Today, we are joined by Zach Montroy of Navigate the Journey and Lillian Hocevar of Traveluxe Official to talk about company retreats. We reflect on Summit CPA’s recent retreat, what we got out of it, and lessons we learned that will help you organize your next company retreat.
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“Taking this time and investment in your team will show dividends in the future.” - Zach
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Jamie Nau: Hello and welcome to today's podcast. I am super excited about this topic. It probably isn't as fun as our last retreat, but I'm hoping this podcast will still be a ton of fun because we are talking about company retreats. The reason it won't be as fun as our last retreat is because one of our guests put on our last retreat at Jackson Hole and it was amazing. We did a ton of adventures, had so much fun and I really enjoyed it. I know Jody, who is on the podcast as well, enjoyed it as well. Everybody there have a good time. So we're joined by Lily, Zach and Jody. So we're going to talk about a couple of things. We're going to talk about the three different sides of a retreat. We're going to talk about it from the entertainment side with Lily. We're going to talk about it from the content point from Zach, and then Jody, from the ownership perspective of why it's important that you have retreats. So, Lily, since it's your first time on the podcast, let's start with you. Why don’t you give us a little bit of your background before we go into our last retreat.
Lillian Hocevar: Thanks for having me. It's my first podcast, so it's exciting to be here and get to do this with you all. So yeah, I specialize, I am a luxury travel advisor. I guess to start off, the reason I say luxury is it doesn't mean five star hotel or high spending dollar point. What that means is really taking the nitty gritty of the details and allowing that to be taken off your plates so that you can spend time working on content and connecting with one another and having a very enjoyable experience. That's what I specialize in. I've been doing this now for just over two years and really fell in love with it when I went on my own first nicer, higher end trip, and saw that there was an opportunity to really expand in this general area. So I love it. And when you get to work with awesome people like you all, it makes it even more fun.
Jody Grunden: Yeah, I would definitely say that it was probably the most enjoyable retreat that I've had on my end. Just because I had nothing really to worry about. In prior retreats it was one of those deals where I was the go to, and then one other person was always the go to guy asking me, hey, what do you think about this? We didn't have any of that on this last retreat, which was really cool and allowed me to enjoy the retreat, whereas before it was a working thing for me and it happened to be a cool thing for everyone else. So it was pretty nice, even though she did about get us killed on hot air balloon. You can talk about that later on.
Jamie Nau: Talk about it later? I was going to talk about that right away.
Lillian Hocevar: That was one to remember. But yeah, I really do try my best to initially dive in. I sat down with Jody immediately to really understand what the team was looking for, and knowing that many of them enjoyed the Vegas/Miami experience and that wasn't available with COVID crisis. So we had to divert and figure out something that kept everyone busy and engaged. Got those check boxes checked off. So it was just a little different.
Jody Grunden: Like I said, I enjoyed it. My expectation was low, to be completely honest coming into it. I'm a beach person. I think Adam's a beach person. You know, we just love to be by the ocean, love to be by maybe a lake, that kind of stuff. But you mentioned Jacksonville, I thought oh okay. I didn’t even know where it was. I don't know where or how she found it, but she put it all together and it was the most enjoyable one I've had.
Zach Montroy: Yeah and I think to Lily, just from having done retreats a lot of times over the years, I never want to do another retreat that does not have a you associated with it, because every meeting leading up to the retreat, you came so prepared and had just so many different options of all the different things that we could do, and had really strong recommendations. To have all of the activity portion planned out and thought through and curated, which you did such an amazing job at, I think like focusing on content was so much easier. And like I said earlier, like Jody said and Jamie said, just having you thinking through all the options, and your expertise there was just amazing to see how well the retreat went because of all that work that you did up front and then obviously on the ground at the retreat.
Jody Grunden: And it really wasn't the obvious stuff a lot of times. We had we had a chef come in and meet us at the beach and made food for us, which was really cool. I say beach, it was a little lake. We had the same chef make the food for us on day one at a winery. Then we ended up with a different chef making food for us in a campground with a bunch of tips and stuff. Oh, don't forget about the food cart that wasn't actually a food cart. It was actually a drink cart that came up and made our drinks for us. So that was pretty cool. So it was, a lot of out of the normal stuff. It wasn't just going to a hotel and making sure that you get this restaurant and that restaurant. She did a great job on making it really cool and making it a cool experience versus just simply a vacation or time away, that type of thing.
