We were lucky to catch up with Kimberley Chan and Linda Cajuste recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kimberley Chan and Linda Cajuste, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

A few years ago, we were both working 9-5 jobs in Montreal, Canada. Linda worked in accounting and Kim worked in marketing. We both have a creative side and like doing creative activities. We met at an improv theatre class, which we were taking for different reasons – Kim wanted to try something new, and Linda wanted to improve her writing and storytelling skills and also wanted to become less shy.

Linda: During that time, I was stressed, overworked and unhappy. My job allowed me to take a one-year sabbatical, so I decided to take it. I had always wanted to live in Paris, but I was hesitant at first. The improv classes taught me to say “yes, and” to challenges. So I said “yes, and” to this decision and moved to Paris for one year. During that year, I pushed my boundaries, indulged in my passions of screenwriting and improv and achieved my dream of writing and producing a short film.

Kim: I was also overworked and had just returned to my 9-5 marketing job after an almost year-long medical leave. I felt the urge to get the most out of life. So, I decided to take some time off to travel. I went to live Europe and Asia, met people from all walks of life and pushed myself to say “yes, and” and do things I never thought I would do.

After coming back to Montreal from what we called our “creative breaks,” we both felt rejuvenated, learned a lot, and became more creative, meaning better at working, leading, adapting, innovating and seeing things through different point of views. We said “everyone should feel this way!”

My Creative Break was initially born to help people feel this way. We motivated people to take breaks and to make time do things for themselves. We realized that not everyone could take long sabbaticals and travel, so we wanted to help people find ways to get in touch with their “creative” side – to act on their drive to explore, try new things and create a more meaningful life than overworking themselves.

We initially started as an Instagram page. We posted motivational quotes to push people to do things that would make them happy.

Then, people asked us, “how did you push yourselves to become these better versions of yourselves?”

We now run workshops and events that help people work on this using our “secret ingredients” – improv and creativity exercises. With these, we bring people together to network, have fun, work on new skills, and get the support and motivation they need to work on their creativity. We also work with organizations and help teams work on communication, collaboration and problem-solving skills using creativity and team bonding exercises.

Kimberley and Linda, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My Creative Break is a community in which people motivate each other to get creative, innovate and step out of their comfort zones so that they can do things they’ve always wanted to do, whether it’s something big like start a business, or something small like pursue a hobby. We connect people through fun events and meetups all over the world.

We also work with companies and bring an element of fun, connectivity and creativity to their work meetings, events and days to ensure good mental health and strong collaboration within teams. We do that through creative team building sessions and workshops that use creative activities and improv (spontaneous thinking/writing/drawing) as a base.

We connect people and motivate them to work on their creativity, which to us means the ability to innovate, adapt to various situations, take risks and do things out of their comfort zones. We do this through different services:

1. Creative networking events. These events help you meet new people, expand your circle, learn and try new things. We structure the events and facilitate icebreakers, activities and challenges, so that even the shyest people have fun. We take the “work” out of networking for participants – we give them conversation topics, we make sure everyone is always connecting and no one is left out and that everyone is having fun.

2. Creative team building workshops for companies and groups that help teams feel happy, connected and motivated, while working on skills like communication, creativity, teamwork and problem solving.

3. Creative workshops – these online and in-person workshops help people connect, make new friends while working on their creativity. We do a variety of activities like improv, writing, storytelling, group challenges and journaling.

4. Interactive and creative city walks – only in Montreal for now. Imagine a tour + a workshop + a team building event. We take a small group on a walk so they can discover the city, meet people and do fun, creative activities inspired by the surroundings.

5. Creative retreats (soon).

What sets us apart/what are we most proud of:

Through all these, we teach that everyone is creative. Many people initially think that they are not creative, but surprise themselves during our workshops and events. We show them that creativity is not only about art like drawing or painting, but it’s about exploring, connecting, trying new things and taking risks.

We also bring a new way of connecting – some people and workplaces have been disconnected during the pandemic, so we bring people together in a fun and safe space, so that they feel comfortable interacting “in person” again.

We also use improv in all our workshops and events. But we teach that improv is not what they think, which is usually unscripted stage performances like “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” We show how improv can be exercised in different ways, like through writing and help in real-life situations.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

We met at an improv class about 10 years ago.

Linda wanted to improve her writing and storytelling skills. She was also shy and wanted to break out of her shyness.

Kim had always loved theatre and trying new creative things, so she just decided to sign up for improv because she was curious.

Kim and Linda stayed in touch while on their creative breaks. Kim visited Linda in Paris. And when Linda returned from Paris, Kim was inspired to take her own creative break which took her to 10 different countries.

Four years ago, we met again in Montreal after our travels and spoke about how we felt happier and how we thought that we needed the type of support that we saw abroad here. So we started My Creative Break.

Have you ever had to pivot?

We founded the business just before the pandemic. Our original idea was to foster a community in which people could connect in person. We wanted to get people together to have fun through workshops, improv sessions and retreats.

Then, the pandemic happened and we went into lockdown. We weren’t sure what to do with the business. We then decided to try to offer some online workshops, even though we had never thought of conducting any of our activities online.

We weren’t sure how it would turn out. We really wanted to foster real connections through creativity and improv. Improv works best in-person – you need to be able to observe people’s gestures, look into their eyes and really feel their presence. We weren’t sure if this would work through Zoom, but we decided to try it.

Hence, our online workshops were born! We had to figure out which types of exercises would work online and approach them differently from the way we would do them in person, but we made them work.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mycreativebreak.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mycreativebreak/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mycreativebreak
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mycreativebreak/
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/mycreativebreak