Soft Skills Pay Bills: You’re Invited to Story Camp this summer!

162 Story Camp

Molly: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Presentation Thinking, aka the Storyteller's Study Club. I'm your co host, product marketing manager of Ghost Ranch Communications, a presentation design creative agency. And I'm joined today by my co host and founder of Ghost Ranch and founder of a little something else we're going to talk about today, Mikey Medusky.

Welcome aboard your own cast.

Mikey: Molly, great intro. And yeah, you're probably wondering like, Hey, why is Molly hooking us in today? And that's because I'm the guest today, as Molly said, I'm co founder of an exciting new sister company to Ghost Ranch. It's called Story Camp [00:01:00] Incorporated, storycamp. com. And Molly, you were generous enough to dedicate an episode today so that we can kind of talk about the Genesis, why we're launching Story Camp, what to expect at the first event.

All that. So let me flip it back over to you. You can start grilling me about story camp.

Molly: Yeah, absolutely. I'm super excited to get into this and presentation nation. If you're just tuning in for the first time, Mikey and I love to talk about presentations, storytelling, everything that goes into them. And we would never just do a self promotion episode without having it deliver some value to you, of course.

And so this requires a bit of a, you know, once upon a time, what's going on in the space for presentations and B2B marketing. And, uh, we talk about product marketers and we have them on the cast so often. And presentations are such a part of that. Delivering presentations are such a part of that. And in a world, Mikey, where, you know, AI is just I've got some crazy stats to share about that, and people are more and more remote.

[00:02:00] I, we, we, it's kind of our thesis in general that soft skills have taken a hit, and yet they haven't become any less valuable in a way they've become more valuable. So give us a little bit of insight, Mikey, with what's going on in the world and how that impetus.

Mikey: Yeah.

Molly: Prompted the beginning of story camp and the need, what was the need?

Mikey: Definitely. Yeah. Like every good story starts with a, an abrupt change and an abrupt and unexpected change. Right. Holy crap. Was there everyone in it? And it's all, it's cliche at this point to say like AI exploded, but yeah, it did. Right. A lot of us. We're creatives, designers, writers. There's a lot of like devs who, and, and, you know, engineers who are like, my career in five or 10 years might look totally different.

Molly: Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

Mikey: And we, we've gotten here because we trained ourselves doing something very niche, you know, like coding and that, that stuff is so brainy and difficult. And people who write for a living, they've gotten so good at their craft. We designers, we love [00:03:00] pushing everything to the last perfect pixel.

But there's these tools coming out that are like, wow, this stuff's doing some stuff that I used to do, you know? And so there's the uncertainty, right? But there, you mentioned that, like, there is this soft skills gap that has been around already, you know, like you go to HR sites and, you know, analysts and stuff, they, they've been talking about this soft skills gap for years, but COVID lockdowns, everyone's remote hybrid work.

And then on top of that, the AI explosion. So every, which I think, you know, you might see it as like, kind of like. Bringing up the lowest performers closer to the top performers, you know, like kind of like equalizing some of the, those hard skills gaps, our thesis and what we're betting on and hearing is that, yeah, like the soft skills gap, i.

e. Communication skills, verbal presentation skills, relationship skills, that stuff is going to be. Not only a massive differentiator for [00:04:00] individuals on your own career path, Molly, but like for a company, right? If if company A and company B are in strict competition together and company A Invests in people who can actually talk to other people build relationships.

They're friendly to be around. They're inquisitive. They're curious They're great at the soft skills And company B doesn't invest anything in that, like we're betting on soft skills as this mega strategic differentiator in the new age, you know, of, of AI.

Molly: Yeah. And just to put a few stats to that, cause this is top of mind as we're working through this with another client with an AI platform, the number of users, the rise of AI is unprecedented.

Yes. Right. But listen to these numbers. The number of users. For chat, GPT reached 1 million in five days that took Netflix 10 months to do that. And it took Facebook two and a half years. So that's just one of many, like five days for a million users. So this like closed a really, it's [00:05:00] really an amazing tool.

