S3, Ep. 124- 4 Takeaways From My Christmas In NYC Retreat

Leah Gervais: Hi everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. I am so happy to be here with you all. It’s been a while, and through the loving encouragement of my clients, I am recording an episode before the end of the year. Um, as you know, I’m sure if you’re listening to this, you probably know that I had a baby four months ago and my podcast has just not been on the top of my to-do list since then. Really all year it has not been a huge priority to be totally honest.

 So I’m excited to get back into it because I really do love it. Maybe anyone knows me. You know that I’m a talker. I have a lot to say. Um, and I’m gonna try to release a few episodes before the end of the year actually, because I always vividly remember, I, many of you have heard my story, but my business really took off around this time of year.

So it’s a very nostalgic time of year for me, for many reasons. I’m a very nostalgic person, but I always remember the Thanksgiving of 2017, which was when I kind of snapped out of my delusion about how I was just halfway in and out of my business. I had just spent two years up to that point giving it what I thought was my all, but every time I really had the opportunity to go a hundred percent in, I pulled back because I was afraid of credit card debt or because I was afraid of what people would think of me or because I was afraid that this ad was going to flop.

 And that Thanksgiving, I really swore to myself, okay, Leah, you have one year, one more year to give it your all. And if you don’t, then you need to close this up because you’re actually losing more money by not accelerating and taking off, then you would be if you, if you just tried.

So, um, that was a very special time of year, and I remember I started really just saturating my brain with entrepreneurship and personal development and books and podcasts and I, excuse me, listened to recordings of coaching calls so that I could become a coach one day. Wow. I don’t know why my voice is so scratchy, sorry. And I listened to them on the plane ride to, you know, traveling for Christmas to be home with my family. 

So I wanna record a few episodes in case you are in that boat, in case you’re really trying to bottle up the energy and the excitement of this time of year and bring it into what you will, um, you know, what you’ll have next year, what next year will be for you. So let’s start with something that I recently did, which was my Christmas in NYC retreat.

This is my second annual one. This was the second time I did it. I loved it. I have every intention of continuing to do this. This one was a lot more coaching heavy than my last one was last year. Last year it was, I would say, like equal parts work and Christmas in New York-esque. Um, and but this time I just felt, I don’t know, I just kinda listened to my gut and I felt like, you know what? I really want them to walk away with as much, with as many actionable steps to take to go into the new year as possible. 

And I just trusted that the magic of Christmas in New York would kind of be sprinkled throughout, and it really was. I mean, it’s not like we just sat in, you know, a Hyatt conference room for two days. We had lunch at Tavern on the Green and we rented an igloo in Bryant Park and we gotta go see the Columbus Circle Mall and it snowed.

So it was really, really lovely, but we definitely got down and dirty with working and numbers and mindset and all the things that really help you make quantum leaps informed quantum leaps. So I thought I would take, uh, a little bit of time to share my four biggest takeaways from what I coached them on. Um, and just kind of the experience in general and what it really highlighted for me as we collectively go into 2025 as entrepreneurs. 

And for many of you listening as moms. Um, and what I think is helpful to think about and what I think is helpful to know that you might not be alone in experiencing, um, I think that a lot of times we can feel like our business is broken or that there’s something wrong with us if we’re going through this and we don’t know how to find support around that.

And so hearing that, uh, many people, if not all the people at this NYC retreat had the same question or were going through the same thing, could be really helpful. Excuse me. And if you’re interested in an NYC retreat like this, they are, I do two per year with my mastermind and then I do this one. This is the only one you can come into if you’re not the mastermind. 

Most of my clients that came were my mastermind, but you are welcome if you’re, if you’re not, if you’re the right fit for it. Um, and I really believe that the NYC retreat is worth the investment of the mastermind alone. In fact, people have told me that , members of my mastermind have told me that, and my mastermind has a high retention rate. People continue to stay because they love the NYC retreat so much.

