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, many of the resolutions people tend to
make 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, it's already January 17th 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 #7 in the Top 20 Fitness Trends for 2015. 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?
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 #7 in the Top 20 Fitness Trends for 2015. 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 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, which should ideally include your plane fair and your
stay.
Granted all of 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 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 also can help you to
find 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. 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: www.balibiuretreatcompany.comIf you haven't yet, come and join our Bali Retreat Planning group on Facebook
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