Notes from Chris

Episode 1676

Sixteen years ago, Jeff Harry landed what sounds like a dream job, working for a toy company. He’d grown up watching the movie Big and idolized the main character (played by Tom Hanks) who is a literal grown up kid who works as a toy tester.

As the business grew they began offering corporate events. Jeff ran Lego workshops for some of the world’s biggest tech companies, including Facebook, Google, Adobe and PayPal. He noticed that even in these innovative companies, they didn’t allow the time nor space for their staff to take risks and play.

So, for the first time in fifteen years, Jeff started to think about a side hustle. He knew these workplaces could benefit from advocating things he’d been doing for years; having fun at work through play and positive psychology. He just needed a hook and a platform to assess interest.

For that, he came up with a fun workshop with a fellow WDSer, Gary Ware, called "How To Deal With A-Holes At Work Through Play" and launched it at the World Domination Summit.

After receiving an enthusiastic response, Jeff pitched the workshop to some major tech conferences, expecting nothing to come from it. He was wrong: three major conferences including South By SouthWest accepted the workshop into their program. The validation gave him confidence he was on the right track.

Over the course of the next year, Jeff was featured on one hundred and fifty podcasts where he shared his story. This exposed him to business owners and representatives at companies that wanted to work with him.

In addition to this podcast exposure, Jeff started posting short TikTok videos about common HR pain points. Afterwards, he’d repost them to other social media platforms. He also writes posts to Medium and LinkedIn on a regular basis and whenever someone reacts positively he’ll reach out to them to make a new connection.

This relationship building strategy has worked well. It’s enabled Jeff to run workshops throughout the pandemic and even boost his income, earning upwards of five thousand dollars per month so far.

As great as that is, Jeff truly believes in the power of play to improve relationships and well-being. He wants to keep teaching everything he knows and build a worldwide community around play.

 

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  MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Learn more about Jeff at his website,, ReDiscoverYourPlay.com.

SEE ALSO:

• Landscape Architect Knots Together Macrame Workshops: One woman’s passion for macrame turns into a money-making side hustle teaching others the craft.
• Hair Braiding Workshops Help Trans-Racial Adoptive Families: A Chicago woman starts a side hustle to support her life, then adapts it to help more than 1,000 children in adoptive families.
• Queer Punk Artist Starts Personal Finance Workshop: A manager for a non-profit organization who describes herself as a queer punk artist creates a series of personal finance classes.

Inspiration is good; inspiration combined with action is better. Now get back to work!

Yours in the revolution,

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