Mad Hudson Retreat / Working Sheet

No strategy theater.

A black-on-white facilitation sheet. It states the grounded read, separates facts from unknowns, and points the room toward one useful Sprint 0.

01 / Read

The problem is reload cost.

Connor is not dealing with one problem called social.

He is being asked to switch between live selling, events, DMs, artist/community judgment, site truth, shipping promises, holiday sales, and internal follow-up. The retreat should not invent a grand strategy. It should remove work from Connor's head and choose one small sprint.

Working sentence: protect the weirdness; reduce the reload cost; do one useful sprint.

02 / Facts

What is grounded enough to use.

The retreat has a job. Turn event frustration, channel noise, holiday pressure, shipping reality, and support needs into a concrete operating plan.
The core load is context switching. Whatnot, Instagram/TikTok, events, Shopify/site, DMs, email, shipping, holiday, and ops all compete for the same attention.
Garen is not the taste owner. Garen can facilitate, record, draft, structure, and follow up. Connor and Mad keep taste, public voice, pricing, promises, and final approval.
Whatnot and site are different jobs. Whatnot is live selling, community, and product learning. The website is official product truth and full-price trust.
The recent event is incomplete data. It was frustrating and missed a stated $3k goal. The useful event math, contact value, proof value, and follow-up value are still missing.
Drama needs a routing rule. WatchTok / design-origin noise should go to ignore, log, respond, or escalate. It should not become public content by default.
03 / Unknowns

Do not fake certainty here.

Event reality

  • actual revenue, costs, and goal type
  • products brought, sold, and asked about
  • contacts, proof, photos, and follow-up owed
  • what exactly made the role/focus situation hard

Operating reality

  • next 3-5 real events
  • holiday products to push, protect, or avoid promising
  • shipping and handling constraints
  • Whatnot exports or manual readback
  • what support feels relieving vs. intrusive
04 / Boundary

Separate judgment from scaffolding.

Connor / Mad keep

  • artist and product taste
  • brand voice and public posture
  • pricing, discounts, and customer promises
  • relationship warmth or distance
  • final approval on anything public

Garen can scaffold

  • event readiness sheet
  • role card
  • capture sheet and debrief prompts
  • DM triage categories
  • holiday / shipping checklist
  • readback with owners and dates
05 / Sprint 0

Next Event + Holiday Readiness Cleanup.

This is the smallest useful sprint because it touches the real pressure without pretending to solve the whole business. It connects event role clarity, product focus, contact/proof capture, holiday promises, shipping risk, and support boundaries.

  1. Pick the next event.Choose one real upcoming event as the anchor.
  2. Name the event goal.Sales, proof, contacts, product feedback, partner value, morale, or a mix.
  3. Write the role card.Who leads, sells, captures proof, handles contacts, and follows up.
  4. Choose featured products.Include stock notes and what not to promise.
  5. Make capture simple.Person or handle; what they cared about; product discussed; follow-up owed.
  6. Draft holiday and shipping truth.Products to push/protect/avoid, handling constraints, promise language.
  7. Approve the DM rule.Ignore, log, respond, escalate.
06 / Room

How to keep it honest.

Open with pressure.

Ask: what are you tired of having to remember?

Do not make Brad the object.

If Brad is not in the room, talk about the role, not the person.

Do not accept taste delegation.

Say: I can draft, but this one needs you.

07 / Close

Read this back.

We are not deciding Mad Hudson's whole future today. We are choosing the first operating cleanup that makes the next few weeks easier. The Sprint 0 is ____. Connor/Mad own ____. Garen owns ____. We are parking ____. I may be wrong in a few places; tell me where. I will send the readback by ____.

What changed from the prior version

The previous page leaned too hard on outside examples and felt overconfident. This version removes the case-study layer from the main page, uses black-on-white document design, and foregrounds the local facts, unknowns, boundaries, and Sprint 0.

Source backbone

This page is grounded in the local retreat packet, especially local-context-brief.md, data-and-artifacts-brief.md, 01-final-facilitator-packet.md, 03-platform-switchboard.md, 05-sprint-0-recommendations.md, and 07-open-questions-for-connor-and-mad.md.