Planning & Presenting for an Offsite

Mikey Mioduski (00:05)
is it on? Okay, I missed the countdown. And we're back. Welcome back to Presentation Thinking, the Storyteller Study Club. This is Mike Medusky, and I'm joined by Molly Gagan. How's it going, Molly?

Molly Geoghegan (00:06)
Mm-hmm.

Hello,

presentation nation. A very merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, happy holidays, everyone. ⁓ December's like a funny time, Mikey, because it's like busy for a million reasons. There's like festive parties, all this Secret Santa stuff to take care of. And it is kind of a busy time at the ranch, if I do say so myself. I know everyone's grinding this week, but a couple weeks ago,

Mikey Mioduski (00:37)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (00:48)
we were relaxing and there was a bit of a festive Ghost Ranch celebration that's been in the works for 10 years since the company's inception that I think would be really fun to talk about today if you're up for it. What? Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (01:00)
Yeah, that's right. I mean, I'm up for it. And yeah,

it is like, it's funny because we are fully remote. I'm sure some listeners here work for remote companies. And as you know, after some time passes, it's nice to get in person together. So what I think, I've been envious of people who have like, you know, they're in office, they're local, they can just get together for the ⁓ classic holiday party. And we generally don't do that.

Molly Geoghegan (01:19)
Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (01:30)
because we're all, you know, if we're lucky, we can get together all once a year. And I think we tried to typically do that during the summer months. But this year we actually forwent the summer months and kind of saved up for a bigger kind of like, were thinking, if our, generally we have a week where it's a little bit quieter around Thanksgiving. So we were thinking, hey, if it's a little quiet the week after Thanksgiving, maybe that's a good time to get everybody together for like a full agency retreat.

Molly Geoghegan (01:37)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (02:00)
We

targeted the first couple days of December this year and went to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Molly Geoghegan (02:07)
and listeners if you're tuning in for the first time.

This is, we talk about presentation storytelling of all things. And a lot of time, and guys, Ghost Ranch is a presentation design agency. We have a lot of internal dialogue to share, blogging about it if you will, here on the pod. And I mean, with any good event, a lot of presentations went into this. not only will you be getting the gossip from our, essentially the office Christmas party that we'll, that I've hold. I don't know, it was a blast to see everyone. But there is a lot of presentations and just assets.

that went into this, even with the fun stuff. We did ghosties for the first time, awards were given out, lives were changed. It was really special. It was a lot of fun. Oh, special guest. What's up, Sloan?

Mikey Mioduski (02:50)
And Molly, special drop in here. Sloan, Sloany girl

is obviously home from school today because there's no school on Christmas break. Sloany is the star who drew the little ghost that was used for our ghosties awards mascot. Sloan, do you want to do you want to say hi to our to the presentation nation?

Molly Geoghegan (02:59)
Yeah, it's holiday time.

Sloan it was so cute

Hi Sloan, how's it going? How's your break so far? Are you gonna be doing some festive cookie things? What are you doing? Are you making gingerbread houses? What are you guys up to this week?

Mikey Mioduski (03:19)
Good.

made two gingerbread

Just got cookies for Santa today. And Soni, are you team PowerPoint or team Google Slides?

Molly Geoghegan (03:39)
Fun! Okay, yay.

tough.

Mikey Mioduski (03:50)
Probably gamma.

Molly Geoghegan (03:54)
She's the next gen.

Mikey Mioduski (03:55)
Gamma. come on. All right, I knew it.

last. OK, Selenie, what's your walkout song? What's the song that you listen to to get hyped up? Race. Race. Oh, Macklemore? Oh, yeah. This is our moment. That's her walkout song. You're right, girlfriend.

Molly Geoghegan (04:04)
Yeah.

This is our moment. Yes. Fun. ⁓ Sloan, I

love that for you. Thanks so much for sharing. We'll have to make sure. Do you want to come back on the podcast sometime? You could be a regular guest. Yeah, Mikey, come on. Let's make it happen. We'll get you a microphone, Sloan. It's so good to see you. Merry Christmas. Wow, she's a natural.

Mikey Mioduski (04:16)
I'm done.

Yeah!

Done. All right. We'll find our new co-host.

You too. All right, say bye Molly. Bye Molly. Merry Christmas.

Never

got it to stay in there.

Molly Geoghegan (04:40)
Yeah

Mikey Mioduski (04:41)
Well, where do we go from here, Molly? Yeah. Gamma.

Molly Geoghegan (04:43)
Wow, adorable. We can cut it there. Yeah, we can kind of get it there. That's fine. That's great. ⁓

so cute. ⁓ What were we even talking about? ⁓ I mean, Gamma? Come on, the next gen. What's going on there?

Mikey Mioduski (04:56)
Yeah, okay, so... Molly.

Had you ever been to Santa Fe?

Molly Geoghegan (05:02)
I'd never been to Santa Fe. This was my first ever time. But it has long been a source of inspiration and excitement for me because I know it's very special to the ranch, Ghost Ranch specifically. Tell us about why you wanted to have our 10 year Ghost Ranch celebration slash Christmas party slash ghosty awards slash 2026 planning time in Santa Fe.

Mikey Mioduski (05:05)
Yeah, yeah.

Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So, ⁓ man, know, end of year, early years, that time when a lot of companies get together for their big kickoff. So we did ours a little, maybe like a month ahead of that. We kind of looked at ⁓ all the things we've done in our first decade of business. And so everyone asks like, where'd you get the name Ghost Ranch? And it's a long story, but it does go back to, I was a freelance designer.

Molly Geoghegan (05:40)
Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (05:54)
My wife was newly, we just found out she was pregnant. We were living in Denver and for her 30 by 30 list, you know, like 30 things you want to do before you hit the age of 30. We were in like the last, we were like a month out from that. She was, she had like this last minute scramble of all these things to like knock off. So every weekend we were doing something fun. And we went, one of her list items was to visit Santa Fe, New Mexico. Cause she'd been hearing more and more about it. And this was like over a decade ago. And ⁓

So we went down there, it was awesome. But on a whim, we were just like walking around downtown Santa Fe, and this afternoon thunderstorm just like boom, came upon us as it does out west, like real quick. We had to scramble indoors, and the place we went to, the first shelter we could seek ended up being the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. And it was crazy, because right when we got inside also the power went out. And so the person up front,

was just like, ah, you can just go in. They're supposed to charge us, but the system was down. So they just let us get out of the rain. And we were just walking around learning about this painter, Georgia. And pretty much in Santa Fe at that museum, they mentioned this place so frequently that she took residence at and painted at called the Ghost Ranch. was like 90 minutes out of Santa Fe and closer to a town called Abiquiu. And so that kind of...

Molly Geoghegan (07:18)
Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (07:20)
lingered with us. We ended up naming the company Ghost Ranch. And so, you know, as we're coming up on this like 10 year anniversary celebration, annual retreat thing, we're like, well, it's about time we actually go down there, you know, and ⁓ there's not a ton out near the actual ranch. And so we stayed in Santa Fe, which is like ⁓ really, really cool. And but we did make sure we could do a day trip out to the Ghost Ranch and do our little homecoming, you know, pilgrimage.

Molly Geoghegan (07:48)
Yeah, it was literally a homecoming, a pilgrimage, a source of inspiration. I've written many a blog post here for the ranch about George O'Keefe. So it was so fun to go on the tour and then hear about some of the details that I'd like just Googled and stuff and then be able to see her house and be like, yeah, she was too hot in the summer. Sometimes she'd sleep on the roof like, and look at the, cause she wanted direct contact to like the stars, the skies, the views at all times. Just really special.

Mikey Mioduski (08:11)
Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (08:16)
⁓ very interesting woman and painter and artist and Santa Fe in itself has long been a storied like artsy Southwest town and it was really fun to just have all of those things come to ⁓ fruition there for you. How did it feel Mikey 10 years on and like returning to Santa Fe? What a thrill.

Mikey Mioduski (08:31)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Well, coming from Indiana, it felt like I was out of breath because I didn't realize Santa Fe is at 7,000 feet elevation. And it was beautiful. we drove in, we flew into Albuquerque and that first night it had just started dumping snow. And so it was like white, beautiful when we woke up. But yeah, just getting everybody together is the best. And so we're going to talk a little bit about Molly, like

Molly Geoghegan (08:40)
Yeah. Yeah.

higher than Denver. Like I was, yeah, my Colorado breath.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

so fun.

Mikey Mioduski (09:04)
If you organize events, if you work for a remote team, what all goes into maybe planning a good offsite? And the presentation moments that occur, even at a small offsite for like 25, 30 people, there's a lot of those communication opportunities that you want to get right ⁓ to do them right and give them those moments, the respect and the planning and prep that they deserve.

Molly Geoghegan (09:09)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

which is what it was.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (09:33)
Sometimes those sneak up on you. can speak from experience because you want to enjoy the moment, ⁓ but also you also don't want to get up in front of people and sound like a schmuck, you know?

Molly Geoghegan (09:36)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Definitely, yeah. So, Presentation Nation, if you're listening and you're planning an event, ⁓ be it internal, external, for next year, we know SKO season is coming upon us, but there's just, events have been on our mind. We've talked to Cameron McGee of... ⁓

Avad3, amazing event production company. And just, yeah, even like something as like celebratory and fun as this, we had like a couple of workshops, right? But there's so many assets and just like pieces that are attached to that when you are putting on something for that many people. And we're not just talking about like the wedding qualities of it with the food and the catering, whatever. We're gonna talk about like the actual, you know, tech side and the site and what that means, like the small group kind of breakdown and stuff, screens. And Mikey gave a really

Mikey Mioduski (10:17)
Right.

Molly Geoghegan (10:28)
great 10 year retrospective ⁓ keynote, you will, Mikey. ⁓ And we can talk about his story, screen, and stage qualities as well. all right. ⁓ Mikey, suppose first of all, I'm taking the interview seat here as an interviewer. ⁓ How did it feel in comparison to previous retreats in the, you you're like, do you feel like you're kind of, with the repetition of that, you're like, okay, we gotta talk to like, who do you talk to at the? ⁓

Mikey Mioduski (10:34)
Who?

That's right.

Molly Geoghegan (10:56)
⁓ hotel or the event events thing and how do you start how soon are you starting this process to plan what you're going to need?

Mikey Mioduski (10:58)
Mmm

feel we've done it as short notice as like six months out. This one we planned.

Molly Geoghegan (11:11)
Mm-hmm.

longer.

