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- [00:06]
A
Welcome to the. Have you ever noticed the smack? Have we ever talked about that? The smack?
- [00:11]
B
I don't know if we've talked about it on here, but I. I've. I've noticed the smack. I've edited out the smack.
- [00:19]
A
Why? It's a good smack. Welcome to the Arcadey group Smacking Thinkers. That's a whole different podcast. Welcome to the Arcade Group Thinkers podcast. I'm your host, Justin McCord. With me is Ronnie Richard. Ronnie, what did you get in trouble for most in school?
- [00:44]
B
I feel like I need to categorize them a little bit. I. I definitely. Talking too much in class. Goofing off too much. There was a particular year, I think it was fourth grade, where I got straight A's across the board in my grades that we also graded effort, which was usually related to homework, and I got Cs across the board in effort. And then we had U for unsatisfactory instead of F, but, like, U's across the board for behavior.
- [01:18]
A
So.
- [01:18]
B
So it's. It's like a laundry list, I think.
- [01:22]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [01:23]
C
Our.
- [01:24]
A
Our guest, you know, shared this idea that, you know, maybe sometimes the things that you got in trouble with got in trouble for the most as a kid. Maybe those things are actually your superpowers and the things that make you really good later in life. And so. And it. Interestingly enough, I think mine was procrastination. I think procrastination was the thing that would end up with me in trouble the most. And I do think maybe it's a superpower in a way. It can be painful for those around me at times.
- [02:04]
B
It was one of mine as well, but it worked out in journalism when you had to cram and get that thing in by deadline.
- [02:12]
A
Yeah. Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about Gare Bear.
- [02:16]
B
Gare Bear.
- [02:17]
C
Yeah.
- [02:17]
B
So our guest today is Gary Ware. He's the founder of Breakthrough Play and author of the book Playful Maximize Workplace Success through the Power of Play. So, obviously, his theme is all around being playful and finding ways to incorporate that to kind of counterbalance this workplace culture of, you know, go, go, go, you know, stressfulness. And. And really, I just. He was just, like, a bundle of joy to talk to. Like, he just. There's a certain energy around Gary that is infectious, I think.
- [02:56]
A
Yeah. I mean, bundle of joy and. And infectious. Not overwhelming.
- [03:03]
B
No, not at all.
- [03:05]
A
And, you know, even the idea. And. And you're gonna hear him unpack this story. I love that he convinced a boss to fund him taking an improv class as professional Development, and, like, he will walk through with you that journey and why that makes sense and. And obviously how it turned into a whole career for him. So Gary is someone who is doing incredibly creative work. He's being honored and recognized by places like Culture Amp as leaders in the future of work. And so an absolute delight to talk to Gary on the podcast today. Here is Gary Ware on Group Thinkers. Gary, my first question out of the gate is, is, what's. What's your nickname? Like, what are your. What do your friends call you? Does everyone call you Gary? Is there something else that people call you?
- [04:06]
C
So funny story with that. So Gary is a short name to begin with, and my nickname is my full name. A lot of folks. And it's so interesting. A lot of folks just call me my full name, Gary Ware, and it's just. And they say it as if it's, like, one syllable. But so that's one nickname that folks. Or. Or they'll say G Wear, which is very interesting. Or this is something. And it's so interesting because, like, I've had folks of different sort of circles randomly. Someone will call me a Gare Bear. I'm like, oh, okay.
- [04:42]
B
Gare Bear Bear.
- [04:44]
A
Yeah, I like that. Okay. See, I was thinking, like, G Dub. Like, yeah, Feels like a very natural.
- [04:48]
C
Yep.
- [04:49]
A
G Dub is one area, but Gare Bear is. That one's fun.
- [04:54]
C
Yeah.
- [04:54]
B
Now I'm thinking about Care Bears, and I'm wondering what is on your belly? If we're. If you're a Care Bear.
- [04:59]
A
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [05:00]
C
If. If I was. So I. Hold on. I have it. Oh.
- [05:05]
A
Oh, this whole thing. And Gare Bear puts on a. Oh, you do have a.
- [05:10]
B
He has a Care Bear. To our listeners who can't see that
- [05:13]
C
it is the one. I think it's Wish Bear. It has the star with the. The. The shooting star.
- [05:21]
A
Well, okay, so how did. How did Wish Bear come into to your life?
- [05:27]
C
Is that.
