31. Kristi Herold: Building Community Through Sports and Play
EPISODE 31
This conversation with Kristi Herold illustrates how play can be a transformative force in both personal and professional realms. With insights into her journey, the evolution of JAM, and the impact of recreational play on workplace culture, this episode offers valuable lessons on community and joy in entrepreneurship.
Catch the Conversation
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Kristi Herold is the founder and CEO of JAM, a multi-million-dollar global business that has connected millions of people through play since its inception as one of the largest adult recreational sports leagues in the world. The JAM team has produced and delivered over 4000 playful corporate events, in over 30 countries since the summer of 2020 and the JAM team consults organizations helping them integrate fun and play into their “workPLAYce culture”. JAM has been awarded “Canada’s Most Admired Culture Award,” and certified as “Great Places to Work – Canada” multiple times.
Kristi's team is offering Figure 8listeners a copy of her PLAYbook PDF and 25% off a JAM event. Get yours here! -
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Julie: 0:04
Welcome to Figure Eight, where we feature inspiring stories of women entrepreneurs who have grown their businesses to seven and eight figures revenue. If you're in the mix of growing a bigger business, these stories are for you. Join us as we explore where the tough spots are, how to overcome them and how to prepare yourself for the next portion of the climb. I'm your host, julie Ellis. I'm an author, entrepreneur and a growth and leadership coach who co-founded, grew and exited an eight-figure business. This led me to exploring why some women achieve great things, and that led to my book Big, gorgeous Goals. Let's explore the systems, processes and people that help us grow our businesses to new heights. If you're interested in growing your business, this podcast will help. Now let's get going.
Julie: 1:04
Hello and welcome to this episode of Figure Eight. Today I have Kristi Herold with me, the founder and CEO of JAM, and Kristi helps people connect through play and she also helps companies unlock profit through play. Her vision is to get one million people playing annually. JAM is one of the world's largest adult recreational sports league providers, as well as her team of playmakers who help corporate cultures thrive. She also has authored a book abo ut it, It Pays to PLAY- How Play Improves Business Culture. She consults companies on creating thriving workplace cultures and is a sought-after speaker delivering on important messages about the power of play. So today I am interested to talk to you, Kristi, and welcome to the podcast.
Kristi: 1:56
Thanks for having me, Julie. I'm excited to be here, looking forward to our chat.
Julie: 1:59
Yeah, me too. I'm so interested about how you came to work in the world of play.
Kristi: 2:07
Oh, it's so funny how you can connect the dots with hindsight. Now, you know, in my 50s I can look back and it seems so obvious to me. But you know, when I first started doing it it wasn't that obvious. So I had grown up in Sudbury, went to high school in Sudbury, Ontario, just four hours north of Toronto, and then I went off to Queen's University in Kingston and then I moved to Toronto after university. So I'm like a small town girl living in the big city and I was looking to meet people and I thought, you know, I was a pretty good athlete, I had grown up as a competitive ski racer and I thought maybe I could join a soccer league or something to meet people. And when I started looking into soccer leagues they were all competitive women's leagues, much more, you know, intense than something I would want to do or could handle. And then I'd heard about these adult recreational sports leagues, these sport and social clubs in Chicago and I'd heard about one in San Francisco and I thought, hey, maybe this is something I could try and start in Toronto, because I'd always been an entrepreneur, I'd always done little businesses. All through high school, through university, I ran a couple of businesses while I was in university. So I knew I wanted to be my own boss and run my own business, as my dad had done, and so I decided to start what was initially called the Toronto Sport and Social Club. It's now JAM Sports and, yeah, it was adult rec sports, started off with basketball, soccer, beach volleyball, ultimate Frisbee and flag football and had 52 teams that very first season in July, or I guess it was May of 1996. And now, you know, today we'll have we'll have over 15,000 teams play in a huge variety of leagues in 25 different cities in Canada, the US. You know, 29 years later, we're coming up to the 29th anniversary soon. So, um, that's, that's kind of why I started it.