Mikey Mioduski (11:15)
a good 12 months out. And we worked with a group called Prestige Meetings who ⁓ they're sort of an intermediary, shout out Karen. So yeah, if you don't really know like the right venue or the hotel or even if you're between a couple of cities, you can work with someone like Karen at Prestige and say, hey, like here's what we have in mind. We're about this many people. We're targeting the first week of December, 2027 or whatever. And then we're kind of between

Molly Geoghegan (11:25)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (11:44)
Santa Fe and Boulder or something like that. And it's awesome because they're super plugged in. They know what's up. They know all the new, you know, if you like big corporate hotels or if you like boutiques, ⁓ if you need a, we usually say like, we need like a bar where people can hang out at like a central area, you know, or in the center. And for this one, we just wanted like a true feeling of a retreat. Like we want people to feel not distracted. We want to feel like

Molly Geoghegan (11:57)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (12:13)
Like we're all here together. ⁓ and so also access to like something cool to do, like some trails nearby or this place had programming. found, we stayed at the Bishop's, ⁓ result Bishop's Lodge Resort, which is a little like a 10 minutes outside of Santa Fe. So you did feel like you're out there and you're like in these foothills. There's, there's like rivers and deer and all this cool stuff. So that's what we kind of fed to Karen and she came up with a shortlist.

Molly Geoghegan (12:13)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm activities. Yeah

Shut up.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (12:42)
There's incredible options in Santa Fe, but good news for us, we had someone boots on the ground, Grace, who was willing to go. You know, she had heard of it and we're like, when you're in the final closing stages of securing the venue, they'll say, Hey, we'll throw in like two free nights if you want to have someone come check it out. So Grace and Luke hit it up, gave us their seal of approval and it was on from there. Cause like, yeah, I hate to go super sight unseen Molly, but so for this one, it was nice to have someone.

Molly Geoghegan (12:49)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's Thumbs up.

Blind. Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (13:11)
who was willing to like vet it for us.

Molly Geoghegan (13:11)
Yeah.

Yeah.

especially with that many people and the partners or plus ones were invited. So this is like a bigger ⁓ thing. Yeah, so I mean, working with third party, I'm sure is extremely helpful in the back and forth and that kind of thing. At what point did they start asking about the workshops, what you needed for like the size of group and the breakout rooms and stuff that we had access to the screens, what it was. ⁓ And we had an AV person there the whole time I noticed with the hand-nailing the mics.

Mikey Mioduski (13:18)
Yeah. Yeah.

yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (13:43)
So there was

Mikey Mioduski (13:43)
Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (13:44)
like, felt very well taken care of, but how did that get set up?

Mikey Mioduski (13:46)
Okay. So that's where Big Mike tends to be. Okay. He's got the, I've got the big, the big focus, right? I'll pick the spot in the week. Right. And then, and then when people start asking questions about like, okay, how many workshop rooms? Then I start to get a little, a little bit out of my, I'm not known for the detail. So that's when we bring in Emily Vogel on our team, who is the most detail oriented, you know, kind of like when it comes to event.

Molly Geoghegan (13:55)
Vision, yeah, you've got the vision. There's no, yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (14:16)
project management creates a spreadsheet and then we really get down to business. So I feel more confident when I have an Envo on my side to say, all right, let's talk about the logistics now. We don't really start to do that until maybe closer to like three to six months out, know, like real logistics about AV and all those specifications coming down to the wire and deciding, do we want ⁓ to roll in a TV versus a projector and do we need?

Molly Geoghegan (14:16)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (14:45)
someone running AV and sound for a little while. So a lot of that came down to the bitter end, right? And there's always room to try to trim and do some savings here and there, decide where you need to invest to make sure it's really top notch versus where you feel like you could DIY things a little bit. yeah, I think, but we knew we would just want, kind of like for us, kind of small, we don't like to over program so that we can give people like a feeling that they can maybe use their afternoons to go.

Molly Geoghegan (15:00)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (15:15)
check out the town, do some events or like some activities. ⁓ In our mornings then are we like two days, the first day would be where we brought in an outside program. We brought in radical candor to do like a four hour, like a half day proper workshop. And then day two, our programming again was like from nine to noon or something where we did our own presentations and workshops internally.

Molly Geoghegan (15:31)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's cool. And as you guys were mapping this out, like this is, yeah, a long year in the making and there's a lot that people might be planning an offsite for, but how did you map out like timing of presentations and then people like inviting people that spoke, we had quite a variety of like different kind of departments, if you will, from Ghost Ranch. So how did you kind of map all of that out? Like what made sense for the programming? Because there's a bit of a, there's a story to the whole setup that we had.

Mikey Mioduski (15:58)
Yeah.

Yeah, for the internal stuff, ⁓ that really is sort of akin to a kickoff. So we've got the key leadership, know, like CEO, head of ops, of creative, head of accounts. ⁓ And so, yeah, that's when I thought, like, for me, ⁓ as the one of the, you know, we've had people coming in at all various years of our tenure, you know.

Lifespan, I thought it would be cool to give that here's what got us to this point today. So I gave that retrospective you talked about. And then looking ahead, we wanted our leadership to say like, and here's what's coming, like, and sort of the theme that emerged as we did a lot of like, kind of what should we talk about? Like, what is this? What's 2026 going to be about? What's our next decade going to be about? And I think we both wanted to say,

Molly Geoghegan (16:42)
Mm-hmm.

planning. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (17:11)
There's some things that'll never change and that's like our core beliefs, our fundamentals, which are our guiding lights, right, Molly? But a lot of other things will have to change. Like every year we've faced some sort of event or some trial that we had to face deliberately to turn into a triumph. so that...