- [05:27]
A
Is that just a. Is that a gift from a kid? Is that something that you saw that. Is there a symbolism behind it? Like, tell us about Wish Bear.
- [05:34]
C
Well, one, to the point, like, Gear Bear, Care Bear. Like, it's always the thing. And growing up my family, we were the werebears. It was like a thing. And so there was always that connection to Care Bear. And this one actually came from my sister, and she just thinks that I just have good luck. And so it's not like Good Luck Bear, but it's, like, sort of like it's Wish Bear. Like, things just sort of happen.
- [05:59]
A
And so, yeah, God, that's remarkable. And it's a little bit of a. It's actually a brilliant introduction for you and who you are and the joy that you bring to the spaces that you encounter. So for the listeners, here's how I met Gary. Gary and I have a mutual friend that every so often, I don't even know how often he does it, but every so often, he puts together a group of 59 individuals because he's. He makes number 60, and it's 59 individuals. And it's a one hour meeting. And every person on that call has one minute to share either something that they're working on, something that's bringing them joy, something that is new or different, something that they're excited about. And, and the first time that I was invited into this circle, Gary, you stood out, man. Like, you just brought, like, this spark, and it made me think, I want to know that guy. I want to spend time around that guy. And, and then I, I started to learn a little bit about breakthrough play. And, and so what I want you to share with our audience is how. How did you get to the place of breakthrough play? Like, what's the path to getting to taking a step out in creativity like this?
- [07:32]
C
Well, I, I guess sometimes it's. It's desperation. Or if you would ask people that really know me, they was like, no, you, you were just being stubborn. You were meant to do this, but you weren't taking all the clues that that was happening and the universe had to just smack you in the face. I. So my background, and this is how Ryan and I know each other. My background's in marketing and communication. So I always thought I was just gonna be a marketer for life. I went to school for marketing, and I aspired, you know, to, you know, be like a, you know, like a madman sort of thing, except digital marketing. You know, it's Don Draper of digital marketing. And I did that. You know, I succeeded. I worked at a lot. A lot of large agencies, worked on a lot of awesome brands. That's how I met Ryan Berman. We worked together, and then back in 2014, I got the opportunity to be a co founder at a digital marketing shop. And matter of fact, Ryan was the one who sort of nudged me in that direction, like, yeah, yeah, you should do that. This is, you know, I, I was a little bit hesitant on taking that leap, but they're like, no, no, no, this is, this is something that you should do. So the, what I thought was we wanted to change the way that agency life works because you know, it. It tends to burn folks out, you know, especially, you know, when you work with a lot of large, you know, clients, you know, they. They feel entitled, yada, yada, yada. And so I was like, all right, cool. I want to be in this space to sort of transform, you know, how this works. And, And I thought I was on board with my business partners. And in the beginning it was that, you know, it was like this honeymoon thing. You know, we had an office, you know, a th. Stones throw from the beach. Know, we're very intentional about, you know, doing. Our motto was, do good, be great. You know, so we wanted to do good work by our clients. And, you know, it was just all about intentionality. But the rookie mistake on my part was not really understanding, you know, the character of the folks that I was going into business with. It's not like these random folks just sort of like, hey, you want to, you know, I thought I knew them. You know, we were all part of the Advertising Federation, the young. The young professionals group. But when, you know, you. When I like to say when you're under fire, your character, your true character comes, you know, it shows up.
- [09:53]
A
That is so true.
- [09:54]
C
And so, but while I was, you know, you know, co founder, my. My job was working on client. Our client experience and our team development. So I was, you know, all about creating good culture, all about helping our teams grow professionally. And so all the things that I'm doing now, I was. It was a small fraction of what I did then. And that's where I, you know, was starting to incorporate what is called applied improvisation. So improv skills, so skills that improvisers use to be able to collaborate on stage without a script. How does that work in other contexts? So my. My agency was like a little sandbox and I. I loved it. I was known as the play guy. I would go to conferences and I would do all these things. Long story short, this. Now Fast forward to 2018 at this point, I'm a dad now. My son's about to be one. I find myself in Nicaragua. I'm. Look, I'm. For my birthday, I was leading this retreat where it was a service slash adventure retreat where we. We did the service project where I was leading this improv workshop for this charter school. And we did, you know, some training for a hostel there. And then we did a lot of fun stuff. Anyways, I come back on December 10, my normal check in with my business partner, and in that moment he buys me out and he's like, I think we should Go our separate ways. Three months before that, he had pushed out our other business partner. So he, at that point, when he bought me out, he owned 90% of the agency. So he had, you know, you know, essentially the. To do whatever he wants. And so when it rains, it pours. That same day, two hours after that meeting, I kid you not, our landlord called me and my wife and said we had about 60 days to move because he's selling the property that we were living in.
