It Pays to Play with Kristi Herold

Oh, live. Once again, it pays to play for me. Music is a big part of play, but our subject is all about play at work and the value of that. As I take sips of my coffee, this is a subject near and dear to my heart. Our guest, Christy Harold will be up in just a minute to talk about that. Let me first just say and welcome our listeners and viewers to the Scaling Up Business podcast. I'm your host and scaling coach, Bill Gallagher, and our show comes here every week. We've done 400 plus shows at this point over some years now. So we've got everything there that you might want. And wherever you're finding this now, you can find it, but you can also go to, you can find the video versions on places like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and then you can find the audio versions on Apple, Podcast, Stitcher and other spots like that. So wherever you want, hundreds of those things on every topic that you could imagine. I think it's a great resource. And of course, you can find us and our website and all that@scalingcoach.com scalingcoach.com is our website. All the kinds of resources there, that kind of thing. So check it out. It's going to coach.com all right, welcome to the show, Christy. Harold, are you in Toronto today?

I am in Toronto, yeah. Thanks so much for having me join you.

So, everybody, Christy is author, speaker, founder and CEO of a company called jam. It's a global business in the business of play. And helping companies and people find play and play and sports and things like that have always been important to Christie. She'll tell you all about that in just a second. But they really work pretty widely and she's got some great stories. She's also written a book on this now that we're talking about today. It pays to play how to use play to improve your business culture. So I'm super psyched to have you join us. You're in Toronto today, it feels like. I understand, Christy, you split your time between Toronto and Costa Rica. It seems like now you should be heading to Costa Rica maybe except for.

Ski season, heading down there very soon. Pretty excited about that. Actually.

I'm a little torn this time of year. Like in San Francisco, the wind stops and I'm big wind sailing sports guy and I, I. And it gets, it's always cold here, but it gets a little colder and then I kind of want to go chase it. I want to go to Mexico or Hawaii, but then I also want to go up to like to Hungo skiing. So I'm torn.

You know, I grew up ski racing. That was actually my sport of choice when I was a teenager. And it's funny, I never really used to understand the snowbird culture of Canadians. And now in my early 50s, I'm like, hmm, I'm start after sp. I spent about two months in Costa Rica last year sort of by accident and went, went down to get married and ended up for two weeks and we ended up staying for two months because the pandemic continued to shut things down up in Canada. So we stayed put for a while and fell in love with it and, and ended up getting a place down there. And we're gonna look to spend a lot of winters down there. But I do miss occasional, you know, this. I do love playing in the snow and getting to both do downhill and cross country skiing, but not quite enough to, to keep me in Toronto for the winters anymore.

It's funny, my, my, one of my brothers live, lived for a long time in L. A. His kids an actor who's now an adult now and they go every year to Toronto for the last few years to film and, and, but I'm like, oh my God. And I remember, I don't know, it was a couple of years ago and they kind of had it in the middle, they're like, oh, it's like an ice storm, you can't go anywhere funny.

Yeah, we were talking about that. My husband actually runs a TV production company. We were talking about the actors that have to kind of that come to Toronto because it is, there's a lot of filming that goes on up here, but in the winter, what a horrible, horrible place to have to leave LA to come up to Toronto for. I mean, Toronto's great. I, I love Toronto. I've been here for 27 years now. It's great city. But to have to come from LA to Toronto in the cold depths of winter wouldn't be my first choice.

For sure. Toronto is a cool big city and we like it. He actually moved to outside of Seattle and they live up there now where I, I just got pictures today and it's snowing, so it's snowing now and he's going to be getting used to all of that. So we'll see how he likes it after a full year up in the Seattle area because it's definitely a little colder there than it is up in la. You don't have as many outdoor pools in your backyard in Seattle, that's for sure.

Yeah, a little wet, little damper and chillier, for sure. Up in the Seattle, Vancouver parts of the world. Yes.

Well, all right. Whether we've covered the importance, this will definitely connect us to, but we're being playful.

This is true. Yes.

All right, let's start off with kind of your story. You alluded to ski racing as a kid and that kind of thing. So you've always been into sports and talk about kind of your personal story and then how that kind of leads to this book.

Okay, sure. Great. So I was raised in a city called Sudbury, which is a small town about four hours north of Toronto. Grew up in a really entrepreneurial household. My dad was an entrepreneur, grandparents were entrepreneurs. So dinner table conversations, you know, talked a lot about the world of small business. I have two older brothers, both entrepreneurs. In fact, I think my brother Cameron, maybe you've, you know, you've chatted with once or twice. He's. He's pretty well known in the world of entrepreneurs.

Prior guest several times on the show and a friend. And. Yes.

