Listen above or on your favorite podcast platform.
Show Notes:
I recorded today's interview BEFORE the pandemic, so you're not gonna hear us talking about COVID 19.
And you might be thinking...um.... in-person retreats are impossible right now.
Yep. I realize that.
And still, I'm interested in helping you explore the possibilities for your business not just this month or next month or even just this year, but FAR into the future.
For everyone, and perhaps particularly for marginalized groups, IN PERSON events matter. In person connection matters.
If you're feeling that, listen to this interview and think about how in person events might fit into the future of your business.
Even before this pandemic,
I ran my entire business online. I love the freedom being online gives me. I love being able to reach folks all over the world. I get to create relationships with people and help them with their businesses, and it's FINE if we can never meet in person. The rebel therapists I work with are from many time zones.
AND I plan to do some in person work again in the future.
I ran a retreat last year with my dear friend Rebecca Wong. Bonding with Rebecca and the participants, sitting with them, actually hugging them, breathing the same air, it all added so much depth to the work. It's something we can't do at the moment.
I KNOW I'll do more in-person work in the future. That's why I'm talking to our guest today with you in mind, but also with me in mind.
This week, I'm talking to Nailah Blades Wylie, founder of Color Outside. She's a professional coach, consultant, retreat leader, and communications strategist. She runs retreats and in-person events for women of color. That's the part of her work we're focusing on today, so that you can get a master class in what makes an in-person retreat successful.
Here's some of what we talked about:
Creating her first retreat because women were asking her for it.
Why women sign up for her events (they're craving community)
How she chooses her locations
Why she always hires a photographer of color at every event
How she keeps costs reasonable
Creating a seamless experience for participants
Adapting retreat activities for all ability levels
Setting up retreats for both introverts and extroverts to thrive
Allowing for free time in the schedule (and how she figured this out during a snow storm)
Changing the way she uses her email marketing (away from a focus on selling and towards giving value)
How in-person events fit into her overall business model
How to get started with events if you have a small audience
How she decompresses after a retreat
More From Nailah:
ColorOutside.org
More From Annie:
+ Full Transcript
Answer HereThank you so much for being here, Nailah. I'm so excited to talk to you. Thank you. I'm really excited to be here. So I want to focus on your retreats, and I'm wondering, how did you realize that you wanted to provide these in-person experiences. Yeah, so I think that. Really the entire community of color outside really started because it was the community that I needed at the time, but just couldn't find, I couldn't find exactly what I needed, and so I created it and the in-person retreats came out of just so many women. Seeing what I was doing here locally in salt Lake city. So I was running hikes and just doing . A lot of in person events here locally, and so many women were like, Oh, I wish I could come to one of those. Or, you know, I would love to get outside, but I don't know. Anyone in my area that can do that or know I've always wanted to go skiing, but I don't have anyone to do it with.