- [11:51]
A
Wow.
- [11:52]
C
Yes. And my wife stay at home. Mom. My son was about to be one. And I guess I could have, like, you know, at this point, like, I, you know, I know some folks, you know, I could have made some phone calls and maybe got another. Another gig. But I think there was, if I was being honest with myself, a little bit of shame of like, man, I stepped out to start this agency, and now look, you know, I'm coming with my tail between my legs. So I didn't necessarily want to do. But again, as I told you a moment ago, folks were like, no, you were meant to do this, Gary. I don't know why you weren't doing this. Why you, you know, you didn't do something like this sooner. And so the, the universe, like, like, no, we'll give him, you know, we'll smack him in the face. And so what ended up happening was me and my wife, we moved in with my parents. My parents live here in San Diego, where we live. And. And my wife was the one who suggested maybe you should do something with this play and this, this sort of team building stuff. Maybe you can get paid doing that. And then I said, all right, I'll look, you know, yes, I'm going to explore that. Two years. If I don't figure it out in two years, I'll just go find another job. And so that was the start. That was the catalyst that led us to where we are now.
- [13:08]
A
Like you said, out of. Out of the fire, right? Yeah, like out of the fire. Something beautiful.
- [13:16]
C
Yes, exactly. It's like a diamond, right? You got that pressure. Yeah. Yeah.
- [13:22]
B
So take us through those early days. It's 2018, you're saying, let me go for this. Let me take these two years and try to make it work. Did it go through a few iterations? Did it take you some time to kind of find your groove of how you wanted to build this and structure it?
- [13:39]
C
Yeah. And so what I did first was I had a sort of inkling of how I wanted this to do as far, because my main thing was I wanted to do professional development. Slightly different because I, again, being on various sides of the coin, you know, in house or agency, and having been part of professional development is usually a checkbox. Like, you know, in that moment we're going through, there's a trainer and we're cramming information and then, you know, maybe there's a certification, you get a certificate. But do you actually transform? You know, is there transformation? You know, are you actually, um, you know, using the things that you just learned? I can attest, no, you know, you know, we, we went through all that just so we can say we did it, checkbox, we move on. Um, and so I had this concept and it, I called it a complimentary recess. It was a 45 minute program and I reached out to all the people in my network and I let them know these are the new things I'm doing and I would like to just offer it to their team just to get feedback. Am I off on this? You know, is this something that will be beneficial? And so this was, you know, I did it in person. I did like over two dozen of them. And the only ask was, hey, you know, can I get a testimonial? And if you see an opportunity for us to work together or someone who could use this, would you just give me a shot? That was the only, only thing. And so with that was I got a lot of feedback, but it was validation, like, yes, this is something that is, that is really special. And that was the thing that got me going. Now how I was thinking about scale, how do I, how do I start to reach more folks? Because San Diego is a small market and you know, but what else? And so the thing that I start to realize was conferences, conferences are looking for programming, especially programming that is a little bit unconventional, something that is going to keep people engaged. And, and I was like, if I go to conferences and I, and I demo some of this in conferences, then people would go back and like, hey, we did this thing, we need to bring this guy in. And so that was like, that was my thing and I started, that was the thing that started to, to, you know, take, you know, it started to take off with that. But the two year mark, if you're doing your math right, the two year mark is in 2020 and March of 2020.
- [16:08]
A
Anything. Did anything happen then?
- [16:10]
B
I don't know.