Yeah, don't hold it against me. I always say that, that he is my big brother. And to be clear, he's not my husband, he's my brother. So that's the other awkward mistake when people think I'm married to Cameron. Ooh, no, just. Just my big brother. And he's fantastic to have as a big brother. I'm pretty fortunate. He and my brother Todd are both awesome. So. So anyway, yeah, we're all very entrepreneurial. We were raised to sort of work for what we wanted in life. We had to if we wanted something. My parents never forked out the money. They were like, how are you going to pay for that? And they'd maybe contribute towards. But we always had to sort of work for what we wanted. So at a young age, you know, I was running lawn cutting businesses and in high school, wherever I could push my lawnmower to, that was because I didn't have a driver's license yet. I could cut the grass at the neighbor's house. So that's how I sort of got started. And then sports. I mean, I remember I wanted to be just like my big brothers. When I was little, I even had my mom cut my hair really short so I could look like my big brothers. And I wanted to play soccer. So she signed me up for a soccer league that there were no all girls soccer leagues and there were no mixed gender soccer leagues in Sudbury when I was a kid. There were boys soccer leagues. So she signed me up for a boys soccer league. I played the full season. Everyone called me Chris and At the end of the season, she made me wear a dress to the banquet, which horrified me. I hated wearing dresses and she loved seeing me in Jesses show up to the banquet and all the boys on my team were like, what? Like you're. You're Chris. So that was fun.

That would have been a crisis. I know when I was about 12 once, some friend of mine, some new friends, thought for a few days was a girl. And that was horrifying. I'm still a little reluctant to say it to this day. Like, how could you not especially like at 12, like the 7.

I was 7, I was masculine then. I was like, I was 6 or 7 when this happened. And I really, I just wanted to play soccer. For me, it was just about, how do I play? I don't care if I'm playing with boys, girls, I don't care. I just want to play. So got to play soccer that season and then they ended up having me back. I was the only girl in this all boys league for a couple of years and I think that was the seed that planted my love of sports. And through high school, played every sport I could sign up for and ended up being an alpine ski racer. Traveled the world with that and then went off to university, went to Queens in Kingston, about two hours east of Toronto. And I remember there the dean of commerce calling me into his office after first year and he said, clearly your marks are showing that you cannot handle the ski team and the rowing team. You better pick one or the other. And. And I laughed and said, yes sir, you're right. I'll just stick with the ski team in the future. And I walked out of his office. What he didn't know was I was running two businesses at the time. On the side I was running a student painting franchise and I was selling custom clothing to teams and groups on campus, sweatshirts and baseball hats. So always loved running businesses, always loved being social and playing and sports. So then when I moved to Toronto in 1996, I didn't know a lot of people in Toronto and I wanted to sign up for sports to try and meet people. And the only sport I wasn't a great soccer player. Like I played when I was a 6 and 7 year old, but I didn't really play much after that. So I looked into these soccer leagues and they were competitive women's leagues. And I was like, yeah, that's like, they're out of my league. Like, I can't, I can't play in those leagues. So I didn't know what I was going to do, and I'd heard about actually a Golden Gate sport and social club, San Francisco where you are. And so I thought, hey, maybe I could try doing something like that in Toronto. And so I started the Toronto Sport and Social club back in 1996. We've since rebranded to Jam. But at the time, it was the very beginning. It was, this was like before the Internet. I didn't even have an email address when I first started this. So I spent about four months picking up the phone, calling everybody I knew and I said, listen, I'm, I'm starting these adult sports leagues. Think of it as like flag football, beach volleyball, soccer, basketball, ultimate Frisbee, if you think it's a good idea and you'd like to sign up, do you know anyone else who might want to sign up? And everyone I spoke to loved the idea. And so then I had them fax me their address books because again, the Internet wasn't really a thing yet. People would fax me their address books and then I would go through all of their address books and I would call everyone I knew and I ended up getting about a database of about 800 people to get things started. So this was 19, winter of 96, couldn't afford stamps. I wanted to send out newsletters to everybody, but I couldn't afford 800 stamps. So luckily my boyfriend at the time who was a semi pro cyclist, he later became my husband and business partner. He has since become my ex husband. He's still my business partner and friend, but that's another story. But Raul at the time agreed to drop off 400 newsletters by bicycle because he was a semi pro cyclist. So he rode his bike around the city dropping off newsletters because I couldn't afford stamps for all of them. I mean that was the early days of getting things going. And that very first season that May of 1996, had about 50 teams sign up to play a mix of five different sports. And you know, fast forward 20 some years and we pre pandemic had about 11,000 teams playing sports with us in 12 different cities year round. And so that was sort of the early, the early days and then the pandemic that was interesting when the world, when the mandates were such that, you know, you, you couldn't play, you couldn't connect socially in person anymore. How do you run sports leagues? And I remember my, my brother Cameron saying, you're going to have to pivot, you're going to have to go online. And I was, I was like, I remember crying on the phone with him. And I was like, cam, you can't, you can't play volleyball over the phone. You know, you can't play soccer on your, on your iPhone. Like, it doesn't work like that. And. And he was like, well, health clubs, they're. They're all going online and they're doing their classes online. And I was, I was beside myself. I was pretty down. It was like, really dark, dark time for me. Spent a couple, you know, we should have been celebrating 25 years of connecting millions of people through play and changing people's lives for the better. And instead we're trying to keep ourselves from going out of business. And so we ended up pivoting to helping we start. I told my team we were going to try and sell bingo and trivia virtual play to companies. And my team were like, you want us to sell bingo bingo to companies? And I said, yes, that is exactly what. You know, at that point we were, we were throwing a lot of shit to see what would stick. And we tried to throw that and it stuck. So people loved it. We were, we were making people happy. We are connecting corporate teams all over the world. In the first year, we produced, I think about 2000 events in over 30 different countries, multiple languages. So we were making a lot of teams happy by connecting them through play. And we started this new, this new business. And so now, thankfully, the pandemic is mostly behind us, I believe, and we have our sports leagues back up and running, although it still hasn't even been a full year that we've been running leagues sports again. But we now have our corporate B2B business connecting corporate teams through play, whether with virtual events, hybrid events, and in person events now. And then we have our sports leagues back up and operating and we're looking to continue growing both sides of the business, helping connect people through play and helping companies to unlock profit through play. So that's.

