How I Built My Small Business

Adam Rosendahl - Can Creativity Cure Disconnection? How LATE NITE ART is Bringing People Together IRL

• Adam Rosendahl • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Adam Rosendahl is the visionary founder and CEO of Late Nite Art . As an Experience Designer and Artist, Adam weaves a variety of art forms and cutting edge facilitation to foster deep connection and trust for a very impressive list of teams and conferences around the world.

From Outward Bound USA to the Scaling Intimacy School of Experience Design and Partners for Youth Empowerment, his journey reflects a commitment to positive intelligence and leadership.

Adam's impact extends to crafting a module for Stanford Life Design Lab and taking the stage in his captivating TED Talk, "How to Use the Arts to Unlock Deeper Connection."  It’s no wonder that he was awarded Innovation Entrepreneur of the Year by the non-profit, Social Venture Network.

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Adam Rosendahl (00:00.178)
I really have stepped more fully into my vision and purpose last year. Dr. Vivek Murthy, the US Surgeon General, put out this huge report stating that loneliness and disconnection is the biggest epidemic of our time. And what are we going to do about it?

Anne McGinty
Welcome to the seventh episode of How I Built My Small Business, the show that is dedicated

about how to start and grow small businesses. Join us as we unravel the stories behind their entrepreneurial journeys. I'm Anne McGinty, your host, and I'm thrilled to have Adam Rosendahl, the visionary founder and CEO of Late Night Art, with us today. As an experienced designer and artist, Adam weaves a variety of art forms and cutting edge facilitation to build connection and trust for a very impressive list of teams and conferences around the world.

From Outward Bound USA to Partners for Youth Empowerment, his journey reflects a commitment to positive intelligence and leadership. Adam's process is so effective that he crafted a module for Stanford Life Design Lab and took the stage in his captivating TED Talk, How to Use the Arts to Unlock Deeper Connection. It's no wonder that he was awarded Innovation Entrepreneur of the Year by the nonprofit Social Venture Network.

You can find a link through to his business in the episode's description.
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Anne McGinty
Welcome to the podcast, Adam.

Adam Rosendahl
Good to see you, Anne. It's been a while.

Anne McGinty
I know. So can you tell us a little bit about how the concept of late night art originated?

Adam Rosendahl
Sure. So people often get a little confused with the business late night art because we do a lot of events at all times of day and it's not necessarily about art.

Like the business is really about addressing disconnection in the workplace. And we use this unique methodology that incorporates creativity in arts to help people build deeper connections in the workplace. But it started back in 2010. I was an AmeriCorps member in Seattle. And I was actually teaching an art class for a group of high school students who'd been expelled from public school. And so they didn't sign up for my class. They were just there to get credit and to graduate. And I had to...

Adam Rosendahl (02:25.282)
get really creative with how I was teaching the class because there was about a 50% attendance rate and most of the students didn't wanna be there. So it was like a test in working with resistance. And so that was the moment where I started bringing music into the classroom and incorporating ways for people to let go of judgment and build these collaborative art pieces around the room. And through this process of working with the students, I developed a new way of working with groups that use music.

and conversation and art as a tool to kind of shift people's perspectives. And so that was the very beginning from the classroom. It turned into sort of a nightlife event. We added a three-course dinner element to it, and we started doing events in Vancouver, Canada, and then also in Oakland, California. And from the nightlife party element, it started getting brought into conferences as a way to invoke more meaningful connection and conversation with attendees. And.

From there, it started getting into team building and leadership development, and it's just evolved a lot over the last 12 years.

Anne McGinty
That is fascinating.

Adam Rosendahl
Now we've done over 650 events in 18 countries.

Anne McGinty
Oh my gosh.

Adam Rosendahl
We mostly work with executive teams around onboarding, addressing executive alignment, and doing a culture reset inside of companies.

Anne McGinty
How are these international companies hearing about you?

Adam Rosendahl
It's all word of mouth. A lot of the events that we do are global summits

executive teams and for groups of entrepreneurs and conferences. And a lot of times when I'm in front of the room, it'll be 300 people and every single person there is thinking about how can I apply this to my team and to my work. And so that's how we've ended up in Turkey and India and Vietnam and Spain and Iceland. I imagine the way company teams work in various countries is different to the way we operate here.

Anne McGinty
How do you adapt your model for international cultures?

