Episode #130: Unlocking Creativity at Science Museum Oklahoma with Azhelle Wade
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At the beginning of June The Toy Coach was invited to give a keynote speech at the Science Museum Oklahoma’s Inspire and Be Inspired Event. This 2nd annual Convening of Makers and Educators presented by Oklahoma EPSCoR. This weekend provided STEAM educators, artists and makers an opportunity to inspire and be inspired as they connected to share ideas and resources. The creative community learned, laughed and explored great ideas together. The museum is over 390K square feet of creative exhibitions and experiences for kids and parents alike.
This year the keynote address was delivered by internationally recognized Toy Coach, Azhelle Wade. During the talk Azhelle shares tips for Unlocking Creativity, and thanks to Science Museum Oklahoma, this talk is being shared on The Toy Coach Podcast! During today’s episode you’ll hear Azhelle explain 3 steps to unlocking creativity for anything! You’ll learn how to implement step 1, market research, step 2, getting to know your audience, and step 3, toy math. You’ll leave this episode not only feeling inspired but you may even Unlock Your Zone of Toy Genius.
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This episode is brought to you by Science Museum Oklahoma.
Click here to learn more about Science Museum Oklahoma.
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[00:00:00] Azhelle Wade: You are listening to making it in the toy industry episode number 130.
Hey there toy people, Azhelle here. And welcome back to another episode of the toy coach podcast, making it in the toy industry. This is a weekly podcast and today's episode is brought to you by Science Museum, Oklahoma Science Museum Oklahoma is over 390,000 square feet and they are known for this science museum, Oklahoma enriches people's lives by revealing the wonder and relevance of science. If you've been following me on social media lately, then you know, that last week I was invited to be a keynote speaker at the science museum Oklahoma. The science museum Oklahoma is a massive space. I was blown away with how huge this museum was when I went to visit at over 390,000 square feet. This incredible museum is filled with educational experiences for kids and adults alike and on June 3rd, 2022, the science museum held a conference called inspire and be inspired, a convening of makers and educators event. This was an entire weekend to provide steam educators, artists, and makers, an opportunity to inspire and be inspired as they connect to share ideas and resources. At this event, a creative community came together to learn, laugh, and explore scientific ideas together. So I was invited to deliver the keynote address for this event to say I was nervous would be an understatement and the museum has so graciously provided the audio from that day so I could share it with you here. If you want to learn more about the science museum Oklahoma, head over to the show notes of today's episode, by going to the thetoycoach.com/130. At the end of this talk, there was a Q and a portion, but it's not included in this audio recording. If you want to catch the Q and a at the end of my speech and the full video of the event, I want you to head over to science museum Oklahoma's YouTube channel. I'm going to put the link to that in the show notes for you to check out later. But for now, please enjoy my keynote address given at science museum Oklahoma's second annual convening of makers and educators. Thank you so much for being here with me this morning. My name is Michelle Wade, AK the toy coach, and I'm thrilled to be here with you today. We're going to talk about unlocking creativity. Let's get right into it. So I like to start off my conversations, asking a question to the audience.
And one of my favorite questions is what toy blew your mind as a kid. And this is a situation where I really just want you to shout it out to me. Tell me like what toy blew your mind as a kid. What comes to your mind? When I say that Lego's Transformers.
Definitely all good ones. Mine. If we go to the next slide, you'll see, is Polly pockets. I was obsessed with Polly pockets. I used to set them in my dining room table. I would set them up like a little neighborhood and the Polly pocket you see on the far right. Flute favorite. It was a teacher poly. I like to literally set up a whole neighborhood and get all the kids from all the houses in my neighborhood and bring them to the teacher's house.
And we would have poly class, but you'll see how that relates to all the things I do today as we move on to the next slide. But I want you to think about why did you love that toy so much? If it was transformers, if it was Simon says, if somebody here. Maybe he had a kid that loved tickle me Elmo.
What was it about that toy? Was it the color of it? Was it the features of it? Was it like how that toy made you feel? I bet you interacted with dozens of toys. Throughout your childhood, if you're lucky, maybe hundreds. What was it about that one particular toy that stood out. Likely, that toy stood out to you because it gave you a certain experience and experience that you remember and you hold with you to this day, whether it was a real experience where.
