I am always very humbled when I go to a business seminar. I used to be one of the youngest in the room, since I started these businesses when I was 26. The basic majority of the people who can not only get away from work and family demands to go, are also more financially able to swing it with their incomes, are between the ages of 35-55. I can almost 100% guarantee that I am the only one in the room with a tongue piercing. I do feel like the biggest dufus in the room for half the time, as I have no formal business training and have learned whatever and however I have been forced to. I'd like to say that I learn because I seek out knowledge, but that would be incorrect. I learn kicking and screaming, in the last 24 hours before a deadline.

The seminar is interesting, despite the very crowded feeling in my head. It was about one "ROI and Cash Flow Statement" away from spurting right out my ears and shooting obscenities out of my mouth, just to hear something I understood at a cellular level. I get the language of numbers to a degree, although my first love is writing. I just alternate between feeling empowered to go work on my business and make flow charts and dancing around the all-knowing balance sheet, and feeling like I am an IQ point away from being institutionalized and drooling.

The group of people that come to these seminars are at the same time motivated and psycho. They get so FULL of LIFE and ENERGY and POWER! If they were a rubber ball, they'd be winging into the walls and making the mom in me scream, "Not in the house!" But then they are also unaware, some of them, that their energy makes them appear as if they have had an steady enema of triple espresso circulating through their system for the last 500 days. They are so full of energy that it's not infectious, you just think they have an infection, one that has gotten septic and making them loony.

I’ve found that while it is interesting to lunch with them and talk between breaks, my fellow seminar attendees are very mired in their problems. They use what they just learned to do one of the following:

1) Be the next expert on the subject—just because they finally grasped what they didn't grasp before, they feel like they now can impart that wisdom in the same caliber as the person we paid money to go learn it from. Some of them just got into these seminars for the knowledge, had the minimal amount of experience in real life, and then go on to "teach" others—basically regurgitating what the real experts say and could do in their sleep. These people are nice but not trustworthy. You throw an idea out there, just in conversation, and they will use it to promote themselves and their seminar business, as if they came up with it. 2) Talk about and appear to appreciate the info but will never use it in real life. The concept is now not foreign to them but the practical knowledge will never be implemented. Knowing it is one thing—getting out of your fear and your little controlled world of insulation is another. They will talk your ear off about their problems, but they still have them, again and again, no matter how much money they throw at it and how many people they claim to have learned from. 3) Determined to figure out how to use the information in their real lives, without bragging or lamenting about their businesses or problems to someone they just met. They are there to learn, and not to have someone tell them they are correct in their thinking or business, no matter what the bottom line says.

I have been all three of these types, depending on the seminar. In some cases, within hours or minutes of each other. This particular seminar, I felt like I was shamed enough to start doing this stuff at home and seeking out the info to help me turn my businesses around, and also enough confidence put into me that although I am shamed that I let things get how they are, I feel better that there are more tools in my tool belt, as a wise mentor describes it.