Matthew Rolnick is the Vice President of Strategy & Innovation of Yaymaker. Yaymaker’s focus is on corporate team building experiences, corporate culture and employee engagement. Matthew has spearheaded the Yaymaker DEI, Mental Health and Leadership speaker series called “Motivational Minutes”. He has numerous articles published in Forbes and has three courses on Udemy (Entrepreneurship, Persuasive Writing and Clubhouse 101) in which over 100,000 students have enrolled. In September 2021, he published his first book, “Find Your Yay“. It was an Amazon Best Seller under Short Business Reads and Marketing Research. The book helps individuals and businesses grow their brand, create new strategic partnerships, utilize social selling and help find their voice.
FMM: How is Yaymaker strengthening corporate team building, corporate culture, and employee engagement?
We do this by offering fun, unique and interactive experiences, like Paint Nite, Wreath making and create your own ukulele. We offer fun and games such as Murder Mysteries, Themed Trivia and Casino Night. We also offer some fascinating food and drink experiences like Brazilian Chocolate Tastings, Charcuterie experiences and even a water tasting event with a water sommelier. We find it’s important to have a dynamic host that can make everyone let down their guards and simply enjoy the experience.
FMM: What are some of the trends you are seeing?
The workplace expectations are constantly evolving. It’s been more challenging with remote work forces across the globe and at the same time a push for many companies to have employees come back to the office. Yaymaker is trying to help the complexity of team building by offering a combination of in-person, virtual and hybrid experiences. It’s exciting to see an event like our paint nites in which employees can have the choice of doing it at their office or the comfort of their homes at the same time as everyone else is participating.
FMM: Take us through working with you.
Companies, Groups, Organizations and Leaders often reach us wanting to do a team building event. Some know exactly what they want – either they have worked with us in the past, heard from another team or saw an experience that caught their eye on our website. Others reach out to us with a blank slate (or we like to say canvas) and are very open or curious what we can offer. We start with a conversation with an Event Consultant and try to determine the best experience that aligns with what they want to accomplish. Do they want the experience more interactive, unique, and collaborative? Is there a theme with the event? Is it to celebrate a special milestone or holiday? What other types of events have they done in the past and how did their employees enjoy it. Once we determine the best event for them – we pick out a date, time, how many employees they think will participate and whether to have the event in person, virtually or hybrid. Once we have everything we need, we have the client work directly with an Event Planner from our corporate office and a local or virtual host.
FMM: You spearheaded the Yaymaker DEI, Mental Health and Leadership speaker series called “Motivational Minutes”. What can we find?
You can find true thought leaders and impressive speakers on a wide variety of topics. Many of our speakers are authors, have TEDx talks and are incredible at speaking to corporate clients and connecting with audiences. Regrading DEI we have experts that talk on Black History Month, MLK Day, Hispanic Heritage Month, AANHPI Month, Pride Month, Women’s History Month, Disability Inclusion, Native American History, Unconscious Bias trainings and numerous other topics. For Mental Health we have speakers that talk about managing stress, pressures to conform and keeping a health balance. For leadership – we have motivational speakers that are fantastic for recognition and helping people break through barriers.
FMM: Tell us about your book, “Find Your Yay.” How does this book utilize social selling and help individuals and businesses to find their voice?
“Find Your Yay” is a short book that encourages businesses and people to utilize social media (especially a platform like LinkedIn) to showcase thought leadership, grow a brand, collaborate with strategic partnerships, nurture relationships, generate new clients and find one’s voice. It’s both a marketing and sales book. I shared my journey and share examples of how my social strategies and content helped generate over 50 new corporate clients and helped form some incredible new partnerships.
FMM: Who has been the most inspirational during your journey?
There is a long list of people who have inspired my professional journey. Dan Hermann (the Co-Founder) of Yaymaker gave me this opportunity to really be a catalyst and an intrepreneur within the company. My colleagues have also been highly supportive. I work with many talented and passionate people — especially three women I work with on the corporate events team (Min Brown, Danielle Smith and MacKenzie Rulnick). My 14-year-old daughter has inspired me to think young and teaches me new social trends. However, my wife of 15 years (Sabine Rolnick) has been the most inspirational person in my professional journey. She’s challenged, supported and inspired me every step of the way and I’m very supportive of her career. She’s much brighter than I am. She went undergrad to Yale, received her PhD at NYU in Psychology. She was a professor at UIC. She had some health challenges and had to retire from teaching. Over 8 years ago – we bought a real estate franchise together called Homevestors and we have rehabbed over 20 houses. I realized how incredible she was at helping people and the whole real estate process. Approximately five years ago, I encouraged her to pursue a career as a real estate broker and she is thriving as a broker at Berkshire Hathaway Homeservices Chicago. We have both been so passionate with our work that we have been wonderful sounding boards for each other when things get challenging.
FMM: Why is Yaymaker the best strategic and innovative companies out there?
We want people to have fun, experience new things and feel connected. We are the Original Paint Nite and have done hundreds of thousands of events. We have a wonderful platform, and our technology is user friendly to execute events. I think it is our people, network of hosts, technology, listening to our customers and constantly thinking how to improve is what makes Yaymaker a wonderful strategic partner that offers many innovative and engaging experiences.
