Back in 2005, Life in the UK seemed rather dull and predictable after flirting with the highly contagious “Baltic Bug”. In my eyes, Latvia held seemingly endless opportunities, and with not much more than the clothes on my back and the “ever optimistic yet slightly over excitable” head on my shoulders, I fell headlong into the bosom of the Baltic. This was the start of my entrepreneurial journey in the Baltic's...establishing Riga Out There, experience agency later in 2006.
It was a lack of reliable information available to visitors in Latvia at that time that gave me the inspiration to form the philosophy behind Riga Out There - helping visitors to “access the un-accessible” with remarkable experiences.
Before embarking on my adventure, a good friend of mine’s father said to me, “You are moving to Latvia, wonderful part of the world but it is full of walnuts”. Bit confused I asked Godfrey to elaborate. He went to on to say “Typically the people have quite hard shells, but once you crack them, they are a real delight to be with”.
I began to explore how can I help facilitate and encourage people to open up in a meaningful way. I set up a company called Travel Out There, organising company retreats and team building experiences to help companies connect with their most valuable asset, their people.
A Travel Out There 'About Us' Video made, in 2014, that still resonates our core purpose today!
I served as a trust architect for the likes of Google, Booking.com and Nestle. It is incredible to think what started as a company, simply offering visitors to Latvia an great experience, with an average pay cheque of €50 Euros per person has evolved in to a pan European corporate event and retreat network with budgets of up to €500,000, within a handful of years. It’s very rewarding to think back and see the fruits of my labor have resulted in a positive experience, for so many people over the years, in so many fantastic destinations.
After have spending well over 15 years building trust in teams with Travel Out There, providing remarkable off-sites and retreats combining travel, training and team building, we are now putting all this experience in to creating the Ozzarks - a place where time is well spent enabling the magical power of nature to connect remote teams within companies and families with one another.
We did this by managing the square of effective communication. Orchestrating experiences at the right time, the right place, with the right agenda, and in the right way. So come and experience the Ozzarks and excuse the pun, crack some shells.
Watch the video for the explanation of our name the 'Ozzarks'