How to Create Retreats
You’ve thought about creating a retreat. You’ve perhaps dabbled in the concept or maybe even looked at some people, companies, or sites that have retreats.
You know you want to either attend one and/or do one, yet you have no idea where to start.
You’re worried about what to do the retreat on, where to host it, how to market it, and make money!
You’re afraid of missing out on more ways to create a life and business you love for you and/or your team, but you equally worried about the how to, the time it will take, and the results.
Yet something deep inside you continues to yearn to travel and/or dream of the day you could do a retreat!
You are still reading because… because deep down inside you know there has to be a better way to transform and travel, integrate it into your life and business, and make money!
What if…
What if you attended a retreat to help you learn how to transform + travel?
What if you had a step by step guide to help you create retreats?
What if your roadmap to create retreats was crystal clear and super simple?
Imagine the return… Imagine the results…
It is possible to create it.
How do I know?
Because I took over 20 years in traveling, over 15 years in hosting events, and now over 3 years in creating retreats, and we did just that.
How did we do it?
I figured it was time to
share it to serve others.
This made me start thinking about my own story of fears, doubts, insecurities which translated to overwhelm, complexity, and clutter....and not the results I wanted until I shifted into....
How to Create Retreats...
Simply and Easily to
Get Results
Let's get into creating retreats and some basics that can help you in loving, leading, learning and earning.
Even though I had tons of experience in over seven industries, I was still unclear if I had wasted my time and life, and about what it all meant, continuing in the rat race and on the hamster wheel wondering how on Earth was I going to pursue my passion and purpose and potential and transform my life. Deep breath. I get it, and the joy you see on my face, the joy in my voice had been missing for quite some time. I was determined to find it again. I have often been compared to a pit bull because I do not quit. That's why I'm so passionate about you creating a life you love, and health, wealth and biz, and if that's travel, then let's get to it.
I've now traveled to over 20 countries and I've now led over four retreats. I have also hosted and created events for a number of different brands anywhere from 20 people up to 10,000 people.
Some of this may also apply to also hosting and creating events.
We will get into:
1) Setting the Stage
2) Retreat Highlights
3) Themes, Tribes, Technology
4) Show Me the Money
Part I: Setting the Stage
This is all about getting clear about your passion, purpose and profits, and really getting into what sets your soul on fire. What you were designed for and your purpose to profit. For me, that's God, family, poetry, dance, fitness, giving, yoga, business, art, travel, just to name a few. I believe that my entire life has uniquely designed me for transformation and inspiration in combining health, wealth and biz in one, and taking the complicated and making it super-duper simple. If you want even more on this, I have a free five-part video series at the website as well.
It's all about facing your fears and what stops many is fear. The fear of existing circumstances. The fear of where to start. The fear of the process. The fear of missing out. The fear of loss. So many different things, so it's so important to help you and for yourself to get clear on your clarity in these four different areas of creating what you love of your gifts, talents and abilities of what you overcome and where you want to impact.
Speaking of knowing what you love, let's talk about the locations you might love for a retreat. So are you more of a beach person? Are you more of a mountain person? Are you more of a nature person? Are you more of an international or a local or maybe regional person? Then what kind of themes do you want to create for your retreats? Do you want them to be motivational? Do you want them to be business? Do you want them to be travel and/or yoga-based, health-based? Or all of the above, which is what we love to do.
Then what targets are you targeting, and technology that you love? So what do I mean by that? So for example, I'm clear that I'm targeting typically women that are 32 to 45 years old, want the simplicity of health, wealth and business all in one, want to get away, typically college graduated or in process, and/or want to create a life they love, and also bloggers and entrepreneurs that maybe have a great press platform but are not monetizing and want to learn how to monetize and build a brand as well as get healthy.
I also teach people on how to set up a lifestyle brand exactly what we've done with Fit Life Creation and the technology that we use to do it, Wix, Kajabi, and those are some of the hands-on things we do as well as how to flow with marketing from freebies into high-end offers as well as how to set up the technology.
PHOTO CREDIT PRESTON OLSEN - Weekendvoyagers
Part 2: Retreat Highlights
The things you want to think about is the theme, the location and the dates, what value and service are you offering, what tools and technology are you teaching and using to sell the retreat, Pricing and packages, and partners and your promotion.
