Retreats: The Ultimate Bleisure Experience

#104 (EDITED) - 12 after the intro

Wed, Oct 30, 2024 1:07PM • 22:43

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Emma, do you want to live a life of freedom and adventure? Are you wanting more than the daily grind? Me too. Welcome to the Emma Lovell, show a place where we talk about living a life you love. Now I'm your host, Emma Lovell, and my number one value is freedom. I've spent the last 14 years running a business and traveling the world, and now I take my husband and toddler along for the adventure too. It's possible, and I know you can create a life doing what you truly love as well. This podcast will inspire, motivate and encourage you to go after your dreams, to create a life you love and to live it now, not wait for a time and or someday in the future, I'll be sharing episodes weekly about how I harmonize business travel and self care. I'll also bring on incredible guests to share their journeys, the wins, the challenges, and how they're creating a life they love. Let's jump in and get dreaming. This is a space for you to manifest a life you love.

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I would like to acknowledge and recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first peoples of this place, now known as Australia. I am grateful for the continuing care of the land, waterways and skies where I work, live, listen, learn and play from here on you, Emma country and from wherever you are listening, I pay my respects to the elders past and present.

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Hello, Lovell. Thank you for tuning in before we get started. I wanted to share with you a very exciting update. I am now an author. My first ever book, The Art of pleasure, is out, and it is available now. If you want to travel the world, make money and live a life you love, this is the book for you.

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What is pleasure? It's the art of combining work and leisure to live a life you love. It means traveling more throughout the year, instead of counting down to that annual holiday that seems to pass in the blink of an eye. In the book, I'm going to share my successes and sacrifices, and I'm going to make this dream achievable for you. I'm going to show you how to set up systems to run a remote business to traveling on a long haul flight with the toddler. Yep, I do it all. I'm sharing actionable tips, helpful checklists and real life anecdotes from others who have adopted the pleasure lifestyle too. I don't want you to wait for one day or someday in the future, you can start living a life you love now and it is a pleasure life. You can get the book The Art of pleasure at my website, Emma lovell.au, forward slash book, and you can also see a bunch of other online retailers, including Amazon, which has the ebook version of the book as well. I would love to hear from you and hear about how you're living your pleasure life. So stay in touch and let me know once you've got the book. Alright, time to jump into the episode.

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Hello, Lovell, and welcome to today's episode where we are going to talk about the ultimate pleasure, in my humble opinion, business plus travel plus self care, which equals retreats. For me, our retreats are the ultimate combo of travel, business and self care, and by now, if you've been listening for a little while, you would have a few ideas about how to travel the world and make money and to live a life you love now, and I've shared a lot of what I know, but I've never experienced such a beautiful marriage of my passions and interests, as I have with hosting retreats and attending retreats, basically anything to do with retreats, I do feel like it is the pinnacle of pleasure in one activity. So as a host, you are running a business, and you're making income from that. You're getting to travel and share that with a group of amazing people and see incredible places, whether it's locally, domestically or overseas, internationally. And you're also getting to practice self care, because although you're hosting, you get to enjoy the space that you've created as well. But also, as an attendee, you could go as a to focus on your business and do some professional development, personal development,

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even if that is going on a yoga retreat or a writing retreat or some other activity retreat that's not technically a business retreat, because when you go on these retreats, You are doing creating time and space to think and dream and to

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reset, and that can really help in your work life. Of course, you get the travel as well. So even if it's even if it's down the road, I've had a retreat 20 minutes down the road at the fabulous Sheraton Hotel on the Gold Coast. I've also had one at the Langham and I've had one about an hour and a half away at a beautiful property called The Stone Hill estate in Pottsville, New South Wales. And all of them just felt so expansive and beautiful and restful, even though they were not far away, and it was also very i.