And we have two spots left in my mastermind as of this recording early December for the 2025 cohort and my mastermind, once it’s closed, it is closed. We don’t have people come in in the middle. So if you even have an inkling of interest in being part of this community, of experiencing an NYC retreat like this, of really having a breakthrough year in 2025, do not wait until you’re quite ready to do this, decide that you’re ready and then do it. That was really the energy that I embraced during that Thanksgiving in 2017. 

And that is truly, literally why I’m here today, um, recording this as my baby sleeping in the other room, as a stay-at-home mom with my average of 50 K months. So you have to decide that you’re ready for your life to change. You have to want it. And if you are, if you’re ready and you’re excited, we’d love to have you.

If you’re the right fit, please go ahead and you can go to leah dravet.com/mastermind and apply, and then we could chat and see if this would work for you. And if you wanna know a little bit more about some of the work that we’re doing in it, then stay tuned. ’cause we are going to talk about it right now. 

Okay, so the first takeaway from this NYC retreat, which I think is so, so helpful, no matter what you’re doing in the new year, is that I don’t, I think that one of the easiest ways to raise your income is to focus on your client lifetime value or a funnels income potential.

A common mistake I see people make is they’ll launch something, whether it’s a product or a service, and they will sell as much of it as they can. They’ll kind of get bored with it because it takes a lot longer to sell it than you thought it would, or it takes, it’s harder to sell it than you thought it would. This is very common. 

And then they get a new idea and they move on to something else. And this isn’t fatal, per se. Your business won’t fail by doing this, but you will really exhaust yourself and lose so much of your steam because it takes so much more fuel, so to speak, to start something new than it does to keep something running that has already been started. 

So what I talked a lot with my clients about over the course of the NYC retreat was thinking about the things that they’ve already sold or the things that they’re already actively selling and how they can add more value to those things without having to create new things, especially for those of them that were already paying for traffic to go to these things if they’re already running ads or if they already are doing pr.

Um, or even if you’re just organically driving traffic to it because you’re posting on social media about it, or you’re sharing with friends and family about what you’re doing. If you’re already doing that to a particular product or service, paying attention to how you can make more within that funnel or increase the value of that funnel is one of the lowest hanging fruits that you can have to increase your revenue without having to launch anything new, without even having to find new clients. 

So some ways you can do that are by adding different upsells or bumps when people purchase. You also can add things, people can, you can add kind of like a funnel of offerings behind the scenes once people have purchased, um, or excuse me. Or you can also kind of add different offerings within the offering, if that makes sense. So let’s say you have a group program and that’s your biggest thing that you’ve been focusing on. 

Then what you could do is think, well, is there a VIP track I could make for this group program? Or is there a downsell I can make for it for someone that’s not ready for the entire group instead of creating a new group program? If that makes sense. 

This is so, so important. This skyrocketed my income this year. I only launched one new thing all year, otherwise I’m still, I’ve been still selling basically the same things for, for several years at this point. And I’m just improving the different ways people can work with me within those offerings and improving the conversions of our different upsells and downsell and expanding upon the client lifetime value, customer lifetime value. 

Okay, the second takeaway, which was universal amongst pretty much all of the people in the group, is that I am finding that people don’t want to be on Zoom calls anymore.

They don’t really wanna host them and they don’t really wanna buy things that have zoom calls. It’s very interesting. My guess is that it’s two things. My guess is that first we are, we collectively are very fatigued from Zoom from the pandemic when you pretty much lived on your computer staring at a screen in place of human interaction, which of course it is not the same at all. I think it really overdid it for people. 

I also think that it made us sort of, it, that replacement stuck where things that were in person became on zoom out of necessity, but then kind of stayed on zoom out of convenience. And studies are showing that there really is not a substitute for an in-person meeting, even on Zoom, your social cues, your audio cues, your visual cues are not picked up in the same way that they are when you’re talking to someone in person.