Lillian Hocevar: Talk about an ego boost right now.
Jamie Nau: That's the whole purpose of this. So what I noticed at this retreat is there were no wrong turns. I do attribute that to you Lily. Sometimes I'll go on a retreat, sometimes four or five days, and occasionally at that restaurant the people were good and I had a fun time, but my burger just wasn't great or whatever. They didn't have something on the menu I would choose. So I'm curious, from your point of view, how much of that do you tailor for specific groups and then how much work kind of goes into that of choosing restaurants and activities, and how much was luck?
Lillian Hocevar: I mean, a huge part of what I do is connecting the dots really. Like I mentioned, getting to know what the group's needs are, but then also really getting to know the team at the hotel that you all stayed at in Jackson Hole, and connecting with them to understand what their recommendations are. Once they start filtering that, I did begin to reach out to, for example, Jackson Hole Winery. They then brought me in on the chefs that we brought in and highly recommended them. Then I start researching, digging in and connecting the dots to make sure it's the right experience for you all. Honestly, the restaurant reservations, specifically the three that we did, which were the only nights that we needed to fill, were the only ones right now with coronavirus that would take a group of 15. So those were a little bit of a shot in the dark, but also were top tier restaurants in the area that had great review.
Jody Grunden: Just the fact that you found the three that allowed us to do it. I would never have found those three. We would have given up. We never would have found the three. So we attribute that to you for sure.
Lillian Hocevar: Well one of them would only take a group of 13, and we had two people that decided to go to Yellowstone, but then cancelled that. So we did luck out at the other two getting to get in last minute.
Jamie Nau: Yeah, there's definitely some luck involved. So Zach, I'm going to turn it over to you now, because obviously we've talked about how much fun we were having and how good the food was. So I imagine it's pretty challenging for a group that's eating well and having so much fun to say okay, now we need to talk about some important stuff. How do you plan that agenda, and what needs to be talked about, keeping in mind that not everybody was there.
Jody Gruden: Yeah, we had a couple of people that weren't there.
Zach Montroy: Including myself. My oldest son got really sick right before we left. And we're in the middle of the COVID crisis and doctors telling me I should not be traveling across the country. We had to pivot pretty quickly. So we did we have a couple of team members who were on Zoom, including myself, and then everyone that was at the retreat. I think there was some collective jealousy happening for sure, like sitting in my attic facilitating the session, and everyone there is having this amazing time of their life. But, you know, from the content side, I think first you just have to make sure you're not planning too much. Like what you do with a team when you're on a retreat should be really powerful, but also really efficient. You know, I mean, I think a big part of this retreat, a big part of our retreat at Summit is building collective time together, building relations with one another because we only see each other on Zoom and on computers all day long. And so Jody has been a staunch advocate of that with retreat's, and I love that part of it. So, yes, we need to cover some content. I think too, we think what we can do that really is going to maximize the in-person experience as well. So we really just figured out what are those things we need to talk about looking ahead to next year? What are those things that we need to be really talking about together strategic in our time? We've got this sort of block of three hours a day to plan together. And so, you know, just looking at that content, sort of what's the high value, high dollar content that we can talk about together. Focusing our time on that is going to make the most difference in the life of the business as a whole.
Jody Grunden: Yeah you mentioned three to four hours a day. That's really all we had for content. And that was by plan. We could have spent eight to ten hours in meetings all day long. But, you know, we don't get that opportunity as a distributed company to get the chance to hang out with each other. And that's the coolest part about it. That's what to me, that's the biggest focus on our retreats. To be able to grab a beer with each other, hang out, get to know each other better. You know, things that you don't get that option necessarily on a Zoom call. Most meeting topics, most workshopping can be done virtually. It can be done in a distributed environment. We've done it before. It's not a big deal. So going into one of these retreats, in my opinion it is important to focus more on the other stuff. The intangible stuff. Different things that you wouldn't typically get a lot out of in a Zoom call where afterwards everybody's talking about it. It's like oh, we just spent two hours on assessing whatever or EQI. Now we're talking three or four hours, just kind of casually about what that even meant, that type of thing. Directly not forced to, but more of an impromptu thing, which is huge.