You know, that sort of was the also what we thought could be a cool workshop, because you know how it is when it's like too much blabbering from a couple people versus all right, like no matter how good they are, just sitting through lecture after lecture can get kind of old. So we knew we wanted some more interactive stuff too. That's where we did a couple of roundtable workshops where we did like a SWOT analysis and let the teams kind of like really riff together.

Molly Geoghegan (17:57)
Mm-hmm.

good swat.

Mm-hmm, yeah. And if you're just listening for the first time, Mikey may or may not be referencing, I don't know, a global pandemic as those trials faced annually, the insane amount of tech ⁓ trials and tribulations that have riddled the tech industry for last few years, yeah. But really cool, and I think that transparency was part of the story of like you've kind of been...

Mikey Mioduski (18:16)
Nice.

Molly Geoghegan (18:30)
pretty really transparent with the team about how it's going, where we're going over the years. And I think that really came across in your keynote, which I think now might be a good time to get into how did it feel? I know there was like a lot of, you presented a lot of numbers in this deck of like being like, here's where we were at, here's where we needed to be. And you're drawing like circles and arrows. We've talked a lot about when you're doing in a presentation, you're showing that kind of data, projections and like.

Mikey Mioduski (18:41)
Uh-huh.

Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (19:00)
what's that called, actuals, right? Is that the term? And how did that, like I thought you did a great job. I mean, again, there's like, it's high, high level and you're just giving a few highlights and circles and arrows, but how did that feel with, you know, some of the stuff we've talked about on here being like, cause we're like, don't just show the spreadsheet, you know, cause that's a lot to get through that you came through 10 years of being really transparent with how the company was doing and stuff and the growth.

Mikey Mioduski (19:03)
Yeah.

Uh, I know.

Yeah,

I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but I started with our numbers, which were like, I just want to look back at each year. And so really like I started with a visual of basically our revenue since 2015, 2016 by year. And so you can kind of see this trend line. It was one damn year that was down, but otherwise what you see is a trend of growth, right?

Molly Geoghegan (19:28)
Pretty good.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

One pesky ear.

Yeah, totally, totally.

Mikey Mioduski (19:54)
And so

I thought it would be interesting to, and maybe just to me, was like, I wanted to make sure this wasn't entirely just for me. And so I wanted to try to like bring as much of the team in as I could. ⁓ And the more I started doing that, like the more I looked at from 2015 to 2016, know, bringing on Jeff, our first full-time hire, Allie was involved as a permalancer basically.

Molly Geoghegan (20:05)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (20:24)
and then sort of what we faced each year and what maybe we learned from that and maybe how we became a better company because of that. I think you can come into a new company and there's these things that they do and you're not sure why they do it. And so I think it's kind of fun to hopefully give a little rationale and reasoning as to like, hey, you know how we check in every day and we kind of punch in, punch out? That's because when me and Jeff first started,

Molly Geoghegan (20:30)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Definitely.

Mikey Mioduski (20:53)
around four o'clock in the afternoon, I couldn't tell if I was going to be bugging him or not. Cause we're a remote company that didn't exist at the time. And so was like, Hey, Jeff, like, do you think it'd be cool if we just start to tell each other when we're in or out for the day so that I'm not worried if I'm bugging you? And he's like, yeah, let's do that. And so that became our traffic channel where we punch in, we punch out. And it's not meant to be a big brother thing. It's actually meant to help our employees like, no, Hey, I can be off. Cause I, I, set the expectation, you know, we're a hundred percent about communication and

Molly Geoghegan (20:58)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (21:24)
Yeah, so Molly was like, it was sort of the almost the origin story of some of these little quirks and traits that we do as a remote client services agency. And as we went along, and a lot of times I think I realized also, you know, like, I'm usually like halfway into a book that I never finish. And the current one I was reading is The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. It was like that, you know, modern stuff.

Molly Geoghegan (21:34)
Mm-hmm.

classic.

Mikey Mioduski (21:54)
philosopher bringing back stoicism or whatever and Yeah, the more I've like been reading quotes about this that like hey We do hard things and in these things sometimes make us better because we confront them head-on and not not kind of avoid them and There's just these unavoidable obstacles. We've we faced and every agency faces along their timeline and I just wanted to show our team that y'all are pretty dang resilient and pretty dang adaptable and when you do those

Molly Geoghegan (21:56)
Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (22:23)
tough things, it makes us a better company. And so it was really just a story of a lot of those little, ⁓ what at the time looked and seemed catastrophic, but we came out of it stronger from losing a client that was 30 % of our book at the time to almost doubling the next year. Like how the hell did that happen? Right. And so ⁓ I think I wanted to just give a little encouragement that geez, when we're in the thick of it, seems

Molly Geoghegan (22:26)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (22:53)
Client services can seem so tough and it is but when we stay together we stay true to these guiding lights like we just We can do Unbelievable things and and as we do it we help our clients along the way It it you know solidifies our reputation in the market all these good things can happen But yeah that so that was what I wanted to do and then kind of coming out of that Hopefully it set up, you know, Ali and Britt and Kels to kind of talk about you know, what's ahead?

