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Idea 65

Between five and fifteen thousand pounds a day.

A corporate day on a working farm, built from a menu rather than sold as a package. The top of that range is Kaleb’s bootcamp, which is the thing everybody asks for and the thing he declines most often.

The proposition

What a corporate day here actually is.

It is not a team-building exercise with hay bales. It is a day of doing agricultural work badly, in the rain, with somebody who does it properly watching, followed by an honest conversation about why it went wrong.

Groups arrive expecting a novelty and leave having had a fairly pointed lesson about planning, weather, sunk cost and the difference between a plan and a schedule. Several finance teams have found it more useful than they expected, which says more about away-days generally than about this one.

It works for groups of eight to forty. Below eight it is expensive per head. Above forty it becomes a coach party and the whole point evaporates.

Build a day

Build a day.

The base is a full day on site for up to fifteen people with two of our staff, from nine until four. Everything else adds to it, and the total at the bottom is the whole cost rather than a starting point.

01How many of you

The single biggest driver of cost, because it decides how many of our people are tied up all day.

02The morning

Everything here is real work that genuinely needs doing, which is why it is not a simulation.

03Lunch

Everything from within sixteen miles, because that is what there is.

04The afternoon

The half people remember, and the half that decides the price.

05What you take away

Optional, and most groups take the first one.

Five real shapes

What the range actually covers.

DayRoughlyWhat it is
Twelve people, fencing, shop lunch, the numbers £4,200–5,000 The commonest booking, and the best value
Twenty-five people, livestock, cooked lunch, brewery £7,500–8,800 The one most often booked by an HR department
Forty people, machinery, pub lunch, driving £11,000–13,000 A logistics exercise. Two coaches and four staff
Any size, with Kaleb’s bootcamp £13,000–15,000 When he says yes, which is about one enquiry in three
Half day, up to fifteen £2,600 Nine until one. Less useful than it sounds — the afternoon is the good bit
Away-days

What a day includes.

Included

  • Two to four of our people for the whole day
  • Every briefing, and there are several because some of this is dangerous
  • Wet weather kit if you have not brought any, which you have not
  • Public liability cover for the activities we run
  • A plan B for every outdoor element, agreed before you arrive
  • Somewhere to leave a coach, which is harder than it sounds

Not included

  • Transport to the estate, or anywhere during the day
  • Accommodation of any kind, on this holding or near it
  • Alcohol at lunch, if you are driving anything afterwards
  • Anything at all during our harvest, drilling or lambing windows
  • A guaranteed appearance by anybody in particular, including Kaleb
  • A refund because it rained. It is a farm
The honest bit

An away-day here is worth it for a group that wants to be bad at something together in public. It is a waste of money for a group that wants a conference room with a view of a tractor, and we have talked three companies out of it on that basis. The rain is not refundable and the field does not care what your quarter looked like.

The one everybody asks about.

Kaleb’s bootcamp — what it is, what it costs, and why he says no about two thirds of the time.

Wondering

What people actually ask.

The two questions this page gets most, answered without a support ticket.

The words are ours. The brands are not, and nothing here is licensed.

The cast page names every person and what they are actually responsible for, which is not always what the programme implies.

Next along the route

Kaleb’s bootcamp

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