Jamie Nau: The funny thing with that is, I know we didn't do DISC on this trip, we did it one of our previous retreats, and I went to dinner afterwards and that's all that was talked about at dinner. People comparing their styles and was surprised at what everyone’s styles were. That's what we spent the dinner talking about, those activities. I think it's important to have activities like that. So Zach, my follow up question to that is, obviously when we do our retreats like Jody and you mentioned, we're only doing content for three to four hours, is that because we're distributed? Or would you do that similar for a company that is a brick and mortar and they're just meeting up on a retreat?
Zach Montroy: Yeah, if you asked me that a couple of years ago, I probably would say loaded up with content because you've got these dedicated times where you can work on the business rather than in the business. But I think even in the case of brick and mortar, you're sort of like passing ships in the night. Oftentimes in the office, you're not intentionally building those relationships. So, yeah, I mean, I think half of the content in half a day of intentional team building in time with one another is really perfect. And you've got the evenings to spend time with one another as well. I love what you both just said there about DISC. That was a really powerful activity that we've done a couple of times as a company. And it equips people to have these conversations to dive into understanding one another outside of the workshop. So, again, like, how do we prioritize that time in such a way that we're equipping our team to work better with one another, to understand each other better and ultimately in our work, understand our clients and get to serve them better as well. And I love after a workshop hanging out and having beer with one another in the evening, and hearing those conversations like, I can't believe, or I never thought that you were a “I” style. What do you think our client is? I just think that is such a valuable investment in our team and a valuable investment in the company as well.
Lillian Hocevar: Yeah, it sounds very much, and what this retreat doing this for you all for the first time was very intentional. The meetings you had, they were intentional to grow as a group and individuals. and then creating time after that's not so regimented, that gives people the freedom to do what they want, but also come together in the evenings to then continue those discussions. So that's really cool.
Jody Grunden: And it's kind of funny because I made it really optional. I figured, you know, hey, there's going be a lot of people tired of seeing me this whole time. So I made it optional of saying hey, if anybody wants to go out for dinner with me tonight, we can. I figured maybe I would get one or two takers to do that. And it wasn't one or two. Everybody showed up, you know, and how often does that really happen at a team retreat where people want to hang around each other? And that's what we find that's so common to ours. I hope that's common to other distributed company retreats. I know for sure it's definitely not common for brick and mortar company. Most of the brick and mortar ones I worked at, you couldn't wait to get out there. You're making excuses to miss the last two events or whatever, so you could hang out with your family or whatever. Whereas here it's completely different. Like I said, that's a characteristic for us. I would like to imagine that's also a common theme amongst other distributed companies as well.
Jamie Nau: I think a lot of it was because, you know, I've done the brick and mortar retreats where I'm in Miami, but I'm in an office working from 8:00 a.m. until 6 p.m. Then we go to things. But ours were, you go to the meeting in the morning, then in the afternoon we kind of did different things. And again, sometimes I hung out with you, Jody, but sometimes I hung out with Jake or hung out with different people. And so, like, we all kind of like hung out with different groups in the afternoon. They were different every day. Then we'd come back at dinner and we'd all kind of like tell stories about our day. So I think that's what really made it cool, was like just the way it was broken down. Like that was really, really helpful.
Jody Grunden: I think spouses enjoyed it, too. I mean, I really do. I mean, again, a lot of them are like, oh, do I have to go to the retreat or the company picnic or whatever it might be. And it's like I think the spouses truly had had a great time. I could be completely wrong. I'm very biased about it. I know mine for sure did.
Zach Montroy: It was really cool to see the excitement that everyone had and the energy that everyone had coming back off the retreat. And to me, that's like that's how you grade a retreat, right? Like how energized, how excited about the future is the team coming back with? Because we've built relationships, we've seen each other. You know, we spent some time planning with one another. I remembered back to a retreat I went on a number of years ago where our boss planned from 7:00 a.m. until like 9:30 pm. Every minute was accounted for. I just remember getting back from those retreats, like I need to not talk to someone for like 24 hours. And I'm an extrovert, like my personality. I can't even imagine what other people felt like. So I love that balance that I think our team retreats have. And I think like Lily was just saying, you've got to be really intentional about it and really put a lot of thought behind that.
