Corporate Team Building and Bonding

Corporate team building has moved well beyond the trust fall. What started decades ago as ropes courses and icebreakers is now a structured industry organized around measurable goals: communication, retention, problem-solving, and company culture. The pandemic accelerated the shift, pushing a largely in-person field into virtual and hybrid formats almost overnight, and most of those changes stuck. The work today tends to fall into a few broad approaches: in-person experiential events like escape rooms, scavenger hunts, and murder mysteries; culinary and tasting experiences such as mixology, chocolate, and wine; competitive game shows and trivia; professional-development and leadership workshops; and charitable or CSR-driven activities where the deliverable is a donation rather than a trophy.

The field has a recognizable roster of players. TeamBonding, the company featured in this episode, is consistently ranked among North America’s leading providers and is a seven-time Inc. 5000 honoree. Others operating at scale include Outback Team Building & Training, The Go Game, Let’s Roam, Confetti, TeamBuilding.com, and The Leaders Institute, known for its charity Build-A-Bike program. Market researchers put the U.S. team-building services market in the low billions of dollars, with steady growth projected through the early 2030s as distributed and hybrid workforces become permanent rather than temporary.

This episode of Rebooting Business is a conversation with David Goldstein, founder of TeamBonding, recorded during the 2020 pandemic pivot. It holds up as both a time capsule and a primer. Goldstein traces the company’s unlikely origin in murder-mystery dinner theater, explains the difference between team bonding and team building, and works through harder territory — how an experiential events company approaches diversity, inclusion, and difficult conversations without overstepping. Along the way he covers charity bike builds, cancer-care kits, the economics of going virtual, and why making everyone happy was never the point.

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Introductions

Somerfleck: Thanks for joining us on YouTube for another episode of Rebooting Business. I’m your host, David Somerfleck, a digital marketing specialist online at www.dms.blue. This is episode 26, and my guest today is David Goldstein. How are you, David?

Goldstein: Very well, thank you.

Somerfleck: Let’s start at the top. Introduce yourself — who you are, what you do — and then I want to get into your background.

Goldstein: I’m David Goldstein. I call myself the CEO — Creator of Opportunities — at TeamBonding. We’re an international corporate team building company. We’ve done thousands of events for some of the biggest and best companies all over the country and the world.

How TeamBonding Started

Somerfleck: When did you start, and how?

Goldstein: TeamBonding started right around the turn of the century, in 1999, and it grew out of another company that wasn’t doing so well. I was running a dinner theater — the first murder-mystery dinner theater in the U.S. I started that in 1987, licensed it, and had 30 mystery dinner theaters licensed to me. By the end of 1999, everyone was doing dinner theater. In Boston alone there were 37. I thought I could outsmart them, outmarket them, do anything anyone else could do. What I couldn’t do was be new and different. I’d been doing mystery dinner theater for 13 years, but I wasn’t doing Italian weddings or Irish wakes, and there were bigger, better things out there. So instead of competing head-to-head, I went smaller. We customized our murder mysteries, started doing team building events, and built things designed for the corporate market. That’s where TeamBonding was born.

Team Bonding vs. Team Building

Somerfleck: So you went from dealing with a hundred individuals to dealing with one decision-maker — a different type of customer, a different type of offering.

Goldstein: Fair to say. Murder mystery and corporate entertainment were optional — you didn’t have to do it. Team building was different. There was a budget for it. It crossed over into HR, into company culture, employee engagement, employee retention — things people had to justify. Same company, but a different pocket where the money came from.

Why Team Building

Somerfleck: Why team building specifically? You could have gone into something related.

Goldstein: Once we moved into corporate, I started to see the opportunity. We did a murder mystery called “Business Is Murder,” where the script was customized around the people attending — we’d gather information in advance and build the show around dinner. Then I thought about what else I had that would appeal to the same audience. At the time I was running a limousine scavenger hunt with Polaroid cameras and film — we called it “team building by accident.” You had three hours, 40 photos, a list of 100 items, and you had to figure out how to score the most points. The biggest one we did early on was 40 limousines and 240 people. I learned two lessons that day: first, it’s hard to make everybody happy; second, you can create something that goes viral. We were across the river from Polaroid — we were in Boston, they were in Cambridge — and we told them about this big event. All we wanted was film and cameras in exchange for any publicity. They passed. So Kodak, who was infringing on Polaroid’s trademark at the time, gave us the cameras and film, and we ended up on television, in the business journal, the newspaper, the evening magazine. Polaroid called afterward and asked why we hadn’t come to them.

Somerfleck: I wonder if the higher-ups even knew.

Goldstein: Probably not. Lack of vision.

Defining Team Building

Somerfleck: How do you define team building to C-level people — or do you talk to them at all?

Goldstein: It’s not always C-level. We’re set up more inbound — people come to us looking to solve a problem: retention, engagement, communication. What we offer are different levels of solving those problems, usually somewhere between two and four hours. Sometimes we combine things or run a retreat, but there’s only so much you can accomplish in that time, so we try not to over-promise. If you and I did an escape room together, we’d know each other a lot better by the end. We’d have depended on each other, used our different skills, and whether we escaped or not, we’d trust each other more. A lot of our activities are designed that way — to build trust.

