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You have all of this transformation integrated into the cells of your being, and you can do this and you can trust your body. You can trust your body to lead, you can trust your energy field to create transformation, you can trust the felt sense of what you’re doing, even if your mind isn’t leading.
– Darla LeDoux
Hello and welcome to today’s episode of Retreat and Grow Rich, the podcast. This is Darla LeDoux, I am your host and I will be sharing about cycles of business transformation today in this episode. This is the final episode in our Retreat Business Model Series where I’ve been teaching a bit about what I’ve learned in hosting more than 70 retreats and bringing millions of dollars into our business through offering transformational work that is totally designed around live retreats.
I’ve also been interviewing people in this series to share about how they have developed their business model, how they’ve made money using retreats, events, workshops, transformational experiences as a part of their business. So if you’ve missed the series, you definitely want to go back and listen.
In today’s episode, I will be sharing with you about cycles of business transformation.
One of the things I love about the business model that I use and everything that I’ve learned about retreats and the way retreats can really transform a business is I love that retreats allow us to create cycles and rhythm in our business. And what I mean by that is when you use retreats, retreats happen at a particular time and date. And because of that, they kind of create this forced rhythm in your business. You need to have a certain number of people who are registered for your retreat by a certain time, and this kind of shifts the way you do business as compared to, and there’s not one that’s good, better or best. But I’m going to kind of make a case today for why having cycles in your business is not only great for you, especially if you’re wanting to operate a business more in the, but it’s also great for your transformation. So it can be great for your business and for you as a business owner, but also great for your own personal growth and just the way you live life.
So I’m really excited for that and I’m not saying that one is better than the other or that it’s better to work in cycles versus to work consistently. But I just want you to try on the idea that you might be, if you found yourself here at this episode designed to work in cycles and create a rhythm and a flow in your business. So the alternative, you might be someone who offers one-on-one services and you have let’s say so many spots each month that you want to fail in order to hit your revenue goals. And every single month kind of looks the same if you bring in, for a lot of our clients, their goal is to bring in two new clients a month.
When they’re kind of in this regular consistent flow, maybe bringing in two new clients of month is all that you need to really churn and sustain your business over time, which is great. And then you might do the same things every single month to bring in those new clients. And if you have a lower priced offering, you might need 10 new clients a month or 20 new clients a month, depending on how your business is structured. That can work, right? And every single month you do the same thing, maybe you’ve got a Facebook ad and that you spend so much every month and you bring in so many clients every month and that consistency works for you.
Or maybe you go networking every month, then you meet two new people every month and that consistency works for you. And that is awesome. And what happens when you add retreats is you create a different kind of rhythm in your business because rather than having two clients a month, you might want 10 clients to come to your retreat or 20 clients to come to your retreat every six months. And that might be a similar number of clients, but it shifts the rhythm and the flow in your business.
So I’m going to talk a little bit about why having rhythm and flow in my business has made a difference, I’m going to talk about what does that mean for your business actually in your clients and the way you serve. And then I’m going to talk about creating a rhythm to your own growth and transformation. And this episode is in conclusion of the retreat business model series, and also in introduction of the next series we’re moving into, which is called transform the leader.
And it’s really all about this idea that for us as transformational leaders, our job is to grow and transform ourselves and be a living demonstration of this work in the world. And so in our next series, I’m going to be interviewing a bunch of different retreat leaders about their own personal growth journey that happened as part of a particular retreat in their business and getting that sense of how hosting their own retreat or event or live transformational experience, how that actually grew them and grew their business on the backside of that retreat. So that’s what we’re moving into next on the podcast.
So I want to start by talking about this podcast is called Retreat and Grow Rich and Rich obviously, Retreat and Grow Rich is a nod to Napoleon Hill and his book Think and Grow Rich. And that idea that our thoughts are things and our thoughts create our world. And as I’ve been living within and working within this context for some time now and hosting my own retreats and modeling my own personal growth, I have really learned that we’ve moved beyond Think and Grow Rich. And really it’s like embody, right? We’ve got to really embody these things and it’s our energy that we put out that helps create our results.