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It was travel. Even if it's 20 minutes away, you can still have a travel mindset. And then, of course, there was a self care element. When you attend a retreat, they, by nature, create space. Tend to be in a beautiful location, and depending on the facilitator or the host or how they run it, the idea is to create a transformation. And I believe that giving yourself that time, giving yourself that rest, or that time away from the day to day, that is such a beautiful gift of self care. So I'm often asked Emma, what's your primary business, or what do you do? And let's be honest, that's a question I've been asked my entire career, and I think I will always be asked how I make a living, because seeing someone travel the world and do what they love and get paid for it is rare, and it's also rarely celebrated. So that's like tall poppy. Here in Australia, we call it when you're doing well, and people see you doing well, they sort of want to cut you down sometimes, unfortunately,

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and that's a shame, but that's what happens. So it's the comment I sort of wanted to answer in my book The Art of pleasure, which is all about this topic, was that, well, it's all well and good for you, Emma. The thing is, I never just want to have these things for myself. I want to share it with you. And if you're listening to this episode and you feel called to attend a retreat, that's great. I actually have a few retreats on I have kangaroo Valley in February, which is a gorgeous, stunning, amazing location. I'll talk a little bit more about that. And I'm hosting one next week in Sri Lanka. So might be a little bit late to attend that one, but I will be announcing a destination next year in South Asia, I might even be having a couple. So if you are keen on that, go to Emma level.au, forward slash retreats to learn more about how I do run retreats and how you couldn't get involved. But you might also be listening thinking, Yeah, I think, I think, actually, I want to make this a part of my business. And

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how could I do that? So

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that's what we might talk a little bit more about today. And I wanted to make this possible for other people and show that this could be an income stream. It could be a revenue stream that also gives that beautiful gift to you and your clients of

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travel and self care as well.

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So in the last few years, retreats and training others in how to run them has become a big focus. And I love running retreats because they are such a tangible, tangible offer, and they're much easier to explain than my personal branding work in the past, even though I ran a retreat about personal branding, and for me, personal branding is really understanding who you are and communicating it in a very simple way to explain it. It's still quite hard for people to grasp what is a personal brand and how to communicate that.

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But when I'm hosting a retreat, it's my job to hang out with amazing people in beautiful locations and get well paid to do it. And I do not mean just covering my expenses. I mean making a profit from every retreat I run. And that's my lane, and that's where I shine. And these days, I do more than host retreats. As I said, I'm teaching others how to host retreats and to do it profitably. I've seen such an incredible transformation in the lives of the people who've attended, and I know that for me, attending has really just been such a gift and helped me so much. So

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I want to give that to other people too, but running retreats might not be for you, but before you decide, I wanted to share a little bit about how they work and why they're such a big part of my business and even a bigger part of my future. So I've actually even in my book, committed to another book.

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So watch this space. Really, really, really love the area of retreat. So it's why you do hear a bit about it on this podcast, if you've listened to a few episodes, and I've actually created a playlist,

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which I will link to on the Emma level.au forward slash retreats page. I'll also link to it on my

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podcast page, which is Emma level.au forward slash book.

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Sorry, forward slash podcast. I've got so many pages on my website that you can have a look to see more about

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about the like a full list of the retreats, but if you can't find that playlist, it is on Spotify, but just send me a note, and I'll send you the link. And that basically has all of the episodes I've ever done about retreats in one place, which makes life a lot easier. But what is a retreat? A retreat is when you go away with a group of people to a luscious, beautiful, amazing place and offer them some sort of transformation. Retreats can be honestly about anything, and they provided there is a transformation attached to the experience. So typically, people see result retreats as health and wellness, but they don't have to be you.

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Go on a retreat. You could go on, I have to say that word so many times, you can go on a retreat for writing, for cooking, creativity, eating. Yes, there are a tour of retreats that are just about that are basically food tours you get to eat.

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Extreme fitness, recuperation from an illness, a get away from your family. These are called respite retreats, and there's so many more. You could create them for anything. And in February 2024 my client, Christine canon and I co hosted a retreat called she freights. So Christine runs a logistics company called pivot freight, and the women on the retreat wanted to source products from India. So she delivered information about her industry, freight forwarding and logistics, and then gave people this incredible opportunity to experience India. And also she guided them through the

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Delhi fair in India, which was a huge, huge, oh my gosh. I've never seen anything like it trade fair.