Who Needs Team Building

Somerfleck: Who usually contacts you, and who needs it most?

Goldstein: It depends. Our programs cover different things. We do a lot of charitable programs, so companies with a charitable component reach out to give back. This summer we did a lot of work with virtual interns — they’re not coming into the office, so you have to find a way to bond them with their teams. In the fall we’ll be doing kickoffs and re-kickoffs. We have more than 100 programs — more now, with all the virtual ones — designed to meet different issues: getting to know each other, building trust, communication, problem-solving. Sometimes there are real issues a company has to deal with. We’re going to be adding diversity and inclusion.

Difficult Conversations and DEI

Somerfleck: That was one of my questions — difficult conversations that aren’t happening. How do you approach that? Do you consult psychologists, sociologists, inclusion professionals? I’ve never seen a team building exercise focused on it.

Goldstein: The first thing I have to realize is that I’m a fifty-something white guy — what I say doesn’t carry much weight in that conversation. So TeamBonding isn’t the place to host that conversation ourselves; we have to deliver it the way people expect. I talked to leaders in diversity, heads of diversity at large companies, to figure out who’s speaking credibly in this space. Where I landed most comfortably was improv. We’re working with a troupe that does a piece — I think it’s called “Black Power, White Privilege.” It involves two performers, an older white man and a Black woman, who role-play different situations so people see things they might not anticipate, with a discussion at the end.

Jane Elliott and the Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes Experiment

Somerfleck: Have you heard of Jane Elliott?

Goldstein: I have not.

Somerfleck: If I had a hat, I’d take it off to her. She’s an older woman, a former schoolteacher, who’s been doing this for at least 50 years — powerful workshops on discrimination, privilege, and racism using what’s called the “brown eyes, blue eyes” experiment. Google it and her workshops come right up. She’s been on Oprah and the BBC. People break down and cry, people storm off — there’s a lot of power in them. In the exercise, people with brown eyes are treated differently from people with blue eyes, with structure built around it. As a team builder, what’s your take on something that confrontational?

Goldstein: We’ve got the pandemic, Black Lives Matter, a lot happening — and people are still working from home. At some point they’ll come back to the office and have to deal in person with things they’ve only talked about. I think TeamBonding is in a position to facilitate those discussions — not to be the company that runs them, but to open them. The word I keep coming back to is empathy. We have to find a way for people to have empathy for one another. It’s a slippery slope. We’ve had a couple of issues as a team building company where we crossed an imaginary line and offended people by accident. Companies are going to need to know where that line is, and we want to at least give them the opportunity to open the conversation.

The Bias You Don’t See

Somerfleck: I’m sure you’ve seen the show “What Would You Do?” There are so many ways to integrate psychology, sociology, even economics into role-play.

Goldstein: It’s a lot of what you don’t see. From my perspective and yours, you don’t know what you don’t see until someone points it out. A few months ago — before this was top of the news — we had a program called Operation Cancer Care, where companies build cancer-care kits: bags with coloring books, lotions, things that help during chemo and recovery. One part is a game, a bit like jacks, where you pick up the “bad” cancer cells and leave the “good” ones. Afterward, several people came to the facilitator and asked, “Why are the bad cancer cells black?” It’s a fair question. We’d never thought of it. We changed it immediately — different colors now. But that’s an unseen bias, and it’s part of society.

Goldstein: There’s a famous interview Muhammad Ali gave when he was a young man — I’m not sure if he was Muhammad Ali yet or still Cassius Clay. It’s powerful and even comedic; you hear people laughing. He says he always wondered why angel food cake was white and devil’s food cake was black — everything evil was black, everything good was white. The president lives in the White House. He gives example after example, one right after another. It’s powerful to hear it put in that context by a remarkable man — arguably the greatest boxer of all time, a great Olympic athlete, very charismatic.

Somerfleck: We just weren’t listening then.

Goldstein: And it’s ironic the video’s being replayed so much now, all over social media.

Making Team Building Relevant

Somerfleck: We’ve got a global pandemic, economic turmoil that rivals the Great Depression, political upheaval, and undeniable social upheaval. How do you make team building relevant to the businesses that need it most — how do you “sell” it right now as a necessity and an investment, not just another bill?

Goldstein: It happened fast. Everyone was sent home — we all thought it would be a couple of weeks. Then people started looking for ways to bring their teams together: first cocktail hours, then trivia. After a while they realized they weren’t going back anytime soon and asked, “Is there anything more we can do?” So we kept pivoting — a word I promise not to use again — toward virtual events, but not just cocktail hours and trivia. Real things where people work together, solve problems, communicate. I don’t think budgets have fully shifted yet — we’re still in summer, when the money was for outings, not team building. I’m hoping in the fall companies look at it differently. If you work for me, I want you happy and engaged. I don’t want you looking elsewhere. Half the reason people stay at a job is the people they work with. We have about 35 virtual options now, and they keep evolving — a lot of them involve shipping kits: chocolate tasting, beer tasting, cocktail making, painting.

Somerfleck: And the post office and UPS slowing down complicated that.