Kristi: 3:54
But when I say connecting the dots seems obvious in hindsight I've really realized I am very passionate about building community and connecting people, whether it's, you know, starting I'm the one who starts the book clubs with my friends. I started a social group in high school the social committee and I would run scavenger hunts and little murder mysteries and stuff to raise money for charities. In high school I started a community musical theater group that's now turned into three musical theater groups in the mid-2000s. Um, and produce musical theater, like connecting people through playing on stage, and and I, you know, happen to live in Costa Rica now and I happen to be the tournament director for the tennis club running the tournaments here like I just love it's, I just seem to naturally like to organize people to connect through play, so it is kind of funny. Um, it seems obvious to me that that's just what I love to do, so it's what I've made my work, my career work doing.
Julie: 4:49
Yeah, and it's so interesting, I think, to have had so long in your business because we talked about there being sort of the three kind of distinct eras of how you've worked in the business from the time that you started it and do you want to tell me about those, Because I think they sort of neatly fall into 10 year chunks which is always interesting, how that can happen.
Kristi: 5:13
Yeah, for sure. Actually, it's funny you bring this up because I just created a LinkedIn post for tomorrow talking about that, because I was getting all these messages this week like congratulations on your 29 years and I was like, wow, it's been 29 years and so I was speaking, I just created a post about this. But so the first 10 years was I started the business in 96 be able to go to my I also had three children during that time and I wanted to be there to take kids to school events and go on field trips with them and I wanted to be involved in their lives and so I didn't want to be traveling. So I was very focused on this lifestyle business, built a great team, had about probably 10 people back then, maybe not even maybe eight or 10 people in that period of time, and we grew the business organically and it was lovely. By 2006, I was like, okay, my kids are a bit older, they're, they're out of diapers. I want to be able to do things with them. So I stepped back and let let the team really run the day to day operations. And it continued with slow, steady growth and I started. I started that's when I started the community musical theater group raising money for charity, and I was producing musical theater for fun and really around a lot for my kids, played a lot of tennis, took a lot of time off.
Kristi: 6:33
That was sort of 2006 to 2016, and by 2016 I was very bored, needed a big change, thought about selling the business at that time and then I decided to really think about what's the legacy I want to leave and what brings me the most joy, and it was at that time that I got the awareness. Well, what actually brings me the most joy is seeing people playing. Because of the work I do, when I see people playing softball or soccer or beach volleyball, it actually fills me with so much joy. Like to this day, my husband will tell you I'll be like pull over, you know we're driving by Lamport stadium. I want to stop and see the people playing and I get out of my car and I go and talk to them and I ask them what do they love? And I, it just makes me really happy. So at that time in 2016, I was like why would I sell this? Why don't I instead grow this? And I think we had probably about 50, 60,000 people playing annually at that time and I wrote down the number 1 million people playing.
Kristi: 7:28
That would be a legacy I would love to leave, and I didn't know how I was going to do it at that point in time. But I realized after sort of thinking more deeply about it, I was going to have to do it through mergers and acquisitions versus organic or franchising, and I didn't know what that meant. I, you know, I took commerce at Queen's but didn't pay a lot of attention in the finance classes and and so spent a good year meeting with people to learn what does it mean to do an acquisition? How do I do that? What's the strategy of a roll up Like? How does this all work? And so then, in 2017, did our first acquisition, and between 2017 and the start of 2020, had done nine acquisitions of other sports leagues in different cities and had really started to scale.
Kristi: 8:10
When the pandemic hit, that felt like a bit of a frying pan to the face moment completely shut us down. The mandates in Canada were really, really harsh, as you'll probably remember, and we lost 18 months of revenue at that time. And then we started to survive, decided to do corporate team building events, we started running virtual team building events for companies and we did over a million in revenue in that first year running corporate team building for companies all around the world. So it definitely helped us cover some costs and survive the pandemic. And then now you know the pandemic is behind us.
