Kissing the Bricks! Celebrating Two Years Of &Marketing With Our First In-Person Meeting

Written By Rajat Kapur

On November 7, 2019

Last week we held our first ever in-person team meeting at &Marketing. The goal was to celebrate the milestone of how far we’ve come after working together for over two years. Most of our team works from “wherever” and finally had a chance to meet one another face-to-face! We enjoyed laughs, plenty of food & drink, excellent dialogue led by our domain experts, and a surprise trip to “kiss the bricks” at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The entire trip was a game-changer for our team, but here are a few of my biggest takeaways.

Highlights 

I expected everyone to enjoy meeting in person, and they did! During our hiring process, we don’t just look for smart, talented, and technically qualified candidates. We painstakingly ask questions about work style, dealing with ambiguity, and other intangibles to ensure each person will blend well with our existing team and work culture. Since most of our employees come from personal referrals, we can prioritize how adaptable and easygoing people are without much effort. Mix all of that with some wonderful meals, a few late nights, and some well-orchestrated “&Marketing Trivia” about hidden fun facts (not all of which were politically correct!) about our team. 

Biggest Surprise: 1+1=3 

The lightbulb moment that surprised me the most during this gathering was the amount of concrete, work-oriented actions that came out of the brainstorming and ideation. Each of our domain experts presented new ideas and best practices as they relate to their specific areas of focus. We encouraged questions, interruptions, and provocations to take what the speaker discussed and bring it to life by applying it to our everyday thought process and work execution. This is where the real power of all of these people together came to life.  

At least ten different moments, we thought of an intersection or collaboration that either wasn’t happening or could happen better on a day to day basis. We joked that these types of ideas “paid for the meeting,”  because if executed, these concepts actually might pay for the costs of meeting many times over. 

 

 Planning for 2020 

This was also a great opportunity to take a step back and look forward to develop our 2020 plan. In the chaos of the everyday grind— especially at a small company— we don’t think about our longer-term journey. This mentality is accurately captured by the below mini-blog from the great Seth Godin.   

“A Year From Now” 

Will today’s emergency even be remembered? Will that thing you’re particularly anxious about have been hardly worth the time you put into it?

Better question: What could you do today that would matter a year from now?

We used our meeting time to:

Reflect on where we have succeeded and struggled

  1. Identify our biggest opportunities for the upcoming year
  2. Set concrete goals to improve service delivery, employee satisfaction, and most importantly, our clients’ results!  

What’s Your 2020 Plan?

Let this be your call to action. Ask yourself these questions:

  • Has your team gotten together recently?

  • Have your team identified your biggest challenges and top goals for the next 12-24 months?

  • If you are a remote team, how you can bridge the distance gap that can sometimes occurs? How can you set aside distractions and transform the culture and trajectory of your business?

 

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About the Author:

Rajat “Raj” Kapur is the founder and Managing Director of &Marketing, and a board member of the Kind Like Joey Foundation.  After a career working with large, global companies, he’s dedicated to providing growing businesses unparalleled marketing support. 

About &Marketing

In today’s fast paced world, many growing businesses are struggling to modernize their marketing approaches because either they don’t have the expertise or the bandwidth to do it themselves.

&Marketing provides seasoned marketing strategy professionals and a nimble execution team to help our clients achieve their goals. Our unique partnership model allows us to augment our client’s existing teams or outsource the entire marketing function in an affordable, flexible, and transparent way.