MRE Capital Welcomes Portfolio Leadership Teams to Its Largest Executive Summit Yet

Working "On" the Business, Not "In" It: Recapping the 2026 MRE Capital Executive Summit

For three days each fall, leaders from across the MRE Capital portfolio step away from the daily demands of running their companies and come together to focus on building them. The 2026 MRE Capital Executive Summit, our third annual, took place September 21-23 at Northwest Point Farm in Centreville, MD.

This year, we widened the net, expanding from mainly CEOs and a few senior leaders in past years to include portfolio companies' executive teams. More than 65 people joined us, including CEOs, CFOs, COOs, CMOs, Chief Revenue Officers, Chief People Officers, and more, marking our largest gathering to date.

With whole leadership teams in the room, the community grew in a new way. CFOs could compare notes with other CFOs, people leaders with other people leaders, and sales leaders with their counterparts, alongside the conversations within each company's own team. Many met peers facing similar challenges at other companies for the first time.

The Summit agenda was built around the MRE Growth Playbook, our shared framework for scaling mid-market companies. The theme for the three days was working "on" the business instead of "in" it. That's a hard balance to strike for teams whose day-to-day is taken up by running operations. Attendees looked at how to apply the Playbook in their own organizations, compared notes on what's been working across the portfolio, and left with practical ideas to bring back to their teams.

We were also glad to welcome guest speaker Verne Harnish, founder of Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) and founder and CEO of Scaling Up, who shared his insights on growth in an engaging presentation and discussion with the group.

The Summit is just as much about the people in the room as the work on the agenda. Between sessions, over meals, and during time outdoors at the farm, attendees built relationships across companies and roles. Those connections give leaders a network of peers they can call on long after the Summit ends.

Day 1: Building Leadership Communities

The Summit opened on Monday, September 21, with roundtable discussions. This year, we expanded the format to include four executive groups, each led by a member of the MRE Capital team:

• CEOs: led by MRE Capital Founder and CEO David Williams

• Finance: led by Finance Business Partner Sean Creamer

• Sales and Marketing: led by Sales Business Partner Dave Paulus

• HR: led by Talent Business Partner Libby Barden

Each group sat down with its counterparts from across the portfolio to share the goals they're working toward and what's getting in their way. The aim was a candid conversation about how leaders in each role can continue to grow and develop.

To prepare, the CEO group read The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz and came ready to discuss it. Their conversation covered what makes a great CEO and what CEOs tend to get wrong, the critical stages of company development, what the CEO must own, and how to develop a strong executive team.

For the finance, sales and marketing, and HR groups, it was the first time they had the chance to meet in the same room. Participants leaned in throughout, and a clear theme emerged: even at companies in different phases, leaders are working through many of the same issues, concerns, and constraints. Many found comfort in knowing they're not alone in the challenges they face. Each community will connect at least quarterly throughout the year to continue to engage and support one another.

The evening concluded with drinks and dinner for all attendees, giving the full group a chance to connect informally before the Summit officially got underway the next day. Seating was mixed so attendees sat apart from their own companies, giving everyone a chance to get to know peers from across the portfolio.

Day 2 - Morning: From Playbook to Practice

Tuesday opened with welcome remarks from David, who set the stage for the day and a half ahead. Everyone in the room, he noted, is here to build a great company, and growing one is hard, takes time, and requires a real investment in learning and growing as a team. The MRE Growth Playbook captures the beliefs, behaviors, tools, and systems we believe help make that possible.

MRE Partner Jon Schwartz shared an update on MRE Capital's platform and progress over the past year, including our new partnerships with Total Fire Protection, a full-service fire and life safety services provider, and Terren Landscapes, a luxury residential landscape design-build and maintenance provider, as well as the growth of our core team to 14.

Each of our business partners gave a brief update on their role and progress to date, and we introduced our newest business partner, Z Shen, who joins the team as Growth Playbook Business Partner. Z will lead the ongoing development of the Playbook, help each portfolio company apply it based on its growth stage and priorities, and connect the work of our functional business partners into one coherent approach to company building.

Adopting the Growth Playbook

Moving into the morning's cornerstone sessions, David revisited our philosophy on building great companies that consistently grow faster than the markets they serve while creating opportunities for their teams to grow and develop. He then walked through the MRE Growth Playbook's operating framework, now organized around four connected areas:

• Vision & Strategy: how we set direction and align priorities

• Organization & Structure: how we operate as a company and work together as a team

• Planning & Operating Rhythm: how we manage the business, both long term and short term

• People & Culture: how we develop our people and culture

As a company moves from foundational to growth to scale stages, each functional leader needs to build greater ownership, cadence, and operating discipline, connecting long-term strategy to the day-to-day operating rhythm.

With 2027 around the corner, David outlined the key planning priorities for the year ahead, from long-term strategy and organizational structure to budgets, strategy maps, and incentive compensation.

He closed by reaffirming MRE's commitment to building great companies together with management teams, recognizing that it's a journey that takes commitment and time.

