Bloom Your Mind

Ep 163: Dream Work Partnerships

• Marie McDonald

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In this episode, I interview Maggie Roach Black in a live conversation about the partnership Maggie and I have built over 18 years of working together.

We talk about what makes a work partnership not just functional — but dream-level aligned. The kind of partnership that makes better work, deeper impact, and a lot more joy possible.

This is an inside look at how we think, how we collaborate, how we navigate challenges, and how we’ve stayed each other’s primary thought partner and creative partner for almost two decades.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • The traits and values we find make deeply compatible work partners
  • How we manage our minds to get the best out of ourselves and each other
  • How we navigate challenges without damaging trust or momentum
  • Why we’ve been able to sustain a primary work partnership with each other for nearly 20 years
  • How meetings on the beach, working dinners and laughing about EVERYTHING keeps us stronger
  • Why joy, partnership, and collaboration directly translate into stronger outcomes and better work
  • How we create deep organizational impact by helping leaders and teams access their bestest best
  • How we help mission-driven organizations build cultures where humans actually thrive
  • The next big idea we’re building together — including retreats in Paris

This conversation is really about what becomes possible when you build work relationships rooted in trust, growth, shared values, and hilariousness. 

When partnership is aligned, work gets better.
 Impact gets bigger.
 And the experience of building something meaningful becomes a whole lot more fun.

Maggie Roach Black

Maggie is an executive coach, mom of three wild daughters, holder of multiple degrees from Stanford University, and co-founder of Bloom Leadership. She loves spending her days coaching individuals, training managers and leaders, and helping all kinds of people get unstuck (along with volunteering at her kids’ schools and Girl Scout troops). Her career experience includes leading a scaling business, building processes for staffing and decentralized culture at scale, strategic planning, managing functional teams of managers for people at all levels, and working directly with teachers and kids. She thrives on helping individuals and teams to set the right goals, and believes every work experience can be fun.

How to connect with Marie:

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We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Reunion With A Beloved Co‑Founder

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind Podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it. Well, hello, everybody, and welcome to an episode of the Bloom Your Mind podcast that has been in the works for like a year or something. We have as a guest today, and I haven't done an interview in a long time, so this is fun. I have a guest that is one of my favorite people on the planet in like every realm. As a friend, as a colleague, as a parent, and a human in general, just like the most amazing spectacular person. And I'm gonna prove it to you with the story that we tell you. And uh she and I have been talking about recording this podcast forever. So Maggie Roach Black is here with me today. And I know some people know this human very well and are probably like, yes, right now hearing this name. Yeah, and a little bit of backdrop is that Maggie and I have worked together for wait for it, eighteen years. Eighteen years.

SPEAKER_01

Well, this is crazy. We're not that old.

SPEAKER_00

Nope, nope. And we've had our own company together, Bloom Leadership, for five years. And so we're here five years. We just decided we're gonna celebrate our five-year work aversary. Yeah, we're gonna have some sort of party, some sort of co-founder's party. It's gonna be very exclusive. Workaversary. Workaversary. Um, but we are here today to talk about why we have been able, not just able, but why we have loved partnering together in work and in life and in friendship and raising family side by side while we are doing all this work together for so long, for almost two decades, without ever like looking back. And it's still feeling amazing. Today we hopped on a meeting this morning and I opened up our meeting, and I said the first thing I said to Maggie was, Yes, it's you. I'm so glad it's you. And so, how do we do that? How do we love each other so much and still love working together and creating great things? And also, Maggie and I did a huge pivot in our lives together, and we're gonna talk about that. So, Maggie Roach Black is here. She lives here in San Diego, in Carlsbad, has three beautiful daughters. We call them the girl squid instead of squad. Right. Uh-huh. Yep, and she's brilliant and fabulous and loves the ocean. Maggie, what did I miss about you?

Deciding To Leave A Stable Career

SPEAKER_01

That's pretty good. Turns out I love living in Carlsbad near the ocean. It's true. Yep. My kids and I love it here. And Marie and I worked together for so many years running a big business, and now we run a totally different business together. I don't believe in guilty pleasures, but I do believe in enjoying things like the real housewives without guilt. And um, it's been really fun recently. My kids are starting to learn to cook dinner, and that's been a wonderful change in our lives, but we all like baking together on the weekends. That's been really fun. Having little chaps. It's so fun. We're currently spending all of our extra hours selling Girl Scout cookies.