And we vowed at the beginning of one of Mikey and I's 2025 goals was to not shy away from talking about AI. And kind of dive in a little more headfirst of like, how can we use it? How is it a tool? And it certainly is closing that skill. It's providing a lot of opportunities. Very cool. Very important. But yes, with that, I think the soft skills gap is, is widening in a way.

Whether you need to be able to talk to people, we need to be able to present things, and if you can't, you can have the most amazing presentation in the world. Designed fully by AI, sure. But like, you can't, if you can't present it and tell the story, like, that's everything. If you can't pitch, if you can't, can't do the first call sales deck, like, that's, that's a big problem.

So this is what we're here for, right, Mikey?

Mikey: Oh, and it's been like lessons hard, hard learned from my side, at least. Like, I wanted to work in advertising. I finally kind of broke in to a bigger, like, An agency working on some like p and g brands and stuff, and I was always constantly getting frustrated [00:06:00] that my ideas weren't, weren't winning, you know?

And like I couldn't sell through these concepts that I thought were so clever. But in reflection, I just sucked at communicating these ideas, you know? Mm-hmm . Yeah. It was all in my head. People weren't getting it, and I think. Design, unfortunately, doesn't sell itself. Messaging frameworks don't sell themselves.

Like so much of what we do, whether we're product marketers, you know, creatives, you name it, subject matter experts, like we still, everyone. Is in sales in, in a lot of sales takes place internally, right? Convincing others to move forward and to adopt and buy into this new messaging that a PMM just put together.

They don't buy in, they're not going to use it. And it was all for not so convincing others, being persuasive. These are beautiful skills to develop in Molly. We've, you know, I'm so grateful that we've had this like ability to nerd out once a week on presentations, because you and [00:07:00] I have started to like.

Sort of distill the art form and the science of presentations down to like these three pillars, um, story, screen and stage. And I think, you know, we can go into that, but ultimately, you know, we started our own retreat at Ghost Ranch to, to make sure our team was leveling up their soft skills. And we'd bring in an outside consultant to like, You know, talk about their new book and put us through a workshop.

And we did that once a year, we called it story camp and some clients were like, that sounds cool. We always dreamed of making that a public kind of facing thing ticketed, you know, so that, Hey, if people are paying for this, we could get even better workshops and maybe we can make it this like. We could get like three workshops and one to target story and one around screen and one around stage and

Molly: tracks.

Holy

Mikey: cow, Molly, we're doing it. It's happening. Yes. Yeah.

Molly: And, um, yeah, just to say you can go back and listen to the [00:08:00] early aughts, the early episodes of story camping and development and kind of our first initial reflections on this. Discovering those three circles, Mikey, of story, screen, and stage, and hard and soft skills encompass all, like, within those, both of the, all of those circles, and, but those are three elements of presentations, and essentially storytelling, because in so many ways they're synonymous, and in our opinion, that we've been able to really hone down and analyze with every, every TED talk we watch, Every person we talk to is, you know, involved in their work encompasses some of those circles and oftentimes the overlap of those circles.

And we think it's such a useful place to dig into in this, in this era of, yeah, mega digital technology evolution. Like, let's go to camp in person and kind of like riff together. So, yeah, what is, give us, give us the lowdown of what's going on for this year's

Mikey: story. Okay. So, yeah, I mean. It's essentially a micro conference [00:09:00] as in it's small and it's capped at 50 people.

There's a lot of inspiration that we've found from other conferences that we really dig or, you know, like kind of symposiums, get togethers where it's like really impressive fellow attendees, people like kind of like at the same career level, motivated, driven, but not too big because once it's too big, it's kind of loud.

It's noisy. We found like some of these intimate gatherings that we've been to. You can just spend more quality time with the other people there and practically get to know, you know, if it's 35 to 50 people, you pretty much have had an interaction potentially with everyone, just about the whole crew, you know what I mean?

Yeah. So it's that like small classroom experience. Which then affords you more time to actually pick the brains of these thought leaders who are there. So, you know, you're not in a room with 900 other people. You're legit in a classroom. And so you can ask questions. You can be right up in it and learning from [00:10:00] Some of the best thought leaders, honestly, we could come up with, and we were kind of amazed that they said, yes.

