Experiences that Shaped the Vision

When Greg joined the profession the firm he worked for, Luttner Financial Group, had a two-day annual training called LFG University. This training was formative in Greg’s growth and development through training, networking, and culture immersion. It was not present when Greg worked at other firms and saw the massive value it delivered.

This experience was combined with seeing how similar training was done through sales trips for successful “sales” people or from the sales culture our profession came out of. Those that were in the sales position were given these benefits which created divisions and did not strengthen the team together.

Another experience that shaped this vision was Greg’s history of conferences. From a young age, Greg joined his dad at conferences and attended them from Student Council in high school to Fraternity Conferences and Township Supervisor conferences in College to Church conferences, leadership conferences, and industry training conferences while working. Seeing firsthand the impact they can have and the results left a lasting impression.

How The Vision Started: Culture Building

As Beratung grew and we needed to develop our team and protect our culture the idea of Beratung University was birthed from the experiences above. The original Beratung University had the vision that this would be the cornerstone of our culture. It would be something that defines who we are and what makes us different.

For Every Team Member

Our vision was this would be for every team member. The Marines have a saying that every Marine is a rifleman, meaning that regardless of your role in the Marines you must be trained and be able to fight if called upon. We believe that every Beratung Team member is a financial planner. To understand how we serve clients and why we serve clients every team member regardless of their role she be exposed to training. It is with this in mind that we said Beratung would be open and required of all team members and not just for the “sales” folks like other firms.

More is Caught Than Taught

Making this the cornerstone of our culture was the belief that when you are immersive with others that more is caught than taught. If we have a strong culture those that attend can’t help but catch on to our cultural norms. Also after spending several days immersive with each other those that do not love our culture will self-select out. The number one reason cited for why people change jobs is culture, however, people typically do an interview or two and may ask a person who works or worked there and read an online view. They don’t have a chance to test drive that car. We believe by taking time together each year our team will assimilate to a shared culture of our tribe and those who want to test drive our culture can come and experience if this is the right fit for them.

Attracting Outside Thought Leadership

The original vision was to bring in outside through leadership. If we all think the same way and do not make room for outside thought we will end up like Blockbuster. However, we knew at the beginning we could not afford to bring in high-level leaders. We started small and worked over the years to get the “Professors” the majority from the outside and to foster an environment to attract leaders to come share their ideas. From the start we wanted to bring our “competitors” or as we call them colleagues in the profession, under Centers of Influences (COIs) or as we call them partners, we wanted to bring the best leader we could find. To create this environment we started with a shared dinner between all participants and an invitation for all professors to attend Beratung University at no cost for life.

Leadership Development

Having seen the impact of leadership development principal in the above experiences and through reading in addition to a deep-held belief that every person is a Leader it was part of the original vision that Beratung University would be a source of leadership development for our team and attendees to jump-start their growth.

Close but Far Away

We believe that your environment matters. By changing your setting or your clothes you can often change or enhance your mindset. We call this concept a Totem which comes from the book Alter Ego. To maximize the value of our time together we set out to find a location that was close but far away. We wanted it to be at least a 1-hour drive from Pittsburgh so that it was long enough to create a sense of traveling. Long enough that you had to plan and change your normal routines. Long enough to want to spend the night and get out of your normal environment. However, we also wanted it to be less than 3 hours so that there was not a lot of wasted time and we wanted it to be drivable so we didn't have to deal with timing flights or flight cancelations. We also wanted a location that had everything on-site to accommodate our event with room to grow in future years. We wanted a place where if someone wanted to they could turn it into a trip by coming in early or straying a few extra days.

After searching many places including Oglebay, Raystown Lake, Geneva on the Lake, Peak and Peak, 7 Springs, and more we found the most cost-effective and best fit was WISP resort. This was a God moment since Deep Creek Lake happened to be Greg’s favorite place on Earth and home to many God moments and spiritual encounters.

The Dinner

In the Bible, most major events happen around breaking bread. The significance of one of Jesus’s instructions to his disciples of a sacrament around a meal cannot be ignored. We were designed to do life together and one of the best ways to share life together is around a meal. From the start, the cornerstone of the day together has been our dinner with all participants gathering together and breaking bread. We started this at Greg and Amanda’s favorite Deep Creek Restaurant, Dutch’s at Silvertree breaking from our goal of not leaving the lodge for meals because we believed having this dinner at someplace special was too important and due to the feedback have continued the tradition of having it there.

Vision Casting

The last goal from the beginning was for this to be the event that annually kicks off our year. We wanted to set our team’s goals, the theme for the year, and our vision for the future. This meant we would need the event to be after we set our goals for the year and work while into our team's rhythms. This is why we host Beratung University the first week in February with the flexibility of a week prior or a week after based on scheduling conflicts.