The Value of Immersion: Keys to Planning Successful Retreats

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[00:00:18] Alison K: You have to be able to get out of what you're doing every day. Because we're such creatures of habit, we get used to having the same conversations. We get used to doing the same things. We think the same things. We eat the same food, we do the same routine. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm always, I'm a big proponent of a routine, but it's not gonna change things for you until you give yourself a different experience.

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[00:01:03] Jen Ingram: You ready girl? Let's make shift happen.

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[00:01:29] Alison K: Thank you so much for having me, Jen. I'm excited to be here with you.

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[00:01:51] Jen Ingram: But a ton of retreats. I've been on a few of her retreats. They are absolute my, absolutely my most favorite. [00:02:00] And I'm also in Allison's Mastermind, her innovative Mastermind, which I. Absolutely love where we talk about how to make sure our businesses are growing and thriving, both in person and online, so that we really have the flexibility that we wanna have.

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[00:02:29] Alison K: Well, I'm, I'm originally, I'm from, I'm a North Carolina native, which usually shocks a lot of people because in my state, in North Carolina, Most people come here to live, they're not necessarily from here.

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[00:02:57] Alison K: But no, I spent my career the last [00:03:00] 30 years in the health and fitness industry. I've pretty much done, done it all. I've worked in corporate, I've worked in, you know, the medical field. I've worked in rehab. I'm a part-time instructor at a women's college here in Raleigh, and I've been doing that for close to 25 years and I've been an entrepreneur for almost 25 years.

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[00:03:30] Jen Ingram: Yes. Oh, I'm so excited. And I love, you know, as Allison shared her experience, so as you can imagine when you think about innovating your business, I can tell you she's got the experience as she has really watched things evolve.

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[00:03:55] Alison K: Yep. Well, not just for me, but for a lot of people that I [00:04:00] knew that was probably one of the, the most pivotal, innovative shifts that I've had to make. No pun intended.

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[00:04:25] Alison K: So sound bite number one for anyone out there listening is embrace the challenges because they're always an amazing opportunity for you to grow and innovate on your own, if not in your business.

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[00:04:49] Jen Ingram: Yep. A whole lot of things happened. Yep. So there's that, right? Yep.

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[00:05:03] Jen Ingram: Truth, so much truth. Yeah. Well, okay, so I wanna kick it off because first you, you mentioned right off the bat that if you could, you hope someday that or not, hope you're going to be living in Key West someday.

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[00:05:36] Jen Ingram: Like I, I can see why you wanna live there, right? Mm-hmm. Like it's just a magical place. Yeah. So talk to me. Tell me, how did you get involved in hosting retreats? What made you think. You know, I wanna start doing

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[00:06:08] Alison K: But having said all that, when I have my studio downtown, I kept picturing myself doing retreats in different places. So, And I had a client who told me once you need to be doing workout camps in different places, you know, that would be a really fun thing and nobody's doing them. And I just kept thinking how cool it would be to do an experience where I could actually work and take people.

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[00:06:52] Alison K: And you're not gonna see it. If you stay in your same four walls, right? And so much of my messages, you know, is in [00:07:00] innovating and planning what your future vision is. You have to be able to get out of your current environment. You have to be able to get out of what you're doing every day. Because we're such creatures of habit.

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[00:07:27] Alison K: And I always saw myself doing that, but honestly, Jen, I was, there was so much, I had so much responsibility with my studio. I had instructors working for me. We had classes going on. I had a full book of business with clients that I was coaching at the time just on their health and fitness. I just did not have the bandwidth to add one more thing.

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[00:08:05] Alison K: Stay in envi in an environment that's somewhat familiar to you, because it doesn't matter how long you've been doing what you're doing. When you add something new and different to your business, whether it's a new offer or whatever, it's gonna feel like you're starting over and it should feel like you're starting over.

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[00:08:38] Alison K: How you want it to look and what it is that you wanna do. And initially my plan was to have 30 people at that first event. You wanna know how many I had? Five. How many? I had five mm. So there was a part of me that was a little disappointed, but I gotta be honest. After the event, I'm like, thank God I only had five.

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[00:09:18] Alison K: And I feel like, and you know this about me, my sweet spot is anywhere between four and eight people at an event. Mm. And sometimes I have even a smaller group of people. Like one of the events I did in Key West, it was just the three of us. But I'm a almost a firm believer in the right. People always show up.

