Retreat & Create

A deep work retreat / workcation for professional women.

No Employees
Founders Don't Code
Solo Founder
B2C
Community
Productivity
Travel

I founded Retreat & Create because I wanted this experience and couldn’t find it. I wanted to get outside and relax, and also make serious progress on my work, ideally alongside other smart women doing the same.

June 12, 2021 Committed to TWO retreats this fall

We've got two retreats scheduled for fall 2021!

One in September: women only.

And another in October: for entrepreneurs / anyone building a business (all genders).

Applications open Wed, June 16. The deadline to apply is Fri, July 2.

We set the cost at $1,999. It's all-inclusive: 4 nights at the inn, all (12) meals, hiking and a massage.

We're launching to about 340 people on the email list, and we have 10 spots available for each retreat, so we need a total of ~20 people to sell out.

http://RetreatAndCreate.com

April 24, 2021 215 email subs

Over the last year, we've collected 215 subscribers for our wait list.

Most of those people have come from a mention in a post on The Write Life (a media property I founded) on writing retreats. The post ranks well in search for dozens of terms related to writing retreats: https://thewritelife.com/writing-retreats/

We also got some subs from Instagram and some from Twitter.

When a person signs up for the email list, they get a welcome email that asks them to reply and tell me how they heard about the retreat and why they're interested to attend. This has been really interesting, as it has given me a look at who might apply. One trend I see is that a good number of people say they'd like to attend alongside their sister, friend, colleague, etc.

I'm happy with this organic growth over the last year. I can only service 10 attendees for each retreat, and I'd filled the first one with just 35 people on my list. So 200+ feels strong!

One weakness of the list: most are writers (from that writing retreats post), but I want to have some variety in attendees. I'd also like to launch events targeted at other audiences, for example, I plan to do one for entrepreneurs. So I'll need to make an effort to build a wait list for that particular audience.

2020 Cancelled first event because of COVID

Sadly, we made the call mid-March to cancel our May event because of COVID.

While we offered refunds to everyone, several attendees asked us to keep their deposits to put toward a future event. In the end, we refunded all deposits, because it's unclear when we might be able to resume, when it will be safe to get together in person.

This was a huge bummer, both because the event itself isn't happening and also because it forced me to push pause on my research into whether this might become a bigger piece of my energy and income pie in the future.

As the pandemic has progressed, we've noticed several businesses we'd planned to partner with go under. So when we do resume Retreat & Create, we'll need to re-envision what some elements look like and who we might partner with instead. Sounds like a small detail, but in a tiny town like this, sometimes there is only one option. We'll figure it out when the time comes!

August 11, 2020 35 people signed up to hear about the next event

Since this event is on hold until the pandemic improves (2021? 2022?), I added a sign-up page on the Retreat & Create homepage to collect emails. Anyone who lands on the page now will notice there's no event scheduled, and if they want to hear about future events, they can leave their email.

So far we have 35 people who've asked to be notified about the next event. I think it's getting traffic in two ways:

  1. I mention it once in a while on social or in my work around the web.

  2. It's still in that post about writing retreats (I explained this in a previous update) on The Write Life, and I suspect some leads are coming from there.

I'm happy with this slow growth. I still plan to offer the next event to my own list when the time comes, but it's nice to begin growing a Retreat & Create-specific list as well.

February 28, 2020 Filled my first event (10 attendees)

Within about a month of announcing my first Retreat & Create event, I had more than enough applications.

These didn't flood in, but they trickled in over the month, and I was impressed with the quality of applicants. In the end, I had a total of 14 applicants and accepted 10.

That number, 10, was kind of chosen for me. When I was looking at B&Bs to host this event in Harpers Ferry, WV (where I live), there was really only one choice, one B&B that felt right for the event in terms of being both upscale and full of character/history, and having enough rooms. This is a small town, and most of the B&Bs only have a few rooms. The B&B I decided to partner with, the Light Horse Inn (http://www.lighthorseinn.com/), is a perfect fit. Ten people was the max that would work there, and I figured that's a good group size to maintain intimacy anyhow.

