Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Hello, everyone. Welcome. We’re so glad to have you with us today. I am pleased to introduce our guest, Steve Rix. He is the CEO of Play Lab. With nearly four decades of entrepreneurial experience. Steve launched his seventh venture about 12 years ago, marking a transformative journey both professionally and personally. We’ll talk about a pivotal moment where two children really inspired him.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
At Play Lab, Steve reimagines the workplace as a dynamic playground, energizing employees throughout the week. His innovative approach has led him to coach over 700 individuals, fostering personal and professional growth through playful strategies. Steve’s dedication to integrating play into the workplace has enhanced team collaboration and driven meaningful organizational changes. In our conversation today, we’ll explore the future of work, the essential role of play in professional settings, and the unique methodologies that set Play Lab apart. Please welcome. Help me in joining Steve. Thank you so much for being here. We’re so glad to have you.

Steve Rix:
I am glad to be here, and that was quite an introduction. Thank you.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
You’ve got plenty for us to work with today, so I’m very excited to have you.

Steve Rix:
Tell us, whenever anybody says four decades, I’m like, no, I’m just a kid.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Well, that’s what makes your job and your playfulness so amazing. Tell us about the two youngins on the beach that day.

Steve Rix:
Yeah, so just give a little framework. I arrived in Hawaii when I was 47 years old, about 12 years ago. And in my first 47 years, I have a lot of really cool memories. And I guess we’d call them benchmarks or achievements in life. However, they also have those dark moments or those. Those things are like, yeah, that didn’t work. Well, the things that didn’t work for me leading up to getting here were two major business failures. Multi million dollars and the failure of two marriages.

Steve Rix:
And when those kinds of things hit you in your 40s, I don’t know what a midlife crisis is. I’m not sure I had a crisis. I just decided that I was done. Like, I missed my window of opportunity. And for almost 90 straight days, Jolynn, I literally stared out at the beach and. And spoke to no one. I. I guess you’d call it depression.

Steve Rix:
At very least I was pouting out loud, but at my circumstances. And these two kids came up and they asked me a question that has changed the course of my life. And I’m quite certain for your listening audience and really for anyone, it could change theirs, too. They just said, hey, mister, do you want to play? And I’m sure we can all imagine the enthusiasm of kids, right? They’re like 4 and 6. They were tourist kids. I would know them if I saw them again in my life. But I had a millisecond, right? And I was like, say no. So we danced in the waves for 15, 20 minutes.

Steve Rix:
We made what they thought was an epic sandcastle and their parents went on their way. However, Jolynn, something remained. I realized that for that 90 straight days where all the doors looked like walls, like I was just close minded, nothing could happen, right? My emotional fuel tank was empty and my outlook on the future was none at all. That in 20 to 30 minutes I had a smile on my face, I was laughing. I was like, wait a minute, what just happened? What was this event that took place without me even noticing or consciously deciding to do it? And what had happened was in an instant and on accident, my entire emotional and mental capacity shifted. And I made a commitment that day that if play could do that that quickly without any intention to make it happen, what would happen if I intentionally said, I’m going to use play and experimenting with it for any challenges in the my life that’s led to the company we have today, Play Lab, it’s led to working through emotional issues in my past has really led to more joy in the simplest ways and more practical tools to help me change my mind. Your podcast is using play for performance, right? Well, the hardest thing to get, more performance always starts with the mind, because my actions won’t change till my mind does. So that’s the story of the two little kids in the book I wrote.

Steve Rix:
I put a little sandcastle as part of the COVID of the book, an homage to them. Maybe they’ll find it someday and say, I think that’s the guy we met.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
I think it’s great. You told me that when we first talked. And I just was inspired by the story because there’s so not very often kids walk up to us in the city or towns that we live in. That doesn’t happen on the beach. That was very special. But how many times do people in our lives, either kids or mostly kids, say, hey, do you want to play? And our immediate response is, well, no, I can’t, I’ve got to work, or no, I can’t, I’ve got to do this. No, I can’t, I’ve got to do that. And I think you said it plainly that when we do play, we’re able to do those other things with more heart, with more passion, with more vigor.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
How have you seen that in the work that you’ve done so far?

