[00:00:00] Welcome. Welcome to this very special bonus episode of the heads together. Podcast. Where my co-hosts and I have the upcoming unapologetic retreat. Ms. Rodriguez and there's Lauren Jones. Uh, in conversation. And we are talking all about. Some of the fine point details. Of this incredible experience that we're bringing together for later this year in the beautiful Algarve of Portugal.
So for anyone who has been listening to us, teasing a little bit about this. Previously. This is going to give you a bit more information. Have a listen and then head to unapologetic retreats.com, where you will be able to find a ton of more information. Okay. I hope you enjoy. Let's dive straight into us in [00:01:00] conversation.
Okay. I think that is us up and running. So thank you for everyone here and also for those catching the replay. Hi my wonderful co-hosts.
It's not quite the same as being together in person in the beautiful Algarve. So Alicia, thank you for your hospitality for our recent trip. It was amazing. Certainly was no, awesome.
It's now made very excited about sharing more with everyone about what we have planned for October, because it's pretty damn good, right?
It's nice to be able to picture the space actually. Yeah. Yeah. Makes a difference, doesn't it? Those who don't know me. I'm highly visual, so be able to picture it and picture the environment and people there. [00:02:00] Great walks and options there. It's just gonna be beautiful. Can't wait. So I just wanna position a little bit, our unapologetic retreat coming up in October.
This year, , it is in the Algarve in Portugal. So you can see on Alicia's backdrop there the Amazing Cliffs where you'll have the opportunity to walk and take in the absolutely just phenomenal view, , which is still etched in my mind. , we brought this retreat together. , Alicia is an experience retreat host, and phenomenal mindset coach.
Lauren is, , an amazing brand strategist, designer, thought leader in my eyes in that arena. And I am a business coach and we all work with purpose led women. We all have worked together and I think. Everything just came together, didn't it? Really? Because we [00:03:00] were all so aligned in the way we work.
We were so aligned in the kind of women that we work with and in the outcomes that we, the standard of the outcome we want to see with our clients. It just felt so natural and of course, working all together. , It gave us this opportunity to see in action. Actually, when Lauren, you were working with Alicia on her branding and then I was working on some business coaching, , with you and just this trilogy of the mindset brand and business was, it was just so powerful, really.
And I think that's what made us realize that if we can. Have this kind of outcome working together. What could we do with a week where we can work with women? And I don't know, I've never seen this kind of retreat held before where we've got three quite different disciplines really, that we work in, brought together in this way.
, and it was really an [00:04:00] experience of all working together that. Gave us this insight that, gosh, if we can have these sort of powerful results with the three of us, what could we do with a week in the beautiful Algarve with , with amazing women? Who we all work with. So that's really the story of how it came about.
And I guess what would make sense really is to just each of us talk through what we bring to the party,
. I'll kick it off. , one of the things that happened when the three of us were working together is we noticed how, fundamental the three disciplines were and the ordering, which they are. I have, I've had clients who started out by , saying, okay, I wanna grow my business.
I wanna start a business. I wanna pivot my business, help me build a website.
And I'm like, eh, no, that's not the way we start. , and I've gotten a lot of that, , and I know that, , Lauren in particular is, has gotten a [00:05:00] lot of that as well. , so it's really hard to tell people, look, there are things you have to do before that because to be successful, you need these three elements and they are, foundational.
So first it's the mindset. Followed by branding, followed by marketing and business strategy. And I am the mindset person. Casey, I know you've been following me for a while, so you know that I've been an executive coach for a very long time, and I've worked with, in corporate, I've worked with leaders, I've worked with women business owners.
I specialize in working with women. , I run retreats in the Algarve now. I was running retreats in Ecuador before. , so I, I bring all of that experience to it. My role, , in this retreat is, I'm the first person on, if you will, that first morning. , and I have really come to see and believe and experience myself that unless you have a mindset that's forward looking and you really are honest enough to look at [00:06:00] some of the limiting beliefs and assumptions you have, you it's really difficult to do and it's almost impossible to do.
