If there's one thing everybody looks forward to in a remote company, it's definitely the company retreat. An event where everyone is able to enjoy, hang out and talk about work, life, and random things in-person and not through virtual meeting rooms. These events are important for our company's culture and we know how such can ultimately contribute to a high-performing virtual team. In this episode, we sit down with Jody Grunden, Zach Montroy, and Lillian Hocevar our team members who made such an unforgettable company retreat possible.
"I really think what Summit has created, and Jody and Adam have created together is something unique; and also is something that should be looked at by other companies and replicated with how they treat their employees and creating that connection in a very remote working environment" - Lillian Hocevar
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Jamie Nau: Hello and welcome to today's podcast. It's that time of year again for us to talk about retreats. So with all of the COVID travel restrictions, we have not been able to have this conversation for a while. However, we just got back from our director retreat. So if you look at the cameras and you're watching this on video, you can see everybody's nice tans. That's all because of the work that Lilly did in getting us to the Bahamas. So I'm going to start with you, Lilly. We're going to do a live postmortem on our last retreat. So talk a little bit about where we went and what we did and give us an overview of everything that happened.
Lilly Hocevar: Yeah, glad to be back. So we chose the Bahamas and Atlantis for the directors retreat. Families were invited, which made it a lot of fun and a very dynamic trip from what we were doing. But, yeah, everyone flew into the Bahamas. We gave the first day there for everyone to unpack and get a feel for the resort, and offered a cocktail hour for everyone to show up at. Some people meet for the first time, others get reacquainted.On our second day, we had meetings commenced for the direct directors and the families all got to go down waterslides, go to the beach, hang out, and do what they wanted to do. And we started off then from there in the evening with a beautiful beachside party to get everyone in the mood and ready for the Bahamas. I know there was some pushback because we made everyone wear white for family photos. And I'm looking at you, Zac.
Zach Montroy: Listen, I didn't own anything. I did not own a white shirt, so I did have to purchase that. But it's all good.
Lilly Hocevar: I mean, you rocked it. Your family, your pictures turned out great. So, yeah, we started with a white party. Everyone wore white for pictures to match and it looked really pretty along the water. Then we finished the final day with either our choice of free time to do the things that you didn't get to check off your list or catamaran ride to an island and do some snorkeling. So that's a brief overview of everything we did.
Jamie Nau: Yeah, it was definitely a great time. I only got two stains on my white shirt at the barbecue. So that's success in my book. So, yeah, it was a great time.
Jody Grunden: Fire dancer didn’t catch anyone on fire.
Jamie Nau: Yeah fire dancers and the music was pretty awesome. They covered every type of music possible. There was also a tattoo artist there.
All: Laughing [in audible]
Zach Montroy: There were a few judged looks from other parents going home from the Bahamas, like on the plane when they looked at our like seven and eight year old and they had tattoos all over them. And I'm like, well, we were in the Bahamas.
Jody Grunden: I would say that was probably their number one thing, the tattoos on the beach. They will not remember anything other than the tattoos.
Jamie Nau: My kids will definitely remember the beach. We have probably fourteen hours of GoPro underwater video. That they took sitting there on the beach each morning while we are in the directors meeting. It is pretty much the same fish over and over again, but that was definitely their highlight. So logistic wise, Jody, I'm going to ask this over to you. How many people were invited to the trip and kind of how many of those were Summit employees versus families and friends?
Jody Grunden: So yeah, that's a good question. So we had I think fifty people could be forty nine. Forty eight something like that, that we invited on the trip. It was our director team and then with a few additional employees that we felt was important to have during those meetings and with that, so we had probably six or seven employees roughly,
Lilly Hocevar: It was nine employees.
Jody Grunden: Nine employee and then the remainder were family and friends. So majority of the makeup was kids, and spouses.
Jamie Nau: I know we did a podcast in this before, but for our new listeners, explain the thought process behind inviting the families and what the importance of that is, especially at the director level retreat.
Jody Grunden: Yeah, so you can't invite families to all retreats with a budget. Unless you're just a multimillion dollar profitable company that can handle that. The budget's pretty, pretty expensive. So we had to limit it to the directors. And we felt that having the families there gave the spouses, more so than the kids, an opportunity to say thank you. Thank you for allowing me, the owner of the company, to borrow your spouse for the time. Maybe it's extra hour that they had to put in some other time that they were away from the family. And so it's kind of an opportunity to give back to the to the spouse, to the family for the time that we took from them in the year. So that's the idea there. And the bonding is huge now because now the directors families get a chance to know each other. Spouses get chance to know each other. The kids hang out with each other and it just really creates a pretty cool bonding atmosphere with the entire firm director team.