SPEAKER_00

We that thin min life.

SPEAKER_01

That's right.

Visioning A Life‑First Company

SPEAKER_00

All right, so I'm gonna start off by saying that Maggie and I scaled a company with an incredible culture, led tons of retreats together, led teams, um, served like thousands of families and hundreds of staff, maybe thousands of staff, I don't know. Yep together. Thousands, tens of thousands of families. There it is. There it is. She's got the numbers. And then we, you know, after 15 years of doing that together, or maybe yeah, was it 15 years? A little bit less, a little bit less than that. Uh, we really decided to make a change. And it was a really big change for both of us. Yeah. Maggie and I both decided after living and loving this work we were doing for a long time that we needed to make a change because we were burnt out, right? We like loved the impact we were having, loved what we were doing together, loved the people we got to work with, and we both decided we got to change this. And so we together came up with this idea for a company we wanted to start. We lovingly communicated that we were leaving our old company, and we made a change to take. I was saying earlier to Maggie, it was like we held hands and jumped, and we made this change to leave this organization that had been really the majority of our professional lives and where we had built our reputations and our careers, and leap out into the unknown with an idea for what we wanted to do and what we wanted to do together. And it was scary and wild. And so we're here to talk about how that happened because we both coach a lot of people that make big changes like that. So, what was that like for you, that hold hands and jump thing, Maggie?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Well, one thing that I remember is that at first we weren't making this decision together. We both individually, independently, were thinking about do I really want to leave this thing that I love so much? And how can I change my life and still continue to do this work I love? And then at some point, when we talked about it, it became clear that what we wanted to do could be something that we did together. And that made it so much easier. Are you grinning at me? And I think it's because you're remembering walking on the beach together in Tory Pines, and we had this moment when we were like, OMG, could we do this together? And for me, that made it go from this is impossible to, well, I guess this is impossible, but I'm gonna do it anyway. Uh, because I could do it with you. And I knew that because of so many things, including our complimentary strengths, I knew that we could take the leap together and we would figure out a way for everything to be okay. But it was really, really a big deal. And one of the things for me was that I was a single mom of three, and it was really hard to imagine walking away from something so stable. Like really for a long time, just the entire concept of health insurance was a blocker for me because I was like, that's not a thing I can do myself. Right. And I needed, I need the stability of a regular paycheck and having, you know, my needs met, my family's needs met by working for a company. But there was something about the well, there were some things about the life, the life I was living that wasn't working for me. And what led me to actually leap was the combination of understanding that I wasn't actually living my life, the way I was spending my time was not in line with my values and what I wanted my life to be like. And so that pushed me to know I had to make a change. And then being able to imagine doing it with you together in like a collaborative way instead of a fully independent way is what made me believe I could do it.

From Ridiculous Idea To Reality

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. You know what made me really laugh when you were saying that or smile was that you know how we always talk about in the work we did with our friend Carmen Lansdowne about the whole idea of futurism and being ridiculous at first? That great ideas sound ridiculous at first. Yes. Both of us were having like our own interior, this is ridiculous at first moment of can I leave this thing that I've put so much love and energy into? This can I leave this community? Can I leave? That seems hard and that sounds ridiculous, and that was ridiculous sounding inside our own echo chambers of our minds, and then saying it to each other, hey, I'm I'm gonna leave. And the other person saying, I'm gonna leave too. Then the idea of doing it together actually felt more ridiculous to me. It felt so ideal that I was like, that's crazy. Can I don't know, like, can we do do who do we think we are? We're a little big for our britches. We think we're just gonna like leave and build something ourselves together. And at the same time, what you said is very true for me too, which is that it felt easier to do it hand in hand this at least.

SPEAKER_01

I feel like the ridiculous at first is also applies so well to the way we decided to center our planning, our strategizing about what we wanted to create, which was we just started from what do we want our lives to be like? Like, what do we want, how do we want our professional life to feed the rest of our lives? And we literally started from how many hours do we want to work, and how do we want to feel when we're working, and what supports the rest of our life? And that felt a little ridiculous. I almost felt like I don't have permission to do this, like and then we just decided that we did and we could actually center our lives in our lives instead of everything comes after work.

