Sitting on an enormous cushion on the floor of the comfortable living room in my home for the weekend – a gorgeous converted barn in the middle of the silent Kent countryside – I settled in to make the acquaintance of the people with whom I would spend the following two days. Looking at these 20 or so women, in loungewear with steaming mugs of herbal tea, I felt weirdly relaxed; it was as if I already knew them. We were there for The One Retreat, run by entrepreneur, speaker, author and business guru, Shaa Wasmund. It was a business workshop with a big difference: it wasn’t a ‘workshop’ at all. There was no conference centre, no boring lectures, no bad coffee, and not a corporate suit to be seen. There was, however, a group of women with a business, a plan, an idea, or the notion of wanting something more in their lives. There was also a handful of incredible coaches and Shaa herself, a force, I was to find, who has the power to shift outlooks on busi ness – and life.
And that’s what The One Retreat is about; business and life, because they are intrinsically linked, explains Shaa. She doesn’t believe in work-life balance. People who own, or want to own, their own businesses should strive for work-life harmony. This was my first revelation. We strive at the things that we are passionate about – and, to create a business from the ground up, passion must be involved. If you are passionate about something, it must have a place in your life that is larger than the nine-to-five; it must live in harmony with the rest of your life, because it is your life; it is you.