If you are someone who’s really committed to modeling that in the world and putting out your best energy and really owning your rich skills in the world, which I’ll talk about, then introducing retreats and using retreats for yourself as the leader, as the business growth journey is an awesome decision.
So the other thing that we need to present when it comes to the name of this podcast, the Retreat and Grow Rich is RICH is an acronym, it stands for right-brained, intuitive, connected, and heart-centered. And those are kind of the soft skills that I want to see be valued in this world, right? Right-brained more the non-linear way of being intuitive, trusting your own inner knowing, trusting that you have guidance. Connected means connected to source energy connected to one another, connected to your own inner knowing and heart-centered is that sense of service and allowing your heart to lead, which is where you’re drawn and how to create the greatest and highest good on the planet.
So when we are operating in our RICH skills, we’re really creating a win-win on the planet. So in order to cultivate your rich skills, these are those soft skills I was given feedback in my corporate job that my soft skills needed to be toned down and I needed to be more, I’m going to say in my masculine, more the hardcore technical system. That’s what was going to get me ahead in the corporate world. And that’s not good, bad, right or wrong, but the rich skills or the soft skills are more the feminine.
And when we use retreats in our business and we create this rhythm and this cycle in your business, meaning sometimes you’re in retreat filling mode, sometimes you’re delivering the retreat, sometimes you are working with clients who have just graduated from your retreat and then you do the cycle over again. This actually helps to support our feminine energy and helps us to be more in a sense of flow and in a sense of having time and space to tune in. And then a time in space to put out into the world and the retreat system can really allow you to design for that.
So if you’re leaning in, if you’re thinking, “Oh yeah, I love that idea of creating a rhythm and flow in my business,” then stay tuned we’re going to talk more about this. Now, we’ve been taught that as business owners, we need to be ready, set, go that the best way to be a business owner is like, get up an hour earlier every day, have a set morning routine, set your timer, schedule everything. Do this, do that, push, push, push, drive, hustle, make it happen. And as a retreat leader, you can lead a retreat that way but you’re going to have more effective results and deeper conversation and better transformation if you allow space and allow for flow and allow for people to connect in to their own inner knowing during your retreat. So if you are following kind of how we’ve traditionally been trained to do business, it’s harder to shift into that and to trust that when you step in front of the room. It’s not wrong, for some people they may be designed to go, go, go, go, go. But for you possibly you’re designed to create more in rhythm and flow.
So retreats create rhythm in your business.
They create a sense of focused attention and intention and there is this flow of clients through your business. So if you follow the Retreat and Grow Rich business system, I talk about this in episode one, we’ve been breaking it down here in this retreat business model series, you know that there will be times where you’re really focused on being out there offering free content, sharing education and information that allows your potential clients to evaluate.
“Hey, do I have the problem you solve? Do I feel ready to solve it? Do I feel drawn to transform this of my life? Am I ready? Am I all in?” And that is, what I call Drawbridge marketing, the things you put out there for free. And your gateway program, which is an opportunity for someone to start working with you and explore where they are in their business. So for you as the leader, when you’re working with clients in a gateway program, it might be a bigger group. They might be kind of more in testing it out phase and you are more in holding space for them to get clear that they’re committed to their transformation.
So there’s a certain energy that you bring forward in this stage of your business cycle. You’ve got a lot of people, you’re helping them get really honest with themselves. You’re helping them look at whether it’s true for them that they want to take the next step, and that they want to actually transform this area of their life. Whether you’re helping people with relationships, with business, with career, life purpose, sensuality, embodiment, leadership, whatever your area of focus is in this stage of holding space as the leader, you’re really helping people get honest with themselves about their readiness for transformation.
From that stage, you’re inviting people to come get in the room with you.
So this is where you’re inviting them to actually integrate the transformation. This is where you’re filling your retreat in the cycle. So when you’re inviting people to come get in the room with you, you’re in a little bit different stage of your own energy field, right? You’re in a place of taking a stand for them because you know, once they get in the room with you, everything’s going to change for them if they’re the right people and they’re ready. This isn’t about like dragging people and to make them change their life. It’s about really inviting in the right people at the divine timing when they’re ready for transformation.
