2025 Offsite Recap

2025 Offsite Recap Speaker 1: Welcome to the Better Advertising with BTR Media podcast. My name is Justin Knuckles. I'm your host here on the show. Today, we are in Jupiter, Florida for the official 2025 kickoff party, you could call it, for BTR Media, really getting the whole team together to talk about strategy, improving overall operations, and just vision planning for this year. I'm sitting alongside Adam Mellott. Welcome, Adam. Speaker 2: Great to be here, Justin. I know it's been a minute, but glad to be back. Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been so long since we were together at the end of Q4 and New 4, but we've had some good times at the end of Q4 and here kicking off 2025. So wanted to get together to talk a little bit differently than we do typically on this podcast. We're talking a lot of ad strategy, technical talk, to talk a little bit more about culture, maybe, and really how we bring the team together to provide the service that people have heard of and expect out of BTR Media. Again, like I said, we're together here in Jupiter, Florida with the whole team, which is a little unique being a fully remote team. We don't get to see each other a lot other than on Zoom calls. So Adam, kind of kick us off here. What has this trip been like? Why is it so important for us all to get together? Speaker 2: Yeah, so, you know, every year we try and plan a handful of company meetups, whether it be department breakouts, full team meetups for planning, such as this meeting, right? General 2025 planning for the business. Where can we improve? What can we do better as a whole in terms of our service offering? You know, a million things under the sun discussed this week, right? While also working to Foster personal relationships with your co-workers. Understand who you're working alongside and ultimately what collective goal we're all working to achieve, right? And in my personal opinion, and I know we'll dive into this, but I just find that In remote culture or in a remote company, it is all the more important to make sure you have those in-person touchpoints, you know, active human touchpoints across your entire team if you're going to be trending in the same direction. Speaker 1: Absolutely. I mean, as we're sitting here watching NFL playoffs, this might be not the best analogy, but right, it's kind of like our halftime break. Even though it is the beginning of the year, right, we're like looking back at last year or the first half more or less. And saying, you know, what did we do well? What did we not do the best? And how can we improve that going into the second half or in this case 2025 as a whole? So I think we had a lot of great conversations today with the team saying, what can we do around client service? What can we do around ad strategy, in-accounts, hands-on keyboards? So these types of talks don't really happen when we're sitting together for an hour on Zoom. I think these are really rich conversations, but also on the culture side, like this is what builds trust, helps you come to a coworker you rarely see other than on Zoom and say, hey, I need some help. Can you come check in on this account and give me some new ideas? So I find a lot of value in it, but I mean, what have you thought of it so far, Adam? Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, for a lot of BTR team members who are here in Florida with us. It's their first time meeting the majority of the company in person and You know, this is my I couldn't even tell you maybe 10th trip with BTR media You know for any reason under the Sun right and in my personal experience when I had first started traveling with the team met the team and I walked into a new company with my guard up a bit. You're kind of reserved and regarded. You're shy. You don't want to break out of your comfort zone in terms of being your true authentic self. I don't want to speak for anybody else, but I'm a bit shy when it comes to new relationships like that, especially with people who I'm going to be working alongside. So you want to make a great first impression and all that stuff. Kind of keeping it more casual in terms of a team meetup in Florida, you know, kind of allows people's guards to come down, you know, and you get to know your I run a company from a human standpoint, right? And it's like, okay, I can trust these people. I have a lot in common with these people. I get to know them in terms of where they're from, about their families, about their previous work history, all of those things. And then when you come back, right, and you get back to business, back to normalcy, we'll call it, you know, you just have this not only like motivation, in my opinion, but you have a greater trust and a greater bond with the people that you're connected with every single day. That really, in my opinion, does truly reflect across the level of service we provide for our clients since so many of us are touching multiple accounts, working across specific facets of the business, right? All the more important to be aligned. Both remotely and in person. Speaker 1: Yeah, there's something very intangible about those moments like having coffee together in the morning or shooting pool around the table in between client work and account check-ins, so that stuff just builds trust and camaraderie with each other. I, again, speak from experience here, but we walk away just so motivated and I know we're all competitive. I'm sure we've mentioned that on the podcast multiple times, but you know, we all walk away with just a little bit extra fire under us saying like, I want to take my account to the next level. I want to do as good as Adam's doing on his account. It's not just for us. This is really also for the clients and bettering them, giving them better support and walking away with better systems and processes to level up BTR Media. Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. There's two areas I want to focus on here in terms of direct benefits. One of those is in-person training. You know, being able to have conversations like you're saying in person, you know, for 30 minutes, 60 minutes at a time, deep dive into an account, sitting around the pool after dinner, going through a, you know, random slide deck that we built last year and talking about why we change things up. All of those things under the sun, right? The areas I want to focus on here as well are, you know, two direct benefits from these Meetups, one of them is education in terms of training new hires, right? How do we get on the same page immediately in terms of where we need to focus, where we need to grow, especially if somebody who has no prior ad knowledge. And the second one is buy-in, right? In a remote company, it's tough. There's times where you feel disconnected, right? Or you kind of feel like you're alone, kind of working on your own facet of the business. You don't have necessarily a great pulse check. Our pulse on what's going on across the board and what we found is when we hire somebody, we want to get them immediately on a plane to meet up with the team. Have some bonding experiences, some fun, dive into some accounts, talk strategy, talk business, talk about the business, and then when you leave, it's like, wow, I'm a part of this. I'm working towards a collective goal with a great group of people who I now really enjoy spending time with and consider my friends. Just really, there's a lot of Direct benefits in my personal experience. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that buy-in is huge, especially to the culture where, you know, again, speaking from experience, when I first joined, I'd heard this type of culture preached from so many prior jobs where, you know, the Netflix culture is the goal. And every company prior to this has fallen so far short of that. They say they want to be that, but they don't actually live up to it. So once I saw it in person for real here, I was like, no, this is actually Living up to what they said it was going to be and again just bought me in so much more to what we're doing here, how hard I want to work to stay at a place like this with a team and a company like this. But at the same time, you know, with a leadership team like Alex and Destiny that aren't micromanaging, aren't checking in with you every day, it can be really scary for a new hire. Like, am I on the chopping blocks or do I not matter? And it's just the type of culture we have where, you know, you are autonomous. You are expected to do what you're hired to do, but we're not checking over your shoulder every day to make sure that it's going as we expect. Speaker 2: Right. And I think with, you know, a company that functions like ours, there's a lot of There's a lot of shift in dynamic from a previous work experience. So there's gonna be a lot of questions that are uncovered from a new higher perspective as you work through your first 30, 60, 90 days, six months, etc. Heck, I still have questions about certain things and I've been here for multiple years at this point. But really again, you know, getting that buy-in, creating that trust and that human connection is Allows people to kind of break those those barriers down and ask the tough questions, right? So, you know you you were in the meeting earlier today team wide meeting and we were soliciting feedback just talking about you know Where can we improve certain aspects of the business and one of the most important? Perspectives in my opinion is from new hires, right? Hey, you guys have a blank slate How do we? How do you look at this from a completely fresh perspective, I think is really, really cool. So just from a perspective of experience and a perspective of no experience, I think both have direct benefits in terms of soliciting beneficial feedback for the company. Speaker 1: Yeah, the new hire feedback is so important because, you know, we're always thinking of new ways, you know, when I say we, you and I, people that have been here for multiple years, we're always looking for new incremental ways to improve our service, our performance, etc., you name it. But the new hires come in with such a blank slate of new ideas saying, you know, This part sucked in joining the company. Like I really could use some help here in this or we need to rethink how we're, you know, training people on XYZ. So that feedback is so important and I think walking away, they again have that trust built in where they can ask those maybe tough, if you want to call them that, or embarrassing questions where, you know, maybe they think they're going to get judged for not knowing the answer to this, but you walk away knowing that we're all human. We all don't know the answer. We're all figuring things out and figuring this out as we go. So yeah, I just, I find so much value in these meetups with, you know, building that trust. Setting us all, like I said earlier, on fire to go crush it this year in 2025 with new ideas and new inspiration. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, you know, from a talent perspective as well, it's really cool to have, you know, some intern-level talent here, people who are just fresh in the industry, learning from the ground up. Next to senior talent, people who have worked at Amazon, X large agency, we'll call it. You kind of get both ends of the spectrum in terms of experience and you can really gauge their perspective and ask questions on both ends of the spectrum in terms of ad strategy, in terms of how Amazon looks at things or other retailers look at things in terms of how other agencies look at things. Maybe something that we're missing or we can improve on immediately from somebody who worked in a different agency. You know, I think it's really cool in terms of how everybody on the team arrived in this place in their career. How we all got here is from a different path, right? We need to really lean into that to continue learning and evolving as we move forward in the 25. So that's been one of my favorite parts just with bringing the entire team together down here. Speaker 1: Another one of my favorite parts, which the audience probably doesn't know even happened, is bringing in a hibachi chef yesterday at the house to, you know, throw food into our mouth from 10 feet away. So nothing like building trust with your CEO when you can, you know, throw food at their face and try to, yeah, just have some fun. I think that it just is such a good culture builder and team alignment. You just build those bonds. Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. It's really cool to have client meetups, right? Like when we were in California, we were just in Newport Beach doing some 2025 planning, 2024 recap meetings with a few of our managed brands and for them to You know, be a part of and appreciate that side of the culture as well. Like, hey, we foster in-person relationships. We want to come to you. We want to come and check out, you know, your HQ, your offices, you know, your warehouse, etc., etc. You know, I've done this a handful of times for brands that I work with directly, and it always is celebrated, right, on both sides. Take a lot of those learnings that we have from these in-person meetups with our clients and really work to understand the importance of what our relationship is and where they want to get to. It helps with emotional buy-in, all the things we've previously talked about with our hires here at BTR Media as well. From a client perspective, I think it's really beneficial as well. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. I think the client meetups are just as fun as these team meetups for very different reasons, right? You walk away from the client meetings just so motivated on an individual account basis saying, I have so many new ideas. The bond with your person at that brand is so much stronger versus this. You walk away with those same feelings but for your coworkers, your teammates wanting to help out. Don't touch a lot of the accounts you touch, Adam, but if you ask me for help, I'd jump in and probably give an entire day or week to help you out. Yeah, very different reasons, but these things are so important for a remote team and why BTR is so good. Alex and Destiny do such a good job of building the culture that you guys all see about and hear about online. It's not a gimmick. This is legit. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's something that I think we're constantly optimizing because we want to foster it and we want to protect it. Like you had said previously, a lot of companies claim to have this culture of XYZ and then when you speak to the previous employees, people who have left, it was far from what they were ultimately speaking on. Speaker 1: Which is exactly why, you know, the best of the best are who we look for at BTR. It's not that anybody can handle that much freedom or this much, you know. Non-micromanagement, but we're just that type of breed of very competitive people, autonomous people, entrepreneurial people that we want to crush it without someone looking over our shoulder. I think that takes a lot of integrity. That's the type of people we want to attract and the people we want to work with and the people that we do work with. Speaker 2: Yep, completely agreed. Couldn't have said it better myself. Speaker 1: Awesome. Well, any other thoughts on this trip so far? I know we have another day left here, but any thoughts so far that we didn't have already? Speaker 2: No. If anybody has any questions on You know, direct benefits, how we kind of orchestrate these trips, what we do, how we get on the same page in terms of team activities or even something as simple as team meals. You know, feel free to shoot us a message. We're always happy to go over the benefits and kind of how we do things and why. You know, there's reason and intent. Behind everything that we do, there's reason and intent in terms of why we're sitting in an Airbnb and not a hotel, right? So all of those things, we continue to optimize just to protect and conserve our culture. So just really excited for this year and what these meetings continue to bring for us. Speaker 1: Awesome, yeah. Excited to see what's ahead here in 2025. We have a lot to accomplish, a lot of goals to go hit. So let's do it, man. Speaker 2: Let's do it. Excited. Thanks for having me. Speaker 1: Yeah. Cheers, everyone. We'll talk next time.