Jamie Nau: I think the cool thing there too is with our director team, it's not like all kids are the same age. You know, we had some college age kids. We had some middle school, high and elementary school kids and we had some preschool kids. So I think that was really cool that you had all these different aged kids hanging out. That made it really fun. To your point, like, obviously I'm a director and my spouse appreciates it more than any company I ever worked for because of stuff like this. She knows that she's appreciated as well as me being appreciated. So Zach, I want you to comment on this as well, being someone else that was at the retreat and had family there. How does your family take it?
Zach Montroy: I mean, my family could not have been more grateful and could not have had a better time. I think we may have had the youngest kiddos there. Our youngest is four and our oldest is eight. I mean, they're still talking about it and asking when we can go back. And we're like, probably never. But anyways, they loved it. They actually got to do like a dolphin training experience that, you know, I mean, it was just amazing. They just had the best time. And yeah, like Jody said, you know, I think that investment in families goes a long way. My wife got to meet other spouses, you know, that I get to work alongside of. That was just great to be able to build relationships. And I'll tell you too, if you got young kids and there's older kids on a trip, that's always an amazing thing because you have to watch your kids less.
All: Laughing [in audible]
Jamie Nau: Yes, that's definitely true. I think it was fun for my kids because my kids are 12 and 14, and at the last dinner there they were at it was a typical Jody dinner where we probably were there for three hours doing the appetizers and sitting there and talking. So my kids got a little bit of an understanding when I come back from a trip and why I'm exhausted. They are like, oh, now we know why. So I'm going to throw it back to you Lilly. So in terms of retreat planning, in terms of inviting families, how often do you see that done?
Lilly Hocevar: I mean never. I really think what Summit has created and what Jody and Adam have created together is something unique and is also something that should be looked at by other companies and replicated with how they treat their employees and creating that connection in a very remote working environment. I agree with what Jody mentioned in you know, inviting spouses and family because of budgeting it definitely is meant for certain employees at a certain level. It's just really cool to see what happens on these retreats with family. It's worthwhile taking a look at if you're looking at doing a retreat and celebrating your team, not only through development at meetings, but also through a memorable experience.
Jamie Nau: So Jody for you, when it came to going into a retreat where families are involved versus ones where families aren’t involved how do you go about selecting the location and what were some of the key things you looked for because families were there?
Jody Grunden: Yeah, that's a great question. So it kind of limits on where you can go. So you're not going to take a bunch of families with kids to Vegas. That's probably not a great location, or New Orleans or something like that. So you really need to look at where it's really kid friendly but can entertain all different ages. Like you said, we had college kids to young kids. So it's important that we find a location that can please all ages. Which there's not that many really out there. You're pretty limited on where you can go and where you can't go. So it makes it really tough on really the scope of different properties and locales that we can actually manage. So, you know, I would say the biggest thing is you have to kind of think of everybody. You have to think of the older people as well as the younger ones to make sure that they walk away with that same experience.
Lilly Hocevar: Even the beach party that we saw is a small scale example of the elements that go into play of, you know, we could have stopped with dinner and a calypso band playing and an open bar. But then what do you have the younger kids enjoying and occupying themselves with so the adults can really actually enjoy the open bar and the calypso band? So what elements then can we bring in? A magician to kind of capture the kid's attention when they first arrived. Then they're like oh, tattoos great. And in fact, the tattoo artist stayed an hour longer because people wanted more. Then a fire dancer for everyone. That's just a small scale example. But that goes into play when you're planning an entire trip and picking a location too.
Jamie Nau: I think that's the key of having a Lilly involved. I think if Jody, Zach and I would have planned this, we probably would have just had the dinner. We wouldn't even have the musician. We would have a dinner in the open bar and the kids would have been bored. I think that's the importance of having a Lilly there. She thinks through all of different elements. I think even when choosing the location, you know, to Jody's point is that there was something to do for everybody. There was something where, you know, some days we were just on the water park all day. I made a joke to Adam when I was talking to him a couple of days ago, I only saw the casino once. That's when we went to dinner on the other side of the beach. I didn’t go into the casino the entire time we were there because I had the kids and because I had the family. Where some of the people that were there that had older kids probably spent the majority of their time in the casino. So, Zach, let's turn the table a little bit here. I think we've talked about the entertainment and the fun part of it. Now, let's talk about the three or four hours a day where we spent doing business and what we were doing during those times. How did we go about putting together that agenda and discovering what was needed there?
