The gang goes to Montréal
Hey, everyone. Welcome to Build Your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2022. I'm Jon Buddha, a software engineer.
Helen:I'm Helen. I'm in charge of customer success.
Jason:I'm Jason, and I'm a software engineer.
Justin:And I'm Justin Jackson. I do product and marketing. Follow along as we build transistor.fm. 2nd episode with all of us together.
Jon:Alright. Getting the Getting the team back.
Justin:Got got the whole team on the call, and we just got back from our first ever Team retreat in Montreal. We we were we were there about a week ago. Right? Yeah. It was a week ago.
Jon:Yeah. I think we all came back a week ago or or so.
Justin:So we're gonna talk a little bit about remote team retreats. We're gonna talk about what we learned, our advice for other teams. But maybe let's start with Everybody's highlight or just one highlight. Doesn't have to be your absolute top, but who has, a highlight they wanna share To start.
Jason:I would I'd say I was just trying to think of of 1 a little bit ago. I I really enjoyed the hockey game. I don't watch sports, like, at all. So that was like a a a fun thing for me, especially hockey. But, it was like a whole like, a, it was hockey.
Jason:B, it was In Canada and then see everybody speaks French. And, like, the the national anthem was, like, in French first. It was just, like, a completely different vibe and very fun experience.
Jon:Not not to mention the free food.
Justin:Helen organized that one, and somehow she got us tickets where all the food was free
Helen:Yeah. How I managed to do that? I'm not quite sure, what kind of Free free tea, we were on there, but we managed to get some free pizza and free hot dogs and things. That was good.
Justin:I thought that dude was trolling us. When when we came in, he was like, food is free. And I was like, is he just making fun of us or something? And then we went to pay for the food, and they're like, no. It's all free.
Justin:We're like, what?
Jason:It definitely explained the the extremely long lines.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. There's that's why that's pretty good. How how how is that hockey game different than, watching a football game back home, Helen?
Helen:Very different. Very civilized, very relaxed. Everybody seemed to be in good spirits. It seemed to be like A very family oriented, night out, really. Yeah.
Helen:It was it was good to see. I'm glad we kinda did that. I enjoyed the hockey game too. It was kind of a good introduction to Montreal because we did it at the beginning of the week. Kinda nice to take part in a local event and, Yeah.
Helen:See 2 teams with a a long standing rivalry, compete, really. So, yeah, it's interesting.
Justin:What what did you think of the fan reaction when Montreal scored their one and only goal?
Helen:Yeah. You would think they had had won the entire Game or some some major tournament, but no. It was just just one goal, and, it made it worth While waiting till the end, people were leaving, and, they still haven't scored. So, I'm glad they they got one in the end. Yeah.
Justin:I think the score was Toronto. This is a preseason game. So I think both teams were trying out some of their rookies, but, I think the final score was 71 or something for Toronto. But, yeah, that was that was fun. 2 classic teams on the ice at the same time, and we had really good seats.
Justin:Drank some cheap Canadian beer.
Jon:Got got to watch some Zambonis.
Justin:Oh, yeah. Jay Jason, the Zambonis highlight. Hey?
Jason:Absolutely the highlight of the game. Always always the highlight of hockey.
Justin:You didn't you didn't approve of their, the way that they cleared the ice.
Jon:You think
Justin:be better.
Jason:They could've optimized it. Most definitely.
Justin:Alright. Let's keep going. Helen, do you have a highlight? Yeah.
Helen:I enjoyed the hockey game. But, So I think for me, the walks that we took down to the waterfront or the kind of unstructured conversation time that we had where we weren't talking about a particular topic, just kind of like the dinner conversations and things that we had where we had chance to, yeah, just sort of connect On a personal level, because I I guess the purpose of a retreat is to build that connection, that personal connection. And I think those kind of conversations and just sharing jokes and just talking about the day that we've had. Yeah. It was just a nice way to kind of end each day, really.
Justin:Have we even said where we went? We went to Montreal, And we stayed in old Montreal, which is this amazing part of Montreal that's right kind of along the water And it's beautiful beautiful architecture, but also we could, like, walk 30 seconds, and we were along the water. And, yeah, we had some amazing walks there. Agreed. And the fall colors were out.
Justin:We had, Warm weather every day for October. It was perfect.
Jon:Weather was perfect.
Justin:Really rolled out the welcome for us.