It's an interesting thing, I think, when you look at all the adaptation and the innovation that happened in response to the pandemic. The first year, 2020, in the beginning of 21 was still a time of let's do this. And there's a great Candido attitude and that kind of thing. And then I think 21 and 22 of 21 in particular, was kind of a hangover year, like, what the hell just happened? And people tried to venture out a little bit. And then I think this year is like another, like, weird transitional year because I have teams that are anxious to get back together and have gotten back Together and then I have others that are like, yeah, we're happy to meet up but I don't want to get on a plane or I don't want to go like whatever. And, and so the, I think there, there's definitely lingering interest in a fair amount of virtual things. I know some conferences have been really well attended and others have just been a disaster. It does seem like it's kind of all over the place with what's going on.

It's true. I sort of tell people that I feel like I have a 27 year old that just got off two years of life support and which is, you know, the sports league business. And then we have this two and a half year old toddler that keeps changing its mind. Which two and a half year olds do. It keeps changing. What does it want to do? It was born as a virtual events business. It's now hybrid and in person. And this past year, you know it, we are still doing a lot of virtual events because it is easy. It's really helpful when teams are remote or spread globally to be able to connect without having to get on an airplane. You can still have a lunch and laugh for an hour and have some laughs with your team in a really fun, playful way, really affordably. And yet we can now do in person as well. So it's kind of fun that we're having this opportunity to help corporate teams connect however they like. And then we've created a lot of different hybrid options because a lot of companies are trying to be the best for their teams and allow teams to do what works for them. A lot of people are really loving coming into the office. A lot of people are really still enjoying working from home. And so you don't want to lose good people because, you know, by laying down the law and saying it has to be this way. So we've been able to create these fun connections for teams to help them connect however works best for them. We've actually even connected. We've come up with a way to run some in person events. So we're running scavenger hunts. As an example, we did a scavenger hunt in Idaho. We did another one in New Jersey where my own team physically did not go. They, they ran the event virtually for these teams, which made it a very affordable way to have an in person event. So that was a team in person.

But you're running it remotely?

Yeah, we're running it with our team in our office in Toronto remote talking to them through video. And it's been fabulous. And Teams have been loving it. So it's. And it makes it a lot more affordable than having to send people on an airplane. Right. So we can do it all. But, but it's just been fun to kind of have come up with all these innovations. The, the two and a half year old toddler business that keeps changing its mind about how it's going to run.

Let's be clear, we're going to talk about two for the listeners. Viewers, we're talking about two kinds of things. We're talking about play in all forms in your business environment and the value for the culture and the team. But we're talking about both virtual events and in person events, both aspects of things and hybrids of them. So we're not fixated on like, oh, just create, you know, at home, bingo kinds of things. Although that is one thing that you could do.

Absolutely. And in fact, Bill, I think where my book comes to, what my book is trying to bring to light, it's to have a really strong healthy organizational culture is not just to have an event once a month or once a year, frankly, which a lot of companies think, oh, we have this big corporate picnic once a year, so we have this great culture. Actually, I would argue, no, that doesn't make for, that's important to do that and it's very helpful. But what the book is, It Pays to play is trying to say is there are ways to integrate playfulness throughout your everyday organization, including signing up sports teams to play in kickball leagues or softball leagues in your cities, or having fun virtual events or in person events. But in addition to that, there are a lot of other very easy to implement ways to have some fun in the workplace. Doesn't need to be super expensive, doesn't need to be super time consuming. Work still needs to get done. But there are ways to have a playfulness, a vibe of fun in your organization. And that's where what I think is a really important thing for people to realize that culture. Those pillars we all hear about, vision, mission, vision, values, purpose. They're absolutely critical pillars. I mean, my brother Cameron wrote the book on vivid vision. Right. Like, I'm a believer in having these pillars in place, but those pillars alone mean nothing if you do not have a team of people who are feeling connected and engaged and friends, friends with each other. If you don't have that team feeling cohesive.