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And got information about how

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manufacturers and suppliers over there wanted to work with exporters and importers. So you know that just wouldn't typically go with a retreat. But there was a market for it, and people came along, which was fantastic.

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Hey, Lovell, I want to open the doors to incredible opportunities for you on an all inclusive luxury retreat, exclusively for people who are ready to live a life they love. I invite you to join me for five inspiring nights in sensational Sri Lanka for the rest and receive retreat hosted from second to seventh of November 2024 by yours truly, Emma Lovell, I ask you to disconnect your senses and immerse in this exotic culture while you reconnect with yourself, you get to share this luxurious experience with 12 incredible people While forming connections that last a lifetime. I really cannot undersell or overestimate this incredible retreat and the magic of going to a place to give yourself space and time. I want to share it with you, and if you are interested, then please head to my website. Emma lovell.au/sri,

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Lanka retreat. I'd love to see you there, and I'm happy to chat. If you have any questions whatsoever, please take this opportunity to come along and join me in stunning Sri Lanka.

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But I also have meditation and yoga clients, and they have tend to have the most success with retreats, especially in India, I've got a beautiful client, Emma walkenshaw, who hosted a sold out retreat. Co hosted a sold out retreat last year, and she's hosting it again, and she's actually had to expand the retreat because she got so much interest. And she'll be looking at hosting two per year, but her next one will be in March,

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2025,

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through Delhi and Agra and Jaipur and Ricky Rishikesh. She hosts it over Holly, which is really, really beautiful. And,

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yeah, sold out again. So that one is fully sold out. I have another client who's going in March, and she's already she sold out her first retreat, so she's booked another one in October, and she's a meditation teacher. So of course,

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people who are interested in yoga, meditation, wellness, think of India, and it's not a huge leap for them. The other thing for these women was that they already had audiences. They're already running their business. They've already got a community. They've already got people who are wanting more from them. So then it wasn't a huge leap in order to go, Okay, now I'm offering this experience which is connected to the work I've already been doing. Why don't you come along?

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But you know, in video, isn't the only place you can host a retreat. It's just for me, it's about

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it's a place that I feel really connected to. I've been there 15 years, 15 times, sorry, 15 times over, nearly 20 years. And speaking to my colleague yesterday, we really love retreat hosts. We really love bringing groups like that over. And he sort of said, Yeah, we looked at doing group tours and women's trips about five years ago. But,

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you know, I think it was really important that I had been to India so many times and experienced it in so many ways that I'm able to help hosts

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to understand what it's like. I know some of the properties and the facilities that are there, so we can help kind of tailor the itinerary.

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So it really helps knowing your destination. And if possible, I think it is great to go and recce a location and be in a location, because for me, the LE.

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Occasion does a lot of the heavy lifting. So I choose the destinations where I host retreats because they are in in their nature, already such a beautiful, wonderful space that people can feel expansive and open. So it's already that

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opportunity for them.

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So they they want to come to the location because it's dreamy and wonderful, and then just the space itself lends to dreaming and wishing and creating and breathing. I went to a retreat last week in New Zealand, and it was on a mountainside with this beautiful, stunning turquoise water at the bottom in this bay. And then you could climb up further. You could go for a bush walk and climb to the top of the mountain. And the top of the mountain, they actually had a quartz crystal on this rock that I climbed all the way up to. They also had a beautiful building which made the very, very most of the VISTA,

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and that was called the sanctuary.

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Just sorry I'm recording, and my cat has managed to get himself locked in the bedroom,

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as you do so i The live process. Sorry, that threw me a little bit. This will be fun to listen to. To Charla, my cat is up to menacing these days. Anywho.

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This is why I do my work on retreats, because I don't have the distractions.

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Yes, so just having that place that

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just felt so clear and spacious being there because of the natural surroundings and the way that the complex was built. So that was actually a retreat center, which was so interesting to go to,

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but yeah, one of the biggest things I think retreats do for me.