Steve Rix:
Yeah, that’s a great question. And the answer, I think, is proof that it works in my entrepreneurial endeavors. I’ve started seven companies now, Play Lab being the seventh. I’ve consulted on literally almost a hundred others, whether they were things I was involved in for other people or as a coach and a consultant. And in half the time I’ve been doing Play Lab, I got two companies to multi million dollars. So why do I say that? Because without Play, I’m not sure I would have had the patience or the belief to stick with this for 10 years. The first five and a half to six were all individual coaching and consulting. A very simple business model.

Steve Rix:
And it’s now all changed to business. To business. And, boy, the sales cycle in that arena takes a long time. And I’ll never forget, I thought, oh, this is going to be great. Everybody’s going to love it. I walked into a boardroom, I don’t know if I told you this story yet, of a major airline that’s based here in Hawaii. A friend of mine set up the meeting and I said, listen, I don’t care how great your culture is or isn’t, if we make your workplace more like a playground, I can guarantee you results. Now, back then, I didn’t necessarily know what those programs would look like like we do today, but I just, I went in, you know, totally confident.

Steve Rix:
I was laughed out of the boardroom in the first 10 minutes. One of my dear friends who’s made it big, he sold his telehealth company for, I don’t know, $150 million. He’s like, Steve, you’re too talented to waste your time on this. And my dad, before he passed away, said, I love you, son, but you’re gone off your rocker. And, you know, to have a vision to literally design workplaces so that the leaders have tools to ensure everybody’s as excited to show up on Monday morning as they are to leave on a Friday night. That became our mission. Happy, playful humans in the workplace. And the progress has taken lots of iterations.

Steve Rix:
If any of your audience has ever read the book the Lean Startup, one of my favorite words in that book is pivot. Boy, you know, I was like, well, that didn’t work. Try something else. Because you have to learn to speak a language. That’s what the companies need. And you have to help prepare them so that they can see great change quickly, but you have to be ready for that. And with the pandemic and the massive shift in the future of work already, it’s been, I would say, the number one reason why we’re currently working with or engaged in working with the clients we have today is the necessity of the pain they see in the workplace with employees that they have not been able to solve. So I’d like to think people just come to us because they say it makes sense.

Steve Rix:
Maybe that’ll happen in the future. But right now we’re working with companies who have low morale, high levels of burnout, big time attrition, and I’d like to say, horrible engagement. But that’s been the case for 40 years anyway. Right. So it’s just, it’s just the cherry on top of a, of a pie that’s just a mess for these guys. So hopefully that kind of gives you a little flavor of how we’ve gotten to where we’re at.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Yeah. So real quick question, do.

Steve Rix:
And by the way, one other thing. It wouldn’t. If I, if I had the ability to pan out my living room, you’d see toys everywhere. Not because I play with toys every day, but because they become physical icons or prompters to lift the spirit, fuel the emotions, clear the mind, and create more imagination. So there’s a lot of different things.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
I appreciate you saying that. In the LEGO series Play methodology, which I told you we’re working through, there’s studies that show that when you use your hands to think and play, you open up 80% more of your brain power, which is phenomenal. Like 80%, that’s, that’s, that’s a huge number.

Steve Rix:
That’s huge.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
And so when I use my hands, it is not, it can be any toys, it can be anything that you’re physically playing with or creating models with that opens up that brain power. So how is, yeah, how integrating play into the workplace has an impact on your approach to leadership?

Steve Rix:
Well, it’s everything really. When I think about most of my career, I guess really all of it has been in some element of leadership. And as a younger entrepreneur like you, I did all the standard, predictable things, Maxwell’s 21, laws of leadership, and all these different, check them all the boxes, I did it. However, what Play has done is it’s helped me strengthen my empathy muscle. And people really don’t think about empathy in the workplace, which is part of the problem. So how it affects my approach to leadership is literally I’ve come up with a half dozen questions that I ask leaders of companies and generally they don’t know the answers. And that’s on purpose. Right.

Steve Rix:
Like, because I want to help Meet them at the dead end of their own future and offer them a different way. So when we meet with leaders, when I lead, everything has to have a feeling of fun. Even in our partners meeting on a weekly basis, we’ve often thought about recording them and putting them out on the Internet just so people can see how goofy they are, but how effective they are. So it’s affected me a lot.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
So when companies come to you and say, we have low morale, we need your help, how do you get yours, I mean, how do they find your customers?