Jamie Nau: I think you have to be intentional about the content as well, because not only did I come motivated back, motivated about the people I'm working with, but I also came back with some initiatives. Like I couldn’t wait to get back and have this meeting with the CFOs about this and really get the ball rolling. So I think a lot of that is because of the content too, not just the adventures we had.
Zach Montroy: We spent, we had some hard conversations over. We used a tool called the For Helpful List, and we really evaluated for our own areas and for the company as a whole, what's going right, what's wrong, what's missing, what's confused? Each of us kind of came with our list of what's happened in our teams and in our departments over the last year and then started looking ahead. What do we see coming that's going to be really important for us outside of the day to day to make sure we're staying on the cutting edge of technology, to make sure we're serving our clients well, to make sure that we're learning from mistakes that we've made in the past. I think, again, like that intentionality seems to be the word of the day. But I think those are the things that are going to continue moving us forward as a team, and for Summit as a whole. And those weren't easy conversations. That was hard work, but it was sort of like we got to get done with the work, and then you all went parasailing and balloon riding and all that kind of stuff, and I went back down the stairs.
All: Laughing [in audible]
Zach Montroy: But I mean those conversations went really, really well, I thought.
Jamie Nau: I agree, I definitely got a lot out of them. Like I said, I came back raring, ready to go and just jumped right into work. So Lily, I'm going to throw it back to you one more time here on some of the adventures you chose for us, or team building activities you chose. How did you go about choosing those? Again, we talked about how important those are and they weren't typical team building activities either. It wasn't like trust falls and all that stuff that you see at retreats. So can you kind of go into a little bit about how you chose those adventures for us?
Lillian Hocevar: I mean, it goes back to Jody again, and really digging in with what he thought the team as a whole would really enjoy. Initially we were going to do a pontoon boat experience on one of the lakes in Jackson Hole. And with COVID again, we got another curveball last minute saying they're not allowing groups and doing rentals. So what's another water experience? And one of the main ones that they all got to do was whitewater rafting, which is exhilarating. It naturally is a team building experience because you have to figure out who's rowing when, and if you can ever post the pictures, it's amazing because I always think Jody is the guy in the back holding the ores up. But it is not him. He is getting drenched.
All: Laughing [in audible]
Lillian Hocevar: I think there is a lot of balance that goes into it. And what the group had was the ability to decide what works for them and their families, and then also make decisions, on after whitewater rafting we knew people were going to be starving and hungry. So what type of eating experience would be unique, different, naturally create some social distancing. So let's find a cool park and bring in a chef. I think a lot of times one of the things that was coming up with me when everyone was speaking is I think it can be easy to go with an all-inclusive style experience when you don't have additional help, which is great. Those can be awesome choices. But what are the wow factors and the different things you can layer in that it’s not just like, well, it's all included. Go do what you want. But what are the wow factors.
Jody Grunden: So the question comes now, we decide at the end of a retreat, one of the big things to do is to determine where we're going to go next year and we pick the Bahamas. Now, keep in mind, this year we picked Cabo. That was nixed because of COVID. So then we go to Miami and of course, Miami becomes a hot spot exactly when we want to do it. Then we thought, oh, let's go to Arizona. Arizona again became a hot spot. The we resided on South Carolina. Then as soon as we did that again, a hot spot.
Zach Montroy: And a hurricane, right?
Jody Grunden: A hurricane came through Miami and Carolina during the retreat. So that would have been really good picking on our part. So we settled with Jackson, Wyoming, and had a blast. It exceeded all expectations. Now we've got next year coming up. We've got a whole year to really plan this thing. So Lily take me through the steps of what you're going to do from here, until then on planning.
Lillian Hocevar: Yes, so once that place is decided, I put together a presentation of various property option of hotels, resorts that could accommodate the group knowing their various interests. And so we landed on Atlantis, and are figuring out Atlantis’s five plus hotels on property that you have to choose from. So we're narrowing it down as to what's going to work. So first is hotel. Second from there is getting that booked and then we start planning out the day to day experience. With a place like Atlantis, you have everything on site, but you're also lacking a little bit more of a culturally immersive experience. So what are things that we can do that's now going to get the group off property in intimate conversations with each other to really connect? And it's going to be that additional, again, I say wow factor that's going to make the retreat different from just going on a family vacation to Atlantis and doing all the bells and whistles stuff. So that's what we'll slowly chip away at with some group dinners. Of course, from there, once we finalize, I build it out in an app so everyone gets a travel app that they take with them that not only has the agenda, but alternative options that they can do and experience. I am on site as well to be an additional resource to kind of get ahead and make sure everything's set up properly, and that's again, a great way for people to find balance. The one thing I hate when I travel is when I wake up and say, what are we going to do today? And then by noon haven't decided what the heck we're going to do today. But if you have it in front of you it make those choices a lot easier.
