Hiyäm Jabak & Frederic Charland on Bespoke Luxury Wellness Retreats

0:00Hey, I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you'd like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to Mission Matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today I have Heum Jevok on the line in Frederick, Charlotte, who are co-founders and co-CEO's at Heum Wellness Living, and we got a lot to talk about today. We're going to get into this luxury wellness living space at Heum, Frederick. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Thank you. Nice to see you, Adam. All right, so I was doing a little bit of reading on your wellness living space and what you're doing. I'm like, man, who doesn't want to do this? Luxury retreats, focusing on their wellness. Before we get into this and what you've launched, I want to go back in time a little bit here. How did you both get started with this idea? I see the term co-founders, where the idea for this retreat and this business come from. I love this question. In 2020, I was established in Panama, opening this beautiful company and creating this

1:02space into yoga retreats for groups, which is already very popular in the wellness industry. And nevertheless, through groups and people writing to us and guests, we found each other having a lot of people sometimes refuse the group retreats because of timing, because we're seeing holes and people who want to have more of a private and choose their dates and choose their villas and choose their destination. On my part, I really love to establish the art of listening to my guest. I find it very important. So we decided to start doing what we call tailor-made retreats into a private section, semi-private and corporate for really the asking of a lot of our guests in email. We tried for a year to do this formula, and it became really, really popular, and it became more of my mission as a yoga teacher, as a martial artist, as a Tisomelier, as a Epicurian and a wine sommelier to create something more curated, more in the aspect

2:04of having really your safe space, something elegant, something really thought of, and we started having way more asking from our guests to do those private and semi-private retreats. So during a navigation this year with Frederic, when we were navigating on our sailing yacht from French Polynesia to American Samoia, 11-day navigation, we wanted brainstorming and took the decision to really, really direct ourselves into best spoke, mezzan of luxury, and really focus on our mission to us in our hearts, which is to do private, semi-private, and really listen to our guests to bring them wherever the desire to live their dream journey. So this is how it became really clear to us. How did you know, and either of you could take this question, how did you know this was going to be a business? Of course you had a great idea, you were inspired, I mean, is an entrepreneur, I know you're entrepreneurial, I'm entrepreneurial too, and we get these ideas, how did you know this

3:05was going to be a business that you spend a lot of time on? Well, I think we live in a world of performance, and we also have other jobs other than teaching yoga, and Frederic has fired her for 15 years, we were surprised by people that I think that we're in a society that goes a thousand miles an hour, and this is beautiful to acknowledge and to understand, there is stress, there is overworking, there is so much natural effects in the society in which we live today. So I think that it became very clear that we wanted to make this as a full-time job, as a yoga teacher and a martial art teacher as well for the past 25 years. Every time I have a student, I think that the art of movement, the art of listening, the art of creating a safe space for our guests, is something that is more and more in asking and in demand, so it was like, and for us working is a pleasure of life, it's our mission of life, it's nothing forced. So all that put together made us really feel, there's a lot of group retreats, a lot of

4:08also yoga centers and high-class hotels, but there's not so much a place where a guest can contact us and where they want to share where they want to be, what they want to eat, what they feel to live. We create that perfect magic together and we create that space for the guests and so far it's been such a beautiful journey that we want to do this every day, seven days a week and we love what we do, so it became, you know, after the day, what do you think? Yeah, just like Yam said, there's a special thing about living at sea, I just live on my selling yacht since 2022 and I really learn to connect after those 15 years of firefighting and living in the sea, the connection with the nature is something very important and to learn how to slow down, but to learn also to know ourselves and how to connect with ourselves and the inner power that is inside each of us.

5:12So when I discovered that, I was speaking with Yam and we saw that it's something so important that sometimes is put aside in our society, so we decided to find a way to introduce that and to share that with people that can enjoy this knowledge. That's amazing and let's get into the retreat itself a little bit here. So how do you choose the locations, how do you choose some of the content, do the retreats vary from one to another, let's go into the retreats a little bit, where do you want to start with that? Well, what I love is on our website, people connect with us for a consultation and I call it a consultation, but it's connection together, I discovered through yoga and martial art that the art of listening is a countercurrent of society, so I love to listen to what people want to live, where they've been before, where they would see themselves going in the destination and for us, our life as nomads on our selling yacht, we've lived in Thailand, French Polynesia,

6:16Bali, Europe, and so while talking and listening to the guest, there's something really beautiful that's created where we choose the space and the country together. Because we travel so much, we know the destination, we know the place, we work with three amazing partners of Vilas, where we, with my 25 years of experience in the high class restaurant and hotel industry, this was also a really beautiful strength in the yoga retreats and the wellness retreats on our side, so when the guest shares with us what they want, where they want to go, the destination is looked at, we scroll on, is there a raining season, was the best timing for it, they have time, do they have five days, 12 days, and we choose the destination with the guest by giving them a couple of selection and some guests give us a cartoblaunch, like a complete open canva and we just use the places where we've embraced and really felt that change for us as well. We've traveled so much, this is where we found