Steve Rix:
Okay, yeah, I, I wish, I wish that was the case so far. And just to give a little framework, over 11 years ago we started the company, but two and a half of those years were all research and development. So we just started developing our pipeline for sales in the spring of this year. And right now we have about 60 companies somewhere in discussion. All 60 of those have come to us through strong referral networks by myself or other partners. And we’ve been scratching our heads saying what is the best way to get this message to the right audience? And with the exception of something we’ve changed since I’ve talked to you last that we’re really excited about, it’s hard to give you a strong demographic. Yeah, the psychographic I can give you hands down is we’re looking for leaders who. And so business owners, C suite leaders, whatever it is, depending on the size of the company, who genuinely practice the care of their employees.

Steve Rix:
Like when we talk to them about, you know, daily practices, they’re like, yep, I do those things. So we kind of screen companies because if they’re not in the place where they’re already invested in the human’s well being at work, not just the job description, then that’s a, that’s an uphill battle that I don’t need to face right now because there’s, well, 60 is not a lot, but it’s a great start and I suspect we’ll find a lot more as we go because the more we get into this cycle of work changing, the more, I want to say, scary but uncertain it is. And with no one jumping up and down saying, here’s the answer, we’ve really taken great care to suggest that we don’t even have the answer for them. We simply have a process that will help them define their own answer.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Yeah, and I think what you said is you don’t have the answer. I don’t think any company should claim that they have the answer because we don’t know. Once we open up the Option of play. There can be all kinds of responses to that that are very meaningful and helpful. But it may not look like the box that maybe a leader is expecting to see.

Steve Rix:
For us, it’s not just play, it’s experimenting with it. And the reason why experimenting is so important is that it wakes up in the brain. If I suppose something to be possible now, I’m going to pay attention to it once I experiment with it. And what’s the big problem in the workplace today? Most employees don’t pay attention. That’s why there’s low engagement. So I would say it’s not just play, it’s experimenting with it.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
What trends do you see shaping the future of play in the workplace?

Steve Rix:
That’s a great question. No one’s ever asked me that. My immediate answer is I don’t see too many trends yet because most people are still kind of like when we talk the very first time, they’re looking at it as like a one off, let me do this Lego thing or let me do a special fun event and hoping that perhaps that appeases the natives. It’s like, okay, we fixed everything, right? I will say this. One of the trends that we’re seeing is that people are at least curious based on a couple simple things that we’ve developed. We have a two, a five and a seven minute game experience or experiences that we’ve designed that can be done on a phone or on a computer. And we’ve had thousands of people do that the last two and a half years. And I think maybe once or twice in the beginning, not recently, somebody people would say, I don’t get it.

Steve Rix:
But today people are like, that game was cool. And before we can even go send it to them or sit with them and talk about it, they’re sharing it with other people. So I think being able to connect dots for people is the biggest trend right now. Just like what you said with tactile play. Right. It increases things by 80%. I think there’s going to have to be a lot of hand holding early on until people have that personal transformative moment. And our job is to do that with leaders so that then they can build that culture within their organization.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Absolutely. And I appreciate you saying that, that it’s not just a one off experience, but you know, your company helps them be able to embrace that change and to continue to make changes moving forward. It’s not just here and done. We’re going to arm you with the tools to continue to play later, to be playful.

Steve Rix:
Yeah, I think I told you this before. Oftentimes people said, are you advocating for recess? And I was like, no, actually, I mean, if you want and you can still be productive, good for you. But, like, the number one problem that I’ve heard repeatedly is where are we going to find the time for that? Right. And so everything we do in the training of leaders is designed in such a way that it doesn’t have to take a half day workshop or, you know, three hours a week. Now, we can do those things to cement and, and solidify experiences. But the beauty of play, as you mentioned earlier, is that it doesn’t have to be a toy. I mean, it could be a rock, right? It could be this pen. Right? I mean, anything.

Steve Rix:
And so when people start to understand that, they have these moments while they’re working, and then their brain will start tagging, oh, I had this problem. I did this. That was playful. The problem went away. Does it make sense?

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Yep. I like it. How about the culture within Play Lab? How do you make sure that everybody enjoys their work and that they can, you know, feel good about contributing? What does that look like for y’?