So when you’re filling your retreat, you are in a place of really taking a stand for people. What often happens and what kind of can trick people who are the retreat leaders or mess with you is a lot of times you’ll have to grow in this stage to really take a stand and hold space for people. In other words, the people that you’ll attract in this stage, you might be in a place where you’re just in flow and everybody’s a yes and the right people raise their hand and they say yes and they register and it’s easy peasy, this happens.
Other times you might be in a place where you’re being called to do deeper work or a little more edgy work or to be more in alignment with your truth as a leader. And when you’re in that place, the filling of your retreat is actually going to be challenging for you because the filling of the retreat is what’s going to cause you to grow, right? Every single retreat that you lead is going to invite you to grow and invite you into your own transformation. So sometimes this happens in the filling process where for you to become the leader who is going to hold space for people at the next level, you’re going to need to go through some process of standing for people in these enrollment conversations.
And you’re going to notice themes, so you might have one retreat where everybody has a money objection and this is the universe inviting you to grow in your own money consciousness, in your own beliefs about money and transformation and your value and the value of your clients and what it’s worth to them and all of that. And that might be your journey in this particular cycle of your business. Maybe for another retreat, you’re going to have a lot of people.
I’ll give an example for me recently, having a lot of people who were kind of in this place of, I know I’m called to something spiritually, I know it makes no logical sense like everything is working logically. If I stay in the world of logical thinking in my business, I would not make the choice to come to this retreat because logic doesn’t make sense here.But if I choose to trust the spiritual side of me that is clearly giving me signs and signals and calling me forward to attend this retreat, then I’m actually choosing not just to come to the retreat but I’m choosing to step into this whole other world of spirit. So for me, has the person who’s leading and filling a retreat, if every conversation I’m having is around people being in this flux, right? Or in this place of, “Ooh, do I trust my logical self or do I step into the spiritual side of myself?” What this is mirroring back to me is my own need to further trust the spiritual side of myself and to further trust the value of that spiritual side of myself.
So this is true for me in a retreat that I held not too long ago, that every conversation that I had was calling me to grow even deeper into the trust of the spiritual side and that message that I have for people that you can trust that side of you, that you can trust the intuition, that you can trust the energy, that it may not make logical sense, and actually sometimes the less logical sense it makes the more intuitive sense it actually makes.
And so in the process of having those conversations, it opened up for me that that was my growth journey in that particular retreat. Well, guess what? That retreat ended up being magical and spiritual ways that were even further in the realm of trusting the divine than I’d ever experienced before. So the process of enrolling people into that retreat actually invited me to grow in a whole new way.
This is going to happen if you’re someone who’s working with sensuality, let’s say, in your own life and in your own transformation. The people who are going to be coming to your next retreat, they’re going to be wanting that, which means they’re going to want you to be talking about that, sharing about that, trusting that within yourself even more.
So when you’re in the process of enrolling for that next retreat, even if you think, “Oh, that’s just something I’m doing in my personal life, it doesn’t fit in my business. You’re going to find that the people who come to you, that’s going to be exactly what they’re needing.” And then you’ll be invited to grow into that even further in your next retreat.
So you’re starting to get a picture of how this rhythm works, right? So then fast forward, it’ll be time to actually lead your retreat, right? So you’ve got it filled, you’ve grown. Now you’re inviting these people in and you’re leading your retreat. Ideally you’ve done your growth during the enrollment process, so now you’re just ready to welcome and embrace them in.
However, if there’s still places where you need to grow, you’ll have growth during the retreat and this could happen in your personal life leading up to the retreat or it could happen that something interesting and challenging happens at your retreat. This is different. Again, it’s different every time.
There is such adventure built into these cycles because you don’t know where your own transformation is going to show up.
So for example, I had a retreat once where right before the retreat, the day before something really traumatic happened in my personal life. I got some news that like shook me to the core of my being and I had to lead a retreat the next day I was traveling to the location and so I actually had a day and a half, I guess, until my clients would be entering the room with me.
