Sassafras Marketing had our annual fall meeting last week in Kansas City. These meetings are essential to our agency’s growth and our team’s morale since we are a virtual agency with employees in Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia. Each year we get together for three days in the spring and fall to learn, grow, and have a little fun! And was there ever precedent for having fun…we only need look back to our last full agency get-together in May!
Piggybacking off of our May theme of “The Energy Bus,” this year’s fall meeting had us moving and grooving in more ways than one. So much fun and such a creative recharge.
Day 1
We kicked off our meeting at Lenexa’s new Public Market– a super-cool food hall and market that happens to be located on the first floor of Lenexa’s new city hall. (Lenexa is a suburb of Kansas City, on the southwest side.) We loved the meeting rooms, local shops and variety of food! Next up: team shirts in red or blue. This could only mean one thing– some sort of competition was in store! We headed to our hotel where a bus picked us up and took us a few miles north to the totally fun and hip Chicken N Pickle!
For the uninitiated, Chicken N Pickle is an outdoor/indoor entertainment venue and casual restaurant in North Kansas City. What do you do there? Play pickleball! And eat! There’s also outside lawn games like battleship and cornhole. What’s not to love? And, Chicken N Pickle’s rooftop was named the country’s BEST rooftop bar in a list of viewing locations for September’s solar eclipse! It was right in the “path of totality.” Who knew pickleball was a thing? Who knew pickleball was SO MUCH FUN? Kudos to the red team for pulling off the win! This might have to become an annual thing for bragging rights!
Day 2
We spent the next day really buckling down in meetings at Lenexa’s new Rec Center, the city’s 100,000 square foot community center. The entire day was lead by Mitch Ditkoff of Idea Champions. He is a wonderful storyteller and helped the team think of different strategies for creative thinking and idea generation. He was the perfect speaker for us, as he specializes in helping forward-thinking organizations go beyond business as usual and establish dynamic, sustainable cultures of innovation. We worked on team-building strategies, problem-solving strategies, and so much more. He helped the team learn how to think creatively and be accountable for helping the business and the creativity of others grow.
Nighttime brought a visit to the Holton’s house for Mexican food and games. We also celebrated Sassafras' work anniversaries that night. (Each fall team meeting we celebrate anniversaries of the year.) Here’s who we got to celebrate last Thursday night:
Jessie Devine – 1 year
Allison Heather – 6 years
Sara Kinslow – 6 years
Sara Rhodes – 5 years
Congratulations to these Sassy folks!
Day 3
On Friday, we spent a half-day at Lake Quivira before everyone headed back to the airport. We heard a presentation from a talented video company and from our own creative team (Allison and Shannon.) And one of the most exciting things was the new fitness challenge that was announced. Basically, we are competing amongst ourselves for a six-month period to see who will have the most steps (we’re going for 10,000 a day). It’s all being tracked on a mobile app and everyone can see who’s in the lead each day after steps are tracked. Our fitness and well-being all tie into the theme of the energy bus–exercise clears the mind and helps produce better thinking. (Cue our brainstorm session with Mitch!)
We are fortunate that Jenny and Geoff want Sassafras employees to be healthy in all aspects of the word: mind, body and soul; and they recognize that creative output is enhanced and that our batteries are recharged when we are healthy! Until next time, Sassafras-ers!