Business Planning and Development, A Different Kind of Retreat

Years ago, when personal promotion first made a splash in our business, I would take a few days and go up to a place called Graves Mountain Lodge each year to work on "creating my image".  Eventually, I began adding a week onto our annual Ocracoke, NC vacation in the Fall, working on presentations, reading articles that had been pushed aside for "future reading", and more of that sort of activity.  For various reasons, I had gotten away from the retreats over the past few years, and, honestly, I have missed them.

Well, I am writing today from a sunny loft in a Ocracoke cottage.  It's my fourth day here, and it's a real treat being able to describe the space as sunny, since I arrived on Saturday at night, during  downpour, and I've been enduring rain and significant flooding ever since.  Until today.  Finally, the dogs and I (our two Dals are with me) drove out to the beach and enjoyed a glorious couple of miles walk.

So, what, you might ask, am I doing during this retreat? 

I've been working on a new website design, for one thing, one that I believe will better express my professionalism, better promote the homes of my sellers, more attractively express all that Charlottesville has to offer to buyer prospects, and, ultimately, be an SEO magnet, :-). 

Today, I am working on Linked In.  I had hoped to get to the Video Factory training today; maybe I'll get to it tonight.

Tomorrow I will spend the entire day writing blog posts.

Friday, I will continue writing blog posts and I will design a Facebook contest.

I need more than a week.

My husband will be arriving on Saturday, and I'll take the weekend off.  I'll be spending the rest of next week playing, but since I know there will be at least some down-time for Stephen, I'll take that time to recap what I've accomplished and establish a schedule for continuing the work.  It's amazing how easy it is to get behind on everything we need to do to promote our own businesses.    It's also amazing how much training is out there and how little time there is to do everything there needs doing.

I have asked myself why I need to "get away" for this sort of planning.  For me, it's a creative process, and I find it very hard to be image-creative while I'm working on client business at home.  Stepping away from that environment allows me to step out of the forest and to see those trees a little more clearly.