Being a teacher before I could kind of be my own teacher or if it was an imaginary experience, maybe it was like your transformers. And you were imagining that you were a transformer and you kind of creating a world like that. The most innovative products and brands out there today are notorious for creating these meticulously designed experience.
So before I keep going, I want to take a little bit of an attendance. I want to know who I'm talking to. So just raise your hand. If this applies to you, what'd you call yourself an educator. Oh, whoa. Okay. Maybe I should have put that last. That was a good one. Okay. Creative entrepreneur. Do we have any of those here with us?
Just a few. Okay. People are like, I'm not sure. Do we have any children's book authors or one of the children's book authors here with us today? She's like, I want to be one. Okay. Do we have any artists? Do we have any parents? Okay. I love that. So you guys are the key to my industry, the toy industry. Let me tell you about what we're going to do today.
We are going to talk about my journey in the toy industry, how I came to be who I am today, the toy. But then I'm going to tell you what helped me achieve those successes and it's something called the zone of genius, and I'm going to help you find yours because I think that you have something the toy industry needs.
So we're going to talk about that at the end. I'm going to teach you what I teach my students. Three steps to unlocking their greatest ideas. You can apply this to the toy industry. You can apply this to products. Honestly, you can apply this anywhere and I'm going to, I'm going to point out some ways in which we can apply this to education.
So don't you worry, you don't have to do all the hard work. Oh, yeah. So let me introduce myself a little bit more. So my name is Michelle Wade, a K the toy coach. I'm in New York based salsa, y bachata dancer. I love to travel. Europe is my favorite. Honestly, I want to live in Madrid. If my fiance will let me, but he really liked.
Family. So I appreciate that. So we're not leaving New York anytime soon. So I'm a three times patented toy inventor and entrepreneur now, and I've developed over 500 products. I've had people say like what? You're so young look at that flawless skin. How could she possibly hit develop 500 products, but I've done everything from buttons to like dolls, 18 inch dolls.
So when you do buttons, you're developing like 50 products a year. When you do dolls, you might be developing like 20. A year, I should say a season. Not. So let's walk through my toy journey. So in 2009, I worked at a company called Mme. Alexander. That was the coolest job ever. I thought all jobs in the toy industry were going to be like this job for Madame Alexander.
And they were not, I essentially was like a fashion designer for dolls. I would come in and my boss would say, okay, this is our theme. Our theme is nursery. Problem. We have been doing this theme for like 50 years. We have done all the nursery rhymes that exist. We need new ideas. I was an intern. They didn't expect me to do anything that would get landed in any books or like actually made.
But I came up with a lot of ideas. I actually did six dolls in my three months there that were made. This is one of them. She is on top of spaghetti. She was very expensive for me to get a copy of, but she is adorable and a pride in. In 2010, I went to the fashion Institute of technology actually graduated in 2010.
And that's where I took a degree in toy design. So this picture is all of my classmates we're with our toys that we created. The arrow's pointing to me and if we go to the next slide, I think we'll get a closeup shot of that.
So you might wonder what was toys school like a shell. Can I go to toy school? Yes. You can go to toys school. Most of the people that I was in class with this was not their first round of college. Most of these people already had careers, but they wanted to come back and jump into the toy. We drew a lot.
Drawing was like the most important thing to be a toy designer in this major. I was not the best artist. This is some of my work I had to learn. I had to work really hard to be able to express the ideas that I wanted to create. And we also made models. We made plastic prototypes plus. So in
2013, I had my first patented item and that was zip screens. And this is really great. I'm so glad I put this in because I heard yesterday, you guys did some screen printing, and I want to tell you the story of zip screens. So it's working at a company and the CMO comes to me and my boss and he's like, There's this company out there called tulip.
They are dominating the screen printing market and we need to take over. We need to, we need to get in there. And they were like, what can you come up with innovation team? That was the team I was on and what can you make? And we're like, okay, yay. We got this. So we spent like a month coming up with what you see up here, which was refashioned.
We were like, this is brilliant. We were coming out of our session as the country. We're going to just rebrand screen printing to be like refashioned. We pitch it. We'd done like this book you see here, we had a whole instruction manual. We did a whole what they call like a three-foot display in the toy industry where you mock up a retail space.