So as helpful as it is to stay home and have something over zoom, the studies are showing that it’s, it’s not a substitute and it actually fatigues people. So pretty much everyone at my NYC retreat said, I want less zoom, I wanna offer less zoom, I wanna sign up for less zoom. I want more spaciousness on my calendar. 

And I just think that this is so interesting that it’s kind of a trend that pretty much everyone’s going through. So don’t feel bad if you are no longer wanting Zoom calls, both as a client or as a coach yourself or a consultant yourself or a teacher yourself. It really feels like that is kind of a common trend and a common experiencing experience people are having right now. And I think that this only speaks to my passive park sales system because this offers you the opportunity to sell to people without it having meetings involved or anytime on your calendar.

It allows us, you, allows you to use digital products. It allows you to teach, uh, on demand instead of, um, you know, on a scheduled time. Um, so I think that consumers are wanting this. I think business owners are wanting this. This was definitely something I workshopped with pretty much all of them. Um, and it’s something I could workshop with you too, if this is something that you’re feeling called to do. 

But if that is just validating that because you are not alone. The third takeaway is that seasons of life are real. So one of the exercises we did during this NYC retreat was we went through different parts of our business and different parts of our lives and ranked how much of our energy and time we’re pouring into that particular part, what we were this year, and then what we would like it to be next year.

And I really encourage them to not go through this all and feel like everything had to be a five. Their scale was one to five, a five out of 10. It could be that self-care, the categories where things like self-care, um, hobbies, uh, social life, friends, or I’m sorry, family and, um, marriage partnership if you’re, if you’re not married, but you know, romantic relationship. 

So those are the five personnel. And then the three businesses were, um, uh, marketing and visibility on the front end, delivery on the backend and operations. And I think it’s really tempting to go through all of that and feel like all of them need a five. And if you scroll through social media, that’s what it makes you feel like, right? It makes you feel like there’s messaging around. If you’re not taking time for yourself, then you’re never gonna be a good mom.

And then there’s messaging around if you aren’t with your kids enough, then you’re not a good mom. And then the same thing in business. It’s like if you aren’t paying attention to visibility, you’re never gonna get enough sales. But if you don’t have an excellent product and a team, and if you’re hiring too late, then you’re gonna burn out.

 And it just can feel so conflicting and so overwhelming. And many of these messages were only created from people’s own experiences, which means that it’s coming from a good place. But you have to remember that their background and their situation could be entirely different from your own. So what I encourage my clients and what I coach them to think through is, what season of life and what season of business are you in? 

Instead of going through this and feeling like everything should be a five, thinking about what are the two or three things in each category, personal and business that will most move the needle for me right now.

For example, if you are trying to get to six figures, for the most part, this is not gonna be the case for everyone, but for the most part, you should be focusing on visibility. You should be focusing on marketing. Your delivery should not need that much attention from you because it should be very simple. You only really should be selling one thing at that point. Oftentimes the first thing that will get you to six figures is a service. In which case the delivery is extraordinarily simple. 

You really only need to be able to schedule some calls on Zoom and send a contract. You should not have a fancy platform to do your work on. You don’t need a bunch of PDFs created in the background or videos recorded in the background. You don’t really need a team to be helping you. You don’t need customer service.

There shouldn’t be complex billing. It should be one thing with the same delivery for pretty much all clients. Of course, there’s some nuance to this, but my point is to simplify the delivery in the beginning so that you can focus on your marketing and focus on your visibility. 

That is like probably the simplest recipe to get to your first six figures. You also don’t really need to focus on operations for the same reason. It should be extraordinarily simple. It should take a fraction of your time every week to do. However, if you are in the, the rut that I know a lot of people get in where you’re like dancing in 10 to 20 K months, you can stay there for a long time, because what gets you to six figures is so different than what gets you beyond six figures, then it could be very, very different.