Molly Geoghegan (22:55)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm,

yeah, definitely. I think you just did a great job. mean, that's the story for, that's the reason for presenting those numbers is that big picture thing. It's so easy if someone's listening in client services too, I'm sure, to be like, oh my God, like yeah, these things can feel huge. And then when you zoom out, not to say that it's not important to take seriously, of course, or whatever, of course correct if you need to, but like when you zoom out the big picture.

Mikey Mioduski (23:35)
Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (23:46)
It can often be what's the outward trend and what is the story that the numbers are saying over time. So that was cool to see and I thought you did a great job with that. ⁓ Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (23:51)
Right.

Do you remember the last

number that I said, Molly? Because there was like one number at the very, very end that I wanted to like impress upon the squad.

Molly Geoghegan (24:04)
I'm

pretty sure it's five million, right? There's five million.

Mikey Mioduski (24:08)
Okay, there's that. Okay, yeah, the big one I thought and

this was like, so you know how chat GPT might tell you things and you almost don't want to fact check it because like, that's pretty good. I'm gonna go with that. So, so then I looked at our at that. so we

Molly Geoghegan (24:20)
Yes, I love this. I know where you're going now. I love this.

Mikey Mioduski (24:29)
build that graph basically throughout the course of like maybe 30%, 30 minute keynote. And by the end we land on that 10 year trajectory that's up. And then I'm like, okay, like what was our annualized growth rate? That's cool. But then apparently what a compounded annual growth rate, a CAGR is what even geekier, stronger investors actually, yeah, I wanna look at that. Cause it kind of takes out the big fluctuations in it.

Molly Geoghegan (24:33)
Ten years. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Such a funny acronym, K-er.

Mikey Mioduski (24:59)
So we get our keger and I'm like, literally chat GPT like, is this good? You know, for a decade in business for a creative services agency, how like, yeah, what's a number if you can't reference it against anything else. And it said, yeah, you're really good. Like top 1%. And so was like, oh, okay. Yeah. So that was, so I got all the way through that 10 % to hopefully, or the 10 years to hopefully leave the gang with a feeling that y'all are in the like.

Molly Geoghegan (25:05)
Yeah. Like how are we doing? Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Top 1%, yes, yes.

Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (25:27)
a pretty rare error here ⁓ for this level of consistent growth over this long. And certainly those trends in the second decade of a company, that'll start to plateau out and that's normal, expect that. But stay true to what you do and you're gonna just keep doing it.

Molly Geoghegan (25:29)
Yeah, totally.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But if you think about like the span of time and like bigger companies that have been here for a long, much longer time, of course, like decades and decades that

the first 10 years is really telling. So to be in that kind of rare era, as you say, the only time I've been associated with 1 % by the way. So that's fun. That's crazy. Yeah. Never thought I'd be saying it, but what a, yeah, that was, I loved that kind of land at the end to just be like, how does this measure up? Like with all the ups and downs and then the overall, just looking at the overall growth, like how does that measure up? So really cool story to hone in. I also, mean, just again, if you're just listening, we love to break down the story.

Mikey Mioduski (26:05)
Molly's the one percenter.

Molly Geoghegan (26:28)
screen and stage elements of any given presentation and this is what I'm kind of doing with Mikey here, he knows it. But I thought the obstacles in path thing was cool. I have to shout out that that is sometimes a way to draw tarot deck cards. This is like a fun, so you draw two cards and.

Mikey Mioduski (26:34)
⁓ man.

Molly Geoghegan (26:47)
One is like the obstacle, something that's in the way. And also, as you had said, sometimes the obstacle indicates the path, right? Like is indicative of where it's going. And so I just thought that that made me, it was very, it was like a Ghost Ranch Tarot reading. I was like, this is kind of fun. So I wrote that down. And then I also think something that you didn't share yet here is that.

Mikey Mioduski (27:00)
Yeah, it's hilarious.

Molly Geoghegan (27:08)
and you did a great job including with your story. It's like your own personal story. And part of the inception for creating the company was, you you were gonna have your first daughter and you were like, I gotta make some more money. And so you had this personal kind of growth as the company grew too. ⁓ And if you've seen Mikey present ⁓ any given presentation, there's usually a guest spot.

Mikey Mioduski (27:19)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (27:34)
of one or both of his girls, Wyn and Sloan, who we just heard from. I just thought you did a great job with the personal, with the professional growth, because it really is, I mean, yeah, I mean, yeah, it was like, this was a startup, and you like, frickin' just went for it. So was like as much of a personal story as any startup and your founder. that was pretty epic, and that came across for me, for sure. It was fun. I loved it.

Mikey Mioduski (27:38)
Yeah, that's right.

⁓ thanks Molly.

That's cool. Yeah.

Okay. I'm known for ⁓ probably more slides than most. Is it whiplash? Like what is that experience like, Molly?

Molly Geoghegan (28:06)
Let's suck with the screen.

Yeah, I I love the slides, because I just think you have fun transitions. It doesn't read as a bunch of slides, because I know you stack those slides with a bunch of, what's that called? do we call it again? I'm spacing with the name growth, growth slide. Builds, thank you. Yeah, one slide or one kind of visual will have a ton of builds built into it. So this doesn't feel like you're going from slide to slide to slide.

