Why Should You Host a Retreat for Your Coaching Community
It feels like I went to sleep in 2019 and woke up to a whole ECOSYSTEM around coaches and consultants.
In our 1:1 event work, we work with a lot of coaches and folks who have a paid community (or less often, VC firms with a founder community of their portfolio companies).
And as we emerge from a year of virtual events and digital EVERYTHING, I’ve been getting the question en masse for the first time ever.
“I’m willing to spend the money to bring my folks in-person. So now, how do I do that?”
Before COVID, most folks were content to stick to online events.
But after COVID, I’m noticing there’s a HUGE pent-up demand for in-person experiences.
Thinking of adding a retreat to your coaching program? Here’s what you need to know.
Why are you doing this?
Or more focused (thanks to the incredible Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering), “what is the point of this gathering?”
Usually, if someone’s first answer is “I think this would a great marketing tool for my program”, I get nervous.
In-person events are a HUGE financial and emotional (not to mention time and labor) commitment.
I used to try to teach people how to pull off a budget retreat, costing $50 per person, but I’ve found those events are hard to see a big return from, unless you’re dedicated to doing events consistently (like, monthly or quarterly) as the cornerstone of your marketing strategy.
So when someone says “my retreat is simply a marketing tool”, I’m always trying to talk them out of it and into another, cheaper, less labor intensive marketing tool.
Some AWESOME reasons to host a retreat:
You personally believe in the transformative power of face-to-face relationship building
You want to create an experience that shows attendees how focused time away from their work can accelerate their businesses.
You love people and you love to host people (do not host a retreat if you get really nervous being around folks more than a few hours a day. Retreats require energy from you.)
Your clients have asked over and over again, and have the disposable income to attend a retreat.
You believe that building a community of like-minded folks will have infinite positive returns for your business, even if the payout isn’t immediate.
The Finances of a Retreat
This section deserves it’s own post, but after you’ve decided WHY you want to host a retreat (and that WHY centers your clients and not your marketing strategy), it’s important to at least understand HOW to make a retreat work financially. There are usually 3 camps of financial model for events.
Retreat as a Marketing Tool
This is the most common type of event for coaches, because often, the retreat costs far outweigh the ticket costs.
Usually, with a retreat like this you’re hoping that folks attend your event, get INCREDIBLE value, fall in love with your company, build great relationships, and thus are indebted to your brand (or at least associate “good times” with your brand).
Usually, companies like this have money to lose in the short term (or won’t financially make much profit — largely because retreats are labor intensive and compensating everyone for their labor at a fair market value is…expensive), because they know, in the long term, getting exclusive, in-person access to their clients will return more money than the money they might lose on the event.
This strategy will work if you’ve got to have a big enough business where your business can absorb $30k - $250k in marketing expense on this event (or, have a strong strategy that knows you can recoup that much in revenue with new program signups.
If your business is making less than $250,000/annually, I wouldn’t use a retreat as a marketing tool, but instead as a profit center or as a part of your existing coaching program.
Retreat as a Part of Coaching Program
This one is far more common in the coaching world, because often a retreat is a way to get stuff done alongside attendees.
The one problem with this is that — again — retreats are expensive. For a coaching program that is 6-12 months and costs upwards of $4000, your retreat needs to be high-level enough where folks feel like they’re being taken care of.
When I estimate costs of a retreat at this level, dependent on # of guests, you’ll likely spend between $250 - $500 per person per day, depending on location. That means, if it’s a 2.5-day retreat, and guests are staying overnight in your retreat location, be ready to spend at minimum $625 per guest at minimum and likely closer to $800-$1000. This might not make financial sense if your coaching program is $4000 for 6 months.
Retreat as Profit Center for Your Business
These are my favorite events to plan. and generally only works if you have a really large existing community of clients.
Retreats can actually be super profitable, and I have a few clients whose retreats actually add $250k - $500k in profit to their bottom line.
However, most of these folks have HUGE audiences, great relationships with other companies that sponsor them, and full-on teams to help them execute this event.
Also, generally, these folks run membership communities or larger course communities, so they already have paying members who trust them to deliver an excellent experience.
Which type of model is right for your coaching program or membership community?
Likely, if you’re less than $1 million in revenue, you’re looking at options A or B, since option C requires some good economies of scale (like, you’d need at least 200 attendees at an expensive-but-not-outrageous price point or 50 attendees at a really high price point to generate significant profit).
One of the things we do first is evaluate the finances of any events we work on (aka does this type of event with all its expenses make sense at X price point? What about at Y price point and Z dollars in closed business after the event?
Contact us to learn more about how we can help you do that.