Above: It takes a village, and Team Synergo is here for it all.
Far left: A Synergo-built suspension bridge at Pumpkin Ridge, Ore.
to step out of the business completely, but it’s important to both of us that it continues long after we have full-time energy for it. We have a fantastic team, and that’s the thing that keeps us going. Erik: When I started Synergo in 1994, it was an in-between thing—I’ll go run ropes courses and I’ll go do team-build- ing until I get my real job and figure out what I want to be if I grow up. I never figured it out, but I knew very young that while I was in pretty good shape, I wouldn’t be able to do this (the physical side of building and training) when I was 60 years old. So, we started build - ing the infrastructure for other people to come in. It’s not like having kids, but it’s like having a family—all these people have good ways of thinking and being. Jennifer: It takes incredible partners, incredible staff, other people who understand the vision and the mission and want to be a part of it. It takes all of us together working on it, not just the two of us. Left: Hanging out on one of the many elements in the massive challenge course Synergo built at Zinc Scout Ranch in Oklahoma.
ed living facility drinking whiskey and recounting our lives, we will have many of the same memories to rehash, relive, enjoy together.
I think the industry has some great opportunities, but we are all challenged right now with finding people who want to be facilitators, who want to spend three weeks in Hawaii building cool things, who want to go dangle in some giant trees in Alaska for four weeks and set up cool stuff. The challenge coming up is getting people to build and create. One of the things we’ve been really good at, and we’re consciously thinking about, is how to build this company so that when we leave and get out of its way, it keeps going. Jennifer: About 20 years ago, we had someone ask us about our exit plan. We couldn’t even think through the next week, let alone what we wanted this company to look like when we’re ready to leave. Now, we have this group of people at ACCT we have connected with for 25 years or more, and it’s nice to see people that have successfully navi- gated the exit plan and to have some mentors. It’s not that we’re ever going
API: As you approach the 30-year anniversary of the company, what do you see for the future of the indus- try in general, and what’s ahead for Synergo? Erik: When we built our first zip tour, I was like, “this will last a couple years and people will get tired of it.” Now, they’re running hundreds and hundreds of peo- ple a day, and it’s still on people’s bucket lists. I go to summer camps and people are still climbing up rock walls, and we’re still building them and we’re still putting challenge courses in camps. And we still want and need them, because people still need to learn how to get out of their comfort zone. People still need to learn how to dance with their fear instead of letting fear overwhelm them—after Covid more than ever.
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