#62 - How to host a virtual retreat for your clients

Any time that you can stop and add in a little bit of genuine connection is going to be really beneficial both for your clients and for your for your business.

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your host, serial entrepreneur 6 and 7 figure funnel strategist and super nerd Kate McKibben, where every week we're here talking, nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you do online. But better, easier, and with a ton more profit too. Are you ready? Let's do it.

Hello. Hello everybody and welcome to episode number 62 of the Doing It Online podcast. I am your host Kate McKibben from HelloFunnels co. And today I wanted to take you behind the scenes once again and give you some Cliffs Notes on how to create and host a really amazing virtual retreat. Sorry for your clients, why you might want to do that, Some tips and tricks for making it amazing. Things to do, things not to do, which we've definitely learned the hard way. The idea for this podcast came because actually this week as this podcast is going live, of course it's recorded a few weeks in advance, but we will actually just be wrapping up our own most recent virtual retreat for our Ecourse Empire clients. So we run a virtual retreat twice a year. It's been an amazing addition to our program because I think it's having a virtual retreat, having that little space and container for your clients to really come together, particularly in lockdown land that we're all in or a lot of us are in right now. Particularly when you have a program that's really online and that you might have clients from all around the world and it might be at a price point that's not really conducive to people flying in for in person events which are obviously going to start to cost thousands of dollars per person. So it's just a really nice way that you can sort of replicate that experience of people coming together, people taking that sort of time out from their businesses or their day to day people, you know, committing a bit of really condensed quality time to working on whatever topic or issue it is that you help people with. And people always come away from these things feeling so much more motivated, so much more revved up, so much more excited. And you know, it's a really inexpensive thing that you can add in. Yes, there are a few moving pieces, but it's something that can definitely be super systemized that once you've done the first time and you kind of figured out all the different puzzle bits that you're going to use and how they work together. It is something that can be rolled out over and over again. And I think it is just so valuable for your clients, like particularly right now, particularly with the way that your online courses and online education is going. Anytime that you can stop and add in a little bit of genuine connection is going to be really beneficial both for your clients and for your business. So let's dive on in now to the do's and the don'ts. I've got a few of them. We definitely got a few things wrong first time we did this and we've been refining it down. So I wanted to share some of the biggest takeaways and the biggest sort of do's and don'ts that we've had along the way. First things first is, and this one I'm sure a lot of you guys can relate to, but I would really recommend that you keep your days short. Even when it's an in person event. You know, a full day is full on. It's, you know, and it can be really, really exhausting. A virtual event is almost more so because you're sitting down, you're sitting still, you're staring at a screen. It's kind of got to be of a different to it. So I would recommend if you're going to a virtual event to have it probably four hours. As a ma, like, you know, obviously feel free to play with what makes sense for your content and your people. But four hours a day instead of one big eight hour day, I think you'll find that the energy is better. People are able to, you know, come in and concentrate better to they'll retain a lot more than if you Bombard them with 8 hours straight or 6 hours straight even of information. And also you have the other bonus if you. So what we do is we have two sessions over two, about three and a half to four hour sessions over two days. And that means that maybe someone can't make it one day, but they can make it the other day. So it increases the chance that as many people as possible will be able to come in and make the most of this experience. So the second tip, and this is a tip or is it more of just like a bit of general like don't beat yourself up too much kind of advice. But yes, try and find a time that suits everyone as much as possible. But please don't lose sleep over the fact that you are never going to be able to find a time that suits everyone. Particularly again if you have a global audience. So I mean we're in Australia, we have clients in Europe, we have clients in the US what we do is early, early morning, like as early as we can in the morning in Australia and then which is kind of afternoon, evening, early evening in the US and quite late evening for a lot of Europe. But it's literally, it's the best that we can do. And what that means is that yes, some of our clients who are in different countries are not able to come along live for the whole thing. But we do obviously have recordings that they can access afterwards and they still are able to jump in, even if it's for an hour or so. Just even that small part can be a really great beneficial little check in, little, you know, stepping in and being part of that community and that experience is still really beneficial. So like I said, it's not so much advice as it is just don't beat yourself up if you're not going to be able to make it a really nice like lunchtime to early afternoon for everybody, because that's not possible. Also be really aware of your own energy of where your guest speakers and things are going to be coming from, because that's probably where, if