And you need to focus on probably only one thing a year to really scale. And I think that that is the biggest difference between getting to six and seven figures is when you’re getting to six, you’re kind of trying to do it all well, like you’re trying to do your service well, you’re probably focusing on marketing the most and you’re just trying to do that as much as you can. And then you’re trying to do your operations well.

 And then if you keep trying to do all of them well, you will hit a ceiling. You then kind of have to pick one thing and go all the way in it, um, in order to really amplify whether that’s one social media platform or one product that you just wanna get all over different social media platforms or, um, you wanna build out a team so that they’re executing things for you on, on the backend.

I know I’ve had years where my only focus was one particular group program and fine tuning the launches of it, and then another year where my focus was delivery and making sure that our operations and delivery made the best experience for our customers as possible. And that really reflected in having my client retention rate go to above 60% or something that year. 

It was wild. Um, this year we were really pretty much just focused on funnels and scaling. So you will need to focus on one thing later on. Same thing with seasons of life. It is very, very easy to feel like you need fives in all of those categories. I’m a good example here.

My priorities at this time in my life are my sons. And if I’m talking about personal life, I would say my sons, my health and my marriage.

Honestly, it doesn’t mean my marriage is the least important thing to me, but it does mean that I know it will always be there. 

So I am pouring into making sure I’m recovering postpartum. I still have a very young baby and am taking care of my boys. Um, I’m not the social chair of my friend group right now. I don’t often leave my neighborhood in New York because we don’t have a car and I don’t wanna bring the boys all over the city while they’re this young. Sometimes I try to do outings, but not all the time. I’m not traveling that much right now. 

Um, you know, maybe next year we’ll travel a bit more, but it is not, I am not in the jet setting season of life. Like I was in my first two years of self-employment where I was traveling once a month, sometimes even more.

So know what you’re doing. I like hobbies, but they aren’t the most important thing to me right now. Being able to be home with my kids is, um, but maybe that’s different for you.

 Maybe you’re feeling like I’m a better mother when I have childcare and when I am making sure that I am, you know, going on a date night every week or making sure that I’m going to a workout class every day or making sure that I get away from myself every, every once a month. Like you have to figure out what’s going to optimize this season of life for you and then forgive yourself for not being able to pour into every part of your life because it’s not optimizing the season. I also am a little bit of an extremist, I admit.

So it helps me to think this way, to think about what are the few things I’m giving my all to instead of what are the many things I’m giving a bit to, which just never feels fulfilling for me personally.

I would rather go all out on a few things and really feel like I’m doing everything I can in it. Then I kind of feel lukewarm about all the things personally. Alright, the fourth takeaway from this NYC retreat is just simply that life does not stop. I think that this is a lesson I continue to learn over and over in entrepreneurship, which is that it is, we don’t understand. I think it’s sobering when we realize how much of a victim mindset we have.

Even if you’ve done personal development, even if you understand what a victim mindset is, and even if you’ve moved through it through ways in the past, I’m still guilty of this even though I think I have quite a sense of radical self responsibility. Um, we will often put off things because we feel like it’s not the right time or because we feel like it’s inconvenient or because we feel like we need to finish X first.

And what I really walked away with after being with this group of women for two days straight is that everyone is going through more than you think. And honestly, even when you feel like you are stretched to the end of things you can handle, someone is probably going through more than you are and still managing to step up more than you are. And that isn’t meant to make you feel crappy. It’s meant to make you feel empowered and remember that you don’t have to be a victim to your circumstances. 

Within this group of women, we had multiple moms. Two of them were moms of three young kids within those three. Um, I literally breastfed through this entire event. My baby is not taking a bottle. So pumping and a bottle of breast milk is not an option for us right now. So my wonderful mother-in-law and husband alternated taking care of my older son and bringing my baby to me every two to three hours so I could breastfeed him, breastfeed him while I did this.