Kristi: 8:48
Finally, it was a good three to four years that it really hit us hard. We've done three more acquisitions of sports leagues. We now have the corporate business is virtual as well as in-person events and we do those all across North America and I wrote the book it Pays to Play how Play Improves Business Culture because of the learning I got from the pandemic and the corporate business that we had built. And we rebranded the whole organization to be called jam. So we have jam sports and jam corporate and it's all about. Our mission is connecting people through play and and, like you said, hopefully we'll get a million people playing every year at some point.
Julie: 9:27
It'll take us a while, but we're we're getting closer and closer, one day at a time yeah, well, I do feel like um, that the real definition, I think, when people say, Julie, you wrote Big Gorgeous Goals, about people who set big goals and want to leave big legacies. What is a big, gorgeous goal like? And I think 1 million people playing is one of those goals. You didn't know how you were going to do it. You didn't know how you would get there. Did you have the knowledge, the people, the money, all of those goals Like? You didn't know how you were going to do it. You didn't know how you would get there. Would you, did you have the knowledge, the people, the money, all of those different things? But you knew that that was where you wanted to get to? Yeah, and then that informs you know all the way down to, like the little steps that you start taking every single day.
Kristi: 10:08
Exactly, and it just feels like such a good legacy because I know that with every one person, person that plays in our leagues, we're changing their lives in a positive way. When they go out and play a soccer game or beach volleyball game and they they meet a new friend, or they feel better physically because they got that exercise, or they're socializing with their roommates from university who they don't get to see every day anymore they get to see them only once a week at their games or where they're getting to know a co-worker better. They go home a happier boyfriend or girlfriend or a happier spouse. They go to work the next day a happier employee. So it's not just it's impacting each individual's lives positively and it's creating this very positive ripple effect. And so I thought you know, I know we've touched over probably close to 3 million lives since inception, but I want to be touching. Getting a million people playing every single year would just be. That would be really cool. It definitely feels like a big, gorgeous goal for sure.
Julie: 11:03
Definitely oh, and I can't wait to see you chasing it. You know, now that we have been introduced, and I know more about your business, because I think it's so interesting that you have grown so much by acquisition you know, I think people often do an acquisition here or there, or they in fact are able to sell their own business, like I did. But you know the tune of sort of a dozen acquisitions that you've completed, let alone any that you may have decided weren't quite the right fit. I mean, that's a big undertaking.
Kristi: 11:39
That's kind of been my full-time focus for the last number of years. I'm not really as involved in the day-to-day operations. That tends to be where I focus. But you're right, it is. It's a lot, and every time we do a deal then it's a lot for our team to integrate. The last one we did was we purchased the atlanta sport and social club in march. Um, and it's it's been really every single one that the thing to remember with acquisitions is they're all really unique. There's as much as you sort of think you have your system, well, then you do a new one and you're like well, that system's not exactly going to work here. Like you, you have to bob and weave. Every single one has been unique. So you can't. Actually you can, you can learn the way, where to prioritize the integration, etc. But, um, but everyone is different and comes with its own, its own unique challenges and opportunities, and you, you know positive things.
Julie: 12:34
So yeah, well, and even thinking about how do you listen to understand where they might be doing things better than you?
Kristi: 12:42
Oh, absolutely.
Julie: 12:42
What are your re to improve across your whole organization?
Kristi: 12:47
Yes, and I'm a big, I mean I make that really clear to our entire team. Like, just because we're big doesn't mean we're better. Always right, we can learn from. In fact, I use those words with my team yesterday. I was like, hey, just cause we're big doesn't mean we're better. Like we got to listen, to look, look and pay attention to what are others doing, cause that's how we're going to get better is learn from others constantly.
Kristi: 13:08
And whether it doesn't matter what size, lots of people have great ideas out there. So yeah, and so I love when we do integrations to sort of take the best of both worlds and try, and you know, get the best practices going. And also there's some regional specific things. You know you can't. Really curling isn't going to fly necessarily in Atlanta, right. So it may, though maybe we'll introduce it. Like, and floor hockey, which is so popular in Ontario, isn't going to be that popular in California necessarily, right? So we learn. And sports like kickball we didn't used to run kickball in Ontario until after we did our acquisition in Michigan, and kickball is huge in Michigan. We're like, why aren't we doing that? And now we're doing that here. You know, we did an acquisition in Niagara and Cornhole was really big there. So we've we're started getting Cornhole going in other regions now, so there's lots of good learning that comes both, both ways, for sure.
