Welcome to How to Create an Awesome Transformational Retreat WHILE You're Starting Your Biz!

Transcription

1 Welcome to How to Create an Awesome Transformational Retreat WHILE You're Starting Your Biz! Our community is filled with heart-based entrepreneurs like yourself who are building your business and want to travel the world, change people s lives and make money doing so. Thanks for joining us! Today, you ll learn how you can become a WORLD CLASS RETREAT LEADER who offers transformational destination retreats around the world or local ones closer to home. We re going to cover The 5 Keys To Creating & Filling A Fabulous Retreat: Key #1: The 3 Secrets to Designing a SOLD-OUT Retreat Key #2: How To Price Your Retreat To Meet Or EXCEED Your Projected Income Key #3: 3 Legal Tips You Can't Do Without To Make Sure You're PROPERLY Protected Key #4: The NUMBER ONE Secret to Filling A Retreat Key #5: How to Make SERIOUS Income AFTER Your Retreat is Over And we ll be revealing our Secret Shortcut to Creating a Successful Retreat WHILE Building Your Biz! We ll also discuss The Plan, Fill & Profit Retreat Blueprint Program teaches our proven strategies for planning, pricing, promoting, and even making additional money from your transformational retreats. And do make sure you stay until then end for our two fabulous Travel Giveaways, our 25 page The Top 5 Steamin Hot Wanderlust Destinations for Your Upcoming Retreat ($47 value), and our Live Q+A! 1

2 The CRITICAL Differences Between a Retreat & Workshop So what is a transformational destination retreat? A retreat is deeply experiential and it s not just a workshop in a pretty place, at least not the way we teach it. It s not just about where YOU want to go but about where the material you re teaching needs you to go. What s the difference between a retreat and a workshop or live event? Retreats are life changing, the location aligns with the material you re teaching, there s time for relaxing & rejuvenating and they are typically 5-10 days. On the other hand, workshops and live events are usually more intellectual and content-heavy, taught from the front of room, there s time for taking notes & breakout groups and they are typically 2-3 days. People are tired of sitting in classrooms they want to get out and have an experience of something deeply transformational and connect with nature, different cultures, and most importantly - connect with themselves. That s real the magic and power of transformational destination retreats and journeys! 2

3 The Biggest Mistakes Even Experienced Retreat Leaders Make 1. Mediocre, subpar retreats that reflect negatively on the retreat leader and do nothing to up their brand, create buzz, or get them more clients. 2. Incorrectly priced retreats. We re talking about ones where facilitators only make a small amount of money or none at all or even worse, lose money! 3. Not being able to fill a retreat and having to cancel it because there wasn t a definitive marketing plan or to-die-for retreat page. 4. Legal issues - liability forms, cancellation policy, proper cash flow. 5. And then there is most serious issue of all putting your dreams of creating an amazing retreat on the backburner just because you feel overwhelmed or confused, don t have enough information, 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. 3

4 Key #1: The 3 Secrets to Designing a SOLD-OUT Retreat SECRET #1: Design a Fabulous Promise for Your Retreat SECRET #2: Match Your Awesome Promise to Your Locale! SECRET #3: Lay Out Your Retreat to be a Retreat! Even if you have a pitch-perfect marketing plan, if your trip doesn t sound delicious and solve your client s problems, if you don t have a great trip or sales page, and if you haven t laid out your retreat in an enticing way with fabulous activities that align with your theme and promise you re going to be spending money marketing something that s never going to sell! Secret #1: Design a Fabulous Promise for Your Retreat To fill your retreat, your promise must address a problem that s prominent in your client s mind. Your promise is the outcome people can expect from coming on your retreat. What specific, pressing problem do you solve? Folks aren t going to fly somewhere and spend a lot of money with someone they don t know to simply hang out in a pretty place because they can do that on their own for a lot less money! 4

5 Secret #2: Match Your Awesome Promise to Your Locale! Align the material being taught and the actual location. Example: Women s Positive Body Image Retreat Helping Professionals Feel More Feminine in Key West, Florida vs. Savvy, Sassy, and Sexy Looking Fabulous in Menopause in Paris, France Problems of target audience: Tend to gain weight, lose their waistline, and often don t feel very good about themselves during these years, often going through some kind of major transition or challenge in their life. Activities: Custom lingerie outing. This is an experience they d never do by themselves! Imagine the change in their self-worth and confidence This one key alone can be the difference between a boring retreat that doesn t fill and one that your clients can t wait to sign up for! That is why you DO NOT want to do a workshop in a pretty place! 5

6 Secret #3: Lay Out Your Retreat to Be a Retreat! There has to be time for relaxing and processing especially since your retreat is going to be more experiential and transformational than the average workshop. Plan activities to help teach your program and are congruent with your promise Your material should match your location No more than a morning session of straight-up teaching The afternoon is for activities and/or free time Meet after dinner with your group for sharing and relaxing Offer less in quantity but blow them away with quality by creating activities and experiences that will impact them profoundly that they ll never forget. 6

