Nashville team retreat: scary birds, country music, and a photo shoot
45:51 Share

This podcast is distributed by Transistor.fm.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Build Your SaaS. This is the behind-the-scenes story of building a web app in 2023. I'm John Buda, a software engineer. I'm Helen. I'm Heather, customer success. I'm Jason, and I'm a software engineer. I'm Josh, and I'm a marketing engineer. And I'm Justin Jackson. I do product and marketing. Follow along as this Motley crew builds Transistor.fm. We got the whole team on the show today. First time we've ever had this many people

on any episode of Build Your SaaS, I think. But we just recently got back from our second ever team retreat and we went to Nashville, Tennessee. And I thought last year we did a kind of an update episode and I thought we'd get everybody on the mics and do another kind of review of the team retreat.

And it's also just a chance for us to talk about kind of what we're thinking about and working on and working towards here at Transistor. So why don't we start off by just sharing some highlights. What were some of your highlights from the retreat this year at Nashville? Helen, did you have any off the top of your head? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, we did lots of things over the week. But I think for me, the highlight was kind of spending time together. It was our priority to get together and spend time together. So when we did things like playing cards and playing games, I think I learned more about all of you in those kind of couple of hours than I have done over the entire past year, really. So it was very telling, some of you. Some of you, the way you play games, it's very interesting. Yeah.

We played a card game called Cheat, which I had played before, but I'd forgotten it. We had like a we rented, again, a big common meeting room, like a penthouse where we could all go in and it had a circular card table. And yeah, there's a game called Cheat where you have to basically lie to each other.

And that was fun. That was fun to see everyone's different lying technique. Helen was like doing something shady on her side. She had like a system. She was an experienced player. It didn't work, though. I only won one game. So I think Jason was the cheat winner there. That's right. Yeah. Jason ended up winning a lot of those cheat games. Yeah, I'm good at cheating. Yeah.

My favorite is like everybody has a look when somebody calls them on cheating and they have cheated. Everyone has a look.

Just getting to see everyone's little look, like John's little smirk. Everyone basically has a smirk when they're caught. That was one of my highlights, too. We played card games, and we played some Jackbox games on the Nintendo Switch. Yeah, I think just the simple stuff sometimes is the best time. You do get to know people quite well when you're playing cards. Had to engineer some...

some HDMI and USB-C dongles together to actually get the switch to work. Yeah, we have a photo of that somewhere as well. That was funny too. Yeah, we had the switch, but we needed to dock it, but there was no outlet. And so Jason, we had piles of pillows, we had multiple cables, we had HDMI cables and power cables stretched to the limit.

so that we could... It definitely looked like a fire hazard. Right, yeah, yeah. It was fun hearing people laugh, like laughing together. I'm also thinking of, we went out to Grand Ole Opry, but there's a stand-up comedian there,

And Josh, you were just losing it behind beside me. You were laughing so hard at that, that standup comedian they had. Who's he was, he was really funny. He was hilarious. But yeah, just laughing with folks is a highlight when, you know, you get to chuckle in like our weekly team meeting. We get to chuckle a little bit, but all out laughing. That happens at team retreats.

Anyone else? Jason, you have any highlights? Yeah, I mean, I agree with the game stuff. That was pretty fun. Grand Ole Opry was... I didn't know what to expect. I've heard it mentioned before.

But it was pretty cool. It's like a variety show almost. I had no idea. So it was pretty cool seeing that. Everybody there was very serious. It was a very serious audience. Yeah. Well, except those crazy Canadians that kept screaming out during Keith Urban. Yeah. Those rowdy Canadians. The rowdiest of all. They had too many Molsons. I was surprised, too, because I didn't know what to expect. But yeah, the show was so well put together. They've been doing that show since 1925, right?

And you could just tell they know how to put on a good show night after night. Yeah, that was recorded for radio too. So I guess maybe you can hear us cheering or laughing. Yeah, you might if you listen closely to that episode. Or groaning at the one guy who we didn't like. Well, you guys didn't like him. I have been singing that song nonstop. That song by Michael Ray became kind of an inside joke for us because he's got...