Steve Rix:
All? Well, to start with, one of the things that’s very interesting to us is this, this company, in the form that it takes now, was assembled, meaning the rest of the team, during the pandemic. I have two about to be three active partners in the company and maybe a half dozen, like, independent contractors working for us in these early stages. So about 10 of us, and most of us have never met in person. Interesting. Right. And so what we use to build culture is taking on new information just from. We pick a book a month to go through, we talk about it every month. One of the members is responsible for coming up with a brand new experiment.

Steve Rix:
We experiment with play, fill in the blank, and then present it to the group. And generally speaking, right now, it’s amazing to me how close we are, like as a family. It’s just. It’s quite remarkable. And I think that old expression, the family that plays together stays together, we’ve kind of applied that to the company that plays together stays together. Right. So that’s kind of where we’re at today. Although I will tell you, since I saw you last, our current CFO has moved on to another operation.

Steve Rix:
So it is no longer current, and we’ve identified a new one. However, you can’t start for another three weeks. And it’s been crazy the last two months because we’re bringing on new people. People are leaving, and that happens a lot in a startup. But I think we finally have the foundation that is poured and really excited about what the remainder of this year does as we launch a really exciting product here in September.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
That’s exciting. I didn’t know you had that coming or I would have asked more questions about it.

Steve Rix:
Well, I can tell you about it because it’s really simple.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Yeah, please, I’d love to hear.

Steve Rix:
And you know, it’s kind of funny. I was on vacation for a couple weeks and it hit me out on vacation, I was like, why didn’t I think of this before? And just the evolution of my own thoughts. But I’m sure you’re familiar with employee engagement surveys. Yeah. And I’ve yet to meet anyone who honestly says these are really effective. Fact is, most of the people I talk to say their participation rate is horrible. And they’re not even certain of the data they get from the participation rate. We’re working with a restaurant that has 28 locations, 1600 employees, and only, I think 31% of the people in the company even filled out the survey.

Steve Rix:
And what is that whole survey for anyway? To put a temperature on your employee base. Right. So we have been designing something called the Playground Live. It has lived now for two and a half years in test mode and reiteration. We’ve had several paying clients with it. And what it does is in one hour, you literally play a whole bunch of games virtually with the employee base. What it does is give us over 40 unique data points that you could never get in an employee engagement survey. Because it’s a direct question.

Steve Rix:
Right. These are things that when you get people in a playful state, they feel safe, they’re more authentic and therefore it’s easier for them to share. So when that happened, we thought, yeah, this will be our lead in. We’ll take that information to leaders and say, here’s your coming storm, here’s the things you can count on, and here’s the thing in the middle called don’t know yet. And I thought, why aren’t we advertising this as the best thing in the world for employee engagement surveys? Because I looked. Over a billion dollars is being spent this year on third party companies administering very ineffective tools. So that’s the kind of product launch and it’s literally fun. It’s like a murder mystery.

Steve Rix:
It’s who stole the play from the workplace and we’ve got paid actors. And yeah, the redesign on it’s really exciting and I can’t wait for it to be out. Once it’s out, I’ll share it with you.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
I love that. That’s amazing. Thank you for sharing. It’s exciting stuff. What specific activities or strategies does Play Lab use to ensure that fun and productivity go hand in hand?

Steve Rix:
That’s a great question, and it’s one that for the better portion of 10 years, has been in the back of my mind. And as we’ve gotten closer to these new services and experiences being provided, that’s the number one thing we’ve been working to solve for. So when we meet with a company, we ask them a series of questions about things that matter. Service, productivity, engagement, all the regular stuff. But from company to company, depending on what industry you’re in, there are nuances to that. So we like to find out what it is they want to measure. And, you know, they wouldn’t want to hear this, but I’m not naming any companies. Unfortunately, a lot of them aren’t measuring anything right.

Steve Rix:
Aside from the balance sheet. So the first thing we suggest to them is you have to be able to be aware of human behavior, right? Like I walk to work. Well, I’m not dating anyone now, but if I walked into work and I was dating someone or married again and I just found out it wasn’t going to work, how well am I going to work on that day? Not very well, unless I feel the psychological safety to dump it on my supervisor and then breathe. Right. And fill in the blank with whatever scenario you want. This whole concept of making room for play and attaching it to productivity, learning how to measure what psychological safety really means. And even though there’s a portion of our current country that’s really big on wiping away dei, we bake all that into it because play is the most socially conscious state of being. I’m very aware of my surroundings and other people, and it’s inclusive.

