Last week I had the amazing opportunity to take part in the first-ever Intuit Global Business Development Manager Summit in Mountain View. As I geared up for four days with my US and international counterparts, I admit, about all I could picture was long days and late nights – but what I wasn’t expecting was all the laughs, and the valuable lessons learned in those four days.

The beauty of this event being at Intuit HQ is that we were honored to receive visits from Intuit executives from our Founder, Scott Cook, to the head of Small Business Group, Dan Wernikoff, to our CEO, Brad Smith. Not to mention the weeklong commitments made by Jim McGinniss, Mark Dean, and Caroline Donahue, as well as Country Managers from our global regions.

Throughout the week, we discussed social selling and building personal brands, compared notes from the Canada, Australia, UK, and India teams, heard directly from a panel of accountants, and strategized on how to tackle the challenges that no doubt will face us this year. There was so much knowledge, perspective, inspiration, and energy flowing through the room all week. There’s no question that my favorite part was meeting and spending time with colleagues I didn’t even know I had…here are just a few of my favorite moments that I thought I’d share.

I admit I was a little star struck by Intuit’s Founder, Scott Cook. The inspirational story of Scott’s early Intuit years filled with uncertainties and struggles only make me prouder to be a part of the company he’s built – and I hope I continue to make him proud to say “To me, YOU are Intuit.”

The UK BDM team, led by Nick Williams, wasted no time showing their true colors – by opening up their turn on stage with a karaoke-style parody of “I Get Knocked Down” entitled “We Win Together”. Video footage may or may not exist (sorry, Bounce Bounce).

My new pals from down under lived up to the Aussie reputation. Meet Birthday-selfie-Geoff Craig, who managed to steal photos with every Intuit exec he could find on Thursday (what coincidentally was his special day).

For comic relief – we had Nick Skiadopoulos from Australia…who had us in stitches from day one and by the time we left I had laughed so hard it hurt. Bonus points to him for hopping into the Twitterverse in style with this hilarious first tweet.

Oh Canada! What a great group of BDMs including Angela, who showed up to the BDM Summit on her first day at Intuit, and our gracious photographer, Steve Beech. I had a blast chatting about social networks & online presence with these guys while we froze our tails off touring San Francisco.

As if the week hadn’t been great enough already, we closed it down on the heels of his record-breaking earnings announcement, with a visit from our CEO, Brad Smith – who’s parting advice was to “Be the best you you can be”.

I’m so thankful to be at a place in my career with a company who invests so greatly in us as employees. It’s no easy task bringing 60+ people from around the globe together – and coordinating another 25+ to present and ensure that we came away better BDM’s than we were when we got to Silicon Valley. I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting the famous “CD” before this past week, but flew home with a new sense of respect for the leading woman at Intuit. Once again, thank you, Caroline for spending the week with us.

As you can see – it was quite an action packed week. I came home sleep deprived, under-caffeinated, and with a giant to-do list. But am I a better employee, and person, after last week? To quote Mark Dean – “Hell YEAH!”