He's got a few lines that we ended up referencing a few times. Still got too much Kentucky in my Tennessee, but I'm working on it. That became a little inside joke for us. There's such catchy tunes that you can't help but keep singing it for weeks afterwards. Even the bad country. Yeah. Even the bad country. Yeah.

Most of it was good country, though. I was pleasantly surprised. I also didn't know what to expect. That was a lot of fun. Yeah. Josh, how about you? You're a music guy. Was there any highlights from Grand Ole Opry or the music you saw that seemed especially great? Yeah. I was actually going to say the food was the highlight. Talk about the food, man. Which I wasn't expecting. It was like everywhere we went, the food was just fantastic. And the coffee, too. I mean...

I think I got like a shirt or a hat from like every coffee shop in Nashville, which didn't seem like it was going to be a lot at first. Because like usually, like most cities usually have like, you know, a few good coffee shops. But yeah, Nashville, I was, there was like almost every block, there was like a really good like third wave coffee shop. Yeah, totally. So yeah, that was cool. But yeah, the music...

The music was incredible. Like I've been there once before and it wasn't nearly that great. Like on that main strip Broadway, there weren't that many bands playing this time. What was it like? There's probably like 20 or 30 bands at any given. See, I've tried to explain this to other people too. So Broadway is the main, it's the main strip downtown Nashville and,

And the best way to describe it is kind of like Times Square in New York or what's the main strip in Bourbon Street? Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of. It's just crazy and I

This is probably not the most... It felt like a red light district for music because you're just like walking down this main strip and there's just open windows with bands playing all along. And they're basically playing cover songs trying to get you to come inside each bar, right? And each bar has multiple floors, each with a different band. Yeah, like that honky-tonk... What's it called? Honky-tonk central we went to?

Like, oh, yeah, every floor had a different band. And like, we'd go up and I'm I'm like into music. But Josh, you're a musician. So you were always like, like just losing your shit over some of these bands. Like that one guy was was doing slide guitar with a beer bottle, which Oh, yeah. Which you say is it really hard to do?

Oh, it's really hard to learn slide like with a regular sliding tool or whatever they're called. Yeah, that was incredible. That part was insane to me. There's just so many musicians. You start to kind of go like,

Like, like if you're just comparing them to each other, it just seems like, oh yeah, this one, this guy's okay. You know, but it's, they're all world-class musicians. And then you like go to the Grand Ole Opry and there was like some of these, some of the people that got up there were in their forties and fifties and they had just been like added to that, you know, the Grand Ole Opry family. It's like, there's all these people, like hundreds and hundreds of these like fantastic musicians that are just there, like,

Working on a dream. Working your butt off trying to, yeah, it's pretty, pretty incredible. And if it, and apparently if it doesn't work out, they go and start fantastic restaurants and coffee shops. That's what I've observed. They just retire.

and do something else really creative. Yeah. There was that one, who was that one guy that was, uh, I'm just looking for his name now. I've actually listened to him a few times since Grand Ole Opry, but he was, his story was so compelling because he'd been working his whole life to get on that stage. And we got to see him up there the first time it kind of showed like, cause we are in the entertainment business. Uh, like podcasting is an entertainment form and

And for me, it was just wild to see all of these performers in a different discipline. They're in music. And just to...

make uh analogs to podcasting like that how you how do you stick out when you're just one band on broadway and there's like whatever 30 other bands playing that night uh the idea of like working really hard at something and getting really good at it and that's still not being enough like you that's that's like necessary but not sufficient to make it and then uh

And just how some of these stages are end up being so important. Like if you, if you're an independent artist and you get on the grand old Opry stage, that's like, that could be your ticket. That, that might be the break that you need to get a bunch of people listening to you and, uh, you know, touring, touring more often and getting more fans and all that.

