Dreams, Regrets, and Taking Your Shot

Crystal Vilkaitis: This is what blew my mind. I had multiple people say. Can I take a selfie with you? I want to be able to say I knew her when. these complete strangers, believed in me and I really believe that when people believe in you and you believe in yourself, anything is possible.

Are you ready to open up and talk about all things business? I’m Crystal Vilkaitis, a curious entrepreneur who loves talking about business, especially over a glass of wine. I started Crystal Uncorked to share open and honest conversations about my journey and talk to other entrepreneurs about their experiences.

We pull back the curtain and talk about the highs and the lows. Wine isn’t required, but is recommended. This is Crystal Uncorked.

In this episode of Crystal Uncorked, I am talking about a recent trip that I went on, something super fun that Dustin and I did.

And then I’m going to be sharing this epic moment that I had on stage in Dallas, in front of 600 people. I’m going to talk about how I got there, what happened, what happened afterwards. It was very cool. 

So as I’m filming this, it’s the beginning of November and a couple of weeks ago, Dustin and I were in Orlando.

Now, if I back up a little bit, I was in Dallas. I went from Dallas. I was at a conference to Orlando. I spoke at a conference in Orlando and then Dustin met me out there and we spent a day at Epcot and a day at Universal Studios. And I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Disney World before. Like if you know me, you know that I love Disney.

Often go to Disneyland because we lived in California. We really, really miss Disneyland, but we do love Disney World. We especially love Epcot. And so since I was speaking in Orlando, it was this beautiful opportunity for us to go. And one thing we like to do is drink and eat around the world. It’s so fun and we turned it into a game this trip where every hut, like they had these little huts in each country that had different, you know, authentic cuisine.

We would order something that we would share. We’d take a picture of it. We would have a first bite and then we would rate it on a scale of 1 to 10. And then we kept all the ratings. It was so fun. It just really made it more interesting and engaging throughout the day. So if you ever go to Epcot, you have to play this game, it was during the food and wine festival.

So they had like all these huts that were out there, but even if it’s not during that time, like get food in each of the countries and then rate it. 

So, I will tell you that Italy won. We actually went to like a sit down restaurant in Italy and the lasagna was so good. And I am a sucker for lasagna.

So that was both of our top score for food, but of all the huts, China won. China won like twice. Their pot stickers were so good. Their egg rolls were so good. So, that was a lot of fun. My mouth is totally watering while I am filming this. It’s about lunchtime and this food was so good. 

The other thing that was epic about Epcot. Oh my gosh. There is this ride, Guardians of the Galaxy. Now, over in Disneyland at California Adventure, or California Adventure? Is that what it is? I can’t believe I can’t remember this because it’s been so long, too long. The Guardians of the Galaxy is like just the drop ride. I hate that ride. 

At Epcot, oh my gosh, it is the coolest roller coaster I’ve ever been on in my life, and I highly recommend it. It’s like you’re floating through space. The car actually like kind of spins, but not like spinny like teacups. Like I didn’t feel sick. Oh my gosh, it starts and you start the roller coaster going backwards. It was the weirdest feeling. It was in the dark. It was sort of like space mountain, but a totally elevated experience. There’s a point where you’re like going around earth. I wish I was miced because the whole time I kept saying, wow, whoa, whoa. Like I was, it was like double rainbow guy. That was me.

I was, like insanely impressed with this ride. So if you go to Epcot, you need to get on their pass list for that. I forget what that’s called. Their queue, the virtual queue, highly recommend. It was so good. 

All right. Now let’s dive into the content of today. Which is all about this Dallas event that I was at.

So I went to the build your brand live event in Dallas towards the end of October. And this is put on by Jen Gottlieb and Chris Winfield, my mentors. I just love these people. They brought on so many incredible speakers. I feel like I could do a month long of episodes about this conference. It was so good.

And, you know, I go to conferences like this. I invested myself and go to them for a lot of different reasons. One, you know, I’m in this mastermind. So it’s a good opportunity for me to go see my other mastermind members and connect with them and network. And I’m just such a believer of having friends who are in similar worlds that you are, so you can relate, you can talk to each other, you can brainstorm, problem solve, you know, do all that together.

So that one of those reasons also, I love learning. I’m just a very curious person. I think that especially for the field I’m in, I have to stay on top of trends. I have to constantly evolve. And so I am always learning. I learned so much at this conference. And then also I’m looking for content for my shows for my conference evolve.

I’m always looking for speakers. So in a way, I kind of feel like I’m an agent going out there, like looking at, you know, the other speakers and what’s going on in different industries. So I can pull really amazing people to come speak at my event. And you may or may not know this if you’ve heard this on a previous episode, Jen Gottlieb is speaking at evolve, which I’m so excited for evolve is my in-person conference thats happening in April in Denver. 

