Episode 123: Behind the Scenes: What REALLY Happens at a Business Retreat

Ever wondered what actually goes on at a business retreat? In this episode, we’re pulling back the curtain and giving you an inside look at what it’s really like to step away from the daily grind and dive deep into strategy, implementation, and transformation.

We just wrapped up an incredible 6-day business retreat, and let’s just say—it was a game-changer. We’re sharing the wins, the breakthroughs, the unexpected moments, and even the challenges that come with dedicating focused time to your business.

We know that as business owners, it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day hustle. But taking time to work ON your business instead of just IN it? That’s where the real magic happens. Whether you’re considering attending a retreat, creating your own version, or just looking for ways to prioritize strategy, this episode is packed with insights you don’t want to miss.

Here’s what we cover:

• What actually happens at a business retreat (hint: it’s not just sitting around talking theory!)
• The power of stepping away to gain clarity and momentum
• Why implementation is EVERYTHING—and how to speed it up
• Common fears and hesitations about investing in yourself (and why they shouldn’t hold you back)
• How you can create your own retreat experience if you’re not ready to travel

If you’ve ever thought about attending a business retreat, or if you’re just looking for ways to push your business forward, this episode is for you.

 Let’s keep the conversation going! DM us on Instagram, send us your questions, or tell us about your own retreat experiences. We’d love to hear from you!

 Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you’re the first to know when new content drops!

 Listen now and let’s dive in! 

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Read the full transcript of this episode below:

 

Lynn Howard

Hey, I’m Lynn.

Amanda Furgiuele (afconsultingteam21@gmail.com)

And I’m Amanda. Welcome to the Pursuit of Badasserie, the podcast. We are so excited to be with you today because we are coming off of an entrepreneurial retreat that we just had the Bangkok Badasserie and we’re going to talk about it today because it was awesome.

Lynn Howard

Yes, it absolutely was awesome. And, you know, it was intensive. It was definitely a life-changing for our participants in many different ways.

I think it was quite eye-opening. know, the benefit because just for those of you tuning in and I didn’t see what the Bangkok Badasserie was all about, it was a six-day intensive where, essentially,

We walked global entrepreneurs through creating their strategic plan for 2025 and really building SOP slash frameworks for just doing business.

And so I think it was really incredible because all of these ladies have, except for one, have worked with us in some capacity or another.

And they opened their eyes so much to the potential to the possibilities to what they were leaving on the table.

And also, you know, how difficult they’re making things for themselves, like they’re overcomplicating. I think that’s, you know, one of the biggest things that I know we talk to entrepreneurs about this all the time is that we complicate things.

And we don’t have to. And yes, some. technology or all technology for some is difficult. At times, there’s a learning curve for everything, but when you can get out of your way and actually just hunker down and really time bento box to figure it out and complete it instead of just putting on your checklist, putting on your checklist, putting on your checklist, having somebody else do, putting on your checklist, like you can get so much done and have a better grounding in what you’re doing and understanding of how to move next.

And it was just it was incredible on so many different levels.

Amanda Furgiuele (afconsultingteam21@gmail.com)

It absolutely was. There were so many moments that I was like, yeah, this is the work. And I know that sounds like obviously we’re excited about our own retreat.

However, to see it play out physically because so often the that we do is online, mean, a lot of our clients are virtual, not in person, particularly me, most of my clients, I would say like 99.9% of my meetings are online.

So to be in the room with people and working through their, the hard spots, the things that they were struggling with, the things that they were, the ways they were holding themselves back, the ways they were overthinking and overcomplicating and creating more work and unnecessary work and dragging out this timeline of what they thought things had to be.

It was really, really exciting to see them have these little moments these off, call them aha moments where they’re like, I don’t have to do it that way or oh, I can do it this way.

And it was just really fun to see and then to hear people talk about their passions anyway, I like to hear how passionate they were about their businesses and to be in the room with them.

They’re just a different energetic shift when you’re in the room with someone who’s talking about their, their passion. what they’ve made their business, and it’s just it was really exciting to see how they developed those businesses in just six days.

Lynn Howard

Yeah, absolutely. To give a basic framework of what we did in the six days is not just walk them through a strategic plan, but eventually like take their goals, reverse engineer them, and just their high level goals.

We didn’t want to do, you know, a kajillion goals, so they they did their high level goals, and then they revised or created their sales process, because even though some of them have been, most of them have been working with us, their sales process wasn’t full picture.

It was, you know, more one-dimensional. And so the sales process, and then we did a brand voice target market audits on

our processes, we developed messaging, content for social media, then we had a photo shoot in tons, tons of videos and behind the scenes photos as well.

Our photographer actually came twice into the work setting to be able to take a bunch of pictures as well as our full day of photo shoot videos and then just a ton of implementation.

We had a couple of ladies who were launching brand new products. One in particular was an actual physical product and she made decisions that she had been putting off for months and she brought the idea.