By yourself. . You need somebody else to reflect that back to you and say, okay, what about this? What about that? I'm seeing you say this? Is that really what you mean? Or what if that were not so what would be possible? These kinds of . But I'm also a real believer in learning happens through the body, and so , I'm not the type of person, especially in this retreat, in most of my retreats, I'm not the type of person who's gonna sit with you all day long , and talk at you.
That doesn't work for you, doesn't work for me. So during this time in the algar, you will be in your body. You will be doing things because the learning doesn't just happen from here up. , we have certain somatic responses that either support a positive mindset or detract from a positive mindset. And I work very holistically.
, So with the women that are coming, they've, they're [00:07:00] the ones that we know are coming, all have been business owners for several years. They're not newbies. , we actually didn't really want someone brand new. We wanted people, women who had been in business for three years, so they had some kind of foundation and so that they could understand the value.
Doing something like this. , and most importantly, as Jill always says, is take action. Actually, don't just leave here and don't do anything. We want you to take what you have, what we're giving you here, and then enact, something different, , in your business when you go home. So the mindset piece will be very holistic.
It'll be in your body, it will be dialogue. It, it really goes deep. As deep as you, you choose to let it go. One of the things that we also decided during this retreat is that everyone meets one-on-one with each one of us. . And so I think that's really unusual. Gill mentioned before there, we don't really know anybody else doing retreats like this [00:08:00] with this kind of format, with this kind of attention to the participant.
Typically, you're one of 20 and or 50 sometimes. , and I don't think that you walk away with what you're going to walk away with by being one of, less than 10 people. So we do add the one-on-one because sometimes you just need to go deep with one person on, either branding business or mindset, and we're available for that.
Generally speaking there will be quiet time. There will be time for you to process. We are not believers of let's just schedule you to the hel like you are at home. Yeah. You are in the Algar. I live here. I am so privileged to live here and. As Gill and Lauren experienced time does something funny here.
It does actually. It really does. Guys, were surprised you didn't believe me. But there's a lot of open space [00:09:00] for you to process because it's going to be a lot. A lot of work, a lot of new ideas. So we want you to process and we want you to enjoy yourself. We want you to renew yourself. We want you to, connect with the other women, go out to dinner, watch sunset, and have a glass of wine.
All of that is part of what this whole retreat is about. So that's like my piece and a broad stroke of what you can expect during that week. So I'm complete. Lauren, you're up next. I thought we were all work in progress
now. So following on from Alicia there's a lovely little overlap with some of the foundational work that Alicia does in terms of mindset when it starts are asking the right questions and the specialty. To talk about what we do here at Box Creative and myself is we work with female founders.
We also work a [00:10:00] lot in the nonprofit and foundation space too. So very purposeful organizations and we really understand a lot of the different struggles. They're quite aligned with the struggles that they have actually in, in owning the story and being brave enough to stand out. But yes. So as Alicia said I usually get the, oh, I need a logo, I need a website.
And not really understanding the richness of the process in particular that I go through to get to that point. And so I don't tend to work with clients that just want the stuff and get stuck in the stuff. And so for this, Retreats. What I'm really excited about is to try and bring out those stories for the individual.
There's a sense that it's quite, a lot of people are talking about personal brand and positioning and their own identity within that, either as thought leaders or as an extension of the organization that have, but very separate to that. And that can be quite a fronting for a lot of women too.
Start asking those questions and creating a brand's positioning that is based on them. And so taking them, [00:11:00] taking through that process, asking the same questions we do organizations, but with a lens of it being in terms of a personal identity and brand positioning. And working through that.
So it's. I'm excited to get more tact, tangible with it and tactile. So to Alicia's point, the being in your body piece, we want to get quite tactile. So we'll have props and we'll have cards and high visuals and we'll be creating and starting to pull together some style sheets and things like that in the room once we've done work through some of the work which is the fun bit.
To get much more visual and start connecting on that level with the actual brand identity itself. We can play with words, we can play with pictures. We can really dive into what, how you wanna show up and who you want to resonate with and how we can start. Using those tools that I have in my toolkit to, to start formulating that, which can again, it can be quite new for some women to, and brand owners to go into that space and, terrified of Pinterest or never heard of Photoshop and all those things.