Molly: Before we announce who the thought leaders are going to be, who would you say, like, if someone's listening and they're like, all right, well, is this for salespeople? Is this for product marketers? Like, who's, who's this for, Mikey?

Mikey: Yeah, yeah. I, okay. I think in conversations with lots of other people, it could be for anybody, but I will get more specific.

I don't know if it's for salespeople. I think they're already really good at talking a lot of times, but Hey, they could come to,

Molly: you know, Molly,

Mikey: like we work in largely B2B enterprise tech. I think there may be offshoots of story camp someday where it's like, this one's for agency people, you know, this one is for.

You know, nonprofit people, whatever. I think we're probably starting with the people that we know really well. And that's SAS companies, tech companies, because here's what happens. They have this big, like user tech conference, right? So we've, we've heard this time and time again from [00:11:00] event marketers who were like, holy cow, we have 50 breakout slots at this such and such tech conference.

And I'm the content person charged with filling them. And we need our subject matter experts who are largely product managers or product marketers. And they're gonna, you know, fill this room of 50 to a hundred people and hopefully give an engaging session. And the concern we hear from them, isn't that the tech isn't like the accuracy or the information.

Like they know that these SMEs know their stuff. It's more about how polished are they as presenters? Like how engaging are they? Is this going to be like super dry? You know, the thing where like someone sits down and then five minutes later they try to sneak out, you know, it's like, Whoa, we've seen, you know, but we've sat in, we, you and I, we love the breakout room because that's where.

People can come, they learn about that thing that they really wanted to learn. They go back Monday morning and they can implement it. So it's really good information, [00:12:00] but we think story camp is for that, that product manager, that product marketer who is on the cusp of greatness. They could just use a little more polishing because.

We know that the executives have already been through all that leadership training. They don't really need it anymore, but they're the one who gets the treatment, you know, because they're up on the big stage, but it's these side rooms, it's these breakout rooms, people who are going to give breakout presentations.

This is their chance to go through, feel a little more confident, develop that again, holistic approach to level up their communication skills so that they, they can actually command and create their own story. They can create the visuals that are a little more impactful on the screen, and then they can deliver with confidence and, you know, a little more charisma, thanks to those three unique breakout workshops that we've provided.

Molly: Yeah, and let's just say, because there's lots of like confidence coaches, people can hire one on one, like bootcamp kind of sessions, like book a half a day with, yeah, one of those experts, one of the [00:13:00] keynoters that gives like this stuff all the time. But why is it? Special and unique. And at least I haven't seen anything like it to join other people that are doing that at the same time and kind of have this camaraderie, this community about it.

And yeah, I know that can sound a little scary for people too. So introverts might need a bit of a push for. Why to choose that route?

Mikey: Yeah, that's a good point. I think there is something about the class nature, the cohort, where you're in it together. Public speaking is the number one fear of public, right?

Is it, is it, or is it like second only to Snakes on a plane or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Molly: It's up there,

Mikey: we'll just say. Yeah, so there's, there's some like camaraderie, commiseration, peer to peer like accountability. Um, everybody who attends will have the chance to submit a session to do a lightning talk in front of our panel of experts or each other for like peer to [00:14:00] peer feedback.

So you don't have to do it, but attendees certainly have the chance to do that. What we call the abstract accelerator, where you get, you'll get like five minutes on the stage, you know, hash some stuff out, give it a whirl, get feedback. The benefit of that Molly too, is we have professional photographers there who now.

Have captured you speaking on a stage and you look legit. Cool

Molly: as hell. Yeah. Right. So

Mikey: Molly, let's say goes through story camp. She throws her hat in. She does the abstract accelerator, gives a lightning talk. Now, she's coming away, not only with like a little bit of confidence and feedback from experts and peers, you have assets that you can take directly to HubSpot Inbound, South by Southwest, whatever industry event would benefit you, your career, your company to represent and show up to.

