#64, Kristi Herold, Founder and CEO of JAM — Pivoting during a crisis, leading through playfulness, and creating joy in the workplace

Welcome back. This is From Startup to Grown up and I'm your host, Alyssa Cohn. And today I have such a fun conversation with Christy Harold. Christy is the founder of Jam Group, North America's leading provider of adult sports leagues and events. Now, when I say fun conversation, I mean it literally, since Christy is an expert in play and that's what her business is all about, unleashing the power of play in your company. She even wrote a book about it called It Pays to Play. Today we talk about her entrepreneurial journey and we also do a masterclass in how you can add more play to your workplace and make your business processes more effective as well as connect people together better. Now, first of all, Christy makes the case about why play is so important and not just a fuzzy cultural platitude. And you know, I hate fuzzy cultural platitudes. Christy gives you a number of specific tools that you can use today to help you build more camaraderie in your business, even if you're remote and, and to make your onboarding better and a whole bunch of other processes. So you're gonna wanna grab a pen to make sure you're taking notes. It's great, it's practical and you're gonna love it. So please enjoy my fantastic conversation with Kristy Harold, founder of JAM Group and author of It Pays to Play. Christy, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Alyssa, I'm so excited to be here with you.

I wanna start by telling us about JAM Group. Tell us about Jam Group. What was the founding insight Jam?

Well, so I started back in 1996, originally running adult recreational sport league. So think of it as intramurals for people who are no longer in college or university, and over 25 years built that up to be one of the largest adult rec sport league providers in the world. And then the pandemic hit and we were getting hundreds of thousands of people playing sports every year and all of a sudden we can't connect anybody through play anymore. And in Canada, which is about where 85% of our of our markets are, in Ontario specifically, we lost about 18 months of revenue. We were shut down. The mandates were really harsh. And so early on in the pandemic we had to pivot to survive. I was, you know, should have been celebrating 25 years of being in business and instead I was trying to stay keep from going out of business. So we looked at our core purpose, which is connecting people through play, and thought, how can we keep connecting people through play, when we can't get together in real life. And, and we started a virtual events offering helping corporate teams all around the world. We did over 1500 events that first year, helping corporate teams connect through playful virtual events. So things like game shows, trivia, bingo, scavenger hunts, escape rooms, we created like 12 different escape rooms. And we were doing these events for companies all over the world and that was really great. And then sports assistants come back and we, we are now also I wrote a book during the pandemic called It Pays to Play How Play Improves, How Play Improves Business Culture. And what we realized doing the virtual events is we have this opportunity to teach organizations how to have a little more fun with the work they're doing. So we've started some culture consulting and helping organizations integrate fun and playfulness into the workday. Because when you have fun at work, you're fostering friendships and when people have friends at work, they're more engaged with the work they're doing. They're more productive, they're happier, they're physically and mentally healthier, they're more creative. There's just so much benefit to having a little fun at work. So that sort of jam is sort of now three different verticals. The B2C adult rec sports leagues and the B2B events, as well as now the culture consulting.

I love that. I love the way you narrate that also because, you know, if you know to the untrained eye what you're doing is sports. What you're doing is, you know, like you said, rec leagues, like kickball, you know, or pickleball or whatever, or baseball, whatever, right? And it looks like, oh, they do sports. But what you're saying is, no, we don't do sports. So I guess I'm just curious, like, was there a moment during the pandemic when you saw that? Because I do understand also that Canada had, everybody had bad restrictions. You all had real restrictions and you had to use these constraints as an opportunity to pivot. So first of all, maybe the question is when you first realized we are totally shut down. This is not going to be just a two week thing. And that literally means our business is out of business. Was there a moment of upset? How did you process that information?

Wow. It was more than a moment. That was a pretty dark, dark time in my life. I'm not going to lie. Next to losing my mom to cancer 21 years ago, that would have been one of the darkest times of my life. It was. I basically wanted to just stay in bed for Two months and pull the covers over my head. My children were all in their late teens and early twenties and my husband was incredible. They were all super supportive, you know, going and getting groceries and cooking meals and making sure I was fed and trying to tell me it was going to be all okay. But I was really scared and really sad. And as a leader I felt really alone because we hadn't done anything wrong. We were delivering a wonderful service. We had broken no rules. We just were being told, you're not allowed to do this anymore. And we didn't know for how long that would be. Now I do want to be clear. We are sports again. We do have, I mean a big part of our organization is playing of sports now that we're allowed to again. And we also run corporate sports leagues, we run private leagues for companies and we have a lot of corporate teams that, that play in our leagues. We're in 15 different cities now in Canada and the U.S. so jam does still run a lot of, a lot of sports. But we are doing all these other things as well. So we're not sports. Work, play, that's where we're all about connecting through play and that whether that's the playing of sports, the playing of having a company choir, the playing of having, you know, events, team building events, the playing of how to integrate playfulness into your day to day operations. It's all about how can you be connecting and strengthening relationships with people by having fun.

Totally. So if you're in Canada, go check out Graham to play your kickball. And what is the most popular sport by the way in your sports group?

Oh gosh, I would say probably soccer is one of our volleyball and beach volleyball. Indoor and outdoor volleyball are both really big court and beach volleyball. And we're in the US too. We're in Michigan, we're in Manitoba, we're in Ontario. We're in a whole bunch of different cities now. So we're getting people playing all over the place.

That's amazing. But in your just going back to the pandemic, so it was a dark time for you and I think that's really also very powerful. Thank you for really being honest about that. Like that is a really dark time. And also I especially appreciate and agree we did nothing wrong. That was the whole experience. Everyone, this is all this out of thing, out of control, out of our control. How did you sort of get out of that? I guess I would ask you specifically how you got out of that depression, like what worked you out of it and then how did you see your way to expanding what you were doing, or I would say really pivoting what you were doing to now work for the new virtual world.