Adam Rosendahl
Yeah, it's a big part of what I do is the cultural translation, or I think about it as bridge building work, where you have people who, they understand each other in a business context, but they don't really get where they come from, or they don't understand the kind of deeper layers of who somebody is. And so I think a big part of what we do is humanizing people beyond the roles that they play at work and how they see their identity. For instance, when we were working with German executives,

Adam Rosendahl (04:48.014)
and it's mostly Germans in the room or even French executives. The cultural differences are very, very clear. And there's a lot of cultures that have more of a resistance towards control. So having a facilitator in front of the room who's telling everyone what to do, for instance, like when I work with groups of people in France or Israelis, for instance, I can say as like a bit of a natural stereotype or generalization, like a resistance to authority and to like following the rules in some way. So.

I have to really flow like water and be more flexible and just really not get into power struggle with those groups. Whereas other cultures have resistance to speaking up in front of a group. And so it's a really nuanced thing. But I think music has been a really important way for me to build credibility with people from different countries and different cultures. It's a way to help people feel seen really quickly and it can kind of build trust. And there's just a little bit more of a shared foundation all of a sudden.

Yeah, what was wild was my first real corporate client was the U.S. Court Office of Federal Probation. So I ended up in this boardroom in Louisville, Kentucky at 8 a.m. with 44 federal probation officers who all had to take off their bulletproof vests and their firearms and put them in the compartment across the street and then walk across the street. 8 a.m.

walk into a room with this young guy from California and a bunch of art supplies on the table and they were just like leaning back with their arms crossed like I do not want to be here and who is this kid? There's just so much resistance and sarcasm. And so over the course of two hours, I had a lot of doubt actually, because I was like, this is a rough crowd. But a lot of what I do is just helping people take off the mask and the armor that they wear. And so there's a lot of storytelling, there was a lot of...

using art as a tool to help people build empathy with each other and drop into what is it like to actually be in the shoes of their clients who've been incarcerated for over 20 years. And at the end, the chief of staff came up to me and she was like, I've never seen my team share so vulnerably. And I don't know what the hell you just did, but we need to do this with every single probation office across the entire United States. So that was the moment where I realized...

Adam Rosendahl (07:05.718)
this is way more powerful than I even expected it was. And I realized that it actually is an accelerated way to build empathy and compassion in groups. And it just gave me a lot of confidence for, if I could do this with provision officers in Louisville, Kentucky, I could do this late night art process anywhere in the world. And that's really what happened. That was in 2013 or 2014.

Anne McGinty
It sounds like you started with probably the most difficult room of participants possible.

Adam Rosendahl
Oh yeah.

Anne McGinty
What are the size of the events that you're doing now?

Adam Rosendahl
I've been doing a lot of events recently that are in the like one to 300 person range, but a lot of the executive retreats we do are like 15 to 30 people. The largest event that I've ever done was about 700 in one time.

Anne McGinty
Whoa.

Adam Rosendahl
And the smallest is six.

Anne McGinty
Wow. So it really varies.

Adam Rosendahl
Yeah.

Anne McGinty
What has been your favorite transformative experience that you have witnessed?

Adam Rosendahl
Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot of...

really powerful shifts and transformation that happens in the work that I do, which is really like why I'm still doing it 12 years later, because it's getting to be the guide for those kind of shifts to happen. And watching it happen in real time is so fascinating. It's interesting. It's fun. I really love it. I was working with a group of executives from Procter and Gamble, which is massive global company. And each person represented in a different region of the world. So one person represented Latin America, one person represented France, one person represented in North America.

And so each of them had a big influence. If they were able to build a strong relationship with another person, it could impact tens of thousands of people potentially. So my session was all about building a sense of trust and connection and stronger relationship with this group of executives. And one of the questions I asked was, what is a challenge that you're facing that you would like some support around? And one of the men wrote on the table a bit ambiguously, will he be married? So the music turns on, people are sort of wandering around the space.

They're anonymously answering each other's questions. So they're giving this mind map of responses and creative ideas for everybody's question. And this guy gets back to his seat and he shares in front of the whole group. So he says, a lot of you had no idea what I was talking about. Some people said yes, some people said no. And he just said, I wanna say bless you to the folks who said yes, cause I was talking about my son, he's 12 years old, he has Down syndrome.

