Re-Release: The Most Valuable Day of the Year: How Annual Retreats Are Transforming Practice Culture

And before we get into the logistics of an annual retreat, because I think for a lot of people listening to this, their first thought might be, "That sounds like a lot of work, you know, and I can barely get people together for my weekly staff meeting.

Now you want me to do an annual retreat? What does that even mean?" Uh, before we get into the logistics of that, we'll kind of break down how you've done it and how you've been successful with that model, maybe even some things you've changed or would do differently, but I'm curious what inspired you to start doing an annual retreat for your practice?

So we've been doing it for several years now, and I believe I may have stolen the idea or gotten the idea from an, a Prima Roundtable years ago.

I honestly couldn't tell you who or give credit to who it was 'cause it's been so long ago.

But I do feel like someone else was talking about how they had either a half a day or some kind of kickoff sort of thing for the year, and I jumped on it and rolled with it, and we have just really grown it from there, and it's a really crucial part to our practice in getting the year going.

Can you walk us through what that looks like? Because I think we're familiar with the term.

For some people, they might think, "Well, does that mean I gotta rent out a, a cabin somewhere out in the woods for a weekend? How much is this gonna cost me? What does an annual retreat actually look like?" And when you described it, I loved the way when we talked before because it seemed very doable.

And, and very valuable and very practical.

But logistically, can you kinda walk us through what a, a typical retreat, in your case it's one day, I believe you said.

What does that look like from start to finish?

A- absolutely.

And to begin with, yes, it is a lot of work, especially the first year.

The second year as you're kinda getting your feet on the ground about it, it is a lot of work, but I do feel like it's very valuable, and it doesn't necessarily have to be crazy expensive.

For us, in three locations, the most expensive part is being down a day.

So we do bring all three locations, all staff.

It is mandatory.

Everybody comes together.

We are fortunate enough that the way we schedule our locations, our biggest or our main location is automatically closed one day a week since COVID.

That was a change we made with COVID.

And so from a production side of things, we choose to have the retreat on the day that that office is already closed.

So we absorb the loss of production from the two smaller satellite offices a little bit easier.

So that's how we started.

We have ...

We started on different days because actually we've been doing it before COVID, and we didn't have that closed day, so we did close all three locations, and, and that hurts.