Wednesday, October 14 · 9:00–9:45 a.m.
Led by Jon Fox, Expert EOS Worldwide Implementer

What this is for

The opening working session of the retreat’s first full business day. Jon Fox — an operator who built and sold a multi-million-dollar company before he spent his days coaching other operators — opens by naming what actually moves revenue in serious businesses: the disciplines underneath customer acquisition, customer retention, referrals, and the sales-to-delivery handoff. Not theory. Not consultant-polished frameworks. What operators recognize on sight, because they have either built it or watched it break.

The session primes the room for the two-hour mastermind that follows at 10:00. Every leader leaves this slot with a shared lens and a running start into the work at the table.

What you’ll leave with

You’ll leave knowing what to do about the revenue problem you walked in with — the segment that’s slipping, the referrals that dried up, the sales-to-delivery handoff that keeps breaking — and, harder, how to get your team to actually run it. That second part is the real work at the table. These problems rarely fail on the idea; they fail on communication and accountability — on whether the fix holds once it’s out of your hands. You work it through with operators who’ve solved the same thing, and you leave knowing who to call when it gets hard back home.

What this is not trying to do

This is not marketing strategy. Not social media. Not business resilience as a category. And it is not the mastermind — the room does its own work at 10:00. This session works on what moves the top line in the operating fundamentals every serious business runs on.

Speaker presence

Jon is not a fly-in keynote. He is in the room for the full retreat. Hands-on through the morning and into lunch — across the break, the two-hour mastermind, and the ninety-minute lunch — available between sessions, approachable at tables when a table invites him over, and seated with leaders at lunch in the territory they came to work. He stays past the working day, too: at the evening at Mallard Hall, and at the last night that begins at Peerless, where the connections made at the tables get room to go somewhere. The seat is not what he delivers on stage. It’s who he becomes to the room across the retreat.

Wednesday, October 14, 2026 · 10:00 – 12:00 · The Ballroom, Hotel Distil

What this session is for

The first working session of the retreat. Each leader brings one real revenue problem they’re facing right now — a customer segment you’re losing, a retention drop you can’t explain, referrals that have dried up, or a sales-to-delivery handoff that keeps costing you deals. You put it on the table, and the operators sitting with you — people who have solved the same problem in their own companies — help you build a plan to fix it.

Everyone gets a turn: you work your problem, then help the others work theirs. What you build here carries into the afternoon session, where an AI tool gets applied to the same piece of revenue you worked this morning.

What you’ll leave with

A specific plan for one part of your revenue — the actual next steps, drawn from what’s already working in other operators’ businesses and fitted to your situation. Plus the direct contact of the people who helped you build it, so you can call them when you hit a snag putting it in place.

What this session is not trying to do

This isn’t a diagnostic exercise, and no one sits in the hot seat while everyone watches — every leader works their own problem. Marketing tactics and social media stay off the table; the two hours go to what actually grows the top line.

Format and presence

You sit at a table of seven or eight leaders and work through each person’s revenue problem in turn. Jon Fox — the morning’s speaker — stays in the room; when your table wants his take, you wave him over, and he moves on after a few minutes. Most of the value comes from the operators next to you, not the front of the room.

Wednesday, October 14, 2026 · 1:30–2:15 p.m. · The Ballroom, Hotel Distil
Led by Matt Auslam, Director of Strategy & AI Infrastructure, Solyco Capital

What this session is for

The afternoon’s opening session, and the second half of the day’s one continuous argument about revenue. The morning named the four places revenue actually grows — acquisition, retention, referrals, and the handoff to delivery — and the room spent two hours at the table building a plan against them. Matt Auslam takes those same four and answers the question every owner is already carrying: where does AI actually move the number, and where is it just expensive noise?

He opens by naming what most owners have backwards. Every distillery in Kentucky starts from nearly the same spirit; what makes it bourbon — what makes it worth handing down — is the barrel and the years. The frontier AI models are white dog. Everyone in this room will rent the same engines, from the same handful of companies, on the same terms as their competitors. That is not the advantage. The advantage is the part nobody can rent: the judgment your acquisition, retention, referral, and delivery decisions already run on — the estimator who knows which quote to sharpen, the manager who can feel a customer about to leave, the person the referrals actually come through. That judgment is the growth asset. It is also the one you lose without noticing.

