Planning an offsite for a five-month-old bootstrapped company requires scrappiness.
The Airbnb for eight people is sourced through a team member's aunty. You even ensure a couch is big enough for someone to sleep on. Team activities don’t need to be flashy, just effective. Perhaps a mystery box cooking challenge and a team trip to the beach.
That's what we did for our recent team off-site in Gerringong. But this time, it wasn’t just about the surf, sand, and a Master Chef mystery box. No, this offsite was defined by one remarkable piece of machinery: the car.
That’s right, a slick Porsche Macan hired from Turo became the unlikely star of our little getaway. It’s amazing how quickly a luxury car can turn a ragtag group of ex-VCs and interns into a mobile talk show, a makeshift grocery delivery van, a philosophical debating chamber, and even an amateur photography crew’s dream ride. And I was the designated driver.
It all started when we picked up the car. We had the pleasure of renting from Conor, who greeted us outside his house. I was gobsmacked to learn through dulcet Irish tones that this car was just one of his. Turns out Conor was an entrepreneur and car enthusiast who could genuinely say, “My other car is a Porsche.” He scaled his rental business to six luxury vehicles and was using Turo to acquire aspirational cars—all on top of his own marketing agency!
I then drove to pick up the team. The week before, we had three new Gen Z interns to integrate into the team, and they were brimming with big, bold, and sometimes outright contradictory ideas.
Packing these three into the Porsche and driving them on a two-hour road trip felt like I was strapped into a live recording of an episode of ABC’s Q&A, except we trundled along at 110 km/h.
Opinions, questions, and hot takes fired off behind me: Was capitalism inherently flawed? How should state governments better manage their debt? How can the housing crisis be solved in a few years? Who can do the best Malcolm Turnbull impression? Could we please stop at the McDonald's where Scott Morrison allegedly had an accident?
As the designated driver, I had to keep my hands at ten and two on the wheel, resisting every urge to pull out my phone and tweet something snarky to get my 10 seconds of fame on Q&A like I used to. These tweets have since been deleted.
On our drive down, the car wasn’t just a means of transport; it was a roundtable discussion on wheels, zooming down the Aussie Coast with more ideological tension than a backbenchers’ meeting in Parliament House. (Or, closer to home for them, an editorial meeting at their university paper).
Upon arrival at our seaside accommodation, the car’s starring role was far from over. We needed supplies for our mystery box cooking challenge. Supermarket shopping is one of my dreaded weekly tasks. The mental load of scouring an unfamiliar Woolworths is a daunting task for me. However, the Porsche prevailed. Our team was keen for a drive in our fancy SUV, and thus, we had volunteers and the milkrun was on.
We pulled into the Kiama Woolies and loaded up on fresh veggies, protein, and dessert ingredients. We also bought some unfamiliar sauces and a few too many packets of Tim Tams. Our mystery box cooking challenge split our team of 8 into two.
On the first night, my team cooked from a box of ingredients we only saw an hour and a half before entries were due to be served. If you want to know how your teammates perform under pressure, give them a can of chickpeas, kimchi, brie, and corn chips and ask them to make an entree.
Later in the trip, we decided to indulge in a quick photoshoot of the car—just two of us this time, one photographer and one slightly nervous model (that’d be me). We drove along a quiet stretch of road, looking for the perfect backdrop.
Instead of the classic ‘coastal sunset with a car’ Instagram fantasy I was envisioning, I pulled into an old graveyard.
My influencing career was off to a grave start.
There, amidst weathered headstones, gum trees, and rolling surf, we started talking about the fragility of life, how life has fleeting moments of creativity poised between success and collapse, and whether personal ambition could ever truly outrun mortality.
But alas, we needed photos, not deep conversation. So to the surf, we drove.
The afternoon sun dipped low, painting everything in a warm, honeyed glow. I wanted to capture the car’s glossy lines against a backdrop of rolling waves and orange skies.
Yet, as soon as we pulled up at the lookout, I realised the photographer’s eye I’d once prided myself on was suddenly hijacked by a strange new fascination: the local birdlife. It was like some dormant gene in my DNA from my birdwatching grandfather had been activated. Suddenly, I was taking photos of a massive pelican flying past.
By the time the return trip rolled around, the interns had had their say—many times over—and the senior team members were ready for something more soothing. We settled into the Porsche’s plush seats, adjusted the climate control to a perfect not-too-warm, not-too-cold setting, engaged the cruise control, and let mellow beats drift through the speakers.
When we finally pulled out of the driveway heading home, the offsite had achieved what we wanted.
Forget flip charts and trust falls—just get yourself a fancy hire car, a handful of outspoken Gen Z-ers, and some time on the open road.
Before you know it, you’ll have a team that can work together better than ever… even if you still disagree about who has the best Turnbull impression.
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