Tamara Golden, our in-house WU retreat expert and owner of Journeywork Retreats, a full-service destination retreat planning company, shares below what it takes for your business to be retreat ready.
What if you could have a killer vacation in paradise with all expenses paid, while distinguishing yourself from the competition, generating additional revenue, and doing meaningful work with your clients?
Introducing retreats into your business can be the answer, but far too many practitioners jump into the deep end of planning a retreat before they or their business are retreat ready.
So, how do you know you’re ready to host your first retreat? There are tell-tale signs and specific benchmarks. Let’s look at these by following the six steps I outline in my Get Retreat Ready course, designed for heart-centered entrepreneurs new to business, but who have a long-term vision of hosting retreats.
Here Are 6 Steps to Help Your Business Become Retreat Ready:
- Step 1: Mindset:
Before we make sure your business is retreat ready, we need to make sure YOU are retreat ready.
This means having the characteristics in place to be confident, comfortable, and most importantly successful, in planning and facilitating a retreat. These include motivational qualities like passion, purpose, and a bigger vision for yourself and your business.
There are also some functional skills you’ll need to hone. These include good time management, organizational skills, and a healthy dose of resilience.
Finally, if you’re wanting to spend quality time with a subset of your clients, and take them away on destination retreats, you should be someone who values connection and ideally loves to travel.
- Step 2: Clear Business Identity:
Paramount to your success is being able to identify the unique service you provide and specifically for whom.
Before you’re ready to launch into hosting retreats, you need to be clear on your ideal clients and have spent some time tweaking and perfecting your marketing materials to resonate with them. If you’ve done this successfully for your business, you’ll be able to do it successfully for your retreat.
- Step 3: Functioning Funnel:
Clients. You can’t run a business without them, and you can’t host a retreat without them.
What you therefore need is a successful means of attracting your ideal clients to you, educating them about what you offer, then moving them along a range of services, programs or products at price points that increase in value. In other words, you need a robust marketing funnel in place.
An effective funnel will not only help you figure out when to propose a higher ticket item like a retreat to your clients but will help ensure you fill your event.
- Step 4: Educational Content:
Even though I recommend your teaching or training time be limited to 3 – 4 hours per day during a retreat, this doesn’t mean the educational content you present is any less important. In fact, the opposite is true. It’s your instruction that turns a fantastic get-away into a powerful, transformative retreat, and it’s a determining factor in making your retreat both meaningful and memorable.
Don’t have any teaching material developed yet? Not to worry. This is something you can develop over time. Going into your retreat, however, you should at a minimum be able to identify your overarching theme and have a good idea for the content you’d like to convey.
- Step 5: Realistic Expectations:
Once you have several of these steps in place, it’s safe to say that you have a viable business and client base. Now the time is ripe to set your sights on planning and hosting your first retreat, one that will help take you and your business to the next level.
First, however, it’s important to have realistic expectations about what it takes to plan a successful retreat. Take some time to map out a planning timeline and break the planning into digestible phases. Consider the various elements you’ll want to include in your retreat design. Finally, consider when to market your retreat and how to embed your retreat into your overall program offerings and business growth strategy.
- Step 6: Strategic Partnerships:
Strategic partnerships are the relationships, businesses, and vendors that support not only your business but you as well.
So, need help with any of the steps outlined above? Reach out to individuals or companies that get you and your brand, can support you where you are in the growth of your business, and who deliver quality results.
At this point, you and your business are officially retreat ready!
– Tamara
Whether you’re just starting out in your wellness business, or you’re looking to up-level, Journeywork Retreats supports heart-centered entrepreneurs like you in making your dream of hosting retreats come true. From our Get Retreat Ready tutorial to our Ultimate Retreat Roadmap course, through to the planning and implementation of your dream retreat, we’re there to help ensure your retreats are a logistical, financial, and experiential success. Interested? Take our Retreat Ready Assessment!
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Tamara Golden is the founder and owner of Journeywork Retreats which supports coaches, healers, artists, and transformation leaders in creating custom retreats across the US and worldwide. Through this work, Tamara’s mission is to create a meaningful platform for heart-centered entrepreneurs to grow their businesses, distinguish themselves from the competition, and foster powerful transformation in their clients.
