The Retreat Model Has a Blind Spot. Here's What Fills It.

A few years ago I bought a $30 course on how to run a profitable retreat. I was excited about it.

I've had a long-held idea of getting a group of like-minded women together somewhere beautiful, and I went through the material the same day I bought it.

Then I started looking at actual retreats. Pricing, pacing, structure. And I realized pretty fast that I didn't want to run one, or go on one.

They were women-only. The reasoning was consistent across nearly every one I looked at: men change the energy of the group. Women get quieter, more reserved, less open, when a husband is standing next to them.

I don't disagree with that observation. But the solution most retreats land on is exclusion, and exclusion is where they lose me, and a lot of women like me.

The itineraries were packed. Sunrise yoga, acai bowls, vineyard cycling, wine tasting, group dinner, repeat.

On paper, it sounds lovely. In practice, for an introvert, it reads as forced socialization from morning to night with a room full of strangers.

That's not a relaxing trip. That's a performance for me.

I need my husband with me in situations like that. We're both introverts. We need to be able to retreat, literally, from the group, sit in a corner, and talk quietly to each other while everyone else is being lively around us.

That's not us being antisocial. That's how we recharge enough to enjoy the rest of it.

There are as many reasons a woman doesn't sign up for a women-only retreat as there are women.

Some of those reasons aren't anyone's business. A leader doesn't need to know them to build a trip that works around them.

A husband who won't send his wife off with a group of strangers for a week because he's stressed about her safety.

A health situation where one partner manages the other's medication or routine, and splitting up isn't a vacation for either of them, it's a source of stress on both ends.

Simple preference: some of us just want to share the south of France with the person we're building a life with, not describe it to him later.

None of that makes a woman less independent or less capable. It makes her someone who wants a specific kind of trip that doesn't currently exist in the retreat model.

A hybrid trip doesn't choose between all-women and all-couples.

It runs both tracks at once and lets people move between them.

Women do the group's actual work together, whatever that is: excursions, the niche content, the parts where the leader's expertise is the point.

Partners have their own version of that time. A cafe. A park bench. A boutique hotel lobby with a book. Nobody's minding them.

Then everyone comes back together for dinner, or the next group activity, whenever it's scheduled.

Some pieces of the day are women-only and optional.

Some are open to everyone.

Nothing is mandatory just because it's on the schedule. If a couple wants to skip a group activity and go do their own thing that day, they do, no guilt, no sense that they wasted their spot.

The trip can also flex around travel logistics that already exist. Fly into London, spend two or three days there as a couple before the group portion starts in the Cotswolds. Book your own hotel with your own points if you want to, or stay where the group is staying.

Airfare is usually the most expensive part of a US-to-Europe trip anyway, so building room for a couple's own days onto the front or back of the group dates doesn't cost the trip anything.

It just uses the flight you were already paying for.

That's the whole difference from a retreat. A retreat is booked out, hour to hour, and you're expected to be present for all of it, or you've wasted the investment.

This is looser.

It doesn't require a single lecture or business session if the leader doesn't want one.

It's a group of people who happen to be tourists in the same place at the same time, with real time built in to actually be tourists.

If you run a community and have ever thought about getting your people together in person, here's what's probably stopped you.

The location and the hotel that fits everyone.

Collecting payment.

Feeling personally responsible for a group of adult travelers.

Being unsure of the legal line around selling travel.

Putting down a deposit, sometimes five figures, to hold an entire property before you know if enough people will book.

And underneath all of that, the fear of spending the whole trip managing everyone else's logistics, expectations, and safety instead of being on the trip yourself.

A hybrid structure takes a chunk of that off your plate. When partners are along, the group isn't entirely your responsibility to shepherd. People are traveling with someone who has a stake in getting them to the airport on time and knowing where they are.

You're not running a field trip. You're hosting a meetup that happens to be in Europe.

It also opens the door to women who'd never sign up for an all-women retreat, for every reason above, logistics, guilt, safety concerns, a partner who's a hard no.

Full adults figure out their own arrangements. You're not managing that. You're building a trip people want to say yes to.

If you've ever wanted to meet your community in person and talked yourself out of it because it felt like too much to organize, too much liability, too much responsibility, this is the version that isn't.

It's a real trip to Europe that you happen to be taking alongside people in your world, with room to actually see the place instead of running a schedule.

So if this hybrid model, a group trip that isn't closed to women only and fully structured every minute, sounds like something your people would want, reach out. I specialize in a methodology for building itineraries exactly like this, ones that let everyone travel together and explore apart.