Tomorrow the entire Heart of Business team goes on retreat. It’s not a “retreat from the world” kinda thing. It’s one of our bi-annual (every six months) strategy retreats. Because we have a virtual team spread out across the U.S. and one in Australia, (Hi Yollana!), it’s important we get together on a regular basis for more in-depth connection and strategy work.
It seems like a good time to ask you whether you take time to reflect on your business, on where it’s going, and how it’s doing.
Too much reflection can, it’s true, create paralysis. But no reflection at all means that you are just operating in reaction to what’s happening in front of you. Not very helpful.
In the Sufi tradition taking spiritual retreats is a pretty normal thing to do. Whether it’s a single day or an entire week, to spend time away from the hurly-burly and immersed in practices brings a tremendous amount of decluttering in the heart. A cleansing. An opening and renewing.
It’s similar for a business. Giving some focused attention will help your business evolve. It’s part of integrating how far you’ve come, and living into a new reality. Yes, I know you’ve probably not reached the goals you set for yourself, but you probably came a lot further than you realize.
Our operations manager and practitioner Lincoln took a stand that everyone needed to be included, and I agreed with him. It was a stretch, and we did what we could. A team member flying in from Colorado. Two team members video Skyping in from further away.
But then there we were, all together for three whole days. Every time we’ve met, it’s been evolutionary for us as a team and as a business.
When was the last time you took deep reflective time for your business? To question assumptions, to dig deep, to get clear?
That long, huh? Maybe it’s time to dig in now.
Here’s what I want you to do:
1. Schedule at least a full day. Two days might be nicer. If you have a team, you might need as much as three days, depending.
Yes, I know your schedule is full. You don’t have to schedule it this week, or this month. Schedule it two months from now, that’s fine. Just schedule it.
2. Get out of your normal environment. Don’t do it just in your home office. You don’t have to spend much money. You could rent a hotel room in the off season. If you live in a big city where the prices are high, go to a small town an hour away and I bet you can find a nice room for much less.
You don’t even have to go away overnight, you can maybe find a co-working space where you can rent an office for the day.
Get creative, make it as cheap or free as you can, but get away from your normal home distractions, so you don’t end up cleaning the bathroom or decluttering the closet.
3. Get someone to join you. Okay, it’s not strictly necessary if you don’t have anyone, or you know that you work well on your own.
For me, I know that I can distract myself pretty easily, so it’s helpful if someone else is around. If you’re self-employed, find a self-employed friend and take two days together, one day your friend helps you focus on your business, the other day you help your friend focus on their business.
4. Prepare for the retreat by answering questions. Ask yourself, and anyone joining you, to answer questions such as: How is your current relationship to your business? How do you see that relationship changing over the next year? What is working well? What are all the things that aren’t working well, or not at all? What are the top 3 priorities in the next six months, or a year, that will make the biggest difference to moving the business forward?
Answering the questions ahead of time, even just a week before the retreat, means your unconscious can start stewing with the answers, and you can assemble any information you might need before you get to the retreat. It means you can dig right in and spend your time efficiently.
5. When you finish, schedule your next retreat. We meet every six months, you may want to meet every year. Don’t go longer than that.
This process has helped Heart of Business grow in so many ways. To have the entire group participating and connecting heart-to-heart has been like striking gold.
Retreating can be over done, but if you’re in a micro business, my guess is that you aren’t doing it nearly enough, if you’re doing it at all. What’s your commitment to giving yourself a business retreat?
Or, if you do retreats regularly, can you share stories of success that will inspire others to make the time for themselves?
p.s. Ready for individual help with pricing, strategy, enrollment, everything?
If you’re ready to tackle the messy topics of pricing, sales, enrollment, copywriting… and everything and anything else involved in making your business really fly, it might be time for some individual, personal help.
Jason and Yollana are our two practitioners who can be that someone to get into your business with you, figure out exactly what you need and what it needs, and get you moving so much more quickly.
