Your Business Retreat: The Power Of Stepping Away To Recharge & Refocus

As a small business owner, it is HARD to step away from the day-to-day of running a business:  delivering services to clients & responding to their needs, building demand with the right marketing strategies & tactics, and keeping on top of all of the administrative details. But we are big believers here at Rinehart Marketing in taking a yearly break to recharge, refocus, and dream up great things for your business.

 Our Retreat Intentions

Cara and I set aside time in late October/early November every year to do just that, and get offsite for a couple of days. Our goals? 

• Celebrate the wins!

• Review previous year’s goals & set new ones for the next year

• Review what’s working & not

• Capture lessons learned and identify new business opportunities

• Revisit our marketing strategy & plan & tweak as needed (we use our own Get-Keep-Grow funnel and marketing consult process on ourselves!)

• Problem-solve sticking points in our work flow

• Dream together

• Have fun!

The Logistics

We have found a convenient airbnb just 30 minutes from where we live, where we spend two days & nights going through our robust list of visioning exercises, reflection questions, and planning. We like to schedule it from mid-day Wednesday to mid-day Friday, so it rolls nicely into the weekend and feels like a sweet break. For supplies, we bring along an easel-sized sticky pad, white board, multi-colored sticky notes, markers, tape, our laptops, and phones. For sustenance, we bring delicious meals, drinks and snacks (we are both a couple of foodies, so planning the menu is half the fun)! We also like to throw in some evening and/or morning yoga.

Why it’s So Beneficial

So why am I recommending this process to other small business owners? Because the benefits are tremendous! 

• It’s rejuvenating. We return to our work energized after stopping the treadmill for a few days.

• It’s inspiring! Taking a break from our normal work routine creates space for innovation & fresh insights.

• It’s productive! There is simply not enough time amidst the day-to-day to tackle bigger challenges that need concentrated attention. Carving out this undistracted, larger chunk of time is wonderfully efficient for problem solving.

• It feels good to pause and celebrate the wins. What’s the point of it all if you can’t pause and look back at where you’ve been and what you’ve accomplished?

• It’s a vital checkpoint. We need to evaluate our work, step back to gain perspective on our progress, and make any necessary course corrections to align with our goals.

• It bonds us as a team. Extended time together, where down-time is woven into the work schedule, deepens our connections and we both leave feeling more known and grateful for the work we get to do together.

My Favorite Part

Aside from our meals together where we catch up on our favorite books, podcasts and family happenings, the visioning exercises are the most enjoyable aspect of our retreat for me. It’s the time where we each have a stack of sticky notes to write on, and then add them to the easel sheets stuck to the wall in response to thought-provoking questions. Here are some questions we have used in the past as part of these exercises:

• What do we want clients to say about us after working with us/using our services?

• What values and strengths define our brand today, and how might they evolve as we grow?

• What does success look like in the next year?

• How might our dream client portfolio look in 3 years? Picture the types of clients we want to work with regularly, and the projects that will energize us.

• What does “work-life balance” mean for us in 3 years?

Cover these Topics

In terms of an overall agenda, we recommend you focus on these aspects of your business, looking back over the past year and then setting your intentions for the next:

• Finances

• Goals

• Clients

• Operations/time management

• Staffing

• Marketing

Our Practical Tips

We’ve done this offsite for three years now, and here are some practical tips if you’d like to incorporate this practice into your business rhythms:

• Pick a time of year and time in the month when there is a lull so you can afford to be ‘offline’.

• Hand off the pressing items to a trusted associate or prepare your schedule like you are taking vacation, letting clients know you are unavailable.

• Keep meal prep simple so you can maximize your time together. We like to do all of our own meals to save on expenses. But, you may want to include a dinner out to mix things up and make it a celebratory occasion.

• Bring the right adapter cables or equipment you need to project your documents and images on a larger screen so others can view your info more easily.

• Use one large note from your easel sticky pad as a ‘Parking Lot’ for miscellaneous ideas that come up. There will always be items that just don’t fit into your agenda, but are such good ideas that you don’t want to lose them.

• Save the last couple of hours for wrap-up & consolidation of action items. If you use a task management system, consider getting a jump on things by adding your new tasks  that have pressing deadlines into your system BEFORE you leave. It will help keep the momentum going.

• Check in on those items you said you wanted to work on right away within the first two weeks of being back in the office.

Are you a solo entrepreneur or independent professional? This retreat is even more important! Even though you don’t have a team with you, it is still vital for you to carve out time annually to do this sort of reflection and goal-setting.

If you’re interested in seeing our offsite agenda to use as a template, reach out! We’d be happy to share.