Helen:I don't know who picked that week, but Whichever one of us picked that week, picked the best weather and the best time of the year.
Justin:Yeah. Hey. Yeah. We bumped it a few times, and then I think we just ended up. I don't I can't remember exactly how we ended up on that week, but, yeah, that was great.
Justin:How, how about you, Jon? Any, any highlights off the top of your head?
Jon:Yeah, I think similar to Helen. I mean, I think it was, you know, the meals we had together and just Spending time that wasn't necessarily revolving around work. And I, I mean, because we do that All day online and, you know, the calls we have remotely are around work and planning features. And it was just nice to connect with everyone in a more personal level and get to know each other a little better. And.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah.
Jason:Totally. It was the,
Jon:yeah, the unstructured time. We're just hanging out. That's great.
Justin:I I I think we all had this sense multiple times of just It's weird being a remote team. You build up so much rapport online. You get together, and it's almost as if you've been friends for a long Time, but there's this whole other dynamic of warmth and connection and, kind of real special Time together, that's that that's hard to explain and is also, you definitely don't get it just in Slack. Just having time together, going for walks together, having moments where we're just sitting around, You know, maybe not talking, but spending time in each other's presence. Really, it it there's really something special about it.
Justin:And I think for our team, because we like each other so much, it was even just more special. Like, this this group is, Yeah. I think we came away feeling like, wow. This group's pretty special.
Helen:Definitely. Definitely. Yeah.
Justin:My my highlight was discovering that the shortest member of the transistor team. Here, you
Jon:know, on Zoom biggest presence.
Justin:Oh, I see. Well, on Zoom, we're all the same height and then show up and, you know, Helen's taller than me. Jason's Quite a bit taller than me. I know I've always known Jon was taller than me. It was you know, I'm okay with it, but that was that was The, the first thing you notice right away whenever you meet remote team members is, oh, wow.
Justin:That's how tall everyone is. Alright.
Jon:Then we probably have probably have an above average Team height.
Justin:Yeah. We probably do. We probably do. That's right. Yeah.
Justin:I I keep referencing this fact that I'm not sure if it's true, which is that I'm 5 foot 8 is the exact, height of the average Canadian male, but I I I don't know. Don't look that up. It's just let me live in my world. I think people will wanna know how we planned and organized the retreat, our daily schedule, what parts of the treat The retreat worked well. What could we improve for next time?
Justin:Maybe it would be fun for us to go through our our daily schedule. This part was not super planned. Our our document had, like, AM, afternoon, PM. But, You know, what was the daily cadence that we we kind of fell into? I try
Jon:to run through it. Yeah. I I think it worked pretty well with without really much planning. It's sort of planned. It sort of worked itself out, I think.
Jon:And everybody was coming from different time zones except Jason. So everyone sort of had different, I don't know, different sleeping schedules maybe, or levels of tiredness depending on the time of day. But, I mean, generally we would like everybody would wake up on their own. We all had our own rooms. I think we get, we got breakfast in the room or downstairs, A small breakfast sometimes together, sometimes not.
Jon:And then we'd sort of just as a group text each other and say we're up and Couple people might go to get coffee next door if they need more. Couple times people went for a run-in the morning. So We were, we were along the water. There was a nice path to run on. And then we sort of lazily met up in the penthouse area, which we had a big meeting area, couple couches, some tables around 10 in the morning.
Jon:Yeah. Kind of did our own thing, did some work Customer support, you know, fixing some bugs or working on a feature slowly. And, I think we'd sort of Casually sort of roll to the couches and start a group discussion for 1 or 2 hours about a particular topic we wanted to, we wanted to kinda get more in-depth on that we didn't, you know, over over zoom or our calls. And then at some point, we'd all just be like, oh, we should eat. It's time for lunch.
Justin:We got some great recommendations from people in Montreal, by the way. I just remembering some I think the first lunch we took was Was the first lunch we took that big three course meal? Yeah.
Jason:I think so.
Helen:Yeah. I think that was Monday.
Justin:It was at Bouillon?
Helen:Yeah. Bouillon Bilk.
Justin:Bouillon Bilk. That that that was, like, incredible lunch.
Jon:Seemed like predominantly business lunches.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. That place there.
Jon:I mean, there was no dress code. I don't know if we were underdressed, but it worked out.
Justin:Yeah. Worked it did work good. And then after lunch, we'd kind of Hang out, do whatever we wanted. Right? We kinda walk around sometimes as a group.