So let's share some examples because you're like, clearly the, the way that we bring values to life, the way that we do a lot of these things is through Play. And I like that your book starts with like ancient Greece and World War I, 100 years ago. Right, more than 100 years ago. So let's talk about a couple of those stories and start to get through to like really bring it to life for, for folks. So why don't you start there with the ancient history?

Yeah. The book starts with the fact that ancient Greece, in ancient Greece there were armies were not allowed to stop people going to the games or because it was like forbidden. That was. The games were sacred. They wanted people to be able to play. And the infamous Christmas truce of December 1914. During World War I, there is a story, true, documented story of German and British soldiers putting down their guns, literally had been shooting at each other, killing each other the day before on Christmas Day. They put down their guns, they crossed enemy lines, they started giving each other gifts of cigarettes and food. They were singing Christmas carols. And the best part of this for me is there was a documented case of a game of soccer occurring on the battlefield. A soccer ball came out and troops started playing soccer. The war stopped because people started to play. And I think that is incredibly powerful. If play can stop war, imagine how powerful play can be. If you integrate a little playfulness inside your workplace. It's an incredibly powerful tool.

Here's the first principle I hear in that, that I think that our companies struggle with all the time. Stop the action of the work to go off site and do your planning is the first thing. But integrate with that a little play in the place, the location, the activities surrounding it. Right. And I think that that makes a huge difference. And two things that we see again and again is the first kind of hurdle for people in starting to be scaling up companies or either on their own or working with one of our coaches is this business of actually pausing the work for a minute. Right. Whether it's for planning or for, for play. Like pause. And then the second one is let's do the off site with. At a cool place with some play, with some activities involved. Let's bring some fun, light heartedness. And time after time they want to do the last minute. They don't want to reserve the time for it. And then they want to do it in this dreadful meeting room that's in the corner of their, like whatever where they train people. I don't know how to use some system or whatever. That's bad. Like bad.

Yeah. And think about, think about being a kid when you, when we were children and we went to school, couple things. When you had friends at school you were excited to get there because you knew you'd get to play with them at recess. When we didn't, when we didn't have friends at school, walking to school or taking that school bus felt like torture. The same isn't it can be held true as adults going to work every day, when we have bonds, friends that we know we're going to communicate with in person by video, whatever, we know we're going to have some laughs during the day with these people. It makes it a lot more interesting and intriguing and engaging to get there.

Yeah.

Now and the other part of that is the recess aspect, what you're talking about. But when you're trying to do an offset, you're trying to do planning and no one wants to take a break. Recess breaks happened for a reason. They re energize us. Right. You can only focus for so long in school. Same thing as happens in the office. We need. It's good for our souls, it's good for our mind, it's good for our health, our bodies to get up from our desks, take a break, go for a walk, grab a colleague and go for a walk. Or you know, sit down at play a ping pong game. Like the ping pong tables that are in company offices should not be there for virtue signaling. Like oh look how cool. Look how we're a really fun organization but the ping pong table collects dust. If that ping pong table actually gets used, fantastic. Encourage a little bit of around the world. We play around the world at our office all the time. 2 o' clock, someone will yell around the world and whoever can get up from their desks will run out. And you play a quick game where everyone around the world when the whole team is running around the table playing ping pong, you have one life and then you're out. And, and it's just a fun way to have a five minute break during the day. You're re energized, you had some laughs with your colleagues, a little bit of trash talking going on, get back to your desk, get back to work. And you're that much more energized, you're that much more able to focus. I mean it's, it's kind of a known thing but we just, it's so overlooked as we grow up and, and move into the workplace.

Contrast to two clients and I'll name one of them that I'll heap the praise on and I'll keep the other anonymous. So medical group that I worked with some years ago, we went to A really beautiful place in the mountains.

To.

Do their annual planning session. And there we are in this beautiful place and the fire's roaring and we have a nice meal, right? So there's a nice meal and ice wine and that kind of thing to connect with people. But then they've got all these options. You could go tubing or snowshoeing or, or skiing, downhill skiing or like whatever you want to do. There's like everything available. They even had dog sledding. Like you could go on a thing and go around the golf course. So there we are and nobody does anything at all. And they all leave promptly. And I'm like, wow, I don't like that team. There's something off that the leader doesn't get. People 1 get on their level and figure out what kinds of things they're going to say y and then figure out what to do and how to engage them and do it as a team. So you know, they all, they is beautiful and it was nice dinner, nice meeting and that kind of thing. It was productive. We got a plan created for the year and that kind of thing. But the real connecting and the play and the spontaneous kinds of things, the appreciation, the laughs, the humanity, all of that that you can get with that didn't happen. And the team grew, the business grew and you know, they really significantly. But it isn't one of the teams that I cite and leaders that I cite regularly to talk about that. They really did it right. And frequently that team with that wider growing business felt like they were just being worked, worked, worked, worked and they had the right pieces there, but not the permission and the connection with the leader to actually engage them in some play. Contrast. Another one of our teams just this last year here, we went down to Mexico recently to do their annual planning and you know, we do the planning and I use a lot of play, like use music and activities and walking around and things like that. And I'm light hearted in our sessions and we had some nice dinners and some breaks but they actually, they went bike riding and they, they did a whole bunch. They went out on a boat and they, they did all kinds of things to take advantage of that environment to wrap around the work. We did good work, good sessions, but they reserved a little time and they wrapped around it with great play. And that team was totally different, right? They came in huffing and puffing and they, they had to take a break and go shower up and they like.