Really trying to break down those barriers [00:12:00] and step into that creative space as well. And yeah, that's what I'm looking forward to, creating something. Also, as much as there's a process, everything is unique and bespoke as the individual. That's the beauty of what I do. We have the same tried and true process but every time it's a completely different outcome.
Which is just lights me up, to hear people's values, what they stand for what they wanna really go out and say, and who they wanna support and serve in the world and why. These are really, big questions that is, is endless combinations of that. So that's what I bring to the table.
Thanks Lauren. I have the absolute pleasure of being delivered. The women on the retreat after they have seen Alicia and Lauren. So I have the best job ever because I get to then step in and again, there's some blurring between what Alicia and Lauren do and then what I do because my job's gonna be to come in and look at the work that you've done with [00:13:00] that mindset and with Lauren on, on the brand.
And the piece of the work with Lauren that I'll pull the thread from is the who. So who is it that you are gonna be serving? Who is it that you want to work with? Because what I then do is work on two main things. The first one is the. The business model, so that's the offer. What is the right offer for those perfect clients that you've identified that you wanna work with?
So what does that look like? And often this can be something that overwhelm. So particularly things like the pricing of the offer. And so my work gets down in the weeds of how much should I charge for that? Or, Will anyone pay that or is that too overwhelming for someone to come in and my program has 57 modules.
What do you mean? So I would tend to be looking at co-creating the right offer. So whether that was for a coach or a consultant, or a speaker, a creative, [00:14:00] it doesn't matter. I will work with each person to come up with what the right business model for them is gonna be.
In terms of their offers. And then we go on to the other half of what my workshop will be about will be the strategy. The marketing strategy, tend to break this down because this can get very overwhelming for people, particularly women who've been in business for a while and are maybe looking to pivot slightly.
You know what, once worked isn't necessarily gonna work moving forward quite often once. People have worked with me, they tend to be moving into a higher ticket offer. So they really need to understand which strategies are gonna work for selling those offers. And I tend to break it down to three parts.
The first part is your visibility. So how do we raise the awareness of this wonderful brand that you are gonna be going home and stepping into how do we. [00:15:00] Build your confidence to be visible and to put out your offers into the world in front of the right people. The next part of that is the lead generation, so this is, okay, so how do we move people then from knowing you exist to maybe wanting to work with you, and then how do we move them from that place to actually signing up to work with you?
And so that's my part. I should probably tell you a little bit about my style of working. So I often refer to rewilding your business, and this is something that tends to really resonate with people because I think recently, over the last few years particularly, Business development strategies and marketing has got very overwhelming, very noisy out there, and it doesn't have to be like that.
What works for one person doesn't always work for someone else, and I really believe in rewilding your business, [00:16:00] simplifying and finding the right strategy for you, because marketing almost always works. It's just that people don't. Find the right strategy that they can commit to and be consistent with for the long term.
So that's what I will be working with, is finding out what feels right, marketing done in a way that feels good, doesn't feel icky in any way. That's my part. I'll be a testament to that cuz I've been through it with Gill and it no longer makes me feel sick, which is great. I call that win. That's a win.
Cause So one of the things is that we have all actually helped one another and supported one another. Our own skills. And that was part of bringing us together as well. We noticed that we were very much aligned in terms of principles and values and our genuine desire. To support women who wanna work from a place of purpose and meaning[00:17:00] and not have to keep apologizing for it.
That's kinda like what, how Unapologetic came about is this idea of so many of our clients who are women who felt like they had to apologize for who they were, the way they were doing business, or were trying to conform to the way business has been done. And they were feeling inauthentic and.
Kind of diminished, that would be the word. When indeed, I, I've said it before, there are hundreds of thousands of coaches in the world, by the way. I hate that word for myself. Anyway, that's an aside. But a lot of my clients our coaches who are trying to build a business and they say there are hundreds of thousands.
There's only one you. And so don't apologize for being you and coming at it from your, from the way you wanna come at it. And that's where the authenticity piece is. And a lot of that comes from like the questions that I ask and that Lauren asks in terms [00:18:00] of, who are you such that you would work with such and such a client and do such and such work, and what does that look like in terms of a brand?