Goldstein: It did — a great idea before shipping got backed up. Some of those can be offered online, and people have gotten more comfortable getting out or having things delivered. There are more options than there were.

Small Business

Somerfleck: Could the typical small business — the mom-and-pop shop — benefit from corporate team building?

Goldstein: One thing this period has done is make us available to smaller groups with lower budgets. When we only did big companies, there was a minimum to justify sending someone out and shipping materials. Now events that used to start around $3,000 can start around $750. That’s opened us up to schools, religious organizations, and others we hadn’t worked with before.

Misconceptions

Somerfleck: What are the most common misconceptions about team building?

Goldstein: A lot of people still think of the trust-fall days — lean back and I’ll catch you. Team building is shared experiences. It’s risk without real danger. There are ways to come together that aren’t dangerous or silly — they can be silly if you want, but they can also be meaningful. We’re doing an event now where we’re sending out 16,000 art kits; people paint small pictures that get downloaded and put into banners welcoming kids back to school. If the kids don’t come back in person, there’s a video welcoming them online. Everyone does a little work, so 16,000 people from one company are doing something to give back. That’s team building too — they’ve come together around a donation and around what they created.

The Charity Bike Build

Somerfleck: How do you make typical team building more impactful?

Goldstein: One of our most popular events before all this was the Charity Bike Build. We send unbuilt bicycles to a venue, hotel, or conference, and through team building exercises the group builds children’s bikes. If all goes well, at the end children come out from behind a curtain and receive the decorated bikes — many getting one for the first time. We just sent bikes to a company where each person at home gets a kit, builds it over Zoom, and donates it to a local charity near them. That’s virtual and real coming together. If you built the bike and gave it to your local Boys and Girls Club, it feels good — and it makes you feel good about the company that paid for the experience.

Designing an Event

Somerfleck: When you work with a company, how much is already packaged versus built around what they want?

Goldstein: A little of both. We start by asking what they want to walk away feeling or having accomplished at the end of a two-hour event, then recommend options. Often they’ll combine two things — a charity bike build plus teddy bears, or a mixology event plus wine tasting. We used to call those hybrids, before the word got redefined. We don’t usually build from scratch — that’s labor- and time-intensive — but things develop as we go. The 16,000-kit event started as one thing and became another: you can’t send paint through the mail, so it became colored pencils, and it evolved from there.

Business Impact

Somerfleck: Has business fallen off?

Goldstein: Yes and no. In June we did twice as many events as the year before, for about a third of the revenue. It’s busier because people need it, and it’s easier in the sense that a facilitator who’d normally fly to Dallas for one event can now do three in a day from his computer. You also learn new things — we had a power outage last week, and you forget that if your computer goes out, you can’t run a virtual event. So for the first time we ran three events on a generator. Just one more thing to worry about.

Being Flexible

Somerfleck: Your flexibility — pricing packages, adaptability — seems to be helping.

Goldstein: Being flexible and innovative both help. One of our differentiators has always been offering many different events rather than specializing in one. It goes against “jack of all trades, master of none,” but doing so many things lets people find something they won’t find elsewhere — and book a few different things at once.

A “Dream” Team Building

Somerfleck: Could team building principles apply to society right now — a dream exercise with Republicans and Democrats in the same room?

Goldstein: I named the company TeamBonding because there’s only so much you can accomplish in two to four hours. If you really wanted to institute change, you’d have to do it regularly — you can’t just show up and, poof, you’re a great team. At our level, probably not. At a higher level, done regularly, you probably could accomplish something. We’ve actually been asked a couple of times to do something for Washington, but right now I think it’s a little too far gone for our talents.

Somerfleck: You’d need regularly recurring events of different types.

Goldstein: Even in Washington, people with different beliefs sometimes work together. It’s as beneficial in Congress as in a company for people to get to know each other, so that when they have to work together, they can.

Final Thoughts

Somerfleck: Any final thoughts on team building and the world today?

Goldstein: Something I find funny — depending on when this airs, the Inc. 5000 comes out tomorrow with its list of the fastest-growing companies in the country. We’ve made it five times, and we make it again tomorrow. But it’s based on growth from 2016 to 2019, so it almost feels like a list of the formerly fastest-growing companies — we aren’t anymore. It just adds to the strange world we’re in.

Somerfleck: How can people reach you?

Goldstein: TeamBonding.com is the easiest way. The lesson I’d share is resilience. We got knocked down — every one of our events stopped, the whole business was done — and in about eight weeks we rebuilt it. That’s the real takeaway.

Somerfleck: Thank you, David. And to everyone watching or listening: if you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing, and stay safe out there.

Sources Cited:

TeamBonding — official site (company facts, seven-time Inc. 5000 honoree)

https://www.teambonding.com/

Verified Market Reports — Corporate Team Building Service Market (market size)

https://www.verifiedmarketreports.com/product/corporate-team-building-service-market/

SnackNation — Best Team Building Companies (industry players)

https://snacknation.com/blog/team-building-companies/

Teamland — Top Team Building Companies 2026 (industry players)

https://www.teamland.com/post/top-10-team-building-companies