What Bloom Leadership Actually Does

SPEAKER_00

Well, and that was part of healing from a burnout culture, right? Or it was the opposite. So we were actually believing enough in the reality that we wanted, not the reality we'd been living in for 15 years, where everything came at the expense, like the expense of our our lives was always it was always paying for us being fully there at work first. That was always prioritized. And and I I really want y'all listening to hear this. It felt wild to us to do it this way. But what made it feel easier for me, Maggie, and I don't know if this was true for you too, but the reason I I really wanted to tell this part on the podcast of how we did it is because we talked to two co-founders that were both women that ran a different HR startup organization like ours, and they said, here's what to do. Sit down together and create a vision for how many hours you want to work per week, what time you wanted to start. Do you want to start at 8 a.m.? Do you want to start at 10? How much money do you want to make? What do you want it to be like? Do you want it to be like creative? Do you want it to be more operational? How many people do you want to work with? How much time do you want to spend actually training and leading workshops and traveling? Like really what Maggie said from the experience of it and just hearing, oh, it that's how they built it for themselves created a possibility that wasn't there in my mind before. That was like maybe we could do that too.

SPEAKER_01

And then we did the way I remember it, I don't know actually what happened because it was five years ago and you know, human memories are fallible. But what I remember about that is that we, you and I had had a conversation that was like, could we build it this way from what we want first? And then I think that's why I remember this feeling of needing permission, because I think there was something about then soon after that, having that conversation with them, these beautiful, brilliant inspirations who were like, This is how we did it. And we were like, Oh, we can. That's really a thing people can do. And they're successfully running a company this way. It was like, we had the idea too, and then the idea was out there and it seemed possible. So just here it's possible.

SPEAKER_00

It is so possible. And in fact, the thing I want everybody to hear is we could not have started from the other side because you can't know exactly how you're gonna pull it off first. We couldn't have known. We're gonna throw a whole bunch of stuff out there and see if it works and then tweak it. If it doesn't work, if it doesn't work, we're gonna try something else. And that was part of what made us so confident together, is what Maggie said. We knew we would figure it out together. Yes. But we knew what we were figuring out. We had the vision first that we were working towards. Here's this is the vision for our life and our work and why we what we want it to feel like. And that way, when we were throwing spaghetti at the wall and trying things out and seeing what worked and what didn't work, we knew what was a match to where we wanted to go.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Right. Yeah. We had the vision for how we wanted our work to serve our lives. Yes. And then we also had the vision for things like the type of work we want to be doing, what type of client, what we want our client relationships to look like, but we didn't hold tightly to different iterations of exactly what our product, what our services would be. Right. We had lots of ideas and we tried some until we found what worked for a certain client or a moment in the marketplace. And then we adjusted. And I think we knew that we could do that together because we had solved so many problems together and done so much iterating and re-imagining together.

Manager Skills That Change Work

SPEAKER_00

Before, I feel like there's like this funny moment where I'm realizing we haven't even told people exactly what we actually do. But I still understand. I'm gonna put this out there as a carrot. We're you're gonna find out what we do in just a second. But here's the other thing I wanted to talk about while we're still on this is why us, Maggie? Like, why did we feel like I know that it's gonna be great because it's you? And Maggie and I always say to each other, one at different times, we're like, I'm so glad it's you. I'm so glad it's you. I literally couldn't do what we do with any other human on the planet but you. We specifically are such a good match. But why? And the first thing that comes to my mind is that we laugh all the time. We laugh so hard all the time.

unknown

So hard.

SPEAKER_00

And it it is in hand in hand with like taking our work really um not seriously, but like it's super important to us to follow through. We're always in integrity, we work really hard, we always do what we say we will do with each other or talk about it when we're not gonna be able to do it. We have so much integrity and trust, and also we are playing all the time.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, yes, it's always fun, and we can trust that the other person is gonna do, and we are gonna do what we say we're going to do. And I think we have learned to work less hard. Like we had a long history of working so hard together. I just want to highlight that because you said we work really hard, but we work a lot less hard than we used to. We play a lot more and we work a lot less.