Steve Rix:
And when I take that attitude into the workplace, it can be measured. So then what we do is after they go through the playground live, we fine tune what the leaders will be working on with their individuals. Because if you ask a manager today how much he manages, he’s going to say, not much because I’m busy putting out fires, right? So one of the great things about play is it requires participation, right? Like, I have to step into it. And so when a human being feels like they have choices at work, that changes the dynamic. And in the past, they’d say, well, it’s just an open door policy. I go in and say my piece. Well, as a company creates a culture that says, here’s an idea, let’s throw it against the wall. Let’s see if it sticks.

Steve Rix:
And that kind of stuff is happening frequently now. You have a means to measure the propensity for people staying or going. Two years ago, a large HR company in North Carolina, whose name I’ve since forgotten, did a survey. 50,000 American workers, 57% of them said they have one foot out the door where they’re at. And that problem is probably increasing. So one of the ways you make it go away is whatever exercises you’re doing with play, you tag human awareness. Oh, he’s happier all the time. Oh, that person’s talking more.

Steve Rix:
And then of course, the really cool thing is that playing by its nature actually speeds things up. So to get more done in less time is always a game changer.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
So you shared with me a video of y’all doing some work with the company and I was marveled in at one point, you’re asking questions of what is the opposite of I’m going to say a word and you say the opposite of that word. And some of the answers made a lot of sense. And some of the answers, people answered different responses. What does that activity do? Is it just to open people up a little bit or give them a chance to speak or.

Steve Rix:
So the playground live is the only portion of our current business model where Play Lab interacts with the employee populace. The rest of what we do is with leaders. So what it does is different from person to person. But one of the things we reinforce in the activity itself and in the follow up report we give to companies is, hey, look, your people shined when doing this activity. You may remember that one of them is doing some drawings of things, if that, if that’s the one you saw. And it was fascinating to me that we had 100% of the audience draw their answers when they said, what’s the biggest thing they’re afraid of at work? What’s the best way to describe their culture? And what’s their superhero power? If we had asked that question and asked for people to give audible responses, we would suspect based on the other audible responses we got, that only 20% would have done that. What does that tell us? There is a willingness to contribute, but there’s a hesitation to be heard. And when we talk to the single owner of that particular business, and I’ve come to figure this out about him, he’s a very strong personality.

Steve Rix:
He’s not a control freak. He just walks in the room and it takes over. And so one of the first things we told him is you have got to give space for people to Lead if you truly want to expand your business. So you always have to be the last to speak and the first to ask questions to get other people to speak because. And that’s just one of many things that comes from this. And it’s really quite magical because every time I tell the story I scratch my head and say, how come we didn’t think of all this stuff sooner? It’s the shortcut to everything that’s difficult in the workplace.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Yeah. What are some future fun initiatives that Play Lab, you mentioned what’s coming in September? Are y’ all looking for anything else in the future that’s coming up? Any big activities for y’ all for other companies?

Steve Rix:
We have to look at our CRM. I think it’s four or five national companies that we are looking at potentially doing some collaboration with our tools where maybe they’re white labeled or they’re at least added to the product lines of these companies. And we facilitate. We’re also looking in probably spring of next year to do a pretty significant speaking tour where we pay for like 10 major cities and invite people to come out for an invitation only type roundtable, if you will. There’ll be more in a roundtable because of our budget, we’re going to invite 100 people in each major city, but it’ll be a think tank for sure. The thing I’m looking most forward to is beginning to beta test the leadership modules that have been created around Play. Because there are literally hundreds of ways to experiment to solve all the work problems. We’ve begun to catalog those and yet we don’t give them out to people for the sole purpose so that they can go create their own and then have these to facilitate it.

