January 14–18, 2027 — Thursday to Monday, over the MLK weekend. Eight hosts, one house, and three full working days of building the thing instead of planning to build the thing.
Everyone is welcome in this room. Most weeks like this are women only; ours isn’t, and never has been. The job doesn’t sort by gender and neither do we.
It’s called a Residency because you make work here. You arrive with something you’ve been meaning to launch. You leave with it launched-ready — filmed, priced, scheduled and written.
This list is the product. Everything below it — the lake, the food, the hot tub — is the setting the work happens in. Most of these weeks have that ordering backwards.
And then, underneath all of that: your lodging, every meal, and the activities. Included, and deliberately listed last.
I want them to feel like they got a lot done — like almost everything — by the time they leave.
— Anna VanAgtmael, on what the week is for
You arrive Thursday afternoon and leave Monday morning. In between are three full working days — Friday, Saturday, Sunday — with two teaching blocks each, and camera time and one-to-ones running alongside every afternoon.
Monday 18 January is MLK Day. Saturday and Sunday are the weekend. So if hosting is still the thing you do alongside a job — which for most people it is — the only workdays you spend are Thursday and Friday.
That is not a coincidence. It is why the week sits where it does on the calendar.
Day oneThu 14 Jan · arrivals
Arrive between 3 and 5pm — Cherry Capital airport is ten minutes away. Dinner at six, welcome and introductions, and we schedule everyone’s video recordings. The evening ends on the founder’s video conversation, so you sleep on it before the cameras come out.
Day twoFri 15 Jan
Robert, 8:30–10am: how to fill your retreat, and what it costs. Stacy, 10–11am: the messaging in your videos. Then two hours outside — hiking or snowshoeing — before lunch. Anna, 2–4pm: itineraries and teams. From four until dinner, founder’s and brand video recordings run alongside one-to-one coaching.
Day threeSat 16 Jan
Robert, 8:30–9:30am: how do I know it’s working? Measurement and iterating. Stacy, 9:30–11am: your website, your email funnels and your tracking. Recordings and one-to-ones until lunch — where Abbey talks through the food, and how to hire someone like her. Anna, 2–4pm: budget and profits. More camera time, dinner, then yoga nidra to land the mindset work the budget session always kicks up.
Day fourSun 17 Jan
Stacy and Robert, 8:30–11am: implementing your plan, and every marketing question you have left. Anna, 11am–1pm: plan Bs and liability — what to have in place, and when to call a lawyer. The session nobody enjoys and everybody needs. Final recordings and one-to-ones after lunch, then a cocktail or mocktail hour that runs as an ask-us-anything.
Day fiveMon 18 Jan · departures
Breakfast and goodbyes, departures from nine. You leave with the work done rather than a folder of notes to action later.
This is the working schedule from Anna’s planning document. Session titles are final; exact times may shift a little before January.
From Anna’s Traverse City retreats, 2021–2023 — earlier years, a different house.
Not extras — two of the deliverables depend on them. You are not cooking, and you are not photographing yourself against a wall at home.
A Michigan maker — welder, jeweller and personal chef — who has cooked Anna’s retreats from Michigan to Banff for years. She checks everyone’s allergies and preferences before you arrive and builds the menu around them.
At Saturday lunch she does a session of her own: what the food actually costs, and how to hire someone like her for your own retreat.
Elise runs Mod Bettie Portraits in Grand Rapids — an empowerment portrait studio going since 2014, and she was named a Remarkable Woman of West Michigan in 2023. She has been the resident photographer on Anna’s retreats for years.
She shoots your headshot and captures the founder’s and brand videos across the week. If being photographed is the part you dread, she is the specific reason it turns out to be fine.
Eight seats in one of Lakemore’s houses — we’d rather run one full house than two half-empty ones. You sleep in the guest house; every meal and every session happens next door, in the house the team stays in.
One price, everything included — the teaching, the filming, the photography, the one-to-ones, the year of The School, your room, every meal and the activities. The only thing that changes the number is where you sleep.