Zach Montroy: I don't really like how you inferred that the three hours that I facilitated was not fun.
All: Laughing [in audible]
Zach Montroy: Yeah, we really set out to talk about what the strategic growth for the firm looked like. And, you know, I think that this is a great opportunity to step outside of the day to day. Obviously a huge investment from the company to do that. And so we really sat back and said, you know, in the next couple of years, we want, you know, we have these big growth goals. And how do we accomplish those together and so we stepped back and first said, you know, who's who is in the room is really important. The investment of the people in the room is really important. So, again, helping to understand our unique abilities and unique contributions. Tom Rath, who wrote the book Strength Based Leadership, said, “As a leader, we can't be great at everything. The greatest leaders understand what they're great at and what they're not great at and leverage those strengths and abilities.” So we used a new assessment out there called Working Genius by Patrick Lencioni, and we went through that together to really understand what our working geniuses are, what our competencies are, what our frustrations were. And so we facilitated some time just around that. What is it that we feel like we do best? What don't we do best? And the cool thing is, in that room, we had a bunch of genius represented. And for most of us, what we are really frustrated with, there were other people that had that genius and so really kind of recognizing, understanding that. We also just had some time of being able to appreciate and affirm one another for the contribution that each person is making. So there is some time dedicated to that as well as challenge. Here’s some things we see that maybe you could work on and do better. And so we left with some really good individual commitments, and then we pivoted to what does that mean for the team? What might our team look like two or three years down the road and really reverse engineered, what is our hiring plan? What are our accountability charts look like based on that growth, based on that trajectory that we want to go down? So we really started with the individual then fast forwarded 2 - 3 years down the road and just kind of worked on reverse engineering. How do we get there? People, processes and ideas and really dissected that, which is, again, just a cool place to do it. Obviously the Bahamas, but stepping outside of the whirlwind of the day to day was really important.
Lilly Hocevar: Yeah, anything is possible when you're in the Bahamas.
All: Laughing [ in audible]
Jamie Nau: So Jody, other than the fact that this test we took called you a genius in a couple of ways, which I know you love, but what else did you love about the Working Genius and what else did you get away from that part of the conference?
Jody Grunden: Yeah, just how everybody has a different genius, something that they're good at. And it gives you the opportunity to kind of reflect and know how to interact with people better.
Jamie Nau: I definitely agree. I think most of us knew each other enough where I think a lot of us could have typed a couple of them. I think that it was helpful to affirm that. But also there was there were some surprises there. So I think that was that was good. Zach, throwing it back to you about how the geniuses work together. Can you go a little bit more into that, and how that built the rest of our meeting days?
Zach Montroy: Yes so the six working geniuses are wonder, invention, discernment, galvanizing, enablement and tenacity. So it kind of goes from, you know, ideation to activating those ideas to completing those ideas, making those happen. So for most of us, when we talked about even the affirmations and things that we can do better for most people, they fell within those buckets. Like you do this really, really well. Hey, you need to pay more attention to this. We saw some big correlation in the genius in frustration's, and more than that, like came up with some good ideas on how to mitigate that. Maybe who to delegate that off to. Maybe focus more on these things than that thing. And so I think it just gave us a good framework. It's sort of like DiSC. The great thing about DiSC is because it's easy to remember. I think these are easy to remember. And so, you know, when I need to do a certain task or I've got to create a new initiative, I kind of know who to go to get the ideas going, who to get the team around and activate the idea and then who kind of brings it over the finish line. I think that that's always helpful to know about ourselves, but even more than that, to know about one another.
Jamie Nau: I definitely got a lot out of it. I think you mentioned this as well, we did the talking about each person and I think when you first gave that assignment, you gave us like 15 minutes. We had to write down positives about people and things that they can work on. And I think everybody was a little worried when that assignment first came out. But then once you got started, it was just so easy, it just flowed. I couldn't write fast enough for all the ideas I had. And I'm wondering if you had a similar experience Jody. When we started kind of going through person by person in identifying what their strengths were.
Jody Grunden: I had the opposite. It was very difficult for me to come up with strengths, weaknesses. My whole thing was blank. But then when I heard people talk about different things like, yeah, that's a good strength, I'm going to put that down on my list. But it was hard for me to brainstorm.
Jamie Nau: So Zach have you done that activity before with other companies?
Zach Montroy: I have. That's why I had Jody go last, because by the time that everyone was done he had some really good feedback to share with each person. But, yes, what's interesting is for most of us, sharing that kind of feedback is really hard and really difficult and not something we tend to do on a regular basis. And so I think not only does it give good affirmation and good things to work on, but it also continues to cultivate a culture and where we can share clear and honest feedback with one another. And so I know Jody is giving himself a hard time, but I think everyone's feedback was very meaningful and very heartfelt. I think everyone walked away with some really good points from that.
