In late October, our team came together in Austin, Texas for credCon 2025, three days designed to pause, reconnect in person, and challenge how we work. The theme this year was Energize. Embrace. Empower. We explored how to use AI with purpose, strengthen our communication, and thought about the future we want to build and how we can get there.
Day One: Team Connection
On our first day, we all arrived in Austin and kicked things off together before breaking into team-specific activities. Two of our teams spent the afternoon exploring exhibits at the Blanton Museum of Art, while another group met with a local colorist for personalized color analysis sessions. One team also visited Lip Lab, where they created custom lip colors and learned about the process behind building a personal palette. It gave us space to connect before diving into a full day of sessions and workshops on day two.
Day Two: Welcome to credCon
The second day brought the theme of credCon to life. After checking in and collecting badges and swag, the team geared up for a full day of sessions designed to inspire reflection, spark ideas, and strengthen how we work together.
Our first session of the day was led by our guest speaker Jamie Mattox of New Soul Rising. Her session focused on self trust, ownership, and communication. Grounded in neuroscience, her approach made complex ideas tangible and connected how habits form to how we lead, respond, and show up for each other. The session felt less like a keynote and more like a reset. Jamie shared practical tools we could immediately bring into our daily work that help build confidence and accountability through small actions.
Looking Forward: Letters to Our Future Selves
Next came one of the most meaningful moments of the offsite, writing a letter to our future selves. We reflected on questions such as what we want to achieve in the next year, what matters most right now, and how we want to feel in our work.
This exercise paired reflection with vision. We mapped out what we want to build at cred and in our personal lives and how it connects to who we want to become. We’ll open these letters at next year’s offsite to see how much progress each of us has made. We closed the session by each sharing one word for 2026, something we do at each cred offsite.
AI Hackathon: Working Smarter
The most memorable session of the day was an AI Hackathon, centered on a simple question: how can we work smarter not harder.
Before the offsite, we grouped employees by role and asked each team to explore how AI could simplify their daily workflows. What, if anything, could be optimized, automated, or removed entirely? During our offsite groups presented the following ideas:
Tools to streamline research and reporting
Smarter ways to repurpose content and track results
Automations that reduce repetitive admin work
Teams presented the work they developed before credCon and shared ideas to simplify how we work. Each presentation focused on finding ways to create more time for thoughtful, high-impact work.
Pitching cred: Our Brand Our Voice
In the afternoon we turned the focus outward with Pitching cred, a exercise on articulating who we are as a business. Each person crafted and refined a short pitch, then practiced giving and receiving feedback. It was a great reminder that our brand voice is not just about marketing we put out, it is also about how every person communicates the impact of our work.
“Become an Expert In” Mini Workshops
Two short sessions closed the afternoon.
Revitalizing Remote First focused on how to stay energized and intentional as a distributed team, as well as quick ways to create better daily flow, maintain focus, and reset motivation.
Mine the Gold: Content That Actually Matters reframed how we approach thought leadership. We talked through how we can turn real client insights into stories that build credibility and cut through noise.
We closed out day two with a team dinner at Eberly, where the set menu made it easy to sit down, relax, and continue connecting. It was a simple way to end a full day of sessions before wrapping up the offsite.
Day 3: Depart and Reflect
The final morning was all about wrapping up and heading home. As everyone departed, there was time to reflect on the sessions and team building from the past two days and how to bring that connection and learning into daily work.
Our annual offsite gave us the space to step back and reset. It was a time to think critically about how we work, what drives us, and where we’re headed next. Austin reminded us that progress comes from reflection, intention, and the effort we bring every day.