Jody Grunden: The one thing I would say is that when we're on the retreat, we involved Lily in everything we did. So I thought that was really cool because, again, it took a little bit off me. The selfish part, it took some off of my end because instead of everybody coming to me and asking me, what are we going to do next? Or maybe even Kelly, our marketing director, where are we going to do next? They end up knowing Lily because Lily has been with them for dinner, she's been with them, you know, at the different events. And she went whitewater rafting with us and all the cool stuff. Which I think was a really cool thing overall to have her invited. And again, apparently that doesn't happen very often, but I would highly recommend it for sure. It just made the experience even that cooler. Then it made you know who to thank at the end. It wasn’t me, it was her. I thought that goes a real long way with our entire team. I wouldn't be surprised if people from our team reach out to you and say, hey, we're going somewhere, can you help us find that experience? Because that's the cool thing that happened during the time we had with her out in Jacksonville.
Jamie Nau: I agree. I enjoyed hanging out with Lily. I think also once you get to know us better you kind of could see that the activities you planned were perfect. Like I said, especially for my family I think everything you planned was exactly who we were. It was perfect for us.
Jody Grunden: And it will make it easier for her when we go to the Bahamas now that she knows everyone.
Jamie Nau: Yeah, for sure.
Jody Grunden: Other than Zach, of course, who didn't make it.
All: Laughing [in audible]
Zach Montroy: From an owner perspective though Jody, you have been ever since I've been working at Summit, a huge advocate, I mean really a staunch advocate for retreat's because you see the importance of them. But I know that this is not a small investment. I mean, this is a big investment that you're making in a team. Where did that become important to you as a business owner? And why do you continue making that such a big investment every year?
Jody Grunden: Yeah, great question. Before Summit I didn't know anything about retreat's. I just thought that the really, really big companies did retreat's not everybody. And when we picked up our first creative agency, which was Lullabot, like I mentioned before on things, I learned as much from them as they learned from us as a CFO because they were the first distributed companies we ever worked with. And with that, the big thing they had is they always had two or three team retreats, and then they had a departmental retreat. So everybody got together at least twice a year. I thought that was pretty unique at the time. I thought it really cool. And then thought how do they get the funds? Well they budget. They forecast. It seems kind of funny, but when you forecast things, then magically things happen and you magically find how to cover expenses and that sort of thing. And you manage everything around it, you know, plus the fact that it didn't hurt that we were going distributed. So the four and a half percent of our annual revenue typically would go to rent or whatever, you know, maybe a portion plus of that went towards a retreat. So it was one of those things that, yeah, we saved a little money maybe going distributed. But in the same regard, I didn't want to take that money and just waste it and put it in my pocket. I wanted it to go back into the team and really develop the team because I think that's like that's huge. I think retreats are huge. We'll always have them. We'll always have one to two a year, one company retreat and then departmental retreats, which typically the majority of the people are involved in that. And we'll have that on a continual basis because again, it's so huge to the culture of the company. I mean, people look forward to going to the retreats that they do. I mean, and we typically don't have families involved in retreats other than our director retreat. We invite the entire family, which is kind of cool. And that added a perk for being a director. But for the rest retreats, it's just simply, you know, themselves, you know, and we don't typically have their spouses come along. We do allow their spouses to show up on the last day for our big dinner. Which we have on the very last day, and if they want to make it an extended weekend, they're more than welcome to do that. So they can kind of turn it into a mini vacation if they want to with that. So that's why we typically have their treats. But Wednesday through Friday night, and then Saturday is when they can, which is usually a travel day, they can turn that into an extended two day vacation if they wanted to, and kind of enjoy the area that we go to. But, you know, and again, that gets them more involved, and it's kind of cool meeting the teams families. A lot of times you just see them from the head up, you know, from the chest up or whatever, that you're seeing on Zoom. So in person it's amazing to see how tall people are and how small people are. One thing that you always recognize is how short I am and how tall Jake is. You know, it's like Jake's a monster in person, but very small when he's on the camera. You get a chance to see all those different things. And then meeting Jamie's spouse was really cool. I've met her before, was cool hanging out with her. And, you know, that's just the fun part of that. Meeting the kids was a first. I got a chance to meet Jake's kids or somebody else's. And always making it optional. So if Jamie didn't want to bring his family and just wanted to have a time away, he could do that. And there be nothing that looked bad or good about it, it is just what you decide to do. I think again, really important parts of a retreat is not forcing my will or my ideas on people, but just kind of letting them do what they want to do and just being part of it, which is pretty cool.