So I feel like at the time I just didn't know how much longer it was going to go on and I was scared and I thought, I can't just keep wallowing in this and feeling sorry for myself. We have to start. And I mean, I'm a leader. I had 40 full time employees at the time, 350 part time employees. I, I have to be there for these people, which I was. I mean, I was trying, but I was not a happy person, that's for sure. And so I started saying, you know, we got to, I'm, I'm just not a, I'm not a give up kind of gal. You know, I never give up. I'm, I'm just like, I got to try something. So I'm a big believer in, in throwing, throwing a lot of things and seeing what sticks, you know, and opening doors and seeing what's on the other side. And so we started doing a lot of different things.

Like what?

And oh gosh, we were doing. I started a Zoom. What was it was called Ask an Athlete series. Like a Zoom series. People could call in, it was free. I was getting all these famous athletes and I would interview them. It was kind of a live, live podcast so people could be on the zoom and could ask their questions. I didn't know if that would turn into something. We started doing fun. We actually started doing bingo and trivia virtually for all the players that play in our sports leagues. And, and we realized, you know, we're charging $5 or we were doing it for free just to sort of keep people engaged. And we realized they were having fun with that and that's kind of what opened our minds to them. I was like, we should try and sell this to companies. One of my employees was like, you want me to sell bingo to Google? And I said, yes, that's exactly what I want you to do. And I think he thought I was absolutely crazy. And I said, yep, I do. And you know, fast forward and we did over a million in revenue in our first year with that little, that little crazy vertical that would have, you know, that helped us stay alive. It helped us cover some of our overhead costs and survive. And yeah, so we were trying all sorts of different things, contests for our players and just trying to keep people engaged. And the virtual events started to stick. And now, you know, your podcast is from startup to. Is it startups grown Up.

Yeah.

And I always joke that now we have this, I have this 27 year old, which is my, you know, adult rec sports leagues business that has just come off of a few years of life support. And I have this toddler, three year old toddler which is the virtual events and now the culture consulting. And it's sort of this three year old toddler that keeps changing its mind because about what it wants to do with its life because it started as virtual events and now it's still doing virtual events but it's also in person events and. And now it's also doing this culture consulting and how to, you know, helping companies integrate play into the day to day. Because there's a lot more than just having these one off events. And that's what the book is all about. It's, you know, how to actually have fun with the meetings, have fun with how you celebrate great work being done. Have fun with your communications internally and externally. There's so many ways to integrate playfulness day to day with their onboarding of new employees with. There's just so many ways. And so that's where I have really seen an opportunity. So this little three year old toddler is growing up and changing its mind and it's kind of fun to be on two different, very different roller coasters with the two sides of the business now.

Yeah, I love the way you frame that. That's amazing. And we're definitely gonna talk about your book. I think like my question is also. So it's interesting, you threw a whole bunch of things at the wall to see what would stick and when did you realize that this was going to stick? The idea of doing kind of the corporate events and that it was gonna really, it was going to be about a much bigger picture play. When did like what was the moment? What was the evidence you had?

I think just people started, I mean at first I actually said to my husband, we're going to run some virtual events for your team at your company. And you can't say no, you're my beta. And thankfully, gratefully they did. Cream Productions did a lot of virtual events with us early days and they had fun, they were laughing and we were realizing, you know, we could basically we have a laughter guarantee that if your team doesn't laugh, we give you your money back and everyone has laughs when they get together to have to have a little fun together. So I just started to realize that there's something here and we started, the sales started to grow and grow and I realized, you know, we don't have to stop doing this just because we can start playing sports again. We have an opportunity to keep helping. So I'm a big believer that laughter is good for the soul. When we connect and play with people, it's just so good for us. There's that saying that an Apple a day keeps the doctor away. I believe play every day keeps the doctor away. And so, you know, we just decided we don't have to stop these corporate events. We can actually do them more of them and differently. Now that we can connect in person, we can be doing in person corporate events. So we do amazing races and scavenger hunts and office Olympics and field days and we do all sorts of different ways of have to help corporate teams connect and have laughs, you know, as well as kickball teams and soccer teams. And there's, there's loads of ways and doing so is just so good for the soul.

Totally. So I'm all about the soul. And, and also these days, if you've been reading the papers, there's this return to, let's say, I kind of want to say austerity in some ways return to profitability for most companies and certainly for many startups. Maybe not, maybe not return to profitability for startups but like driving towards profitability. Also the notion of we are going to be more, let's say tough minded in performance reviews because you know, there was this report that like people were having two full time jobs because of the pandemic was allowing them to do that. So we're kind of in this culture that's almost, I kind of want to say let's say a cracking down culture. But here you are coming with play and I'm into it because it's good for my soul. But make the case that it's good for the company.