And so, I’m here at this event and getting so much information and on day 3, they had 10 mastermind members go up on stage. And we had up to five minutes to talk about our transformation by becoming a super connector mastermind member. And this is a pretty like standard thing you’ll see at conferences.

There’s usually a three day. The first day, pure education, seeding, whatever you want to sell. Day two around lunch, you go into the pitch, you make your offer. Then day three, you’ll have current clients that come in and endorse that offer. It’s very typical, works really well in the event space and conference space.

So I was asked to be a part of this, which I was honored. There’s hundreds. I think we’re at maybe 300 super connector mastermind members and I was honored to be a part of the 10 that got to be on stage. So we’re behind scene behind stage. We’re getting ready to go out and we go out and it’s 600 people.

This is one of the largest audiences that I’ve ever spoke in front of. And I mean, I’ve been on over a hundred stages and I got to tell you, I still get nervous. So we go out, we sit on these chairs and the format is somebody goes up to the end of the stage, stands there with Jen, takes their five minutes and then they come back and then it’s the next person.

I went last. So I am the final person. So that entire time I am sitting there like waiting for my turn. And I swear to you, my heart was beating in my stomach. I could just feel it pounding. And I’m like, deep breaths, just breathe, you know, like all you’re doing is just sharing. I just get nervous. And part of it’s also like I was excited. I had some excitement to share and I’ve talked about this on previous episodes of Crystal Uncorked about anxiety versus excitement. They show up the same way in the body. So I was definitely excited and nervous and it was so cool to hear everybody’s transformation.

And then I get up and I share what’s happened to me over these past 18 months. And I really have transformed over the past 18 months. I’ve been very public about that. You know, with my team and on the show . 

Two major things that helped me transform was joining the mastermind and getting therapy.

And so I just talked about some of the results. And one of the bigger things that I addressed was the fact that I invested in the mastermind. I invested in myself and I put pressure on my goals. I invested $25,000 to join their mastermind last year and, I never invested that kind of money before in myself.

And when you invest and you put pressure on yourself like that, for me personally, I show up different. So I really wanted to get that money back, see a return on my investment. And one of the ways that I became very focused was getting more stages. And so historically the most stages I’ve spoke on, I’ve been a speaker since 2008, 2009.

The most stage I’ve had in one year is 11 stages. This year I’ll have 18 stages. And a big reason why I have that is because I put pressure on my goals last year and invested in myself. And I was really committed to building out my topics, my speaker sheet. I have a coach I worked with in the mastermind.

And then I put myself out there. I promoted, I marketed myself to try to get these gigs and I showed up and it really helped because then people started seeing me on all these stages on social and then they would be reaching out and they’re like, you’re everywhere. Can you come speak at my conference?

And so there was a really great ripple effect that happened for me as a speaker over this past year. I’m really putting myself out there. So, I’m sharing my transformation and you only have five minutes. It’s insane how fast that time goes by, but one thing that I said on stage that I was really glad I said was I shared my dream to the 600 people, which is to have my own talk show. I talked about this in last week’s episode. And by the way, if you haven’t listened to that episode, I really recommend it. I’ve been hearing a lot of great feedback about these questions, like how powerful they are. And they really are powerful questions and I share my answers and just give some advice there.

So last week I talked about one of my ultimate goals here is to have my own talk show. And I knew that there were a few producers in the audience too. So, you know, you’re like, you gotta shoot your shot. Like you gotta just say it, tell people you never know. You never know who you’re talking to, who’s in the audience, who knows who that can help you get to your goal.

Right, or get you one step closer to the dream. You never know. So that’s why you have to talk about it. 

I think so often, at least this is my experience. I have wanted to, I’ve wanted this since I was in high school. I just have always been drawn to have my own show, but there’s been many years over the years where I haven’t talked about it because, well, who am I to think that I want my own talk show?

And that’s just seems so big. Like, there’s no way I could ever make that happen. There’s a lot of head trash around it. There’s doubt, there’s sabotage. There’s so much that happens. But I’m also a believer that if we’re committed and we truly believe in ourselves and we put ourselves out there and we do the work, anything is possible.

So I’ve been leaning more into that latter, experience and thought and putting myself out there and really going for my dreams because I would regret it if I didn’t. I have to at least try, right? So you never know who’s in the audience. And so I, I share my story and I was, a pretty dark place before joining the mastermind and getting my therapy.