Julie: 14:08
Right. And then you're expanding the business, not only from you know, bolting on these acquisitions, but also expanding offerings within each geography that you have already.
Kristi: 14:18
Exactly, yeah, exactly. And and we also, you know, I realized when you were sharing my bio that you we say that we were one of year and a half ago included youth leagues, and we actually just opened our very first youth leagues in Kitchener-Waterloo because we run adult leagues in Kitchener-Waterloo. So we're taking our youth learning from Niagara that we acquired and we're putting that into place. So you're totally right, Like that's exactly it, and some of it will work well and some of it won't, but we're learning as we go and you know, it's stuff that we maybe wouldn't have tried had we not done these acquisitions. So it's been really a lot of great learning with the growth that we're getting.
Julie: 15:05
Yeah, oh, that's really, really interesting. And so you mentioned that you are really sort of out of the operations and working a lot in the acquisitions and the strategy pieces of the business. How do you kind of balance that? Have you used a system like, did you use EOS or any of the sort of different ways, or is it just sort of been something that you naturally fall into, that you are more the idea, strategy, big vision person and you need someone to look after all the little pieces of of making the wheels turn smoothly?
Kristi: 15:41
Great question.
Kristi: 15:42
So, yes, we use EOS. We've been using EOS, uh, since 2013 I think, if I'm not mistaken. An, you're an early one, then an early adopter for sure, um and um, and I am finding, as we've gotten EOS to a certain size, like that us has has definitely strengths, um, but it's almost like we are a little bit that's sort of what we were touching on earlier that some of the processes that we use to get to a certain size don't always keep working, um. But so you know, we're constantly looking and trying EOS improve and even when we started eos we didn't take EOS verbatim, like as an example. Eos is about breaking things into 90-day chunks. Our business is very seasonal. We sort of say we have three seasons a year, not four. We call the winter is four months, and then spring and summer is four months, and then our fall is four months, and those are three distinct seasons for us. And so we broke our EOS rocks into these 120 day chunks. That just worked better for us, you know. So we're sort of always trying to take what works and leave the rest.
Kristi: 16:48
n helpful and I think just naturally because my business partner, rob, who I've worked with since 1999, he is definitely more the integrator and the the um operations guy. He's kind of our COO. Uh, he focuses on the day to day. And I think when I try and get involved in the day to day, um, sometimes it goes well and other times I just make a mess of things and annoy the heck out of my team. So, um, you know, sometimes they like it when I just leave them alone. Probably they prefer that. Um, so I dab, I dab, I dabble right now I'm probably more mostly involved in the day-to-day on the corporate side, but not even so much of the day-to-day. It is more of the bigger picture planning and how are we going to grow and, and, um, that kind of thing. I just naturally seem to fall there yeah, the, uh, the like..
Julie: 17:39
Oh, she came through, she's rocking the boat again like the. This sort of like the balance between the not opening the doors to share the vision and the ideas that you have for what's possible for the business, because I still think that's got to be incredibly important for the team's sort of connectedness to the vision and the motivation to really, you know, reach for those stars and what you're trying to do so we do a vision every three years.
Kristi: 18:06
So I actually just shared the vision for 2027 at Jamboree. Once a year, we have Jamboree and that's our annual conference where we bring our whole team together for a few days of learning and playing and and so I shared the 2027 vision and now I actually have to take the vision that I shared and people were like everyone loved it, the feedback was great and they're excited by it. But now I have to actually take it and break it down into I always put it on a mouse pad, like the high level onto a mouse pad, so it's always top, front and center for everyone. So mouse pad is in the works right now and then really break it down into these 120 day chunks to sort of go how are we going to achieve this vision? And it's amazing how well it works.