Justin:Yeah. Nap time.
Jon:Get some alone time, take a nap, Maybe go for a run, walk around, find another coffee.
Justin:Yeah. Jason and I were in the afternoon, run category. Yeah.
Jason:Yep. I did too.
Jon:I always had intent. Well, I guess I ran once in the morning, but my intention is always to run before everything. And then I just don't.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. And then in the evening, we'd have dinner again. It was usually I mean, we ate really well. I think Yeah.
Justin:The, I don't want Jon to look at the, the expenses for this trip, but I I felt like the money on dinner was well spent.
Jon:Oh, I looked.
Justin:And then usually after dinner, we'd come back, and sometimes hang out in the penthouse. You guys introduced me to mister Robot. We watched that altogether.
Jon:Yeah. That I think that was that was because you were talking about how much you liked the movie hackers.
Justin:Yes. But I wanted to reedit it without I wanted to make a fan edit. Yeah. Mister Robot's good. I've I've I've since shown it to my kids since we got back.
Justin:We're we're we're on the mister Robot train now.
Jason:Have you have you progressed beyond episode 1?
Justin:Now because I showed them episode 1, and then and tonight's Friday. So movie night, we'll we'll probably watch episode 2. Nice. What what were some of your thoughts about the schedule? I I really liked how we had You know, you could get some work done in the morning.
Justin:And it's also nice just working alongside each other. You know? You can see what Jason and Jon are chatting about back and 4th, Helen and I can talk about a ticket. There's just, like, this this nice even if we're working on our own things, it's Just nice to sometimes be in that open office mode, you know, and then to have a focused discussion every day, I thought it was great.
Jon:We did have some discussions planned out that we wanted we knew we wanted to cover, which we did.
Justin:Yeah. And but before we get into that, any comments on the schedule, Helen or Jason? Thoughts for other teams? Should other people do that too?
Helen:Yeah. It worked really well. It seemed to be quite flexible. We had a little bit of structure in mind that we all knew we would be Discussing a particular topic each day. So, we tried to kind of prioritize doing the sort of business as usual tasks first thing.
Helen:So, With me coming from a different time zone, I was probably waking up a little bit earlier than usual. So, I had a little bit of time before we got together to Sort some customer success things out, which meant we had the sort of morning to discuss, remaining issues or topics And, yeah, just sort of have an opportunity that, allowed us to kind of come up with new ideas and and talk about future features as well.
Justin:How about you, Jason? How what'd you think of the the schedule?
Jason:It's good. I mean, originally, we were talking about, like, a 10 o'clock start, and I'm like, that's pretty late. But, I I settled into that pretty quickly. I have a toddler at home, so the the opportunity to not get Woking up at some ungodly hour was was pretty pleasant. Yeah.
Jason:Couple days, I took the opportunity to wander about, have a have a coffee, sit sit Time. So that was nice.
Justin:I mean, it's a team retreat, but I think there's also this other thing about getting away from home As an individual, that gives you time, you know, time to be by yourself in a different place, time to walk around a beautiful neighborhood or a beautiful setting, Reflect on your life, reflect on work. I I liked having those those times, you know? Yeah.
Jon:I think, I think it worked really well. I think, you know, for other teams too, if you're planning something like this, like definitely plan some downtime where people can either do things by themselves or do things in small groups or, it doesn't, I don't think it has to be planned, like, you know, 9 o'clock in the morning till 9 o'clock at night is like a full schedule of stuff for the company.
Justin:Yeah. I'm so glad we didn't do that. It just felt like It felt like every day we had some work time together. Every day we had a discussion. And then every day we had a group activity, and that was Perfect.
Justin:And there was, there was time in between to do what you need to do.
Helen:As a team, we're quite light on kind of the number of meetings we have each week. So, Really, we had kind of a week of all of those kind of meetings together, and also we had, all of the possible Celebrations that we would have had as a team together all in that one week as well, whether that would be holidays or birthdays. We've condensed everything into this one Very sort of intense week, and having a bit of flexibility really helps with, yeah, just as all have put in our opinion and then deciding what things we'd like to to fit into the week?
Justin:Yeah. It's it's a good way to put it because you are celebrating too. It's like, this is the one time we get to get to Get together and have a drink, you know, cheers each other, just kind of celebrate what we've accomplished as a team, up until that point. So I I'm really glad we structured it that way. I'd highly recommend a similar structure unless Unless your team is completely different, but for our vibe, it worked well.