SPEAKER_00

Even though we're working hard, it does not feel hard.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I think that is my number one. I mean, I know that that is my number one too, that it's just fun. And even when we're like untangling a sticky situation, I know we're gonna giggle or we're gonna be able to like make fun of ourselves or whatever in a way that feels true, genuine, and like I don't know. I don't ever feel like we have to be performing to each other. We just have a genuine, authentic connection and we can laugh and work at the same time.

SPEAKER_00

And it helps everybody else laugh and work at the same time.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

Retreats, Coaching, And Real Outcomes

SPEAKER_00

It makes us so good at what we do, leading spaces, leading retreats, because we're always helping other people take their work more seriously in terms of how important their work is, because we'll tell you that's what we do. We come into organizations and make sure they're super mission-driven and they believe in what they're doing, and we help them create strategy that lines up with like the heart and the mission of what they're doing, creating cultures that are values-based and training around leadership training so that people really come across authentically and clear-mindedly and uh put their people first. So we really help leaders accomplish beautiful missions for the change they're trying to make in the world, but do it in a way that puts their the human beings in their organizations first. And so we develop all of the skills and leaders to listen and to um to create strategies and communicate them well, all the communication and feedback and coaching and all the leadership skills that help people love where they're working, right? What else would you add to that, Max?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think you were starting to say this, so I'll just say straight out we we ourselves and we help other people take our responsibilities seriously, but not take ourselves too seriously. Yeah. And I think we always come back to that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And I think I love what you said because that's really at the heart of everything that we do. And the other thing that I often come back to is how many people struggle not enjoying their jobs, in part because of their lack of clarity in communication or not feeling valued by their manager. And so often what we focus on is teaching skills that every manager should be taught, but that many places are not prioritizing, investing in manager training to just do the basics of communicating clearly, giving valuable feedback, setting people up for success by clarifying expectations and then giving feedback on it, holding good meetings, just like really basic stuff that I know in my life I hear so much just in random snippets of conversation about how much people hate things about their jobs. And it's a it's a thing that we've gone back to over and over again. Like this is actually a way to make the world a better place, to have bet stronger, more valuable manager relationships because people who like their jobs more are happier and make things better in the world.

SPEAKER_00

So we usually work with a C-suite, we do 360 evaluations and look at what's working for the C-suite and not working, and then we work with them and we work with their teams of directors and leaders and uh help them all. Um, we do that through coaching them individually. We do tons of one-on-one coaching with C-suites and their teams of leaders. And then we do that through leading, one of our favorite things is leading retreats. And we travel around to all kinds of cool places and lead retreats and offsites, whether it's like a half day or three days, and we love that because it's also so fun to just be together and create these little pockets, little atmospheres, little snow globes of times when people can get out of the business and focus on the business together in a way that feels good and that kind of builds connection on those teams.

SPEAKER_01

And we facilitate by Zoom also. We do virtual workshops as well. All the time. Yeah. But we love it when we get to go somewhere in person, in addition, because we do so much of our executive coaching is usually virtual as well. So that's what we do.

How We Solve Problems Together

SPEAKER_00

Um okay, Maggie, what do you think helps us get through challenges together?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think the most the like key thing at the heart of it is that we are comfortable speaking honestly and clearly about what's not working. And like we know we're not gonna hurt each other's feelings by talking about something that's not working, or if we do, we'll we know we'll repair and move forward. And so we're not avoiding saying the thing that's not working and naming it. And then also I think I was just thinking of an example recently when sometimes one of us goes a little bit gets a little squirrely in the way we're thinking about the problem. And I love that we can name that and ask each other for help. Like I have a bad attitude about this problem right now. Can you help me get back on track? That is something that has happened before. And I think that's really at the key or at the heart because really it's all about the way we think about the problems, right? And it's so helpful to know you'll call me or I'll call you if that's if we're not doing that well. I think that's the most important thing. What do you think?