Adam Rosendahl (09:25.886)
His older sister is getting married and he's talking to my wife and I every day and asking if he's going to get married. And this guy, you know, he starts to, he's emotional as he's, he's sharing the story. And he just says, even though you didn't really know the context for those who said, yes, I just want to say thank you for giving me this encouragement. And so then this other guy stands up. He's also like, starts to feel emotional and he's like, I wrote no. And I just want to say, you know, I'm sorry, but also just knowing the context of your son.

I just wish with all my heart that he does like find love and get married in his life. And so then these two men walk across the table and they're hugging and just the room, you just feel the room. And all of a sudden this group of executives, which felt very siloed and kind of there's a lot of posturing and every single person's in a black and Navy suit. And it's, there's a certain way of engaging with each other, which is more normal business. And all of a sudden that just melted away. And the way people were treating each other was so...

compassionate and just more real, authentic. This process really led for the whole room to drop to another level of depth that completely changed the environment. And I think it really probably transformed how they see each other.

Anne McGinty
That is incredible. These are people who are strangers to you and maybe also each other. What are you doing to get them to feel comfortable enough to be vulnerable with each other?

Adam Rosendahl
Yeah, it's, you know, I like this.

idea of the ladder of incremental risk taking to get to the space of sharing on a deeper level or, you know, we've all had this situation where somebody tries to ask us, are you passionate about or what are you afraid of? And it's like too abrasive. It's too much too soon. It actually feels like a violation when people ask really personal questions without building enough trust. So I really think about it like a ladder where it's like

The first step that you take people through has got to be very accessible and small. And so I always start off with people talking about what they're celebrating in their life. When you get people into that zone of talking about their celebrations, and people are talking about their kids and their animals, their recent award that they got, the book that they wrote, and it's just the buzz in the room and then people sharing in front of each other. And then from there, getting people out of their head and into their heart. So for instance, the second activity I often lead people through is called the visual conversation.

Adam Rosendahl (11:50.71)
and I'm getting people to using watercolors and colored pencils on the table, they're looking at the person across from them, they're sitting at these long banquet style tables and they are having a visual conversation without words. So the music kicks in and one person makes a mark, the other person looks at that and they build off of it in a complimentary way so they're not crossing it out. And it goes back and forth for about three minutes. And it's a pretty unusual for people to do this without speaking to each other. And...

Then they have a debrief with words where they're talking about like, what did it feel like to have this collaboration with their partner? There's a lot that happens in that 10 minutes that kind of creates the foundation for what comes next. Once we're about halfway through and people are sharing stories of failure or challenges that they faced. So it's a mix of just like, how do you build the trust and like the vulnerability in the one-on-one and the interpersonal, but also with the entire room.

Anne McGinty
And how did this latter concept come to you? Are you just a natural at getting people to open up? Because it seems like a super skill.

Adam Rosendahl
Yeah, this I think is a very nuanced and important thing for us all to learn is like, how do we create the space for the people that we're engaging with to be able to drop in and to be real? And of course, part of that is emotional intelligence. I was really lucky to participate from a young age.

in a youth empowerment through the arts program that was called Power of Hope. And it turned into a bigger nonprofit called Partners for Youth Empowerment. And the facilitators with this nonprofit were, I'd say like world-class leaders in arts-based facilitation and all of these techniques around how do you quickly get a group to feel comfortable to share.

How do you quickly get a group to become quiet without creating a power struggle? Like all of these sort of like facilitation superpowers. I witnessed that from when I was 13 and then came back every single year. And I was just sort of in awe by how they were able to do that with a group of teenagers, you know, who are very combative and like not compliant. And I ended up taking courses on facilitation and it became sort of like my big study of how do you work with groups?

Anne McGinty (14:05.862)
Do you ever work with the same group twice?

Adam Rosendahl
Absolutely. Yeah. I'd say about 30% of our clients are repeating.

Anne McGinty
Wow. It's obviously effective.

Adam Rosendahl
Yeah. Well, I mean, a lot of our clients will hire us once a year. Usually it's at their annual offsite. And often one year later, there's a lot of new people. And so what we do is accelerated onboarding experience. People often say, wow, in two hours, I feel like I've been with this team for six months. And I always think about like when people are together in person,

and they collectively laugh as a group, I'd say it's true virtually too. I don't know the stats on it, but I heard someone say that when a group collectively laughs in the same moment, it's almost like they just spent a week together. That is so awesome. I imagine every company could benefit from this type of onboarding.