- [16:11]
C
I know, right? We might have amnesia or something. But I was like, in January 2020, I was like, this is going to be my year. I was like, this is going to be my year. Because I had more things booked than I've ever had booked before. Matter of fact, me and a colleague of mine, we had this program that we were running, and it was titled how to Deal with a Holes at Work Using Play. And we got booked at a whole bunch of conferences to do that program. And we. One of the places that we got booked at was in Melbourne, Australia, this conference called Pause Fest. And it was in February of 2020. And me and my son and my wife, we go out there. I have to say, it was one of the best vacations we've had in a long time. I ran this program, um, and it was sort of reminiscence of when I was in Nicaragua, because when I was in Nicaragua, I had this epiphany moment of like, wow, things are going good. Like, I have this job that's given me autonomy that has allowed me to do this good work. I was literally in Nicaragua thinking the same thing. And guess what? I come back. And then the world just turned upside down, where all of the bookings slowly just went away because everything shut down because of the pandemic. And I was challenged again to, like, reinvent myself. And what. I did that, like, again, I had an inkling. I was like, well, I have nothing going on, so could I make this work in virtual? And at the time, everyone was shuttering in place. A lot of folks were burnt out. And so I didn't even. Again, going back to what I did in 2018, I wasn't even charging. I had this weekly virtual session where I was just trying out material in a virtual space. And I said, come. You know, this is a chance to sort of like, get your mind off of what's going on in the world. Pay where you can or whatnot. Or not. Like, I just want to try out some of this material. And. And I burnt myself out because I be very optimistic, like, oh, this is going to be over by summertime. And we know how that went. But it did give me an opportunity to do some really transformative stuff. I partnered with a friend and we did this intergenerational program and we ended up doing a thing where we. And we couldn't have. We only could have done this in the capacity that we did. We paired up children in Nigeria with elders in the Bay Area, and we did this really cool applied improvisation workshop with them where they were just doing these activities in a virtual space together. And then we did, like a little fun little showcase all online. And yeah, so I was in experimentation mode again.
- [19:04]
A
What? Okay, so where did the Improv connection. Come in. Like, had you taken improv classes? Like, was it just something that you were interested in?
- [19:15]
C
So it's so funny. It became the thing that was like my, like, like, oh my God, this is amazing. I took it as a way to get better at public speaking. So early in my career I knew that public speaking is important, but I had crazy stage fright and I hated Toastmasters. I needed something else that was going to help me get better public speaking. And a mentor of mine said, why don't you take an improv class? I only knew improv, as in whose line is it Anyway? But I was like, I don't know how this is going to help me, but sure, why not, right? And so I took the class and the company that I worked for at the time had this thousand dollar a year stipend for anything professional development. And I convinced them to pay for my $200 improv class because I wanted to get better at public speaking. And they did. And I was brilliant. I was like, I didn't know what to expect because I had. Up until that point, I've never taken improv class. But for two hours I didn't think about anything that was going on. I was completely present and I was among these people that I didn't. It was the first time we all met, but by the end of that first class, you would thought that we were friends for years. Matter of fact, I'm still very close to a number of the folks that, that I was in that cohort with my very first improv class. And that was over 15 years ago. But that was the thing that became like my hobby. But it was my way of just rejuvenating myself. My improv classes were on Mondays, Sunday. Most people have the Sunday scaries. I was excited because improv. And it wasn't until years later where I started learning about the neuroscience of all this stuff. When you have something that you're looking forward to, it makes everything else better. And for two hours again, it was just my stepping away from the work. But I guess the work is still going on, right? The things that you're like, that you're pondering is still happening in your brain. But you know, we're very bad, us humans are very bad at taking breaks and stuff like that. So that was my forced break. But it was just so much fun. It was so much joy. I remember after my first improv class, I was nervous. I was nervous to do. I didn't know what to expect. And when I came home at this big grin on my face, and my wife thought I was drunk. And is. Isn't that funny that we think that there has to be some sort of substance or something that makes us adults happy? It couldn't just be something that's just pure joy.
- [21:44]
A
Just the. You know, it makes me think about years ago. I remember being at a conference that was for nonprofit leaders, and it was in Chicago, and they had some of the folks from Second City do a couple of professional development sessions. And like you, my. Or my exposure to improv starts with whose line? And. And even today, like, as you said that, I. I thought to myself, you know, I. I kind of want to go back and watch some of the old. The original versions, like, yes, the Drew Carey versions are great, but like, give me. Give me original Ryan styles new. Yeah. So, you know, way, way back. And so there's so many applicable ideas from improv that go into the professional life. I. I hadn't considered public speaking as one of them, like from the agency side, you know. Yes. And is a great model for how you serve your client and how you approach conflict and. And how you address those things. But I hadn't ever considered the public speaking side. That's fascinating. How. How soon was it before you felt like the lessons that you were learning were changing your behavior and changing the way that you thought about public speaking? How. What was that journey?
