present and leave, but this time I had the opportunity to attend OptSum.I try to relate stories into lessons learned, and for the first time in a long time, that’s what I got from being an attendee. Having conversations and sharing stories over lunch, breakouts, dinner, and sitting as an attendee listening to my peers present.

I didn’t go to Dallas hoping to feed my soul, but meeting so many people inspired by doing their jobs, inspired me. I don’t take my job for granted but we could all use a recharge every now and then.

My simply advice, find that spark that got you doing what it is you do… and share it.