So yeah, that was interesting for me to think about all that while we're there around so many performers. And Montreal, it's just Montreal was where we went the year previous and

It's just a different city, but this was such a performance town. Everybody there is like trying to make it, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. These guys play for hours as well. We like walk past a bar and then come back past again several hours later. The same musician has been playing for hours and hours. So they clearly put in their reps in and...

playing every night for multiple hours at a time. Yeah, it is really wild. It is hard to explain to people, I think. It's like the first time we walked on the Broadway, it was just like a cacophony of you hear all the music at once and you're like, how do I even decide what to play or what to listen to? A friend of mine that used to live there describes it as Nash Vegas. Yes.

which seems appropriate. It's also kind of like the strip in Vegas. Yeah, it's just pandemonium and lots of bachelorettes and just lots of people there to party. And, you know, it's an interesting place. What about you, John? What were some of the highlights for you? Yeah, I mean, similar to Helen, it's just hanging out with everyone in person. We don't get to do it often enough. And

Just getting to know each other a little better every time we hang out in person is always a fun thing. And getting to spend some focused time talking about the company itself and where it's headed and how we want to work together and what the next year looks like. I think those are definitely the highlights. Yeah, if anything, every time we had this feeling last year, too,

Um, it's, it's hard to make it happen, right? It's hard. It took a while for us to plan this, uh, this retreat and, uh, it takes extra time out of our regular schedule. Um, we have to pick a venue, we have to book the hotels, we have to book flights, and then we have to basically leave our homes for a week, which is a pretty big ask, you know, like it's, it costs us something to be there.

On the other hand, it feels like, man, you could almost do it twice, right? Just because being together is so special. And I think working on the internet, the same disconnection we see in the culture at large, like people, you know, just...

barking at each other on Twitter and everything. That does also extend to teams too. You know, it's just like when all we're doing is chatting to each other on Slack and then we have one meeting a week, that's like a video call like this. All of the moments, those little moments that you would normally get in an office where you're getting coffee together or you're talking by the water cooler, like all of those memes about office life,

There's disadvantages to office life, but there are some advantages. And you really get a sense of that when you're together. You get the sense of like, oh, wow, like you get all these little pieces of people. And I think in a way, technology does kind of dehumanize us in a way. And then when we're together, it's like it's a humanizing experience just to be

uh together with each other definitely my highlight well one of my highlights was i've always wanted us to do a photo shoot and this year we made it happen we we went on i should get the name of this is it just called photo walk nashville photo walk nashville yeah i think so and it's

I think most of their business is just doing bachelorettes. And she said she gets some teams, but I think that's the minority. We showed up not knowing what to expect. And basically a bunch of repressed nerds showing up for this photo shoot. Yeah.

And we get there and there's the first thing. I didn't realize she would have this, but we show up at a makeup store, right? And there were two like photo booths inside the makeup store. That's how we started this photo shoot. One was like this futuristic neon thing. And the other was the Taylor Swift room. Oh, and then there was a flower wall. There was three things. And this whole experience was just a riot to me. Just that.

Getting us all into... She would, like, pose us and then, you know, kind of chide us to smile and do different poses. And I just thought it was hilarious, the whole thing. And something I think we'll always remember. It was an experience in of itself to, you know, have her take us to all these places. And then she took us to all these places in Nashville, all these famous murals and stuff that we posed up against. So that was pretty fun for me.