And the CMO looked at us and he was like, no, I hate it. Like just, I don't like it start over. And we were like, oh, okay, sure. So a 10 minute patented idea came out of all that weeks and weeks of work because I went back to my desk and my boss goes, Michelle, let's take a break. We've been working on this too much, take a break.
And I was like, no, we are not taking a break. Okay. I have been living and breathing screen printing stuff. I have been researching. We're going to figure this out right. And that's when zip screens was born. Literally we sat down 10 minutes. We brainstormed what makes up screen printing?
You guys know if you did it yesterday, you got to paint bottle. He got the squeegee, he got the frame. You got the design artwork. You've got a lot going on. What if we could combine that all into one, you'll see the steam of combining things a lot and how I, how I brainstorm. And that's where we created what you see in the bottom left here.
The zip screens packet, where there's paint, there's a squeegee all wrapped up into one and you tear open the packet and you screen print right over a screen that sticks to your. No frame, no bottle, no separate squeegee, no mess. The CML loved it. It became zip screens. It was in Walmart. And this is one of my patents.
So going back to my toy journey, where, where did she go from there? 2015? I went. A little company called ToysRUs dream job. I was so happy. I looked so scared in my first photo. They take like a photo of you when you work at toys arrest, like, you know, the employee badge.
And I literally was like, I was terrified. But it was a great job. I was the design manager for all the girls world brands. When I'm holding there as a product, I designed it. It's like a little Vesper scooter for journey girls, which is their 18 inch doll. So if you're wondering, like, what's it like to design toys a gel?
Well, it kind of looks like this, so I would come into work. They would say, this is the line of product we're going to make. I would sketch out some ideas, I'd say, okay, you want to make like a kitchen? What if it looked like this and they'd say yes, or they say, no, usually they said, no, let me real. But they say yes or they say no.
And then we, I would move on from that sketch. You see over there into something that's called a plan drawing where I'm adding in Pantone, colors and patterns. This has done an illustrator. And that's what we sent over to the.
Once we send that to the factory, the factory would send us back samples. Sometimes the samples would look good. Usually they looked bad and then we would give back feedback and we'd say, yes, no change. This change that. And that thus was the designing of toys at toys R us so then in 2016, I got a little bit of a promotion.
I was able to instead of doing design management and do product management for a brand called totally me. So what you see here is a craft desk for the brand. Totally. Okay. So 2019, I worked, I moved on from ToysRUs and worked for a company called creative kids at creative kids.
I eventually became the VP of brand and product as the VP of brand and product. I was doing all of the stuff I did for toys R us like designing product, costing product, but I was also hiring a team to help me do that. So I want to give you an example, a comparison of designing toys versus developing toys, because they're kind of different.
And if you're like, I'm not an artist, I can't do this. You might be able to develop toys. So these are some behind the scenes photos of like the process of developing toy. And most companies, they divide this where the person developing the toys, the person who goes to China, talks with the factory and says like, Hey factory, this is what our designers want to make.
Can you help us? What can you do? And the factory says, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like here are the samples of what we built from what your designer sent us. And then the developer says, no, they're not really catching their vide here. And that's really what you do as a developer. So after working for this company, creative kids, I moved on from that we were in the middle of the pandemic and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm realizing how much I'm building someone else's dream.
And I'm not building my own. I realized that because I was spending time at home with my now fiance. And I was like, wow, I never used to see him. I'm seeing him so much more now I'm never home. What am I working for? And I said, you know what, I'm going to take a shot on my own dreams. The toy coach. So the journey of becoming the toy coach, it started with a toy podcast and this podcast started because while I was working in the industry inventor came up to me and they said, oh, I've got this really good idea. I spent all my money on it. What do I do? And I was like, inventor, just like, send me any.
With all the information I got you. I have a hookup. I will pitch you to my boss. If he likes it, let's do this. And she didn't know what to give me. She wasn't ready. It was all a mess. She really couldn't get it together. So I was like, let me help you. But I didn't help her fast enough. She went off and spent money with somebody else.
And I thought, man, that was a missed opportunity for me. I need to make a resource. So I made this podcast, got it approved by my boss, made this podcast. But then eventually left that company, kept the podcast. And then I started getting media coverage, Marie Forleo. I was on access daily a few times. And with that coverage, I built this program called toy creators academy.