7:22also that doing the best spoke private retreat was a breath of fresh air for us because we bring our knowledge and what it brings to us as humans in the destinations to our guests where they feel to go and it's always been a really beautiful short shot so far, so we feel very inspired to share that with our guests. And Adam, if I may, the right question is not exactly where does Ian wellness go with their guests, the real question is what is their dream destination and we built around that. Where do you want to go, where do you see yourself going and then we just take the time to look and it's a fast process and it's an organic process and we just put all the strength on our side together and it's always a really beautiful and winning combination, you know. What are the size of the groups that you typically recommend, like the size the groups for these and I know I can vary based on location or the thing, but what are the sizes that you typically like? Yes, it's a beautiful question. I love this one. In the private retreat, I've had

8:26one person, we've had four people, it could be up to in the private we do one to four people, sometimes it's going to be a family, it could be really close friends, it could be two couples falling into the semi-private we go from four to ten people and for my part in Montreal, teaching corporate yoga was such a blessing that I've opened also the corporate private retreats where some businesses can contact us. I think that in our business industry, Fred and I, we love to honor also the corporate because there's so much brainstorming, so much beautiful workshops we can do, so corporate can go up to 25 people, but we do a maximum of 25 to keep, for me luxury is its quality, not necessarily quantity, so this is where we love to go in terms of quantity of people or a number of people. That's great. So we're recording this in March of 2026, so we're going to be done with Q1 before we know it. What's on the horizon for the

9:32retreat business and for everything going into high wellness, going into 2026, like, what's on the plan? Well, we will be established in Indonesia with the sailing booth. We're here, we love to create that opening of destination on our website where we're going to be. Sometimes the guests come and meet us in Indonesia, we would love to really welcome people in Indonesia, it's such a beautiful blessing of one of the most beautiful countries I've ever seen. Also, we have other projects in the making. Frederic can share something really beautiful, but without, you know, spelling out the magic so bad. Yeah, I don't have been very fortunate in the last three years. I've been doing around 20 to 22 countries and those were all amazing places on this planet. And we've seen some amazing place that we would like to share the energy, share the experience with our guests in Indonesia. So this is what it's going to look like for

10:37our next couple of months. So we're also very flexible, just like we said, to go anywhere that guests dream to go. But for the moment, we're going to live for a couple of months around Indonesia and fill the vibe and be able to share this energy. And then we're going to continue moving and discover some new places. And that sounds like a lot of fun. And I'm going to live vicariously through you two while I'm sitting in this podcast studio recording, okay? Okay, I love it. That's amazing. I love it. I love that you out there exploring and helping make other people's dreams reality. I think this is a great story. I'm happy to bring this to my audience. How do people follow up? I want my audience to be able to connect with you and follow up and learn more whether it's website, social media, otherwise. How do people follow up? Yes, absolutely. So we have a Instagram where people can write to us, ask all the questions they feel and feel inspired to

11:39share. It's He Am Wellness Living. On Instagram, our website is www.heamwellness.com. And there's emails. You can create a chit chat with us. We're open to create conversation and video meetings. There's memberships online. There's so many beautiful ways that we can connect. And we really love to connect with humans with anything that they feel to share with us. So this is the best way for them to connect with us. Lincoln is always possible for businesses and yeah. Awesome. For everybody listening, just so you know, we'll definitely put some links in the show notes so you can just click on the links and head right on over and check out He Am Wellness Living. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven't done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. Yes, you heard me right daily. Each and every day we're bringing you new content, new ideas and hopefully new inspiration and help you long the way in your

12:39journey as well. So hit that subscribe or follow button and He Am, Frederick. Thanks again for coming down. This has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much Adam. Likewise. We love that. Thank you. The Toyota Tundra and Tacoma are built to keep going blending rugged muscle with precision engineering, all supported by Toyota's time-tested legacy of dependability. Step into a Tundra and feel the unyielding capability with the available I Force Max engine. Tundra puts out impressive power torque and towing performance and the roomy high-tech cabin keeps you connected on the go. Or take a look at Tacoma made for drivers who push past the path agile, tough and relentless with available features like crawl control, portable JBL speaker, a power lift gate, so gear goes in fast and the adventure keeps moving. The Tacoma and Tundra are engineered to endure season after season, mile after mile. So drive one home today, visit toyota.com or stop by your local Toyota dealer to find out more Toyota. Let's go places.