It was fun. Got a nice, nice tour of one of the newer neighborhoods, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it was, yeah. The neighborhood was really cool. It had just been kind of redeveloped. Um, and we got all these great photos of, uh, of us in like, yeah, I think the Taylor Swift room was my favorite. She was like, uh, she was like, how many of you want to get into the Taylor Swift room? We were all like, yes, we will. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, the whole thing kind of felt like it reminded me of Silicon Valley, the TV show when it was like one of the early episodes where they're showing somebody was having a party and they had Kid Rock playing. And it was just like this really weird kind of like context for that. You know, it just sort of felt like it felt like that. It's like we're a tech company. And it was like it was like it was almost more appropriate that it would be more awkward than

It just because of how it was just, yeah, I just thought that was fun. I really enjoyed it. It was, it was great. Like, okay guys. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Josh, work it, work it. Good. Jason, come on, come on, put your hand on your hip. It was, it was hilarious. Yeah. And she took us all over and, and we got all these great photos now too. Yeah. We all warmed up to it by the end, by the end of the session, we were all professionals by the end. Professional, professional,

uh, professional models by the end. Yeah. I, I would actually really recommend this if I think I'd like to do it again. Um, if you can find a photographer in the city, you're going to with your team retreat or, um, or if these photo walks are a thing in other places where you, someone just kind of tours you around, you get to see some of the city, um,

She tried to point out like interesting things about the city and then recommend different places we could go after. And now we have all of everybody got, uh, headshots done in various places. We have all these really fun, uh, team photos. And it was also nice having someone else direct us. I think, uh,

you know, that's not something normally you get. I think in Montreal, we convinced someone to take a photo of us and it turned out fine, but it was nice having all these, we've just got all of these photos that once I get all of your approval, we can use in marketing, social media. We'll see about that. All these things.

I'll try to, maybe I'll put some of these in our, we'll have our episode art will be an approved photo from the photo shoot. Any other highlights that you think we should bring up or other things that were significant that we haven't mentioned yet? I think Justin's fear of birds. Oh, that was fantastic. I'll make sure I get a clip of that for this episode. I've known Justin for a long time. I had no idea. Yeah.

They're just terrified of birds. I don't like birds. They're like little demons. They're little evolutionary demons that have just persisted. Who do you think killed the dinosaurs off? Do you think it's any accident that the only things that remain from that time are birds?

It's going to happen. They're just plotting their next move. And there were some crazy birds there. There was just trees filled with these little demons. And then all of a sudden, a bunch of them flew over me. And Josh has it on video. We'll get Chris to put it in. Yeah. I also bought a...

like a screen print of a poster and it does have a bird on it just to remind me of our time in Nashville and your screen. Awesome. That's great. That's just great. We can briefly describe our schedule because I think folks always want to know kind of how do we do these retreats? How much do we work together? I think there's a tension here, which is

You want to get a little bit of work done when you're on these retreats, but too much and you kind of miss out on all of those little moments we just described. You get those moments when you're not staring at a screen. You get them when you're kind of out experiencing life or sitting down and playing games together or...

going to a nice restaurant. Our schedule is pretty similar to Montreal. The one difference is we had one less day this year. Last year, we flew in on a Sunday, and then we flew out on Friday. Most of us did, anyway. And this year, we all flew in on Monday and then flew out on Friday. So Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday were kind of our full days together. And then we kind of had evenings and mornings together.

Monday and Friday. Hey, how come your team doesn't have their own podcast? Head over to Transistor and use my coupon, transistor.fm slash Justin. You'll get 15% off your first year of podcast hosting. But generally, we would wake up 9 a.m. ish, meet at the penthouse suite, kind of 10 a.m., 11 a.m. ish, work together for a little bit, have a group discussion for one to two hours, and

have lunch, go out, walk, explore, nap, go for a run, work out. And then we often, I think every night we went for dinner together. Is that right? Yeah, we always went for dinner together. We also often had lunch together. And then there would be an evening activity where we would either go to the Grand Ole Opry or just go out, hang out, explore the city together. So that's kind of the general schedule for

Um, any comments on that? Like what, how did you guys feel about the schedule? I kind of missed having the extra day, but I also liked that we weren't gone as long. I thought, yeah, I think, I think it worked out pretty well. I think the one thing I noticed in the difference from Montreal, it seemed like we did less work work. Like I feel like in Montreal we would, we'd kind of meet up in the morning and we'd be doing like a little bit of

as in like sitting at a computer and either coding or doing customer support or whatever. It seems like we didn't do that, which isn't really a bad thing, but there's like a tension where you're taking time off to hang out with everyone, but you're not doing work. And so you're like, I don't know, there's like a little bit of stress involved to some extent to where you're like, oh, I'm falling behind or I'm missing something or whatever, but yeah.

