Every summer, a small group of ACE Peer Group members trades their desks for a float plane and lands more than 1,500 miles from the office — off the grid in King Salmon, Alaska, surrounded by bears, bald eagles, and some of the best salmon fishing in the world.
It looks like a fishing trip. It's really a reset button and one of the most memorable parts of the entire ACE Peer Group program.
Why You Have to Leave to Fix Anything
Ask any owner why they stay in their peer group, and it usually comes back to the same idea: it's the only place they're forced to stop working in the business long enough to work on it. Alaska takes that further, removing every excuse to check back in.
"As business owners, we are so invested — honestly, we are married to all of our employees and all the people that work for us," says Daniel Hudson, owner of Square One. "It's really important to step back and remember why we do the things that we're doing."
People Who Already Know You
What makes Alaska different from any other retreat is who you're stepping away with. By the time a peer group is invited, they've spent years meeting together — comparing numbers, working through hard decisions, showing up for each other.
"They know everything about you. They know everything about your team," says Jim Cali, Founding Principal at McFarlin Stanford. "So once you get up here, there's no relations that need to be made — it's really just about the depth of the relations that take place here."
That closeness is what makes owners come back changed. Mark Maslow, owner of Southern Landscape Group, almost canceled before his first trip. "As soon as we got there, I was immediately glad that I was there," he says. "I think we have the best peer group in the world."
A Once-in-a-Lifetime Kind of Perk
This isn't a company retreat you plan yourself, and it isn't open to everyone — it's offered once a year, and only to peer groups who've put in the work together to earn it.