The most ironic thing about being brand marketers is how difficult it is for us to find the time to focus on our own business when our day-to-day job is developing successful brands for our core partners. However, we believe in the importance of leading by example, and we know that to work with the best, we have to be at our best. In order to ensure that we are always at the tip-top of our branding game, we work a little bit extra so that we can carve out “us” time- an annual team retreat each year to get our minds off of the daily grind and on to our own short and long-term goals and objectives for the year to come.
This brainstorming time is an invaluable resource for us in terms of recharging our creative batteries and moving Design the Planet onward and upward, and over the years, it has led to the planning and creation of some things we are very proud of (such as our own recent website redesign, which just won the 2013 w3 Silver award- score!). We recently returned from a four-day retreat in which we honed in on new avenues for further growth and development of our franchise and construction marketing niches, and we feel refreshed, revitalized, and more focused on our areas of expertise than ever!
Because of the huge benefit this annual practice has had on our personal brand development efforts, we highly encourage you, our core partners, to develop a plan to dedicate a chunk of time to get together with your whole team and strategize how to accomplish your own stepping stones to success in the upcoming year. Having tangible goals and a step-by-step plan to achieve them is the first step in holding yourself accountable for getting where you want to be, and thinking about the best way to reach your aspirations as a team allows for out-of-the-box ideas and solutions that you never would’ve thought of otherwise. Trust us- we know from experience! Some of our best results and brightest moments have come out of these retreat “think tanks”, and whether you dedicate an hour, a day, or a week to discussing your own annual vision with your employees, we guarantee that your brand will benefit from it.
Have a unique idea or perspective for company improvement retreats? Do tell-we would love to hear it! ANDDDDD-BREAK! 🙂