Maybe that was just me, but I think it worked out pretty well. That's where I was. I went to WeWork every morning. That was like a couple hours in every morning, which was nice. They have like a really good view at the location there. But yeah, I think otherwise, like it felt like it went by really quick.

because the planning sessions were really good. But it was like, oh yeah, I guess we only had like, we only had three, like because there was, because of the way that it, and they were, and I think they were like really effective, which was, and yeah, I realized that after I think, but it was nice. I think the,

having some free time to kind of unwind in the afternoon was really helpful. I think the only other retreat that I've been on like this was, it was years ago, but there was like a, more of the group were extroverts. And so it was just like, it was just like go pretty much all day long every day. And, uh, and those, those can be a little bit tricky. So it was nice to

that, uh, it really felt like a balance kind of, um, I didn't come back, like didn't come home, like exhausted, you know, like it was like, we did a lot, but it was, it was nice that there was some, some balance there. Yeah. Yeah. Any Helen, Jason, any thoughts on the schedule? Yeah, I think it worked well. I think with me coming from a different time zone, I was kind of naturally kind of waking up a little bit earlier. So

I felt like I was able to get a few things done before we were able to meet in the morning, which was kind of nice to feel like there was something done in the day before we were discussing the year as a whole or what we're going to do next in the next quarter. So I think it worked well. And then we kind of just sort of naturally moved on to lunch and

We still discuss things over lunch. You know, you can still have a kind of a productive time just being in the same room talking about things and carrying on the conversation that we started earlier in the morning in front of our laptops and then carry that through to lunchtime. And I think ideas come out a little bit better when you've got that kind of freedom to mull things over rather than having to come up with our answers and suggestions within a particular hour. It kind of bled throughout the entire day, really. Yeah, that's a good point. That's the other disadvantage of

of remote work is that you have like typically set meeting times where it's like, okay, every Thursday we meet and we have a schedule, but it can't last too long. Basically everything in remote work has to be scheduled. You have to say, even if it's just like, hey, do you want to jump on a call right now? It's still like, okay, we're doing this thing that's a little bit unorganic. You know, it still feels like this

time box thing, like we're going to be on a Zoom call for a little bit.

And when you're on those retreats and you're just walking around, Jason, you're really good at this. You bring up things while we're walking around, like, what about this? And, oh, we should think about this. And ideas do kind of come out more organically when you're just spending time together. Or when you have an old-fashioned. Or you have an old-fashioned. Okay, let's briefly talk about booze, because I definitely had too much Kentucky in my Tennessee experience.

The last night, I think we need to... Well, I at least need to modify my approach next year. But Friday night became a bit of a debacle for myself. And I think everybody was feeling it Saturday, but I was really bad. Friday, we had a good time, right? So... Thursday. Oh, Thursday. Thursday, we had a good time. So Thursday...

We woke up. We went on that. We had brunch or something together, I think. And then we went on the photo walk, right? And then after the photo walk, we had already booked this amazing restaurant for five o'clock. So we knew we had an early dinner and we thought, okay, well, we got some time. Why don't we go? There's all these beautiful rooftop patios. So we went to rooftop patio. We had a few drinks there.

Then we went for that amazing dinner. That place, Husk, that was...

I mean, we had two kind of amazing, memorable meals there. And that one was incredible. I think we can all agree. Was that your favorite of the two, Jason? Or did you like the other place better? I liked the other place a bit better. Husk was awesome. Yeah, they were both great. One kitchen was the other one. Yeah, kitchen one or one. Yeah, one kitchen was the other place we went.