You know, like they'd had some laughs together, right?

That team, not surprisingly, is in the business of play and fitness. It's a crunch fitness franchise group and you know, just love they're taking the place seriously. And it started in this case with the CEO who's you know, pretty hardcore about his paddle boarding and his triathlons and his, you know, that kind of thing. But he leads by example there and then engages the team. And that team has people of all different fitness levels. It's not just because he's a super athlete and everybody's going to be, you know, not everybody's going to be like that.

Absolutely. But. And I would, I think you've nailed it. You don't have to have the most gregarious leader or the most outgoing leader or the best athlete as a leader to be to have a place playful organization. You just have to have a leader who buys into the fact that when you have some laughs together as a team, your, your friendships and bonds are going to strengthen. The connections are going to be better when that happens, when that there's permission for that to happen, as you said, and that by the a leader in an organization leading by example, it doesn't actually necessarily even need to be physically playing. Although I think physical play is really good for the, good for the body and good for the mind. And there are ways to physically play. But then there are also lots of ways to play that don't involve physicality, like how we communicate. We have a daily huddle at jam. It's a seven minute huddle. It's video for most people. But anyone who's in the office does huddle from the boardroom. And every single day we have a different leader who runs huddle. So whether you're an intern or you're the cfo, you take a turn leading huddle. And so it goes through a schedule and everyone knows when their day is coming up in the next 40 to 60 days. And it's always the same agenda. But at the end there's leaders choice. And leaders choice is always different because it's a different leader every day. And some days it might be, you know, the leader might say, okay, I'm going to just encourage, I'm encouraging everyone to do a five minute meditation today or I'm encouraging everyone to reach out to someone that you haven't talked to in a while or put into the, put a funny photo of your first sports team you ever played on when you were a six year old or whatever. You know, every single day. You wouldn't even believe what today's leaders choice is. It's actually I'M kind of. It's hilarious. Something about what was the weirdest thing you used to like to smell when you were a kid? And the banter that is now happening in our teams chat right now is hysterical. But that's the kind of stuff that we do.

Weirdest thing you used to like to smell as a kid?

Yeah, it's pretty funny.

So the, the wet pavement, the wet asphalt on the driveway of my grandmother's backyard, the smell of that like as I would play in the grass and stuff as a little kid. Really memorable.

Yeah, yeah. Well, the, my chat is just like people had some weird things that they liked to smell, me included. I can't even go where I went with mine right now. But anyway, it's very funny. And the whole point of this is it's just playful communication. It doesn't matter if you run a hospital, if you run Crunch Fitness or if you are working in the oil and gas industry or manufacturing, you can have a daily huddle and you can have some laughs. No matter how serious your business is, we all have time to have some human connection. If you make time for human connection in a playful way, playful communication, you're going to get stronger bonds that happen between your team. They're going to be more engaged with what they're doing at your organization. Everybody wins.

Well, so let's create that, like make that real for people. You shared the story in getting ready of one of your teammates who left for more money and came back. Talk about Sandeep. Tell us about him and Sandy.

Yeah, Sandy started at our. He, he started an organization as an operations associate. He moved into bookkeeping when someone went on a maternity leave. He ended up working his way up into one of the leaders on our finance team. Over six and a half years working with us and in I think it was like September of the pandemic, September 2020, he came to me and advised me that he was going to be leaving. And it was brutal to hear this because this is a guy who, he's a gem of a human. I just, I cherish him as a friend. He's, he's funny, he's trustworthy. So hard working. He's just an absolute all round guy. And I remember when he told us it was hard for him because I know he really loved our organization and it was really hard to hear, but he said, you know, I have this opportunity. It's, it's more money and it's going to be bigger responsibility and I believe it's the right time for me to take this. And I said, you know what? I totally understand. I wish you all the best and let's keep in touch. I keep in touch with a lot of my former teammates because these are people who I've become friends with. And I actually just texted my EA from two years ago today. I sent her a funny picture. I was like, just was thinking of you when I saw this. These are friends. I keep in touch with them. So anyway, Sandy left and heartbreaking. And about four months later, I sent him a text. And I was like, hey, just wanted to check in. I've been thinking about you. How are things going? Hopefully, hope your new adventure has been going really well for you. And he said, you're not going to believe this. I'm. I'm actually submitting my letter of resignation this week. And I said, what? And we. I jumped on the phone with him and I said, what's going on? Like, he said, yeah, I'm resigning. He said, this organization does not care about their people at all. There is no culture, no one is friends with each other here. It's brutal. He said, I absolutely. I'm miserable. I can't believe I never should have left. And I said, sandeep, would you ever want to come back to jam? And he said, nothing would make me happier than to come back to jam. And I said, we can't pay you what you're making at this new place. And he said, it's not about money. He said, I'm miserable. And so we. Over the next six months. What's that?