Matt spent twenty-six years in national defense as a Tier One Special Operator and CIA Operations Officer; in 2009 he brought a then-obscure company called Palantir into a targeting cell in Baghdad, one of the earliest operational deployments of the technology now at the center of the AI era. He reads the AI question the way an operator reads any new capability: what is commodity, what is moat, and what you do about it Monday morning. This session sets that lens. At 2:15 the room puts it to work — you take your morning revenue plan back to the table, where the operators next to you show you the AI they already use on exactly that kind of problem.

What you’ll leave with

A clear read on which of your revenue problems AI can actually move, and which it cannot — so the next tool you buy is bought on purpose. A way to see the judgment already inside your company as a revenue asset: the quoting instinct, the retention read, the referral map, the handoff that only works when one particular person runs it.

And the threat named correctly. What stalls a growing business is rarely a competitor with better technology. It is the person who leaves and takes the operating judgment with them, and the six months of revenue it costs to rebuild what nobody wrote down. Auslam watched an institution he loved lose its hardest-won knowledge one departure at a time, then became an example of it himself. He has spent his second career building the fix.

You leave with the specific moves you can make Monday morning against your own version of that — and a running start into the table session that follows, where the room’s own AI experience gets put to work on your plan.

What this session is not trying to do

This is not a product demonstration, and nothing is sold from the stage. It is not a tour of tools you should be evaluating, and it does not assume you employ anyone in technology. It is not a warning about machines taking jobs, and it is not optimism about them either.

It works on one question, and only one: how does what your people know turn into revenue that survives them?

Speaker presence

Matt is not a fly-in expert. He is a Me Plus Ultra member, in the room for the full retreat, working the same prompts at the same tables as everyone else. Most of the room will have already met him the night before — he is on the Solyco Capital side of Tuesday’s welcome reception — which is part of why this reads less like a lecture and more like a conversation already underway.

He came up in an organization where the senior person’s job was to be reachable, and he works a room the way he worked a task force: he finds the person carrying the hardest problem and goes to sit with them. Bring him the specific version of yours — the estimator retiring in eighteen months whose instinct nobody can replicate, the salesperson the referrals run through, the twenty years of files nobody can actually search. Those conversations are the reason he took this seat, and they are where the real work gets done.

Wednesday, October 14, 2026 · 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. · The Ballroom, Hotel Distil

What this session is for

The afternoon’s working session, and the second half of one continuous day on revenue. This morning you worked out a plan for one real piece of your revenue. At 1:30, the afternoon’s speaker opened the question most of this room is already living — how AI actually grows revenue in the work, not in theory. Now you take it back to the table.

Most of the operators sitting with you are already using AI in some form — different tools, different uses, some further along than others. That range is the point. The capability one of them swears by may be the one you’d never seen and walk out wanting. You put your morning plan in front of them, and together you work out how AI moves that specific piece of your revenue forward. Same room. Same operators. One topic, one more angle.

This is where the day compounds. The morning gave you the plan; the afternoon puts the room’s own AI experience to work on top of it.

What you’ll leave with

A concrete read on how you’ll use AI to grow the piece of revenue you worked this morning. That might sharpen what you already run, or it might be something you’d never seen until the operator across the table showed you what it does for them — either way, the actual next move, not a list of possibilities. Plus the operators who worked it with you, ready when you put it in place back home.

What this session is not trying to do

This is not a demo, and it is not a survey of tools — nor a top-down push toward one tool the whole room is told to adopt. What you pick up comes from the operators next to you, not from the front. Not a talk about where AI is headed. Not one screen at the front while everyone watches — every leader works their own piece, the way they did in the morning. And it is not a new subject: this is the same revenue you worked at 10:00, taken one angle further.

Format and presence

You work at the same table of seven or eight, on the piece of revenue you brought from the morning. There is nothing to prep and no facilitator to wait on — the room does the work, and the operators next to you are the ones who make it worth the seat. The afternoon’s speaker stays in the room while you work, and tables wave them over for a read. At 3:15 the speaker steps to the front to surface what came up across the room, before Scott closes the day at 3:30.

Wednesday, October 14, 2026 · 3:15 – 3:30 p.m. · The Ballroom, Hotel Distil
Matt Auslam, Director of Strategy & AI Infrastructure, Solyco Capital

What this session is for

The close of the day’s one continuous argument about revenue. Jon Fox named the four places revenue actually grows. The morning mastermind put each leader to work on the piece they came to build. Matt Auslam took those same four and read them through the AI question — what moves the number and what is expensive noise. Then the room spent an hour applying it at the tables, with Matt in the room the whole time.