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[00:10:00] Alison K: Every single one of them has his own personality. Every single one always has lessons to teach and every single one, you always walk away with pearls of wisdom for yourself and cuz you're as transformed as your people are if you're doing it right.

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[00:10:20] Jen Ingram: And it's so funny too, that you bring up, you know, it's always the right container for the people because you know, you bring up that, hey when we went to Key West this last time, it did end up being the three of us, and I had in my head, leading up to it for weeks or months leading up to it, okay, here's who's gonna be here, right?

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[00:10:58] Jen Ingram: Yep. Yep. This, [00:11:00] this is supposed to be it. Yeah.

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[00:11:18] Alison K: You have to be willing to be flexible and to say everything is always happening for you. There's always a lesson. So, Nothing ever goes according to the script,

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[00:11:36] Alison K: Nope. No. So, because the, you know, as you know, in May, I did two retreats and you were at the first one, and then I had a second group of people come in for the second one.

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[00:12:02] Alison K: We ended up with six people, so it was kind of like you talk about having to juggle in my head the activities and the schedule. You just have to be you, you, there are just a lot of things you just, you just have to release control of. But if you don't have a clear idea of what you're doing and how you're gonna deliver it, then something like that can really mess you up.

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[00:12:35] Alison K: a while. No, I wouldn't. Not, not if they're new. Yeah. Just because look, you don't, we don't know what we don't know. Okay.

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[00:12:59] Alison K: And you're [00:13:00] traveling somewhere. You know, there's always gonna be some kind of energy dynamic going on that you're not aware of because when people leave what's familiar to them and go somewhere else, you just can't help it. You carry that energy with you, and for that reason, for new retreat people, I would never advise that.

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[00:13:36] Alison K: Why not do a second event? I know what I'm getting myself into. I know the island like the back of my hand. I know how to plan the thing. Right. Right, and so basically everything just came together, so,

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[00:13:55] Alison K: number?

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[00:14:10] Jen Ingram: Mm. So I imagine international brings a lot new complexities.

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[00:14:19] Alison K: And I, you know, there are a lot of people out there with very strong feelings on what they think a retreat is and where you should do it and all of that. And for me, I guess I love being in a tropical environment anyway. So of course if I'm gonna look at a, in a international location, there's gonna be like, Beach time, there's gonna be something like that involved.

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[00:15:00] Alison K: Because to me there's really not a better way to teach yourself a lot of lessons and stretch your boundaries and grow than to add travel and to leave the country on top of that. Yeah. One international retreat I hosted, it was right after the whole pandemic stuff was starting to, you know, lessen up. And of course a lot of the airlines as you know, like weren't even flying during the pandemic cuz nobody was traveling.

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[00:15:43] Alison K: Right. So it's like you've got people signing up and then you've got people saying, well look, I'm not gonna come cuz I don't think it's safe. So you're trying to navigate all of that too. So it's just, it was a lot. It was. And it turns out that was the biggest retreat I ever did. That was my 15 person retreat that year.

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[00:16:16] Alison K: You either know if you wanna do it or you don't. Right? Yep. And so for me, that trip was more about like, Stepping out of the whole pandemic thing and really embracing this whole, all right, this is what I do, this is who I am. Cuz that was the biggest international trip I've done to date. I've done smaller international trips, but not like that.

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[00:16:52] Alison K: it could be like three or four, you know, up to about eight people. So

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[00:17:08] Alison K: Well, a couple things. One is energetically, as a retreat leader, you cannot be available for a large group of people at one time. I know there are a lot of people out there that think they can do it. But those are not retreats. Those are vacations. Those are getaways. Those are girls weekends, boys weekends, whatever you wanna call it.

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[00:17:48] Alison K: And granted, in a big group of people, you can have those conversations, but as a retreat leader, you cannot hold space for that many people at one time and do it very well, [00:18:00] not without a lot of people helping you. Right, right. So for me to answer your question, a, a very, a small group really lends itself to not only holding a really safe container.

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[00:18:40] Alison K: It's really hard to do that with a big group of people because people's, mm-hmm. You start challenging people to grow and guess what? Their shit comes up. Pardon my French. But it does. Okay. Yeah, it does. It does. And that's just because we get in our stories, we believe our stories. We're really good at our stories because they become habits.

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[00:19:21] Alison K: I think I am the strongest. When I have that type of group of people, that's when I really feel like I can use all of my strengths and when I feel like my people really get the best results.