Uh, uh, one of our members was going through a very, very challenging season with her health. Um, it’s really been going on for the course of the year and she had an extraordinary year in her business and she’s going to hit a million dollars next year. So never ever feel like whatever is on your plate is too much for you to continue moving on with your dreams. Never feel like there’s more than you can handle. You can handle so much more than you know. You’re so much more capable than you know. 

And the only time that it’s truly not gonna work for you to continue pursuing something because of an obstacle is the moment you let that be your excuse. Otherwise, you can continue to pour in with whatever you are able to. Sometimes you have more to offer than others and find that fulfillment in what you can control while things that feel a little more out of control still happen.

And paradoxically, even though it might feel exhausting to do that, I actually think it invigorates you so much. So if this year, if you’re ending this year and you’re feeling like it was a good year, but my passive income isn’t where I wanted it to be or it was a good year, but I know I’m capable of more, or it was a good year, but I really only grew, I don’t know, maybe 5% in revenue, maybe, you know, maybe 10%, but you, you wanted a bit more. 

What really is the reason for that? Was it out of a lack of desire for doing those things or was it because you had these excuses as logical as they may sound, kids, family, health, money, confusion, lack of clarity, whatever it is that stopped you, and how can you shift that and say, these things are going on and that’s how life is and it’s not going to stop me from pouring into the things I can control and that are most important to me.

And I just walked away very genuinely inspired from this group of women, of my own clients by seeing all that they have done and how they showed up even with all the circumstances surrounding that. I mean, women truly run the world as moms are such powerhouses. 

Um, and, and you know, when you build through those moments, it builds you, it gives you a grit, um, that a that a lot of people just frankly don’t have to develop, which is why so many people end up not achieving their dreams, not feeling financially free, staying in nine to five jobs, wondering what if comparing themselves to people on social media, you know, whatever your kind of downfall is, we all have it. Um, and so I hope that this just gives you a, a gentle nudge to make a decision by the end of the year that you know, will, will, will, will not have 2025 be a year of circumstance, but a year of choice, a year of power, a year of freedom.

And I know personally for me, as I have gone through, I wouldn’t say this was a per, there were some personal challenges I’ve gone through this year that I will not talk about publicly. Uh, but for the most part, the things under my control have been great. I have had a wonderful postpartum period. I had a good pregnancy. I did not have any complications. Of course, I was tired sometimes. That’s just how it is. Um, I’ve loved being a stay-at-home mom. My business has been very fulfilling to me. I love the clients that I work with.

So I wouldn’t say that it’s been a particularly challenging year and it’s just been a busy year for me given transitioning from one to two kids. We moved this year. Um, my husband’s career changed slightly this year. And of course, not having really any childcare has been, my hands are full a lot of the time and I just couldn’t imagine this season of life without my passive income sales.

And I cannot encourage you enough to take the time, invest the resources, the time, the money, whatever you need in yourself to support yourself to have that. Um, even if you feel like you’re in a calm season of life and that’s great, having a service is great, but you, you will always have that little bit of vulnerability where you’re at the mercy, your income is at the mercy of your energy, your time and your presence. 

And just having that kind of fallback, that that reassurance that you still have money coming in, whether or not you’re physically there, whether or not your energy is X, y, and Z, um, really just brings so much peace of mind and I think just helps you in your other areas of life. It helps you be a better mom. It helps you be a better wife. It helps you be a better entrepreneur and it helps you support the clients that you do have better.

So, um, you always know I can help you with that. You can just DM me passive on Instagram. Um, and we have resources we can send to you. We have a checklist, we have a webinar you can come to. Uh, so never be afraid to take action on that. And that would probably be my biggest piece of advice before the end of the year is, is, get that going. 

You know, you don’t wanna start the end of the year with or the beginning of the year with a goal. You wanna start the beginning of the year with sales coming in. 

Okay. I hope that you guys found this helpful. If you have any questions, you can always DM me. Thank you so much for your warm encouragement on getting back into my podcast. Happy, happy holidays and more to come soon!

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