Dr. Christine Smith Grew Instagram Following from Hundreds to 124,000 via Mindshare

I came to this Summit, the first time completely alone, sick as heck but still showed up anyway because I needed something else in my life. I just had a lot of things kind of come to an end and I needed something new. And it was one of the most welcoming places I've ever come to. In my first year I sat down at a table of women, who are all earning more than seven figures. I was nobody. And they sat there and they just, like, had fun helping me come up with stuff for my business and it was entertaining for them and they were so kind and friendly. I was like, "What wormhole did I just step through? Like, where am I?" And those people are now my friends. And even though my business is still growing, I feel like coming to The Summit network-wise, relationally and learning how to embody a certain kind of energetic presence that gets you to where you want to be, provided me a platform for that that I would never have found anywhere else. Hello, my name is Dr. Christine Smith and I work out of Denver, Colorado. The Summit came into my life at a time when I needed community more than ever. My life would have not been on the same trajectory without it. And so every year that I come back it has been this incredible opportunity to slowly watch my community grow more and more and see the benefits of just having lunch with somebody. Which is very different than just setting up a call with them. You get to meet people in a much more personal way and those communities have made me so much happier in my life. And people that I've met here that live in the same state as me, have become some of my best friends back home. So I'm very grateful for that. I have kept it fairly casual. All of my stuff started very organically and just kind of grew on Instagram. So, now I just kind of do the "Lives" on Instagram because that's where the audience is and I really like people being able to ask questions. That's the main reason that I've kept doing it as "Lives" rather than a recorded podcast. And then they all turn into recordings anyway that people can access online. Getting to interact with people, getting ideas, keeps the passion alive when you're feeling burnt out. And then everyone here is so giving and there's so much sharing that I'll even just do like a reel with somebody and then we'll tag each other and then we benefit from each other's communities. And since everyone here is growing their communities, every single person that you interact with and tag and promote actually ends up promoting you, too. I think it depends on how you enjoy showing up in your life. The connections that I've made are where I've learn from. So, the connections to me are the most important part. Then the learning comes out of that from those communities. The lectures are always wonderful, I always pick up something, I always have something to take home. There's always new tools to check out. So, like, I always pick up tools to look at while I'm here or resources that I can investigate more. But if I had to pick what I have found to be the most valuable learnings that has come from the people that I've created friendships with. My social media following is a metric that I can share. When I came I had maybe a couple hundred followers and four years later, I have 124,000. So it clearly set something in action. I think it came from the things that I've learned here about consistency and providing value and showing up and integrating with other people. But a lot of how I keep my channel alive and where I feel passionate is doing those interviews with the colleagues that I meet at these events. And for business, I think it's more just understanding how to run it more effectively rather than running yourself into the ground. Anyone who's been through academia learns this way of living where you either run yourself into the concrete or you're completely dead. And that's, like, the only two ways that you know how to exist. So coming around these communities you see all these other ways of engaging with your business and ways that are significantly more realistic and sustainable. Where you're actually serving people better by serving people less because you're not serving them from being completely burnt out and from a survival state. So, I guess metric-wise, I've gained more free time and more income and I'm still working on those. So It's the "Smarter not harder."