And then taking that, handing it off to marketing and saying, okay, now that we know that, how do we access, how do we reach the people that would value what you have to offer? And stop wasting time with people who don't value you. Stop time with people who wanna, say, no, that's too expensive, or, that's not a power.
We don't do it that way. And, I in particular feel really strongly about unapologetic. Because it is, it, I've seen it being an executive coach in corporate world, I've seen how women try to conform and like contort even themselves to fit molds where they could be so much more. Yeah, absolutely.
So that was like how this whole idea was worn and these are the pieces that we bring together for our guests. Because we're keeping it [00:19:00] small. If you were to hire any one of us just on our own, it would be much more expensive than coming and working all three of us in a retreat in Portugal.
It's really doesn't get much better than that. So I how many people are participating? Or what is your goal in terms of numbers? We don't wanna exceed 10 people. And how many are currently committed? I think, how many do we have guys? Four. Four. I think we have four already signed up. And then we have two maybe who have expressed interest.
And awaiting. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, we're much more interested in keeping it small and doing a deep dive with those people than massive amounts of people. Not, none of us are really. Really interested in that. It's not the way we work. It's not the kinda, yeah. I think it would be too big a leap for any of us because we all work actually on quite a high level and quite intensely with our clients.
So I don't think it would translate to then yeah, come to a big [00:20:00] event and kind of pay lip service to each of our topics. Yeah. It's just not the way we work, is it? We need to go deep yeah.
Those people who might be seeing the recording, it is a tax deductible because you are actually working on your business.
Part of. Our work is to understand how we grow businesses that are rooted in our sense of self. Values and how do we take that out in the world, even beyond business.
And there's like friends woman who's coming, she has a thriving business, but she's looking at it from the point of view of I have a thriving business and. What's this look like out here? And she has some ideas. Yep. So I. I think it's not mutually exclusive. I think it's both. Yeah. Yeah. I think as well as you've already got this reputation, brand can equal reputation.
It's just about how packaged that up in terms of thought leadership whether that's wrapped into an exit strategy or a, building value in that business in [00:21:00] many years to exit and whilst in parallel you getting the tools of how you can extract you from the business and have this other.
Entities running in parallel with it to build value with that as well. And actually, I say build value. You've already got a lot of value in it. We need to package it up for you. Give it some direction is really powerful. And that's very common, particularly in nonprofits, that space I work in because they're so entrenched in the purpose, which if you have got a purpose-led business organization, a lot of people just feel this.
They are it. And so trying to co coach people outta that mindset of there's two different things we can talk about and exploring that is, is is quite common.
, one thing I'd really be interested in is one of the questions we tend to ask when women are signing up is, What, how is it you would like to feel, or what is it you'd like to have achieved by the end of the retreat? Have you got a gut feel on that at the moment? Because I'm hearing that there are a few different things that you might wanna bring to the table while you're there.
[00:22:00] Yeah, I think part of it is just Being, some of it is just being reinvigorated. Which, because it's a tough slog right now in this interest rate environment. And I, it's not that I don't feel supported and I'm pretty good at, reaching out both personally and professionally to find that support.
But And then it's like you say it's okay, if I started with this business model, I've been relatively successful given all the outside inputs that have gone on in the world over the last four years. Yeah. Yeah. So now, so it's like now, What do I wanna pour more into this?
Do I wanna grow it? Do I, and if I'm gonna do that, then I need these pieces. Or am I pivoting? And I don't have a clear answer on that right now. I think something, so this would be helpful to ask questions that I'm not thinking about. And [00:23:00] then, other than just putting myself out there, and yeah, it's being able to take the opportunity to actually focus and have other people who are not in my business, who don't know, just give me some outside, Yeah.
Inputs and have the space to process. Yeah. You said the right word though, you said focus. That's the whole, that when you're away outside and I've run a few retreats and events through clients and other And other partners as well to be outside. And I've been a participant recently, which has been great cuz I was like, oh, what's this?
How am I gonna feel? And I was very cognizant of feeling well, I'm in an exotic place, I'm doing this deep work for a shortish period of time. But because you're in a, a different place. And you've got the right support and expertise around you in a concentrate time. The transformation is incredible.