Absolutely. I believe it's pretty easily done. The statistics show that turnover is huge, huge expense to any organization. And when people report that they have a close friend at work, they're far more likely to, to be, they're far less likely to be looking for another job. They're far more likely to be recommending your organization as a great place to work to others. So they're recruiting for you. And when, when over 60% of your employees report having a close friend in the workplace, profitability of organizations that have that stat go up by 12%. So there's huge return on that. And that's just on the retention turnover side. Productivity has been shown to increase. Engagement statistics right now are I think it's 30, only 36% of employees. This is as of 2022, 36% of employees are engaged with the work they're doing, which leaves 64% disengaged. And of that 64%, 13% are actively disengaged. And why? Because they don't care. They don't care about the people they work with. They don't care about the work they're doing. So if they feel they have purpose and they actually care about the people they're working with, they're far more likely to say, hey, you look a little stressed today. I'm your friend. I care about you. Can I help you with that? Can I help take something off your plate? Because I've got some time on my hands. If you don't care about the people you work with, you're not engaged with them as friends, as people that you care about, as humans. You know, you're just going to be like, you're going to mail it in and you're not going to be there to help. And so productivity isn't as good. Engagement goes down. There's other ways, too. I mean, you've been on the phone before, I'm sure, Alyssa, with. With someone who is doing customer service for you, and you can tell that that person hates their job. And the experience you get as a customer is miserable. And the likelihood of you telling anyone to go use that company when you've dealt with someone who is miserable is slim to none. In fact, far likely the opposite. More likely, you're going to, you're going to tell people, don't use that company. I had such a horrible experience. Having said that, on the flip side, if you're on the phone with a customer service person who gives you fantastic service and clearly loves their job and they're happy on the phone with you, you're going to tell people this, what a great experience that was. And so the word of mouth happens. So happier employees turn into happier customers, which turns into a happier bottom line. I mean, there are. I could go on for days about the ways that creating strengthening community and relationships inside your organization is just so powerful and will help the bottom line. Another one. Mental health and physical health. Something that I have a bit of an issue with is that organizational wellness is a big. I mean, everyone really cares about that, which is wonderful. We should care about the mental health and physical health of our employees. Unfortunately, what I feel is happening all too often is organizations are taking care of this by they're giving health club membership, gym membership, meditation apps, therapy, resources, what they're not doing is providing social components and social connectivity when we play. The Mayo Clinic has done studies that prove when you combine social sports with your exercise, it will add 20% longevity to your life. It's, it's good for you to go play tennis and basketball and soccer and badminton. I mean, not don't, don't stop going to the gym, but add a little play into your week as well. Get out and play a couple times a week as part of your exercise routine. So that's where I think organizations could be saying, we're also going to give you the option to sign up for a company soccer team, a company kickball team, a company beach volleyball team, or we're going to give you credits to play in an adult rec sports league. There are adult rec sports leagues like JAM and in every city across North America. So companies should be giving employees the opportunity to go out and be social, ideally with their own colleagues. But if, even if not with their own colleagues, at least go out and meet other people. Get some in real life social connection. While you're being physically active, mental health goes up and improves. So you know, depression reduces, people take are more physically healthy so they don't miss as much time at work. When people are depressed or physically unhealthy, they miss, they take a lot more days off. And so productivity goes in the tank. Like I just, there's so many, so many reasons that encouraging people to actually enjoy their work and have fun with the work they're doing will benefit the bottom line.

I love it. Christy, I love your passion. Amazing. So what, what I thought we could do is kind of walk through some specific activities. So yes, people could form a baseball club, a soccer club. You know, I'm obsessed with kickball, obviously kickball club. I remember that from when I was a kid. I loved kickball. They can do that. They can form one of those company things. They can keep doing events, but what can people do inside the world? I'm going to give you a few examples and then I'd love to hear your ideas about like, almost like a masterclass for people about how they can implement more play inside of different activities. But let's start with my favorite topic, meetings. No one loves meetings. I'm the only one who likes meetings because I love the potential of meetings and I myself am very intentional how I structure meetings. What suggestions do you have for people to help them bring more play and therefore more results, more connection, better results from their meetings.

So I agree with you. I actually like meetings if they're run Effectively. I hate meetings if they're not run effectively because they can be a complete waste of time and a waste of resources. Very expensive to have a lot of people in a room if not everyone is either adding or taking value from that meeting. So it's important to be very intentional with how you run it. So my. A couple tips in terms of running meetings. This can be done in person and virtual and hybrid. First of all, at jam, we press play to start. Every meeting starts with a playful connection point. It takes three to five minutes. It's not a waste of time. It is a benefit to the organization because what happens is whoever's the leader presses play to start. Maybe they tell a silly joke, maybe they ask a funny question and everyone goes around the room and shares an answer. It's a connection point as people to get you engaged with each other as humans that you care about. And it just allows you to sort of get very engaged with the moment, have a laugh, and then get ready to get into the work. Versus okay, here we are. And we're going to start. You know what I mean? Like, it doesn't have to be so hardcore. It can be more human and that way people feel cared about. So it's very simple. Press play to start. Don't waste a lot of time. Have it, you know, make it tight. Three minutes, wait.

So I love the idea. Let's do it right now. Press play to start.

You start, sure. So press play to start. One of our leaders, the other day, yesterday in a meeting. It's holiday season, you know, he's a. He grew up in the Christian household. Christmas presents under the tree. So he asked everyone to share what was the. Your favorite childhood memory of a Christmas present. And there were seven of us in the room for the meeting. Some of us were virtual, some were in person. We just went around the room very quickly and shared literally 15 second memory of that favorite Christmas present you got as a child or a favorite Hanukkah present or whatever. You know what I mean? We've done that with Halloween costumes or what. And it's just, it just gets a little talking point. Maybe it's a joke that you share. There's so many ways you can get creative. Maybe it's a little riddle you get. You say, I'm going to give everyone two minutes to solve this riddle and I'm going to give you hints as we go. There's loads and loads of ways. And my book and the appendix is filled with loads of ideas as well.

Great. All right, good. So reference to the book. Okay, good. I love that. Are there any other tools that you want to use to bring play to a meeting?