Yeah, I'll bill for that. Some things matter much more than money. Money is important, right? You need a certain amount of money to live and you have to stay competitive. But a lot of these things matter more. And people quit more often because their boss sucks because the place sucks than.

Anything else because they have no friends and no one cares about each other there. Right? And. And so he ended up six months later. We didn't get him back right away. We. We ended up. Took us a little while, but we eventually found a way for him to get back on our team and he's now been on our team, I don't know, a year and a half since he. Since he came back. And happier than, like, he sent me a text message about a month after he came back. He said, I can't believe it's so amazing to be back and I should have never left. And it's just so great. And, and we're all so happy to have him on our team. And the best part is that happened another time during the pandemic as well. Taylor also left for a job and she, you know, it was going to be more money and a different experience and different opportunity and we wished her well. We were really sad to see her go. And about six months later, she reached out to us. She saw a job posting and she reached out and said, I would really like to come back. And I, I got on the phone with her and talked to her. She was dealing with all HR and such, but I was just curious. I was like, Taylor, what's going on? Why do you want to come back? She said, I can feel my mental health declining in this new role. I'm so miserable. No one cares about each other. There aren't friends in the workplace. And I just really miss working with people who care about me as a friend. So great. I mean we've had. Taylor's been back, it'll be a year in February and amazing to have these stories to share and these again. Both of them left for more money, but they both came back for culture.

You know, the thing that I hear in the background of that is that the culture of play creates an opportunity to be known beyond the business. The professional surface layer, right? There's a professional veneer. I do this, I do my job, I'm this, I have these skills, that kind of thing. Then there's the like the humanity that comes through when we go past that, when we play, when we have some interaction, when we screw things up, when we compete with each other in a good way. That that really comes through and we're known and we're connected there as human beings that we don't have any other. And that actually elevates communication. And you cite results of studies by Gallup and Mayo Clinic about satisfaction and play in the book that I think are relevant. People maybe read them before, but you can talk about that if.

Yeah, for sure. So. So before I get to the Mayo Clinic thing, just to your point about being known for having a fun culture in your organization, any organization can do this. And something we often do when we welcome a new teammate onto our team. We have a high five welcome and we video it. And so it's. We have that we play their walk up song for them when they first walk into the office and we greet them. Our whole team shows up with whoever can be in the office and everyone else is on a screen in the boardroom. But we give people like a literal high five tunnel that they walk through as their big walk up songs playing and we share that on LinkedIn and people are like, wow, that would be a really fun place to work. And so we maybe can't compete with the Toronto Maple Leafs or the Raptors as maybe a place that for, you know, a lot of people who work in our industry, their dream job is to become the general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Well, you're not going to get that from working at jam, but you're going to. It is helping people connect through play and sports. And look, we're really fun culture to, to work for, so it does. And any organization can do this kind of thing. But to your point, what you were asking about the Mayo Clinic. So the Mayo Clinic has done studies which I find incredibly, I've always, I've loved this study since I first heard about it. So we all know that exercise is great for our health, right? Like it's, it's good for us. We all know this 30 minutes a day should be, you know, will, will do you, do you a world of good. What the Mayo Clinic has done is shown when, when you combine that exercise with play, it adds years to your life. So when you can combine your exercise with say a social sport like soccer or basketball or badminton or tennis, it can add 20% longevity to your life. And so the point of this is if all you can do is get to the, get to the gym and, and run on a treadmill and lift weights, absolutely you should be doing that. However, if once a week or twice a week, you can combine your play with, with, you know, a basketball or combine your exercise rather with tennis game or sign up for a co ed basketball, a mixed gender basketball league, or have a company team playing softball. I mean, recreational sports leagues like JAM exist in every city around North America. And in fact, if people are looking for resources, I have a list of resources of the sports leagues all over on my website. But these leagues exist and putting company teams in so, so many organizations right now are focusing on health and wellness as part of culture, which is fabulous. What I'm finding is it's very much a, it seems to be a very individual focus. So it's, let's get, make sure you have the ability to get therapy. Let's make sure you have the ability to, you know, a health club membership. What they're not doing is providing social connections and, and let's not mix going for drinks afterwards after work as necessarily the best social connection. That's not a bad thing. But it's not good for everybody. And not every, you know, some people need to go home and Take care.

