I almost didn't. When you're building a company, two days away feels like too much. I looked at the agenda and did what everyone does. Skip that one, skip that one, maybe that one. I had emails to answer and calls to make, and I didn't want to lose a day of momentum.
But once it started, I stayed in my seat. And somewhere in the first afternoon I stopped thinking about my inbox. I can't remember the last time that happened. We spend so much of our time half in the room and half on our phones, and we've gotten so used to it that we don't notice what it costs us. Being fully present for two days felt like a luxury. I didn't realize how much I needed it.
The second thing was simply being in a room with so many talented people. That's rarer than we admit. Most of our relationships now live in email, on calls, and in quick messages between meetings. We rarely get to sit across from someone over dinner with no agenda and just get to know them. In Ojai I met people I would never have crossed paths with otherwise, and those conversations didn't happen in the sessions. They happened at dinner, over late night drinks, walking between rooms. I felt more like myself in those conversations than I have in a while.
The third was hearing fresh perspectives. The topics were completely outside my normal day. Glass engineering for phones and cars. How brands decide which athletes to back. Menopause in the workplace. Leadership, resilience, how teams perform under pressure. On paper they had nothing in common. But the more I listened, the more I heard the same thread running through all of them. Every story came back to people. How they work together, how they trust each other, how they support each other when it matters. One session put a name to it: relationship capital, the trust and shared history that people build with each other over time, and why it may be the most valuable thing an organization has. These were people with incredibly rich experience, and the lessons were ones I can take into my own work and my own life.
None of this happens by accident. Yardstick has a real gift for curating an audience, bringing together people who grow from each other. DSG has spent the past 50 years building a business on relationships, and you could see it in who they brought together and how they treated everyone. Together they've created a community where people can be themselves. Thank you to both.
I went in worried about what I'd miss by being away for two days. I came out realizing how much I miss by never being fully present. That's what I'm going to hold onto.