- [23:07]
C
Yeah, it took a little bit, but the interesting thing is because it was fun and playful, I immediately wanted to do these activities with my team. I started to see some of the connections, and I, at that point, I was a newer leader, and I was always looking for things that I can do with my team, you know, to just help us bond. And so I would bring these games, these games that we did in improv class. I would bring them and we would do them before meetings. I, you know, we did them on Fridays, like, while we're just sort of sitting around the watering hole and stuff like that. And then. But the. This is where there's a lot of research now that shows that continuous work in this space will help you with the ability to not only think on your feet, but to not have this fear of the unknown. Because all of these activities are completely random. Yes, we might have done it before, but it is made up on the spot. Like, how you do it this one time is not. You're never gonna do it like that again. And so it starts to change your brain chemistry. You start to create new synapses in your brain, new neural pathways, and you will start to Realize that, oh, wow, I do trust myself. If something happens, I am capable of recovering and rebounding because in these low stakes environments, I did that. Like, if you think about when folks have allergies and they want to help you get rid of it, they give you this low dose of whatever the allergen is and then with hopes that you develop, you know, your body develops some sort of immunity to it. And that's essentially what happens with our sort of, you know, thinking on our feet and that fear of the unknown. But yeah, within, within a quarter, my team was cooking like we were. And again, I didn't know what I know now. I just, it's like, wow, we're just a high performing team. Yes, we were, but we had like, we had the reps. I call it the brain gym. You know, you go to the regular gym to get, you know, abs and, and, and, and whatnot. This was making our, our brain stronger and as a result was helping us connect better.
- [25:11]
A
That's awesome.
- [25:12]
B
Gary, you've mentioned a couple of times the term burnout and you're talking about how this is a refresher or rejuvenator to be able to play. We work in the nonprofit space where burnout is a very common thing. Not only the sheer amount of work that nonprofit professionals have to do, but also they tend to carry the weight of the mission that they're, they're working on in. And we see it so much. If you like, what advice would you give to nonprofit leaders based on what you've seen and what you've learned in the work you've done?
- [25:52]
C
Oftentimes we feel like rest and play is something that we have to earn. We often look at our productivity as part of our self worth. And at the end of the day, if you burn yourself out, how good are you going to be to the mission? Can we reframe that thing called rest and play and look at it through the lens of instead of earning play, earning rest. We work from a place of rest, not work. To rest now it takes like sort of flipping things on his head. We're conditioned, you know, if you think of the Protestant work ethic and stuff like that, we're conditioned to work, work, work, work, work, work. Because the old belief was if you weren't working, you're probably going to do something not good.
- [26:45]
B
Idle hands.
- [26:46]
A
Yeah.
- [26:46]
C
Yep. And then again, if you think about these nonprofit professionals, they have a big mission, they have a lot that they're trying to do. But if you are burnt out, if your cup is not full how can you pour from it?
- [27:05]
A
Yeah, yeah, it's true. How can, like, how can you, how can you legitimately address the needs of those around you? Right. If you're empty now, from a scientific.
- [27:17]
B
Put on your mask first. Right?
- [27:19]
C
Yep, exactly. Yeah. Before you, before you can serve others, you need to put on your own mask. But here's another thing from a scientific standpoint, all right, so, like, all that, you're like, oh, that's nice. Scary. But guess what? The science shows that when we are not fully rested, fully rejuvenated, we don't make choices that are intelligent, that are going to be ones that are going to help us in the long run. We think we do, but us humans, we're bad. Judge of our ability to do stuff. I know plenty of times I'm just like, you know what? Let me just go one more hour. Let me just go. Like, you know, I know I'm tired, but, like, let me just power through. We're more prone to making mistakes and making decisions that are not good when we come from a place of rest, but yet we do it.
- [28:05]
A
You use the word reframe, and I think it's a. It's an important, it's an important element. It may be the. I don't know what the symbol is for reframe, but that may be what's on Gare Bear's belly. Right. Is the idea of reframing whatever the emoji is.
- [28:23]
C
Whatever the emoji for reframing.
- [28:26]
A
So. But you're. So your book, Playful Rebellion.
- [28:30]
C
Yes.