Anne McGinty
How many facilitators do you have?

Adam Rosendahl
Right now the Late Nite Art team is about 12 people and...

Outside of myself, there's seven others that are facilitators. One of our facilitators is in Cornwall, England. One's in Stuttgart, Germany. One's in Chicago, Northampton, Massachusetts. And then there's four of us in the Bay Area. And then we have a number of other folks who are supporting with business development, finance, marketing.

Anne McGinty
What are you doing to keep your team as connected as you are doing for other corporations?

Adam Rosendahl
Yeah, it's so interesting. Right now, I'm listening to Delivering Happiness, the book by Tony Hsieh.

who's the founder of Zappos. It's just so interesting because it's been a beautiful collaboration and overlap with a lot of team members who worked at Delivering Happiness, which is a amazing culture consulting company who have also been collaborating and working with late night art. So I wanted to learn a little bit more about the culture of Zappos and Tony's philosophy around company culture because he's such a luminary in that field. And there's a lot of just talk around how we walk the walk. You know, we are so much about

resetting the culture of teams in this two hour shared experience that they might experience only once a year, for instance, but can really have a deep effect on how people treat each other and how they see each other as more human beings outside of the roles that they play. And so internally with our team, there's a one hour and 15 minute experience once a month that is led by a different facilitator every single month. And in those 75 minute sessions, there's often tears, laughter. It's mostly focused around connection and learning.

Adam Rosendahl (16:28.406)
So once a quarter, we do a quarterly business update. But most of the time when we're getting together, it's really focused around learning about each other in different ways and improving our skills. But the big thing is that I'm finally doing my first company offsite, February 8th through 11th. So I'm flying everybody out. They're all coming to Oakland. And we're going to have four days together. So it's going to be very collaboratively led. And for me, it's a big deal. And so there's a lot that rides on the time.

Anne McGinty
Yeah. I really admire what you do.

Adam Rosendahl
Thank you, Anne.

Anne McGinty
How are you evolving your experiences to keep it fresh for participants?

Adam Rosendahl
It is always evolving. It started in 2012. I was the AmeriCorps member in that classroom in Seattle in 2010. So now here we are 14 years later, and I'm still doing it. Which people are like, I can't believe you're still doing that late night art thing.

Anne McGinty
That late night art thing? I mean, it's kind of big.

Adam Rosendahl
Yeah, it's just funny like what people's assumptions are of what it is versus, you know, what we actually do. But it's still fresh for me because when I walk into a room, you have 300 people who are standing there. And a lot of what we do is about interpersonal connection and then getting the group to reflect and integrate and debrief and think about how this process relates to their work. So there's a lot of interplay between me and the audience. So first of all, the playlist is always changing depending on who the audience is. If it's a little bit more of a

old-fashioned company and I'm thinking about like how do I kind of make them feel comfortable but also surprise them a little bit but I'm not gonna play house music so I'm thinking about how to change the framing and the words and the music for the audience that I'm working with. We're also working with every single client to think about what are their values, what is the arc of their entire off-site or conference, how do we incorporate some of their language and themes into what we do and oftentimes you know I'm having a call later today with a client.

for an executive offsite that I'm doing in two weeks. And they want to weave a lot of their themes and ideas into my curriculum. So I'm really trying to come in as an insider and not be a random vendor who parachutes in and then just does my two hour thing and then leaves. How can we really feel like this has been customized for this group and that they feel like, oh, he gets us in our culture.

Anne McGinty (18:55:6222)
And as an artist, facilitator, creator, how do you balance your vision
with the operational sides of running a business? 

Adam Rosendahl
Yeah, it's hard. I feel like I really have stepped more fully into my vision and purpose last year. And it was, I think it was partly because Dr. Vivek Murthy, the US Surgeon General, put out this huge report just stating that loneliness and disconnection is the biggest epidemic of our time. And what are we gonna do about it? It's affecting our youth, the elderly and everyone.

across the world, but in the US, it's like 50% of people feel lonely and 18% of people feel like they don't have a single close friend to talk to in their life about meaningful things. It's actually really kind of horrifying when you think about the level of isolation that people are under. So I realized that I always described our work as being about connection and creativity, but now I really leaned into the idea that disconnection is one of the biggest problems of our times.

