The 7 Steps to Successful Retreats

In this blog we cover the 7 steps you should follow to take your retreat business from just being an idea to an established, successful and profitable business.

Step 1 - Set Your Goals

It's important to think from the outset what your goals are when starting a business, if you don't set a goal then you will never know if you have achieved. Is your goal to run one retreat a year so that you can enjoy a holiday with your clients, would you like to earn a full time income from running retreats or would you like to open your own retreat centre? If so how many retreats would you want to run a year to achieve the right work balance?

Often in life we set goals and never achieve them, but luckily there are a few proven methods we can use to vastly improve our chances of success.

The first method is to make your goals SMART goals, this is a commonly used acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timed.

Often when we set our goals they will sound like this 'I want to lose weight' or 'I want to learn Spanish' or 'I want to start a retreat business'. But the problem with setting our goals like this is clear, the goal is so vague that we have no way of even knowing if and when we have achieved it. So we should try and restate our goals like this 'within 3 months I want to run my first trial retreat and at least cover the costs or make a small profit and within 1 year I want to run 10 retreats a year and earn a full time income from it'.

Now we have made our goal specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and most importantly time bound. You can never underestimate the value of giving yourself a deadline to counteract procrastination.

The next thing we can do with our goals is to Create micro milestones! If we are always looking at a goal in the far off distant future its hard to stay motivated, its important to break down the journey into micro milestones and congratulate yourself when you achieve each milestone along the way. So some of our micro milestones might look like this : create an idea for a brand, create our social media channels, build a website, open a business bank account, set up accountancy software, get listed on the main booking sites and finally run a trial retreat.

The next simple thing we can do with our goals is write them down. Something about putting pen to paper and keeping a record of it makes our goals concrete, helps us measure our progress and keeps us focused.

The last thing to do is to share our goals. Telling other people our goals gives us an element of accountability as we want other people to see us as consistent and that we follow through when we say we are going to do something. So share with your family and friends your goals.

Step 2 - Do Your Market Research

So many people set out to start a business without doing any or very little market research. Sometimes we can be so excited and in such a rush to get started on the fun part of designing our retreat that we can miss this essential stage.

Just some of the questions that you will want to know the answers to before you get started on anything else include :

Who is my competition in that area? What are they charging? What do they include? When is the peak season?

What can I expect to pay for accommodation in my chosen area? The main cost for any retreat and a vital piece of information. Some areas after doing a profit and loss forecast might simply be too expensive to make a healthy profit.

Are there any current gaps in the market? Are there any market segments that aren't already being catered too? Maybe there are a lot of luxury retreats in the area but no one catering for more affordable retreats or maybe all the other retreats only offer yoga and don't offer other activities or excursions.

Who are my target demographic? Its all too easy to design a retreat the way we would like it, but we have to think about getting it right for our target demographic. Is the niche that we have selected a big enough target market and how will I find these customers.

What is my break even point? Its essential before putting any money into it to do a profit and loss forecast and to calculate with all of your fixed and variable costs how many guests you would need to have to cover your costs. Also to calculate your potential losses and potential profit. If a villa only has space for 10 guests and you need 7 guests before you even cover your costs is this a risk worth taking.

When we have gathered all of our market research and done a profit and loss forecast then we are ready for the next stage of our business.

Step 3 - Develop your brand

By this we don't mean create a logo or decide on a font and colour scheme, although these are important details that can help convey the personality of a business it shouldn't be your starting point.

We think its important to start with the Why?

As Simon Sinek explains in his book 'start with why' what separates good companies from great companies, is that the good companies don't start with what they do, but why they do it.

As part of this identify what your core values are and why it is that you want to run retreats? This will help you identify what your Unique Selling Point will be and clearly define how you will differentiate yourself from your competitors. From this you need to make it clear what your companies core values will be, what your mission statement is and to tell your own unique story.

For example our core values at Bliss Yoga Retreats are : Freedom, Fun, Friendship and Adventure. These help to define what makes us Bliss Yoga Retreats and guides the way that we have decided to design our retreats. You can see our retreat ethos below.

OUR ETHOS

Also equally important is to tell your individual story. When people buy into something they don't just buy into the business, they buy into you! Clearly communicating your own personal story is one of the most powerful tools you have in creating a unique and long lasting brand.

Here is my own story of why I decided to start retreats.

MY STORY

Step 4 - Design Your Retreat

As well as the day to day stuff such as what will be included, the menu and what roles you will play at the retreat, we would encourage you to take some time to think about how you can create some powerful defining moments within the retreat. Its these small and special moments that people treasure and remember long after they have left.

At our retreats we spend a lot of time thinking about the small details. So for example when people arrive at our retreats they find an envelope on the bed with a red ribbon tied around it and a flower. When they open the envelope they discover their own personalised horoscope along with the itinerary for the week. When they come for their first yoga class they find a personalised journal which we gift to them. We ask people to use the journal to keep a gratitude list and to write daily their thoughts and feelings during the retreat. On the last evening of the retreat we drive high up the volcano Mount Teide to over 2200m, we climb up to the top of a peak and sit perched above a fluffy sea of white clouds. Here in this awe inspiring location we have a closing circle where anyone who would like to can share their thoughts and feelings from the week. Its a beautiful closing moment that often moves people to tears.

The experience we create is filled with dozens of these big and small defining moments, which I believe is one of the reasons our retreats are so highly rated.

If you want to get more inspiration about creating your own unique defining moments I would highly recommend reading 'The Power of Moments' by Chip & Dan Heath. Its a fantastic book that looks into the science of what creates a defining moment and looks at companies that have deliberately decided to engineer more of these special moments to create a memorable customer experience.

