In this concise "6 Questions in 7 Minutes" interview, Professor Pete Alexander talks with Sam Kayucci, founder and CEO of OneHuddle, a gamified platform that helps companies train, onboard, and upskill employees in an engaging way. Sam explains that OneHuddle serves a wide range of verticals—from hospitals and sports teams to hotels and the U.S. Air Force—highlighting the excitement of working across diverse industries. He shares a unique reading strategy: start with the core message of a book and work backward, urging leaders to focus on the essential takeaway. Sam emphasizes the critical role of a strong "culture code" for scaling teams, especially in remote or hybrid settings, and describes OneHuddle's core value of "toughness," which encourages embracing failure, learning, and iterating. He recommends fellow business leader Paul Epstein, a former sales leader for the San Francisco 49ers, as a future podcast guest. Sam also recounts his first job as a personal trainer at Bally Total Fitness, illustrating his early work ethic. The episode closes with contact information for OneHuddle (website, LinkedIn, Twitter).
Chapters
This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast, where business leaders share their insights. It is 6 questions in 7 minutes because successful business leaders are busy and rarely have more time to spare. So let's get to it. Question number 1: In a few sentences, please tell me who you are and what you do.
Sure, pleasure, pleasure to be here. Sam Kayucci, I'm the founder and I'm the CEO of OneHuddle. We are a game platform for workforce training. So we know that companies struggle to onboard, upskill, and fire up workers now more than ever. So we've built a tech product that allows companies to not just skill people up quickly, but do it in a manner that is fun, engaging, and creates excitement along the way.
Sam, it's great to have you on the show. Question number 2: What's the best thing about working in your industry?
Probably the best thing about working in our industry is the fact that we get to interact with so many different types of, uh, not just workers, but different types of industries. So there's a lot of tech startups that maybe pick a specific vertical or a specific industry, and at OneHuddle It's exciting to know that we work in about a dozen different verticals, so we could be talking to a hospital in the morning, and then a sports team in the late morning, and then a hotel in the afternoon, and then the US Air Force in the evening. So that excitement and agility is really exciting.
And it's fun to have that kind of variety as well, I imagine.
Absolutely.
That's great. Question number 3: I have a fictitious book. With All the Answers for Business, what chapter would you think most companies should read?
I always read from the back forward. So I'm a big believer in— I'm a big believer and you got to get to the point, get to the end. I always start with understanding what the core message is and I would start there and then I would, as my employees say, swallow the book.
I love it, that's very insightful. Question number 4: other than the generic work harder, have a great attitude, and care for customers, what advice or insight would you give to other business leaders?
Culture matters. It's something that today, as we now operate from a distance at times, we're remote, or even if we are in person, the focus being on just the business model, the strategy, or the tactics, or the, or the, the day-to-day process is important. But I know that our company has succeeded to where we've gotten by getting the most out of each individual person on our team. And that, that starts with our culture code that we have at OneHuddle. And that's extremely critical, especially as companies hope to develop their people over time and keep them. If you don't have a culture code that everybody rallies around, it's going to be really tough for you to, to scale to wherever you might want to go.
And that culture code, I like how you place that, or you say that, that culture code also is, I would imagine, really powerful when things aren't going so well and the stress mounts?
Absolutely, you're, absolutely. As a, again, as a startup, for us specifically, we get told no a heck of a lot more than we're told yes. Being comfortable with failing in our sales process, in our service process, in our product and engineering process, but learning from it and iterating on it, You know, one of the core values at OneHuddle is toughness. We define that very specifically internally, but it has to do with being okay with the struggle and learning from it. So that is a, you know, that's really, really why the culture component of what we do is so critical to developing a team that is resilient.
That's very, very powerful. Question number 5, what other business leader like yourself would you like to acknowledge and invite to be on my podcast?
I'd love to invite Paul Epstein. Paul Epstein is a, was a client of ours and has become a friend. He runs a very successful new consulting business out of the LA area. Paul was a sales leader for the San Francisco 49ers football club and worked all across the sports industry. I think it would be awesome for the audience.
Wonderful, I'll reach out to Paul. Thank you. And our final question, question number 6, please tell me about your first job.
My first job was, uh, Bally Total Fitness. So I was right into college. I was— grew up in a family that provided a lot of opportunities for me, but I had to grow up pretty quickly and I wanted to work in fitness. So the first, first place I went was the place I would go to every day, which is the gym. And I applied to be a personal trainer at 18 years old, did one of those quick and dirty certifications that really didn't teach me much. But I, uh, I learned a heck of a lot as a personal trainer at Bally's. I don't know if there's any of them left.
Yeah, it's, it's interesting. I, I think there is on the West Coast, um, because I've— I remember seeing the sign not, not that long ago. So I think that— I think they're, uh, I think they're still around. So Sam, thanks so much for being on the show. How can people find you?
So if you want to find, uh, OneHuddle or myself, you can connect with us at our website, www. Onehuddle.co. And you can also find us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Perfect. This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast. For more insights and ideas, please go to LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or iTunes and search for the Winning at Business and Life podcast. Thanks for listening.