And now I just feel like I really transformed. My business has done the most revenue we’ve ever done. We’ve already crossed over a million in revenue this year. Last year was the first year we did it. And we did that in December. We already crossed over in September. So we’re going to have our best year from a revenue perspective, but I want to also be like crystal clear and transparent because this is Crystal Uncorked here.

I’ve spent a shit ton of money this year. I was going through expenses recently and I spent $92,000, $93,000 on travel. Okay, so, you know, whoa, that’s a pretty big bill. Part of that 20K of that was taking my team to New York City. And that was an investment in our culture and my team and, and each other.

And so that was so worth it. And honestly, some of that travel is actually reimbursed from places that I speak. So it wasn’t that full amount, but like tens of thousands of dollars on travel. I did that though. I did that strategically to put ourself out there. To go to more shows, to meet with our partners.

We’ve never traveled to meet with partners before, and that’s something that I feel like we need to do more of. So we just have a bigger effort to help support each other. And we really showed up in a lot of places this year to see what makes sense for the years coming and market.

So, you know, yeah, we’ve had our biggest revenue year. I’ve also spent the most money I’ve ever. Spent in one year and it’s been major investments in myself and in the team and in the business. 

So anyways, I’m sharing my transformation and where I was before and here I am now. And then you’re done. And then we were done and we go right to lunch and it was a really fun feeling because so many people afterwards came up to me and were just like, I really resonate with your story.

Oh my gosh. Thank you for sharing. That was so inspiring. Can I take a picture of you? This is what blew my mind. I had multiple people say. Can I take a selfie with you? I want to be able to say I knew her when, like I knew her before she got her show. Like their belief in me to have my own talk show. These complete strangers, I did not know them at all.

These weren’t people from my mastermind. These are just attendees at the, at the event. Wanting to take a selfie to be like, I want to show my friends that I knew her. I mean, like it was one of the coolest things I felt. I felt really special. And I felt. Like people believed in me and I really believe that when people believe in you and you believe in yourself, anything is possible.

There’s a lot of people out there that don’t have that network or they don’t share what they want. So how can people invest in you and how can they show up and believe in you? And so that is really my lesson from today’s episode is that if I never would have said my goal and dream is to have my own talk show, In my five minutes, like the talk show has nothing to do with my mastermind experience, right?

I just found a way to kind of plant that in there. And then I just talked about some of the things I’m doing to try to get me to that goal. But I just was like, Hey, shoot your shot. There’s a room full of people here. Some are producers. We need to, we need the universe to know about this goal. So the universe can help me out if I never would have.

Confessed and opened up and shared my dreams, which can also feel really scary and vulnerable because trust me, I’m sitting back there, you know, 10th person to go thinking, No, don’t share that. Don’t share that. That sounds too much about you. Nope. People, why, why you, who do you think you are that you would have your, like all the head trash sitting there as I’m about to go up.

I’m really glad I did it anyways, and I’m committing to myself and I’m committing to my dream. And there for sure are, going to be people out there and there probably is people out there right now who is like. There’s no way she’ll ever have her show or I’m annoying to them or whatever because we’re all unique individuals and I won’t resonate with everybody.

But you have to share your dreams and I think that you have to get really clear on what it is you want and then you have to share and that getting clear on what you want.

That can be challenging. I think that a lot of entrepreneurs skip that, we kind of skip over that. I think that we could get really caught up in what everybody else is doing, what I’m supposed to do, where can I make a lot of money, where are all the opportunities? And you could get really caught up in all of that.

I’m speaking from experience, this totally happened to me. And instead, what, instead of me like becoming wildly successful, what ended up happening is I was really burned out and multiple times just wanted to run away from my business because I was not on the path that I want to be on of what that looks like for me to reach my dreams and have fun at what I do.

To make a living. And so we lose ourself. We don’t take that time to really get clear on what we all want. We’re not always honest with ourselves too. Having a talk show has nothing to do with having a social media agency. Right? And there’s been times in the past where I’m like, Oh, I can’t talk about this because I’m, I’m supposed to be the social media girl.

I’m supposed to be the social media agency person. I’m the social media speaker. I keep myself in that box and I’ve had to do a lot of work and this still sneaks up on me that I don’t have to just be in one box. I don’t have to just be one thing for the rest of my life and I don’t have to become something new and then forget everything else.

These things can coexist. I have an incredible team that I’ve built. I have a self managing business. I have time to go try to do some other things like this show and speak on stages on other types of topics and interview people that I find interesting because that leads me closer to the dream vision of my life.

So the lesson is that you have to get clear on what your dream vision is for your life. And be honest with yourself about it and then share it because you never ever know who could help you and get you a little, a little bit closer. So I would love to hear what is that dream for you? Will you DM me on Instagram?

