What Retreats Are Right For High Achievers?

The problem with most retreats is that they are retreats.

You're stepping out of your day-to-day life and escaping to a temporary and safe container. What happens when you need to return to the "real world."

We wanted to create something that worked with your life, not be an alternative to it. What we noticed is that in most retreat environments there are several things that prevent you from integrating your new-found wisdom back into your world.

In traditional retreats, there’s always a guru. Some charismatic personality on a stage who’s figured it all out, beaming wisdom down at the rest of us. You’re the audience. They are the show. At Second Harvest there’s no stage. Devon and I will sometimes facilitate, but we don’t teach or preach. We prefer a classroom where the students are learning from each other. You don't need us to continue the journey. Our approach is to return agency and authority to you so you walk away with the confidence to do what needs to be done.

Most retreats want you to become a whole new person. Shed your old self, unlock your potential, and emerge transformed. It’s exhausting, and honestly a little condescending. You’re not broken. We believe you're remembering, not reinventing. The work isn’t building someone new. It’s finding who you already were under all the layers of BS.

We got tired of the fake vulnerability in the self-help space. Trust falls. Crying on cue. You can smell it a mile off, and so can everyone else in the room. You can't manufacture catharsis. Depth happens because the right people are there, and they have the space to explore their own deep questions, not because somebody engineered a breakdown on the schedule.

We also didn't love the dopamine high that’s gone by the time you arrive home. You leave with tons of energy but you’re back to baseline before the days out. Nothing actually changed. So we stopped treating the retreat like a one-off. It lives inside a much bigger space that keeps going with peer groups and the wider community. The weekend’s a doorway, not a destination.

Our experience was that retreats were out-competing each other by offering more. More habits, more routines, more frameworks to optimize your life. But you’ve already got too much on the plate. So we go the other way. Subtraction. What do you stop? What do you put aside? What's at the core when you strip the distractions away? For busy people, taking things away is the actual relief.

Instead we create a no-guru, no-fix, no-additive option where you can share the room with people standing at the same crossroads you are. They get you. You don’t have to explain yourself to anyone. So you walk away with agency and people who will support you on that next chapter, whatever it might be.

That part you can’t really get anywhere else.

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