you're going to be leaning more towards favoring one time zone over another, I would say it's okay to be selfish here and favor your own or your guest speakers time zones versus others because you're the ones who are having to come in and show up and to deliver and you want to be well rested, you want to be awake, you want to be able to have your brain functioning at its highest capacity. So, you know, that's a little, little semi tidbit for there. Number three, and this again helps to kind of counteract. Number one is that if you have a schedule of how you're going to run things. So just for example, this is one that we've kind of played with in the past where we start off with an intro and a session, maybe a bit of a learning session. Then we might have more of a practical do something together session, which may be a guest or it may be from our team. And then we might end it with some masterminding, like round table, hot seat style, small group masterminding. And so if we do that on day one, what we do on day two is we would actually do it in reverse. So that way that again, if people are, you know, in one side of the world can only log in for the first session and maybe other parts of the world, they can only join in for the last sessions by switching up the Itinerary, it means that as many people as possible get to take part in as many types of content as possible as well. So number four, and again, this one. So we, one of my, what's it called? My love language is giving gifts. I love that we have this really built in as part of our program. You know, we celebrate people when they join, when they hit certain milestones and also because I think it's one of the most fun things about it, one of the most fun. But you know, one of the really great things about an in person event is the goodie bags, right? Like you get like this swag bag with some few cool things in it, often a lot of rubbish as well. But you know, I want to try and replicate that experience as much as possible. So we send out little swag bags to everyone who has RSVP'd for the event. Now this works well for us in two ways is that if we get people to rsvp, we ask them for their address when they rsvp. So it's more likely to be an up to date address. But also it's going to help to incentivize the people to RSVP in the first place, which kind of gets them more excited about coming. When everyone receives these things together and they have these like physical things in their hand as well as attending this virtual event, it just, it adds to the experience. It adds to the tribal ness of it, to that kind of group experience. People can be talking about what they got. And of course I'm not here. You know, I try and be as sustainably minded as possible. I try not to send out just plastic crap that's got our brand on it. Like we are very intentional and thoughtful about what those gifts are. But you know, at the end of the day it is, it can be a little bit of fun. It can be a good, great branding experience. And I think it is always so powerful. When you have a virtual business, an online business where you rarely see people and they don't get a physical anything from you to every now and then give them something physical that they can hold in their hands that is connected to you and to your brand. It really does help to build that loyalty and that, you know, that sort of good feeling ongoing from your clients. That was my long way of saying make them rsvp. And as like a little bonus tip of how to help bribe them to rsvp. We do, as I said, we send out little gifts. But if you're sort of, again, if your program's not in the price point where you have the budget to send out little gifts. You could even send them something virtual. You could send them an extra little PDF planner or they get a bonus, extra training or something like that to say thank you. Because the thing is, these virtual retreats, they're not just for more premium programs. You can do them for membership sites and things as well. Like, they still have those same benefits. They still give you something that's, you know, an exciting way of bringing those members together of gives you something that the, you know, the members in your membership site or in your program can look forward to. That kind of, it's an extra, adds an extra layer of stickiness as well. People like, well, yeah, I want to stay on because there's going to be this event in a couple of months and it was amazing last time and I don't want to miss out. So it can be, as I said, a really, really powerful tool in addition to your online program and one that, yeah, it doesn't have to break the bank or take years and years to put together either. All right, so tip number five is keep it simple. And I mean it because I'm the type of person who always tries to overcomplicate things. Like the very first one we did, we just tried to jam in way, way, way too much. So that's why I've now broken it down into a much more simple, repeatable format. Like I said, we do ours over three and a half to four hours, over two days. And we have that same formula. We have one sort of in house, sort of either speaker or like I said, something more practical where we walk people through doing it together, one external speaker and then a masterminding session. And you know, that format, it ticks all the boxes. It lets people connect together, they learn something, they do something. But it doesn't mean that you're trying to coordinate 25 different speakers. We coordinate two and our own team is much, much easier. Tip number six is add some occasion to it. So again, yes, it's not in person and you want to try and think about like what are some of those fun things that people do at an in person retreat or event that you can still do virtually. So we like to have like a little ceremony, a little sort of awards ceremony to celebrate the people who've hit some really big milestones, hit some of our inbuilt program milestones. So you guys would probably know because I talk about