Mikey Mioduski (28:23)
Like builds or like sequences, yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (28:32)
It doesn't feel bogged down by any means for me. If anything, you helped make the numbers really interesting, I wrote. ⁓ Visual consistencies, I have notes I'm reading from. Visual consistencies with of course the Ghost Ranch brand, and then of course you gave a shout out that you always share a little pic of Wynn and Sloan. ⁓ I think you're very funny, and then your visuals are funny too. Sometimes you'll include, there's like a silly visual to convey a feeling, whether that's like a really cheesy stock photo.

or even a tweet, I've seen you use some memes really cleverly. ⁓ And not in a way that's too, might I say, not overly cringe millennial. I think you just use them nice and sparingly, nice and sparingly. Yeah. ⁓ And yeah, so just being able to share the screenshots and the data while aligning them with the numbers and the people, because you had a lot of year over year, and you're like, and this year we got this many more people, because this was a story of who joined the team too, it's a small team.

Mikey Mioduski (29:12)
Yeah, border on it. Yeah.

Mmm.

Molly Geoghegan (29:32)
So as far as screen elements, I thought that was really ⁓ consistent and great. ⁓ yeah, so the slides never bothered me. Your builds are great, I think. But how many slides? Give us the number. How many slides do you think you had in that presentation? Over.

Mikey Mioduski (29:48)
I mean, it's rare

for me to get one like under 100 slides. I don't remember. Yeah, I bet it's in that ballpark. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (29:50)
Yeah, I was gonna say over 100 probably. I mean, you were talking for like 30 minutes, so yeah,

yeah. And then stage, the stage setup for Mikey was like, he was at a podium, there was a clicker, ⁓ there were some fun videos, there was a little blue, a bluey clip, that was great. A clip from the Emmy nominated show. And.

Mikey Mioduski (30:05)
Yeah.

Yeah Yeah That was where

that that one saved me cuz that was like an ⁓ I didn't realize we're gonna hit get hits But like I got a strong emotional smashing right then and I fortunately on the next slide I had a bluey clip so I was able to play a video while I tried to collect myself. Yeah ⁓ So sometimes sometimes videos can come in handy, you know as like a little

Molly Geoghegan (30:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Cut off card.

Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (30:38)
chance to like drink some water, look around the room, yeah. But yeah, the

Molly Geoghegan (30:39)
Catch your breath. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. No, it was great. ⁓

Mikey Mioduski (30:44)
stage, probably not ideal. Like we ⁓ had a podium and we were projecting from our laptop. So I didn't have a clicker and I was just like there, I was kind of clicking the arrow on my laptop. So I couldn't like walk around or anything. So then that's why I decided, they gave me the option of the.

Molly Geoghegan (30:58)
yes, yeah. That's what I wrote, yeah, lack of clicker.

Mikey Mioduski (31:06)
the handheld or a lavalier mic. And I think I find myself, I like a handheld if I don't have to hold anything else. But if I have to have a clicker and a handheld, then I feel like I'm a little bit like, like I'm holding two bags of groceries or something. And like, can't, I know, I think I need to adjust to that. But yeah, so I went for the lav and so that I could at least have like one hand free, you know.

Molly Geoghegan (31:08)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Right, right, right, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Stage ⁓ is the only category I was like, but this is sometimes out of people's control is that I think we could have been improved upon. Remember we heard from Ivan Juanes Ruiz, we've referenced him so many times this year for presentation advice. ⁓ He talks about.

Mikey Mioduski (31:41)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (31:51)
when you're speaking to a room, like go to the weirdest corner, you know? And like, I think that's something that clickers really allow people to do because if you're kind of just like floating in the norm, what people perceive as the norm of the edge of the stage, that's fine, but you can kind of slip out of their attention pretty quickly. And so I love this advice of like, I was picturing like, if you were able to like walk in circle, like walk around, you know, there's only like 10 round tables, right? So it wasn't a ton ⁓ of people, but it'd be really interesting, like iteration to hear you just like wandering around the

Mikey Mioduski (31:55)
yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (32:21)
you know.

Mikey Mioduski (32:21)
Molly, like

I remember a dude, Sangram, the P, it was the Go-To-Market Summit, San Diego. I had to follow him and he's like such an energetic morning keynote and he was so cool. Like first thing he did was just step off the stage and he was just like walking around into the crowd that morning and it's like so cool. And yeah, it reminded me of like what a good professor might do.

Molly Geoghegan (32:41)
Yeah, in the audience. Touching people's blessing.

Yes.

Mikey Mioduski (32:49)
walking behind

the desk and yeah, I think it definitely keeps people on their toes. know, if you can, and like, it's almost like at a big concert when they do strut out onto the catwalk and they're like looking at every, yeah, so I think that would have been cool.

Molly Geoghegan (32:55)
Yeah.

Yeah, and people are excited by it, yeah.

There's both excitement by that and a thing, I'm thinking of comedians that are gonna pick on someone in this kind of fear way where people are like, they're gonna pay attention because they're actually like, don't pull me into this kind of thing, don't, please. ⁓ So I think that's a good way to actually give people's attention for better or worse. Yeah, but that's nothing we could have controlled to a certain extent, so. ⁓ I thought you did a great job, though. ⁓

Mikey Mioduski (33:09)
gosh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah.

Okay. Thanks.

Molly Geoghegan (33:27)
given the podium and the tech setup that we were working with. So story, screen, and stage checked out. Super fun.