Creativity has been this very unique way that I'm addressing this huge issue. So the phrase that I have been saying is, disconnection is the disease and creativity is the cure.

Anne McGinty
I love that.

Adam Rosendahl
I can really get behind that right now because I know a lot of people who are also struggling, you know, myself included, it's just tricky to be in my living room working every single day. And like, it's this interesting world now of just having so many Zoom meetings.

Anne McGinty
Yeah.

Adam Rosendahl
Connection and being part of this cure of actually helping people build real friendships and relationships that are long lasting feels like an incredible cause and purpose to get behind. We work with so many audiences. I talked about executives, but one of our facilitators was working with Afghan female refugees who ended up in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. And she was doing the late-night art process as a way of talking about and exploring self-confidence.

As well as, you know, we just did a workshop with trans youth in, it was a camp with 70 trans identifying youth who came to Oakland. And it was just about building community with a population that is basically under attack in our country. It's just amazing how we can use this process as a form of community building, of healing, of exploring difficult topics around race and identity and how to balance that with the operations is I just hired a lot of wonderful people.

Adam Rosendahl (21:21.922)
who also are helping with the operational side. So thank goodness it's not just me like it has been. We have a pretty solid foundation for operations now. And so that's a game changer.

Anne McGinty
It's such deep work that you're doing. And I love it how you're making it accessible to just about anybody. I want to participate in one of your events. Going back to the very beginning, how much capital did this business require?

Adam Rosendahl
Sure, yeah.

Because I live in the Bay Area, a lot of people are like, oh, did you get funding? And people call it a startup. I was living in a communal house in Oakland and I had like $600 rent and I had no car. And when I started Late Night Art, I was leading events for four years, once a month, every single month for four years. It was more of a community building effort, the combination of all my passions around bringing people together, curating these eclectic and interesting playlists that would take people on a journey.

using the art supplies as a tool to help people go deep. But people would pay like 25 to 40 bucks and it would be like a four course dinner and this three hour evening. And I would make like a hundred bucks or something, you know? And that was like four years where I had a job. So that was really the foundation. And whenever people go like, how did Late-Nite-Art start? Well, it definitely was not a business. And I didn't even think it would ever turn into a business. I just was doing it because it was an amazing way for me to bring different communities together in Oakland.

And the main advice that I usually have for people is consistency. I was once a month doing this event. A lot of people kept coming. It was sold out every single time for four years. And I made it accessible so that could get everybody in the room every single time. And I also just built like an amazing group of people working within the business, usually in a volunteer capacity. But I would curate these teams of like six people plus a chef, plus a photographer, plus like a venue partner.

So we'd have like 10 people and I would build these really wonderful friendships and relationships from the beginning. So I'd say there's like the social capital part of it, you know, where creating a space that was truly transforming people's lives and experience. They would just feel generous. They would want to help me. So there was a lot that was done for a very little amount of money. And so then when I got the first opportunity to go to a conference, I wasn't paid, but that conference led to my first corporate opportunity, which

Adam Rosendahl (23:43.934)
I ended up being stuck in a hurricane. I couldn't go.

Anne McGinty
Oh no.

Adam Rosendahl
And so I had to teach my client how to lead my event in the middle of the night from the Dallas Fort Worth Airport. And I thought this is so bad, but he ended up being able to kind of salvage it. And I empowered him to do something he never thought he could do. So I still got paid, which is kind of amazing. After about that time, it was 2014, I tried to go full time. And then after about two or three months, I quickly realized I wouldn't be able to pay my rent. There was no way.

I was going to be able to make it work. So I had to get another job for about two years until 2016. I got laid off from that job. And in 2016, after the business is growing, I ended up getting another corporate gig in the Bay with Old Navy. It was the day after I got laid off. And then the next day, I got this other inquiry for another project. It was just basically like, if I could keep this up, I can make it. And the metaphor is I started running and then I never looked back.

Anne McGinty
It sounds so serendipitous.
The fact that one opportunity closed its door and immediately another one just opened up.

Adam Rosendahl
It was, it was. I mean, that was a moment for me. I'd invested in a business coach, which was a huge investment for me. And when I got laid off, remember, I was actually crying. I was on this hill in Berkeley and I was like, oh my God, what am I going to do? Like I really don't have plan B. It definitely felt like the carpet was pulled out from under me. And then this opportunity that literally came the next day, it was serendipitous. And it definitely was like

It had like a bit of a predestined quality to it of just like, you know, here's the doorway for you to go self-employed, but you got to work.