Justin:So we did have before we went, we had some discussions that we did each day. So the first day was a company update. Where are we at financially? Maybe look over our direction, where are we headed, what bigger things are we trying to accomplish in the company and in our lives. We reviewed some of our values.
Justin:And then the next day, we had a product priorities discussion. This kinda bled through the whole the whole week. And, actually, That was most of it. Product because we we started with that product discussion, and then that became kind of, most of the discussion that week. And then we also plan to talk about marketing and sales priorities.
Justin:I also put this category called open air discussions, which was Just to make time for people to bring up issues, things they'd like to be more involved with, things they'd like to change, things that need clarification. And I think that was kinda sprinkled throughout the the week. For for you folks, what came out of the discussions? Like, what was good about it? What, you know, What were some of the things that were helpful about it, comments about it?
Jason:I mean, for for me, a thing I'm always trying to figure out it's like we're kinda where we're headed as a company. And there's There's a lot of ways to there's a lot of, I guess, kinda end goals for that and to and to really understand. Like, it's hard to It's hard to hash that out in, like, small bits and pieces. So, like, talking about that stuff deeply with everybody and just, like, picking up, like, the vibe on, like, how people are feeling about things and what they wanna do and was really useful and, a good way to understand where everybody's at.
Justin:And And and in high fidelity, like, I yeah. I'd say a central issue at this point is where do we want this company to go? Like, what is Is there is a is there a longer term objective? And the central tension there is probably, You know, are are we gonna try to build this thing bigger in the sense that it could be acquired or bigger in the sense that we could I don't know. I think acquisition is, like, the main question.
Justin:And then on the other side of that tension is, especially for Jon and I. But I think for all of us, we, you know, we we created this company to have a a better life and to really have a calm life. And, yeah, I think figuring out those things when you when you're in person, it's like one person can Speak, and then the other person can speak, and there's just this high bandwidth kind of conversation. And then later on, you're out for drinks and you can keep talking about it. It it can just kinda flow and leak out as we went along.
Justin:Do Do you feel like we do you feel like we made progress on that on that that tension at all?
Helen:Yeah. I think one thing that you do Get to notice in person more so than when we're remotely is people's enthusiasm, so when a particular topic comes up. I guess at the beginning of the retreat, perhaps people are perhaps a little bit, starting to introduce Themselves to each other and the sort of more detailed conversations perhaps come out later in the week. But you kind of really pick up on the enthusiasm people have Particular topics, whether that's, certain features or certain feature directions of the company, and that makes a big difference to kind of Feel that enthusiasm in real life?
Justin:Yeah. Like, Jason, Jason, while we're having this feature discussion, Jason brought up this idea of Kinda how we're gonna organize networks and higher level grouping, features within transistor. And I think after you pitched that, Jason, there was, like, this kind of palpable, like, enthusiasm about That particular direction. Did did you feel that too?
Jason:Yeah. For sure.
Jon:And it
Jason:and it's like something, we've briefly talked about before, but not like, I I don't think anybody sort of, like, deeply thought about it. So, like, as soon as as soon as the idea was out there, everybody was kinda iterating on it and throwing out things that could be done with it. And it felt like, it didn't kind of become everybody's feature that we wanted to work on.
Jon:Yeah. Yeah. The feature discussions, I think worked really well In person. Like we haven't, obviously we've never done that before, but it felt, it felt quite a bit different than us just planning things over zoom. And I don't know if that's because you're just in people's presence and you can pick up on like talent said the excitement a little easier, But also like, you know, you can keep talking.
Jon:We kept talking about those topics later in the day. We didn't just stop necessarily. So you can kind of keep the discussion going. Whereas If you're remote, you know, you might throw some things in slack, but it's not in person. It's not quite as detailed.
Jon:And I think it can like the excitement. It can maybe fade away easier if you're not together. So I, I I've, I really enjoyed the product discussions. Like I haven't, I haven't had that in a while on a team, you know, Justin, you and I, like, we got together and was it January? Yeah.
Jon:Yeah. We did some of that and that, that felt similar, but it was a little, it was quite a bit different with, you know, Helen and Jason there as well. Kind of just Spit balling and throwing ideas back and forth and like riffing on each other and, oh, what about this? And, kind of get a better sense of Yeah. How, how excited people are and just different ideas of how the future could work.
