Unfortunately, saying thank you seems to be an afterthought more and more. So at least once a month, I will take a few minutes to publicly appreciate someone that has had an impact on me.
This round: Ignite Women’s Leadership Retreat 2025
Last year, I decided to experiment with hosting a women’s leadership retreat in San Juan PR. To say it was amazing, would be a massive understatement. So I decided to repeat the experiment for 2025. Short version, the first year was not a fluke! This is absolutely a valuable offering to others and to me. And one that I will now be continuing!
Some of the experiments in this year:
- Last year, the attendees were strictly invite only. I had no idea if this would work and I was nervous to just offer it. This year, I did a “interest form” for people that would want to attend – in addition, to any invites I sent. This opened up attendance and 3 people that I didn’t even consider inviting (location, etc) ended up attending. The downside, not everyone looks at LI feed when I published the interest form. I will have to figure out how to increase the visibility.
- Less people knew each other this go around. I still knew everyone directly except for one but last year more people already knew each other. This year, I had more senior leader practitioners attending. I’m grateful to highlight – that people starting connecting immediately. That one said, “it feels nice to be seen.”. That I watched insights, discussions, laughter from day one. My goal will continue to bring a mix of people to this retreat.
- Increasing size from 10 to 12. I really was nervous about increasing the size. Would it cause small cliques. Would it make dinner take too long. Would it just change the dynamic. The overall feedback from myself and especially the people that have attended both years, 12 vs 10 was no noticeable difference. I don’t know if I would go up in size again – especially at the suite room really only holds 12. But this was good information.
- Different dinner location was an ok bust. The dinner part was good. But I thought the location was near live dancing music but this was definitely more of a party scene then what I was intending. I mean the police officers were smoking cigars with drinks on the top of their cars here. So it was interesting to do a quick walk around but I preferred the previous year’s karaoke after dinner option better.
- Including dinners and one night of the hotel in the fees. I did a good job hitting the budget correctly. Not overcharging people but not losing money. The hotel billing correctly didn’t go smoothly but was corrected and I know how to prevent that better next year. This definitely lowered my risk as a small business and also made dinners easier.
- A really small item is next year I will be asking for drink preferences. 2024 was all about red wine. 2025 was all about white. I didn’t buy correctly. This will be going on the registration form.
- Could I still find it relaxing when it’s not just purely friends? Yep. VERY MUCH SO!!!
So thank you to each attendee this year for helping to create the space that all of us needed so badly. I am forever grateful.
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