Shared room, two beds
$5,000
2 seats
Private room, twin bed
$6,000
2 seats
Private room, queen bed
$6,500
3 seats
Private room, king bed
$7,000
1 seat
Travel to Traverse City isn’t included. Everything from the moment you arrive is. Payments are non-refundable — we strongly recommend travel insurance. If we cancel the Residency, you are refunded in full. Full terms.
Want to see the rooms first? Every bedroom and all three floor plans.
Questions before you book? Book half an hour with Anna or Stacy — free, and nothing gets sold on it.
Seven lakefront houses ten minutes from Traverse City’s airport and fifteen from downtown. We take two for guests and one for faculty. In January the lake is frozen, the fireplaces are lit, and there is nowhere else to be — which is exactly why the work gets done.
Photographs courtesy of Lakemore Resort.
If yours isn’t here, book a call and ask us directly — or email us and one of us will answer.
The teaching, the filming, the photography, all four one-to-one sessions, a year of The School, your room, every meal, and the activities. One price, and the only thing that changes it is which bed you sleep in.
Travel to and from Traverse City isn’t included. Everything from the moment you arrive is.
$999 holds your seat. The balance is split into equal monthly payments, and the last one falls on or before 15 December 2026 — a month before you travel.
We don’t store your card and nothing is charged automatically. Each instalment arrives as an emailed invoice you pay when it lands, or you clear the balance early if you’d rather be done with it. You can also just pay in full at checkout.
No. Payments are non-refundable, and we say so plainly rather than burying it: we commit to the house, the food and the team months ahead on the strength of the seats that are booked, and those costs don’t come back to us if someone can’t come.
So buy travel insurance, and buy it when you book rather than later. It’s cheap next to the price of the week and it’s what covers you for illness, a family emergency or a Michigan January doing what Michigan Januaries do. If we cancel, you get everything back.
You sleep in the guest house. Every meal and every session happens next door, in the house the team stays in — so the working room is never the room someone is trying to sleep in.
Lakemore has seven lakefront houses. We take two for guests and one for faculty. The rooms page has the four room types, the prices and the floor plans.
Two days. It runs Thursday 14 January to Monday 18 January, and Monday is MLK Day — so for most people the only working days you spend are the Thursday and the Friday.
That was deliberate. The three full working days in the middle are Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Because you’re paying for working days, not nights. The Residency has three full ones, and the price is everything: your room, every meal, the filming, the photography, all four one-to-one sessions, and a year of The School, which is $1,188 on its own. From $5,000, that’s about $1,670 a working day with nothing left to buy.
The other difference is what you carry home. Eight seats, three teachers who between them cover the whole job — the week itself, filling it, and being found in the first place, and you leave with the video, the page and the budget finished — not notes.
Fly into Cherry Capital Airport in Traverse City. The houses are about ten minutes from the airport and fifteen from downtown.
Arrivals are Thursday between 3 and 5pm; dinner is at six.
Yes. A women’s reset in Costa Rica, a writing week in Michigan, twelve people going to the Indy 500 — underneath, it’s one job. A fixed number of seats, a fixed date, and a deadline that doesn’t move.
That job is what the week teaches, and it doesn’t change with the theme.
No, and you don’t need to join separately either — a year of The School, the Guild’s $99 tier, is included in your seat.
If you’d rather start smaller and see the community first, The Community is $19 a month and you can walk in today.
Please do, and there’s no form to fill in. Book half an hour with Anna or Stacy — free, and nobody sells you anything on it.
Ask Anna about the week itself and Stacy about filling your own room; either can answer anything. If the Residency isn’t right for where you are, we’ll say so and tell you what we’d do instead. Rather write? [email protected], answered within three days.
Same week, same three of us, same co-ed room — a different mountain and a warmer month. Dates and the house aren’t settled yet, so we’re not going to pretend otherwise.
Put your name down and you’ll hear it first, before it goes on the site. That’s the whole promise: no sequence, no countdown, one email when there is something real to tell you.
Nobody is deciding whether you’re allowed in. You pick a room, you pay the $999, the seat is yours. That’s the entire process, and it takes about two minutes.
January 14–18, 2027$999 holds your seat.
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