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You know, self care is one of the biggest things for retreats, and sometimes going to bed on time every night can be a battle for me. It is, and sleep is such a precious thing, and it's like number one self care. But if you ask me if I want to go to India or run a retreat there, or host a retreat, or go on a retreat, anywhere I'll move heaven and earth to make it happen. So retreats are my self care. India,

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specifically as a destination, is my self care, and travel is my self care. So running a business that I love is also self care. So being able to combine the business, the travel already is self care, but then the nature of retreats are that they are taking care of yourself.

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So

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what, what I'm trying to share with you

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is finding a way

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living a life you love is about finding what you love and what you love doing. So listening to this, you might say, Oh, I don't want to run a retreat, and I am not going to go into the how to run a retreat, because I've done episodes on that, and I've shared the mistakes I've made in order to learn that. I think there's five core principles to running retreat,

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and this is what I teach on my retreat, on retreat days. So actually, take a group of people to fabulous destination and teach them about running a retreat in a retreat like destination. But one of the biggest things I believe that is so crucial to the success of a retreat is your intention. And if this sounds like something that you're interested in as

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something that you could add, and like I said, you already have a community, you've already got a business, you've already got an audience, you have something that you think

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needs intensive work, you know, and it's like, in order to get a transformation, you really sometimes need to do deeper work, and it just can't be done the same way, or you would have to do it over such a long period, to do one hour sessions. So for people who really want to make a shift, I think retreats are such a great way.

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Daily work is great and and you will continue the work after but you go on away on this three days, five days a week, whatever it is to really kind of do intense, focused work, and then you're able to

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go back to wherever you live, go back to your business. And then the transformation is going to come in the next six months or so. Sometimes for people, they get a big aha on the day in the moment. Sometimes it's a week or a month later, but I really find like six months later, people reflect, and they go, Wow, this is the intention I set. This is how I felt before I went on a retreat, and this is how I feel after. And so

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I guess two prong here,

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if you think that

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you want to include this as part of your.

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Business.

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I really believe in the power of retreats. I think there's just some principles to learn, and I would love to support you in that, but also attending. If you haven't, if you haven't attended a retreat, please do not host a retreat. You have to attend a retreat or a few retreats first to understand because you might not even like this style of work. You might not even like this way of doing, and it can take energy. And for some people, it takes too much energy and too much requirement. It also is like, although you run them profitably, they also do have really fixed expenses in them. So,

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you know, it's a different sort of offering to, say, a coaching or a consulting or things like that, in terms of like, I guess there is a there is a risk. So if this is sort of all just a bit alluring to you, maybe the first step is to attend a retreat. And of course, I would love to host you. I also know a number of fabulous hosts and retreats that I would recommend. So if that's something that's been called to you, then reach out. But I just wanted to share, I think you hear me talk about retreats a lot, and sort of drop it in conversation. So I wanted to give a little bit more background as to why I do believe that they are such a great way to to pleasure. And also, I just keep talking about this pleasure thing, and you're like, how do I do it? And so retreats are just one way that you could create a really great offering that is pleasure. But you know, as I said, also attending retreats and including that more in your life could be a really great way to live your pleasure life,

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and it could be a fast track to finding out what your pleasure life looks like. So I hope that's been some inspiration today. Thank you for listening as always, and I would love to hear from you. I just yeah, I'm talking out into the wilderness, so I'd really love to hear from you anytime, and you can contact me on my various channels. Just look me up as Emma. Lovell, all right, have a wonderful day. Thank you.

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Thank you for listening. Lovell one. I hope this has inspired you to dream big and start creating a life you love today. If you love what you're hearing, don't forget to follow and rate on Spotify and rate review and subscribe on iTunes. It helps other awesome people to find this podcast and get motivated and inspired as well. Want to stay connected. Come and join the live a life you love. Group on Facebook or connect with me on Instagram. Emma lovell.au the same as my website, but all the details are in the show notes. Lovely. I'll see you next episode for more inspiration, motivation and freedom seeking now, go out there and live a life you love. You.