You look that much more polished and professional. You can add those shots to a new speaker website, to LinkedIn. You can submit them when you're submitting the abstract [00:15:00] and you're that much more turnkey as a speaker. So I think that is like another benefit, but yeah, doing it with a cohort. Then you've bonded, you've spent three nights, two beautiful days in Park City.

You always have Story Camp as a memory and, you know, something that you can share.

Molly: Yeah, yeah. And I would like to just, like, endorse in a completely non biased way that I think Ghost Ranch Anything Ghost Ranch produces has always done a really authentic job of building team camaraderie without it being like, you know, I'm Molly, like marshmallow or something, you know, like it's, it's not that kind of team building and having to like remember people's names.

It's just natural. Again, when you have a smaller group, I think it's a much more natural case for hanging out. There's a lot of open and free time where we will just get to mingle. It's not necessarily for networking. It's truly just for getting comfortable so that when you get up to do the lightning talks.

And share about what's going on for you. It's much easier. And [00:16:00] that'll be a, that's a huge component of it. And it's not something you can achieve with just like a one on one confidence coach that you meet on zoom, you know, biweekly or whatever. So I, I think there's a huge benefit to branching outside of your own company or whatever they might have on offer and bringing one of your, you know, colleagues.

If you're in that space to start, if you're starting to give more and more presentations, it's perfect for you to kind of like up your ante for sure and walk away with a couple of friends, sweet headshots and a lot more experience. Yeah. And without further ado.

Mikey: Oh, yeah, go ahead. Oh, yeah.

Molly: I mean, you'll also get to meet the amazing speakers that we are bringing in for you to learn from.

Mikey, I think they've waited long enough. Go ahead and let them know who's going to be there.

Mikey: Okay. Starting with the story track, Molly, Mr. Terry Zuplat, who is the bestselling author of Say It Well, a book about his time serving as Barack Obama's speechwriter in the White House on a team of other speechwriters.[00:17:00]

Terry knows a thing or two about crafting compelling narratives, and he's going to share those insights with us. Non partisan session, how to be a better speaker, lessons from a White House speechwriter, where he'll share the secrets of great speeches that we should all seek to replicate, uh, and the common mistakes we should strive to avoid, so, Terry, I mean, Barack Obama to me is like, one of the greatest speakers.

Thank you. Speech givers ever to find out that this gentleman was on the team crafting some of those incredible words, you know, kind of helping Brock get from from page to podium, as he says, is like, just unbelievable. So for me to be like one degree of separation away from Air Force One and from freaking Barack Obama, I'm just I'm excited.

Molly: It's good. It's so it's so special. Yeah, to have someone that. Like, embodies that, like, the, yeah, how to say something well, say it memorably, weave a story together. I'm so, yeah, I couldn't be more excited to hear [00:18:00] from him. Yeah. And I would get to read, I'm going to try and read his book beforehand so I

Mikey: can

Molly: tell him that I read it and get him to say, yeah.

Mikey: You have to. Yeah. Like, total fan girl.

Molly: Yeah. Really special. So, not to make you more nervous, this is, this is something that should get you, get you in the seat. We've got professionals you'll be hearing from at Story Camp. Yeah. All right, if that's the story track, what's the screen track, Mikey?

Mikey: Yeah, so Visuals.

All right. I may not have been smart enough to get into Northwestern University, you know, as a high schooler. I can't believe it. Or today.

Music: But

Mikey: I will, I will say we can bring Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management professor Stephen Franconari, PhD to us. So, Dr. Franconari leads research on like visuals, visual thinking, visual communication, and like the psychology behind visualization, Molly.

Dr. Frankenary will be bringing his a game to give a session called how to upload complex [00:19:00] ideas into human brains I think it'll be sort of that so we've got the story down right but like again, how do we bring it to life? How do we make sure it counts and pays off? And what are you putting on the PowerPoint?

Molly: Yeah we know so

Mikey: much about like the power of imagery like dual coding theory the whole like Picture superiority complex where these things stay in our brains, but I'm sure there's a right and a wrong way to do it. There's some best practices. So we're bringing in someone who's who actually leads research on this stuff and you'll have to be there to get these insights.

