The advent of the a new year is generally seen as a good starting point to make personal changes. It is a marketing opportunity for those of you who have a product or service in the field of wellness to offer that should be taken full advantage of. With all of the resolutions being made, most of which have something to do with personal development, whether it be to lose weight, or get in shape or sort themselves out emotionally or just make some sort of life change, most of them fall right into the realm of expertise of the wellness practitioner.
Making New Year’s resolutions has almost become a bit of a cliche as more often than not, these resolutions are all too quickly forgotten or dismissed and just end up being a testament to all of the things you should have done, but never managed to accomplish. A bit depressing, really. One of the reasons people fail to accomplish their resolutions is that change is hard to make on your own. You are much more likely to succeed if you have someone helping you, providing a disciplined structure in which to make those changes – that’s where you come in!
You need to show people how you can help them fulfill those resolutions while those resolutions are still fresh in their minds and people are still excited about making those changes before life catches up to them and hands them excuses to abandon all of the plans and changes they’d resolved to make. And yes, it doesn’t take long for life to catch up; case in point – it’s already January 11th and I am just posting this now!
Timing is everything and NOW is the time to be peddling your wares if you are planning a retreat anytime this year or next year. It’s not so much doing the retreat right away that will have people crossing things off their list of resolutions done, but the commitment to do so. Just signing up to make the change is enough to keep people on track – doesn’t mean you need to run a retreat in January. In fact, January isn’t a great time to be running a retreat in Bali. Not only is it rainy season, but after the holidays, people have less dispensable cash lying around, so you my find it harder to recruit for a January retreat. But you need to present the opportunity now.
It’s not just about the resolutions, the beginning of the year is also the time that everywhere you look, there are lists of top trends for the upcoming year. People love to jump on the trend bandwagon. According to the American College of Sports Medicine [1], Yoga is in the Top 20 Fitness Trends of 2020. And although I know that not all of you are planning yoga retreats, but if you were looking for a retreat inclusion for your wellness retreat, what about a yoga class?
One of the things I am constantly harping on about when planning retreats is starting your planning and organizing early. The earlier the better. Unless you have participants lined up, waiting to sign on, it’s going to take some time to recruit. All too often I am approached by people a few months before they plan to hold their retreat and they either end up cancelling or having a retreat with 6 people when they had planned for 20.
The other biggest mistake I see people making is deciding they want to run a retreat, pricing it out, advertising THEN trying to find a venue and organize activities to fit within the budget they’ve set. How can you price something out if you don’t know what it’s going to cost you?!
Start by looking at venues and getting some pricing and finding out what that pricing includes. This way you can at least have an idea of the price ranges you have to work with. Then figure out what you want to do while you are there – which activities, tours, excursions you want to include. Of course you can’t forget to include your fee for workshops/training or whatever it is you are doing. You need to figure out how much this is all going to cost you per person and price your retreat accordingly, keeping in mind how many people you need to join to make some money out of this, on top of covering your plane fare and your stay.
Granted all of the work that is required to research different venues and figure out what inclusions you are going to offer may take a bit of time to organize, so how are you supposed to start advertising if you haven’t figured out exactly what you’re doing and hence haven’t priced it? No one said you can’t advertise an upcoming retreat if you haven’t priced it yet – just leave the pricing out for now and put in a “for more info and pricing, contact….”
In the meantime you can also speed up the research and organization process by contacting yours truly at Bali Biu Retreat Company at info@balibiuretreatcompany.com. We can help you choose a location and find a venue that will suit the kind of retreat you want to run. We have venues in different budget ranges. We’ve done site inspections of all the venues we offer. We can also help you choose activities and excursions that will compliment your workshops and organize that for you, as well as transport to and from the venue, not to mention handle and organize all of you and your participants’ pre and post-retreat travel plans – pretty much a one-stop-shopping for all of your Bali retreat needs.
Trying to organize something overseas can be a bit of a nightmare. Putting a deposit down on a venue sight unseen can be a big leap of faith. We’ve done many a site inspection where the website wasn’t what I would call an ‘accurate reflection’ (and this is me being diplomatic) of what they had to offer. That’s a big investment to be making if you are unsure about what you’re getting. If you want to make sure you are getting what you paid for, want to have everything organized through one source, have one facilitator overseeing all the logistics and have that person on site during your retreat to make sure everything goes according to plan – come and connect with us.
How much is all of this going to cost you? Nothing. The only things you pay for are the things you would have to pay for if you were trying to organize it on your own, i.e. venue, transport, activities, etc., except we make it so much easier and give you the peace of mind of having someone on the ground at the other end handling everything. It is also more cost effective than trying to organize transport and activities through the venue as we don’t have the same overhead and our pricing is significantly less. Our planning and organizing services are free of charge.
If you can communicate your vision of the ultimate retreat experience, we can make it happen. But making it happen means you need to get your ass in gear. Time waits for no one and the beginning of the year is one of the most opportune times to advertise and take advantage of the fact that a lot of people are looking to make personal changes.
To find out more information or if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to connect with me at info@balibiuretreatcompany.com or visit our website at:
www.balibiuretreatcompany.com. If you haven’t yet, come and join our Bali Retreat Planning group on Facebook.
www.balibiuretreatcompany.com. If you haven’t yet, come and join our Bali Retreat Planning group on Facebook.