Just Starting Your Business and Haven’t Run A Retreat Yet?
(But you REALLY want to!)
If you’ve been bitten by the travel bug and dream of being able to take your business (and your clients!) on the road by creating an incredible transformational destination retreat, while making fantastic income and changing lives – then you’re in the perfect place!
So just for a minute, we want you to imagine that it’s morning and you’re walking out onto the terrace of the magnificently appointed medieval stone farmhouse that you’ve chosen for your upcoming retreat in Tuscany.
The morning mist is swirling through the hills as the first smells of a delicious organic homegrown breakfast are emanating from the kitchen. Your heart beats strongly in anticipation of the start of your retreat today and as you walk out to greet your group you can’t believe that this is your life and business!
Can you picture how amazing it would feel to be sharing all your gifts and blessings with a fabulous group of people who are thrilled to spend a week with you in a stunning location that you’ve been dreaming of traveling to?
Well, that’s how we feel every time we run a retreat at Wanderlust Entrepreneur and that’s why we want to share how you can get started on planning your retreat, while growing your business.
Now most heart-based entrepreneurs who are just getting started in their businesses think, “I’d love to travel and run a retreat, but I don’t have a big enough business yet” or “It’d be amazing to hold a retreat, but I have no clue where to start and I already have so much to do in my biz!”
However this is absolutely the wrong way to think!
Why?
Because building your biz and creating your retreat go hand in hand (if you want to create a business that includes retreats, that is!).
So here’s the problem with postponing planning your retreat….
First, when you put your dreams of creating an amazing retreat on the backburner just because you feel overwhelmed or confused, don’t have enough information or enough clients and/or the proper tools and education to feel confident enough to be able to step out and create that retreat you’ve been dreaming about, then you are robbing both yourself and your clients of your amazing gifts and talents. Please do not do this!
And secondly, no matter how big (or small) your business is, you should always be growing your business while planning your retreat.
In fact, you can use the process of designing your retreat to help you gain clarity on who you serve in your business (your ideal client), what problem you solve (we call this your promise) and how your coaching, teachings or healing will benefit your client’s life. Let us explain this one.
I’d like you to picture two trains running side by side down parallel tracks.
The first train is headed to your dream destination where you’re hosting your first retreat. To get there, you are going to need to complete “The 6 Components Necessary to Run a Retreat,” which are:
- Designing Your Retreat
- Promoting Your Retreat
- Pricing Your Retreat
- Running Your Retreat
- Protecting Yourself Legally
- Building A Retreat-Worthy Business.
So off you go on that train, uncovering your match-made-in-heaven audience, brainstorming your teachings (which includes your promise), selecting your dream destination, crafting the perfect activities and outings, designing a beautiful retreat webpage, negotiating with your retreat center and so on.
In the meantime, on track two is the second train. This train’s destination is a few stations down the line where there is a huge crowd of people.
Who are all those peeps?
They are your business’ audience – your active and responsive email list and social media following.
To have a retreat that fills and sells-out, you must build a retreat-worthy business so that when you are ready to tell your tribe about your retreat, you HAVE a community of clients and fans who would simply love to travel with you – and will sign up for your retreat.
So can you see that if you focus only on designing a retreat and don’t build your business and audience, then when it comes time to market your retreat (heading to that stunning dream destination), your train will come to a complete halt?
Likewise, if you concentrate only on building your business and don’t plan your retreat, then your train will take forever to get to your dream retreat destination!
Now here’s the shortcut that we teach in our Retreat Blueprint Program.
Designing your retreat begins with uncovering your niche and becoming crystal clear on what you will be teaching (we use a very specific, effective and super-sonic way to speed up the process of figuring this out.)
Now your retreat niche and teachings are obviously closely tied into your business niche and teachings. So you can be gaining clarity on your business as you plan your retreat – not to mention using all the strategies we share for marketing your business, having proper legal protection, and ways to add additional moneymaking programs and products to your offerings. Who-whooo!
So there’s nothing wrong with hopping on an old-fashioned touristy steam train for a slow chug through the mountains by working on your retreat and business-building separately. But if you want to hop on the high-speed bullet train, then stick around because we’ll be sharing plenty of tips, tricks and tools with you.
In the meantime, make sure you’ve joined our private Facebook Group where we post amazing resources and answer retreat-related questions, not to mention pal around with some of the most amazing Wanderlust Entrepreneurs on the planet!
It’s time to build your business AND plan your retreat simultaneously so you can travel the world, change lives and make a fantastic income!
To your wanderlust life,
Sheri, and the whole Wanderlust Entrepreneur team!
