Laura Kendrick and Cort Sharp hijack the mic to share what it’s really like behind the scenes at Mountain Goat. From Zoom bloopers to unexpected team bonding, they unpack how a fully remote team built a thriving, human-centered workplace.

Overview

In this special takeover episode, Laura Kendrick and Cort Sharp pull back the curtain on what goes into running hundreds of Scrum and Product Owner classes virtually—and why Mountain Goat's remote team still feels so close-knit.

With stories of early tech headaches, Slack banter, hilarious costume moments, and the quiet rituals that keep the team connected, they explore how remote work can actually foster strong relationships and top-tier collaboration. If you’ve ever wondered how to make a distributed team work (or just want a peek at some Zoom-era growing pains), this one’s for you.

References and resources mentioned in the show:

Laura Kendrick

Cort Sharp

#61: The Complex Factors in The Office Vs. Remote Debate with Scott Dunn

#147: The Power of Quiet Influence with Casey Sinnema

Run a Daily Scrum Your Team Will Love

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This episode’s presenters are:

Cort Sharp is the Scrum Master of the producing team and the Agile Mentors Community Manager. In addition to his love for Agile, Cort is also a serious swimmer and has been coaching swimmers for five years.

Laura Kendrick is the producer of the Agile Mentors Podcast and a seasoned Scrum Master who keeps virtual classes running smoothly. Outside the podcast, she helps clients apply Scrum techniques to their marketing and business strategy, bringing structure and momentum to big, creative ideas.

Auto-generated Transcript:

Laura Kendrick (00:00 )

Welcome in Agile Mentors. As you may have noticed, I am not Brian Milner. I am Laura Kendrick, and this is Cort Sharp. And if you have taken a class with us at Mountain Goat in the last five years, there is a good chance that you have met one or actually both of us.

Cort Sharp (00:19 )

I think it's like 90 % chance, 95 % honestly. We've been in so many of these classes.

Laura Kendrick (00:26 )

Definitely, and oftentimes together too with one of us TAing, one of us producing, sometimes one of us teaching court.

Cort Sharp (00:33 )

once in a while, once in a while. Yeah.

Laura Kendrick (00:37 )

So we thought we would come on over here and hijack the podcast to share a little bit about some of the insights that we have gained from doing about a billion, maybe a little exaggeration.

Cort Sharp (00:49 )

Roughly. Roughly. We've done roughly a billion classes with Mountain Goat. Yes.

Laura Kendrick (00:56 )

We have seen a lot in the certifying of Scrum Masters and product owners and advanced product owners and Scrum Masters and all of the evolution of the classes that we have done. We actually hold quite a bit of insight into what is happening in this world. And so we thought we would come in, steal the podcast, and share a little bit of what we have seen, learned, observed, and really just kind of Honestly, some of the laughs and fun that we've had along the way.

Cort Sharp (01:25 )

Also, I think, I don't know, just your intro right there is talking about, hey, we've seen the evolution of these classes. That just got my brain going of like, remember the first class that we did? Way like 2020. I mean, I was in my parents' basement with really terrible internet. It was a struggle.

Laura Kendrick (01:40 )

Yeah.

Cort Sharp (01:49 )

But we were working on like Miro boards or mural. One of the two, forget which, which tool it was, but that was, yeah, that was before team home. And then we got to see the first version of team home. We helped do a little testing with it. And then we've seen it grow all the way into this awesome tool that we have nowadays. And I don't know, just, just to me, I think it's cool to see how we've been iterating and be part of that process of the iteration process, um, to develop these classes and these courses into.

Laura Kendrick (01:52 )

Mm-hmm. Mural. Yep. Mm-hmm.

Cort Sharp (02:20 )

the truly awesomeness that they are today. Personally, I'd rather take a virtual class than an in-person class with Mountain Goat at this point.

Laura Kendrick (02:27 )

It's funny that you say that because I notice actually the iteration of the experience like outside of the tech piece because you know, that's where my brain goes. Here's the difference between court and I. I'm noticing the interactions. But I've noticed, mean how people are interacting a little bit differently in the online space, how even our team interacts, like all of those things has become so much more sophisticated and amazing and

Cort Sharp (02:39 )

Yeah, just a bit.

Laura Kendrick (02:54 )

I mean, honestly, we sometimes talk on our team between like the producing and TA team where like I've referred to it as a perfect game if we don't need anything from the outside team, which occasionally we need a lot of support from the outside team, but we've we've got this down at this point. And it is it's become those first classes. I remember them being super stressful, like, my gosh, the breakout rooms and all the things and just being like, I mean, you couldn't do.

Cort Sharp (03:17 )

Yes.

Laura Kendrick (03:21 )

It was almost like learning how to drive where you felt like if you turned the radio knob up, you might actually turn the whole car. And it was like, so much anxiety.

Cort Sharp (03:31 )

I mean, but we just didn't know Zoom then. Zoom didn't even know itself then, right? What Zoom is, ⁓ for those of you who don't know, we host all of our virtual classes on Zoom. And learning that platform, like I'd used it once maybe for some just, yeah, here's Zoom exists in one of my college classes. That was about it. But yeah, totally. was like, man, what does this button do? Hopefully it doesn't end the meeting and kick everyone out.

Laura Kendrick (03:34 )

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's so true. Yeah, no kidding. But you know what's really interesting too, though, is that it's been over five years now for both of us being part of the Mountain Goat team. And we all work remotely. And other than you and Mike for a little while being right down the road from each other, none of us had any actual interpersonal interaction with each other outside of Zoom email and Slack and the occasional, know, fretted text message of like, are you late? Where are you?

Cort Sharp (03:58 )

Absolutely, yeah, totally. Yeah.

Laura Kendrick (04:26 )

But other than that it like we truly were of and still are a fully remote team and the crazy thing about it is we have at this point once gotten together as a full team in person and it was such an interesting experience being having been fully remote and then being in person and in particular the team that is live on the classes

Cort Sharp (04:39 )

Yep. Yep.

Laura Kendrick (04:51 )

It was a very different interaction because we have this time built into our classes where the team gets on the Zoom call 30 minutes earlier than the students do. And we get this time to just honestly have like water cooler chat and like friend chat or occasionally see Mike get on and you can't hear him, but you can see that he is quite angry at his very elaborate tech system that is not working correctly.

Cort Sharp (05:14 )

you That does happen. Yes, it does. ⁓

Laura Kendrick (05:21 )

these moments, I feel like they really bonded us together. Because when we got together in person, it was old friends. wasn't even fast friends. It was old friends. And the banter even that goes on in Slack is fun and engaging and not rigid and confining.

Cort Sharp (05:31 )

Yeah. Yes, absolutely. I agree with that. I mean, I'm just thinking back to like the first time because that was the first time I met you in person. aside from being like, wow, she's a lot shorter than I thought she would be.

Laura Kendrick (05:47 )

Mm-hmm. shorter. By the way, court is like 6-4.

Cort Sharp (05:55 )

Yeah, yeah. Not that you're short. But I've just always ever seen like, the profile like the profile picture. That's all that it's really ever been. So I'm like, yeah, you're like, what I would consider normal height, which you totally are. But in my mind, I was like, yeah, it's weird seeing, you know, your legs. That's funny. ⁓

Laura Kendrick (06:14 )

We digress.

C