Anyway, we went to Husk and it was, again, incredible. We had the end. They have incredible drinks. And so we did that. And then we were like trying to decide what we wanted to do because it was still early. And I don't even know how we ended up at that tiki bar. But I think the tiki bar was where was mistake number one.

Tiki bars seem to be usually a mistake. Maybe we just need a blanket policy. No more tiki bars. Oh, man. Now I'm remembering all this. And then the waitress suggested a place on the strip, so we went back to Broadway after that. Then we went to a honky-tonk and listened to music. Now, if you look at the photos...

We are having the best time. Like, we are all hanging out. We are all listening to country music. You know, it's a good time. After the honky-tonk, then we had gone to a few speakeasies in Montreal, and we thought, oh, maybe we should go to a speakeasy. And then I think that was mistake number two, was going to that speakeasy after. That place was strange. Yeah.

Yeah, the Shining. That was a creepy bar that one was. That was awesome. There was like a Shining-themed speakeasy in the basement of this hotel. And we did not need to be there. Next year, we hand out drink tokens to everyone. And you only get so many during the week. Yeah, yeah. You can spend them however you want. Right.

I'm glad I had a burger at the strip there. At Roberts? Yeah, Roberts. I'm really thankful for that. Yeah, that might have saved you, man. Anyway, I woke up the next day and we're all texting. And I think Jason's the first one to make that joke of too much Kentucky in my Tennessee, but I'm working on it.

because we were all not feeling great, right? Helen, you had been more restrained, I think. You were doing okay. Yeah, you guys started at 3 p.m. I waited until 5 p.m. So you guys picked a little bit early. I think I did wait too, yeah. Yes. I woke up and I felt I went through the whole night feeling fine and then as soon as I got out of bed, I was just basically sick.

And I was sick that whole day. I was supposed to have a flight out that day. I had to reschedule it. It was not fun. And I do not want to repeat that ever again. You have learned your lesson. I learned my lesson. I don't even know if I can drink. Ever since that, even the thought of booze just makes me, ugh, I can't even do it. After the podcast movement trip, I realized the value of just, like, I think I had either a Gatorade or...

a water, uh, basically like on me, basically the entire trip in Nashville to that helped a lot. Cause yeah, that was the electrolytes is the key learnings from Denver. Right. Yeah. There is a broader discussion here about booze at company events in general. And I think it is something we in general want to be careful about. Um, I, I definitely, we, we, we were having a good time, but, uh,

Yeah, some guardrails would be nice for... Oh, the other thing is we had a keg in our penthouse, which just meant there was like kind of beers kind of always around.

But I think for the most part throughout the week, everybody was pretty, like, there was really just the first night and the last night where there was a bit more. But yeah, yeah. And I mean, we did have... That last night was big. Sometimes it's nice to have a good time. Just not too much of a good time.

Okay, so that's booze, that's schedule. I wonder if we have any advice for ourselves for next time, ideas for next time, and any other tips we would give other teams that are thinking about doing a retreat.

So anything we want to improve for next time, any tips we can do for other teams? Yeah, I don't know. I think maybe the only thing I can think of about things to improve or tips, I don't think we went as in-depth on some stuff as we did last year, as far as planning goes. We planned everything.

like broadly what we want to do, but we didn't really go too in detail. And like, there's only so many times you can get together in person and really discuss stuff and kind of get down to the nitty gritty and maybe having one less day affected that. But maybe having a kind of a better sense before you get there about what to talk about and what to plan. Like we, we knew we wanted to plan the next quarter, but possibly having that stuff determined before you come. So we could kind of get,

maybe into more detail about some of the features that we want to build and, and things like that, um, might be good. And we did talk a lot about, you know, maybe we adapt our, our weekly meetings to be more product focused and, and plan things out more regularly. Cause we don't do a, we don't do that particularly very often. It's like actually planning features out altogether. Um, but I think, I think there's something to be said for talking more about those things in person. Yeah, I agree. Yeah.