Mikey Mioduski (33:29)
Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, that's fun. we also,

within a, okay. I guess we were there for, this was a longer retreat for us, because we added on the extra day to go to the Ghost Ranch on a Saturday. Friday night, we had an awards night. Like for the first time ever as a company, we're like, that's when we know we're a real company is if we have an awards night, right? And so long time coming, but that's another presentation that sneaks up.

Molly Geoghegan (33:46)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (34:02)
on everyone. Like every client we've ever worked on who has an SKO or a customer conference, awards, the award show is always the thing that's like, crap, someone has to present this and you really don't want to botch people's names or you know, like you really want to do them justice. ⁓

Molly Geoghegan (34:07)
has done awards.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's gonna take

longer than anyone thinks. Cause they're like, we'll just read the, yeah, we'll just read this, like whatever. But not only do you wanna be, have like a hype person of being like the awards, but you need the names to be right. They need to be spelled right. Has anyone considered the visuals attached to them? Like at all, you know? So no, yeah, yeah. So yeah, tell us about the ghostie presentation.

Mikey Mioduski (34:25)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Not until hours before yeah, totally Yeah, so yeah

it was probably the high peak career moment for me was like so we had ⁓ We had a big dinner we had our many of us had plus ones there and so we it just like a beautiful night and we had this these ⁓ I guess like a month or two before

Molly Geoghegan (34:59)
full of.

Mikey Mioduski (35:04)
opened up four categories for these awards that really reflect, you know, different aspects of what make us us. And it was a peer nominated type of submission. And so we just took straight up, whoever got nominated, the most blind nominations for this one category won it. And so it was really special for me to just get up and be able to present to these like incredibly deserving people for the first time. Like we had never done an award. And so...

We had four categories and just like, feel guilty for being the one who got to look and see everybody's reactions, like presenting ⁓ like Lindsay Hadley with the Bright Spot Award, which is that person who pumps everyone up is like the cheerleader, the positivity in like seeing Lindsay's face, but also everyone's face like so happy for her. Same with.

Molly Geoghegan (35:45)
Yeah, but that's fun.

Mikey Mioduski (36:01)
Laura Wascovich, who's the wolf, comes through at any moment, not afraid of any project. Emily Pantoja, the North Star Award for always delivering mind-blowing work for clients. And Jason Tucker, the spark. So these, as well as Courtney Lester, who was the unsung hero, Steve Hurl, ⁓ the secret sauce. So yeah, for me, that wasn't as...

Molly Geoghegan (36:12)
Mm-hmm.

On Zung Hero.

Mikey Mioduski (36:30)
That was more fun, right? Like, you know, we, just got to read a couple of the accolades that were, you know, kind of, that were attached to those submissions. Yeah. Shout out some poll quotes. Don't screw up their name. Ours is easy because we're a small company, but yeah, I could see like if you had a big company where you have big names, confusing, lots of syllables, just make sure you have a couple of people proofreading before you, proofreading that.

Molly Geoghegan (36:39)
Shout out some pull quotes, yeah.

No.

⁓ my gosh.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (37:00)
that final award show track, talk track.

Molly Geoghegan (37:01)
Yeah.

And not everyone's met everybody with bigger companies sometimes, so you might have someone giving you the award or giving out awards that hasn't met people. So that always just like, yeah, write out the syllabic pronunciation, right? Like step-by-step. That's always really useful in the talk track. Don't forget about that. ⁓ Get two people to proofread the deck beforehand. Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (37:08)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yep.

Good news is we pretty much just live

and breathe by nicknames at the ranch, so it's a lot easier. Wasco. ⁓ Okay, Molly, and if we're just in the bonus here, ⁓ if this is Spice Cab, if you're throwing a decade in the making party for your company.

Molly Geoghegan (37:28)
I was like gonna say pretty easy.

Mm hmm. Spice cap.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (37:44)
Definitely do two things. First, get an ABBA cover band for your blowout party that night. Desert Disco was a huge hit. Everyone showed up, garbed out for that. It was fun. And you gotta get a professional photographer, because I'm so glad that we had someone there named Willa was there to capture, and the photography just is so fun to look at the week that we're getting back.

Molly Geoghegan (37:51)
Yep.

Hahaha.

You

Same to capture.

Mikey Mioduski (38:12)
⁓ I was very grateful that we went for the photographer on site.

Molly Geoghegan (38:16)
I think that's so helpful with events like these sometimes because it helps with the culture, even if it's just an internal or offsite, right? But there was this opportunity to do headshots and then it's this look back at, you know, not everyone has to be worried about like capturing the moment with their phone. And it does encourage this sort of just the presence of the retreat. And so there was this, this almost like wedding like quality to that where I was like, there's a photographer here. I don't need to worry about it. And so if you are having, especially for companies that are all remote, I think that's something kind

Mikey Mioduski (38:26)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (38:46)
special for people to really be like device free in a way. So I thought that was really fun. And Abba Kirky, shout out if you were in the Southwest area and needed an Abba cover band, you killed. that's... And if we're in the spice cabinet, I was gonna say, I'm picking an Abba, like let's pick an Abba song for the retreat walkout.

Mikey Mioduski (38:51)
Yeah.

They killed. Still good.

Yeah. man.