Kristi: 18:47
Like I remember from my 2019 vision, part of the 2019 vision was that we were going to launch our own charitable foundation. Part of the 2019 vision was that we were going to launch our own charitable foundation and we it was the last rock session where we are choosing our rocks and I was looking at all the things that we had accomplished, which was amazing in the last three years. But one thing was still this charitable foundation hadn't gotten started yet, and so it was that quarter because we had it really broken down. We use a. We sort of break it into our own like checklist spreadsheet almost.
Kristi: 19:18
We got Keep Playing Kids launched in December of 2019. It actually had to get parked because of the pandemic, but it relaunched again. We actually got kids playing this past year, which is amazing and so exciting that so 1% of our revenues is getting underserved children the opportunity to play sports for free. That's what Keep Playing Kids is. But had we not had that as part of a three-year vision, and we had we not mapped out that three-year vision into these 120-day chunks, it wouldn't have happened. Right, it would have been this shiny, happy idea.
Julie: 19:50
But that always somehow sat in a parking lot, never actually getting going.
Kristi: 19:55
But it was really important to me.
Kristi: 19:56
I was like we said we were going to make this happen, like we have to make it happen now and we got it. We got it done and now we really have kids playing because of it and it feels amazing to see like the full circle of being able to help give back from the work we're doing is awesome, so powerful stuff.
Kristi: 20:14
Having those goals and visions laid out and and shared with the team for sure.
Julie: 20:19
Yeah, and the idea of bringing the big, big, big things into a place where suddenly you're like, oh, we kind of act, we actually have a deadline for that. Now it's time, because that deadline is coming and we haven't made the progress we needed to, so we gotta go.
Kristi: 20:35
Yeah yeah, exactly, and having the focus, we do see we call it a season finals. Three times a year we, we meet, the leadership team meets and chooses sort of the company rocks and then the departmental teams choose their rocks um, you know they're big projects that they're going to work on and and then at the end of the season we reflect on how did, how did it go, which ones did? Do we get all done and what's the? What are the ones we've chosen for the next, the next 120 days, and um, it's really powerful to continue sort of seeing the, the growth and traction that's happening and gives the team real buy-in to see cross-departmentally what everyone's working on as well.
Julie: 21:15
e I'm imagining that at a play company you have a focus on culture and what the work environment is like. Tell me what that journey has been like for you.
Kristi: 21:26
It's it's sort of funny, like I guess I just like to have fun. I really loved it. I like to laugh. I'm nothing makes me happier than a good laugh, I mean, right, so, and I feel like if I'm going to spend all my time working with people, I want to be able to work with people I can laugh with. And so I think, right out, right out of the start, you know, back in the in the 90s, I just had a a sense of wanting to work with smart people and hard-working people, but people that also like to have fun and um, so our culture has always had that ingrained within it. But we've really, I mean, we really have a lot of great initiatives. Some have been around for for, like, we celebrate, we know how to celebrate, we believe in celebrating and it doesn't have to cost a lot. Like, a lot of these initiatives don't have to cost a lot. We celebrate shout-outs, like, with a shout-out channel, every day you'll see two, three, five shout-outs going off, where someone's giving someone a shout-out for something usually centered around a core value, and it's just a public shout out in a channel so you can see other great work being done by your team.
Kristi: 22:35
We celebrate anniversaries, so when someone hits their one year mark with us, they get their. They're officially drafted to our team and they get their veterans jersey. It's a hockey jersey that says jam on the front and their number is the year they started with us. So I'm a 96, you know Rob's a 99. Like, we've got people you know and if you don't have your veterans jersey, you're considered a rookie. Until you get your one year mark, you, you have a, you get a rookie hoodie and you've got your jam hoodie. That's so when we take team photos, anyone in a hoodie is a rookie and anyone in the hockey j ersey is a veteran little things like that.
Kristi: 23:10
Um, you know, know, we celebrate, we start every meeting we do. If you've got four people or more in a meeting, we we call it, you press play to start, and so whoever's leading the meeting takes three minutes to have a playful connection. You might play a little game, you might tell a riddle, you might share a joke, ask a funny question, of everybody. It's just a playful interaction that gets everyone sort of feeling friendly and getting to know each other as friends. And then you land and you're like okay, let's go, we're let's get to work and you've had a laugh and um, and so it's just. Those kinds of things are woven into our culture naturally, like because we we believe in it so much.