That can be made. Yeah. And letting your subconscious work, right? You have to have space in order to let that happen. So yeah,
You're absolutely [00:24:00] right. It's a very uncertain environment. It's an uncertain future. We want to empower women to be able to navigate that uncertainty with with grace, ease, and empower. Yeah. And it means that you have to step outta your daily life.
Yep. Yeah. There's no other way to do it, but rather than to be caught short or caught up. By something that is outta your control. Wouldn't it feel much more empowering to be able to say, I've got this thing and I've created it in a way that I can navigate through this and still be okay and still, yeah, and hopefully have a, a one, 1, 3, 5, and 10 year plan.
Best laid plans never go, they always change, but yeah. That kind of an idea too. Okay. Something that do stand the test of time and a lot of it is centered in the self. Yeah. In your own [00:25:00] personal resilience. And then how do you take that personal resilience and manifest it through, let's say a brand.
And a strategy. So all of that is tied up. It's it sounds, it's really simple that we can talk about, mindset, branding and marketing. But given the work that the three of us know that we do, we know that it goes much more deeper than that. Which is why we keep it small, because we know stuff is gonna show up.
And we wanna be there to help our guests go through it and to be able to teach people how to navigate that future that we all of us are doing it in one way or another. But we have a certain set of skills that can be applied for women who are in the business world. Usually a male dominated, everybody that's coming is in a male dominated industry which isn't, that's true.
And so we wanna empower women to be able to do that through the retreat. But it does, we're, we have all our skin in the [00:26:00] game. We ask our guests to have skin in the game too. It's the only way it can work. Do you have an agenda already? Of the week. Yeah, it's on our website.
Briefly, they're the, our sessions, our working sessions are mornings we don't start at the crack of dawn. You're in the algar, we want you to go out, go for a walk, do yoga, take a swim, because you can swim in October, by the way.
And then come back after breakfast and be ready to work with us. And then we work until one o'clock, and then we have a small discrete session after that. In other words, one day it will be on mindset, very focused on mindset. One day on branding and it's ask us anything sessions, informal.
We have a day of coaching clinics where everyone signs up to work with us. Our last day also has a, we were gonna call it a fireside chat, but I think it's gonna be a poolside chat. Yeah. It also is a [00:27:00] kind of like bringing us together, making commitments and ask us anything. There is a day where you do get the whole day off and I'll be taking you up to one of the most beautiful spots.
That I know of near here, it's called Mon Cheek. And and you just, I'm gonna take you to a certain, a couple of places that are, I'm very intentional about where I'm gonna take you because there's something to be learned with these spots. And you'll still enjoy a day away and three, and.
And then we're going to have really good food. That's important. Yeah. Very good food. The food as Lauren and Gill can attest to. Absolutely. Very good. Yeah. Food and wine is a big deal here in, in Portugal yeah. So that's it. Like broad stroke again.
One thing I wanted to share was that we do have this diverse group of women coming already and the diversity also extends to where they are in their businesses because we have some women [00:28:00] who are, who know that they wanna work on their.
Current business. We have women that are pivoting. We have one person who is selling her business this year, and she's selling a big business, wants to do something that's more value aligned for her. So yeah, I think there's gonna be a lot of different perspectives that are gonna be quite useful.
For someone like yourself who has options and wants some clarity on which path I is really the right for your, what's next, if you like. Yeah. I think those different perspectives will be useful. Yeah. That's helpful.
I'm really looking forward to having that diverse group. I think it's really interesting that When they're different stages of the business growth and the opportunities. Again, it's the same, it's the same sort of work, but very different outcomes. And that's what I find really fascinating.
Yes. And if you're watching the replay also what we'll do is we will put this up on YouTube. It'll also be on the Heads [00:29:00] Together podcast. But we will make sure that there is a link under there. But if you go to unapologetic retreats.com. You'll be able to see where you can register, where you can find out more information.
There's FAQs on there and of course if you've got any questions that you wanna ask us, you can reach out to yes, at unapologetic retreats.com and we'll get back to you as soon as we possibly can. Yes. Okay. All right, let's wrap. Wrap. Bye.