Yeah. Another really fun thing to do to help meetings be more engaging is we always have a ball, especially for in person meetings. We have a dodgeball that sits on our boardroom table. And so whoever has the ball gets the floor. And what this meaning you get? It's your voice, that one voice. Because no one wants people talking over each other. No one wants to be interrupted. So if you're holding the ball, you get to speak. When you're done, pass the ball to the next. Whoever you know has their hand up and wants to speak it. What it does is it helps people stay engaged with. With the meeting that they're doing. It helps you also realize I have this ball in my hand. This is precious time. I shouldn't go off on tangents. I don't want to waste every. You're very conscious of the fact that you have the floor. And so I help. I find it's kind of this playful way and then you can throw it across the room to someone else and just adds a little element of playfulness, keeps people awake. A couple simple little things. It's not taking any more time from the company, it's not costing the company money. It's adding playfulness into that day to day.

I love it. So good. Christie, these are so good. Okay, Another one. Something that people companies do very poorly. Onboarding. How can you bring play into onboarding as a process?

Yes. One of my favorite things we do, in fact, we had an onboarding here today. We had two new employees start at JAM today. We always do. High five. Welcome. And this again can be done virtually or in person. Today the teammates who started today were both in person coming into the Toronto head office. So everyone on the team gets an invitation. On the day that new employees are starting, it's at 10 o' clock in the morning. It's never on a Monday and it's never 9 o' clock because people need to come into the office themselves. So the new employees are starting at 10 and what happens is their team leader would meet them at the front foyer or they would meet them in the Zoom room separately if it's virtual. And then when we're ready, they get brought up to the office and everyone in the office is ready and waiting for them. Anybody on our team who is a rookie, which means you've been on the team for less than a year, is wearing their JAM rookies hoodie. And anyone who's Considered a veteran. Once you've been on our team for a year or more, you get your veterans jersey. It's a hockey jersey. It's got jam on the front, your name and number on the back. Your number is the year you started with us. So you've got your veterans jersey on. And everyone is lined up in a big tunnel waiting to give a high five to the teammates that are starting for the first day. And their walk up song is blaring from a speaker. So they walk into the office and.

Everyone'S wait, what's their walk up song?

Their walk up song, whatever they.

So what they've chosen.

Yeah, when they onboard with us, when they're doing some of the paperwork in advance, we ask what's your, you know, what would your walk up song be? As if you're a famous baseball player, what would it be? And, and so we have that song blaring from the speaker and we cheer and they get a big high five. And then they're guided into the boardroom. And then when they look up on the big screen in the boardroom, everyone who's working remotely is up on that screen. And then we do a very quick three questions. It's just passed around. Anyone on the team asks three quick, silly questions like what's your favorite chocolate bar? What would be your, you know, what's your favorite sports team to cheer for? Whatever. What's your favorite, what would be your final meal if you were on death row? You know, just silly questions like that. You get to know people just as people very quickly, very simply gets a little laughter going. And then in addition to that, we have houses at jam. So there's four different houses, similar to Harry Potter and whatever house you get, you get drafted into your house when you join the jam team. So today they were told which house they were part of and the house that they're part of. That house is responsible for making sure that they have a fun lunchtime and with the new teammates so they're not left alone, they eat lunch together with them. So there's just so many simple ways to make starting at a new organization really fun and really engaging and exciting.

I love it, Christy. I love it so much. Now I want to just challenge you a little bit. I want to say, hey, man, you're a play company. Let's just be honest about it. You're a play company, your connection company. Of course you have a walk on song. Of course you're Canadian. Of course you have a hockey jersey. Right. What advice do you have for Someone from IBM who is listening. From somebody from Chubb Insurance who is listening right now, who actually has influence over the onboarding process but can't create houses.

Sure. The house initiative is very new. We just started it this about three months ago, ecstatic about it. But they can create houses. There's no reason they couldn't. And they could do hockey jerseys or they could do. It could be a hoodie. I mean, you can do whatever you want. Every culture is unique to your organization. One of our clients is an accounting firm, Henderson Partners. We do core value awards every month ourselves and we give out a trophy, a core, it looks like an apple core. The core values are written around the base of the trophy. Well, Henderson Partners, they also do a core value award. They're an accounting firm that's not really all that sexy or exciting. It's about as far from place play as you can get. When I think about my taxes. Right. They're great people though, and they know how to have a lot of fun with the accounting work they're doing. So at Henderson Partners, they do their core value awards once a month they give out the Superhero of the month award and they have a golden cape that says Henderson Partners on the back. And they give the golden cape to whoever got the most superhero shoutouts during the course of the month. And that person also gets a hundred dollar gift certificate to treat themselves to. I, I'm not exactly if it's a Starbucks gift, you know, or what, what is a gift certificate for, but they give out these token gift certificates to recognize and celebrate great work being done in a playful way. A superhero cape, it's. And they share it on social media and I mean they do a ton of really fun, engaging things. They do a lot for their community. They, they play, they have sports teams, they play tons of events with us and with, and with other organizations. They, they're constantly looking for ways to engage their team and their retention is incredible. People want to work there. It's just a fabulous. I saw yesterday on LinkedIn that their organization was recognized as one of the great places to work certified. So this stuff helps and it really is beneficial. And just because I run a play company doesn't mean everybody can't find the way that works for their organization to.

Have a lot of fun. Yeah, in a minute I'm going to. I wanted to say something about onboarding, but in a minute I'm going to ask you about other ways to integrate play into some of the formal structures we have at work. Giving feedback one on ones Career conversations, whatever you want to share. But I want to say something about onboarding. So I've been a coach for 22 years. I work inside of so many companies. And onboarding. I'm just going to say it like, the state of onboarding in companies is just not good. And why is that? It's because people are not intentional about it. And you sort of expect people to just jump right in. And yes, their new boss takes them to lunch or some group of colleagues takes them to lunch. And, you know, yes, they have 10 people they have to meet on their first day or whatever. And yes, they have an onboarding plan. But what I always talk about is the. Not just the sort of. The tactical onboarding, but the emotional onboarding.