The Role of the Executive Team

The second session focused on what executive teams are there to do: align on a core vision and strategy, communicate a shared narrative, work together to reach goals and solve problems, develop their teams, and set the example for the culture they want to build.

David discussed how leaders evolve from individual contributor to manager to executive, and the difference between management, which is about authority, and leadership, which is about influence. Most executive teams struggle, he explained, because they're misaligned, dysfunctional, or lack competency. Solving for those requires a well-defined management system built on:

• A clear, documented, well-communicated strategy

• Clear organizational design with well-defined roles and responsibilities

• Goals, initiatives, and budgets that people are held accountable to

• A high-velocity meeting and communication rhythm

• An incentive structure that aligns the company, the team, and the individual

• A culture based on shared values and beliefs

That's what the Growth Playbook is designed to provide.

Group Breakout Discussions

To close the morning, each company's executive team broke out to discuss how the sessions applied to their own organization. The prompts encouraged candid conversation:

• Are we aligned?

• Do we function as a team?

• What aren't we addressing that we should be?

• Are we even comfortable having these discussions together?

It was the kind of conversation the Summit is built for: a chance to step back and work on the team, not just in the business.

Day 2 - Afternoon: Scaling with Verne Harnish

In the afternoon, attendees heard from this year's featured speaker, Verne Harnish.

Verne founded EO, which today has more than 18,000 members worldwide, and for fifteen years chaired EO's premier CEO program at MIT, where he still teaches. Through Scaling Up, a global executive education and coaching company with more than 290 partners on six continents, he has spent the past four decades helping companies scale up. He is the author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits; The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time, with a foreword by Jim Collins; and Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0). He is also the co-author of Scaling Up Compensation, and his latest book is Start to Scale.

To prepare for the session, attendees worked through Verne's Rockefeller Habits Checklist in advance, marking their progress against each habit so they arrived with a clear picture of where their companies stand. Throughout the afternoon, Verne built on themes from the morning's sessions and shared examples of companies that have scaled successfully along the way.

He also walked the group through two practical tools:

• The Vision Summary, which brings a company's direction together in one place: core values, purpose, and brand promises; strategic priorities and BHAG; and the KPIs and quarterly priorities that keep the team moving toward them.

• The Function Accountability Chart (FACe), which focuses on clear ownership. Teams name the person accountable for each function, pressure-test those choices against a set of guiding questions, define KPIs for each function, and assign an owner to each line of the P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow statement, so every function has clear, measurable outcomes.

Both tools reinforced the morning's focus on strategy and accountability, giving executive teams a practical starting point to bring back to their own organizations.

While he was with us, Verne also sat down with David for a conversation about the MRE Growth Playbook and how we partner with management teams with the goal of building great companies. Watch the full conversation here.

Day 3: From Strategy to Execution

The final day opened with a session on M&A, moderated by David and featuring a panel of portfolio CEOs:

• David Williams Jr., CEO, Advantage Services Group

• Craig Dempster, CEO, Trilliad

• DJ Vander Slik, CEO, DJ's Landscape Management

David framed M&A as a part of a broader growth strategy, never the strategy itself: if a company can't articulate that broader strategy, it shouldn't be doing M&A. He also shared lessons learned, including that M&A is a learned skill, that integration is built on trust more than systems, and that companies with more mature cultures and systems are better positioned to integrate well. The panelists then shared their own perspectives, including why they pursue M&A, what's been harder or easier than expected, and how their approach to integration has evolved.

Preparing for 2027

The final session of the Summit went deeper into the annual planning process David introduced on Tuesday, with a reminder that there's no better time to make real progress than the start of a new year.

The group walked through each step in more detail, including what a strong long-term strategy should cover, what goes into building the annual budget, and how strategic themes, goals, and initiatives fit together.

David and Curated Events' CEO Dave Paulus then walked through Curated Events' 2027 planning as a real-world example, and company teams broke out one last time to discuss how prepared they are for 2027 planning, the challenges they expect, and the benefits of putting the Playbook into practice.

To close the Summit, David brought everyone together to share initial feedback and final thoughts. He encouraged attendees to take what they learned back to their teams, keep using the relationships they built over the three days, and stay curious and keep learning. His parting reminder: the system sets you free, and the Playbook is how you build it.

Building Together

The 2026 Executive Summit brought more of our portfolio's leaders together than ever before. Over three days, full executive teams stepped away from the day-to-day to work "on" their businesses: aligning around the MRE Growth Playbook, having candid conversations about how they work together, and getting ready for the year ahead. Just as important, leaders built relationships with their peers across the portfolio, forming a community they can lean on throughout the year.

"Every year, this group reminds me that great companies are built by great teams," said David Williams, Founder and CEO of MRE Capital. "Bringing full executive teams together this year changed the conversation. Leaders weren't just learning from us; they were learning from each other. That's the community we want to keep building: one where people are open about what's working and what isn't, and where everyone leaves with something they can put to work right away."

Thank you to every leader who joined us. Your candor and willingness to learn from one another are what make the Summit work. We look forward to building on these conversations together in 2027!

Professional photos captured by Jamie Good Photography