Yeah. And it almost felt like it having that extra day, that's the, that's the challenging part because on one hand it felt great to not ask people to be gone from home for too long, but flying in on a Sunday and having,

And having four whole days, I think, is nice to just give us more time. But we were pretty—this year, we were definitely a little bit—you're right. Like, we had more—less time, like, planning and working together than we had previous. And we could probably build more of that and be more intentional about it. Jason, Helen, Josh, any other—I should just go one person at a time. Jason? Jason?

Yeah, I'm pretty much with John. Just a little bit maybe more formalized.

I'm scheduled for the planning sessions and Helen Josh. I'm sorry Helen. Yeah, I think for retreats the city that you pick makes a big difference so The quiet of the city they're probably more productive the team will be The more fun the city the more the team will feel like they want to kind of go and not miss out on things and experience the place

and what it has to offer. I think what was really helpful for us, we kind of collectively made a list of things that we would like to do before we went. So especially if you're going to somewhere that there isn't a particular person from the team that knows it well, it's useful to have everybody's input on the things that they would like to see and make sure it kind of, the trip is kind of catered to, you know, everybody's interests really, which I think we did really well. Yeah, I think that's a good point. The...

The city you pick matters a lot. And one bit of feedback I got from somebody on Twitter, I think, is we've only done this twice, but we tried to pick great cities that had lots to do. But we tried to pick a midway point between basically the UK and BC and then Illinois. And we tried to pick a midway point between basically the UK and BC and then Illinois.

So us in BC and then Helen in the UK kind of fly about the same amount of time. And then Jason and John had a quick jaunt. And that's a good way of doing that. There's a tool I can put in the show notes, a location finder, discover the optimal location to meet with your remote team. And you can put in everybody's original city and they'll figure out kind of a range of places you can meet.

The other idea is that just going somewhere really amazing, you know, some teams always choose somewhere tropical just because it's beautiful and it's worth, you know, going somewhere that's just beautiful and gorgeous and has nice beaches. Other teams have chosen what we've done, kind of cultural hubs like Montreal, New York, Newport.

I've heard of teams going there too. The activities that you do, it's like, it's fun doing some things that are memorable, like Grand Ole Opry. But I think also just thinking like we had an

an incredible time, as we mentioned, playing cards, playing games. Um, and I think that night where we, we drank too much, uh, if we'd gone bowling into the arcade, that might've been a better choice than the tiki bar. Um, so even just doing simple activities, um, it, it's not like you have to do something crazy and, you know, go to the,

an exciting show every night or whatever. Sometimes just saying we're just going to sit around and play some games, play some cards, watch a movie. Movie's not as good because you're just all watching, but I think you can have simple activities that... I'd be fine making bowling a standard. Yeah, just a standard activity. Yeah, that would be great. An escape room would have been awesome too just to see how everybody does under pressure and like...

working together on it, that would have been, uh, yeah, we've done escape rooms at, uh, microconf. Um, and that ended up being a big hit just because it is, um, yeah, you get to see more of people's personalities again, when you're all doing an activity like that. I, uh, I think the, having that, having that one room where we could all like, it was basically just that we just left it open and everybody would just like wander in throughout the day. Um,

Just to be able to like just sit and chat randomly and stuff. And then of course, where we had the sessions and everything, that was really nice. That would have been really, I can imagine like without that,

Having to, like, go somewhere else, like, off, you know, somewhere outside of the hotel and find a place to, like, either do it just, like, at restaurants and hope that it works out, you know, or actually have somewhere you'd have to go separately would have been, yeah, far less convenient. So that was, I definitely think that that was...

Something that I highly recommend for other companies. And this is interesting because we could choose somewhere that's less exciting in terms of culture and events and...

restaurants and everything. And for example, I know some teams that have just gone to the mountains and they just rented a big place. And there are a few things to do in the place you're staying. Like, you know, maybe there's a pool table and cards and board games. And then the outings end up being like a hike. And so it's...