Jon:And yeah, it was, That was good.
Justin:And I I think I mean, there's a few things. 1, for me, I I mean, I've been working remote, and then I worked independent for quite a while. So I think my last job where I was, like, in a room with people working through ideas was probably 2015 Or 16 maybe. I can't remember. So it's been a while since I've been in a room, You know, kind of all working on something together.
Justin:And, I I mean, the this old cynical version of me was like, ah, like, All those meetings we used to do at those old companies were such a waste, but this was like a new version of that that really felt good. It it was like, Oh, wow. Like, we've been missing this. And as we try to figure out, like, we're still, like, figuring out how to work together, It became so clear to me that for a remote team to really figure out how to work together, they need to spend some time together, because it kinda sifts out all of the the rough edges. It, like, it it At the end of it, you have a a little bit better sense of how you can work.
Justin:And then we did, I can't remember if it was you, Helen, that recommended this or, but we ended up, changing our Our weekly meeting our weekly Zoom meeting, do you wanna describe what we changed, Helen?
Helen:So, normally, we would have a Full meeting on a sales deal that will be centered around customer success, whether that will be feature requests or issues that we want to solve or things that frustrating for customers that we want to improve upon. And because we have this kind of, This sort of feature set that we want to work on as a team as well, we've decided to kind of split this meeting a little bit. So we have a first part of customer success where we talk about the requests people have asked for. And then we have the second part, which is more focused on a particular feature that we would like to dive deeper into as a team and sort of shape and, move something forward. I think sometimes the meetings we have, contain a lot of ideas, whereas the the structure that we've moved to now seems to be a little bit more Laser focused on one particular thing.
Helen:We move things forward better. And I think one of the benefits of the retreat is Our remote product discussions since seem to flow a little bit better as well.
Jon:Mhmm.
Justin:Yeah. I that was a big improvement. And even, there's sometimes a disconnect. Again, maybe this is because it's been a long time since I've worked on a team. Maybe because it started out with just Jon and I, and it was just Easy for us to just keep throwing things over the fence to each other.
Justin:But I think once we had 2 more people, once there 4 of us. For me, there's a bit of a disconnect between, like, we're we've got ideas. And then one, I think, for Jon and Jason and everyone else too. We've got ideas. And then how do those ideas become a practical plan to actually build something?
Justin:And we've been loosely following Basecamp's shape up process. But often, it felt like in in Slack, the feedback was, we really need to, like, nail down what What is are the first steps for us to start working on this thing? Like, how do we get this thing to the point where we can put it in our project management software and start working on it. Would you agree with that, Jon, Jason, Helen? Is that Yeah.
Jon:Yeah. We have a, we have a lot of ideas in Slack and the others. I don't know. I don't know if it's a lack of focus, but it's, we have a lot of ideas, which is a good thing, but we don't necessarily Tighten those up often enough, I think.
Jason:Some of it's sussing out our collective enthusiasm for it. Like, they're you know, we're such a small team, and we have So many ideas that we would like to implement. It's very difficult to figure out, like, what what we, as a group, like, wanna tackle first. So It sort of all gets muddied up. But talking about these things in person, it's it's it was, like, pretty clear, like which, which things folks had the most interest in.
Jason:I think
Jon:I had this out the other day and I don't know if people agree with this, but like, If we, if we were always in the same room, like let's say we had an office and we worked together. Like, I don't know if We'd probably have more meetings just because may maybe, but like, I I feel like the these discussions worked really well in person because we knew we had a limited time. Yeah. I don't know. I just, it just feels like if we were in the same office working together, like maybe Because we think we would have all this time to get together and talk, we maybe would do it less efficiently or less well.
Jon:Like, it just seemed like Yeah. There was something special about it because it was it's not a frequent thing.
Justin:Yeah. I agree. I agree. I think, It it it did almost feel like we could probably do something like that twice a year, but I definitely felt like we had the time. We knew we only had a week together, and and it was also became clear, like, we really only have time for, like, a focused One focused discussion a day if we're gonna keep our this kind of schedule.
Justin:And so every morning, I was kinda like, okay. Yeah. We gotta move over to the couches and talk Because that's gonna be our moment to have that conversation. And if we don't do it in the morning, it might not happen. I I thought that was great.