Here are a couple of examples and what we've done at our retreats so you may see the theme is all about transform and travel, creating a life in a business you love, chefs and nutrition with the #1 Global Nutritional Brand Herbalife, beach photography, surfing, community service, things like the animal rescue center. Things like hosting workshops and giving scholarships at a photography school in Cuba. Making them all inclusive other than airfare.
Highlights have included influencer marketing with blog posts before, during, after.
Think about the dates because obviously if you're doing a beach retreat, you know you don't want to do it when it's cold, right?
Some of our examples are Costa Rica, Jamaica, again Cuba. We have Brazil coming up in 2018, and then we're looking at things already for 2019 and 2020. You can also think about in terms of trip set-up or terms of promotion Trip Tribe wholesales, Airbnb, becoming an influencer or trip leader with us just to name a few. So value and service.
I always believe that you should give 10 times to 100 times the value of what you charge. Give more, take less. We also give away swag bags. We give away nutrition, transformation packs, mastermind, activities, so many different things.
Then also the post-event masterminds also create more value because people are like, "Wow! Not only do I have the retreat experience but now you're equipping me for success in health, money and business for a month to tow months after."
Things you want to think about in pricing and packages:
The stay cost, the tool cost, the activity cost. So things like the resort, things like the villa, things like any other supplements or tools, activities, photography, yoga, surfing, influencer costs depending on how you set up collaborations. Think about your targets and average income, and then determining packages and early bird rates. Then you want to think about, for example, the size of the retreat. Do you want it smaller? Do you want it larger? Do you want to collaborate with influencers and ambassadors? How much do you want to make per person per retreat? Partners that you could have. Brands that you can collaborate with, and different partners you can align with for advertisement and other things. Promotions, and you guys promote, promote, promote.
I've learned more and more and more as an entrepreneur, it takes so much energy especially in the beginning way more than you thought.
Part 3: Themes, Tribes, and Technology
Our retreats combine motivation, transformation, business, health, adventure are a combo.
Step 1:
Who do you want to attract? What do they love? Where do they like to go? More than likely they're going to be very similar to you.
Step 2:
What do you like and what's your target likely to do? What types of activities? What types of community service?
Step 3:
When and why? What's the best time of year? What value will they get from attending? What's the best place for the vibe you want to create and why do you want them to get away? And really, really diving in and thinking about the tribe that you want to create with.
For Costa Rica for one of our retreats, this included professionals, specific fitness themes, studios, chefs, blogs, adventures, photographers. Technology insight can make it a lot easier for people. So landing pages and bookings, and I've included several examples as well and links, and you can look at our retreat page too. The examples that I included in addition are in the freebie guide.
Then you want to think about in general like what sites do you want to be on. Where can they find you? What type of reach and exposure do you want to get? What are the best sites for that, and I list some of those as well in the freebie guide.
Photo Credit: Carly @light.travels
Photo Credit: Leo Parias in Costa Rica
Part 4: Show Me the Money
You guys remember that scene from Jerry Maguire where he's on the phone with Cuba Gooding Jr., and he's like, "Tell me. Show me the money." Tom Cruise or Jerry Maguire is sitting in an office in a cubicle and he's kind of whispering. He's like, "Show me the money." And then he's like, "No. Say it louder." He's like, "Show me the money." He's like, "Yell louder." And he's like, "Shoe me the money."
It always cracks me up and I've used this, you guys, in so many different scenes because you know I've used both playing the video and doing it myself, even with people in boardroom meetings because it's so simple yet so profound, right?
Speaking of which, resorts. So with resorts you could earn free rooms with bookings with wholesalers and/or you can increase your profitability quite a bit with villas or doing collaborations with villas, or finding listings on Airbnb and/or VRBO. So that's a lot of what we've done.
Tools and technology can help you set up insight and additional value with an additional up to five income streams before, during and after the retreat. Then with trip and trip leaders you can earn and get bookings faster, and also get leaders to help you promote.
Take a leap of faith focusing on a life and a business you love, thinking about what we've covered so far. Locations, tools, ways to collab, trips and content after the retreat.
So venues, resorts versus villas, and I give you a lot more breakdown on the numbers on what is comped. For example, some wholesalers will give you a comped room with every six rooms you've booked. Then setting up health and making money.
So we always, always, always include hands-on experiences with workshops - things like smoothie bowls, money making, social media, influencer marketing, and boss brand building to name a few!