- [28:31]
A
It reframes rebellion as something, you know, working against conventional workplace norms. And so, Gary, I consider myself to be a zagger and, and so a bit of a non conformist. And, and I, I love the idea of if everyone is doing one thing, I want to do the other. I love that. It's. I've done that so many times and made Ronnie very, very frustrated and, or very uncomfortable. But, but, like, unpack. Yeah, unpack. Playful rebellion. Like, it's, it's such a, it's, it's easy to grab a hold of, of that as a, as a great quip. But, like, what does it mean in practicality?
- [29:21]
C
Yeah. So going back on this journey, at first I thought improv, Improv is a thing. We all need improv, which is true. We all. It is great. But when I unpacked, what we were doing, we're essentially playing. It was just pure play. And if you think about play in its essence, it's doing something that brings you joy for the sake of doing it. And when you're in a play like state, a lot of magical things happen. You connect on a deeper level with people, you're able to be more creative, all these things. However, play has this stigma that it's juvenile. Play has this stigma that is goofing off. And when I was looking at what makes high performing teams, the research is very clear. There's this book called prime to Perform and it looked at all these high performing teams and it was high performing teams. They optimize for three things. Play, purpose and potential. Play means you see the work as play. You do it for the sake of doing it. It's all intrinsic stuff. Purpose. What is the impact of the work that you're doing and the potential. What is your potential to grow, to self actualize. So if you can optimize for those three things, you will get teams that will be able to think on their feet, that will be able to go the extra mile. However, most of the world, they optimize for extrinsic motivators and that is economic pressure, emotional pressure, and inertia. So economic pressure is, hey, you better do this or we're going to dock your pay. Or, you know, you, you perform very well, we'll give you a bonus. You know, emotional pressure, oh, you made a mistake. Oh, let's shame you to not doing that again. Or inertia. We've always done it this way, no questions asked. Again, that is great if you work in a factory and you need repeatable work, but you are not going to get creative work there because you are, you are taking the, essentially the drive away from folks because you're optimizing for things outside of the work itself. So play being one of those things. And I really play the thing. And I was going around like, you know, and I still, like, if you look up all the stuff I do, I'm a champion for play. Most people were like, no, sorry, sorry, you want us to pay you what to do what? And then I started to realize it's our conditioning. It is our conditioning to think. One play is juvenile. Play does not have a place in work. But there's a really great quote that the opposite of play isn't work. The opposite of play is depression. And most adults are suffering from a thing called play deprivation in that we are not, you know, we are seeing the world as a proving ground and we are overworking ourselves and we don't give ourselves a chance to play. Now play can take so many different forms. And so that's why I started Diving into this. And I realized play is very complex, and there's so many different layers to play. And that's why I call it the, you know, the playful rebellion. In that in order to get us to really see play the way that it needs to be, we need to have a rebellion. And is the rebellion against the status quo of work? And so it doesn't mean that we need to rebel against work. No, we need to rebel against how we have been doing work, because in my opinion, the way that we are working is no longer working.
- [32:36]
B
So, Gary, as somebody whose work is play, when you're not working, what is your play? How do you get away from. To relax and recharge?
- [32:48]
C
So funny. So I was talking to my therapist recently, and my therapist asked me, like, point blank, gary, do you have a hobby? And I said, yeah, yeah, I have a hobby. Improv, they like. But that's your work now. True. Okay. And I still. I still teach and I still perform. I was like, all right, valid, valid point. And then I was like, oh, Legos. And like, I love Legos. Like, I've loose Legos all around. You know, I love building with my kids. And also my therapist said, well, if I've been listening correctly, don't you also use LEGO in your work? I was like, valid, okay. And. And so then I was. This was recently. This was as, like two months ago recently. And then I was like. I was like, man, I man, talk about like a gut punch. I was like, do I not have a hobby? And so. So, like, what is my hobby? Like, because, again, to have something that brings you joy that you would do just for the sake of doing it, you know, again, I still look at improv and Lego as those things, but valid, like, what are some other things? And so the stuff that I turned to. There's a Gentleman's name is Dr. Stuart Brown. He wrote this amazing book on play and how play shapes our minds and whatnot. And he says there are different play archetypes, play personalities. And it ranges everything from the joker to the competitor to the storyteller, you know, to the artist to the collector. And two of my dominant. Well, I have three dominant play personality ones to Joker. I'm a. I'm a. I'm a big goofball, but I'm also a collector, and I like an artist creator. Those are the things that I like. And so I was like, all right, how can I tap into something new that is down with those play personalities? And as luck would have it, again, the universe sometimes just show up when you just put something out there. Um, two weeks after that was Christmas. And for Christmas, my wife gave me a 3D printer. She was tired of me complaining that I wanted one and not doing anything about it. So she just bought me a 3D printer. And that has been my obsession of since Christmas. And I will tell you, like, it's just been something that I do that brings me a lot of joy because again, collecting, I love collecting things. So now I have all these like little things that I've 3D printed. But I love creating things and I've created all kinds of things. But I also love giving gifts. And so it's allowed me to connect with people on a whole other level because, you know, I love surprising folks. And so I was meeting with some folks recently that I hadn't seen in a long time. And then I brought them, matter of fact, I have them right here. These like little fidget toys that I made. They look like little poker chips and they're, you know, just little fidgets. And I gave them away and that you should stall their face. They turned into little kids just playing with those. And so it has been something. I will tell you this because I have been sort of consuming that I have not been doom scrolling. I found that I have been spending less time on social media because, you know, I've had other things that is bring bringing me joy and I don't have the space for that other stuff. So anyways, that's a long winded answer to say what kind of play that I'm currently doing.