All the people you see here so far, I've had a hundred students, a little over a hundred students. They are everything from like bakers, industrial engineers, mechanical engines. Scientists artists, illustrators, all that have ideas for toys. They didn't know where to start. And they came to me and they trusted me to give them an opportunity.
Not only did I teach them everything I knew, but I created this thing called the TCA virtual pitch event where I would, I reached out to my industry contacts and I said, Hey, Hasbro, I got some people you need to meet. And thus, the whole toy coach Toy Creators Academy saga was born. So eventually the toy industry started to take notice.
A lot of people in the toy industry were like, who is this girl who looks 16? Thank you. Coming in here talking about, I have 10 years of experience. But eventually they understood like who I was, where I came from. I got all of these great accolades. One of them being this taggy award for being a change maker in the industry later.
And I don't have an image of it. One, a wonder woman award for being a great storyteller. Tell me if you think I deserve that and then let's move on to the next one. I was also on the history channel. I got really lucky. I got to say one thing. I'm going to tell you if you're going to do something creative.
If you're going to make something, talk about it everywhere. The reason I got on the history channel, this is not supposed to be in the conversation, but I have to tell you I posted about my pod. In a Facebook group about podcasts. Someone saw me there, we started a conversation and it led to this and so many other TV opportunities to like, post about your work.
People need to see it. They need to hear your personal story. Let's move on to the next slide. Ah, yeah. So access daily you know, this was huge for me. Every time they call them, like, you guys want me back, like, I'm so excited. I'm pumped. Yes. I'll come back. I have clips of Mario Lopez calling me a friend of the show.
I will put that everywhere some of my biggest achievements though came because I knew my zone of toy genius. So why don't we identify. So let's figure out your zone, a toy genius. Okay. Question one. Have you ever had an idea for a toy if you have, what category was that idea in? So categories like dolls, games, puzzles on a note, shouted out role-play costumes and ever had an idea for a toy. Ever category, none. Stop it. Huh? Game. Okay.
Crafting toy. See, as making me feel bad for a second, keep going. Stuffed animals. Meteo coding. That would be good. You should do that. And okay. You have that idea for this toy. What is your specific skills and your unique knowledge? What is like the career you work in or the hobby devote yourself? So for me, for a long time, it was like sewing and these pants, I made them, this is pure example of that.
But because of that sewing thing, I was able to kind of rise up in a company I worked at as this person who knew everything about sewing. So like anytime they needed to like, make a plush or like make a jewelry kit, they were like a gel. You do it, you know? So what is your hobby or your professional experience that would make that you're an expert in shouted out?
Are you a mechanical engineer? Are you a take artists? Would work. Oh, that's a good one. Okay. Early childhood development. Very good. Okay. And baby, baby inventions are like, they need more of them. So I don't know if you don't mean that early, but any more. Hmm. Crafting. I love, so that was my whole career for a very long time.
So I love that. So next. So that is your zone of genius. So you combine those two things. So if you let's say the, the example I usually like to give is say you had an idea for a science toy and say you always get ideas for TV shows. This is actually an example of one of my students. So say you are.
This is Keisha. She is a chemist. She just won a competition at the licensing expo in Las Vegas, because she had an idea to create an animated character line called McAdams. Very cool idea. All about cats and Adams and science. And elements and everything. So that is your zone of genius. And you might not think it's anything special, but it is.
And the toy industry needs it because most people in the toy industry are like me. Like we just do toys all the time. That's all we do. But people like you who come from the educator background, you might see toys out there today. And you're like, Ooh, That is not a good toy for my child. I could do a better toy.
That's not a good choice for my kid. Who's learning. She's like, , she's like I saw those toys. So let's go to the next slide. Okay. So maybe you're thinking about your zone of toy genius. Maybe you found it here. Maybe you have to noodle on it a little bit more, but now what do you do next? So now you're going to follow my three step process to unlocking your creativity for, oh, the, the graphics not working in here.
Well, if the graphic was working, it would say innovative toys, products, art. Just imagine that's happening next to the word. Innovative, just like toy product art. Right. I sent him a PDF. I forgot. Okay, let's go to the next slide. So the first thing you're going to do, and this is the process that I teach in toy craters academy.
