The One Where I Had Two Big Retreat Disasters (And How I Recovered)

Do you enjoy embarrassing stories? How about learning from my mistakes so you don’t have to? Then this is the episode for you! I’ve done several retreats now in my business and in hindsight, they were super fun. However, two of them started out as absolute disasters. So I want to talk about what happened and, more importantly, what I did to fix them. Our story begins back in 2013 with my first retreat attempt. I had seen a lot of people doing retreats, and I thought they looked like so much fun. Who doesn’t want to get paid to go on vacation with their business? Not this girl. I love the idea of getting paid to go on vacation! (!!) With that in mind, I randomly decided to have a retreat. So I booked a place in Costa Rica because I really wanted to go there. I threw up a very simple webpage with limited information, and I chose a whole lot of lovely photos of parrots to sell the idea that Costa Rica was a place that was going to be super fun to visit. You can already tell this is going to end well, can't you? Listen to the full episode to hear about:* Why a great location isn’t enough to get people to pony up to attend a retreat* How to use multiple marketing approaches to fill spaces if your initial outreach fails to sell out* Why selling a retreat will almost always require a more hands-on, personal sales process* Four lessons for planning and hosting a successful–and super fun–retreat To learn more about Christie Mims:* FREE MARKETING MASTERCLASS (http://www.coachpony.com/marketing)* Coach Pony (https://coachpony.com/)* Instagram @christiecoachpony (https://www.instagram.com/christiecoachpony/) And if you have some chocolate worth reviewing on the show, we are easily bribed! You can send it to us at: Christie Mims, 3630 High Street, #19286, Oakland, CA 94619