And you know when you have something happen that has every cell in your being react, it was kind of like that. So here I am going, “Okay, I know I have people flying in from all over the world. I need to be able to lead, I need to be able to deliver what it is that they are coming for. And I’m personally in a whole different space. My head space is totally off.”
So I needed to grow in that moment and what happened for me is I had a huge lesson in trusting my transformation, trusting my being, trusting my energy field, trusting my body’s wisdom actually. Because like I said, I was not in the right head space. In other words, my head couldn’t lead. My head couldn’t think straight, couldn’t make sense of things, it wasn’t able to put pieces together because my head was distracted.
And so what I was able to do is I was able to actually like let go of even thinking that my head needed to do anything. And I’ve been leading retreats for a long time at this point. So I was able to do this to say, “You know what, you’ve been in cycles of transformation for years. You’ve led 70 retreats like every single retreat is the cycle of transformation, which means you’ve got 70 transformations that are integrated into the core of your being.” And that’s just for me since starting business, I had a lot that led me to even start my business.
So I had to pause and go, “You know what, you’ve been walking your talk for almost 10 years. You have all of this transformation integrated into the cells of your being and you can do this and you can trust your body. You can trust your body to lead, you can trust your energy field to create transformation. You can trust the felt sense of what you’re doing, even if your mind isn’t leading.
And what happened and what unfolded for me was really beautiful because I got to really see and know that there are other aspects of me that could lead that retreat besides my mind and my knowing and my logical teaching and training. And I actually ended up being really beautiful, so while it wasn’t fun, it was actually divine the timing of this experience happening right before leaving that retreat.
I could go on and on with examples and I’m not going to do that today because I know these stories are going to come up, so I’m just going to see it a little bit. I had a retreat where the experience of the retreat actually helped me create home in a whole new way within myself, bringing home to the retreat helped me create home within myself, which helped me create and really own and understand the power of the energetic space of my home by creating home on retreat. And I’ll share about that in this upcoming series.
Another one that pops to mind. We had a retreat in Colorado Springs where we toured a castle. Believe it or not, this man had built a castle for his wife in Colorado Springs and we toured the castle and because that was a part of the land and the experience there, that became the theme of our retreat around being the queen of your castle.
And in the process of leading this retreat around being the queen in your castle, I actually developed content which is a core part of my course today around thinking of your business as a castle. And I had to own my own queendom even more in this retreat in order to give permission for those in attendance to become the queen of their own castle.
So again, sometimes it’s actually the land and the energy of the space or the experience you’re creating that helps you grow and integrate a whole part of yourself that you didn’t even know was there. Other times, it’s things that happened in your life that come up that create this within you.
So the retreat is kind of the pinnacle of transformation for you and your attendees, your participants who come in to this particular cycle in your program. The perfect participants come because they need that particular transformation of that exact cycle that you’re in. So you’re creating this amazing energetic space for them to step into.
Now, as you’ve probably learned, if you’ve listened to this series, I am also an advocate for providing what I call back and support or a high level program after your retreat because when people come into this space of transformation, now they have to go home and take that back into their life and actually hold the transformation as they navigate in their life.
So I’m a big fan of offering a high level program at the back end, we’re really giving people support as they go back home and integrate this transformation. And I love for that support to include retreats, so they come back together with other people who were in that same retreat with them, with you, and they’re seeing you again and they’re actually having this built-in accountability to becoming the person they discovered that they actually are in your rich retreat.
So why I’m sharing this now is this is also a part of the cycles. So whatever transformation opens up at that retreat, you’re actually creating the energy of that transformation within that group that you want to have happen on the back end, right? So let’s say everybody in your particular retreat, they get a new awareness about how they haven’t been being the queen of their castle and how they could be. Well now, they need to go home and actually become queen, right?
And so that might be the theme of the entire six months or nine months or 12 months following the retreat is them actually becoming that, or let’s say they open up this idea of embodiment and transformation within the cells of their being, like I was sharing about with one of my retreats. Everyone who comes in from that cycle that might be their learning is embodiment and they’re spending the next six months or nine months or 12 months, learning to embody their own transformation and trust their body and trust the signals from their body.