Yes.

And what you're talking about is emotional onboarding that greases the skids for social capital to get built immediately and thus makes someone sticky. If someone has a question and they've experienced what you're talking about with their house, or you call a small group a lunch buddy, whatever you want to call it. And then. And. Or the high five. I love the high five. The high five. And the music is amazing. But that experience, then a month from now, someone has a question, it's a stupid question, they're concerned. Stupid question, they don't know who to ask. Suddenly they have people to ask, and.

That is uncomfortable right away.

And they totally. And then they have also this sort of experience of being welcomed, and they're also now not thinking about, oh, should I have done this? Should I have not done this? Because it's really hard here and I'm not sure how to stick in. But they have kind of that overhang of that sort of early emotional experience. So I really want to say that, you know, I'm, of course, a believer, Christie, but like, I. I'm worried that people are going to think it's so ornate what you're doing and so well practiced. If you're at IBM, if you're at Chubb Insurance, if you're anywhere right now, you can think about a way to give people more of an emotional experience in their first day and week and month. And that's going to help you ultimately get them involved with work much more quickly.

Absolutely. And this is. This doesn't come overnight. Right. Like, this is stuff that we sort of. I would encourage our clients to layer this kind of thing in slowly and start to build and build. I mean, I've been running our organization for 27 years, and our culture has morphed and changed over the Years. But we've always had fun because I'm kind of, I'm the kind of person that I take my business seriously but not myself. And that's what I really encourage everyone. Have some laughs. Like life is too short not to have some laughs and we spend an awful lot of time at work. If you can't say that you have a laugh regularly with your colleagues, I, I would want to know why. Why is that you should be having laughs with the people you work with because you spend too much time there not to.

I love that.

Yeah. So. And there's just. Anyway, carry on.

No, it's good. Chrissy, tell me what are some other ways to integrate play where Pick anything you want. Pick feedback or pick one on ones or career conversations. What are other ways to integrate play and connection?

Let's talk about. So I'll give you a couple very simple ones. One would be celebrating great work being done. Every single organization can have a shout out channel as part of their Microsoft Teams or Slack chats. And that shout out channel should be celebrating great work being done around core values ideally. So you might shout out, hey, I just want to. You just throw it into the banter channel takes 10 seconds to type. Just want to shout out Sarah because she really, you know, she created this new whatever. She found a savings, she's looking to find a better way or she was looking to, which is, you know, one of our core values. And I want to celebrate Sarah for that. And when someone on our team celebrates Sarah for that, Sarah feels pretty great. And everyone else in the team sees something great that Sarah did and can say, hey, way to go Sarah. I don't work with Sarah all the time, but when I see that shout out for her, I can be like Sarah. That was amazing. And so it costs nothing to do that, but it makes people feel good and feel cared about and feel seen and feel heard. So they're engaged, they're more engaged in the work they're doing. Another really interesting way to add play into the workplace. A lot of people have daily huddles, which is something we didn't used to do before the pandemic. The pandemic changed us and we decided we were going to have a daily huddle. I will never go back. It is so powerful. It's a seven minute meeting. The agenda is the exact same every single day, but we have a different huddle leader every day. So everyone in the organization, from intern to C suite takes a turn working their way through as a huddle leader. And there's A schedule. So you know, every 40, 50 days it's your turn to be Huddle leader and you always know the agenda. Agenda always starts with good news. So whoever the huddle leader is starts off and they say okay, I'm going to start with good news. And it's their job to get it started. They have to share a little bit of good news that's either their own personal piece of good news or a work win. And then they do a call out. Anyone else have good news to share and, and they have to keep it tight on an agenda so that you know, they have tight seven minutes but they, they allow a couple pieces of good news and then they say okay, now we're going to updates and there's every day of the week is a different department update. Get some key metrics shared. Then they say anyone need a helping hand with anything? So if someone needs help there's a call out for that and you can say yeah, I need help with blah blah blah, I'm going to reach out to Noel and Dave later because I need help with this or can anyone please reach out to me if you can help me with this, you know. And so it's a call out and then it always wraps up with Leader's Choice and Leaders Choice. There's also, sorry, before, before the Helping hand there's also a little segment and I have a whole post about how to run huddles but there's another segment that is any sort of other cascading messages or important updates that are not a departmental specific departmental update. And then it's the Helping hand and then it goes to Leaders Choice. And so we always wrap up with Leaders Choice. And again similar to press play to start Leader's choice is whoever's leading huddle will encourage you. Today they said Spotify launched their wrapped up for the year music list today. So he said everyone share your share your Spotify most listened to list today in the banter channel so we can all see what everyone's been listening to all year. Another one, one of my all time favorites was one of our huddle Leaders said I'm going to encourage everyone to pick up the phone and call someone you haven't spoken to in a year. And I was like oh my gosh, that is so great, I love that. And no, you don't have to do that but it's the huddle leaders ask of you. And so then when you know people that did it shared I just called my grandmother, I hadn't talked to her in a year. And we had the best chat. Thanks for the. Thanks for that reminder. You know, leader's choice can be anything I recommend. Today I'm leader's choice. I'm going to ask everyone to consider taking five minutes to meditate today and breathe deep. You know, could be anything you want. So it's just a little playful element. You never know what you're going to get. A little bit of surprise, a little bit of fun. And again, it's just a connection point for everyone in the whole company to see each other for seven minutes every day, get productive work done and have a really playful connection point with each other.