So she has a business name, she has gotten the domain or product name and business name. She knows her color.

She has not just everything else that she created. But… all these other things. She’s shortlisted manufacturers because it needs to be manufactured, you know, so many different things.

And I know the last two days, because the last two days were for heavy implementation, I mean, we definitely walked them through.

We made them make choice, make decisions. But those implicit implementation, I can’t even say it now, what implementation? That’s what I was trying to say.

My mind was like, implementation, why does it tell wrong when I’m saying it? Anywho, those days to watch them, like really, really get serious and put everything, because we did take time in between each of the learnings, but to really make that happen, it has transcended their business.

They have put their business. so much further than what it was and what it is even working with us wants to twice three times a month because it was hyper-concentrated, hyper-focused, time-blocked where they absolutely had to do the work, stay committed and just make that happen.

I’m so stoked to see what they do this year with everything that was created in those six days.

Amanda Furgiuele (afconsultingteam21@gmail.com)

Okay too, it’s my favorite part of being a business consultant is seeing people grow their businesses and seeing them take them to the next level and seeing these like lights come on where like oh there’s this way I can do that or how can I can make money this way and this thing I just I love that aspect of it and that was crammed into six days in front of these incredible entrepreneurs that we have on our retreat and it was just so nice to be around like-minded people.

and to be a part of that because I so miss that kind of interaction, energy, and I just loved every second of it, except for maybe one part.

Lynn Howard

What do you except for what?

Amanda Furgiuele (afconsultingteam21@gmail.com)

Except for when you guys were like a man to pick a mantra and I couldn’t figure out what my mantra would be to keep going.

Yeah.

Lynn Howard

We all have weak spots.

Amanda Furgiuele (afconsultingteam21@gmail.com)

Yes. We all have weak things. We all things were working on folks.

Lynn Howard

Yes. Well, yeah. Yes. What would your biggest takeaway? Because I know as facilitators, we often, I know the type of facilitator that I’ve always loved to be is one who’s there with them, a parrot talking to them, but really working working with them.

So what would you say one of your learnings were during the summit?

Amanda Furgiuele (afconsultingteam21@gmail.com)

Just one, you know? I think that over the course of the six days I had to come back from being real about it.

I had to come back into having that mode of being in the room with people and being honest and real and also telling them my opinions of how things go and giving examples of what works for me but not make it about me because my business isn’t there best.

The way I do things might not work for the way they do things because I’m much more ex happy for example so like things that come easily to me or that I just kind of work through because my mind will do the mental math on it.

It was interesting to have to really break down some of that stuff and think about it from a different perspective and I forget I forget what it’s like to not know those things but it was quite easy for

on the other side because I’m not the more woo side and I there are a lot of things that I’m working on personally that I had to kind of oh I had to work on that thing and then I had to like face it in front of a group of people I’d be like oh I really need to work on that myself whoops about that so it was just very enlightening in that way and it really made me think about things in a different way so I’m really excited for the next work to treat that we do because some of the things that came up I’m you know we always talk about how we’re constantly work some progress and so those things are going to be I’ve been working on those things the next couple weeks or months or years who knows how long it will take but I just was very excited to see those things that I wasn’t expecting coming from like my side of things yeah yeah I definitely feel like there were some reminders and you know obviously having in here in Thailand at this point and we’re together gives us ability to

Lynn Howard

to really buckle down and put put different effort and different focus into our business, because we’ll be in the same space for a couple of months at least.

And I feel like this was a great start to you being here, even though it’s conferences and for me.

But I feel like it was such a great start for us together, because it’s not say as I do, right?

Or do as I say, not as I do type of thing. And we really need to buckle down and make sure that all of our processes or flow or sales conversations or whatever is in alignment with what we teach.

And so there’s definitely some adjustments behind the scenes that will only amplify our results and absolutely amplify, amplify the results for our licensees that we’ll be bringing on by the end of the year, because the system, the systemizing of this Bangkok badasserie, which will be one of our signature programs, is incredible.

The other thing too, I mean, you know, I’ve been a facilitator for 15 some years and having the six days again and having that hyper-intensiveness, it just brought back a lot of memories for me of why I love what we do, I love what we do, and I know that I’m good at it.

And it’s like, so on a personal level, was just like a personal reminder of like, dang, like, this is, it’s one of our mentors would say, you know,

you’re in your flame type of thing so definitely like it was energizing to be able to immerse myself and immerse ourselves at least from my point of view into that and to be able to help these women realize a lot of things like we discussed earlier but for me it just um yeah that kind of launching pad of having you here but also like that remembering of i’m good at this and i love it and yeah i’m super stoked about being able to implement this into our licensees um this framework and i’m excited about actually doing the work that we haven’t to make this six-day intensive even more structured

in a good way, not in a super can’t breathe way, but with all of the bells and whistles and just adding such value to it.

And yeah, I’m super excited.

