I spent $11,000 to spend six days with my team in Rio de Janeiro: $6,000 on my flight, $3,000 on the hotel, $2,000 on food and entertainment. Four team members were already there; two flew in from São Paulo.
Expensive on paper. But keeping a great remote team behind a screen costs a lot more.
Video Keeps You in Sync, Not Connected
Zoom is a great tool. The visual contact matters, and I’ve coached CEOs for years over video alone.
But something extra happens with face-to-face communication that no call replicates.
In six days together, we built more alignment, trust, and ideas than months of video calls could have produced.
Routine Is the Enemy of Trust
Every time I’ve taken a team off-site, the same thing happens: removing people from their daily environment builds trust faster than staying in it ever could.
Rio was no different. Remote teams need this even more, because staying aligned from a distance only gets harder as a company grows.
The Hidden Cost of Staying Remote
$11,000 is a real number you can point to. So is the cost of staying disconnected.
Slower execution, ideas nobody raises, trust that quietly erodes. It just never shows up as one clean line item, so leaders underestimate it every time.
I expect this one week to generate well over $1 million in value for the business: stronger events, sharper communication, better execution across every project.
Bringing That Same Experience to Barcelona
This is exactly why I built COO Connect European Summit in Barcelona, October 14–17, 2026. It’s capped at 14 COOs, so I can work as a mentor in the room, not a speaker on a stage.
Over 3.5 days, we run TEDx-style presentations, issue-clearing hot seats, and private peer discussions. No panels, no fluff, just operators solving real problems together.
If your company does $5M+ in revenue and you’ve never invested in this kind of room, this is that trip.
