WELCOME TO THE
Library
Pull something off the shelf. I write most weeks about the parts of an event nobody sees.
New on the shelf
everything on the shelf
The brief that lets your retreat team decide without you
A good brief tells your team what to do. A better one tells them enough to make the call themselves when you're mid-session and unreachable. This post covers the difference and what has to be in the second kind.
The 4 retreat roles that make delegation actually work
Delegation falls apart when nobody is clear on who decides what, which is a different problem from nobody knowing what to do. This post covers four roles that make the handoff clean and what each one owns.
Why Your Retreat Team Keeps Coming to You for Everything (And How to Fix It)
Your team is capable and they still check with you before nearly every decision. They're missing something you've been carrying in your head without realizing it. This post covers what that is and how to get it out of there.
WHY STAYING HANDS-ON WITH EVENT TECH CAN SLOW EVERYTHING DOWN
Keeping the tech yourself feels faster and safer, and for a while it genuinely is. This post covers what it costs once other people need access to it, and how to hand it over without losing track of anything.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PLANNING YOUR EVENT AND BUILDING YOUR TECH
Planning your event and building the tech behind it are two separate jobs, and treating them as one is why both keep taking longer than you budgeted. This post covers where the line sits and what belongs on each side of it.
IS YOUR EVENT TECH SETUP COMPLICATED… OR JUST UNFINISHED?
The setup that feels impossibly complicated is very often just half-built, and those two problems have completely different solutions. This post covers how to tell which one you have before you scrap everything and start again.
THE HIDDEN COST OF STRETCHING EVENT TECH ACROSS WEEKS
Twenty minutes here, half an hour there, and it feels like progress. This post covers what it actually costs to keep restarting the same build, and why the work never seems to get closer to finished.
WHY YOUR EVENT TECH SETUP KEEPS GETTING DELAYED
The tech has moved to next week four weeks running, and you're not avoiding it out of laziness. Something specific is blocking it every time. This post names what that usually is and what it takes to get past it.
HOW TO BUILD A RETREAT BACKEND THAT ACTUALLY MAKES PROFIT
The places money leaks out of a retreat are rarely the places you'd think to check. Most of them sit in the setup rather than the spending. This post walks through where they are and what to build so the profit survives to the end.
WHY RETREAT PROFIT SHOULD BE PLANNED BEFORE YOU BOOK
Profit worked out after the venue is booked is really just whatever happens to be left. By then most of your costs are already decided. This post covers how to build the number in from the beginning, before anything gets signed.
WHY RAISING RETERAT PRICE DIDN’T BRING RELIEF
You raised the price, the guests still came, and the pressure stayed exactly where it was. This post covers what a price increase can genuinely fix, what it leaves untouched, and where to look when the relief doesn't arrive.
WHY RETREAT PRICING FEELS HARDER THAN EVERYTHING ELSE
Pricing a retreat means putting a number on something that doesn't exist yet, for a group of people you haven't met. That's genuinely harder than pricing your other work. This post covers why, and what makes the number easier to land on.
SELLING OUT ISN’T THE SAME AS BEING PROFITABLE (HERE’S WHY)
Every seat filled, a beautiful event, and almost nothing left at the end. It's one of the most common outcomes in this work and one of the least discussed. This post covers where the money goes and how to find it while you can still change something.
THE FIVE ELEMENTS THAT MAKE A RETREAT FEEL PROFESSIONALLY HELD
Guests can always tell when an event is being run well, though most of them couldn't tell you why. This post covers the five things they're picking up on, and how each one gets built before anyone arrives.
RETREAT CONTINGENCY PLANNING 101: STAY STEADY WHENT THINGS SHIFT
Something will move. A speaker's flight, the weather, the room setup you confirmed twice. Contingency planning means deciding what you'll do about it now, rather than at 6am on event day on four hours of sleep. This post covers how.
FROM STYLED TO MEANINGFUL: RETHINKING RETREAT GUEST EXPERIENCE
Beautiful staging and a meaningful experience are two separate projects with two separate budgets. This post covers what guests actually carry home with them, and where the effort is better spent.
HOW TO BUILD A RETREAT BACKEND THAT SUPPORTS YOUR LEADERSHIP
How present you get to be during your own retreat is decided weeks earlier, by what you did or didn't build. This post covers the setup that lets you lead the room instead of tracking it from the side.
3 RETREAT PLANNING MISTAKES THAT QUIETLY DAMGE YOUR BRAND
Three planning missteps your guests register even when nothing visibly goes wrong. They won't mention any of them, and they'll factor into whether she comes back. All three are fixable months before event day, and this post covers how.
HOW STRONG LEADERSHIP (NOT HARD WORK) UNLOCKS YOUR NEXT LEVEL
Working harder stops producing results at a certain point, which is disorienting when hard work is what got you here. This post covers what replaces it and why the change feels uncomfortable well before it feels good.
HOW LEADING LIVE EVENTS TRANSFORMS YOUR LEADERSHIP INSTANTLY
Standing at the front of a room you built changes how you lead everywhere else, and it happens faster than you'd expect. This post covers what specifically changes and why hosting does it when other things don't.
She registers, gets a confirmation, and then hears nothing for six weeks. Whatever excitement she had gets a chance to cool all the way down. This post covers what should be reaching her in that stretch and how to set it up once.