Building Community and Connection in Business with Brian Kellerman

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:16)
Welcome back to the show, everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach again here with my co-host, Mike Liwski, and our special guest today. So a recent McKinsey study found that companies fostering a strong sense of community among employees are 55% more likely to report high engagement, and 47% more likely to outperform competitors in customer satisfaction. So connection is not a nice to have, it's a growth driver. Today, we explore how human connection fuels innovation, retention, and resilience in business, and how one company has made community its competitive advantage. Mike, please introduce our special guest today.

**Mike Liwski** (0:58)
Absolutely, Stephen, looking forward to it. So with us today is Brian Kellerman. He is the CEO of GoGather. With over 20 years of experience in event strategy and experiential marketing, Brian really helps organizations design gatherings that move people, really not just logistically, but emotionally.
That's a critical component that we're really going to dig into today. And as well, his work transforms meetings into movements. I love that, Brian. And he does that by really creating alignment and belonging that lasts well past the event, right? Why make this big investment if you're not going to be able to go past the event? So Brian, we are super eager to hear your insights today. Welcome to our show.

**Brian Kellerman** (1:47)
Oh, I appreciate it. Thank you, gentlemen. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm very excited and grateful for the chance to talk about something that's been really the center of my career for over 20 years now.
It's sort of hard to believe coming through it. Really, honestly, since school, since college, funny story, long story, I was a DJ of all things. In college, great way to work your way through college. But that's when I realized sort of the power of connecting people. It was through music at that time, but of course, in great wonderful environments. But the connections, the bonds that were made, even with me and making friends during those times, really showed me the power of bringing people together. It was through that career, or that what I thought was going to be a geology group, I got a geology degree, a big estate, but working my way through school, that made such a strong impact on me and then I continued to meet friends that were in the hospitality industry, in the production industry, that sort of thing, and realized, oh my goodness, there's this whole industry out here of bringing people together in a really meaningful way. That was it. Hit the ground running from there, was completely fulfilled with everything that we were doing, and went through all kinds of different iterations, whether it was focusing more on production or creative and that sort of thing, and finally landed here at GoGather, which is really the embodiment of all of those different experiences. There's no better way to build connections and bringing people together, and it's right there in our name, GoGather. It's about gathering together to be better than we are as individuals as a whole. When we're face-to-face, something deeper happens. As much as I appreciate being here with you all, I can't wait till the three of us are together.

**Stephen Sakach** (3:34)
Yeah, the way we're face-to-face, because it's a different connection.
What have you learned about building connection intentionally rather than leaving it to chance? It's such a huge difference-maker, right?

**Brian Kellerman** (3:48)
It is, and it's a challenge because so often we want to go, especially into things like meetings and events, we want to go into it and be very intentional. Of course, that's the idea, and building a strategy around it. But what we found is it's really more about creating environments and moments than having a specific strategy of how to make those connections. Now, we need to create an environment where people can feel comfortable, where people can start to break down those personas, those barriers. Even as we meet somebody for the first time, we have our default go-to. This is Brian meeting you for the first time. Once you get to know me, maybe once we get to have a chance to go fishing or spend some time outside of the office or start to share family connections, that's where we're going. Those barriers start to break down and then we start to build those meaningful connections.
That's really what we want to focus on is, how can we create shared experiences through spending time together? Of course, we're there to learn, we're there to understand other people's experience, we're there to understand the goals and objectives of our business, that sort of thing. But at the same time, while we're doing that, what are the shared experiences that we can have? And I always push my staff to think back to, what were the most impactful things in your life that you remember, you know, in the ways that you made deep, meaningful connections? For me, it was thinking back to things like summer camp for my childhood, or team sports, or school trips, or those big shared meals, family fun, kind of chaotic. Wasn't all organized and perfect. It was a little bit messy and a little chaotic, and there was some laughter and fun to it. And so we really want to humanize those experiences for people. We want to design event environments where, yes, there is that structure, there is those checkboxes, those things that we need to get done. But at the same time, there's also that freedom to just be out there and interact and be encouraged to do so.