SPEAKER_00

Yes, yes, I agree. I think one of the other things I agree with everything you said, and I think another thing is that we never assume motivation or intent to be negative. Yeah. I mean, the opposite, of course, is always assuming positive intent, but I think it's important to say it the other way too. It's like, yeah, if something happens that doesn't work for one of us, we always know that the other person didn't intend it because we have trust, we care about each other, and so it's always a you and me against the problem process. It's always a like, hey, somehow the way this fell out, can we tweak this? And I think that's part of why if we ever have to problem solve or go through a challenge, we are both on the other person's team as much as we're on our own team and solving what's happening, right? It's like 50-50. It's no blame, no shame. It's just like what do we need to tweak to get back to laughing?

Our Creative Process And Low Ego

SPEAKER_01

Yes. And often we're laughing even in it. I totally and I think also because of that, it helps us believe that about other people too. Yeah. Like if the problem is something with a client, we're never like those people are out to get us. We always just assume it's something else, you know, that everybody has positive intent all the time.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, yes, yes. Okay. What about Mags? I want to hear you describe how do we bring an idea to life? How do we like turn an idea into a real thing? What's our collaborative process? Because I talk about all the time on the podcast. I talk about bringing ideas to life on our own, really, and like how to pull people in. But you and I start 50-50, like our idea. Yeah, how do we bring our idea to life together? We're both in it from concept to like not just fruition, but sharing it out, right?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think it's looked lots of different ways with different ideas. But one way that I love, I love it when you get going on something and you're like dreaming big and you've got a vision, but it's really open. It's a little vague. And then I I feel like sometimes I'm like running to catch up with you and catch the pieces and try to like help them form into a shape or something. I don't know if that makes sense, but I feel like sometimes that's our collaborative style. Not that you can't, of course, you're quite good at structuring something from concept into reality, but I think sometimes that's a good way for us to juke and jive. Is that a phrase? I have no idea, but I like it. I like it. Okay. Let's just say jive. Yeah. Um I I really like collaborating that way. I also think sometimes we do it in like a really I also love when we're like, okay, here's our concept for a training. Let's like go hard for 20 minutes and each take a portion and write it and then see what we came up with. And if it goes together, just like joint, like iterate or um getting the first design out. I think that's really fun too.

SPEAKER_00

You know, in what you're describing, I agree. Like we have all these fun ways. And I think that, and I I love those two ways. I love it when we just like give ourselves 10 minutes to brainstorm and we both are jotting down idea or like uh sharing ideas and we're just taking mad notes on them and we start with concept together, or when I'm like talking and talking and you're like pulling out the pieces that you like and putting them down, all these things. And I think that when I think about all those ways and our complimentary strengths, I think one of the core things that make them valuable, and also when I think about the tenets of innovation that we worked in, you know, for over a decade together, is like you're less attached to the idea being yours. You're what did we used to say in our old org? It was like, uh, you let go of your own idea in favor of a better idea. You and I both have like, I would say no attachment to it being ours. We have attachment to what we think is gonna work best. So we'll argue for things, but we'll also also let it go if the other person convinces us that something else is gonna work better. So it's just like throwing all the ideas out and just seeing which ideas are best, not the holding on to them. And that's part of everything that we've talked about that makes our collaboration partnership so successful is that it there's just a very strong lack of ego, I would say, in like, is it yours or mine? Who had more time? Yeah, attachment. It's you and me making stuff. And does it is it gonna serve people?

Iterate: Celebrate Wins Before Fixes

SPEAKER_01

Totally a hundred percent agree. And that just reminded me another thing I love about collaborating with you is sometimes I, for example, we have a really good idea for something we want to teach, and then I'm like stuck. I'm like, I don't know how to do it. I can't get there. And then you throw out five ideas, and then I'm like, got it. Okay, and then my ideas start flowing, and it's like a very literal build on the ideas of others, which was one of the tenets that we worked with before as well. It's like sometimes I don't know, it could happen at any stage where I get stuck, and then just whatever's flowing from you then starts the flow going in both ways. Yes, sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I love it. Another thing that I love about our work is, and I've talked about this on the podcast before, that whenever we're done with like doing some public speaking thing or leading a retreat or whatever, we force ourselves. Yes. We, y'all, we force ourselves.

SPEAKER_01

It's hard sometimes. It's so hard. Sometimes we failed.