He returns for fifteen minutes to name what he saw. Not a recap of what he taught — a read on what the room produced. He works a room the way he worked a task force: he watches where the hardest problems sit and how operators move on them. Across the hour, table to table, patterns emerge that no single leader can see from their own seat — the moves that showed up again and again, the places the room converged, the ones where it split. He names them. That is the shape of what the room built, made visible in the last quarter hour before the day lands.

What you’ll leave with

The room’s read laid on top of your own build. You already leave the applied hour with your next move on your own piece of revenue. This adds the layer only someone who watched the whole room can give you: where your build sits against what everyone else arrived at, and which patterns are worth carrying home because the room, not the front, produced them.

What this session is not trying to do

This is not a summary of the day, and it is not a verdict on what the room got wrong — Matt names what got built, not what broke. It is not a group conclusion that replaces the work you did at the table; your build is still yours, and you carry it home intact. This session adds a read. It does not overwrite one.

Format

Fifteen minutes. Matt at the front, the room listening — no table work. He closes by handing the room’s read up to Sandy Cerami, who takes the stage at 3:30 to land the day and its commitments.

Wednesday, October 14, 2026 · 3:30 – 3:45 p.m. · The Ballroom, Hotel Distil Led by Sandy Cerami, Chief Solutionist and Leadership Consultant

What this session is for

The whole day pointed here. You mapped where revenue actually grows, built your own piece of it at the table, laid the AI question over that build, and just heard the read on what the room made of it. Now it comes down to one question before anyone leaves: of everything you built today, what do you install first? You write it down — not a resolution, not a page of takeaways, but one specific move on one piece of your revenue, and the AI application you’ll put to work on it. Today built the engine. This is where you name its first turn — and it sets up the harder question Day 2 opens with: who runs it.

What you’ll leave with

One commitment, in your own hand — specific enough to remember at breakfast and act on the following week. Not the day’s notes. A decision: the piece of revenue you build first when you’re back at your desk, and the tool you’ll layer onto it. You walk into the evening carrying a build and a move, not a stack of pages.

What this session is not trying to do

This is not a recap of the day, and it is not a group resolution the room reaches together. You don’t commit to fixing what’s broken — you commit to building what’s next. And the move is yours: Sandy holds the room while each leader names theirs, but no one hands you a commitment from the stage. You leave with the one you built today.

Format

Fifteen minutes. Sandy from the stage to land the day, then each leader writes their single commitment privately on the page — the piece of revenue you install first, and the AI application you layer onto it. From there the room walks into the evening’s Louisville Immersion Experience.

Thursday, October 15, 2026 · 8:30 – 8:50 a.m. · The Ballroom, Hotel Distil
Led by Kasey, Me Plus Ultra

What this session is for

Kasey opens Day 2, and she carries its close later in the afternoon — the framing of the day runs through her. She starts by naming what the room built on Day 1. Not a summary of the sessions, but the actual work: where each leader decided revenue grows next, the AI they laid over it, the single move each one wrote down before the room broke for the night.

Then the turn: yesterday we built the engine, today we build he people who run it without you. Day 1 was revenue — the engine of the business. Day 2 is the leaders who run that engine when the founder steps back: the second-in-command who isn’t ready, the high-potential who’s stalling, the bench that’s still mostly a wish. The same two disciplines run underneath both days — communication and accountability, the ones that decide whether any of it holds once you’re back in your normal week. The work on top of them is a different thing entirely.

What you’ll leave with

The through-line that makes these two days one retreat instead of two agendas that happen to share a hotel. You walk into the morning already knowing what Day 2 asks of you — the specific person inside your business you’re going to build next — and why that question follows directly from the revenue you committed to the night before. The commitment you wrote at the close of Day 1 stays yours and stays intact. This does not replace it. It aims the next layer on top of it.

What this session is not trying to do

This is not a warm-up, and it is not a review of what the room got wrong — Kasey names what got built, not what broke. It does not re-open the commitment each leader wrote at the close of Day 1; that decision is made, and it travels home with you. And it is not the opening of a second, separate event. Day 2 is not more of Day 1. It is the same disciplines turned on a harder problem — the people, not the engine.

Format

Twenty minutes. Kasey from the stage, the room listening — no table work. She hands directly into the 8:50 framing that opens the day’s leadership arc, and returns at 3:15 to carry that arc into the year ahead before Scott lands the retreat.