Molly: Yeah, absolutely. And last but not at all least covering the stage track of our story screen and stage pillars centered for story camp is none other than

Mikey: Amy Cuddy, PhD. So you either had to be a White House speechwriter or a PhD to lead a workshop at Story Camp this year. You know all about Amy Cuddy, Molly.

Tell us, tell us what you know. She

Molly: is an author, a psychologist, and she has the most watched TED Talk of all [00:20:00] time. We have talked about, about podcast and it is our most listened to episode. She has coined the term power poses and you might have, you know, heard that theory where if you stand like Superman or do like a Wonder Woman, like arms out pose for about, I think it's about two minutes, 90, 90 minutes to two or 90 seconds to two minutes, uh, before an interview.

You will perform better. So she is really adept at embodying like with like truly like body language and delivery pacing, how to actually really deliver something in a way that's impactful. That makes, if you, even if you don't feel confident, it's like, can you fake it till you make it? That's part of her thesis as well.

She's, she's an incredible speaker. She's been a really fun Instagram follow and she's written. Some amazing books. If you follow her, you know, so I'm so, so excited to like, have, have gone from, you know, watching her Ted talk, really praising her and having it be one of our most listened [00:21:00] to episodes to hearing from her directly at story camp.

Mikey: Yeah. And her session will be called personal power and presence, bringing your boldest self to your biggest challenges. And yeah, imagine, you know, being one of 70 million people to have viewed her TED Talk and now being one of 50, 5 0 in a room in Park City, learning directly from Amy how to command a room, right?

Yep, totally. And then, gosh, Molly, what if you were one of our lightning talkers to get selected to go up in front of if you're brave enough? Terry, Steve and Amy to get feedback holistically on your, your five minute lightning talk. I think to me, like, I can't imagine the value on something like that.

Molly: Yeah.

It's not just going to be like peers and us rancheros being nerdy now about presentations and giving you feedback. It's these three like absolute experts in their field.

Music: Yeah.

Molly: And I think that's really what's up in the ante. We've always brought in experts for story camp, but to have this opportunity for.

Our [00:22:00] clients, our colleagues, like people in the space is going to be, it's going to be really, really special. Yeah. Mikey, what is, I know there's a lot of information about, you know, like higher ability with these soft skills too. Like, can you give us a little bit of some information on like, if someone's, I know a lot of people are out there looking for a job right now, you know?

So is this, how can soft skills help them?

Mikey: Yeah, Molly, there's like just a ton of stats online, you know, from like hiring managers. Something like 89 percent of hiring managers state that communication skills are just as important as technical skills. Like that's for data scientists, which is crazy. Like you would think that's the one that's no, just do your data science thing and we're good, but no, almost all hiring managers say that the communication skills are of great importance.

You know, just with like product marketers as well, like there's so much interpersonal interdepartment cross functional relationship management that goes down, like that's becoming seen as more and more almost like, I think it's the top [00:23:00] skill as far as soft skills go for product marketing, hiring managers is can they relay these ideas?

Can they help, you know, unite and align sales and products so that we're all rowing the same direction basically. You know, the, the misalignment issue between marketing and sales is trillion dollar problem, 10 percent of revenue off your, off your table, if marketing and sales aren't seeing eye to eye. So the value of that ability to guide people toward a common goal is becoming just seen as more and more important.

And certainly if you needed help to convince the boss, your manager, we do have a resource storycamp. com slash resources. There's a justification kit, you know, which, um, Lauren Comer, big shout out helped us put together. I think it's got some juice in there. If you were like, if I only had a stat to convince my team that this is really important, it's all there.

Molly: Yeah, exactly. And like, yeah, you, you don't have to do it. And again, this is us trying to, you know, practice what we preach. Like [00:24:00] we're, we're helping you get there. And the soft skills pay bills, I think is kind of our embracing of how technology is going and just identifying the gap and embracing it rather than running away from it.

You know, we have to like roll with the evolution and with that soft skills are more important than ever and it's worth investing time and spending two days in Park City for in the summer.

Mikey: Exactly.

Molly: Yeah.

Mikey: Yeah. And really, we've seen, you know, over the years, a lot of people wisely have asked us if we at Ghost Ranch, you know, do any sort of training.

