Three years ago Red Frog Events was a one-man show run out of my apartment; today it’s a thriving $50 million business with 125 happy employees. I attribute our ability to grow at such a clip and do it smoothly to our fantastic culture and my wildly dedicated Frogs.
But let me back up for a moment and just say that the Frogs (our employees) thought up the idea to make a conference table out of Legos.
Today a handmade table with 50,000 Lego pieces sits in one of our conference rooms and serves as an everyday reminder of the power of great company culture. It brought us together (we literally built it by hand) and defined our uniqueness that led to an office tree house, rock climbing wall and many more office elements that help make work feel like a place you’d genuinely enjoy
So, what does an intricate Lego table have to do with employee culture and company growth?
• Validation: regularly asking your employees for their suggestions is great but actually bringing those suggestions to life within the company shows employees that you take their suggestions, and ultimately them, seriously.
• Access: the larger a company grows, the further key leaders are from those newer to the company. Opening your door to employee ideas provides a gateway for all employees to showcase their passion for the company and its overall success.
• Innovation: we've all heard that "two heads are better than one," and this couldn't be truer among employees. The more people working together for the company good, the more ideas and opportunity for crowd-sourced innovation.
A Lego table might sound frivolous, but when you look deeper you’ll see what it really symbolizes. People want to work in a place where they’re trusted, valued and inspired to think creatively. Now the challenge is how you put that company culture together. My advice? One piece at a time.
Joe Reynolds is an entrepreneur at heart, but it wasn’t until after having an entrepreneurship degree (yes, it’s a real major) in his pocket and shaking his serious travel bug by touring 40+ countries around the world in his early twenties that he decided to pursue his passion by turning a $5,000 investment in an event production business called Red Frog into a thriving $45 million company in just four years.