Anne McGinty
For sure. It's like the world was nudging you in that direction. You were meant to do this.

Adam Rosendahl
Yeah.

Anne McGinty
And all of that dedication and hard work and perseverance, because at the beginning, it sounds like you didn't really know, but you still had the passion for what you were doing and you made it through that transition. What do you know now that would have helped you at the beginning?

Adam Rosendahl
I think I needed to go through all of the trials and tribulations and the scrappy nature of doing work that pretty much took all my time that didn't pay anything for four years. It almost was part of it. It was like putting in the initial investment energetically to just create a buzz, start a brand, build community, really focus on the relationships.

Adam Rosendahl (26:03.402)
you know, would I still do that now? I don't know, I feel like a little bit more like spoiled. I have like higher needs around where I wanna live and things like that. So that is just so interesting how each chapter sort of leads to the next. You need it to happen to get there. Yeah, but there's so many things around just how to, how do I give direct feedback in a loving and supportive way, but not.

push things under the rug. And there's just a lot of leadership skills that would have been nice for me to know earlier.

Anne McGinty
Speaking about that, what is your leadership style?

Adam Rosendahl
My leadership style is similar to my facilitation style. And the way I would describe it is, when I'm in front of a room, because I'm working with a lot of big personalities, there's always ego in the room. People who are used to being the one who's got the microphone. And so if I'm telling them what to do, why should they listen to me? There's always a power dynamic of who has the mic.

And people can pretend like they're listening and play along, but in the meantime, be very resistant or critical or skeptical, or they can be fully engaged. And so how do you convert people? And I think my style has been from the beginning as much as possible, trying to melt the power hierarchy. So I really let people know that it's not about me. I'm not trying to call tons of attention to myself, but I'm really wanting to lift other people up in the room. And

create the dynamic where this is all about them. This is completely in support of them connecting with each other. And so I'm not necessarily a keynote speaker who's coming in to inspire them. I'm the guide that is helping them to build these bridges across the different departments and the relationships in the room. So I think when people realize that they have a very different relationship with me, so they see me as, oh, this guy's really trying to help.

And also by being vulnerable and sharing my own stories, it helps people feel comfortable with me in the room. So I think a big part of it is just being confident, assertive and clear, but then also not creating a power hierarchy. And that's how I try to work with my team too, is everybody's an equal and everybody's an expert in their arena, their niche. And so as much as possible, I'm trying to just let people be the leader of their area.

Anne McGinty
Have that mutual respect.

Adam Rosendahl
Yeah, it's all about respect. It's also about like really...

(28:19.454)
intentionally building relationships with people. So I understand who they are, what's going on in their life, what do they really want? How can late night art be a vehicle to help them grow and develop in the areas that they wanna grow? It's definitely relational, not transactional.

Anne McGinty
I love that about your business. So how do you then balance the financial side and growing your business with your heart centered approach?

Adam Rosendahl
Yes, the last couple of years, late night art has grown, it doubled and then last year grew another 25%.

So there's a lot more money coming in and a lot more money going out. And it's almost all the money that's going out as the investment in the business is in people. And so I think I've just, I've shifted. I used to be a little bit more hesitant to invest in the business as much. And so now I feel much more abundant and thinking a little bigger of where we wanna go, where we're going and hiring people who are really good at what they do as opposed to people who are newer.

Anne McGinty
And where is it that you wanna go? Where do you see the vision for the future of your company?

Adam Rosendahl
I mean, I really feel like almost all aspects of our society are really struggling right now in terms of the lack of creativity and connection. So when I think about the education system and the U S government and the medical system and the way businesses operate, how people feel when they're working for a business, there's so much work to do, but I do think there's drastic need to help imbue and infuse deeper.

relationships inside of all of these institutions of our world. What we're doing already is being a creative partner to open the door to bringing humanity into places that really need it. I imagine if they're happier in their workplace environment, they must take that home as well and into their communities.

Anne McGinty
So this is incredible work.

Adam Rosendahl
Absolutely. But thinking about the election coming up in November and the multiple wars that are going on and

all of the dehumanization that's happening, the polarization, the way people are treating each other. It's just the need for people to recognize the humanity in both sides of the aisle. It feels like more important than ever. And I don't really see it happening very much. So that's pretty disturbing. But I definitely think that late at art is an accessible tool to build that walking in someone else's shoes and building a relationship that makes it hard to stereotype them.