7 Creating a Fabulous Retreat Page That s NOT Boiled Chicken Make sure that your retreat page reflects the difference between a retreat and a workshop! That means NO: Boring trip titles, Run-on text with no bullets, Long paragraphs, Hard to read text which runs all across the page from left to right, No clarity as to who the trip is for and what the attendee is going to gain, Poor quality or small pictures, No clear information about what s included on the trip and what s not, and No text illustrating the VALUE of your retreat And no compelling reason as to why we should go on the retreat! This is critical folks, just because your location is beautiful that s rarely the reason people use to determine if they want to come on your retreat. Stellar Retreat Page Example: 7

8 Key #2: How To Price Your Retreat To Meet Or EXCEED Your Projected Income A true transformational retreat is a lot of work, rewarding work, and you deserve to be paid for what you do and you need to value yourself appropriately. If your retreat is priced properly and you get your minimum on the trip you WILL make money even on your FIRST retreat. Pricing a retreat is critical! Make sure you price properly so that you net (profit!) in the end and include all your costs into the price of the retreat. And we mean ALL! What to include: Flights, Your room, Your food at the event and in transit, Your supplies, Cell phone costs, Advertising the event, Any extras, Credit card fees (like for example, on a $2000 trip, that would be at least $50 a person if your percentage was 2.5%), The price of your hotel room if you re arriving the day before, Transportation costs, Tips, Guides, etc. 8

9 Key #3: 3 Legal Tips You Can't Do Without To Make Sure You're Properly Protected! This information applies no matter what country you live in! 1. Make sure you re covered by professional liability or indemnity insurance, general liability insurance AND retreat Insurance. 2. Have proper legal forms. And any old liability forms or simple waivers will not do your forms need to be written specifically for travel and the issues that occur while traveling. 3. Put a cancellation policy in place that is visible before people pay. Do Keep In Mind If you are accepting money for a retreat that includes rooms, food and transportation you are accepting money for travel and that can make you a Seller of Travel. So do make sure you are functioning legally since there are strict rules around selling travel in most countries. 9

10 Key #4: The Number ONE Secret to Filling a Retreat! Market your business, don t advertise your retreat. Bar-none, the number one way to fill your retreat is by marketing your business (not your retreat!) and by doing audience-growing and list-building activities all year long. That s why we recommend taking 6-12 months to fill your retreat if you don t have a great following yet. If you try to advertise your retreat you ll spend a lot of money that s going to come out of your retreat s budget and eat up your profits! This is so important because most retreat leaders are using the wrong strategy to fill their retreats! You need to be list-building and growing your audience all year long and don t fret, we share over 20+ ways to do so in our program. 10

11 Key #5: How to Make SERIOUS Income AFTER Your Retreat is Over! The number one way to monetize your retreat is to run your retreat knowing that you have a follow up program at the ready that you re going to offer during your event. A retreat as a one-off deal is never a good idea. You re putting all that time and energy into your participants and to not offer them a way to follow up is simply negligent! Coaches and healers who are starting out often feel like they are constantly struggling to attract clients yet this strategy is another way you can grow your business by adding in retreats. Follow-up strategies: A three, six or 12-month group coaching program, Individual coaching, High end group mastermind, Shorter weekly group teleclasses, webinars or Google Hangouts. Examples: 6-month group coaching program: $300 a month x 10 people = additional $18,000 An eight week paid group teleclass after the retreat: $497 x 12 people = $5,964 Private yearlong coaching: Only 3 of the 12 attendees signed up x $600 a month = $21,

12 The Shortcut to Creating a Retreat WHILE Building Your Biz Building your biz and creating your retreat go hand in hand. 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 (remember we talked about your promise earlier) and how your coaching, teachings or healing will benefit your client s life. 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 sign up for your retreat. 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, you won t have anyone to market it to. Likewise, if you concentrate only on building your business and don t plan your retreat, then it till take forever to get to run a retreat in 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 and 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. Which is awesome! 12

13 Thank you! Hope you enjoyed the webinar and learned a lot that you can implement! Truly - there s no reason why anyone cannot create your own retreat and net over $10,000. No reason at all! To your wanderlust life, Sheri & Meghan xoxox The Retreat Blueprint Program ** If you re ready to create a retreat that transforms lives & actually sells, then join us for the Retreat Blueprint Program so you can become a WORLD CLASS RETREAT LEADER and avoid all the pitfalls that cause most coaches, authors, and facilitators to lose money on their retreats. We want you to focus on building your business and doing what you do best teaching, coaching and having fun on your retreat rather than struggling to figure out how to put all the details together. NOW s the PICTURE-PERFECT time to be learning more if you re planning to host a retreat in the next months! The Retreat Blueprint Program is now open. Live classes start the week of February 20 th and run all year! If you want to join us please go to: If you have any questions about the program that we have not answered on the webinar and you need to speak with us privately here s our calendar: Or you can us: awesomeness@wanderlustentrepreneur.com 13