If you love what you do and want to both honor your heart and make more money, then check’em both out and see which one you think resonates with you more. Then schedule a conversation. They’ll help you discern if it’s the right step for you.
Check it out: One-on-one help with the Organic Business Development Program
Thinking about working directly with me, Mark? If you want to see what it’s like to work with me and who I work best with, here you go:
8 Responses
I’m feeling pretty smart right now. :). I’ve been taking annual 3-day biz regards by myself annually since 2002. It has helped me enormously. One day is for the year that just passed. How did I do financially, how many goals did I meet, what did I learn, etc.
One day is for the year ahead. What are my goals? Big projects? Continuing education (I’m a 1-person massage practice)? New marketing ideas? One day is to relax, get a massage, go for a walk, etc.
In 2011 I formed a small training company with another MT. We do a weekend retreat twice a year and have a monthly dinner meeting. It’s helped us balance our workload, analyze our financial situation, plan new stuff. Right now we’re both in Australia and that grew out of our January 2013 retreat!
I am a full-on evangelist for business retreats. They’ve been awesome for my practice and critical For our training business.
Kelly- and well you should! That’s awesome that you’ve been taking retreats for so long. I love the structure you outline.
This sounds really wonderful, Mark. Can you sketch out an example of how one would structure such a day? Is it just for prayerful noticing, or might there be processes for producing things (like plans, products, etc.)? What do you do at Heart of Business, and what do you recommend? I would think the danger would be moving too much into “work” and falling out of “retreat” if one had too many goals for the day. Just curious about what this might look like. Thanks!
Hi Leslie- great question. There are 3 basic formats to the time. The first has to do with check-ins from each person, the State of the Business address from me, and generally feeling connected as a team. Then we have a series of hour and half discussions (with plenty of breaks and lunch, etc). Each discussion is for some big topic that we need to take apart and talk through to get really clear on what we’re doing. For instance, one of the topics this retreat is we’re going to take our marketing down to the studs, and reimagine it from scratch, to see what could be the most effective, alive, and engaged. Another topic is that we’re going to have an open discussion about profit-sharing for the team.
The final format is assembling everything that we came up with, identifying projects, and then prioritizing them for the next six months. Usually we end up with about a year and half worth of projects, so we have to decide as a team which are the most critical that float to the top.
The “retreat” part comes in how we have the discussions. We start with an invocation, and in the course of any discussion if we feel stuck, if the energy feels “off,” or if someone feels we need it, we go into silent Remembrance rather than try to strategize or talk our way through it.
It’s not really a spiritual retreat- it’s more retreat from the day-to-day work so we can, as a group, feel connected and look at the big picture things we’re doing.
Thanks! I’d love a few words on the analog for that for a one-person business. How would a “business retreat” look different than our usual work that is for big visioning? Or are you suggesting it be precisely for that?
Leslie- Not sure what your usual work for big visioning is, so it’s hard to compare. 🙂 For me personally, I’m not a “big vision” kinda guy- I don’t walk things out 5 years into the future. Instead, we look more medium-range, 6-18 months, and what is going to get us there.
This sounds really wonderful, Mark. Can you sketch out an example of how one would structure such a day? Is it just for prayerful noticing, or might there be processes for producing things (like plans, products, etc.)? What do you do at Heart of Business, and what do you recommend? I would think the danger would be moving too much into “work” and falling out of “retreat” if one had too many goals for the day. Just curious about what this might look like. Thanks!
Tu van- thanks for asking. We start the day with intention/prayer and some minutes of Remembrance. The team checks in about how they are doing both personally and in relationship to the business. Then, we go into each topic that we’ve identified previous as needing to be discussed/plumbed.
To be clear: this is not meant to be a spiritual retreat. That’s not the intention. It’s a work retreat, and it’s okay to do work. But we’re careful not to get caught in rat holes of too much detail, staying instead at the strategic/visionary level. We’ll spend 90 minutes to two hours digging into a topic. If we get stuck, or someone feels we need it, the group goes into silent Remembrance, and that always helps shine a light on the next step forward.
Hope that helps!