Anne McGinty
What has been the most challenging pushback that you've faced?

Adam Rosendahl (30:43.734)
Like I said, we've done 650 events. Sometimes it's out of our control where it's, you know, we actually have a no alcohol policy at our events, but sometimes companies insist on having a happy hour before or during, and it can be hard for me to enforce that. So almost all of the experiences in which there's been something that is a little bit wonky or goes wrong is because of the group in relation to alcohol. So that's an interesting data point.

There's also moments where people are just hungry or they're jet lagged or they're tired or there's bad lighting or you know, it's been a really, really long day and they don't actually have the emotional capacity to go through like a deep two hour experience. So the timing and the placement of where we are in a group is really important for the success and how things feel. So all of those factors really play into it. But every once in a while, we're also working with a group that might have a toxic leader or sometimes people say like a bad apple. I bet. That has a ripple throughout the whole.

event and people, they might not feel safe to open up with that person in the room. And so that of course, it affects their relationship with what I'm doing. And I can't necessarily transform that into ours.

Anne McGinty
That sounds like a toxic work environment that needs multiple years to sort out.

Adam Rosendahl
I mean, sometimes there can be a transformation where that person actually opens up in a vulnerable way that

everybody starts to see them in a different way. And that can be a big step.

Anne McGinty
So what percentage of these events are you facilitating in person versus online?

Adam Rosendahl
We went 100% virtual in 2020. I didn't think it was possible and then we made it happen. And we did a ton of events in 2020 through 2022 that were all online. And then the end of 2022, in-person came back. And then last year it was mostly in-person and we did maybe 10% of our work was virtual. So.

This year, we're getting more back into doing a mix of 25% virtual and 75% in person.

Anne McGinty
So that you're more accessible, I assume, to clients who are far away?

Adam Rosendahl
Yeah, what we started doing is kicking off our collaboration with clients in person and then doing a series of virtual events to keep the continuity of connection and learning after that event. So we'll do a virtual event every two months or so after the first impact.

Anne McGinty
And what is your pricing strategy for your late night art experiences?

Adam Rosendahl (33:01.022)
It's been an evolving topic. So a lot of companies think about team development is a hundred dollars a person or it's something in that range. And it's tricky because in some ways we're in that industry of team building and team development, but we operate on the higher level of that. And so whether we're doing an event with 50 people or 500, it's not a per person rate. It is more expensive when it's more people.

So at this point, we have a floor for any in-person event that we're doing. And of course, there can be flexibility based on the client that we're working with. It also is different whether it's an event that's for executives, for managers, or for general teams. The pricing tier is slightly based on who the audience is and what is the expectation and how much are we customizing this for this audience.

Anne McGinty
That makes sense. I just assumed you would have done a per person pricing structure. So that's really interesting to me.

Adam Rosendahl
Yeah, it's more about the intention for the outcome of what we're doing and can we deliver on that and we're pricing based on that.

Anne McGinty
That makes sense. I only have two more questions for you. So the first one is what advice can you share that you know a lot about and you think could move the needle for any entrepreneur or anybody aspiring to become one?

Adam Rosendahl
I remember writing an article a long time ago that was called taking out the trash and the ideas. So much of the time we're actually doing.

the dirty work. I'm the one who's sharpening pencils for four hours. And like in the early days with blisters on my hands. And I was continuing to like manage our storage unit and refresh the supplies. And I spent hundreds and hundreds of hours sharpening pencils, which is just a funny thing. You know, when some people are like, what do you do? You're like, well, actually, our business is about addressing disconnection in the workplace and leading these creative experiences that really activate people and drop them from their head to the heart and build these deep relationships. And it's very enlivening.

But the reality of how much are we actually in the field? That's like, you know, 5% of my time. Like the reality is, what does that actually mean to run a business? It's like in front of a computer, having meetings, sharpening pencils, dealing with problems. It's just the way I'm spending my time is not exactly what I would have thought, right? The book that was the big aha for me early on was The E-Myth, which is the classic entrepreneurial book, which is pretty much like, if you're really good at something.