a lot, but we have one of the first milestones for people inside our Equals Empire program is that they hit their financial freedom checkpoint, which is where, when they first join us, we get them to calculate how much revenue do they need to have coming into their business every month on autopilot so that it covers off all their expenses, paying themselves a little bit of buffer and tax. And when they hit that milestone, we like to send them a little present, like saying, well done. Yay for you. And then we also celebrate them with by getting them joining our Funnelers hall of Fame. We have a better name for it than that. I can't remember it right now, but, you know, we get to virtually invite them up onto the stage and celebrate them. And I think it's just, again, it's nice to help to celebrate your clients, to put it back on them. It's not just a learning experience, it's an interactive experience. And again, that also serves as a little bit of extra motivation for those people still working through the program who haven't hit those milestones yet, that, hey, they want to do that before the next retreat and they want to come to the next retreat because they're going to get celebrated as well. Tip number seven is absolutely make sure you let people mastermind and connect. I feel like a lot of people are worried about doing this. I know I've spoken to people and they're like, oh, why would I do that? You know, it's. They're not learning anything. It's not anything from me. And selfishly, as a business owner and a coach, it's one of the best things you can do because you don't actually have to be doing anything. You just group people together. And so we did ours in Zoom and created breakout rooms, and we gave everyone a little brief on how it worked. And then we just sort of had to, through Zoom, could moderate everyone with time to switch people and time countdowns and stuff like that through messaging. So as far as implementing it and running it, it was really, really super easy. But when we did our surveys for our retreat, everyone said it was one of their favorite things. Like, they loved the lessons and all of that, but they loved even more being able to connect with their peers, brainstorm with their peers, bounce ideas. And, you know, I myself was hesitant in offering this because one of the things we do in our program is we have two to three calls a week that are hot seat calls where people can brainstorm stuff with myself and my team, but they still found it relevant and really, really valuable to be able to get that sort of, you know, that mastermind, which is the term mastermind, where you have this bigger collective feedback and so we're 100% offering it every time now. And like I said, it's one of the easiest things for you to prepare because all you need to do is make sure you have Zoom and you've upgraded so you have the breakout rooms for that particular time and that's it. It's super easy. So 100% make sure no matter what your topic, I would have some kind of built in, even if it's not masterminding it, even if it has a different format, some kind of built in connection with your people amongst themselves. Because again, that's going to help with the stickiness as well as giving them great value and great insights and aha moments, which is what we want for them. Last, of course, I couldn't talk about hosting something online without talking about the tools that you'd need to do it. So hopefully from what I said so far, you guys know that it doesn't have to be complicated. You can, you should have a bit of an idea for roughly how even you could break it down and what to offer and what you need to organize. But how do you deliver it? Well, again, keep it simple. I would 100% recommend that you get Zoom and obviously a paid Zoom because you're going to need to have it longer than 45 minutes. You can just upgrade for this time period. You need to make sure that you have whichever pricing plan allows you to have the breakout rooms. If you're planning on doing Masterminding or anything else where they're going to split off into different groups. The other thing I would recommend is either having, if you're using Slack already for your client community, create a separate Slack channel so that as everyone RSVPs, they get added into that Slack channel. That's where all the announcements are on the day, that's where you can post the links, remind people what they need to do, all that good stuff. Or if you don't use Slack, if you use Facebook group, sorry, use a Facebook group, maybe you create a separate Facebook group or I know Facebook's bringing in different things all the time, but some other way. Again, that's live and interactive where people, once they've RSVP'd kind of again get popped together where they can chat amongst themselves, they can get the information they need and it just helps to create that lovely buzz and excitement which is like, you know, if you were at an event or retreat, it would be the standing in the lobby waiting for it to start. So you create that by creating these online rooms or online spaces. So hopefully that has been helpful. Guys, I hope I have inspired you, if you've been maybe thinking about it before or perhaps hadn't thought of it at all, to consider creating a virtual retreat for your clients. It doesn't have to be difficult. It's not expensive. It is super valuable both on the day and just as a, you know, as an asset for your clients, the thing that they can look forward to, particularly in times like these. Now, if you found this useful, guys, make sure that you DM us or post on stories and tag us at hellofunnels. We'd love to know if you're gonna go out there and start creating your own virtual retreat. Until then, guys, I will let you get on with the rest of your day. I hope you have an amazing week. I'll see you all next time, same time, same channel. See you then. Until then, keep doing what you do and I'll see you online. Bye.

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