Lessons from a strategic retreat

Our next strategic retreat is in November. You can book here. Five days to transform your business.

Synchronicity

Have you ever been to a place where everything you have worked on, all the hundreds of business book you have read, all the subjects you have written about, all the conferences you spoke at, all the sessions you have had with your clients, all the principles you believe in, all come together in perfect sync? Where a combination of like-minded people create magic? 

Strategic retreat

I am just back from a strategic retreat in Barcelona, where I had the pleasure of delivering a week of business coaching and masterclasses. Organised by tibor.nl. A combination of sunshine, good food, relaxation, mental fitness, sports and business.

Helping businesses to scale

It started a few weeks ago where an old contact of mine asked me if I was interested in going to Barcelona for a week helping businesses to scale. That is asking if a cat likes milk. So that was a resounding “yes”.

Websites not telling the story

I then spend some time researching the companies and in particular their websites. Not a pretty picture. A bunch of me-too service providers, most of them in the coaching and training world. Two more product focussed companies with potential. Not much to work with. I was concerned.

More compelling pitches

They arrived on Monday afternoon and the first thing we asked them to do was a two-minute pitch about their company. As always, the pitch was no reflection of the story on the website, but already a lot more compelling. They all had something interesting and maybe even something unique.

Transformation

On Friday we asked them to do the same thing. There was genuine transformation. We created growth of sales during the retreat (one sold over 30K in one day), we shifted minds from 800 to 800,000 units per year, we developed recurring revenue models, we doubled company valuations, we went from local to global, we found defensible not-to-copy competitive advantages, we created new products and much more important we gave them a focus and a plan of action for the first 100 days and for next week.

Why

Why did this work? If I had to express it in books, it is a combination of “Move, eat, sleep”, “Buddha Brain”, “The obstacle is the way”, “Living with a navy seal”, “Exponential organisations”, “Bold”, “Business model generation” and “Scaling up”.

The lessons

• All choices are pain. No pain no gain. Suck it up.
• Strategy is about those few choices and sticking to it.
• Everything is action.
• Action needs focus.
• Incremental always wins.
• The Lindy effect is everywhere.
• It is all about storytelling.

That is only half of it

If your body is not right, your mind is not right. Movement in your head starts with your body. Hence the reason we had a cross fit trainer doing mobility exercises twice a day (before breakfast and after lunch) and a workout in the evening (before dinner). Healthy body, healthy mind. Without a healthy body, entrepreneurs are not operating at full capacity. 

Mind

Your mind does get in the way. Self-limiting believes, using the wrong internal language and programming, not being in touch with your heart and spirit also ensures you are not operating at full capacity. 

Purpose

Purity of intent matters. Transformative purpose matters. For example, it is not about cosmetics. It is about giving women a clear and healthy skin, so they have the confidence to make their dent in the universe. It is not about hypnosis courses, but about training 1000 people to help another 1000 people to be the happy people they can be. All the people we worked had purpose in abundance. Making strategy easier.

The mix

What happens when you put positive people, with a purpose, in a villa, in the sunshine and give them an opportunity to work with each other, to work with top-notch sports, mental and business coaches and help them to expand their vision and mind, make a choice, focus on a 100 day action plan and define changes they want to make on a day-by-day incremental level?

Magic

You get magic. If you want to be part of that magic, contact Tibor at hallo@tibor.nl or click here.