It's less going out on the town and more just like, hey, today we're going to do this hike in the afternoon. And then in the evening, I've been on a retreat where we hired a chef. And then the chef just came in and cooked at the place we were renting.

So that could work well as well, just to, it would be a totally different feel, but I think that could be equally good just to have, it simplifies some things, you know? Yeah, that'd be interesting. Yeah, I think that'd be awesome. Anything else, any other tips or advice we would give to other teams doing remote retreats or other ideas we want to think about for next year? I think we need to come up with a system of how we pick where we go next. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. And again, it doesn't always have to be, I think, meat in the middle. Meat in the middle is nice, but I think there are other ideas of like we could do one in Europe, for example. We could do one somewhere tropical. We could do somewhere mountainous.

Um, there's other ideas there that I think could work, could work well. Yeah. I liked the, the idea of a, um, going somewhere like Europe where there's more, uh, options for train, like to do, to be able to get on a train and have like a few hours or whatever, uh, where we can actually be working on something while we're going somewhere too. Oh, I love trains. I'm all for that.

Give Helen the hour flight instead of Jason and I. Yeah, eventually give Helen the shorter flight.

Cool. It is invaluable. It was really nice being with everybody. And again, I think we had this sense when we're there together that it did feel like I got to look at everybody and just be like, it's amazing that we get to do this. Like, I just feel fortunate to work with such great people. And the fact that we get to work on this great product and the fact that we have amazing customers, like,

That's the other thing we didn't do this year that I kind of missed was last year, Helen and I went and met with some customers. And that was one of my highlights from Montreal. I just didn't make it happen in Nashville. We just looked up who was kind of around and organized some of that. But yeah, I just felt really fortunate to be there. I think we all had that sense, hey? It was just nice being together and it felt great. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. I think 51 weeks of the year, we kind of very much head down doing work in the most kind of efficient way we can as a small team. And I think this kind of week is like a culmination of all the celebrations and things that we don't necessarily get to do, whether it's people's birthdays or holidays or just milestones within the company, that it's nice to kind of get to do that, even if it is condensed into one week. And I think, yeah, I think the rest of the year we,

We kind of work as efficiently as we can and then it's nice to get to see people in person to celebrate what we've achieved the prior year. Yeah, and maybe we could be even more intentional about that, about celebrating milestones. If we're meeting once a year, that's the time to celebrate the number of years different team members have been on the team, things that we've released.

other milestones that we could celebrate. Sometimes just being intentional about those things and even just naming them in a group can be really helpful too. Cool. All right, everyone. Thanks for being here. And John, why don't we take this opportunity to thank our Patreon supporters? Yeah. Thanks as always to our Patreon supporters for helping us out. We have Pascal from sharpen.page, our friends at rewardful.com,

Greg Park, Mitchell Davis from recruitkit.com.au, Marcel Follet from wearebold.af, Ethan Gunderson, Bill Kondo, Ward from Memberspace, Russell Brown from fotivo.com, Evandro Sassi, Austin Loveless, Michael Sitver, my brother Dan Buda, Colin Gray, and Dave Junta. Junta! That would also be fun to get some of our...

long-running Patreon supporters out to the next one. We've got to have Ajunta fly in. Dan Buda fly in. If we do it in the UK, we can hang out with Colin Gray. He's technically a competitor. He's still supporting the show on Patreon. Thanks, Colin. Michael Sitver's been around for a long time. Austin Loveless, Evander Sassy, Russell Brown. A lot of these people have been around for a long time.

Yeah, well, maybe that's how we choose our next retreat location. We just, where's Junta live these days? Can we expose that on the show? Near Chicago. Oh, I guess Chicago. There we go. We'll just do our next one in Chicago. There you go. All right. Thanks, everyone. We'll see you next time we release the show.

Podcast hosting is provided by Transistor.fm. They host our MP3 files, generate our RSS feed, provide us with analytics, and help us distribute the show to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more. If you want to start your own podcast or you want to switch to Transistor, go to Transistor.fm slash Justin and get 15% off your first year.