Amanda Furgiuele (afconsultingteam21@gmail.com)

Yeah, and excited to actually put our businesses through the same ringer that we just put our attendees through. I am looking forward to, we had talked about it before about actually doing the six days ourselves to get our businesses moving forward and getting where we are.

And I’m absolutely going to run my businesses through the same strategies and reverse engineering that we did for this one.

I’m the same goal setting for pursuit of badass or the same. All those things are going to come down.

So it’s fun to I’m not saying that we don’t practice what we preach. However, sometimes we get so anybody who’s ever been a trainer or teacher knows that sometimes you get so used to helping other people that you forget to help yourself.

So I’m really looking forward to running our It’s just through the exact same thing we just made everybody else do because it does work.

It works really, really well. And I want to dive deeper into our goals and dive deeper into our strategy.

I get kick out of that anyway. It’s kind of a jam to go through strategies. So I looking forward to it.

Lynn Howard

Yeah, absolutely.

Amanda Furgiuele (afconsultingteam21@gmail.com)

If it’s kind of argy to go through strategies, isn’t it? That’s just mine.

Lynn Howard

It’s ours. It is my title. is what what we love to do, for sure. Strategy.

Amanda Furgiuele (afconsultingteam21@gmail.com)

Strategy is all the way. So if you have any questions about what it’s like to be in a retreat, please ask us about it because we will talk here off about what it’s what it is to be in a retreat and the different types of retreats.

I know both of us have led retreats in very different respects. And this is my first retreat with Len, a co-leading of

six-day retreat with them. We’ve both done training together, but this is our first retreat together, and it was so much fun.

So I’m really looking forward to how it builds, how it grows, and I can’t wait to see what these bad- business owners do this year.

Lynn Howard

Yeah, I guess what I would say to those that are listening is like listen, we can take the time and chip things away and learn from YouTube and learn from, you know, life and learn from this and that, which all of those are about you, where you can rip off the Band-Aid.

Like these women put aside, and they happen to be all women, although we weren’t marketing to just all women, but who needs to be in the room was absolutely there.

But these women put aside these six days to just dive in, and we made it really clear to have as minimal amount of distractions as possible, and even those with kids, like making sure that they had extra help, so that way they

can just process through everything and get as much done in the 6A. So it wasn’t just ripping off the Band-Aid of like diving in deep, the application of, the implementation of.

So just the, not just the processing. And so the value of, you know, and I talk about time talking all the time or, you know, bento boxing and really hyper focusing in on stuff.

Well, the six days or retreat like this is you diving in and just how much you can get done.

what I was really surprised with too, and I was really proud of our ladies is there were only a couple of times where they were like tapped out, like needed some time to like process.

You know, that’s why we fed them plenty and all the other stuff, which I think is important in a.

a retreat structure or even conference structure anyway to have that brain break but just to set aside that time so even if there’s not a retreat by you or maybe you can’t afford to have a retreat right now I would challenge you to say you know if we have to sacrifice today to have what we want tomorrow or the next day or so on and so forth so minimally like setting aside a full day to dive deep dive into your business or a full weekend to deep dive into your business or going on a retreat like this that is not only going to talk in theory and that’s one thing Amanda and are we’re not ones who are just going to talk in theory we’re all about the action so it’s about that learning it and you implementing things and again obviously we need to promote ourselves but it’s more about like making sure that you choose the right form of

for you and and have the time to implement speed of implementation. It’s so important when we’re learning anything when we’re processing through anything and so having a retreat or an intensive or a mastermind weekend because I know some masterminds will do things like this where you have that collective that learning the application the and and the implementation of is super important because it’s going to absolutely push business further than what you could possibly ever imagine so if you’re not in a in a place where you can afford to travel and go to it then create a framework how we call us up we can help you out but create a framework, dedicate the time and actually just do it yourself as well.

Spending that time is priceless for us as business owners it is it can absolutely be. game changer and I think that we don’t do it enough and also I would say on a personal side too like taking time and if it’s a retreat or a vacation or whatever and deposit in itself is just as important but that’s a whole other topic.

Amanda Furgiuele (afconsultingteam21@gmail.com)

When we talk about it all the time investing in yourself is always the best investment you cannot expect to grow and change and do more see more if you don’t give yourself an opportunity to put back into yourself and it doesn’t have to be monetary as Lyn said it doesn’t have to be you know of course we would love for you to join us for a week along a treat but it doesn’t have to be that it can be setting time aside for yourself to really get it done and get that work done and investing in your time investing in your business investing yourself is always going to be a good investment every time.

Lynn Howard

Yep so hit us up let us know we’re going to be in retreats in many cities in the near future.

like we said, that will be one of our signature programs that our licensees will also use in different regions of the world.

We’re very excited about this but DMS messages, let us know.

Amanda Furgiuele (afconsultingteam21@gmail.com)

to our YouTube channel so you are the first to know when these videos come out and for new announcements which we will drop on the channel.

Lynn Howard

Absolutely. Until next time, get after it.