Planning A Business Retreat
THE INSPIRATION
Starting your own business is such a challenge, so many unknowns, so many things to learn. As someone who has a day job and is looking to transition to running my own business there are a lot of struggles and what has really helped me survive the hard work and the self doubt is having a friend to go through it with. I am lucky to have a business bestie who is also juggling all of the things and trying to figure out how to navigate the world of entrepreneurship with. Thank you Danielle (of Sip of Copy) for being the best partner in crime and trying to navigate all of this with me!
As we both hit a stride in our work this past summer we were both feeling down about not being able to put our full focus into our work once September hit and we were consumed with our day job. After talking we decided that we needed a getaway or retreat to really disconnect from our other obligations and really focus on what we wanted for our businesses and what the next steps should be. As we approached the fourth quarter we planned a business retreat for ourselves to reconnect with our work, get some needed rest from our day jobs, and plan the rest of the year so we could come back strong and ready to tackle our goals.
THE PLAN
We are both type A personalities and absolutely love planning so once we decided on taking the leap to plan a retreat we both jumped into researching and planning our trip. I happened to find a discount for a hotel in Carlsbad which was just far enough away to feel like a getaway but not too far that it would take a lot of travel time. It was about 45 minutes away from my house. I also thought it would be a nice chill escape and is close to the ocean which I liked as being close to the ocean really recharges me.
Next we started researching . . . It was important for us to find coffee shops nearby as my business bestie I and I like to explore coffee shops to work in. We also researched local restaurants and fun places to visit in case we needed to get out and feel inspired. Our shared google document included links to food options, cute shops to visit, a bookstore, things we might want to bring, and the details to our stay such as our travel schedule.
THE RETREAT
When the day finally came, we were so excited to head out. We finally go the hotel and started to settle in and take a breather. Now because we are both educators by nature we of course each prepared goodies for each other and our stay. So like Christmas we each presented our gifts to each other. My package included a boss girl workbook with worksheets for goal setting, finding inspiration, etc. I also included some fun stuff like stickers, coloring pages, and face masks. Danielle of course had put together binders for us! I just love binders! One binder included dividers so we could organize our work and the other was filled with inspirational stories of other entrepreneurs. She also included fun stuff like inspirational art quotes, stickers, and other fun tidbits! I personally also brought a book, Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert and some inspirational magazines.
After the excitement of getting away and digging through our goodies we spent the night unwinding and discussing plans for the next day. The rest of the weekend was spent mostly exploring different coffee shops and going through our resources, goal setting, and discussing the future. I will include some of my planning documents below in case you need some help organizing your own retreat or business planning.
The most helpful for me was having a planning document for the retreat, this allowed me to list the things I really needed to accomplish, some things that would be nice to get to, and some things to do for fun and rest. I am a list checker and giving myself permission to focus on just a few tasks and allowing anything else to be extra allowed me to also take time to rest and recharge which is difficult for me to do. I also created a done list as my friend and I discussed that sometimes we forget all of the work we actually accomplish because we are so focused on the list of things we haven’t gotten to. Completing a done list allowed us to reflect on our hard work and feel productive.
REFLECTING
After successfully running our first boss girl retreat I wanted to reflect so that I can make adjustment for our next one. Our goal is to have a retreat every quarter to touch base on our goals and get refocused. I think we will pick different locations that reflect what we are needing that quarter. We decided that it was maybe less important to explore cities and more important to really relax and connect more with nature and ourselves. I think I underestimated the value of rest in order to be productive and focused. I definitely am tweaking my business worksheets a little but found them to be really helpful for me personally. We learned that having really detailed plans or schedules isn’t really necessary and we tended to go with the flow. Overall, I found the trip very recharging and inspirational.