Justin:And the other thing I I felt like was really great is we really hammered kind of these discussions out, all these feature ideas. We got to, like, what does an initial version look like? And that seemed to really clarify things. And when we got home, we put that initial version kind of in a shaping doc and then worked, through it together they're just in Google docs.
Jon:Yeah. I mean, we definitely didn't finalize these ideas by any means, but it was definitely a good jumping off point to start shaping it and Try to figure out what, you know, how to build this thing in pieces or all at once if we need to or whatever. But
Justin:So let's, Quickly go through which parts of the retreat worked well and what could we improve next time. I thought the location was great. People ask us why we chose Montreal. I think just because it's one of the most unique cities in North America. It was first time in Canada for Helen.
Justin:Is that right?
Helen:Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Good introduction to Canada.
Jon:I think part of it was it was, like, centrally located for all of us, sort of.
Jason:Yep. Right.
Jon:Like Helen's coming from the east. Justin's coming from the west. Jason and I are coming from the Midwest. It was all like, Kind of in the middle.
Jason:Has anybody actually triangulated the the central spot between I
Justin:put it in a I did put it in a They have these online map things like meet in the middle, and it's roughly you know, Helen's flight and my flight were roughly about the same. You you folks were more well, Jason, you're east, and then, Jon, you're more central. So, yeah, I I John Young Fook, I think, from, Bannerbear said Somebody should build just a tool, that triangulates team retreats based on a number of factors. So not just distance, but, You know, maybe, you know, cultural cities or attractions or, you know, time of year And, maybe other events that are happening the same time. I think that's a cool idea.
Justin:I don't know if you can make a business out of it, but It'd be a cool little tool that we would definitely use.
Jon:Yeah. I thought, yeah, that worked really well. I think the city was perfect. I'd I'd never been before, but I'd always heard good things and I would totally back to Montreal and hang out there. I'm sure there's tons tons left to explore.
Justin:Oh, man. I definitely wanna go back. And every person that stayed Like, Helen and I stayed a day later, and we went to that amazing light show in Notre Dame. And then Helen stayed even later than me, and then she she hiked Mount Royal without us Yeah. And made us jealous with her her beautiful photo.
Jason:That was a nice photo.
Helen:Yeah. I couldn't I couldn't leave without actually going to, you know, see the park and go to the mountain.
Justin:What'd you folks think of the hotel? We stayed at Epic Montreal right on, in downtown there. Sorry. Old Montreal there?
Helen:Yeah. It was a great hotel. It's quite a small hotel, which was kind of good for us. It kind of felt quite personal. We were probably the biggest group that was staying there.
Helen:So, yeah, it was, very, very nice.
Jon:And it felt like we were the only people there some days.
Jason:I mean, there's, like, there was probably
Jon:10 rooms total in that place, Maybe?
Justin:Yeah. There wasn't very many rooms. It was nice and small. And I think Carl Alexander from, from Mega Maker is the one that that pointed me that direction. I just asked for recommendations for hotels, and, he had a a friend at that hotel.
Justin:The penthouse was pretty awesome. It felt it like, it was in terms of a place for us to all hang out in.
Jon:Had some quirks.
Justin:It had it had it had some quirks, but it was like, the the one quirk was that it it has a pitched ceiling. Right? Is that the way you say it? A pitched ceiling?
Jason:I think so.
Jon:Yeah. Yeah. So
Justin:Jason had to walk sideways sometimes to get around there.
Jason:Which is fun. It's it's not that unusual for me.
Justin:Yeah. I had this cool loft And, dining table, kitchen, separate area for TV watching, separate area for, like, couches and hanging out. So there's, like, Some distinct areas. And depending on our mood, sometimes we would all hang out in the kitchen just on the bar stools. Sometimes we were watching TV.
Justin:Sometimes we're at the dining table. Sometimes we were in the other kind of coffee place. Had some outdoor balconies.
Helen:I think some of the recommendations that we had really helped to Pointed us in the right direction, whether that was, restaurants, places to visit, the hotel, things like that. So having a city where we Perhaps have connections with people who are already there, was helpful, and also to arrange, like, meetups and in in person Coffee chats, things like that.
Justin:I tweeted about our trip quite a bit and asked folks if they were you know, had recommendations. I, found I I emailed a list of customers who are in Montreal and said, hey. We're in Montreal for a week. If you'd like to meet up, Let's find a time, and then I just sent them to a reform form that had a bunch of options. So Helen and I met with, a group of our customers at MedPlan, which is a communications agency in Montreal.