Step 5 - Market Your Retreat

In order to market your retreat its vital that you first have some amazing content to share. When we look at booking anything the first thing we do before we read the description or look at the reviews is look at the pictures and if we don't have some inspiring, eye catching content then we may as well forget about the description because people will just carry on scrolling. If you don't have any content yet then I would highly recommend running a trial retreat for your friends first which covers the costs and spend that first retreat creating eye catching, inspiring content.

Once you have your content now for the part that most people struggle with, how to reach your target market? While we believe that social media obviously plays a crucial role in marketing your retreats and it may be sufficient for running 1 or 2 retreats a year, if you are running them regularly it simply won't be enough.

We sell out 14 retreats a year and we simply couldn't do this if we solely relied on our social media presence. Here are some of the best ways we have found to market our retreats :

Create a free google business listing, you will come up on the first page of google when people search for you by location and you would be surprised how many people will find you this way. You can also then quickly establish your reputation by asking clients and friends to leave you reviews.

Build a community on your website by offering something free. Attract traffic to your website by offering a free video library, audio of free guided meditations or free vegan cooking recipes. You can see our retreat recipes below.

OUR RETREAT RECIPES

Build your reputation on booking sites. Around 80% of our bookings come through just 3 booking sites. These are Book Yoga Retreats, Book Retreats and The Retreat Company. We spent time creating quality content, are always super responsive and quick with replies and always remind our customers to leave reviews. There are lots of other things to consider when using booking sites and we have learned over time the best practices to rank higher on their sites, the same way that doing the right SEO for your website will make you rank higher on google.

OUR BOOK YOGA RETREATS PROFILE

Step 6 - Build & Manage Your Team

Building the right team is essential to making your retreats run smoothly. You might think that you an run the retreat on your own, but believe me when I tell you that is a guaranteed recipe for a lower level of experience for your guests and burnout for you.

In the beginning you may not have the budget to hire full time staff, so consider taking on 1 or 2 volunteers. There are lot of people out there that would be happy to help out on a retreat in exchange for a free holiday. The most important things I have found when recruiting staff or volunteers is to clearly set expectations from the outset. Make sure you put something in writing which clearly outlines their tasks and responsibilities, their work hours and what they get from the exchange. This will save you time when recruiting people as you can send this ahead of interviewing them to make sure they are happy with the arrangement as well as giving you something to reference back to if you feel the agreement is not being fulfilled.

Managing people is a skill, not everyone is a natural leader myself included, but everyone has the ability to learn. If you are going to run retreats regularly and not exhaust yourself you will have to know how to delegate responsibility and manage a team of people effectively.

When I first started running retreats I had little experience in managing other people and a great desire for everything to be perfect. This manifested itself in me being overbearing at times, micro managing and not creating an environment that encouraged people to be creative or offer ideas. Over time I have improved my management style to be much less autocratic and to allow people freedom to add their own creative touches. Most of the time if you give people autonomy and the ability to be creative they will be much more motivated and dedicated than if you try to manage every tiny detail of the retreat. Looking back now I can't imagine how I ever ran the retreats without our small, brilliant and faithful team.

People management is a broad topic to cover but if you are interested in learning more then some of the books that I have found useful and which we reference in our coaching includes :

Messengers - by Stephen Martin 

Leaders Eat Last - by Simon Sinek

Ego Free Leadership - by Brandon Black

Emotional Intelligence - by Daniel Goleman

 Step 7 - Run Your Retreat

Now for the exciting bit! You have done your market research, built your brand, designed and marketed your retreat. What can you do next to prepare to make the retreat run smoothly?

Make your book keeping easy by opening a separate business bank account and keeping all of your revenue and expenses completely separate from your personal expenditure. Remember to do this right from the early days of your business and to include any work related expenses. If you travelled to go and look at different villas this is a business expense, if you are working in a café then your food and drinks while you work can be deducted. If you decided to use our business coaching services then this is also tax deductible. Often your first retreat you won't make a profit because you have all of the associated set up costs the first time around.

We also recommend if you plan on running regular retreats to get some sort of accountancy software such as Xero to make keeping your accounts as automated as possible which you can use in combination with Dext to take pictures of your receipts and invoices which automatically attach to the transaction in your accounts.

Create a welcome information pack for when people book the retreat. You guests will appreciate having all of the information in one place and it will save you a lot of time from answering numerous enquiries about arrival times, how to get there, what they should bring with them, what the schedule is and more. We direct guests to a page of our website hidden from the navigation as this is easy to forward on and also improves our SEO by more people visiting and spending more time on our website.

Collect customer information before their arrival. Before guests arrive you will need to know essential information such as dietary requirements or allergies, health issues or disabilities as well as their arrival time, phone number, nationality and date of birth. We collect the nationality and date of birth so that we can pair people in shared rooms when possible with someone similar as well as using their date of birth to surprise them with a personalised horoscope on their bed when they arrive :)

We use a contact form on the website to collect this information so that it is all in one place and easily downloadable into a spreadsheet that we can print out and use on check in day.

Remember that this is your first retreat. You can't expect to get everything perfect the first time! If you let guests know this is your first retreat and they can see that you are working hard to make it the best experience possible then they will easily forgive small mistakes. I remember on my first ever retreat burning the Thai curry and after apologising and making a joke about it it was easily forgiven and forgotten. Appreciate that each retreat is a learning experience and every time you run them you will make improvements, create systems and perfect the timing of things.

Send customers feedback forms. This is something that we do on all of our retreats. Its a great way to hear what you could improve, what guests enjoyed and what they would like to see more of. Also if anyone does want to give you constructive feedback its far better to receive it in this way than through any negative comments given in your reviews.

Good luck on your business journey, for more insights on how to build your own retreat business check out our other blogs.