Yeah, I love that. I love especially that last thing you're talking about because it really showcases humanity. So in my book From Startup to Grown Up, I talk a lot about, you know, everyone wants to talk about authenticity. And, you know, authenticity is kind of a word which I think people have some trouble with. And also, if you woke up authentically grumpy, then we don't want your authenticity, thank you very much. Right. But what we do want is your humanity. And so what you're really talking about as it relates to play is showcasing your. Our ability to connect with each other and also showcasing humanity. So I just really appreciate that. I just want to highlight again, if you're working at IBM or any other large company or Pfizer. Right up thinking, any. All the people who listen to my podcast. Right. Remember that you can do this in your little department. You don't have a call of Pfizer all hands to do this.

Exactly.

It can be in your little sphere of the world.

Exactly.

Tell us, Chrissy, about your book. It Pays to Play. Why did you write the book? And tell us when people read the book, what they should take away.

So I started, I decided to write the book because when, after we had started the corporate events business during the pandemic, I was hearing from clients and realizing, wow, this is powerful stuff what we're doing. It's making an impact. And when we play and laugh together, it really actually can help the individuals in your company be better, happier people. And that will also help your company. It helps the bottom line. It will. It's a. It's an investment that pays huge dividends. And so, yeah, I think just hearing from many clients about, oh, that event was so great and we laughed so hard and we had so much fun and, you know, we can't wait to do another one next month. And. And then I started to realize our company is really good at this. We just have done it Kind of naturally over the years, without really thinking anything. We just did it because we wanted to have a fun culture. And now I realize we've actually created some really interesting, like our onboarding experience or our Huddle, you know, which, by the way, I didn't come up with the huddle idea that came. I copied 1-800-got junk. Brian Scudemar has a fantastic culture over there and I think they do a wonderful job. So I want to give credit there. I love huddle. Totally took that idea from them. It's powerful. So a lot of the things we do much, you know, we've created ourselves or we've gotten from other, other organizations. And I just realized I can share with other people by writing a book and have other people. If, if a few people start to integrate a little more playful elements in their workplace because of they hear me do a keynote or they read my book or they try one of our events, I'll feel good knowing we're impacting lives in a positive way, frankly. Like if one HR leader decides they want to have a little more fun at their office, they're going to be a whole lot of happier employees in that organization. And when you're happy at work, you go home, you're a happier parent, you're a happier spouse, you're a happier roommate. It's just a powerful thing to have some fun in this life.

I love it.

The world's heavy, right? It can be heavy.

The world can be heavy. Absolutely.

And so it's important to find some fun when you can.

Yeah. And I know that your book has very practical tools like some of the ones we've been talking about, including also an appendix of different questions and whatnot. Is there anything else you want to say? And then I'm going to talk to you a little bit more about your own management style. But is there anything else you want to say about the book and what people will get out of the book?

Well, I think the book really just opens your eyes to. It's broken down into a variety of different chapters. It focuses on retention, engagement, creativity and innovation. Physical mental health, happier customers.

And.

And what it's. What it does is it highlights the problems, like how these are negatively impacting our business and shares a lot of different anecdotes. I interview a lot of different business leaders and share examples of ways that they integrate playfulness into their organization. One that I love was learning about a company in Toronto called Inertia. They I said to Ray Manado, who's. Who is ranked number one great places to work in 2021. I said, Ray, how do you guys integrate play into your organization? He said, well, we actually play music together. And I was like, what do you mean? He said, we have a rock band and we rehearse together every two weeks. And a couple times a year we put on a performance for the company. I mean, so you can have. Offer a kickball team or a volleyball team, offer a company choir, offer a book club. We have a book club at Jam. Every two months we meet and we discuss a book. Offer these things and let it be optional because there's something for everybody out there. There are ways for people to connect and get to know each other as friends. And then what happens is you're connecting. Someone from the finance team is going to get to know someone from marketing because they're playing soccer together, or someone from HR is going to get to know someone from accounting because they're part of the company choir together, playing music together. Right there's. It creates these beautiful bonds, it breaks down barriers, it gets you outside of those silos and it just fosters so much positivity within your organization.

I love it. Christy. So good. Christy, how did you. As you said, we have. You have three lines of business now. You've got this, this. I was going to say teenager, but not teenager. You got this 27 year old business and then you got this three year old toddler and you've got these different lines. You've been a leader for a long time and an entrepreneur for a long time. How did you learn management skills?

