Voit Team Building through the SoCal Ragnar Relay Race
One of the hallmarks of Voit’s ability to attract and retain talent is the firm’s ongoing cultivation of a company culture that balances productivity with employee satisfaction. In a previous blog post on the topic, SVP/Partner Christopher Drzyzga noted that Voit’s “secret sauce” was providing opportunities to not only build on the culture but also to build new and strengthen existing relationships. “Working with people outside the day-to-day real estate business and understanding what makes them tick…is very powerful and translates into every little aspect of the business,” said Drzyzga. “A lot of the people I work with have become lifelong friends.”
The latest example of this team-building mindset was Voit’s participation in the recent SoCal Ragnar, where teams of 12 runners compete in a roughly 200-mile relay race over two days and one night, beginning in San Diego and finishing in Huntington Beach. Teams of runners take turns running sections of the course, with each runner responsible for three legs or loops. The race combines a grueling weekend-long athletic event with social experience, and for the Voit team, a terrific way for brokers and support staff to bond with people from other offices.
Putting together a team for the event was the brainchild of Katherine Martene, Senior Client Coordinator in the Irvine office. She is an accomplished runner and had participated in the event before with a previous employer. Martene came to Voit two and a half years ago and decided that the Ragnar race was an ideal event for the company culture. “I said to myself, ‘This is totally their jam.’ There’s a lot of young people here, and they’re probably willing to do something crazy like this — because it’s not just a normal race — so I just knew it’d be the perfect fit for this company.”
200 Grueling Miles – Together
After getting approval from the board, Martene assembled her team of 12: Brokers Chris Durbin, Christian Emerson, Brian Fischer, Ryan Fischer, Myles Martinez, Ryan Osterkamp, Danny Rogers, David Santos, Carter Shannon, Erik Sikes, Connor Usselman, and herself, and began the process of coordinating the details (renting vans to transport the two six-person teams, booking hotels, locating safety equipment for night running, etc.). Not surprisingly, all of the team members were 30 years old or younger.
On April 11th, the teams began the race at the Strand in Coronado. Each competing team of 12 ran 36 legs, with each runner completing three legs apiece, completing a total distance ranging from 10.7 miles to 22.5 miles. The legs varied in difficulty and were classified as easy, moderate, or hard, with some legs being run through the night. The teams made their way through Chula Vista, National City, Ocean Beach, Sabre Springs, along the beachfront at Del Mar, to Cardiff-by-the-Sea and Encinitas, through Oceanside and San Clemente, and into Orange County before the final stretch in Laguna Hills and into Irvine, before crossing the finish line in Huntington Beach.
Team Building
Despite the effort involved in running the grueling race, there was plenty of time to bond with co-workers (now friends). “Because my group wasn’t running in the morning from 8:30 to noon, we went to breakfast and hit balls at a golf simulator,” said Martene, who ran a four, a five, and a nine-mile leg for the team. “And while I was doing my 9-mile leg in the afternoon, the other team members were having lunch or grabbing a drink. It was a great team bonding event.”
One of the elements of that bonding, however, was going through such a demanding exercise together. “We all met driving in the van early on, but you don’t really get to know people until you’re suffering, and you’re cold, and then later you’re eating lunch together, having a drink, or having coffee. And during the race, it was the coolest thing to see all our teams just cheering each other on and laughing because it was so hard,” said Martene. “When you’re with a person for over 24 hours, you’re speeding up the process of getting to know them, and after our time together, we were all so close.”
Ryan Osterkamp, an associate specializing in industrial in the Irvine office, agreed. “The main benefit I received (from the race) was getting to know these guys on a more personal level, and I guess some of that came through suffering together,” he said. “It helps to build a good team and also builds trust.” Osterkamp, a seasoned runner who has competed in half-marathons and Iron Man competitions, emphasized that the event was as much about team building as it was about the competition against other corporate teams.
“There are some teams that train all year for something like this, and then some teams that are just looking to get out there and have some fun – more along the lines of an adventure race. I think we were right smack in the middle,” Osterkamp laughed. “It was something cool for us to do as a company, and it’s fun to do this stuff with colleagues and to get to know everyone a little bit better, to really get to know everyone for who they are rather than just at work, and there’s really no better way to do it than spending 48 hours in a van with them.”
Like Martene and Osterkamp, associate Chris Durbin, a life science specialist in the San Diego office, is also an accomplished runner but admits that he typically trains for the event. For Ragnar, that meant 14 weeks of three-to-five-mile runs multiple times a week to prepare for the 18 miles he logged during his three legs of the race. And like Martene and Osterkamp, he feels that “there’s no better way to get close and really get to know someone than to be in the trenches and deal with a hardship together,” he says. “Running several miles a few short hours after your previous run, or in the middle of the night, or early in the morning, after only two hours of sleep – which is pretty much all we got – you really get to know people when everyone’s not feeling their best.”
Durbin added that, as brokers, he and his colleagues are inherently competitive, and despite the fun nature of the Ragnar race, that was readily apparent as the entire team gave it their all. “That was super impressive. There were various skill levels, but no one threw in the towel and just walked the whole thing. People really pushed themselves, and everybody was really supportive.”