We also integrate our monthly mastermind feature with creation clubs so that not only do they get, to attend our retreats and/or our live experiences, they get insight into our monthly mastermind and our content they also get post-event support which is huge. That's normally a charge, but we're including that in the retreat price because it's a higher ticket item.
We also expose people to be a referral source beyond the client, influencers and how to collaborate with influencers. We collaborate with influencers on over seven different platforms, and we're in the process of building a press army of over at least 200 by the end of the year. We've collaborated already this year with over 10 people.
Spending money.
The biggest cost will typically be the villa or resort. It'll depend on if you have single occupancy, you know double occupancy, single rooms, the price that you set on the retreat. So I guesstimate based on a 2,500+ retreat somewhere between $450 to $1,000.
Now tools you may need. Digital tools, time and assistant, meal bags, supplements, and the estimate there. Maybe you need a virtual assistant. Maybe you need a photographer. They may offer for free with bookings and/or a collaboration so keep that in mind. Always be willing to ask.
Adventure and tours again maybe you can collaborate with this with a photographer, a resort, zip-lining. We did amazing zip-lining, you guys, with Costa Rica.
Marketing you may end up spending some money on collaborations with different platforms or getting a blog post that's paid for. You know, there's a lot of wiggle room obviously.
This is showing you guys the vision and tasking the vision of what's possible with hard work, focused determination and time, this is based on 10 people, all dougle, double occupancy. Dougle? I don't even think that's a word.
2,500 early bird assuming all 10 book 2,500 early bird, so $25,000, right, times 10, so that's your gross.
Then let's assume the villa's $3,000, so that's an average. You can spend more. You can spend less. So 22,000 net.
We always donate as part of Fit Life Creation being also a social enterprise and heavily believing in helping vets, battered women, and cancer, and in homelessness, in donating a minimum of 10% of our profits.
So $2,500 donated assuming about $1,000 for the chef, $1,000 for activities.
So assuming worst case scenario, they're not, it's not a collab, and about 500 for the driver, so about $17,000 net.
Then the meal bag and nutrition bag, so takes it down to about $16,000 net.
If you think about it, you guys, this like, a pretty great salary would cover someone for the next three months, right, if you're a solopreneur, travelpreneur, lifestyle entrepreneur.
Keep in mind I haven't even gone into yet the post-event results with potentially people deciding to be you know influencers, ambassadors, Herbalife coaches, or all the above. Then digital products that'll help you spread, because now you have way more eyeballs on you because now you've created more press.
Photo Credit: Rey_Cuba via IG in Cuba
Post Event
Let's figure that you decided you reached out to a magazine or you reached out to another blog, and you're getting paid to write a blog post about Brazil, like we're going to Brazil, right? So 200 to 300 per post. Let's assume five posts. Keep in mind hard work is required. E-books, let's assume you create an e-book about the retreat, right? Like in this case, this e-book I'm giving away for free to help increase the know, like and trust factor, and really to get people to get into our monthly mastermind.
So but let's assume you create an e-book. $100, right, but we could still create specifically an e-book later on Brazil because this is a creating a retreat guide, so you see how my mind works. Memberships, like you give the retreat attendees free access for a month to two months, but also incentivize them to share with referral awards.
So let's assume within a year to five years, *hard work is required, you sell 100.
That's $10,000 pre-bookings. So I would highly, highly, highly suggest if you do a retreat, incentivize people with an added extra incentive at the retreat only, that with pricing only at the retreat for the next retreat. Let's assume you sell a couple there. Then trip leaders, then that's not even counting coaches or leaders or influencers or ambassadors for future collaborations you guys, as well as Herbalife coaches, that'll lead to even more value. People that want to create a lifestyle brand.
I hope that served you, and I hope that helped you create a life and a business you love. If you haven't already, tune into our free 14-day challenge. It's at our website at fitlifecreation.com. Freebies, and here's to you transforming and inspiring because you were born to.
I think we can all agree — creating a life and business you love involves elevating our energy when it comes to building. It involves changing our minds from all the lack, fears, and insecurities we have allowed when it comes to creating a life and business we love, making money, and giving back.
One of our focuses in our lifestyle platform is How to Scale Smart, and teach others how to do the same.
To Create a Life and Business We Love, we connect, create and cultivate.