Well, my dad is an entrepreneur and so I got to watch him and our dinner table conversations were always around. Lots of amazing dinner table conversations. And thankfully my dad was really open with us. I remember one time asking my dad at the dinner table, I was probably 12, you know, how much money do you make? And my mom was like, Christy, we don't. You don't ask those questions. And my dad was like, wait a second, Judy, why shouldn't she ask that question? That's a great question. How's she going to learn if we don't tell her? So. So we had really open conversations, which was fantastic. I started a lawn cutting business before I had a driver's license in high school. So was an entrepreneur myself. We had to work for things we wanted in our lives. And yeah, so we had a lot of, lot of entrepreneurial dinner table conversations. And I started a lawn cutting business when I was 15 years old, before I had a driver's license and learned a lot you know, I remember after my first summer, I showed my dad how much money I had earned working by myself cutting grass. And he said, well, imagine if you hired someone to work for you. And I said, well, how would that, how would that help? And he said, because, you know, you'd be charging the same amount to your clients for an hourly rate and you'd be paying an employee less than what, what you're making. And I'm like, what? And he said, and you'd be creating a job for someone and you could do more, do more jobs that way. And I was like, what? And so the next summer, I hired three students to work with me and we started cutting more grass. And then in university, I ran a painting franchise. And I remember my very first summer, it was so. It was from May through August was the summer, and I had 10 painters who I'd hired and trained. At the end of June, half of my painters quit. And the reason they quit was because I was a horrible employer at that time. I was a drill sergeant. And I was sort of just really bossy and didn't really think about them as people or as friends. I was like, I want to get this done. And I just demanded. And they quit. And it taught me a very good lesson very early on about how important people in culture are. I remember crying to my dad and saying, what am I going to do? And he said, listen, this is a lesson you're going to want to learn now. Without good people, you've got nothing. So focus on your people. People are your priority. And I was like, wow, okay, good wake up call. And so after that, I had to stop all my production. I had to re, recruit, hire, train, start marketing again, get, get production back up and running for the painting business. So I got things back up and running. And the painters I hired for that second summer, for the second half of that first summer, ended up staying with me. I had the same crew of painters for the next two full summers after that because I started to care about them. I shared my vision with them, I got them aligned, I gave them incentives around helping me hit the targets I wanted to hit so that they were aligned. And I would bring popsicles to their job sites and I would go and barbecue hamburgers for them if they had to work late. And, you know, I just made it more fun. We went out and played laser tag together as, you know, whatever, 20 year olds, and we made it fun and playful early on because I realized that's, you got to show these people. I got to show my Team. I care about them because I did, truly. But it really taught me a very hard lesson early on. So those are pretty great, great learning opportunities for me from day one.

That's incredible. And oh, by the way, who gave you such a wise father?

Jeez, I know we were pretty lucky. Honestly. My dad was pretty great, taught us an awful lot.

Incredible. How has your own leadership style changed as the company has grown?

I mean, I'd like to think not that much but of course I've changed. I mean, you know, when I started the company I was 20, whatever, 26 years old and I'm now 53 and my, my team are all very young and, and I'm like, some of my team weren't even born when I started the company and I'm like, wow, it makes me feel old when I hear that. But that, but yet when I hang out with them, I'm always laughing with them, like I have so much fun with them. So you know, our team is just a group of really great people. They all from all walks of life. You know, we've always had this mantra, hire the best person for the job and make sure that they're going to be a great culture complement to our organization. It's not about fit, it's about compliment. Because you need, I believe like a good melting pot of all types of people is so powerful to get, you know, to get great sparks flying and great work being done. And as long as they're passionate about our values and our vision and our goal to get a million people playing every year, if they can get behind that and they're excited by that, then we to want, want them on the team. And so trying to like leading people who are excited to help connect people through play, it's easy for me because I just, I just love what I do and I think that probably shines through. I think people, I work hard and I think I try and lead by example that you know, I work hard and I play hard. I like to have a lot of laughs but I also, I get shit done which is one of our core values, you know. So if I can lead by example, I guess that's sort of the best thing I can try and do.

That's so helpful, Kristy. Now Christie, how I mean you can be the most successful down to earth person in the world and still you're the boss and you're the founder and you're the CEO. How do you make sure people tell you the truth and give you feedback and when was a time maybe you got Feedback from either someone in your team or someone nearby that actually really stung, which you then kind of really learned from.

I mean, it happens all the time. Because I actually have told. I've been. We talk about at jam, you have an obligation to dissent. Meaning we want radical candor here. So if what you. If I'm saying something and you believe that that is not going to be for the best interest of our team or our customers or our vision, you have an obligation to dissent, to challenge me. Just. And. And that goes across the board. You have the obligation to dissent against anyone on our team. To we. We call it rumbling. Like get some rumbling going on in those meetings because that's great. Debates are where powerful ideas come from. If you're just saying yes to everything, no one is served well by that. So I get challenged often because my team know I can take it. I'm not going to get defensive or I certainly not going to. Going to try not to. I also am the kind of person that I wear my emotions on my sleeve. So I might get angry for sure. I might get angry here and there over. I try not to, but if I do, I speak up, like within 24 hours. I will share. I have this concern because this happened and then I move on. I do not hold grudges and everyone knows that about me. So, you know, I'm very candid with the feedback I give and I expect to be given candid feedback and I've got to be able to take it if I want to be able to give it out.

Yeah, that's really great. Well, I think also just not punishing people for giving them, for saying what there is to say.

I think that's like one. Yeah, we do talk about making mistakes like. And owning mistakes. I actually shared a post on LinkedIn this morning about a mistake I made. I think during the pandemic. Our ENPS Score employee Net Promoter score pre pandemic was at around 61. And when the pandemic hit, I was panicked. I was very scared. I didn't know what to do. So I was. Felt like everything was out of control. So I tried to control what I could, which was costs. And I said, cut everything. We're stopping everything. We're all culture initiatives. We're not buying. People are getting their veteran status. We're not buying veteran jerseys right now. We can't afford it. We're not doing core value awards. We don't have time. We just stopped everything. I basically canceled Fun for about six or eight months. And our net Promoter score A year later was down at 17. It had dropped from a 61 to a 17. And I was like, oh, that is entirely my bad. I'm owning this. And I, I actually shared a post about it today. I made a big mistake and I'm not afraid to admit it. And I learned from it. And I immediately, once I sort of started to feel our culture decline happening, people were miserable, people were quitting. I was like, oh, gosh, I've made a mistake. Okay, let's buy everyone their veterans jerseys. If they hit their one year mark in the last year, get the veterans jerseys. Let's get back to our cult. Why did we ever stop? Core value Awards, they don't even, they don't even cost money. We just celebrate once a month. Like, what was I thinking? You know, And I started to, we started to reintroduce culture pieces again. And what a change it made. And our ENPS now is back at 54. We're right back, you know, climbing back up to that world class level. I think a world class is over 50. So, you know, we're pretty happy to be, to be back climbing up. And we want to be over 65 in terms of our EMPs. So, you know, we measure, we care. And I'm not afraid to own mistakes when I make them. And I want others to know, you're going to make mistakes. Just don't make the same one twice. You gotta learn from our mistakes. So I won't be canceling culture or canceling fun anymore. I learned from that mistake.

