A new event: where culture and clarity combine
This is a one-day summit designed to help those of you navigating a significant life or career transition. This pragmatic event will guide you from what got you here to how to get to the next chapter. This isn't another dopamine hit. This isn't about optimizing your current schedule or setting another goal. This is a full recalibration.
Somewhere along the way, many of us absorbed a dangerous myth: that life is about grinding through each day, managing responsibilities, and enduring stress until some future when things will finally ease up. We tell ourselves we’ll start living after retirement, after the kids are grown, after the savings account feels secure. This summit is for those of us who choose to face the hard truth that your inbox will never be empty, your bills will never go away, but you can still stop postponing your aliveness. You don’t need to abandon responsibility to live fully—you just need to choose presence over survival.
Most transformation programs fail because they stop where real life begins. The Second Harvest pathway was designed to pair short, catalytic experiences with sustained, supported practice.
Our first summit is modeled on our signature retreats. If you want to go deeper after the summit, retreat spaces will be available to select Spring Summit attendees.
Meet your hosts
Richard Banfield
Entrepreneur, author, and artist. Richard is a recovering CEO who has built companies, launched 100's of products, helped teams find purpose, and now helps people design the second act of their lives with intention and creativity.
Devon McDonald
Venture capitalist turned catalyst for connection, clarity, and courageous living. Devon brings grace, energy, and a gift for creating space where real transformation can happen. She’s raising three kids and building a life rooted in authenticity.
Together, they bring real-life experience, warmth, and wisdom to every part of this retreat. As Richard says, "Our approach is to create a classroom where everyone is the student. No gurus, nor masters, just curious minds that are open to possibility."
Richard Banfield
For decades, I lived by the metrics of achievement: startups founded, books published, clients served. Ticking the boxes of the American Dream. And for a while, it worked, until it didn’t. Losing my wife to cancer and being forced to shut down a business soon after stripped everything down to essentials. What emerged from the smoldering mess was a remembering of what it means to build something from love, not fear. Of how creativity, relationships, and purpose can rebuild a life.
Second Harvest began as a question I needed to answer for myself: What if the second half of life could be better than the first? It’s now become my answer to that question. A living, breathing experiment in meaning-making.
Devon McDonald
I’ve spent my life at the intersection of care and creativity—building a portfolio of startups, nurturing a community around that, raising children, navigating transitions with grace and humor. My transformation wasn’t a single moment, but a collection of them: the realization that being fully alive means being fully present. That real leadership starts with the humility to truly listen to others, and to myself.
Second Harvest is where all of that experience comes home. My work is to create environments of belonging—places where people can safely drop the masks, meet themselves again, and rediscover the joy of being seen
Not just results—
but resilience.
Expert-led
Sessions
that blend practical habit and behavioral plans, cognitive reset, & identity work
Personal Workshops
that help you detach from performance-based identity & reconnect with purpose
Small Group &
1:1 Coaching
designed for clarity, direction and away from cliché
Shared Experiences
with like-minded peers navigating similar transitions and building alliances and connections
What participants have experienced
This summit is designed for:
Anyone that is currently experiencing or planning a significant transformation. This is for those entering an exciting new chapter in their lives, whether that's personal or professional change.
Community, family, and business leaders stepping out of their current roles into new roles. These can also be creative or personal journeys.
Executives and individual contributors in mid- or late-career transitions seeking more than status in their lives. They are seeking deeper meaning, not just new goals.
Before the Retreat: Intake & Reflection
Participants receive a short intake form designed to spark pre-day introspection:
Sample Questions:
- What do you feel you’re walking away from?
- What do you feel drawn toward?
- Where do you feel stuck?
This isn’t just intake—it’s a starting point for the transformation.
Morning Session: Ground, Move, & Reframe
- 9:30am: Arrival & Welcome
Delicious coffee or tea, introductions, and context-setting. Arrive with an open mind. - 10:00am: Keynote
- New Beginnings: Hacking Reality and Escaping Average
- 10:30am: Release and Reset
A full-body and cognitive warm-up to open the nervous system, awaken attention, and prime our bodies for deeper engagement. Part physical reset, part mind tune-up.
- 11:15am - 12:15pm: Personal Story and Identity Workshop
Reflecting on what stories got you here and shaping the next chapter through conscious narrative building and practical habit forming.
- 12:15pm: Lunch
Over a delicious lunch we split into small groups to discuss identity detachment. We explore what happens when the labels we've carried no longer apply—and why that’s not a loss, but a beginning.
Afternoon Session: Integrate, Experiment, & Align
- 1:15pm: Refocus time. Take a walk around the sculpture park, or journal to clear your minds.
- 1:40pm: Thin Slice Experiments Workshop
Readiness isn’t a guess. We can take action on our ideas immediately if we know how to break things into manageable slices and test them. In this session we'll learn how to break big goals and ideas into small bite-sized experiments. Using design thinking and cohort-based alliances, you'll learn a life skill you'll use over and over again.
- 3:30pm: Testing Your Experiments
Your thin slice experiments can give you answers to your questions and generate new questions worth interrogating. We'll teach you quick and simple ways to test your experiments and find what you're looking for.
- 5pm: Optional Small Group Coaching Sessions
Everyone needs a team around them. Exploring the support and alliances you build around you, creating a powerful and trusting advisory board that aligns with your purpose and journey. We'll lead facilitated conversation with focused groups to uncover purpose, define values, and explore personal frameworks for what’s next.
- 6pm: Wrap-up
Closing remarks followed by casual conversation with other participants. We hope you use this time to deepen the connections you've made and consider some of the cohort based workgroups that Second Harvest offers to it's participants.
Evening Session: VIP Dinner
- 7:00pm: Dinner
Good food, real talk. An intimate meal where participants reflect on their day, create alliances, deepen connections, and begin to articulate what they’re building next.
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“Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.”
— Joel Arthur Barker Ratcliffe
Applications are open now. Due to the exceptional nature of the venue, we will have limited space for participants. Once we receive your application, we’ll reach out and provide you with a payment link.
FAQs
Yes, we have discounted rates for groups over 5 people. Please contact us directly on info@secondharvest.co with details of your group size.
A select group of fascinating humans—think successful professionals, creative powerhouses, and resilient souls in search of what’s next. We spend a lot of time curating the groups and making sure everyone there is showing up for the best reasons. If you’re hoping for trust-falls and firewalking with a crowd of corporate suits or midlife crisis clichés, you’re in the wrong place.
Because this isn’t about making you a better cog in someone else’s machine—it’s about reclaiming your creativity, agency, and purpose. No slide decks. No corporate jargon. Just real conversations, bold ideas, support, and experiences that actually change how you show up in your life and work. Your hosts and guides have been through some tough times themselves so they know what it means to build a new life out of the ashes.
If you’re asking that, you probably need this more than anyone. The people who attend aren’t the ones with extra time—they’re the ones who finally decided to prioritize themselves. Life will always be busy. The real question is: Are you ready to make space for what actually matters?
We know life happens. If you need to cancel 60 days or more before the day of the event, we’ll refund your payment minus a 25% fee to cover our advance booking costs. If you cancel within 30 days of the retreat start, we’ll do our best to transfer your spot to a future event if openings are available, but no refund will be provided.