And it's because rightly, they're like, well, I could keep, you know, like, we love the service. It's done for you. It's white glove. But we have this team of in house people who probably need to get better at making and crafting presentations themselves. And so, We really see Story Camp as that complimentary kind of offering to people who maybe are already leaning on Ghost Ranch for the white glove, like done for you [00:25:00] or done with you services, but really do want to invest in their team's own personal and professional development.

So that's why we see these like being hand in hand and also another bonus massive perk of coming to story camp is team members of Ghost Ranch will be there. So we'll have sort of one of those like genius bar booths in the back where, you know, during our open, open skate afternoons where you, you've got an option to like go kick it by the pool, go on a hike, you know, do a pitch peer group.

You also can book a slot with a Ghost Ranch presentation specialist. And bring some stuff. Like if you had a market texture slide, that's bugging you. If you have, you know, just some questions about, Hey, our templates kind of wonky, what's up. You can book some time and brainstorm with a professional presentation designer.

So we see that as a huge perk. And that's why we see, you know, this ecosystem between Story Camp and Ghost Ranch Ring being, like, really beneficial to anyone who attends.

Molly: Yeah. Part of, [00:26:00] Mikey, as, like, you know, part of our professional development and something that's been asked in recent years, and we've become more expert in our field, I guess, I suppose, people have asked, like, can I just book a day with, Yeah.

Like Steve, the technical director, like to, to really get through this deck. Cause I just need some one on one help and I need like a dedicated number of hours. So not only having, of course, the presentation help the slide help and just the general camaraderie to let you know, you're not the only one like struggling through slides.

This is. This is our way of putting our money where our mouth is quite literally. So Mikey, where is this? Where is this going down? What type of place can people expect to hear all this amazing information?

Mikey: This first event, Story Camp 2025, our, our summer symposium, if you will, on soft skills. It's in Park City, Utah.

Specifically at a resort called the Pendry. So that's in Canyon village. So it's about 10, 15 minutes shuttle ride from like downtown park city, where all the huge shopping and [00:27:00] really good restaurants are. We stayed nearby at the West gate last summer for our own. Story camp, a few of us were walking around and stumbled up onto this like pretty brand new sparkly, just ridiculously cool, modern hotel with a rooftop pool that caught my eye.

It was slope side. So in the wintertime, this place is exorbitant. Yes. Yes. We managed to like, uh, get this last minute tour from a guy named Matt who runs the property and we were blown away with, with everything there. It's like. We ate at this restaurant called Kita, this like Japanese steakhouse. They have a Mexican restaurant that looks really fun for margs and, you know, like some, some eats for a dinner party and we'll have breakfast up by the pool every day.

It kind of has it all, and our thought is like, we imagine a lot of people will come, so we'll check in on a Tuesday night, we'll have a little opening soiree. Then we'll have programming Wednesday and Thursday, and hopefully we'll go see like one of those outdoor concerts or [00:28:00] something, you know, to wrap up Thursday night.

If, if there's something going on in Deer Valley amphitheater, and then you check out Friday morning. And so it's included with the fee is this three nights at the Pendry. Because, because Park City is such a destination, we thought we'd just roll everything in so that it covers pretty much everything except for your travel meals at the airport, basically, right?

Molly: Yeah.

Mikey: You know, you'll be pretty well covered by, by coming with that ticket.

Molly: Wow, Mikey, this sounds like a pretty good deal. If I want to find out, yeah, if I want to find out more information, where do I go?

Mikey: StoryCamp. com. StoryCamp. com. Which was an acquisition we did have to make last year. Someone else owned it.

Took a couple years. Someone in Korea. Yeah. And they are good negotiators, as in they don't budge. But, eventually,

Molly: I

Mikey: talked myself into it. We got

Molly: it. We have StoryCamp. com. Yeah, yeah,

Mikey: yeah. Congratulations, Mike. Thank you. Really appreciate that.

Molly: We will link all of this in the show notes, of course, Mikey, I think we're about the spice cabinet.

