Shortly after I started C3 Network in 1997, I found out about Jim Cecil who was a motivational speaker and the creator of a program called Nurture Marketing. He was a leading supplier of marketing support to Microsoft in those days and also held weekend offsites where you could “come to the foot of the master” to talk about your sales and marketing challenges. I traveled to Seattle to spend a weekend with Jim at his home and have never forgotten that experience.

Offsites can be good and bad. I held a particularly good one when I hosted a team from Bosch who had recently purchased our Diesel Technology Company. I found the meetings held at our offices in Grand Rapids and their offices in Stuttgart to be stilted, stiff and somewhat guarded. I remember one of our USA staff members saying about the Bosch people, “They are speaking English but I don’t think they are hearing English.” Another one said “These guys just get up in the morning differently than we do.” 

We had a communication barrier and needed a solution. So I rented a B&B in Grand Haven, right on the shore of Lake Michigan. It was February, a winter storm was blowing and the lake was frozen but we had a cozy living room style conference room with a roaring fireplace, a large white board, and all day to have a discussion. I opened the meeting with a request and a question – 1) “Tell us about your best childhood memory.” Suddenly the Bosch folks were human, we found out that our shared experiences were stronger than our differences. 2) In your trips to the USA or to Germany what is the best thing you experienced.

• We learned the Bosch chief engineer learned to play the piano as a youngster and has always  loved sitting down to play.

• We talked about experiences fishing for scrappies on an Alabama river.

• An American was amazed by the urban tram efficiency in Stuttgart.

• A German was in awe of the number of cereal choices at the Meijer shopping center.

We let our guards down, then got on with business. At the end of that day we had outlined the key challenges at the company, brainstormed some solid solutions and got excited together about some new products in development. One day on a frozen lake changed our working dynamic.

Over the years at Euclid, Freightliner and Diesel Technology, I hosted multiple offsites and thought I had the formula down pat. Then I met with Jim Cecil for a weekend and realized I had just been scratching the surface. His Nurture Marketing approach was pure genius and could apply to much more than customer relations. I have thought about building offsite experiences ever since but have always been too busy to pull it off.

Now I’m not.

Introducing The Farm Offsite

Find your edge and free your message by breaking down the communication barriers that exist within your team. Come to the Farm to open up and get down with some serious ideation.

Farm Offsites are single topic focus sessions. Rather than setting a 5-year strategy for the entire company or evaluating the M&A opportunities in your market space, I want to grapple with a single topic – the approach to a troublesome customer, launch ideas for a new product, how to reduce the churn of new employees, building killer board presentations … you get the idea.

One Day Event — $5,000.00 plus travel, lodging, restaurant meals

• Arrive Thursday afternoon flying into the Grand Rapids, MI airport (GRR)

• Rooms at the Ada Hotel

• Group Dinner with Derek at the Post Tavern

• Up early for breakfast at the Grist Mill

• 10 minute trip to the Farm – meet in a living room setting on a small lake for a session facilitated by Derek

• Lunch at The Farm (included in Offsite Fee)

• Afternoon — continued ideation ending at 3PM

• Depart GRR by 5PM

Full meeting synopsis with action map submitted to convert your ideas to an implemented plan

Interested? Go to the Contacts Page to send me a note.