I’m Crystal Vilkaitis. Just start typing my name. You’re going to see a little picture of me dancing. Crystal Vilkaitis you could DM me. I want to know what that dream vision looks like for you.

Now, as we close out today’s episode, I am adding in these kind of, I’ll leave you with this final thought, and it’s a thought for the week, and I’m going to incorporate this into shows moving forward.

Maybe you noticed a little bit of a change in the beginning to where I’m going to do a little bit of an intro of something that’s happened in personal, and we’ll get into the topic. And then I’m going to leave you with a final thought. 

So my final thought for this episode is that at that conference, Jen asked us to write a list of the things that we would regret if we did not go after our dreams.

If we did not become that vision of ourselves that we really, really want. And that regret list was really powerful for me. We, you know, started writing it at the conference, but I actually took it home with me and had it be a whole journal entry for me. And just a little side note, what I do like. When questions like that are asked and I’m like, Ooh, this would be a really good morning journal session because that’s why I do all my journaling.

I will go to my alarm clock, put in the prompt and then set it for that morning. So I remember because sometimes you get so busy, you forget what, what question you wanted to journal on. So I had that in there. When we came back from our trip and one of those things, I only had nine things on the list that I would regret if I didn’t do X, Y, Z.

So first of all, I was like feeling really good about that. It felt like, well then shit, do the nine things. You have no regrets, like just do the things. It felt really, really refreshing actually. But one of those things on the regret list was… I would regret never doing a retreat because I really love sitting down and talking with people.

That’s a big part of the talk show and wanting that, like interviewing and that connection and creating interesting content and going deeper with people. And I think at retreats, you have the ability to do that with other business owners. You get a few days in a new environment, which I talk about the power of that so much on the show to go deeper and to help people maybe in more meaningful ways.

And I have a lot of fear around doing a retreat because I’ve never done one before. And it’s a higher ticket because it’s a whole experience. So it’s a five that it’s going to be around 5, 000, very intimate, 12 people, 10 to 12 is the goal. But that includes your hotel and we’re going to be in Palm Springs.

And as you could tell, there’s a retreat coming because I looked at the regret list and I’m like, okay. Nine things. Let’s do it. That day, like hours after journaling, I called Pauline, my COO. And I said, I wrote this list of things I would regret. There’s nine things. One of them’s doing the retreat. So we got to do it.

I want to do it on February 18th, 19th, 20th. Can you and Steph make those dates? If so, I want to do it in Palm Springs. I was just like, boom, have answers. Just pick the answers, do the things, go. We can get so stuck on having all the answers before we begin and feeling like we need to be ready before we begin.

And I was like, nope, we’re just getting this in motion dates, location. Let’s go. I go to chat GPT. I create the name. I created a whole look for it, which I’ll talk about in next week’s episode using Dolly three AI. So cool. You’re definitely going to want to tune in the next week as I talk about that, because it’s blowing my mind, this tool And we’re, we have the oasis of opportunity retreat.

That’s now happening February, 18, 19, and 20. So if you want more information about this retreat, I’m going to give you a link. It’s not even live right now, but when this episode goes live, it will be live crystalmediaco.com/oasis. Is where you can learn about this retreat and if you want to be one of the people, we are only doing 10 to 12 people.

So it’s super intimate. You could also just DM me on Instagram if you want some more information or have questions about the retreat. But my whole thought for you for the next week ahead is what would you regret if you didn’t play full out? If you didn’t follow that dream of yours, that calling, that pull that you have.

What would you regret not doing if it’s, you know, a hundred years, you’re a hundred years old, you’re on your deathbed and you’re looking back and you’re like, I regret what, what are those things? And hopefully it’s not an incredibly long list. And if it is, who cares? Go tackle it. Go do it. But what are the things you would regret?

And then I really, really, really challenge you to jump into action on one of those things like I did my retreat. It feels so freeing. You just gotta, you just gotta start. You just gotta dive in, commit. And I know it’s scary. I know it’s uncomfortable and I know you don’t have it all figured out, but you’re not going to figure it out until you do it.

That’s how we learn. We just gotta do it. So what would you regret? Take some time to journal on that. Jump into action on one of those things. And I hope that you found this valuable. 

I want to say that if you are not on the Crystal Uncorked email list, get on it because my podcast team and I are coming up with some really fun and creative things to send you.

Free downloads, free helpful things to support you and your business, so you got to be on the list. So if you go to crystaluncorked.com. You’re going to see a little get on the list, just join, and then you’ll get some really great educational information there by being a part of our community on our email list.

And then of course, follow me on Instagram. That’s the best way to chat and connect and be a little bit more personal. All right. I will see you on the next. See you. Bye.