It's like a piece of it, obviously it's on the whole thing, but you can't go through all of that in 20 minutes, but step one become a mini expert in industry you want to innovate. So if you're inspired by what I'm saying today, and you're like, Ooh, I want to innovate the toy industry. I want to do. Helping the people do.
That's great. So you want to become a mini expert in the toy industry, if you're an educator and you're like, I'm just going to stay in the lane. I'm going to be held up in here in the education field. Great. Become a mini toy expert in that a mini expert in the education field. And you might say, Joel, I'm already an expert in the education field.
Great. But what if you wanted to break into online education? That's a whole other vein of education. So become an expert in that online education. Let's go the next slide. So what I call the stages market research. Why is it important before you innovate anything? You've really got to know who your competition is.
One of the biggest mistakes all my students make before they come to me, as they go to a company like has run. They're like, oh my God, I have the best idea. The idea is there are going to be dots on them. They're all going to be like red, blue, yellow. There's a spinner. You spin the spinner, whatever.you get, you put your hand on it.
And then Hasbro's like, we have twister. So that's what you don't want to do. Right? You don't want to be the person who's coming up with ideas that already exist. So you want to get to know your market. You want to learn those rules before you break them. And you want to find what we call in the toy industry, the white space.
You know the opportunity. So one opportunity that was really prevalent in the news recently was black dolls. There weren't enough of them. So we saw there were a lot of white dolls out there placed everywhere in all the stores and people were saying, there's not enough black dolls from my black daughters opportunity.
That's what you're going to find. Are there. Toys that represent children with disabilities. Are there not enough, you know, toys for, for blind kids? That's actually something a friend just keeps texting me about. She's like, Michelle, when are you going to make a toy for my blind step son? And I'm like, I'm, I'm busy, but I will, I will get on it very soon.
But where do you go to do this market research? So. For my students, I have them go to toy stores. Right. So I say, you guys got to go to learning express. You got to go to Lego. I like them to go to whole foods for like packaging, inspiration, FAO Schwartz. I like you to look on Amazon. We'll talk about why.
But for you guys, if you're educators and you're seeing this trend of like online education and you're like, I want a piece of that pie. You might look on you, Demi. You might look at masterclass. You should definitely check out. Not so wimpy teacher, if you don't know what that is for online education if you are like an artist might want to look at designer con you also might want to look at.
Let's go to the next slide. And while you're looking, you have to ask yourself certain questions like how are they engaging the kids in education? What topics are they covering? What products do they have? What products are the best? What things do people buy the most of what's top rated what's bottom rated, and most importantly, what is missing.
So I want you to introduce you to Julie. Julie is a student of mine. She is a child psychology. And she created this thing here. That's called dealing in feelings. So Julie works with children with developmental disabilities, and she said that she was trying to help them understand their emotions and she didn't have the right tools to do it with.
There are all these cards out there like matching cards with faces of adults and different emotions, like happy and sad. But none with kids' faces on them. So she created that she's already an expert in her field. Like many of you are, and she saw an opportunity to create a product that, is it a toy? Is it a kid's product?
It falls in that vein of the kids and entertainment industry and she created a product and it is selling very well on Amazon and on her own site. So let's go back to the three steps of unlocking creativity. Step number two, find out what your audience actually wants. So how do you do this? You are going to ask questions and then you're going to listen when they give you the answers to those questions.
So this is a picture of me in this sequined pants that I'm wearing today, because this is the last time that I completely ignored my audience. And I, I love to tell the stories that people don't make the same mistakes. I was this, so I created a costume line called costume eyes. Me had whole reason that's for another speech another day.
But when I was fitting a friend of mine in these pants and I was like, I just need to get the fit. Right. I want to come, can you come, let me test you. She said, where are you going to sell these? And I said, oh my own website, of course, of course, Shannon. And she said, really, I feel like this is something that should be on.
And I was like, Shannon, you don't know. I was like, I have in my head, I didn't say this. I would never say now she's going to see this video and she's going to be like, oh really? But no, I said, Shannon, you don't know. I was like, I've been researching this. I know where I'm going to go with my leggings. If I put it on SEL to share some of the profit with Etsy, I don't want to do that.
