Running retreats in your business is a surefire way to infuse more fun, energy, and adventure into your life and business. And the good news is that anyone with an audience base, a drive for adventure, and a hunger to help people can make it happen.
If you’re anything like most small business owners, you work for yourself because of the freedom it provides you. Many of us like to be able to pick up and travel at our own leisure. But what’s even cooler than traveling at your heart’s content? Getting paid to travel. And you can make it happen by running your own retreats.
Running retreats in your business is a surefire way to infuse more fun, energy, and adventure into your life and business. And the good news is that anyone with an audience base, a drive for adventure, and a hunger to help people can make it happen.
Here are 3 key tips for running successful retreats in your business:
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Make sure to focus.
Just like selling any service online, your retreat needs to have a focus. You want to make sure that your target audience is clear, that the takeaways are defined, and that your vision is solid.
Are you swooping people away to the mountains to teach them how to nail their marketing and branding? Are you working through self-doubt and fear through yoga and meditation? Or maybe you’re helping moms and daughters connect with each other on a deeper level? When you’re clear on your focus, your retreat will appeal to the right audience and be much easier to sell.
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Create a plan.
While retreats aren’t hard to run, they do require a lot of planning ahead. You’re going to want to choose a date at least 6 months away, and work backwards from there. You’ll need time to secure dates at your venue, create content for your retreat, hire additional contractors, create the website or sales landing page, and marketing and launching the actual retreat.
It’s also important to consider your clients when planning – many people plan their vacations months ahead of time, and a retreat is no different. Give customers ample time to fit it into their schedule. And remember, the longer you give them to spread out their payments, the easier it will be on their wallets, and the more likely they will be to say “Yes!” to coming along.
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Build your community in advance.
Prepare for your retreat by marketing your business as a whole. In order to successfully run retreats, you need to have an audience. It ends up being a numbers game, and you want to be on the winning side of the equation. Even if leading retreats feels like a really far away, long-term business goal, the time to start marketing is now!
When you cultivate an audience that is hungry for what you have, launching retreats becomes a piece of cake. But it can take years to build your community to that point. The sooner you start taking the risk to put yourself out there, the faster your reach will grow.
Writing guest posts for other sites, pitching yourself for interviews and podcasts, offerings great free content to readers, and talking about what you’re doing to as many people as you humanly can are all great ways that will cumulatively help you grow your reach further, faster. Come retreat time, you’ll have people just waiting to hand over their deposits!
Running retreats doesn’t have to be as hard or scary as it might seem. Build up your brand to support your retreat focus, and start planning ahead, and you’ll be swooping people away to exotic places (and getting paid for it) in no time!
Rebecca Tracey is the head/only honcho over at TheUncagedLife.com. She helps people flaunt what they’ve got and get paid for it like a BOSS, and is a whiz at helping new business owners zoom in on their message, their niche, and their packages. Get her new course on how to create killer packages and services here. Connect with @rebecca_tracey on Twitter.
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