Tropical Think Tank 2016 – 5 Months Later

In March this year I travelled to the Philippines for Chris Ducker’s Tropical Think Tank.

If you had have asked me how it was 2 weeks after the event my response would have been something like…

OMG OMG OMG I wanna go back! Let’s go back! Can we go back now?!

Which is pretty unlike me.

We’re about 5 months out now and the initial excitement has well and truly worn off. That means I can objectively look at what kind of impact the event has had on our business.

Well… I’d be lying if I said that impact wasn’t enormous.

Tropical Think Take White Party
Tropical Think Take White Party

TTT isn’t the kind of event I’d normally go to. Let’s face it, it’s not exactly cheap to go halfway around the planet to hang out for a few days. After being jaded by many a crap event, it was a hard call.

But with the help of a small grant from the Lord Mayor or Brisvegas, why the hell not?

The Event

On paper, the most stand out difference is the size of the event. Ten speakers (9 plus Chris) and 50 attendees. Try get that kind of ratio anywhere else.

What that paper didn’t say is that we’d be chilling in the pool for hours talking shit with people who had done seriously amazing things in their business. Like Peter Shankman who was incredibly generous with his time for the entire event.

That’s not limited to speakers either. The calibre of attendees was insane.

People were running all kinds of business. Yeah there were the expected digital businesses like design, coaching, software, crowdfunding and memberships. What I didn’t expect were the volume of brick and mortar businesses like roofing, recycling and even private investigations. Some of these businesses were freaking massive.

Tropical Think Tank Speakers

For the actual event days, they are split into a half day of speakers and a half day of masterminding. Needless to say I came home with a fist full of notes, a huge majority of which come from the mastermind sessions. The opportunity to have 6 or 7 people focussed on only your business for 20 minutes at a time provides a huge amount of insight and ideas.

Five months later I’m still getting through the list of ideas that came from those tables. Again, not even just from the speakers. The knowledge of other attendees is right up there too. I owe a huge shout out to Brian Clark and Matthew Kimberley from two of my sessions.

Cebu

Over the course of all of this we provided loads of awesome food. And drink. Oh man did we drink.

If you know me you know I’m a firm believer that all the best connections are made at the bar. Or in a water fountain without pants at 3am with 5 other people and 6 bottles of wine (one of three sans-pants occasions of the trip).

One of three sans-pants occasions of the trip…

So of course many friends were made. Proper friends. Next month I’ll be seeing around 10 of the crew again. I’ll also be attending a wedding of fellow TTTer. Just nuts.

There are a few of us that still mastermind every week thanks to the wonders of good ol’ internet.

So, was it really worth it?

It really doesn’t matter what way I look at it, the answer is a big fat yes.

From the monetary side… Just in referrals from people I met there, the ticket has well and truly been paid for. So there’s that.

From a content perspective… The information from the speakers was awesome. The masterminds even better. That’s hard to value, but I’m sceptic AF and even I think these sessions would have been worth the trip.

Finally for connections… Well I made lots of friends. I generally don’t pay for friends so I’m not sure how to put a value on this.

In all seriousness though, the connections made at TTT are nothing short of insane. Only a certain kind of person will take out a week or two from their business to fly across the world and hang out with other awesome people. I went from knowing only a few people in this space to having a one or two degrees of separation from some amazing people. All in a single event.

So yeah. You could probably say it’s worth it. I booked in for TTT17 within an hour of tickets going on sale.

TTT Cruise