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[00:19:45] Jen Ingram: They're all coming at you. And if you are at a place that you're wanting to look inward, which I would think is the part of the purpose of going to the retreat, right? Yeah. This isn't a vacation, this is a retreat, right? You're there for reflection and [00:20:00] development and growth. So I can't. Deal with my own shit and take on the energy of 20 other people.

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[00:20:14] Alison K: thing, the other thing to remember as a retreat leader is, is that you were ultimately helping deliver an outcome for somebody. Mm. Now when people show up, they may not really know what the outcome is that they want to get.

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[00:20:56] Alison K: Okay. I'm not saying, oh yeah, it shouldn't come up. It has to come up. But if you allow [00:21:00] yourself to get absorbed in all of that, we have to remember that we're energetic beings and we take on energy from other people, and we're not even conscious of it most of the time. Mm-hmm. So I have to be very careful as a retreat leader when I see that somebody is having either a breakthrough.

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[00:21:38] Alison K: Yeah, and you have to be ready to respond because you want people your number one responsibility. Here's another soundbite for anybody listening. Your number one responsibility as a retreat leader is the protection of your people. That is your number one responsibility. You have to provide a safe space.

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[00:22:14] Alison K: Right. And sometimes it means people might not like you, but you have to be willing to, you have to be willing to go there if you need to.

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[00:22:37] Jen Ingram: Exactly. Yep. And what you're, just, like you said, I'm there for some type of outcome. Yep. Because, It is easy to get drawn in, you know, to other things. And you have to be able to tap back into, okay, why am I here though?

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[00:22:57] Alison K: When someone tells a story and [00:23:00] then we wanna jump in and say, oh my gosh, the same thing happened to me. I totally hear you. I understand. And then you get a lot of that, what I like to call cheerleading going on, right. Which you know that you go girl, and Yeah, I get that. And oh, I totally know what that's like too.

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[00:23:45] Alison K: But that's where it has to stop. You just have to be very, very careful and it takes a lot of energy to be able to do that.

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[00:24:05] Jen Ingram: Like, what's the, and I'm like, because I walk away with

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[00:24:14] Jen Ingram: Yes. And that's completely different than a vacation. Don't get me wrong. I might go on vacation and be like, oh my gosh, I experienced this really cool thing. Yeah. Whatever it was. And yep.

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[00:24:48] Jen Ingram: Yep. And to be able to. Have both of those things occur in one place. It's, it's just, it's well worth it to me. Yeah. But,

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[00:25:10] Alison K: You cannot try to pack too much in. It really takes away from the experience for people. In my opinion, if you're new running retreats or this is something you're thinking about adding, keep it very simple. Very simple. In fact, I wouldn't even add any extra activities. I would just keep it very basic.

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[00:25:46] Alison K: Mm-hmm. Like, we went on the boat in Key West and that was very intentional on my part because of what we were doing. I didn't just say, yeah, oh, let's go on a party boat. That sounds like a good idea. You know, I just, right. I, I was very selective down to the boat that [00:26:00] we actually went on, because I wanted it to compliment our program.

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[00:26:04] Jen Ingram: it so Totally did. I agree. If we had been on a party boat, not the same experience to go with what we were working on. Yeah.

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[00:26:31] Alison K: Right. And sometimes when I talk to people about a retreat and they, they reach out to me and say, Hey, I'm interested in going to Key West, and I talk to them about the program. Well, so we're not gonna, we're not gonna go for a day on the boat. We're not gonna spend a day at the beach. I'm like, Nope. And they're like, oh, okay.

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[00:27:17] Alison K: You know, nothing changes for you, right? So, at all of my events, my, my number one intention every day is, is that I want people to walk away with the tools, the instruments, the plans, whatever they need to do to just plug themselves in when they get home. Cuz that's what it's all about.

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[00:27:44] Jen Ingram: Mm-hmm. And, but now I have these new tools that I can keep using and implementing and refer back to. Mm-hmm. It's so, it's so powerful. How important do, would you say, thinking about location like mm-hmm. What is the [00:28:00] role location plays into planning a retreat?

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[00:28:13] Alison K: I think a lot of retreat leaders just pick fun places that they think would be fun to go and say. I, I've always, I think it would be really fun to do an event here. I. Yeah, but here's my thought. There's nothing wrong with that. But here's my thought to that. My rebuttal rather, is that I think you have to really think about the kind of experience that you want your people to have.

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[00:28:53] Alison K: I mean, honestly for me, when I pick a location, it's usually a combination of two things. It's either a place [00:29:00] that I love to go, I've had a great time going there as a participant or as on vacation, and I think it would be amazing to give people an experience there. And then the other piece is, is that sometimes it's a place that I just feel instinctively drawn to.