SPEAKER_00

We force each other, we force each other too. We keep each other accountable to looking for what we did well or what we like first, what worked first. Because we'll start saying, Oh, this moment and this moment, and the other one will be like, nah, nope, not yet. And we force ourselves to take notes and highlight everything that we liked first. And what that allows us to do is then we get to the part that's like, what didn't work, or what do we want to do differently? And we really are able together to fail, to like do something, but it's valuable because we're looking at, oh, that didn't land so well. I was so excited about that part, and then it really did not land well. Let's not use that again, you know. But we're not or let's tweak whatever. Let's tweak it, whatever. Yeah. But we both the iteration process that we have is really great. We always take time to reflect on what's working and not working in our design, redesign, and try something different with feedback. Yes.

Rituals, Appreciation, And Joy

SPEAKER_01

I think actually that thing that we do for each other to sort of force ourselves to watch for what we like first, yeah, has helped me to do that when I'm alone, also. And it's hard. Our brains are so well suited to, you know, look for threats and talk about failures. So it's much easier for me to be like, here's what you did well right afterwards, and then that helps me build the practice and do it for myself. So that might be helpful to people who are listening.

SPEAKER_00

Like, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01

There's something you're doing in collaboration with other people, so compliment them right afterward, and then maybe that'll help you practice that for yourself.

SPEAKER_00

For yourself and help their brain engage in that way. Totally. Um, I love that. Okay, so another thing we we that I really want to just put out there that is probably a hallmark that keeps us really happy in our work together and with each other is that we always take a ton of time for like personal updates. Like we will have an hour and a half meeting once a week and we save 20 minutes to half an hour when we can. And sometimes it gets whittled down when we're really busy, but we will take that much time to do 15 minutes you update me on your life and how you're doing as a human being, and 15 minutes for me, or 10 minutes for you, or 10 minutes for me. And then we go and we'll walk while we do that before we get into like whatever spreadsheets we're working on or content or whatever. And we go um a couple times a year and we have like a company holiday party, which is really just me and me walking on the beach and like making jokes, having coffee uh or an anniversary party for our five years, whatever. A couple times a year, we just take a day or most of a day of a workday and just celebrate, do a little work and then hang out and be like, this is great. Look what we built, look what we're doing.

Stress‑Free Offsites And Growth

SPEAKER_01

Yes. The other thing that is in line with that, I think that I really have learned from you. I you're so good at this, is um thanking me for all the little stuff that I do, and it helps me remember to practice. I have to be a little intentional about it, it doesn't come as naturally to me to thank you for all the things. Sometimes I'm like, that's just our work. You don't need to thank me for that. Yeah, I submitted an invoice, duh. But I it makes it so much more fun and enjoyable, and I think that's such a key part of feeling seen.

SPEAKER_00

That's so funny because over the last year I'm like, Maddie is so good at thanking me. I have to make sure that I keep up with her.

SPEAKER_01

Straight up learned it from you.

SPEAKER_00

That's so rad. And also, it is so real. Anytime you submit an invoice, I'm like, thank God for you. We're gonna get paid. Yeah, and I don't, I'm not the best. Uh you didn't have to do the invoice. Yeah, the best. All right, chill. Um, before we log off, Maggie, I'm gonna ask you one more question and we'll answer it together about the question I always end on, which is what's the idea that we're making real right now? But before that, is there anything else that you want to share with everybody? Anything else you want people to know that we didn't cover that you think they would like to hear or that would make them laugh or be valuable to them?

SPEAKER_01

I just love what we talked about about how it seemed so impossible. And sometimes when I look back, when I was so productivity culture was so ingrained in me that I couldn't see another way, it really seemed impossible to design a life that I wanted instead of taking what I thought I could get. So if someone out there is hearing that and is feeling like they're stuck in something impossible, I don't know. There's just you can design the life that you want and build it. And for us, it was about being confident and just jumping in and trusting ourselves and trusting each other, I think. And then laughing a lot, just really making ridiculous jokes as often as possible. Not even jokes. We just laugh at stupid things that nothing even happens. I don't know.