Kristi: 23:52
But then we have things like book club that every two months I lead book club and it's an optional um thing for people. If you're coming to book club, they and you have read the book. We pay for the book um and we have a great discussion whoever shows up. Usually we get 20 to 30 people come to book club and we have it's totally optional, done over a lunch hour and we have great discussions. They're all nonfiction that we read. They're either a business book or a self-help book or a biography, and we learn a lot from it from from doing that. But it's playfully, it's done playfully. So we have things.
Kristi: 24:24
We have a house system like Harry Potter. So within jam we have four houses and the houses are the names of the first four streets that the first four offices were on. So there's Cottingham, huron Avenue and Bridgeland and and the houses within the houses we we have challenges social challenges, sports challenges, community, give back challenges and you earn points for your team. So just by showing up to book club, you'd earn points for your team. So just by showing up to book club you'd earn points for your house. And then we have, you know, a big cup at the end of the year at jamboree and um, and we have team challenges all the time. So it's just a fun way to sort of playfully get people uh getting to know each other cross departmentally and fostering friendship within our organization, and there's just no end.
Kristi: 25:12
I could go on for days about all the different things we do. We believe it or not, we actually do get work done like. These are all just little things that are happening on the side, but they keep the culture really fun and then our team's more engaged, I believe, more productive because of that. They're happier working here, so retention is really good. Their recruiting is easy, because when someone loves working at Jam, they're going to tell their friends when job postings come up. It makes recruiting new people a lot easier, you know, a lot less expensive. So these investments in play. Oh, and then, of course, we also have like corporate sports teams, right, like that's obviously duh. We have, you know, we'll have a softball team and a soccer team and a beach volleyball team and a floor hockey team, Like we have all the company teams, and people choose to sign up with their colleagues, and it's all paid for by us, and so it's just loads of ways to stay connected and have a great healthy fun culture.
Julie: 26:03
Yeah, yeah, and it doesn't like I think your point about like it doesn't cost a lot or take a lot of time. But the sort of vibe that it creates and the desire for people to then work hard to, you know, work hard so they have that time for play and they have those, those things around them, becomes woven into the just the fabric of the company and I believe that also because when you foster friendships this way, if you don't, if you're not friends with the people you work with, you might finish your work and be like I, I'm done checking out for the day.
Kristi: 26:33
I'm like I'm out of here If you are friends with people you work with. And it's a really busy time of year which right now, like it's really busy for our team All the winter season sports leagues are starting up. I know they're slammed right now, but I also know that team, my team, will be constantly checking in with each other. Does anyone need help? I'm about to wrap up for the day. Is there anything I can do? Hey, tony, you look stressed. Hey Taylor, do you need help with that? Because they've become friends with each other. They're not going to leave each other out to dry. That's just not the culture, and that could easily be the culture if we didn't really foster this building of friendships and community within our, our own team yeah, because then it becomes about their, their winning and their winning together together as a team towards a shared goal, right, yeah, it's very much teamwork.
Kristi: 27:23
We're very team-centric, not family at jam. We're big on that for sure.
Julie: 27:30
Oh, that's so interesting. So now, as you're scaling up, what is next for you, what are your challenges and what are you excited about?
Kristi: 27:43
I'm excited about lots. The most recent acquisition was our biggest by far, the atlantic acquisition, and it's taken a fair amount of energy from my team to really um, to really, you know, get it integrated. Um, we're not, you know, we're not even at the one year mark with it yet. So once you sort of get a full year under your belt, that will give everyone a little bit of okay. We did it here, we get now everyone's got the systems and um, because that takes time. So I'm actually not even I've got. I've got a couple other acquisitions that I'm loosely, you know, in contact and discussing but not actively, actively pursuing at the moment because I want to make sure my team's okay. We've got some great exciting facility projects going on. Nothing I can talk about right now, but very exciting opportunities to sort of lock in for long-term in some different areas which will really allow us to build some and grow.
