Pt. 2: Soul + Leadership: Leaders Need The Space And Time To Shift
AKA: our solution is not a yoga-wine-and-naps style retreat.
So on that day in 2017 as we discussed the breakthrough our client was experiencing, we began to explore how we could create a more immersive offering that combines our work and that would bring us joy. Vision work is central to all that I do and this is a great example of what can be created with blue sky thinking.
We recognized that sometimes for real transformation we need to carve out time and space. The idea of a weeklong immersion came up. Actually, we called it a retreat at first but realized too late that the word retreat tends to evoke a slow, restful, and more passive approach - this ain’t that.
This was our checklist:
Being in a really stunning natural setting
Delicious and healthy food (not prepared by us)
Mornings of beautiful guided meditations
Merging of soul work and business leadership
Major respect and value places on people’s time
Deep transformative work with conscious leaders and entrepreneurs
Chances to bring in other amazing teachers
Horses and horseback riding
Yoga (to take care of our bodies)
Lots of breathwork
Option of Massage
No filler
This is how the Soulful Entrepreneur came to be.
Participants pulled us aside “You HAVE to do this again. It is life changing.”
We have hosted 4 retreat style immersions, with over 65 attendees in the subsequent 3 years, experimenting and adapting, dreaming, stretching and crying along the way. We aren’t business partners in the traditional sense, but our collaboration has been an avenue of expansion for us and for so many others.
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AND it is not all memes and horse filled meadows, there are miscommunications, difficult conversations, hours staring at spreadsheets and disconnections mixed in for good measure. And as with every startup idea, it gets better with every iteration.
**Aso, biz consultant spoiler alert **, if you value your time and don’t own the venue, retreats aren’t very profitable. That’s not our whole motivation but still. We run businesses.
Half-way thru the last year something felt stale. We both had a lot on the go, new offerings, big creative projects, personal + family struggles were leading (and in some cases pulling) us in very different directions. We had set bold growth goals for 2019’s retreat; we were feeling obligated to promote, promote, promote and I was discouraged we weren’t meeting those goals. The time committed to administration, deposits, invoicing, venue coordination, menus, logistics and organizing the retreat were causing us to feel depleted. We were stressing as registration closing approached and despite so much enthusiasm and interest, the hard numbers were weak. **Aso, biz consultant spoiler alert **, if you value your time and don’t own the venue, retreats aren’t very profitable. That’s not our whole motivation but still. We run businesses.
We made the difficult decision to cancel our late summer retreat in France.
We decided the ranch retreat would be the last.
We announced the news online and told our communities privately. It was bittersweet. We both experienced a sense of relief. Pressure released.
And then our ranch retreat started to fill up.
We exceeded the registration from the previous year. New curriculum and programing flowed and crystalized. The stars aligned for incredibly talented teachers to join us facilitating yoga and horse communication work. Because the year prior we had hired an amazing coordinator, set up was streamlined and effortless.
Inspiration returned. The retreat began.
We did deep chakra clearing and meditated with the herd of 100 horses on the first night and ‘coincidentally’ saved a horse from colic.
We made sacred crafts and got into relationship.
We did breathwork and were visited by ancestors, loved ones and Light Beings.
We release trauma store in bodies and experienced powerful healing.
We truly analyzed and dug into our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
We uncovered long standing limitations and released beliefs that no longer served.
We rode into the high desert and laughed with joyful abandon.
We accessed listening on a level we’d never before experienced.
We got clear about what fills our cups, what depletes and where our curiosity calls us.
We filled our bellies and nourished our bodies with beautiful food, sunlight and fresh air.
We sunk our bare feet into the dirt and grass and rooted into the earth whole heartedly.
We cried. We cried. We cried.
We made plans, set intentions and declared goals and formed friendship bonds that will last lifetimes.
We wove a spell over 5 days and are all forever changed.
I know I sound a bit like a woo woo witch of the highest order but it can only be described as magic. And then friends and clients and strangers started messaging us.
“I can’t believe I’m missing this.”
“What heaven is this?!”
“I am feeling so called to this.”
“I need this so much right now.”
“Please say you will do this again.”
“Where do I sign up???”
Participants pulled us aside “You HAVE to do this again. It is life changing.”
I stepped back and reflected. Had we cancelled the experiment too soon? We were giving in to scarcity mindset? Were we being closed off to what could alleviate the pain points?
Or in releasing the work that is within our weaknesses were we creating space for ease?
Carolyn Anne Budgell, the majestic yoga teacher (who was luckily my roommate on retreat) generously shared her experience from a much longer tenure as a teachers and retreat facilitator. That this took a few years but once you hit your stride the planning and prep load decreases. That she and her work-wife enjoyed a flow together that brings them joyfully all over the tropics leading yoga teacher trainings, and they don’t have to have weekly meetings about them in the lead up.
I drank it in. Tasted like mentor wisdom ;)
And then we changed our minds.
On the final day of this last retreat Bree let me know that she was feeling it too by surprise announcing we’d be hosting a 2020 retreat shortly after she finished live channeling on our final morning.