Justin:That was really helpful. We came back fired Fired up from listening to all their product feedback. And then, we did another meetup. Jason and Jon had left, unfortunately, but we did one on Friday Afternoon, at a at a restaurant where just anybody on our list or anybody who knew that we were there could come and hang out. So we had some customers come.
Justin:We had some podcasters come, some indie hackers come. That was that was really fun. Yeah. I I love that part personally. I love, Like, doing a few customer things on top of, the the meetup, and we had the space to do it.
Justin:So, Yeah. That was great. I think we're we probably wanna go somewhere different every year, but that location was just amazing. It really set a high bar.
Jason:Yeah. I wonder I I have a very skewed view, I think, of what Montreal looks like because we're in this really old, beautiful area, and we saw Virtually nothing outside of it.
Justin:So next time you wanna stay in the suburbs in an Airbnb, Jason?
Jason:That's right. If we could find, like, a Radisson or
Jon:No. The neighborhood we were in was great and, you know, old Montreal, but and we walked around a bit at night. We went to a concert one night and kinda walked back and walked around a different part of town. You know, I think the, the last night we were there, we had dinner in What is actually, like, a pretty cool neighbor pretty cool neighborhood, but we didn't really get to see it because it was evening. We didn't really walk around, but apparently, that's a really cool part of town.
Justin:Yeah. I I think we could have even stayed in that in, Le Plateau and and had a really good time. I I think, actually, in this case, not every city is like this. But in this case, it was actually nice not staying at an Airbnb. It was easy to check-in.
Justin:It's easy for everybody to get their own room. We had we really did have privacy as A team too. Like, each of us had our own room we could go to. It felt like that was money well spent.
Jason:Yeah. I really enjoyed having, like, a shared space And then our own our own separate rooms.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was great. The meals together, You know, that that was great. We did we already said lunch and dinners.
Justin:We had just some awesome meals together, And I really like the activities. This kinda happened organically. This is something I wouldn't naturally think of, but, you folks did. So Helen was like, oh, we should go see a hockey game, and she just booked the tickets and, got it all done. Jon was like, what's the name of that band again?
Justin:It's
Jon:Motorat.
Justin:Motorat. Yes.
Jon:So you
Justin:were like Motorat. You just looked up to see what Bands are playing? Yeah.
Jon:It's, like, randomly found that, like, oh, this band's in town. Cool. They're awesome. Maybe we maybe if everyone's interested, we should go.
Justin:Yeah. It was super fun. Like, I'd never heard even heard them before, but, it was fun going to that concert together. The the venue is really neat. What else did we do?
Justin:We did the boat ride.
Jon:Yeah. I
Justin:love the boat ride. That was one of my highlights.
Jon:Yeah. That was kinda we were we were trying to find, like, one of those boats that was, like, more of a tour boat, but we ended up on, like, the public transit boat Yeah.
Justin:Down the river. Ferry.
Jon:Yeah. The ferry.
Helen:It was great, though.
Jon:It was great. Yeah. And that
Jason:thing was fast. It was a really fast boat.
Jon:Yeah.
Justin:It was super fast. I I got some great, like, sunset photos on the way back on the water.
Jon:Justin got to practice his French.
Justin:Oh, yeah. I cornered this old French couple and just wouldn't let them I wouldn't leave them alone. Just kept practicing my French.
Jon:I
Justin:got a education in French politics, French history, English, French relations, east west relations. We we covered it all. The other thing that worked well is I'm so glad that everybody took time to take photos. We have so many great photos that we shared with each other in a a shared album. And, Especially I mean, I'm built like this because I'm a dad, but I was trying to be deliberate in saying, oh, let's get a photo taken.
Justin:And if we can find someone to take a picture for us, let's do that. And so we got a few I mean, like, 70% of those photos are not great, and then a few worked out. And we just got this great photo of us with the Ferris wheel behind us and all the fall colors, and we just look fucking golden out there.
Jason:That lady that lady was a pro. Total pro.
Justin:We that that that lady we asked was a pro. I I really like that part, and, everybody contributed by taking photos, and I I thought that was great. I do think at one point, Next retreat, I wanna get a professional photographer to come in and take some photos because those assets of us, hanging out or doing work or having a discussion are just so valuable from a marketing perspective, so valuable for even just We could also do headshots then. I think having a professional photographer would have been a nice addition and probably not that much more money, just to have someone come in for to do some nice really nice photos that we can use in press releases and blog posts and tweets and And, also, for us to all have uniform headshots if we wanted. Yeah.