Of kids and all your socialization is based around alcohol.

There's not really the best.

You can get some inappropriate office relationships starting there.

So if you consider. Sorry.

We're frequently told that our off sites and planning sessions and training days are surprisingly free of like, contention, disagreement, difficulty. Like, wow, that was a lot easier than I expected. It went really fast. But there's two things that I'm always doing with it. One of them is I'm combining physical movement. So it could be as simple as I tell you to take a walk or I say stand up or leave the room or like that kind of thing. So we, we add movement to things. Rarely is it anything like dance or whatever, like that.

And.

But then we also add sort of playful, different approaches. So when things are off a little bit, we mix it up. So physical activity, movement with some novel approach to something or maybe even a playful way, a little humor. Those two together are super useful in diffusing the typical positional, combative kinds of things that you'll get where people just grind down.

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, play just breaks down barriers and it helps sort of lighten the mood. Right. For everybody. And, and it doesn't mean that you can't. You still have to have your status meetings, your, your board meetings, your, your weekly.

No, no, there's work to do. Right.

Like, you've got to get your work done, but it doesn't mean that you can't be having a little bit of laughter and playfulness throughout your workday, throughout your week, having celebrations. You know, the core value. We talked about core values. I talk in the book about having a core value award. You know, it's great to have your core values written on your wall, written in your onboarding document. Then what, like, is that it?

These are our core values themes around them. Right. You talk a bit in your book about our mutual friend Brian Scudamore, whose values are really obvious and apparent in his company. Like you could see it and feel it in the way they. Everything and the. What the office looks like, the whole thing. So.

Absolutely. And so we started what we do, once a month we have our core value award. And it's literally, I'm a very literal person, so I bought this, like, probably, I don't know, 12 years ago, bought this apple core. It's a big bronze. It's an 18 inch apple core trophy. And around the base of the trophy are the six core values of our organization. And every month everyone has the opportunity to, and we encourage everybody, but it's not mandatory Everyone has the opportunity to nominate someone for the Core Value Award and they list which core value what, the core value they're nominating them for and why. A little, a little anecdote. And then I read through the Core Value nominations once a month at the end of Huddle. It takes about 15 minutes, but it's 15 minutes that are so well spent because it's everyone hearing things that nicely said about them and it's the opportunity for someone else to shine a light on someone, to show somebody gratitude. And we also, you know, studies have shown when you give gratitude, that does good for your soul as well. Right. So by giving the gift of, of shining a light on someone else, you're actually doing good for yourself as well. Does that make sense? So, so having this Core value what, and then that core value, that trophy gets to sit on that person's desk. And if they don't work in the office, everyone, whoever gets the Core Value Award for the month, they get a special zoom backdrop that has our, you know, Jam branded zoom backdrop and it's got a core value. So, so we know at our, at our month, at our daily Huddle meetings who the Core Value Award winner is for the month. And it's just something everyone takes a lot of pride in. But it's, it's really fun. And the, when people do the nominations though, sometimes those are said seriously. Other times people will do a haiku, other times people will do like a limerick or a fight, make it like rhyme or like people just have fun with celebrating and highlighting. Great work being done in the office. We also have a shout out channel which is on our Microsoft Teams Chat. So all day long there will be, you know, two, three shout outs a day or maybe, maybe more, depends on the day. And it's just again, people shouting out their teammates for great work being done with a highlight around Core Values. So it's always sort of spoken, tends to be focused on a core value that. So we're keeping them top of mind all the time.

Well, you know, I'm hearing a couple of things and I'm mindful of our showtime here as well, but I'm hearing play. So Jam Group does events where you organize games and play and things like that for companies to connect and come together and to combine with their other meetings. But I'm hearing play infused through everything and every part of the thing, not just in a specific game, whether it be online or in person, but in the whole way that we interact through things. I think that's pretty unique and distinct. Way of thinking about play, being playful throughout the whole time. And. And I would say, like, since it always starts with a leader, a good question to ask yourself is, are you playful? Do you have any room for play? I was on one of our CEO coaching calls recently and fantastic CEO and the company is doing so well. He's like, bill, what. We've talk about all these things, and I've done this and I've done that, and like, what do you think is there? And like, well, you're really good at these areas, but you have, like, very little in this other department. And it may not be a strength. And you may, like, you know, want to keep playing to your strengths. However, if it's a blind spot for you, is there an aspect of. In this case, it was play. Like, where could you be more playful, more creative? How could you use that? Why don't you give yourself and see what you come up with and talk to me about that next time. Like, completely different area. Right. Just took him into some other kind of thing because even though that might. He might not ever, like, lead with play. Perhaps it's something that he's avoiding because he doesn't think that it's okay, you know.

