Spencer Fertig, the CEO of our company, joined Barry Moltz, the host of the Small Business Radio Show, to talk about Bar None Games and how businesses can keep the fun going even when work-from-home can feel incredibly lonely. Check out the full episode here (19:58 - 35:55). Below are a few gems dropped by Spencer during his interview.

Start small

Going from zero to 100 with culture building can feel intimidating, especially for companies who have never had to do it virtually before. Instead of feeling like you are tackling a huge task, start small with just one event per quarter to begin with. It’s not a huge burden on the event planner to find an event on this cadence and it doesn’t feel like a big commitment on everyone’s calendars. After awhile, it will start feeling natural and fun. Your employees will start looking forward to these regular events and asking for more. Now, you can up the cadence on the foundation that you've built! 

Culture impacts productivity

We've all been in the shoes where we feel demoralized, whether at work or at home, and it prevents us from doing our best. You have to take focused efforts to maintain time outside of work-related meetings to foster culture, but having a culture where you care about how people are doing both personally and professionally impacts work performance. There are a lot of ways to set the foundation for this, whether it’s by scheduling informal time to catch up with your co-workers about non-work items, or gathering the group together for a fun activity.

Feeling confidence in pursuing your side hustle full time

The customers will always be able to tell you whether you should do a side hustle full time or not. If people are wanting it and asking for it - go give the people what they want. If it feels like a chore to sell something - probably don't quit your day job just yet. For Spencer, it became clear that he could work on Bar None Games full-time when he had enough customers asking him to host trivia games that he could cover his rent. It gave him enough confidence that the customer demand was strong enough that he should focus on building the company out to its full potential. 

Full transcript of the podcast is available here.