That's where to find some more information on story camp will [00:29:00] obviously link all these amazing speakers that we've, we've talked about Amy and Steve, Steven and Terry Zuplat. Yeah. We've LinkedIn page going for StoryCamp already. What's StoryCamp's walkout song? What's your walkout song for StoryCamp, Mikey?

Michael Franti and Spearhead.

Mikey: We did see Michael Franti and Spearhead last, last summer. What was this? The slogan was like, happy is the new sexy or something like that. Yeah, he

Molly: had some crazy hashtag, hashtagable phrases. Hashtag

Mikey: togetherness.

Molly: It was hashtag togetherness. Take your time.

Mikey: Molly, I should have thought more about this.

Lately, I've been going with my karaoke song, which is Dancing in the Moonlight.

Molly: That's fun. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of summer jam for sure.

Mikey: Yeah. I love how it opens. It's kind of just groovy. And it's going to be a groovy place. Like. Molly, like, you were there. Like, what was the weather like [00:30:00] in Park City, late July? And then what did you do? Did you go do anything fun?

Molly: Yeah, there's tons of fun stuff to do.

Like, Park City, as you've said, is a destination, both in the summertime and the winter. It's a little less busy in the summer, which I really enjoyed. Very walkable town. And yeah, just quick shuttle from the hotel, which is free. Obviously, you just kind of hop on in whenever you need. And we went on a really cool hike to a lake, like one of those hikes that's perfect where it's pretty much low exertion, but high reward.

I love, I love a water feature hike. You know me. Out here in Colorado, that's my favorite type of hike. There's shopping, I know a lot of people went shopping. Great eats. We went to an amazing outdoor concert. There's a, one of the oldest, I think, distilleries in the country, if not the oldest distillery. So if you're a big whiskey person, high west distillery.

Thank you. That was

Mikey: sweet.

Molly: So there's tons to do and the weather was, it was hot, but dry, not too buggy. That's the beautiful thing about these arid high desert climates. So it [00:31:00] is going to be warm, bring sunscreen and sunglasses, but it's not going to be crazy because we've got that nice high altitude. Yeah, pretty much can't ask for more the rooftop pool.

It really has caught my eye. It depends. Yeah here. Well, uh, We should link that directly as well

Mikey: It's it's gonna be cool And if you're a client or a friend of the show and you're like hey I think I want to send a couple people from from my company You can talk to me. Hit me up. Mikey at ghost ranch. com.

Yeah. Let us know

Molly: directly. Yeah. You don't. Yeah.

Mikey: Just hit us up. We'll we'll wheel and deal with you. Let

Molly: us know that you came from the pod as well.

Mikey: Exactly. Yeah. Well, Molly, thanks for letting us go into story camp. com

Molly: soft skills, pay bills.

Mikey: Yeah,

Molly: absolutely. I think it's so going to be so valuable and it's valuable to just consider like thinking about soft skills in this age of AI and tech innovation and evolution.

So yeah, we'll, we'll keep beating this horse [00:32:00] as I've said in team meetings,

Mikey: you know, if we don't, if we don't like full on bankrupt after this first one. We will be planning these really aiming at sort of a twice a year cadence. So one in the winter, like, like think right after SKO season before spring conference season, we'd like to have this story camp sort of like, I'd call it spring training in late, late February, we'll call it where you could send your people so that they can go rock, rock a stage, get some reps in, get some training before they have to take a breakout at a spring user conference.

And then of course, Our late summer, you know, standing story camp, that's kind of the fall training. So that gets people ready for those fall events. So I think eventually we'll, we'll find our groove and see if that's viable, but, um, that's kind of the, the vision right, right now.

Molly: It's going to be cool to get in early and kind of.

Be with it as it grows. Yeah.

Mikey: Yeah. Yeah. So if you can't make the first one, just at least go subscribe for updates, you know, on LinkedIn [00:33:00] or at story camp, like, you know, pop in the email and, and so you can stay tuned for announcements on, on future events.

Molly: Yeah. We'll see you in July 23rd through 24th.

Music: Yeah.

And,

Molly: uh, in the meantime, everybody

Music: keep on pitching.