Or maybe the theme at the retreat was around home and the energy of home, and maybe that’s what they’re working with for the following months is that energy of home. I know for me, I’ve had cycles around nurturing and nourishing myself and that was a part of the cycle that my clients also needed. I’ve had cycles of discernment and learning discernment, and that was also a cycle that my clients needed.
So what’s beautiful about this is as your holding this energy space, you can hold it for them and they can trust that you’re doing your own work in this area. And by the nature of energetic exchange that happens when we’re in this container together, we’re exchanging money, which means we’re also exchanging energy. Your clients get to tap into this whole energy dynamic that you’re living in your life, and that’s part of the value that they receive through working with you during this cycle.
So the cycle you had, let’s say five years ago in your business and for those of you who lead retreats, you’re probably getting this and resonating with this and maybe this is going to help you value your work even more. If you think back to the cycle you had five years ago, it might’ve been about one thing and that might’ve been appropriate for a certain type of client. Well five years later, you’re navigating transformation that at a higher level and higher level doesn’t mean better.
But at a more advanced energetic level at a higher vibrational field, you’re inviting in clients who are looking to shift into a higher vibrational field so your actual client base is going to change and evolve over time with these cycles. And what’s beautiful about that, again, the type of people who are drawn to transformational leadership and leading retreats often are the type of people who like adventure and love the adventure of transformation.
Your adventure grows with every cycle you move through in your business, your level of who you’re being called to be grows.
And so I know for a long time I kept thinking, okay, I’m going to get to this point where I’m in my groove, I’m in my comfort zone, everything’s flowing. I don’t need to transform anymore. It just is. And what I want you to know is I haven’t found that yet because that is the adventure I’m called to as a leader of retreats and as a leader of transformation. And I’m guessing that’s also true for you and it’s beautiful.
So just to recap, bringing retreats into your business brings a certain cycle and rhythm into the way that you work because there are different stages. There’s the people getting to know you stage, there’s the retreat filling stage, there’s the delivering the retreat stage, and then there’s the after retreat stage. And then you move into doing that cycle all over again. And by the way, we can do this once a year and create a multiple six figure business. And if you’re someone who likes to systematize and grow, maybe you do it two or three times a year but you’re creating this built-in growth right into your business and into your world, which is amazing.
When we create with rhythm and flow, we’re actually honoring that rich part of ourselves, brain, intuitive, connected, heart-centered or more that feminine part of ourselves which is less linear and more quantum in the way that we work. And so that’s really a beautiful thing if you want to embody more of who you came here to be and who you came here to be is more of that rich leader.
We walked through what happens at each stage of the cycle, why it’s important to have each stage of the cycle, both for you and your transformation and for your clients. And part of my goal is to help you validate that yes, you’re going to change and grow. Yes, things are going to happen. Yes, sometimes filling your retreat is going to be sticky and that’s not a problem, it’s actually an invitation and yes, sometimes it’s going to flow beautifully and you’re going to just grow right along with your clients.
And lastly, my intention is to invite you into the upcoming series around transforming the leader where I’m going to have different retreat leaders share their own stories, I’m going to be sharing along with them different stories that naturally come up and the process of our interviews from my own growth and transformation as a leader. And we’re really going to demonstrate for you why. First of all, it’s so important to do your own inner work as a leader and also validate what you already know, which is your own leadership and you’re walking your talk in transformation is actually what’s creating magic in your business and that some level you know this and I want to help you value that and really see what an amazing, powerful leader you are, that you are doing your work in this way.
I’m Darla LeDoux. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Retreat and Grow Rich the podcast and I look forward to seeing you in the next series. Please share your experiences with transformation as a business cycle I would love to hear, we’ll talk soon.
Have you been called to integrate retreats into the way you do business?
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If so, it might be time to start leading transformational retreats. Transformational retreats are only going to get more popular as our world gets busier, and more and more people are opting to invest in experience and transformation over stuff and information.
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