Jody Grunden: It wasn't not being transparent. I just couldn't think of things that are good and bad. It was a difficult assignment for me.
Jamie Nau: I think part of it too is sometimes it's tough to brainstorm by yourself. It is a difficult task to just sit there in silence.
Jody Grunden: Yeah it was easier for me once I start hearing people talk to get an emotion there.
Zach Montroy: I feel like you're writing like a million words a minute. After people started sharing. You're like, oh yeah, yeah. By the end of it, everyone just kept building on each other. It was cool.
Jamie Nau: I think the coolest thing about it too was I think, Zach, the amount of time you had dedicated to that, we probably went well over it. I think that's because of how close of a team we are, because of how well we know each other. No one just said ditto. I think we probably took more time for that than you wanted us to. I think that was really, really valuable.
Zach Montroy: Yeah I think that's a good note when you're doing retreats like this. You know, we talked about, and in what I tried to get from Jody and Adam what are the things we hope to accomplish from a big picture perspective and then kind of brought a bunch of tools to be able to do that. And we cut some things that we didn't do because you're right, that took way more time than I thought it was going to take. That's sort of the story of my life on retreats and things. But it was really good and that was the right thing to do. And it actually helped us. There were some tools we kind of thought we were going to do that we didn't even need because that went so well and it set us up for the next conversation. So we kind of programed it day by day. We started with the individual. Then we talked about how does this intersect with the team and now how do we plan for the future. And so I just prepared kind of a toolbox for every day. We didn't get to every tool, but that was okay, we got to the right tools.
Jody Grunden: I think that's the importance of having a Zach as opposed to having the CEO or the COO lead the discussion. It puts us all on equal footing.
Jamie Nau: I think having Zach there, similar to what I said about Lilly earlier, like it would not have been as successful without someone like a Zach running that because that is what he does best. I think when I talked about his strengths, like whenever I see Zach at a retreat, I'm like man, the chef is in the kitchen. He's where he belongs. So it's fun to watch him work in that area. I think it makes our retreat super successful.
Zach Montroy: It's a team effort, right? I mean, we were making fun, but I mean, a retreat I planned with Summit a couple of years ago was at a Holiday Inn. And not that Holiday Inns are bad. I'm not passing any judgment, but Jody was mortified. Number one, that I planned a retreat at a Holiday Inn. It would have been way better had Lilly planned it.
Jamie Nau: So the last thought on the on the retreat side of things. So Jody I definitely noticed, the last retreat we did in Jackson Hole, we really focused on what seemed more like short term goals. What needs to be done in the next year. And then this retreat we obviously focused on a couple of years down the road. Can you talk a little bit about the thought process behind that and kind of how we go from one retreat to the next?
Jody Grunden: I think the short term goals are important to have because again, we had some leaks in the company, different things that we needed to fix right away. As we fixed those leaks, the leaks were big. Now the leaks are really small in the company. So we've got some smaller leaks which those can be handled a lot of times on the weekly meetings or the monthly meetings, you know, that sort of thing. It doesn't really need to be addressed necessarily at the retreat level. So I wanted to get everybody off of the short term and their heads buried, and start looking at the long term, because what happens is we don't start looking at the long term those leaks become waterfalls and pools before we even get to them because we weren't thinking ahead. So I thought it was really important to really focus on what the company is going to look like in three years, because we are growing, we about double our size every three years. So that's a pretty good growth pattern. And the only way to be successful in that growth pattern is really planning for that growth and making sure that hires are made prior to the need for that hire. Making sure the cash reserve is built strong enough to be able to afford hiring a million dollars in new hires every year. So it is really important to look forward. And that's what I wanted the director team to do. Let's look forward as directors and let's let the managers look at the day to day stuff. Now that we're putting different levels underneath that. The director should always be looking forward, not in the weeds, not doing the day to day stuff.
Jamie Nau: So Lilly are you excited to plan a retreat for a company that's twice the size in a couple of years?
Lilly Hocevar: It will be awesome. As long as everyone's flights go to plan it'll be great. No, I mean, this this work and working with you all is my happy place. I thrive in it. And the bigger the group, the more intricate the itineraries get and the more people you're looking out for, that excites me even more. So bring it on.