Jamie Nau: I think for me, having my family there and my kids and my wife, it was huge. Again, just having that connection to work like they know what I'm doing all day. They know I'm down in this office and they're not sure exactly what I'm doing. They know I'm talking and I'm meeting with people but they don't know my coworkers and all that stuff. But now that they know, like my daughter talks about Jody once a week, like what a cool dude he is and how he does all these cool things. I know we are making Jody’s head big but that's the honest to goodness truth. Like my daughter talks about Jody all the time, and that's just from meeting him once. So I think it is huge. And again, having your spouse’s buy into your work is one of the most important things. I tell that to my clients all the time. I know when I've left jobs like a lot of times, my wife would say your working way too much and we never see you, we never do things. But like when your spouse knows the people you work with and knows what you're doing, it's a lot easier to stay connected to the job. So we are actually a little bit over our normal time frame here. This has been a fun topic. I wanted to just get everybody's final thoughts here before we sign off. I'm going to start with you, Lily. Any final thoughts for our listeners? How would they how would they get a hold of you if they want to reach out to you?
Lillian Hocevar: My email is best, or a phone call. I also respond to text. So I don't know if there's a way to link it.
Jamie Nau: We can in the show notes.
Lillian Hocevar: A final thought that came up while you were all talking is I want to acknowledge the strong culture you have at Summit. It was very apparent with you all and the rest of your team, and you don't find that everywhere. I think retreats are a great way to amplify a company's culture as well. So kudos to all of you.
Jamie Nau: Great. Zach, any final thoughts?
Zach Montroy: Yeah, you know, I mean, I think Peter Drucker said it best. We're in the knowledge economy where most workplaces require our constant thought and action. I think, you know, thinking about turning off, thinking about leaving work, and especially in a remote environment where we have a fifteen second commute from our kitchen to our home office, taking that time and investment in your team is something you are going to see dividends on in the future in how we work better together, how we communicate, how we serve our client. So it is like what Jody said, an investment. I think one that you see payoff over and over again in the context of your team.
Jamie Nau: I definitely agree with that. Jody?
Jody Grunden: I would say the biggest thing, if you're distributed, there's really no choice. You've got to have retreats. That's just part of it. Your culture needs that. If you want your people or your team to be on your team for a long time, they've got to be connecting. Just being over video is not going to work for three or six days of the week, 5years in a row. It'd be tough for sure, but retreat's really, really do that. But the key then is when you have retreats, don't workshop it to death. I ran into companies that one hundred percent of their time is completely recreational. They have no meetings at all. And it works really well for them, you know, which is perfectly cool. Nothing wrong with that. Just make sure that you're bonding and make sure that the end goal is that people want to hang out with each other at the end of the day. They don't want to do their own thing that's the key. You can't force it, but you've got to build that so that the people really, truly want that. I think that's the really the key of a successful retreat. When it is 12 o'clock at night and everybody's hanging out in each other's rooms because they can't get enough of each other, that type of thing is pretty cool. I'm not saying you have to be out until 12 o'clock in the morning, but what I'm saying is that people want to hang. They are asking, what are you guys doing afterwards? Let's grab a beer. Let's hang out. You know, that's the key to successful retreats.
Jamie Nau: Those are all great points. I definitely have gone to Summit retreats, where my family is not there. I've gone with very little sleep because I'm having so much fun. So, I appreciate Lily, Zach and Jody coming on. I thought this was a great topic.