Yeah. And I think actually this is where it's important to recognize there are so many ways to have playfulness. It doesn't need to be a soccer team that the company. You know, there's Raymondo, friend of mine who runs Inertia Design is a great example at their organization. They have a band. They have a rock band. And they. Everyone's welcome to join the rock band. And they get together a couple. Once, like a couple times a month to do rehearsals. And then a couple times a year, they put on a show. I. I play guitar. I didn't start playing guitar until about 10 years ago. I'd always wanted to learn to play guitar. And for me, it's a very meditative time. So I sit down and try and make 15 minutes a day of play. I don't always get it done, but I love it when I do. And there's. There are ways to make time for play. So have a guitar in your kitchen, at the office. Have a keyboard. So if someone's having a lunch break, let them strum away on the guitar. Have some puzzles. Barry Goldless, sorry, Barry Glassman, rather is a friend of mine. He runs Glassman wealth. They've won number one best place to work in Washington, D.C. multiple years at Glassman Wealth. They have a puzzle table. They have puzzles out so you can Just play by doing a puzzle by yourself, having a little break. You know, there are just so many ways to integrate playfulness and, and the communication I think I touched on earlier. I was, I found it really interesting. The other day I had a business meeting downtown Toronto at the Royal York Hotel. Very fancy, you know, highfalutin hotel. And I walked in and there's these, you know, bellman greeting you at the door. And I had to go to the bathroom so badly. So I ran up to the first bellman I saw and I said, can you, can you please tell me where the washroom is? And he said, yes, ma', am, it's up on the 21st floor. And he had this very serious face. And I was like, the 21st floor? And he, he started laughing right away and I was like, oh, you're kidding. Like, he didn't need to say that. But he got me, he made me laugh, he made himself laugh. And what I loved was this was the Royal York Hotel. This is a fancy hotel. And he found a way to playfully communicate with me there.

You know, I don't think that you should make a woman who has to really pee badly laugh.

Good point. Fair. Touche. That could have gone very badly.

Oh, you made me laugh. Look what you did there. You know, hang on a second. Let me just tell our listeners we've got a special. Christie's got a cool special offer for you we're going to get to in just a second. But I encounter all the time, I think we all do, people who feel that professionalism requires a certain comportment. And although you might not describe yourself that way, a lot of very straight laced, uptight, tight ass kind of people walk around in the business world that in other realms could loosen up, up. And I worked with a guy a few years ago that had this issue and I talked with him a long time about his business and his barriers, his blocks. And I'm like, look, I hear all this, like, how hard you work and all that kind of thing, but let's explore what it is. And so I just gave him some options. I'm like, improv, dance, music, like, where could you just loosen the hell up and play? Because I know that there's something in there. So he did some different things. I actually can't remember what it was now. But as a result of that, his engagement and his rates all increased over the next year and a half. So, yeah, you know, finding a way that fits you to bring your natural play to bear, you know, it's going to be different for everyone.

And this is where we're starting to try and help as opposed to just giving people these events that we offer. And we're starting to help companies. We're going in to sort of be culture catalysts and help them to figure out what would work for their organization and to help them learn how to integrate a little playfulness. Because every organization is unique and every culture is unique, but there is room for play. I believe in every culture and doing so will make it a lot more engaging of a place to work. It'll help retention. It'll help with health and wellness of your employees and helps with creativity. And happier employees equal happier customers. We all know that. So I just think there's a every organization can win by making a little time for playfulness.

Yeah. So let me give a few shout outs to some people in our world before we share your offer and wrap our show up. But there's so much more. Lots of stories at play that we could go on here. But I want to be mindful before we lose all our listeners and audience, we bring our show to you every week. If we can help you connect with something or if you'd like to give us feedback or anything like that, you'll find us. You can send an email to info@scalingcoach.com or you can find us@scalingcoach.com we have 230 scaling up coaches around the world in addition to the work that I personally do with companies. So we've got lots of resources wherever you are. I'm going to put up Christie's information in just a minute. A big shout out to Vern Harnish, their author and creator of the whole Scaling up framework and the Rockefeller habits that came before it, my friend and mentor. And to the folks at Podfly Production who get our show produced and out every week, the show notes compiled and all that stuff, who help us make all that happen. And thanks to our listeners. You'll find all our shows and more there@scalingcoach.com or wherever. You're getting this right now. So like it, subscribe it so you get the notices every week and that'll help you out. And then I would love to put up this special offer. So Christie's got an offer for you that's really good and here's a link here. It's in the chat, in the comments, if you're watching the video and it'll be in the show notes and it's right here on the screen. Christyherald.com Scaling up 25 if you're listening pretty easy. It'll give you two things. It'll give you a 25% off one of their virtual events. So if they're going to do an event for you, if that looks of interest, you can get 25% off that event. But you can also get for free immediately their special playbook. So it's not the book about play that we've been talking about. It's the companion that helps you get started finding ways to do some play yourself and your own organization. So get started yourself and get a discount on their professional programs. Christy harold.com Scaling up 25.

Yes, thanks, Bill.

Thank you. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for joining us. Thanks, everyone, for listening for watching. We'll talk to you again next time. Keep scaling up.