Jody Grunden: We've got one coming up next week, actually, which kind of leads to the next topic. We're having a part two. Next week will be the CFO retreat. So we're planning that and we're going to have that in Las Vegas and we'll be conducting our next podcast during that retreat. So that should be pretty exciting. Talking a little bit about that. Again, we did the director retreat, which is directors with families and then the CFO retreat is a little different. Families are not invited, which is purposely done that way so that the CFOs get a chance to hang out with each other more often. They don't have the excuse that they've got to go back to their spouse at night. They can feel more free to hang out and really kind of get a chance to bond with each other a little bit more. So that's the purpose of that. But then we do have that element where families are allowed to come in that last day for a really cool dinner and stuff like that. We'll talk more about that on the next one. But it gives them the opportunity to extend it to a nice little vacation afterwards they can do that for a couple of days afterwards. We try to end on a Friday to give them the ability to have a Saturday and Sunday, and then back to work on Monday type of thing. So a little different. Much smaller. Only about 20 people at the CFO retreat.
Jamie Nau: Yeah I think we will be doing our first attempt at a live podcast next week. So we are going to bring several cameras, several microphones, everything we need to try to do this live in Vegas and hopefully the slot machines remind us what we're trying to talk about. It should be a really good podcast. I'm looking forward to that one. To Jody's point, there definitely is a different mindset behind both retreat's in not having the family there. I've been to five or six CFO retreats now and it's just about bonding. It's about spending time and playing cards against humanity until four o'clock in the morning in a hotel bar. That has happened before. I'm sure it'll happen again. But it'll be a great podcast and I'm looking forward to it. We'll have this exact same group on that podcast.
Lilly Hocevar: I think we've had one hundred percent attendance, and people deciding to stay longer or had plans and needed to leave but then we're like, I'm canceling those plans because I can't miss out on this thing that we're doing. So good track record for sure that that starts at the top too.
Jamie Nau: Especially for a distributed company. It's not like I get to see Jody every week at the water cooler, like we see each other maybe a couple of times a year. So you don't want to miss out on those opportunities. So we're right up on time here . Any final thoughts on the director retreat or things that we wanted to get out there for our listeners to know about on putting together retreats?
Jody Grunden: I would say the key is the planning part. Make sure you have the right people in place for it. Don’t try to do it all yourself as an owner of a company. It would be the most stressful week in the world if I didn't have a Zack and a Lilly on the team that could coordinate the retreat and then manage the retreat as it was going on. So don't try to do it all by yourself.
Jamie Nau: Absolutely. Zach, any final thoughts from you?
Zach Montroy: I agree, you put a lot of thought into where you want to end up at the end of the retreat with facilitation, you know, what do you want people to know? What do you want them to kind of feel? What do you want them to do? I think that that's really important because this is a huge investment. You want to get big dividends from it, not only from the building side of relationships, but also what you accomplish. And you have this amazing opportunity to step outside of the day to day. So think about the end in mind, reverse engineer from there. So, yeah, that would be my advice. And get a Lilly to plan for sure.
Jamie Nau: I will turn it over to you Lilly. What's your final thought?
Lilly Hocevar: I mean, the planning is truly crucial, especially when you're working with groups that are 10 people joining you and more. Along with if you're traveling internationally. I think one of the big things we had to deal with for this trip was some of the COVID regulations and protocols going international. I know that left a lot of people feeling somewhat anxious. But I could tell people quickly felt relieved and confident in the process of traveling to the Bahamas and what needed to be done, because I was there to hold their hand and guide them through the entire way. So it's not only the planning, but also just when you're that set up and have it well thought out when things happen, you're then able to quickly act on a contingency plan because everything's already pre planned out. So that would be the biggest thing that I'd lead with.
Jamie Nau: I think that's even true outside of COVID. Even international versus domestic or whatever. I think just having someone there that's planning because I know I'm more of a fly by the seat of my pants type guy, my wife is a planner and the amount of times like she was reaching out to me through Lilly. There was definitely a lot of stuff up the air that we just didn't know about. I think that having a Lilly there to answer those questions is a lot better than someone internally trying to do it.
Lilly Hocevar: That’s such a guy thing versus girl thing. Jen, Dave's wife, was like, thank goodness you sent that out and everything, like the itinerary and all of that to me because Dave was just going by the seat of his pants.
All: Laughing [in audible]
Zach Montroy: I think I forgot to tell my wife that there was a specialized app that had everything until we got there. And I'm like, just look at the app. And she was like what app? What are you talking about? And I was like, oh, sorry.
All: Laughing [in audible]
Jamie Nau: My wife would be wearing green to the white party without the itinerary. Well, I definitely appreciate you all joining us. We will talk again next week in Vegas.