Last week, I was in Tucson for a retreat. It is one of those “work” trips that I get to take as a business owner a couple times a year. It was certainly a productive trip from the perspective of building my business, but that’s not why I’m part of Rhodium. I also would not have chosen to go to southern Arizona on my own volition, but I did get to visit the Saguaro National Park and see plenty of the famous cacti.

Rhodium is a group of people from all over the country (and a few even from outside the US) who are unified by (1) being entrepreneurs and (2) operating digital businesses. They fudge a little on #2 for me as I often represent people buying and selling digital businesses, but they don’t hold it against me too much. It is a group I’ve been a part of for several years and a group to which I attribute a good deal of the growth in business we’ve seen in recent years as it is an incubator and sounding board for me. I also enjoy being around people who understand what it’s like to run a remote-first business and who are working on some really cool projects.

As with almost every conference right now, there was plenty of conversation around AI. The difference is that almost everyone in the room has been using Claude Code for several months now and several people are working with it for hours each day. It’s the whole “if you’re the smartest person in the room, then you’re in the wrong room” thing. I definitely took some things home with me as I continue to build infrastructure and tools for our little law firm. At this point, I’ve also been in the group long enough that we’re familiar with each other’s lives and every meeting is meeting with friends I get to see in person twice a year. Some of the best moments were those spent around the fire at night telling the sorts of crazy stories that you can only share with people you’ve known for a while and with whom you have been through some travails.

The resort itself was something of a fever dream. It is about half an hour away from downtown and the university. It has two golf courses, manicured lawns on the grounds, and plenty of flowers. It is set against the backdrop of the Catalina foothills, but the whole area is the Sonoran Desert. It was lovely but felt incongruous. For one of the group activities and since we were staying at a golf resort, we had a drive, pitch, and putt contest with some handicaps. It was the first time I’d picked up a golf club in years. I also won the overall competition; it’s not exactly a golfing crowd.