Justin:I I thought that would be good too. Any other thoughts on what we could improve for next time or other advice we would give to teams to to close this out?
Helen:I guess I think one of the things That really worked well was obviously you, Justin. You kind of, led the group in terms of a lot of the product discussions. I guess if you have a larger team, it might be nice to, perhaps rotate the response who that responsibility falls to each day. So there's an opportunity for, like, each person to, step up and take ownership of a particular feature or a particular Talk for the day so that you can also enjoy being part of those discussions without having to lead them all the time.
Justin:Oh, we should do that next time. We should just have someone lead every day.
Helen:You need to force us into the leadership position.
Justin:Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And I'm gonna force you guys all to go to organize 1 meetup, and I'm gonna force you all to I I was definitely it felt like I was definitely the the one extrovert in the group. We have a very introverted, group.
Justin:Anything else for for other teams, advice, or things that we should improve on next time? It's okay for us to get a little bit, You know, you can be you can be a little bit dangerous and reveal something that you didn't think worked well or that we should do next time.
Jon:I honestly can't think of anything that didn't work well. I mean, it, you know, it might be nice next time to like change up the, the venue to maybe a smaller city or outdoor activities or which would be totally different, right? You're not gonna go out to every day, and you're not gonna do this and that, but, like Yeah. Could be like, go on we'll go on some hikes or, like, hang out on a boat on a lake or, you know
Justin:Yeah. So Yeah. Let's do the whole thing on a boat. Yeah.
Jon:Okay.
Justin:What kind of boat are you thinking of, Jon? Are you thinking of, like, Sailboat or a houseboat or a cruise ship. Are we gonna go cruising next time?
Jon:I don't know. Could do a houseboat. That might go a little cramped.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I agree. I think it'd be fun to mix up the venue.
Justin:Marie Poulin and her team did their retreat at the same time in Banff, And I think they had, somebody cook the whole time. And, so they didn't go out for meals as much, but they had really amazing meals inside. And then they had all the hiking and and other things to to do outside. Yeah. I think that'd be great.
Justin:If you have questions about the team retreat we didn't cover, reach out to us on Twitter. All of our Twitter handles are in This episode, you can also, if you're on the web, look at our people profiles, which is a new feature we just released. Every, transistor customer gets to set up hosts and guests. And they get a photo. They get a link.
Justin:They get a social media link. So if you're looking for any of our Twitter handles, They're all there. Sass.transistor.afam. Jon Buda. We have some people to thank who have been supporting us for such a long time, even when we don't release an episode every week or every month even.
Justin:Big shout outs to these people. Jon, do you wanna go through the list?
Jon:Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks to all of our supporters. We have Jason Charnes, Michael Davis from recruitkit.com.au Marcel Fale from we are bold.af Alex pain, bill condo, Anton Zoren from prodcamp.com. Harris Kenny from the intro to CRM podcast, Ole Kulik, Ethan Gunderson, Ward Sandler from member space, Russell Brown from.
Jon:Fotivo.com.
Justin:That's right. Yep.
Jon:Noah Praill, Colin Gray, Austin Loveless, Michael Sitver, Paul Jarvis, and Jack Ellis from Fathom, My brother Dan Buddha, Darby Frey, Adam Devander, Dave Junta.
Justin:Junta, who actually I forgot. He he's got his own people profile. If you go to sas.transistor.fm/people, there's Dave Giunta. You can see what he looks like. You can go and click on his profile, hear the episode he was in.
Justin:We gotta have Junta back, I think, on the show.
Jon:Absolutely. We should. Yeah. And we have Kyle Fox from get reward for dotcom and Simon and Vulcan. Can you explain this one?
Jon:This is this looks different to me.
Justin:Yeah. This is a new Bootstrapper podcast Simon and Vulcan are doing, ship saasfaster.com. Worth listening to. If you like the bootstrappers talking to bootstrappers every week format, kinda feels like an early Build your SaaS podcast. Yeah.
Justin:Worth checking out shipsassfaster.com. Thanks everyone for listening. Thanks to Jason, Helen, Jon for being here, and we'll see you next time we record an episode. Glad we got one out. Talk to you later.
