As a small service business with numerous clients, we have to be realistic that we can’t pull everyone out of the studio and retreat from our company’s work in the middle of a standard work week. But we can retreat to a new venue, off the beaten-path, and unwind a bit without completely leaving the reality of the daily grind, without leaving our clients hanging and without breaking the bank. That’s exactly what we did in early October when we retreated to Quarry Hill Farm (QHF) in the Endless Mountains of northeast PA for a few days.
Cell phone reception was minimal, but the building was equipped with wireless internet which is all we really need to operate LaunchDM most of the time. We work in the cloud!
We departed the studio on a late Wednesday morning and met a few clicks north at Jason’s house to load our gear. From Leesport we headed up 61N to Pottsville, PA and home of the original Yuengling brewery – the oldest operating brewery in America – for the 1:30 tour. It’s an awesome experience – highly recommended. From the brewery we jumped back on 61 for a few miles before hitting 81N for an hour or so until we reached the Endless Mountains region of PA and backroaded it to QHF.
Our days at QHF were filled with getting clients everything they needed while we leisurely worked our way through Belgian waffles, fired potato guns, grilled meats, mountain bike rides, shuffleboard games (a.k.a. longboard), pulled pork sandwiches, tennis and, of course, a few cold Pennsylvania beers in the evenings.
The point here is that there are ways to build and bond with your team off-site without spending an arm and a leg and without ignoring your customer/client base. QHF was great for us. Think about your team, your customers, your product or service and figure out a time and place – an occasional dinner, miniature golf outing, ski trip, whatever – that might work for your group.