- [36:05]
A
I mean, Ronnie, you nailed it on the question, man. Like absolutely nailed it. You know, we didn't know that, that you were hobbyless up until, you know, just recently, that you're months into a
- [36:19]
C
new hobby, month into a new hobby. Matter of fact, I have a challenge too. I bet he's so funny. I have this challenge that I've been doing 3D printing something new every day for 30 days as a way to just, you know, one, keep doing it, but two, like explore different things. And I just finished the challenge and the thing that I printed that is like so amazing. And so for the folks listening, I'm going to describe it to you, but this is a Lego Batman that is fully movable that I3D printed on my 3D printer.
- [37:06]
A
You did the whole thing?
- [37:07]
C
The whole thing. This Lego Batman. So I'm holding in my hands, it looks like a little minifig, but it is a Lego Batman that is over a foot tall and this boy is thick and and its limbs and whatnot move. And it was the finale of my 30 day 3D printing challenge.
- [37:28]
B
That is awesome.
- [37:29]
A
That's brilliant. That is so cool, Gary, man. Our audience doesn't get the benefit of this, but we're so excited we're going to spend some time together in the next couple of months in person. And so I can't wait for that time and to just be face to face and to. Yes. And even more with one. Another last kind of question that I want to get your thoughts around. When you live in the agency space, awards mean quite a bit. Awards become like a proof point.
- [38:17]
C
Yes.
- [38:18]
A
Of success. They become a driver of new business. They become something that, you know, that they take on a lot more weight than they maybe should. But there's still value, there's still merit in that level of recognition. As a solopreneur. You were recently recognized with something that is incredibly cool. And I just want to know what you think about it. You were named one of the top 25 emerging culture creators by Culture amp.
- [38:47]
C
Yes.
- [38:48]
A
Like, how did, how does that hit you?
- [38:52]
C
It was a surprise, to be honest. And it was, it was, it was very validating considering I complete like 180 career pivot and to show the hard work that I've done like over the last like eight years is, is shining. And I, I think I'm all about sharing the knowledge. I, I'm not one to gatekeep anything, so anything that I learned, you know, I, it's funny, the. I was talking to a coach one day and they said, you know, the things that you got in trouble for in school, that's your superpower. You just didn't know how to harness it. You probably need that. And so when I was young, going to school, I, the teachers didn't know what to do with me because I was always sharing stuff. Like, anytime I was like, hey, did you know this? You know, it's. I very talkative and whatnot. And so that's still me to this day. If I learned something, I'm like, hey, you know, X, Y and Z. And so to show that like all the stuff that I was learning as I was growing in this new career thing, people found it valuable. And then to get recognized by culture Ramp. Yeah, that was, that was a big honor.
- [39:58]
A
And yeah, so, so cool. Gary Ware, you're the real deal, man. We, we appreciate you like walking us through your journey and, and can't wait to experience your work together and, and continue to amplify it. So thanks for hanging out with us.
- [40:14]
C
My pleasure. This was such a delight. Group Thinkers is a production of RKD Group. For more information, including how you can partner with RKD to accelerate growth for your fundraising and nonprofit marketing needs, visit rkdgroup.com.