Thursday, October 15 · 8:50–9:45 a.m. Led by Scott Joseph, Founder, Me Plus Ultra

What this is for

The opening working session of the retreat’s second full day — and the founder keeps this one for himself. Scott Joseph has spent thirty years building industry-leading companies and the leaders inside them, and he’ll tell you he got this exact thing wrong for years: he thought handing his best person more of his own work was development. It wasn’t. It was delegation with training wheels, and it kept a capable person doing tasks long after they’d outgrown them.

This session names the difference. The person worth building is rarely the most loyal or the loudest — it’s the one already carrying work a size too big for their seat, the one you’d scramble hardest to replace if they walked tomorrow, and the one you’ve never actually told how much the place leans on them. Scott walks the room through the deliberate sequence — five moves, one person, one quarter — that moves that person from your most reliable doer to someone who owns decisions you used to make alone. The moves themselves stay in the room.

It sets up the two-hour mastermind at 10:00, where every leader takes this lens to the table and builds the plan for their own named person.

What you’ll leave with

You’ll leave knowing exactly who your one is — named, not gestured at — and what the first real move on them looks like the week you get home. The harder part, and the actual work at the table, is everything after you name them: whether you can put a decision that carries real downside in their hands and then keep your own hands off it. It rarely fails on the plan. It fails on communication and accountability — on whether you can let the person own the call once it’s theirs, and stay clear enough about what they own that they never quietly hand it back. You work that through with operators who have already built the leader you’re trying to build, and you leave knowing who to call the week your instinct is to take it all back.

What this session is not trying to do

This is not an HR framework and it is not a hiring plan — the person you’re building is already on your payroll. It is not a personality assessment, and it is not an hour spent diagnosing why your bench is thin. You will not leave with a catalog of what’s broken. You’ll leave having started to build one specific person, on purpose, this quarter.

Why the founder keeps this seat

Every other framing session at the retreat brings in an outside practitioner. This one, Scott keeps — not because an outside voice couldn’t frame it, but because building the leaders inside a business is the work his thirty years are made of, and this room should hear it from someone who has lived every move of it. It shows in the shape of the day, too: the founder delivers the framing in the morning, while the leader he built opens Day 2 ahead of him and carries its closing arc at the end — a founder handing his own people the weight he spends the hour teaching everyone else to hand over.

Thursday, October 15, 2026 · 10:00 – 12:00 · The Ballroom, Hotel Distil

What this session is for

The second working morning of the retreat. Each leader brings the one person inside their business they’re building next (either physically or mentally) — the second-in-command who isn’t ready, the high-potential who’s stalling, the operator already carrying weight without the title. You put that person on the table, and the operators sitting with you — people who have built the same leader in their own companies — help you build the plan.

Everyone gets a turn: you work your person, then help the others work theirs. What you build here is where the afternoon starts. The one leader you develop this morning is the first seat in a bench; after lunch the room scopes up from that single person to the pipeline behind them — the system that produces the next leader, and the one after, so the business stops running on any single name.

What you’ll leave with

A development plan under construction for one specific person — the actual next moves on them, drawn from what other operators have already built in their own companies and fitted to who this person is and what you need them to own. Plus the direct contact of the operators who helped you build it, so you can call them when handing the work over turns out to be harder than planning it.

What this session is not trying to do

This isn’t a diagnostic exercise, and no one sits in the spotlight while the room watches — every leader works their own person. It isn’t a panel or a Q&A carried over from the morning; the framing is done, and this is where the room builds. And it isn’t a conversation about leadership in the abstract — no bench-building theory, no org-chart exercise. You leave having started to build one real person, by name, not holding a catalog of what your bench is missing.

Format and presence

You sit at a table of seven or eight leaders and work each person’s build in turn. Scott — the morning’s speaker — stays in the room; when your table wants his read, you wave him over, and he moves on after a few minutes. Most of the value comes from the operators next to you, not the front of the room.

One rule runs the room: the name stays at the table. When a story about someone leaves here, every identifying detail changes with it — the same rule that governs every Me Plus Ultra session. It’s why leaders put the real person on the table instead of a version they’ve sanded down.

Thursday, October 15, 2026 · 1:30–2:15 p.m. · The Ballroom, Hotel Distil

Led by Tim Novak — leadership developer, best-selling author of Remarkable Influence.

