HI, I’M CALVIN!

♦ Speaker
♦ Coach
♦ Researcher
♦ Entrepreneur
♦ Adventurer
♦ Student of Happiness

 

During Calvin’s 30 year entrepreneurial journey he has been passionate about creating happy corporate cultures. First hand experience has shown Calvin that if you can get the culture right, staff are happier, productivity and innovation are higher, staff turnover is lower and the business runs with less friction and more profitably. As founder of the office coffee and snack company Lykki, Calvin has gathered insight from over 2 million orders delivered to clients. His research shows that providing free snacks, delicious coffee and fresh fruit might be nice “perks” but overall they don’t create amazing corporate cultures.

*Lykki (say Lie-Key) is a playful take on the Danish word for Happiness.

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MISSION

Help create

  • Healthier
  • Happier and
  • More productive workplaces

As a life long Student of Happiness and Entrepreneur Calvin has travelled the globe to research, interview and document some of the worlds happiest workplaces. While visiting over 200 companies in Canada, USA, Denmark, Sweden, Japan, Germany, Thailand, Philippines, Australia, Nicaragua, Mexico and Bhutan Calvin found that no two corporate cultures are the same. Each has a unique “recipe” all their own. Calvin’s consulting company The Culture Kitchen focuses on Workplace Happiness research, speaking, coaching, workshops and retreats. As a speaker Calvin is warm, funny and very insightful. His personality instantly makes everyone feel comfortable but he is not here to motivate and inspire – he is here to create a change in attitude and provide actual science based tools and strategies to become happier, healthier and more productive at work! Calvin lives in Canada with his wife and 2 sons.

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calvin johnson

My Entrepreneurial Journey

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31 years of experience

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467 company culture interviews

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1 book in the oven

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21 countries researched

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Startups founded - 6

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Over 2 Million Orders Delivered

Combined Sales $250 Million

Why Workplace Happiness?

Happiness is the secret weapon for all the successful organizations he have studied and interviewed. A Culture Recipe that includes people first will increase profitability, productivity, engagement and lower absenteeism.

The topic of Workplace Happiness has exploded in the last 5 years, uncovering a treasure trove of new scientific research. We are constantly collecting the most important research from psychology, sociology, neuroscience and management studies and use them in the development of our work.

  • Our work is 100% evidence based.
  • A happy culture is a competitive advantage.
  • Happy teams outperform unhappy teams in virtually every metric.
  • A positive work culture allows employees to reach their full potential.
It’s about researching, documenting and sharing the ingredients successful companies use to build amazing, high-performing cultures. Every company has a unique culture all their own and my goal is to help them develop it thru research, speaking, coaching, workshops and retreats.
Basically, I got obsessed with happiness at work. While running my own B2B businesses, I kept bumping into these amazing, successful companies who were my customers: start ups, enduring brands, super-achieving growth companies, “Best Places to Work" repeat winners. They all felt eerily like the same place. They shared the same warm vibe, the same fluid cooperation, the same cohesion. Everybody behaved like family. The question is, why? And, what was their culture recipe?
I started visiting, touring and interviewing the hundreds of customers I had in my own businesses and going behind the scenes to see what makes them tick. I would bring these insights back into my own business to help build our own culture. Soon I found myself travelling North America to tour great cultures like Zappos, Apple and The Container Store then on to 21 other countries including Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Thailand, Japan, India, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Nicaragua. I looked at how they prepared, how they thought, how they communicated, how they celebrated, and how they approached each day. After hundreds of company tours and research, patterns on workplace happiness and successful cultures became apparent. I also explored the science of personal happiness, national well being, positive phycology and workplace happiness, devouring hundreds of books, research papers and completing coaching training in Denmark at the WooHoo Academy and the positive phycology program at Stanford University.
You know that old saying by Peter Drucker: culture eats strategy for breakfast? It’s never been more true than right now. Culture can be your most powerful asset, or your biggest Achilles heel. So how about “creating an amazing happy culture" is your strategy? The topic of Workplace Happiness has exploded in the last 5 years, uncovering a treasure trove of new scientific research. We are constantly collecting the most important research from psychology, sociology, neuroscience and management studies and use them in the development of our work. We now know that company culture is powerful: a Harvard study of more than 200 companies found that strong culture improves revenue 765 percent over an 11-year period. Yet when you ask how culture works, the answers are always vague. People explain it with mystical phrases like, it’s in their DNA… it’s in the oxygen… it’s magic,… it’s their secret recipe. Kip Tindle of the Container Store puts it best with his famous high performing "Yummy Culture". In addition, today’s challenges are more complex than ever, no matter what field you’re in. They require a level of group intelligence, speed, problem-solving, and collective learning that only an amazing culture can deliver. To put it simply, the old top-down, authoritarian models of culture don’t work anymore. A great culture is the most powerful advantage a company can have.