I filled the event through two primary avenues:

  1. My newsletter. I've blogged at AlexisGrant.com for years, but have barely blogged in the last, say, five years (I was busy with a leadership role at a high-growth startup and having two babies). So I had a list of about 14,000 readers, but it was super stale. (I'm in the midst now of culling and regrowing it.)

I got about 2-3 of the applications from my newsletter. Many of those people have followed me for years, even a decade, throughout my online career, so I already had trust with them that I could put on the type of event that would deliver huge benefit.

  1. The Write Life. This is a media property I run for writers. We have a post about writing retreats that gets consistent search traffic, so I put a note about the workcation in the post: https://thewritelife.com/writing-retreats/. My workcation isn't billed as a writing retreat, and in fact I hope to have more business-minded folks there than pure writers, but it can most certainly serve as a place to make progress on a writing project.

If I hadn't owned this site, access to a post like this that does well SEO-wise would be a cost. I was somewhat surprised at how many high-quality leads came through that post! SEO traffic tends to be high-intent; in other words, people come to the post looking to actually book a retreat, rather than just browsing. So I think that's why it converted well.

In the end, I was able to fill this first event pretty easily. Could I scale that? Could I fill lots more of these events? Probably not simply with my own network and media properties. But I bet those alone would take me far enough to gain some great traction, word of mouth, recommendations and referrals, which would then catapult us forward for continuing to fill them.

January 22, 2020 Launched & opened applications

I'm facing two uncertainties with this business:

  1. Can it be profitable (and profitable enough to do it again and again) to be more than a hobby?

  2. Would I enjoy running a business that has a significant in-person component?

After running some numbers, I felt good about #1. With this caveat: I didn't know what I didn't know. I had to run the first event to identify any gaps in my knowledge or unanticipated costs.

For #2, I also needed to run an event to learn whether this type of business is a fit for my personality.

While I have a lot of someday projects I'm excited about, I decided to pursue this one because...

  • It's a meaningful way for me to support professional women. I want to help women (including mothers) create the space in their lives to do big things in business. This helps them do that.

  • It will expose me to different people and different ideas. One way I get inspired is by hearing what other people are working on, and selfishly I love the idea of bringing smart, ambitious women to me, not just online but in person.

  • It dovetails nicely with a number of my professional ambitions. I can see some of my other (online) projects benefiting from this business and vise versa.

  • Testing this concept isn't as easy as testing an online product. It's slower going because it requires getting people to a place where they can experience something and then give feedback... and I'll want that feedback before booking my next event, so I can iterate effectively. I want to get moving on this now so I can grow it significantly in the coming years if the initial events go as I hope.

With these ambitions in mind, I launched the website and shared it with the world in January 2020.

RetreatAndCreate.com

I spread the word through my newsletter and networks, and asked people to apply for our inaugural event in May 2020. Seeing that first application come in -- and my vision begin to turn into reality -- was exciting!

June 1, 2019 Chose a name and URL for workcation business

This business is different than anything I've ever launched. Why? Because it has a BIG in-person component.

While I'm using my online skills for marketing and branding and selling, the core of this business is IRL = In Real Life, in person, not online.

In many ways, this isn't a product business. But I'm thinking about it in much of the same way, aka, what components and features does it need to be successful? And it's close to the product and IndieHacker world because the mission of the business is to support people growing those types of businesses.

The URL I wanted for this project, workcation.com, was taken. No name I came up with felt perfect. But I wanted to get this launched, so I picked a URL that was available and went with it: RetreatAndCreate.com.

About

I founded Retreat & Create because I wanted this experience and couldn’t find it. I wanted to get outside and relax, and also make serious progress on my work, ideally alongside other smart women doing the same.