Steve Rix:
But we know that time is the biggest, you know, killer of initiatives. So I hope by the end of next year we’ll be launching version one of all these leadership tools and experiences that we’ve built over the last 10 years in a simple, highly engaging, I guess you’d call it app or just a technology based tool. And we partnered with a company that we’re really excited about and I’m not the guy to talk about it because as you saw today, I’m not a techie, but I’m literally the company’s motto is we use technology. And she showed me when she had a phone so that when they look down, it forces them to look up and connect with others. I was like, that’s cool because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve got patience for Angry Birds and Candy Crush and all these silly things, and I’ve never opened one of them. But my feeling is the people are playing that stuff. They can. They can get into our gamified technology for a fraction of the time and get a whole lot of worth out of it.

Steve Rix:
So, yeah, we’ve got a couple cool things in the works.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
That’s awesome. I love it. So, two questions before you wrap up. One is, when was the last time you played with Legos? You can see it’s a big passion of mine. What about you?

Steve Rix:
I played with Legos almost daily during the pandemic, but that’s because I was living out of a suitcase all over the mainland because there was no work here. And when I left, I gave those Legos to somebody who had kinetic sand. We did a trade. And do you know what kinetic sand is?

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
I do, yes.

Steve Rix:
I, of course, had no idea what it was. And when I put that stuff in my hand, I was like, okay, Legos can take a rest. Let’s go play with kinetic sand. Well, I guess it’s been about four years since I played with Legos.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Awesome. I love it. And you shared lots of things that are in your tool bag when you do your work and when you work with customers and when you work with your team. What’s one tool that you can share with our audience today that you encourage them to take with them? After our conversation, let me break it.

Steve Rix:
Down into three ways for them to go: Find the best tool for them, and then I’ll give you one. So we learn kinesthetically by what we touch tactically. Right. Audibly by what we hear and visually. And it’s safe to say that that’s how we play as well. So I would say to a person looking to find their go to tool, ask yourself of those three categories, Are you a touch it, feel it? Have you heard of it? Have you seen it? I happen to be in touch with it, I feel like that kind of guy. And my number one tool is a multicolored plastic slinky. I saw it during the pandemic.

Steve Rix:
I was like, I gotta have that. Just. Because it looked cool. And I put it in my hands. And Jolynn, all of a sudden I was like, wow. Like, it just opens my mind in a way that other tools don’t. And. And here’s why it’s so effective.

Steve Rix:
It’s the only darn reason I have it. So when I pick it up, it’s a function of my mind. And And the problem with traditional tools, you know, you got all these laws of leadership and Tony Robbins this and Wayne Dwyer that. Who the heck can remember all that stuff? So I know that if I get stuck or I need to see things differently because you can manipulate a Slinky, I just pick it up and play with it for 10 minutes and it gets me back on track mentally. I’ll also tell you if I just need a brain break, I blow bubbles. I love bubbles because it just puts me in a state of laughter.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Yes. So many things that you just said. I completely agree that we all learn differently. So find the way that you learn the best and tap into that. Having toys available when you get stuck. And it can be any. It can be Slinky, it can be Legos, it can be anything. Play doh.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
If you want it to be whatever. But have that available to you so that when you do get stuck at work or when you do get stuck on a project, you can play and sometimes work through some of those obstacles. So thank you so much. You’ve shared so much today that I really do appreciate our audience. Can find you on your [email protected] you’re on LinkedIn. Steve Rix. R A X.

Steve Rix:
Steve. My email address is Steven Experiment with Play.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Yes, Experiment with Play. Got it. If you can’t find Steve on LinkedIn, you can find him through me because we’ve been connected for a while. Steve, thank you so much for your time today. You are phenomenal. I love what you’re doing. I can’t wait to see what you guys accomplish in the next year.

Steve Rix:
Thanks for having me.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Thanks, Steve. Have a great day. Bye, everybody. We’ll see you next time.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
That’s a wrap on another episode of Play for Performance. I hope today’s conversation sparked some ideas for how you can bring more joy and engagement into your workplace. Remember, transforming workplace culture doesn’t happen overnight, but every small step toward play and connection makes a difference. Try one thing we discussed today, even something small, and see what happens. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who could use a little more play in their professional life. And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss our weekly conversations with incredible guests who are changing the game of workplace engagement. Have a guest suggestion or want to share your own Play at Work story? Reach out to me at [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn. I love hearing from you.

Jolynn Ledgerwood:
Until next week, keep playing, keep performing. And remember, work doesn’t have to be taken seriously to be serious. This has been played for performance. I’m Jolynn Ledgerwood, and I’ll see you next.