Why We Retreat

People outside these walls ask me all the time, “How is the culture at Marketwake so strong?” “How do you get a team to work this hard and still genuinely like each other?”

The short answer is… we play. We laugh. We take trips together. We do things that have absolutely nothing to do with a QBR or a client deliverable.

The long answer is a little more personal.

Before Marketwake , I stepped in as CEO of a company called Kevy during a massive pivot. We had a short runway, limited funds, a product to rebuild, a rebrand to pull off, and a lot of angry clients who didn’t love the changes.  

As you can imagine, trust was low. Pressure was high. I was only 26 years old and convinced the solution to everything was to keep our heads down and grind harder. I took the role seriously and did not want to fail. 

Then Paul showed up.

At just 21, Paul had this uncanny ability to break the tension with humor. I didn’t fully appreciate it at first; I was too buried in deadlines and pressure to notice he was quietly building something more important.

A few months later, I was invited to pitch at a large founders event in Nashville called 3686. Fifty companies were competing for $500,000. We needed that money, and I felt that even more than that, our team “needed the win” so I put the weight of it all into that pitch.

The audience voted for the top five on Day 1. Those five pitched again on Day 2 in front of a panel of judges. We made the cut.

To say I was anxious is like saying a triple espresso is “a little energizing.” I was pacing through my lines like I was training for the Broadway run of Stressed CEO: The Musical.

Sharing the Airbnb with me were my CTO, Don Pottinger , and Paul. Paul saw what was happening. He knew the best version of me wasn’t going to show up if I stayed locked in my own head. 

He walked over with a bottle of wine, a couple of beers, and started chatting. I was not having it. So he upped his game, moving from small talk to a few outrageous “Survey Says” questions.

“Hey Brooke — survey says — is it true you are a robot?”

After a giggle, he knew he was onto something. Paul continued lobbing questions at me that were so ridiculous, mostly irrelevant, and shocking, that I couldn’t help but laugh. 

Before I knew it, we were laughing harder than I had in a year. I stopped practicing entirely and enjoyed my team.

The next day, we won second place. But we went home feeling like we had won it all. That night taught me that laughter, connection, and shared memories mattered far more than a trophy or press coverage.

We didn’t win the money, but we won back so much more.

After that, I led differently. The more I let go and actually lived, the better our team became. We came to trust each other.

Paul taught me that when you create space to play, laugh, and connect, trust follows. And when you have trust, you start winning.

Paul passed away a year later. There’s not a day that I don’t miss him or think of him. When I started Marketwake, I knew his energy would be part of our DNA. Connection over competition. Joy over grind.

His impact lives on here in more than philosophy. His cousin, Ellis Murray , was the broker who found and secured our Campus 244 office space. With Paul’s memory as a compass, we found a place where Marketwake can thrive, a space for the team to live big lives and create big stories together.

That is one of the biggest reasons we retreat.

Paul was the first to show me that the nights we laugh until our faces hurt are worth more than any “win” you can log in a spreadsheet.

We retreat to reconnect. To let go. To play. No work talk, no training sessions, no agendas. Just grown adults letting go for a second, creating memories that last a lifetime.

Because growth doesn’t live in the echo chamber of “business as usual.” It lives at the edge of our comfort zone, where curiosity meets courage, and connection intersects with companionship.