Kristi: 28:45
We have our corporate side. We're really getting a little more focused on after the pandemic, when we started to kind of we did these three pretty good size acquisitions. Post-pandemic took the focus off corporate and corporate needs a little bit um, a little bit of focus and strategy, and I'm excited about that and actually it's not going to be me. It's got one of our, one of my teammates, um kevin, who's amazing. Uh, he's going to be really leading the corporate and I'm excited by the way he thinks that that's just starting getting going. Oh, what else I mean? There's just so much. It just feels like we've got a good vibe right now and I'm excited to have what will be our biggest year. You know, last year was our biggest year ever and this coming year will be our biggest year ever. So the growth is really exciting to see and feeling the vibes from the team has been really exciting. So there's good things happening.
Julie: 29:33
That's amazing. That's amazing and I think when you feel like you've got a lot of opportunities and a lot of things that are going right, it really helps you with the things that are challenging. They don't feel as hard when you know you've got a lot of things that are going in the right direction.
Kristi: 29:50
Occasionally I have to remind myself of that, right like when you've had a rough day and there's something going on that's a bit stressful and you're like, but keep in mind, we just had our biggest year ever, like that's a good thing, you know.
Julie: 30:02
And you're setting up to have more big years because you know you've got, you've got the acquisitions, things are smoothing out in terms of the integration.
Kristi: 30:11
And well, and I think what I keep it's you know, it's sort of the the um, the organic growth for years was like steady, steady organic growth and earnings were steadily growing. Alongside that, when you do, when you grow with investment, it's different um, the earnings don't show as quickly, and so that's that's also really been. It's really been interesting learning for me, and it's always this fine balance of, you know, growing revenue versus growing the bottom line it's they don't always line up right, and so it's it's. It's that's a fine balance as well, for sure.
Julie: 30:47
Uh-huh, and staying kind of, I think, curious and open to other metrics that are going to tell you if things are going in the right direction, while the financials are a little bit more wavy or bumpy, as opposed to that nice straight kind of upward trajectory that you know might make us sleep better at night but isn't necessarily going to get our business where we want it.
Kristi: 31:13
Exactly, yeah, exactly. So this is all. It's amazing how much I just keep learning. You know, I'm never, I will never stop learning. I just every day learn some new stuff and keep implementing and trying our best with a positive attitude.
Julie: 31:27
Yeah Well, and I mean, who would have imagined in 1996, when you kind of turned the lights on and opened your computer and and started that you would be here still loving it so much, having done so many different things, weathered a pandemic like all of the ups and all of the downs?
Kristi: 31:54
This was never the vision from 1996, right, I just wanted a lifestyle business. I thought it would just be me, you know, connecting people for a few years through play, like. But then it just people loved what we were doing and it just kept going and then it was getting bit yeah. So you're totally right, it is pretty neat to look back to see where we've come from and to just see the number of lives we've touched in such a positive way, both of our players and my staff. That's the other really cool thing.
Kristi: 32:18
Like a lot of my teammates from over the years, you don't keep. Not everyone has been retained, obviously, you know, but, um, but I would say the vast majority, uh, who have come and gone, still have strong friendships with each other. So I'll see, like on social media, a wedding and I'll be like oh, there's like three of my former teammates all at the wedding together. Like that's awesome that we, these people who never knew each other before, only got to know each other working at jam, have become such tight friends that they're standing for each other in their wedding parties, you know those kinds of things. Or or they're godparents to their children now and like it's so cool for me to see that, because it it really that's the part that the numbers are important but the lives we're touching, it's just, it's super cool, it feels really good awesome.
Julie: 33:16
Well, I must say I can't wait to see you get to those 1 million people that are playing in your leagues a year, and how you're going to get there and what interesting things are going to happen. I really want to thank you for joining me today.
Kristi: 33:29
Thanks for having me, Julie. I really appreciate it. It was really fun to chat.
Julie: 33:32
Great Thanks,
Julie: 33:37
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