179: Relax, Refresh, and Reflect: Behind the Scenes of a Mastermind Retreat

Welcome to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I'm your host, Andrea Liebross. Each week, I focus on the systems, strategy, and big thinking you need to CEO your business and life to the next level. Are you ready? Let's go.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I am here today and thrilled to talk to you about our retreat. The Runway to Freedom Mastermind group had our biannual retreat, our spring retreat in person in Destin, Florida, at the beginning of April.

For me, it was a beautiful experience. From the sounds of it, sounds like all the participants had a beautiful experience as well. I wanted to give you a little sort of behind-the-scenes of what went on and then also wanted to share with you some of the participants' biggest takeaways with the intention that you can use and borrow from some of the discoveries that they made while they were there.

Hopefully, some of their discoveries can help you in your business. So let me just set the scene for you. We all flew in from around the country, I think we're coming from seven or eight different states and met in Destin.

We were in an 11-bedroom, beautiful house. It was three floors. We all had our own bedroom. We all had our own bathroom. We had all the meals catered. On-site was Annie, and Annie was our event coordinator, and she made sure everything kept running smoothly and kept us on schedule.

Then we started out on a Wednesday night with a welcome dinner by a guy named Chef Marrow, and before the welcome dinner, I kind of set the tone, I think hopefully for the retreat, where I always ask a few questions that are going to help you open, help the participants really open up their minds to what might be possible and what might occur in the coming days.

Wednesday was also a little bit of a meet-and-greet because not everybody in the group knew each other, some people did, but not everybody. We use that time also to get to know each other on a little deeper level. Everybody's ready over Zoom, but not necessarily in person.

That was Wednesday. Also, let me tell you this, when you arrived, you chose kind of a crudités in a cone, and on the cone, like a paper cone, on the cone was a word. Depending on what word or cone you chose, you matched that to a little frame on your bed.

So each bedroom, each bed had a frame with a word like luxurious, abundant, possibilities, what were some of the other words? I said luxurious, enchanting. If you chose enchanting, you found the bedroom that had enchanting in the little frame on the bed and that was your room for those couple of days.

Also, I placed little welcome bags. Part of what I love to do on these retreats is surprise and delight. Here's how some people prepared for the retreat. When you do something like this, how do you prepare? How do you set yourself up for success? It's almost like how do you prepare when you're going on any trip?

Well, I’d gotten some feedback from last time when we had done this that some of the newbies weren't necessarily prepared for what we were going to be doing, which was a lot of expansive thinking. They had a hard time switching into that because they still had this running to-do list in their heads.

In order to prepare, I encourage them to try to get everything off the to-do list. To talk to their team, tell them if they needed to communicate with them while they were gone, how was that supposed to happen? Was it supposed to happen in an email, in a text, and a direct message? What was the way via Slack, whatever it was, so that there was only one channel of communication that they need to stay in touch with?

Hopefully, their team understood that while the reason they were going was to help grow the business, and they were going to come back with lots of amazing ideas and information, I'm pretty sure that everybody did arrive with a clean slate and had gone to their team and told them how to best prepare, how to best communicate with them while they were gone.

I got the feedback post this retreat, that it was amazing to be able to actually relax their brains. Not only were they in a beautiful physical space, they also were in a beautiful mental space because they had cleaned their mind, kind of like clean up your mind, they cleaned their mind prior to arriving.

I don't know about you, but if anyone has a housekeeper or a house cleaning service that comes to their house, I'm always busy cleaning up for the cleaners. Is that you? It might be.

If that's the case, this is what my participants were doing. Also, they were cleaning for the cleanse. That made a huge, huge difference. Next up on Thursday morning, we had Melissa come in and do a yoga session on the deck.

This house had three different decks. On the deck, overlooking the pool, she led us through a yoga and meditation session, which again, it was a great way to start the day and to get into your brain and body and open it up to new possibilities.

After that, I did some coaching. I did some group coaching. We ate breakfast. I did some group coaching. We sat outside for a bit, and then everybody scatters, and they are free to go work on whatever they want to work on. I rotate around doing one-on-one coaching throughout the morning while they're working on whatever they want to work on.

Now, some people chose to sit outside by the pool, some people sat in their rooms, some people sat in the kitchen, some people sat in the living room. There were lots of spaces in this house to sit. People had all different kinds of agendas.

I do ask them what they would like to accomplish, solve, discuss, or get clarity on while they are there over those few days. Then they get to work. That is what they did on that Thursday morning. We took a little break. We had a beautiful lunch on Thursday and then we got back to work again.

I did some coaching and then we broke up and worked on our own thing. Again, I did some one-on-one sessions, which was really fun. In the evening, we had another beautiful catered dinner and we had intended to go to the beach or a bonfire, but the weather did not allow for that. We postponed that till Friday.

I'll tell you about that when we get to Friday. But instead, we just had time to connect, converse, and learn from each other. I asked them what was the most impactful part of going on the retreat with your mastermind peers and having a coach.

I got some version of this answer multiple times. Connection and conversation and the space to relax and really stay focused on the business was the most impactful. It really gave them the space to do deeper thinking uninterrupted. I think that is super duper important.

Another answer I got was what was the most impactful part. Someone said the most impactful part was having the space to finally realize what was getting in my way, which was me, but my brain had the space to rest and reflect on that. Why was her own self getting in the way? Why was she the bottleneck? She was able to tease that apart. But again, this word space keeps coming up space to relax, to rest, to refresh.