Big Dreams: Destination Retreats

SPEAKER_00

Because why would we do it if it's not fun? Why would we do it if it's not fun? Yeah. We were just coming back from leading an off-site last week where we turned and burned a trip, like met at the airport at 6 a.m. and got back to the airport at 9 p.m. together and we led an off-site up in the Bay Area. When we got back, we were just talking about how much fun it was. And also when we get back from those trips, we always look back a little bit and think about how far we've come, right? Like in the beginning, we were conceptualizing what if we could just do one-day trips and actually like get back to our family, and then it wouldn't be hard and it would feel fun. And at the end of that trip, we we you were dropping me off from the airport in my driveway last week on Wednesday night. And I looked at you and I was like, like the circumstances of this particular off site did have very stressful elements, right? Like there was a lot of like last minute pivoting and in-the-moment pivoting. The whole thing kind of felt improv y and it all went off beautifully, and they were so happy with it. But I looked at you and I was like, Maggie, I never felt stressed ever. Totally. Zero stress. And that was like potentially a very stressful thing to have pulled off together, but we just don't do that. Yes, we don't do it that way. We did it that way for a long time in the old organization, and that's like one of the core tenants of the shake it off. It took us some time to like it really did get out of that skin or whatever. Yeah, that's a weird way to say that.

SPEAKER_01

What I pictured us as lizards, okay?

SPEAKER_00

We were shutting up that, but that was so weird.

SPEAKER_01

Don't ever use the phrase get out of that skin again. Let's like it down. Don't say that.

SPEAKER_00

Say shake it off instead. Don't get out of your skin. Wait, what?

SPEAKER_01

We're keeping this in.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Everyone gets to know that you said get out of your skin.

SPEAKER_01

That's not even gonna be the weirdest thing I say today. 100% guarantee.

SPEAKER_00

This, I know. Okay, what's the idea?

SPEAKER_01

Okay, so one of the things I love about the the way you're talking about last Wednesday is that basically anytime we're on a flight together, we're like, what are we loving that we're doing and what do we want next? Yeah. And the thing that I'm so excited to get to create more of. Oh, and to just like tie a bow on what you just said, at one point we were like, what if we just did one day trips and we didn't have to spend a night away from our families? And we're like, that's crazy. And now we do it and it's fine. And so what we are, I think, looking to create now is continuing to do this work where we lead a workshop that feels rad and like we're offering something valuable to our clients and the people that we get to teach and be with, you know, helping them to come up with new ideas or think together about how they want to make their work different together, but doing it in even more exciting places. We want to go big. Let's go, I don't know, Bali or big.

Closing Cheers And Community Invite

SPEAKER_00

I had Bali in my head too. I was looking at it in Bali, yeah, for sure. So that's definitely where it's gonna be. Okay, but um, and so that's the idea we're making real right now, right? Yeah. Like in the next year or whatever, we're gonna get invited and asked to run these amazing retreats and workshops in places we've always wanted to go. Yeah. Like Japan or Bali or Italy or places we've been before and we really love and want to go back. Who knows where? Maybe just cool places in the states, Wyoming. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, somewhere we didn't even know we wanted to go. Oh, that's cool. I like that. Yeah, like Wyoming. I knew I wanted to go there. I actually did too. Okay. Iowa.

SPEAKER_00

There you go. I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_01

I I don't know still, but someone's gonna show us that we do.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Wait, what's the one from Waynes World? Delaware. Delaware. Here we come. Here we come. Delaware 2026.

SPEAKER_00

No, I'm down.

SPEAKER_01

Is that the note we want to end on?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we do. Okay, uh, we need to let them go because we are rapidly devolving into what we do. Humorous. Okay, so Maggie Roach Black, thank you so much for making this idea real for this conversation together, which I feel like was really kind of a celebration for ourselves, too. It's kind of the five-year anniversary episode, you know?

SPEAKER_01

Yes, that's it. This is our champagne test.

SPEAKER_00

It is. Cheers. Cheers. Thank you, everybody. That is what we've got for you this week, and I will see you next week. If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, you gotta come and join us in the Bloom Room. This is a year-round membership where we take all of these concepts and we apply them to real life in a community where we have each other's backs and we bring out the best in each other. We're all there to make our ideas real. One idea at a time. We'll see you in the bloom room.