WHAT THIS SESSION IS FOR

You spent the morning on one person. Here’s the harder question: everyone else you call your bench — are they real leaders, or people doing your work with a better title? A real one owns a number, makes the call that can cost you something, and doesn’t hand it back. Most of what owners call a bench is the other kind. This is where you build the real kind — and enough of them that the business isn’t riding on you, or on the one person you just promoted.

Tim Novak has done this at a scale almost nobody has. He ran sales and operations for 1,700 Matco Tools franchise owners — his job was building people who ran their own shops without him in the room. He’ll take you through the two or three people to build next, how to tell who’s actually ready from who only looks it, and the order to build them in. The person from this morning is seat one. At 2:15 you take it to the table and map the rest onto your own business.

WHAT YOU’LL LEAVE WITH

A short list: the two or three people to build next, in order, for your business — not leadership in the abstract. An honest read on the bench you already have — who owns their work, and who’s still handing it back to you. Your morning person set as the first build. And a plan already moving when you walk into the 2:15 table session.

WHAT THIS SESSION IS NOT TRYING TO DO

Not an org chart. Not a reorg. Not succession planning for your attorney. Not a case for going out to hire — the people you need are already on your payroll and have just never been handed anything real. And not an hour admiring the team you’ve got. You leave with who to build, and in what order.

SPEAKER PRESENCE

Tim doesn’t fly in and fly out. He’s at the tables through the afternoon, same prompts as everyone else. Forty years and thousands of leaders in, he’s seen your situation before. Bring the one you can’t figure out: the right hand everyone swears is indispensable who’s never made a call that could cost you a dollar; the two good people and one promotion; the seat you keep meaning to fill and keep doing yourself.

Thursday, October 15, 2026 · 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. · The Ballroom, Hotel Distil
A working table session.

WHAT THIS SESSION IS FOR

The afternoon working session. At 1:30 you got the framework. Here you put your own business on the table, in front of operators who have built a bench in their own companies — and broken one.

Then the part the framework can’t do for you. This morning you built a leader. If you built them right, the bench underneath them is theirs to build, not yours to assign. So the work at this table isn’t writing their plan. It’s getting clear on what you hand them — and catching the moment you start taking it back.

WHAT YOU WILL LEAVE WITH

Your bench mapped for the business you actually run — real names, real order, not a framework applied in the abstract. A clear line between what’s yours to decide and what belongs to the leader you built this morning. And the operators at your table, ready the week you get home and your instinct is to take it all back.

WHAT THIS SESSION IS NOT TRYING TO DO

Not one hot seat while the room watches — every leader works their own org. Not a plan you carry home and hand down to the leader you just built. Not an org chart, not a reorg. You don’t leave with a ranked list of who’s falling short. You leave with a bench under construction and the discipline to let someone else build it.

FORMAT AND PRESENCE NOTE

You work at a table of seven or eight, on your own org. Nothing to prep, no facilitator to wait on. The practitioner from 1:30 stays in the room, table-invited, five minutes at a time. At 3:15 they hand off to Kasey.

Thursday, October 15, 2026 · 3:15 – 3:35 p.m. · The Ballroom, Hotel Distil
Led by Kasey, Me Plus Ultra Integrator

What this session is for

The forward arc, and the close of the working day. Over three days you made it real: the revenue you committed to install first and the AI layered onto it, the one leader you’re developing, and the bench behind them. Every operator knows what usually happens next — it walks out as inspiration and thins to nothing by the following Monday.

This session names what happens instead. Not motivationally — structurally. The retreat is one node inside the Me Plus Ultra year, and the twelve months in front of you already have the touchpoints where what you just made gets checked, reinforced, and kept running. Kasey draws the line from what’s in your hands right now to the year that carries it.

What you will leave with

A clear read on where the work of these three days lives after Louisville — the specific points in the year ahead where it gets reinforced, so the engine, the leader, and the bench you shaped keep running past the first busy week home. Not a calendar of obligations. A line from what’s in your hands to the twelve months that keep it in motion — and the knowledge that Me Plus Ultra carries that arc forward with you.

What this session is not trying to do

Not a motivational sendoff. Not a recap of three days you were in the room for. Not a program overview of everything Me Plus Ultra runs across the year. Kasey doesn’t tell you what you should have done differently — the room already did the work. She names what carries forward and how the year keeps it installed. You leave knowing it all has somewhere to go.

Format

Kasey from the stage. Twenty minutes, no table work — the making is done. At 3:35, Scott returns to land the retreat.