I didn't listen to Shannon. Shannon, when. I struggled to sell these leggings, like so hard. I spent like hundreds, let's be real. It got to thousands on Facebook ads trying to sell these leggings. And then like two years later, I put them on Etsy and sold in like two days. My first. So the lesson here is listen to your audience.
So how are you going to find out what your audience wants? You're going to ask them, you're going to do surveys. I teach people do Google form surveys. They're super easy, but the questions you want to ask are not questions. Like, do you like these leggings? It's like, where would you go to buy these leggings?
Where would you go to learn this lesson? Where would you go to shop for this toy? Why would you shop for this toy? Who would buy something like this? If anyone. You also will want to look at online reviews. This is my favorite tip. Love this tip. I'm sorry. I skipped focus groups, but I love online reviews.
So say you're creating a competitive product and whether it's like an educational course or you're creating like a physical product, there's usually a way to find reviews. The reviews you want to pay attention to are the reviews that have three stars. People that leave three-star reviews tend to be, they give a lot of really good information.
They're really on the fence. They're not like fan girls, but they're not like haters. So they're going to tell you exactly how it is. They're going to be like, oh, this product was good, but I was expecting X, Y, and Z that X, Y, and Z is what you put into your product. So you can make it better. Also you'll ask family and friends for their opinion, but take it with a grain of salt because they love you.
And they'll say whatever. But tip for you is I want you to pay attention to when people express how they feel about a product, write that down, highlight it and circle it. Emotions goes back to the beginning of this conversation. When we talked about experiences, why you remember that toy? You love so much as a kid.
Whenever somebody tells you the emotion, a product made them feel relieved, happy, excited, you know, surprised those are the things that you want to make sure your product has. Those are the things you want to communicate about your product. Whenever you're trying to sell it. If you're pitching it, if you're teaching it, if you're trying to sell it at a trade show, the emotion is really what you want to pay attention.
So, I'm curious if you guys have anything for me. Has your audience ever told you they need something specific, maybe kids that you're teaching maybe people you create art for, maybe your kids send some of your parents and he's like, yes. What? Well, I design exhibits, so I put out the prototype and I have to take every consideration and I get tons and tons of feedback.
And sometimes the product exhibit goes from point a to completely different point Z at the end, because. What's the top thing they said that they say that they want, or the thing you get the most often, the feedback you get the most often usually it's it's not so much like a verbal, but it's breakable like that.
Like it breaks easier than they thought. So they're like, oh, you got to make this stronger. They want durability. So if you're designing an exhibit, then in the situation you would, you would go into is the next time you do marketing materials about that exhibit or the new exhibit you would say, oh, our most durable exhibit.
You can just throw your kids at it and it will stay up right. That, okay, great. I don't I'm sorry if anyone else had any answers, we have to end there because that was too good. We got I'm sorry, Nick. So I want to introduce you guys to Nicole. Also a student of mine. She's an agile project manager. I also barely know what that means.
I think she works in software development. She's okay. That's great. So Nicole noticed a lack of high quality black heirloom dolls when she was looking for one for her daughter heirloom dolls, meaning they're, they're made out of like yarn. You keep them for a long time. So what's in Nicole. Do she created.
She created her very own heirloom dolls and she got them into a toy store. She also won plenty of grants, grants from Amazon. I'm not sure where the other ones were from, but she got them into a toy store. Now, finally. Let's move on to step three of this creativity unlocking magic. I'm I'm gonna teach you today.
And what I teach in my program is something called toy math, but we're going to make an educator math here today. I'm going to do a dance routine. You'll see it shortly. So you can use a version of toy math to brainstorm what I call layered ideas. So what is toy Matt? Toy and math mixes up the elements and play patterns of toy creation to inspire new ideas.
So I have some examples up there for you like monopoly. Plus the nail that TV show might create a board game where the goal is to build a cake. An actual real-world example of this is the top example here. What do you mean was inspired by looking at the existing game cards against humanity and the popularity of memes.
Thus came the game. What do you mean? Which was like a top number one bestseller for so many years in the toy industry. And it changed the game in the toy industry, the price of board games, I believe went up because of what do you mean? Nobody would spend the kind of money at retail that customers would spend until what do you mean?