We were not sitting around like eating bonbons all day. When they say relax, refresh, and reflect, they were doing some deep work, some thinking work. I had a lot of pencils going, pens, journaling kind of stuff, really exploring what was going on in their brain.

Friday, we woke up and we went on a kayak tour, a two-hour voyage in a kayak in pairs, so we were all in two-person kayaks. They were clear. That was super fun. We got our brains and bodies working again. This again allowed for conversation because we were in these kayaks, with no one else.

We stopped on a little island. We had brought a packed breakfast. We had breakfast out on the road, we'll call it. Then we paddled back to shore, got back in our vehicles and we're back at the villa, mid-morning, and we got back to work.

Again, what happens on the second day is that you start to realize what the wins are in having this space. Here is a list of some of the wins that I heard about: “I realized that my current offer and my business structure needs to change if I really truly want freedom in the business, freedom of time, money, and energy.”

“I was able to put this into play as soon as I got back,” because this particular person started to offer her new offer immediately after she got back. She didn't wait till the website was ready. She didn't wait till she had all the materials. She started to talk about it immediately. That was a huge, huge win from her.

Another participant realized, “I can hire people who are just great educators and not subject-matter experts.” This particular person had it in her head. Her belief was that in order to grow her business, she had to find people who were both subject-matter experts and educators. She realized that that wasn't true, that she could just hire great educators and they can learn the subject matter.

Another participant realized that her ties to using Square as her point of sale was holding her back. Square doesn't have lots of options, it doesn't allow you to do a lot of things and she was stuck using it and that was holding her back.

Someone else realized on Friday that there was another option for the space that they owned. So they owned a commercial space that they had housed their own boutique in for a while and the boutique closed. We talked about how to finish out the close and then what was she going to do with the space? She only had in her head, she could rent it or sell it.

But all of a sudden she had this idea she could rent it out, not permanently, but for events. We started to talk a little bit through that. But see, that idea had never even occurred to her. She needed space to come up with it.

Another participant realized that builders are really her best referral source. She had been focusing on the actual homeowner, but the builders are the best referral source, and we mapped out how is she going to get in with them.

Another participant realized that all of these small projects are getting in the way of her biggest project, her biggest money-making opportunity, and that she really needs to put aside the small things and focus on the big things.

Sounds so obvious, but until she needed space to tease through that, to tease that out. Another participant committed to writing a book while she was there, and she needed the space to be able to take a breath before she could make that commitment.

Someone else, their biggest win was that they finally cleaned up their finances. All of these wins took place during their time there. Lots of them really came on Friday after they had had a whole day of work prior. Then on Friday afternoon around four o'clock, we went to the beach. We had a bonfire waiting for us there with s'mores.

We hung out for two hours and we got back. We had a Havana night-themed dinner where we all got a teeny bit dressed up. All of these meals were in the villa. No one had to leave, which was amazing. They all were just presented to us. No one had to cook. Again, giving us space because running your household takes up a lot of space in your brain.

Then Saturday morning, everyone departed. It's really a full two days with a bit of Wednesday and a teeny bit of Saturday morning tacked on. But in those two days, we all refer to it as a whole week when we're there together, which is not true, but that's what it feels like that it's magical in the sense that it feels like it's a whole week.

It's magical. Okay, so then I asked, “What's something that you're going to do right away when you get home? What's an insight from the retreat that you're excited to put into action once you get back home?”

Here were four things that came out: “I am excited to tell my family what I plan to do in my business.” So many women don't tell their families what's happening in their business.

Someone else said, “I am excited to actually hire more help at home.” She came to the realization that what was holding her back on her business was that she didn't have enough help at home.

Someone else said, "I am super excited in making more in-person connections and less digital connections." She realized she was relying too much on digital marketing.

Someone else said, "I am super excited to schedule out the entire year, not just quarter by quarter." She had been doing things or really focusing on quarters, which I think is important, but she was excited to look at the bigger picture.

These were things that they implemented right when they got home and I checked in with them that next week. We had a coaching call and people were doing it. This wasn't all just talk.

So, my friends, I hope you enjoyed that little 15-minute snippet of what happened on our retreat and what some of the participants experienced because this is all available to you too.

I want you to come join us in The Mastermind. That should be part of your goal to get to a place where you feel comfortable being in a room full of these women, being in a place where you are investing in yourself as CEO. More than any other investment. Being in a place that brings you joy and allows your brain to relax and open up to all of the possibilities.

Okay, my friends, I'm going to link a few pictures in the show notes and I look forward to talking about this more. If this is something that appeals to you, if you would like to be part of an experience like this, please reach out to me, please direct message me on social media, or send me a message via my website.

You can go to andreaslinks.com and get all the links to social media to my book, if you have not picked up your copy of She Thinks Big, go pick up your copy of She Thinks Big at your local bookseller or on Amazon because this retreat was a lot of big thinking. It was a lot of big thinking and it was a lot of fun. Come join us. Let me know if you want to be there. Let's make it happen.

Okay, my friends, until next time. Remember, now's the time to level up. If not now, when? Get thinking big. I'm with you. See you soon.

Hey, listening to podcasts is great. But you also have to do something to kick your business up a notch. You need to take some action, right? So go to andreaslinks.com and take the quiz. I guarantee you'll walk away knowing exactly what your next best step is to level up.