On November 11-15, I was a part of the inaugural Nurture Change Business Retreat that, through some great planning on our part, happened to be in Fiji. Steve Pirie (my business partner in this venture) and I had been planning it for about a year: five days in Fiji with business owners. It was the best thing I have ever done in my life. Well, professionally anyway. (Sorry, Sip!)
A bizcation certainly made a lot of sense to me, the concept of being able to learn and chill at the same time. That is how I holiday (ie. I am literally unable to 100% switch off from the world of business) and I really enjoy learning in a chilled atmosphere…
The history of the idea was that I talked to 2 clients (Lizzi Hines of Spaceworks and Wendy Thompson of Socialites) and I said to them, individually, “I reckon we and a few others should go to Fiji for a week to chill and talk business”. Both were both very keen and coincidentally I happened to be coaching Steve (who is a very successful travel entrepreneur) – voila, the Nurture Change business was born. It really has evolved into a real business and that is really cool as you never know when you launch something new whether it is going to work or not.
We had 130 business people in Fiji in November and the feedback was very positive. Beyond positive, in fact – it was raving! People learnt things that were relevant for their own business. People met new people. People got a little healthier (or at least got better knowledge in this area). People had fun. People were inspired. We could not have asked for much more.
Highlights included: the final night gala where Sir Ted got up on the dance floor, the laughs we had as a group (particularly around my public goal of getting fit before Nurture Change 2.0!), a marriage proposal (on the same day that he rescued three kids from a rip!), absolutely mind-blowing speakers sharing their secrets to success and then hanging out with the guests informally throughout for even more learning and nurturing, the local village kids performing an amazing song and dance routine for us and seeing the attendees becoming fast friends over the five days, bonded by their love of business.
Please check out www.nurturechange.com and you will see a little video we put together of the event highlights. Thank you to Chillbox Creative for their amazing video work. Thank you also to Hayley, Zeb, Cam, Hazel, Sip, Rochelle and everybody else who helped out on this. Here is to a great business future for Nurture Change and for Steve and I to have lots of fun along the way, work with a great team and to be able to impact positively on business owners and managers. Bring it on!
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