 (35:20.362)
And then you start a business doing that thing, you'll probably after a certain point, not be doing the thing that you're good at almost at all anymore. And so running a business is a different thing than just doing the, what you're good at. So I've managed to continue doing the thing that I love that I'm good at, but as I'm hiring more people, I want to do less of it so that I can remove myself from some aspects of the business, but there's just a lot of different ways that I'm spending my time and energy.

now that I have a team and I love working with people and I love the relationships and I love the learning element of running a business. There's so much to learn.

Anne McGinty
And what's great about the point that you've gotten to now is that you can really sit and do some soul searching and choose what parts of my business do I love doing and what parts am I not a good fit for and then hire out accordingly.

Adam Rosendahl
Yeah.

Anne McGinty
It takes time though, because I think as an owner, a lot of times you do, you wear so many hats and you take care of everything, but you don't have to.

Adam Rosendahl
It's tricky though, because who you hire is so important. I've had a lot of experiences of hiring contractors for different things that didn't go well, and it's just realizing, oh, I could have just done this myself. But somebody told me this advice pretty early on of like, if somebody else can do it 75% of how I could do it, then I shouldn't be doing it.

Anne McGinty
Hiring can be so challenging both in finding suitable candidates, but also letting go of the reins.

Adam Rosendahl
Oh, yeah.

Anne McGinty
So for my last question, if you could go back and have a conversation with yourself when you are in your young 20s, what would you say to yourself?

Adam Rosendahl
I had a lot of self-doubt and a lot of criticism towards myself. And I don't know if I fully believed in myself, even though I got a lot of external validation. I think it was just my internal world was sort of rough, not extreme. But.

I think if 10 years ago I could say you are on the right path, you have found that intersection of what I love to do that I'm passionate about, what I can get paid for, and what the world and community needs. And keep going, man. Keep evolving. Believe in yourself because it's worthwhile.

Anne McGinty
That self-doubt, I think, hits all of us at some point. Whether you're an entrepreneur or you're just going about your life, it's those moments where you need either outside support or your inner voice to pipe up.

Adam Rosendahl (37:32.446)
It's wild how it can be transformative event, and then it can just immediately drop into self-doubt. I know. It's just like the roller coaster of emotions is very real. And having a strong practice, and even people who are around me who believe in me, kind of helps me remind me who I am.

Anne McGinty
Yeah, and what you're doing is powerful work and is so values driven that I can only see it as being a continued success because you're impacting people's lives in such a positive way.

Adam Rosendahl
Yeah, and I love that. When I see people who they actually built a new friend at work and they built a relationship during one of my sessions that is long lasting, like, for me that it's just like one of the best feelings when people come back to me. People come back to me like eight years later and they said I met somebody in that session that has become one of my closest friends and or we started a business together or how a moment can turn into a long lasting connection.

Anne McGinty
I really love your story.
Look at how much you've achieved.

Adam Rosendahl
It's been a crazy journey.

Anne McGinty
Well, thanks for coming on the show and sharing your insight with us.

Adam Rosendahl
Absolutely, yeah, thank you.

Anne McGinty (38:40.734)
If you've made it this far, as always, thanks for being here. 

Today's key takeaways. 

  • Loneliness and disconnection is the biggest epidemic of our time. Is there something you can do to improve that? 


  • Companies around the world have teams and workplaces that are often disconnected, which can affect team performance. There are opportunities to increase meaningful connection and build relationships that are long lasting which also has a positive influence on work efficiency. 


  • Learning how to communicate with others in an authentic way is an important and useful skill, not just as an entrepreneur, but also in your family, with your friends, community, and teams. If this does not come naturally to you, take a course that can help you improve this skill. 


  • If you don't know what to say when meeting a new person, you can always start by asking them what they're excited about in their life to help them open up. 


  • Consider the difference between relational and transactional leadership. Transactional leadership is driven by process and relational leadership is people driven. Humanizing teammates beyond what they do for work is one step in the right direction. 


  • Being a good leader or employer includes leading by example, using effective communication, and also understanding what it's like to walk in another person's shoes.


  • Finally, self-belief is essential for success, and the people you surround yourself with can have a huge impact on your life, so choose wisely. 


That's it for today. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate and review and share it with a friend who you think might benefit from the story and the insight. I release episodes once a week, so come back and check it out. Have a great day.


People on this episode

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Anne McGinty

Host
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Adam Rosendahl

Guest