Good. Well done. Just a few more questions. Kristi, have you ever experienced imposter syndrome or severe self doubt?

Honestly? Not really. A little bit. I would say during the pandemic, I definitely was like, you know, everyone says you're this. I'm an innate entrepreneur. And I'm like, but now what? Now I'm really scared. Like, I was running a business that was not on cruise control necessarily, but, you know, I'd been doing it for 25 years. I knew what I was doing. And now what? Now how am I supposed to do this? Oh, you know what? Actually, when I. The biggest probably imposter syndrome I had was when I wrote my book and I released my book. It was about a year ago that I released the book It Pays to Play. And I was a bit like, who am I to be writing a book? Like, who's going to really listen to me? What do I really know about this? Like, I didn't go to school to be a workplace culture expert. But the truth is you don't really need to. Like, I've spent 27 years leading a business, so I'm over it now because I realize, having done many keynotes and workshops for people, I now realize that people really get a lot out of my talks and they get a lot of good nuggets out of my book and ideas that they didn't have before. So I. I'm kind of over it now, but I definitely was struggled with imposter syndrome around the book for sure.

Yeah, I hear that. I totally, as an author myself, I can relate to having to go through many, many different journeys as you write a book and release a book. Chrissy, what do you wish you had known earlier on your journey? Hmm, Partly.

I think I intentionally, for the first 20 years of my business, really wanted a lifestyle business. I, I didn't want to be traveling. I wasn't looking to scale and grow a big company. I just wanted a lifestyle business because I wanted to be around for my kids. And it wasn't until my kids got older, it was around 2016 that I decided I really wanted to grow this business. They didn't want me on field trips anymore. They didn't really want to hang out with me anymore. They were older. They just were like, yeah, we love you, mom, but don't need to hang out with you. And so then I was like, okay, maybe I should try and grow this. And I know, I guess in some ways, like, I don't regret actually that I built a lifestyle business. I don't regret that at all. But there are some ways that I've now, as I'm scaling the business and growing it, eventually will want to sell the company down the road one day. And I still love what I do. So not yet, but I think that I probably could have implemented some things earlier on to get a business I don't know, outside of lifestyle more ready to scale, I guess, if that makes sense. But honestly, like, I sort of just take the journey as it comes, you know what? Another thing I think I wish I'd learned earlier was early on I was very much. I was task oriented. I wanted, I wanted to achieve this and this and this. And then I kind of got to the, well, we keep hitting our goals and so now what? And I do wish early on someone had taught me to focus on the journey and enjoy the journey because I think I was very. Which I do much more now in the last 10 years. But for the first, probably, you know, 15 years of, of my career, I was very like, motivated by achieving a Result. And I'd get the results and then be like, now what, what's the next one? That's the next one. And I don't think I enjoyed the journey as much as I should have. So now I'm learning to enjoy every piece of it, the ups and the downs and, you know, try and find the good in all aspects of it.

Yeah, yeah. Good process. And last question, Christy, what advice do you have for other founders as they embark on their journeys to grow into leaders?

Well, I will, I will use, share my dad's advice, which is if you, if you don't have, you know, you got to make people your priority. Remember that if you want to be a leader and grow an organization, people are your priority. So really care about your people. And a little piece of advice that I personally love is I believe you gotta go through when a door is open for you. Go check it out, go see what's on the other side, dabble a little bit because you just never know what good things could come from trying new things. And you know, had we been, had we not sort of walked through that door of trying virtual events and you know, we wouldn't have, I wouldn't have written a book, we wouldn't have built this new B2B side of our business. I wouldn't be doing keynote speaking. Like, all this stuff that I'm learning, I now love. And so, yeah, I think it's important to sort of, when you've given an opportunity, go through the door, see what's on the other side. Check it out. They may not all be great, but some of them might be gold.

Amazing. Christy, thank you so much. What a fantastic conversation. Really appreciate you. A reminder for everyone. The book is called it pays to play. Pick it up. You're going to find it very practical. And Christy, it was just great to spend time with you.

And I do want to mention, Alyssa, I have a, if it's helpful for your listeners, we have a landing page that would take them to a offering. It's my 10 page playbook PDF. It's called 10 Ways to Integrate play into your workplace and it gives some tactical ideas. So the landing page for Your listeners is christyherald.com startup25 and also at that landing page is a, or inside the playbook rather is a 25% savings on a jam event. If they do want to try a jam event, a virtual team building event, or put in a corporate sports team in our leagues, they can enjoy 25% savings as being a listener of your podcast.

So Kristi, Herold is K R I s T I H e R o L D everybody that's correct. Good.

So say again christyherald.com christyherald.com startup25 Love it.

Fantastic. Check it out everybody. Christy Great to spend time.

Super fun.

Thanks for listening to From Startup to Grown Up. If you like what you heard, give it a review on Apple Podcasts so other people can find it. And if you know of a founder or someone else who is meant to be on this podcast, drop me a link line through my website. Alyssacone.com.