How to Prepare and Run a Retreat

How to prepare and run a retreat

So, You want to create an awesome retreat where everyone has a great time and make money doing what you love while helping others people. This seems to be the dream job for a lot of us, so it’s not surprising that hosting a retreat has become a big trend right now among yoga teachers, business owners, entrepreneurs, coaches and spiritual healers. Also hosting a retreat can be a quick way to up-level your business. But the number one question I get from my students is always,    “How do I actually prepare and run a retreats?” 

Well let me tell you, it isn’t a dreamy fairy tale.  It takes a lot of planning, commitment and hard work  to design and run profitable retreats. You need to really know exactly what to do  , and just as importantly, how to do it so your retreat sells out But you can turn this dream into a profitable business. If you understand the steps to creating successful retreats, you’ll be able to follow them as an outline for your own business model. It’s WELL worth taking a look at how you can combine travel to dream locations with deeply meaningful work that transforms people’s lives. 

This goes for all types of retreats:  yoga retreats, health and wellness retreats, business retreats, couples retreats, personal training retreats, healthy diet retreats, spiritual retreats, religious related retreats, and any other kind you can imagine. Follow these steps as you begin planning how to host your own retreat and I promise you will most likely make good money from this venture.Here are the 5 steps you need to take so your retreat sells out:

1. Know why you want to host a retreat

 Before you jump into your dream, you need to define it and you need to really understand why you want to host a retreat in the first place! The reality is that hosting a retreat requires hard work.  I suggest not starting until you can answer why you really want to do it. What’s your motivation and what do you envision as an end result? I have seen many people who talk about hosting retreats because they want to travel to an exotic location in the middle of winter which sounds good, but I have seen only a handful actually commit to working hard because they lose focus on what they’re doing. If you don’t know your WHY and if your WHY is NOT BIG ENOUGH, you'll most likely not enjoy it and even give up before your retreat even starts.  Your WHY doesn’t have to be like everyone else. If you say you want to host a retreat because you want to level up your business and offer a higher ticket sales, I think that is a really realistic answer. I think your WHY is BIG ENOUGH to do it. So, take some time to answer why you really want to host a retreat.

2. Knowing what type of retreat you want to host and who are your audience

If you are not clear of what type of retreat you’re going to host and who are your specific audience is, you most likely won’t make any real money from it. Why? Because you can’t help everyone. If you try to help everyone, you actually end up helping no one. If you are not clear about what type of retreat you want to host, your retreat probably won’t be interesting enough to get people to sign up. Ask yourself, what is your niche?  What are you good at? Use your expertise to build your retreat. You don’t need to go out and seek a new skill before you host a retreat. You don’t need to teach or do everything by yourself for the retreat. If you are not good in some areas, find someone to help you who is. I always ask for help or offer some work exchange on my retreats. When you create a unique and special retreat that will serve your ideal audience or what we call avatar clients, your retreat will sell itself. People nowadays need help with basically just three things...health, relationships and money. So if you create a retreat that will help people with one of these three things, people will definitely buy it. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Create something unique, specific, and genuinely in service to a particular niche of people and your retreat will sell out! What do you sell? Is it a destination, Health, Culture, Transformation...etc.? Build a program around it! 

3. Plan well ahead of time

One of the biggest mistakes that I see people make is NOT planning the retreat with enough time in advance. You should plan your retreat at least 8-10 months before it starts. You should understand that in order to get people to get time of formwork, move money around to make a payment, arrange a babysitter, you need to give them time. Time is just as important for them as it is for you! You don’t want to stress out because you have only two months left before the retreat and you’ve only had 3-4 people sign up. You don’t want that. Most people don’t realize that they actually need a whole year to prepare the retreat. Think of Hollywood movies and how they get released. I bet you saw the advertisements for Frozen about 8 months before the movie actually came out. Why? Because the movie producers want to make sure that people are aware of the movie for a long time before they offer it to them. They build interest and grow their market before selling a single ticket. When planning your retreats, you want to make sure that you prepare your ideal clients well. I have a friend who saw Facebook posts about my previous retreats for over a year now and when she finally came to me asking how to sign up. I told her to put down a deposit because the early bird was ending tomorrow. Well, she signed up right away because this wasn’t a new idea for her. She had been aware of it for a while by that point and she was ready to buy! 

4. Commit to your plan 

Unfortunately, many people end up cancelling their retreat because they didn’t have enough people sign up and they were losing money. When you make a good plan and commit to it, you’ll succeed. You might want to find someone who can hold you accountable so you do the hard work and stick with your plan. As a coach for yoga teachers and entrepreneurs, I notice that most of my clients need a lot of work on their mindset. Because hosting a retreat takes a lot of time to plan, organize, market and run, you feel burnt out a lot even though hosting the retreat can be rewarding and it’s something you want. So, be sure to find a coach who can mentor  you about business of retreats and help you commit and support your goals and plans. 

5. Sales: Give and Transform

For a lot of us, money is not a particularly fun topic, but if you view your retreat as a business from the beginning, you ‘ll sell out and consistently make good money from it. However, if you only think about making money, you might not enjoy the process or the concept of retreats after a while. Ultimately, I invite you to view your retreat business as transformation. You are selling transformation. Travel and self exploration is always a powerful combination and you can be sure that your clients will feel inspired and transformed after it. You are selling what they think they want but you’ll give them what they need. Then selling your retreat become natural and easier to talk to your audiences. As you follow these 5 important steps, you’ll be designing your personal plan you can use to make money hosting retreats. Remember to always journal what you learn. Take note of each thing you plan, what you want to get done, date it and write an action plan, so you stay on top of it. You and your clients will soon discover that it’s worth the effort. I know you ‘ll enjoy traveling the world and living the life of your dreams while hosting retreats.

Question of the day: What is the number one action you would do right now if you know that your retreat will be successful and profitable?