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[00:29:39] Alison K: You're kind of like there's a part of you that's excited that. Man, I can't believe that. That just was in such an amazing event, right? We never want it to end and then there's a part of us that we really need to pay attention and recharge our batteries too. Cause it takes a lot out of you. Mm-hmm. So I, I guess to answer your question, you know, for me it's a hybrid of those two [00:30:00] intentional thoughts.

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[00:30:21] Alison K: Let's go. Right, right. So, right. I just, anyone listening, I would just challenge them to, to really sit with that, pick a place that where you really feel energetically drawn to and that you feel not just comfortable, but almost challenged to grow on your own. Because every retreat experience changes you as a leader as much as it does your people.

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[00:31:19] Alison K: Well, I don't know that there's really a correct answer to that, but what I'll do is I'll just share my perspective because I've done it. I've done retreats at all of those places that you mentioned, and then some. I think a retreat center is very valuable if you're gonna have a very immersive type experience where you don't want any distractions, you want a lot of things done for you.

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[00:32:02] Alison K: Cause I'm all about a theme. I'm gonna theme my event and I'm gonna theme the hell out of it. And I wanna make sure that everybody that comes really has that experience. Like they just have that tangible feeling, almost like I could put that energy in a box with a bow on it and say, here, this is what you're taking away.

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[00:32:44] Alison K: Yeah. You know, I've done the big resorts and there's a lot of workarounds that you have to do with that. A lot of times you can't reserve space. You're really dependent on what's going on at the resort at the time. There's a lot of things that are out of your control the bigger you go. Right. [00:33:00] So for that reason, like in Key West, I usually do a house or I have this favorite little guest house property that I use.

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[00:33:23] Jen Ingram: Yeah. I've done both now as well, and I kind of agree.

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[00:33:50] Alison K: private.

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[00:34:08] Alison K: Enjoy it. Go do it and enjoy it. I like doing that, but I'm not gonna do a retreat there for that reason.

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[00:34:33] Jen Ingram: I know, Allie, that you've got several more retreats coming up this year. Any, any ones in particular you wanna give a shout out to?

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[00:34:52] Alison K: And so if you missed this last retreat in Key West and you have that on your radar and you would like to go and experience Key [00:35:00] West my way, then let me know. I am also gonna be doing a smaller group experience down there the first week of December to kind of like wrap up the year and vision cast for next year.

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[00:35:30] Alison K: And we've got, I've got two excursions planned that week while we're there. And then the other retreat, of course, that you are, that hopefully you'll be coming to is the next innovate retreat, which we do at my lake house on Lake Norman, which is just north of Charlotte. And that will be like five or six people at that one as well.

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[00:35:54] Jen Ingram: Oh, that's so exciting. Yeah. I can't wait. I, I went to Lake Norman in February as part of [00:36:00] the Innovate Mastermind and gorgeous, gorgeous area. It was so peaceful. Yeah. Could not have been any better.

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[00:36:12] Alison K: we did. There were five of us there. It was just perfect.

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[00:36:18] Alison K: right people always show up, so,

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[00:36:30] Jen Ingram: How it was supposed to be. Yep. Yeah. That's always how it's, it's so amazing. Yeah. So if one of our audience members wanted to get in contact with you, how can they follow you or reach out?

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[00:36:55] Alison K: You can check out my podcast, the Ultimate Journey of Self-Care, which drops every Tuesday, [00:37:00] and then creating the world's best client experiences. That's what we're talking about here. That's my second show, which drops on Thursdays, so you could check either one of those out. You can reach out to me on any of my socials.

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[00:37:36] Jen Ingram: Oh, that's amazing. Okay. I'm gonna be sure and put those links into the show notes. So if you're listening, be sure to check the, the show notes so that you have access to the website. And I'll also be sharing all of her handles for social media. She's under the Alison K. Yep. So definitely check those out.

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[00:38:17] Jen Ingram: And I have to tell you, the things that she shares in those, in those groups is, is really powerful between there and her email list, you want to, you're gonna wanna check out what she's got going on this year For sure.

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[00:38:34] Jen Ingram: Yeah.

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[00:38:43] Jen Ingram: Hey shifters. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of a whole lotta shift. If you heard something today that inspired you or resonated with you, please head over to iTunes and leave us a review to help others as well. Your review helps me give as much motivation and [00:39:00] inspiration as I possibly can.

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