The image came off the work began

I didn’t immediately understand what made this format different. The realization came somewhere around day two watching a successful colorist with a massive following sit across from a mentor and say out loud, for the first time in a long while, the things that usually stay off camera.

The IBPA Business Retreat in Coachella is not a conference. Not a masterclass. And definitely not the kind of event you leave with a tote bag full of handouts and a vague sense of having done something productive. It’s four days in the California desert, where a group of beauty professionals made an unspoken but very specific agreement to be honest. With themselves, with their peers, and with the questions they’ve been pushing to the back burner.

An Environment That Changes the Conversation

Coachella wasn’t chosen by accident. The desert air, the open space, a pool instead of a conference room all of it physically shifts you out of “I’m at work” mode and into “I’m actually thinking” mode. It sounds like a small thing until you’re inside it. Most professional events in beauty follow the same logic: show up, listen, take notes, leave. The logic here was different. No information overload for the sake of looking busy. Instead a real environment where you could slow down and actually figure out what’s been holding you back.

That’s why the first evening no agenda, no program, just dinner and genuine conversation turned out to be one of the most valuable parts of the entire retreat. People started talking. Really talking.

One-on-One Work as the Core Tool

The foundation of this retreat was deep, individual work. Not lectures delivered to a room full of people nodding along, but focused, personal breakdowns: business strategy, personal brand, positioning, pricing. Everyone came in with their own specific questions and that’s exactly what got addressed. Watching this unfold, I kept thinking about how rarely we allow ourselves this kind of conversation in this industry. We’re used to broadcasting through Stories, through portfolios, through carefully worded bios. Receiving feedback that goes deeper than surface-level edits? That’s a much harder skill to develop. Participants were working through very different things. Some were rethinking their pricing structure. Others were trying to clarify how their studio was positioned in the market. Some were putting into words for the very first time what actually makes them unique as a professional. The common thread was a willingness to dig rather than skim.

Presentation Skills: The Conversation Beauty Has Been Missing

My lecture at this retreat focused on a topic I consider one of the most underrated in the beauty profession: how to present yourself effectively. Not in the aesthetic sense people in this industry generally have that covered. I mean what happens when you need to open your mouth in a room full of strangers and explain who you are and what you do. Without your feed to scroll through. Without a portfolio on the screen. Just your voice, your words, and a live human being in front of you. The group’s reaction genuinely surprised me in the best way. I was looking at people with established businesses, serious client bases, and strong personal brands online. And many of them completely froze when asked to simply stand up and introduce themselves in person. That’s not a personal flaw. It’s a symptom of an industry that has trained us to package ourselves flawlessly in visual format while paying almost no attention to how we sound. How we hold a pause. How we walk into a room. How we talk about our work in a way that makes the other person feel something, not just process information. Working on verbal presence within the retreat turned out to be surprisingly powerful precisely because it happened in an environment where people had already opened up. There were no walls to break through. The real work could start immediately.

What Happens When You Remove the Stage

The sharpest observation I walked away with from Coachella: the beauty industry is extraordinarily good at creating images and genuinely uncomfortable when the image comes off. We operate in a space where external polish is a professional standard. That shapes a certain habit: hold it together, project confidence, don’t let the doubt show. A retreat like this one intimate, intensive creates conditions where that habit temporarily loosens. And that’s when the real work begins. People talked about the fear of raising their prices. About burnout they’ve been masking with content. About not knowing where to go next despite everything looking fine from the outside. About being exhausted by the performance of being a brand and just wanting to be a person. This isn’t therapy. It’s professional honesty and it hits differently than any online course ever could.

Why Retreats Like This Actually Matter

Immersive formats are nothing new in the business world. But in beauty, they’re still treated as something optional almost indulgent. I think that’s a mistake. The beauty industry is, at its core, a relationship industry. Everything in it runs on trust: between a professional and their client, between business partners, between a mentor and a student. And that trust isn’t built through algorithms. It’s built through real human contact through the ability to show up authentically, to be present in a room, to communicate in a way that actually lands. These are things that almost never get discussed at professional events in this space. The Coachella retreat didn’t hand out answers. It offered something more valuable an environment where the right questions could finally be asked. I came with a lecture. I left having learned just as much as anyone I spoke to. That’s probably the best outcome you can hope for from four days in the desert.