Molly Geoghegan (39:10)
And I would have loved to walk, I know we didn't get a walk out for you for your keynote, so that would have loved to just hear what you would have done for your timeline specific, 10 year retrospective, ghost ranch keynote I wanna hear.

Mikey Mioduski (39:19)
Yeah.

Not exactly like get up and go, but I definitely chose Oasis, Don't Look Back in Anger because yeah, I thought it was topical or like on theme to, you know, the obstacle is the way we've overcome a lot. ⁓ And I also saw Oasis this year, so that was cool. Humble brag. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. but Molly, so then.

Molly Geoghegan (39:29)
Love it.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say major. Yeah, like he got those tickets you guys. So just be mad at him, okay?

Mikey Mioduski (39:48)
Abba-Kirky, what Abba song would you have picked?

Molly Geoghegan (39:51)
Okay, I was gonna say, well, there's a lot, everything's about money, a good bit. But I was gonna say, take a chance on me. Absolutely one of my favorites and I think fits the Ghost Ranch spirit. Take a chance. Power this funny little company coming up with the, know, niching into PowerPoint. Like take a chance and... ⁓

Mikey Mioduski (39:57)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's good.

Molly Geoghegan (40:13)
Yeah, if you need me, let me know. It's perfect. And it kind of speaks to a few of our guiding lights too, if you really get down into the lyrics. ⁓ But just so fun. That started playing and I hadn't been on the dance floor yet and I was like, it's just like you shuffle over. You don't have to be like a good dancer to dance to ABBA. Yeah. Yeah, it's so fun.

Mikey Mioduski (40:16)
Yeah, that's cool.

I didn't know how much I liked ABBA until that night.

oh, and then when they got through all their ABBA and they warned us like, this is literally all we sing. But they did have one bonus song at 3N, Heart, Crazy On You. And that this the lead Ingala I think from yeah, Abba Kierke destroyed it. they do I mean Heart.

Molly Geoghegan (40:38)
Yeah, Abbot only.

Mm-hmm, crazy on you. She killed.

Yeah, yeah.

And you do have to understand why they end on that song because I couldn't possibly imagine singing more after that. That's like, man, heart is so hardcore. That's such a hard song to sing. Amazing. ⁓

Mikey Mioduski (40:57)
Yeah. Yeah.

was good. Yeah, good trip. Molly,

did you check anything out in Santa, like downtown Santa Fe that you were ⁓ super excited about?

Molly Geoghegan (41:12)
Yeah, okay. Shout out to, yeah, Bishop's Lodge got us these amazing activities and my partner and I did leather tooling with a few other, the Rancheros, so cool. And so we went to Scott Horn, the artist that led that, we went to his studio after the next day and it is called, hold on, I'll tell you everybody.

Mikey Mioduski (41:23)
Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (41:38)
His studio is called, it's like one word, it's like clean or something like that. ⁓ I'll link it in the spice cabinet, but it's in a collective. It's one of those cool things where his partner's also an artist and she has stuff there. Anyway, I'll link it.

John, can cut some part of that. But anyway, we went to Scott Horn's studio in Santa Fe and I got a little leather slide for a scarf, you know, like a little bolo for leather, so cool. So shout out to Scott Horn, he was so rad. And similarly, but unrelated to him, familiarized, Jimmy Dean Horn is a native artist down there that runs Running Horse Studio. Super rad, check him out. I kind of became obsessed with his stuff. And yeah, we went to that studio as well. It was rad.

Mikey Mioduski (42:07)
yeah!

Where'd you go to dinner

that night? ⁓ we went to it together, to Maria's. Yeah. Yeah, it was good. Yeah. It was, it is a classic spot.

Molly Geoghegan (42:28)
Ugh, I was gonna say you were with me. Tia Maria, right? Yeah. So good. New Mexican Kitchen. Yeah, classic. And I think they have

like 99 types of margaritas apparently. So if you need to get your margarita on, check it out there. So good.

Mikey Mioduski (42:41)
Uh-huh. But no

non-alcohol. Megan was trying to order a mocktail. He's like, no, tequila. Yeah. OK. He goes, lemonade. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (42:48)
Right. ⁓ yeah, that was... Yeah, she's like, okay, sure. Yeah, that's fine. This

was after the Abercracke Band. You must understand it, listeners. Things were... energy was waning. But what a blast. ⁓ Listeners, if you are planning an event and you need help, let us know with assets. What did we miss? Any event tips for presentation, tools and content stuff? We'd love to hear it.

Mikey Mioduski (42:59)
Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly.

yeah.

Yeah, this one probably bordered on somewhere between the SKO and one of those like incentives trips, you know, it was a little more like, let's have some fun. But glad we did it, Molly. It was great having you there. Yeah, we should do it again sometime. gosh, what's in store? What's next? We'll have some pretty good stuff coming up. Presentation thinking. We're doubling down in 26, so yeah, expect some more great interviews.

Molly Geoghegan (43:24)
Yeah, totally. It was a mix.

Thanks for throwing it.

See you in 10 years.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (43:47)
if you have any ideas, talks that you think we should dissect. If you want to come join us for a book club, shoot it our way. We're always looking for input. So we can't thank you enough for listening all along. There's more to come. Molly, until then, what do you say? Keep on pitching.

Molly Geoghegan (43:51)
Ted Talks. Yeah.

See you in the, keep on

pitching into the new year. See you next year.