How to Host a Wellness Retreat, and Why

In this moment of goal setting for next year or your next quarter or half year there is always - at least I hope it’s true for you, someone or something that makes you realize you have been thinking SMALL… and when you start thinking big, you start doing big things.

Whatever your goals are this coming year.. Try 10xing them. What would it be like if you.. Partnered with someone every quarter this next year and earned by promoting them, they by promoting you, or you offered something magical together. 

What would it be like if you bought the house next door and created a place for a retreat center? A magical backyard oasis? 

If you're an entrepreneur and you want to host a wellness retreat, or you're toying with the idea, and you're just wondering how and what there's a lot to unpack. This is you and I’m unpacking! I promise it’s way more fun than that end-of-vacation kind of unpacking!!

Start with Why Host a Wellness Retreat

What is the reason you’re even asking how to host a wellness retreat (and there are many reasons why you would), but you don't want to begin planning that super fun, ambitious retreat, before you explore, what is my purpose? 

Some purposes could be: 

1. Make a profit. I'm going to host a retreat, make a profit, and ideally make this profit doing something that you would enjoy doing: spending a week or a weekend depending on how long this retreat is, with people you enjoy doing activities that you enjoy. That would be number one, you immediately want the profit from the retreat. 

2.  You might host a retreat as a live event model. That you definitely have to cover your expenses. Let's be clear on that. But in order to sell your attendees into something greater, and that might be a combination of sell them into a training program that occurred prior to the retreat. So they're buying the training program, the retreat is the reward. And you package it all together, but make it appear as if this is the test of the training they want. The conditioning, the strength, the endurance, the whatever it's going to take for them to have a good time at the retreat, even if there wasn't a retreat, but now you're allowing them to have this real goal: this real starting line if you will, at the beginning of the weekend. That's one way. 

3. Another purpose is in bringing them together and selling them on what they don't know that maybe you're hosting simply an activity kind of retreat. You're taking them hiking, doing yoga, Pilates, core, stand up paddleboarding, horseback riding or kayaking, and otherwise just keeping them very active. But you're doing this with the opportunity to plant seeds about what it is you do on a deeper level. You’re making them hungry for more information, more guidance, helping them realize they don’t know what they don’t know… and want to. You're creating desire for a next step. You're planting that seed at the entire time of your retreat, and then planning to sell them into that and that is how you make a profit. You'll be concerned or thinking about your conversion rates. 

That is, you know that if you have 15 people attending 40% of them will take a next step and that those 40% might positively influence each other and make others have FOMO. 

Once you know WHY you’re hosting the retreat you can plan much more effectively. When will you drop seeds about what’s next? Even in your welcome kick off party there may be a very small hint about previous attendees and what they went on to do. That’s very subtle. 

Based on feedback from nearly 15 years of hosting retreats of various types: 

• Private for small groups

• Fitness Professionals retreats

• Flipping 50 fitness retreats

 

I’ve learned a few things:

• You won’t please ALL the people all the time

• People don’t always read the fine print

• People who’ve never been in a program or met you might attend 

• Some want “white space” time to for instance journal 

• They don’t like to be rushed 

• Many don’t read the fine print

• Some don’t follow the training plan and aren’t prepared to keep up

• If your brand has a style of eating/nutrition it doesn’t mean attendees will comply 

• The right people always show up
  

Determine how long you want the retreat to be:

• Half day
• Full day
• Weekend
• 3 day

Do you want to host live or virtual? 

You might feel more comfortable doing one or the other.

Pros to virtual - low expenses.

Pros to live - the energy and no tech to go wrong! 

Let me know if you’re hosting a wellness retreat in 2024 or want to! 

Other Episodes You Might Like: 

How to Host a Successful Fitness Retreat

https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/successful-fitness-retreat/

10 Ways to Fill Your Fitness Programs Right Now

https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/10-ways-to-fill-your-fitness-programs-right-now/

7 Ideas to Get Booked as a Speaker or Presenter to Build Business

https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/get-booked-as-a-speaker/