 Okay friends, there's still lots of time for you to do your goal setting. In fact, you don't have to do goal setting in January or September. It can happen any time of year. But if you're sitting at your desk this week wondering how you're gonna fit your goal setting in with all the other to-dos that have been piling up over the past few weeks, then maybe it's time for you to go on a business plan retreat. I'm gonna show you what I do and hopefully set you up for success this year with your goals. Hey everyone, it's Leanne from LeanneColderwood.com and I just returned from my annual business plan retreat. Yes, I go every year for two days to plan out my business and life plan for the year ahead. And it really sets the groundwork for me to achieve my monthly goals as well as drives my weekly and daily tasks so that I'm not drowning in the minutia and I'm actually doing some strategic things with my time each and every day to get me towards some goals that I've set now here at my business plan retreat. So I want this for all meeting partners and meeting planners because I think it really drives our industry forward when we stop looking at our career is very reactive and as more proactive. So I want you to join me on this journey of planning your business plan retreat and actually plotting out some strategic things that you can do in your career that's going to move our industry forward. And if you need some ideas on what a potential strategic project would be, I did do a video not too long ago that you can find up here about some different ideas that would I guess kind of jog your creativity for you to plan on your retreat. But let's talk about the retreat itself. It's not something that should be taken lightly. So by the end of this video, you should be able to now know how to plan out a successful retreat and get yourself there. And when you come back from that retreat feel like you're set up for the year ahead. So let's look at some great ways that you can set up your retreat so that you come out of it feeling accomplished and feeling that you can now contribute to our thriving industry and back to your organization as well. So here we go. The first and most important thing you need to do when setting up your business plan retreat is lock it down in your calendar and protect that time fiercely. So don't let anyone else book any other meetings with you on your business plan retreat day, but block it out completely so you have relatively uninterrupted time from dawn to dusk. It's going to take you that long to get through all the elements of your business plan or your life plan whatever it is that you choose to do. So make sure you protect that time that is your time to actually focus on all the projects you want to get accomplished in the year ahead. The second thing you need to do is to pick a location. Now I typically skip town. At least I get away from my home office here for a day or a day and a half. Now this year I actually couldn't fly anywhere just family logistics. I could not find two days where I could be away from the house with my kids running here there and everywhere. So I decided to go downtown here in my hometown, but I still hold up in a hotel for a day and a half with no home distractions. Now you might not, you might decide that a hotel is not the best fit for you or you work in the hotel in the meetings industry and going to a hotel you run the risk of running into people, but there's other things you can do. For example, I've done it in public libraries. There's really quiet spots in the public library that you can use the wi-fi and stay there for hours on end. You can coffee shop, jump. I've done that as well where you start at one coffee shop, have a coffee for a couple hours, then change your scenery and go to a different coffee shop or restaurant and just do that a couple times throughout the day and all of a sudden you've got six to eight hours of dedicated time or find a friend who doesn't work from home and go to their house. Stay at their house while they're working downtown. You've got uninterrupted time, no one's going to find you there, so that's another great place to do it, but make sure again you pick a location where no one is going to see you and find you and interrupt you during this critical time. The third thing you need to do is pack necessary supplies. Now your list is going to look different from the next person's list, but some things on the list you might want to include is a copy of last year's plan, lots of note paper, pens, maybe of different colors, my favorite post-it notes to plant temporary notes on each thing, as well as any books that you're reading that are helping you through this process. So for example this year I decided to do a life plan as well as a business plan so I took Living Forward which is a book by Michael Hyatt and that's really helped me throughout the day. So make sure you pack all your supplies as you're heading out the door to your business plan retreat. The fourth and final thing to set you up for success is decide that you are going to be offline. So you're not going to be checking your social media accounts unless you're going to post a picture of your retreat, you're not going to be checking for text messages or emails from back at the office and let your friends, your family and your colleagues know that you're going to be unreachable during this time. This really is your time so protect it fiercely and make sure that no one can get a hold of you. The day before you go on your retreat you'll want to do a couple things to make sure that you're set up for success for the following day. First and foremost get plenty of rest that night. You've got a huge day ahead of you and you want to be at your optimal best. Secondly thank your colleagues and your family for giving you this time. Maybe it'll encourage them to follow suit and plan their own business plan retreat but make sure you just show gratitude for the people respecting your boundaries as you head out on this retreat. And finally make sure you put on your out of office notification so that people who are trying to reach you know that you're spending this time doing something incredibly valuable. And again who knows, maybe it'll rub off on them. So those are the things you want to do the night before you head out on your retreat. Now I typically craft a skeleton agenda for when I go on my retreat and your agenda is going to look different but I do encourage you to to create a bit of a guide as you're going through your day so you're not wondering what step is next in the process. And some things you want on your agenda do include a look back at the past year. Not only do you want to look at the goals you set but you want to assign actual realistic values to those goals if you actually met the goals. So make sure you you have some numbers in front of you about what you did last year so that you can take a look at if it was realistic or not and if things need to change for the upcoming year. The other things you want to put on your agenda include a rough draft of your goals for the year ahead. Again this can be a business draft or it can be a life draft. And with either one you want to plot out goals as it pertains to all the different portfolios that you have. So for example in business you not only have sales goals but potentially you have some volunteer goals or some professional membership goals that you want to achieve or perhaps some sales titles some books that you want to read in the year ahead. So again make sure you outline all of those things as well and it's not just about the sales goal. On the life plan side of things you might want to plot out activities that affect all areas of your life. So for example some hobbies that you want to tackle. Books again that you want to read. Things that you want to do with your spouse or things that you want to do with your family. And again writing it down makes it intentional. So flush that all out and then the final part of your agenda is tying those all together and making them fit. You also might want to spend a little bit of time figuring out how you're going to achieve these things by starting to pre-block chunks of your calendar to tackle all of these different things. And then at the end of the day is a review of your day. See if anything is left outstanding. Maybe tack on a couple hours in a week's time to review an update as fresh ideas come to mind. And the most important thing about your business plan retreat is the actual plan and you executing on this plan. Review your plan regularly. Review it at least once a week for sure once a month. And please once a quarter take a look at your plan again and make major adjustments if necessary. And then of course start ramping up for next year's plan by making notes here and there about how things are going up to and including this year. I could go on and on about goal setting but instead let me point you to a couple videos I've done in the past that might help spark your creativity as you go through this process. One video you'll find above here is about defining your roles in the meetings industry. Once you define your roles that's a great template for your business plan as well is creating action items around each and every role that you have. Another video that you're going to find up here is setting goals and it's about breaking down one goal and expanding it into three goals. A meet goal, an exceed goal and a far exceed goal. So take that template into your business plan retreat as well. And finally if you're looking for a business plan template that's going to help you set goals better and you can't find a good one that's going to work for the meetings or events industry I've created one. So the link is below this video and if you go over to the template over at LeanneCulterwood.com you can download that template for free and use it for your business plan retreat. I hope you found value in this video and I'm always curious about how other people plan their retreats or how much value they found in planning their own business value retreat. Will you please reach out to me and let me know how your retreat went this year or any questions that you have about business plan retreats or even goal setting for the meetings and events industry. Have a great retreat everyone and here's to a fantastic year. Bye for now.