Let's do another example of toy math. I don't know if you ever seen this game. This is actually a knockoff version of it. So it's actually called connect for blasts, I believe, or bounce. So it's a combination of pong. Let's not say what kind of pong, but pong plus connect four.
And it is one of Hasbro's great selling games. It made a splash at the toy fair where it debuted. It adds action and anticipation to connect for like a physical activity. You can add drinks on top of it. Lemonade. If you're. But let's keep going. How can an educator apply this? Well, so I had this high school teacher and her name is Mrs. O'Brien. She's now the head of math at the high school I went to and her problem was math is boring and no one pay attention, but she was like the best math teacher. I had an a in all of her classes. She was amazing. So what she did is she combined boring math with something that wasn't.
So this, this is literally what she used to do. I'm going to do a little demo. So it was known throughout our school that this would happen when you got to precal with her. She would get to teaching us about ASAM topes, and she would do this. If it cancels. It's a whole, if it doesn't cancel, it's an asymptote.
If it cancels, it's a whole, if it doesn't cancel it, but. I have no idea what an asymptote is. I have no idea what a hole is, but if I were in a situation where somebody is going to say it, does it cancel if it's an asymptote or a hole? I know because of Mrs. O'Brian combining some things with Matt.
So she combined some dance moves with math and a little bit of like rhythm and she would repeat it. It was literally one class where she did this, but it stuck in not only my mind, everybody at this high school talked about Ms. O'Brien and her dance and the ASAM Tobes and the whole everyone knew.
So I want you to think about using toy math in your education. Like, can you use educator. So you might be wondering this three-step process that I taught just now doesn't really work a shell. Have you ever used it? Well, yes I have. So this five and one friendship bracelet creator is something that I made over a while ago, but it was another patented item and how it came about as a CMO of this company came to me and my whole, my whole innovation team.
And he said, Hey, Azhelle, we need to. Go up in the friendship bracelet market. There are two and one friendship. Bracelet makers are three in one friendship, bracelet makers, they're killing it. They're dominating. We need to dominate. I said, okay, I got you. So I did step one, which is doing that initial market research.
I was a pro in my industry already, but I did some extra research on friendship bracelets. Why did people love them so much? Got to know my audience read a lot of reviews. People said, oh my I love the variety of friendship bracelets that I can create. And it's so easy. I love it. I don't have to use my drawer anymore.
And then I use toy math and I combined all of these different types of bracelets. I met with a jewelry designer that worked at the company. I asked her to show. Every kind of friendship, bracelet, you can create with thread. And then I asked her to show me all the tools that she used to create those.
And I sat there with her and I said, okay, if I took this piece of this tool and I put it on this tool, would this still work? And she'd say yes and say, okay, if I took this piece and put it on this tool, would it still work? And you really know, and okay, okay. What if we did this? What if we did that? We did that trial and error.
We kept, we layered like how you create all these friendship bracelets we made, what is called a breadboard. And mock-up what you see in the bottom left. At a foam core, this idea, and eventually that became the friendship bracelet creator, and was sold a bunch of places. I know Walmart maybe target, not sure, but that's what that became.
Final recap, we learned three steps. Number one, market research, number two, get to know your audience really listened to what they say to you. When you ask them questions, number three, toy math, or your version of it. To go to some Q and a.
Hope you enjoyed that.
So, thank you so much, Azhelle.
Well, there, you have it toy people. That was my keynote speech at the science museum of Oklahoma. As I mentioned at the top of this episode, if you want to hear the Q&A portion of the speech, I'm going to direct you to the Science Museum Oklahoma's YouTube channel. To get the links to the YouTube channel so you can see the full keynote video with the Q&A, head over to the thetoycoach.com/130. No action item for this week. If you haven't caught up with last week's episode, I want to encourage you to do that.
Now, if you love this podcast and you haven't yet left a review. What are you waiting for? Your reviews, help this podcast reach more people. And it keeps me motivated to keep coming back week after week .As always. Thank you so much for spending this time with me today. I know your time is valuable and that there are a ton of podcasts out there.
So it truly means the world to me that you tune into this one until next week. I'll see you later.
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