I never thought I’d make an episode like this. For years my students asked for a lesson on manifestation, and for years I said no. It felt too woo-woo for a business show. But this past year I learned how much manifestation and hard work go hand in hand. Here are the 3 habits I’d have you practice to turn your toy idea into a real product.
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Mentioned in this episode:
You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero: https://link.amazon/B08r79kHK
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill: https://link.amazon/B0a1HlUrZ
Toy Creators Academy: https://www.toycreatorsacademy.com -
I want to help you manifest your toy idea. Yeah. That's right. I know that this is not something you ever expected to hear from me. Welcome to making it in the toy industry. The show for inventors, entrepreneurs and professionals in play. And now your host, Azhelle Wade. Hey there, Azhelle Wade here. And welcome back to another episode of Making It in the Toy Industry.
This is a weekly podcast brought to you by TheToyCoach.com. So today we are talking about something that I said no to for a really long time. And that is the topic of manifestation. Over 250 people have gone through Toy Creators Academy, and in the survey at the end of every round of TCA, people kept asking me for a lesson on manifestation.
Over the past year, I've realized how intertwined manifestation and hard work really are, how both are very important to success. So today I'm going to share three habits that I would have you practice if you were working with me. And I wanted you to use the power of manifestation to help get your toy idea out of your head.
Produce it a factory and on a store shelf. By the end of this episode, you are going to learn how to see your toys future clearly, how to show up for it every single day, and how to protect your time and energy so you don't burn out before you get there. First, I want to talk about why I've said no to talking about manifestation for so long.
So for the longest time, every time I saw the topic of manifestation come up in that survey as to what I should add to the program, I just said no. I thought it was way to woo woo, and I just kept thinking this is not the place for it. This course is all about business, business, business. Step one.
Step two. Step three. How to launch. And I didn't see the need for diving into manifestation. Now you might be thinking, yeah, this is a toy business channel. Why are you trying to talk to me about manifestation and the universe and all that movie stuff? And I get it, because a year ago, maybe two years ago, I would have probably said the same thing.
But over the past year, I have really been embracing manifestation alongside serious hard work. And I realized how intertwined those two things are. Because when you get to a stage of burnout in your business and you will get there, or you hit a stage where you're just feeling lazy and you just want to curl up and watch Netflix and chill, or maybe you just think you really need a vacation.
Being able to come back to your why and your purpose is what is going to stop you from falling off track. And manifestation teaches you a lot about that, a lot about gratitude, so that even when you're in your current life and your current situation, you're not hating it, you're appreciating it. You're seeing potential in your life and yourself and your situation and in the people around you.
So I've been listening to a lot of books on this topic lately. I listen to You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero. First, she directed me to Think and Grow rich, and then my current business coach directed me to outsmarting reality, and I want to share how I would have you bring some lessons about manifestation and mindset into your toy business.
All right. So first up, you need to visualize it. The problem that I see with a lot of new toy creators is that they're so focused on everything that they haven't done yet that they have to do, that they can't even enjoy where they are and what they've built already, and they can't even picture where they're going. So number one is to just visualize where you're going with your idea.
Now the first thing you got to do is you've got to practice gratitude. So every day or every other day, whatever you can commit to, I want you to pick a notebook and write things that you're grateful for in them. Right now, I'm actually experimenting with doing this publicly on Threads, and you're going to be writing little things like, oh, I signed up for Toy Creators Academy or oh, a sample came back better than I expected.
Oh oh, a retailer followed me on Instagram and liked one of the posts about my brand. Whatever you can do to appreciate the little positive things that happened through your day. When you do this consistently and you start appreciating little lumens, and you start seeing these little opportunities that are already unfolding in front of you, you start to realize that you aren't as behind as you thought you were.
Now, the second part of that is almost to practice gratitude for things that haven't happened yet, and that is to write down what you envision for your toy brand in the next 3 to 5 years. Who are the people that you want to talk about it? Is it that you want Oprah to be talking about it? Do you want to find out that Rihanna's kids have one of your toys in their living room?
Who do you want saying things about it? Are you envisioning the toy coach doing a YouTube review of your product? Do you want the Toy Book to feature it? What awards do you want to win? Do you want to be on the stage at the TAGIEs or the TOTYs collecting an award for your incredible product? Write out all these things as though you're grateful that they've already happened.
Now, I personally like to illustrate my future, so I have two ways that I do this. I write it all out as a little paragraph, but I also illustrate what I want my future to be in like four little panels. So what? My husband and I both do this actually. We will have a night where we take an eight and a half by 11 piece of paper.
We folded into four quadrants and we write different areas of our life on it, like health, wealth, happiness, career and we literally draw what we want to come true. So I actually like to draw it all out and we put it up in our home. So we see it day in and day out. Because once you write these things down, once you draw them, you have to go back and look at them over and over again to get it built into your psyche, that this is the reality that you are moving toward and that you're going in.
Now, if drawing isn't your thing, you can just open a voicemail app on your phone. Record yourself telling yourself the story of your brand, you know, 3 to 5 years from now, and then listen to it every day and like, meditate on it. And when I say meditate on it, it's really just paying attention to this future vision you have for yourself and allowing yourself to just vibe in that future visit vision.
Just sit in it, feel it and pray for it. Enjoy it. Appreciate the vision. Usually when I'm doing that, that's when an idea pops into my head that is like one small step forward I could take toward that vision. Let's say that my vision is one day I want to have a toy TV show. True story. And I'm sitting there one night meditating on that, thinking about it, and then all of a sudden what popped into my head is like, hey, why don't you reach out to that producer you worked with and said and ask her if you could pitch an idea to her.
One thing led to another, and next thing you know, I am having a meeting with a show developer at a major studio pitching a TV show idea. So these little moments are moments that you're allowing yourself to exist in a future that you want to happen, that you believe can happen, and that you are determined to make happen.
And it's time that you're giving your brain to rest and accept any just instinct, intuition, advice that, like the universe, God, universal intelligence has to offer you to get toward that goal. But the thing is, when you get those two intuitive hits, you have to actually take action on them. A vision alone is not going to do anything to get your toy made.
You're going to have to show up for it. You are going to have to take action toward it. You are going to have to commit money to it. You are going to have to work with people for it. You're going to have to be clear on what exactly you want your product to do and where you want to sell it.
And taking action is, frankly, where a lot of people fall off. And then a lot of people say manifestation doesn't work. It's easy to say that it doesn't work because you tried it for three days and things didn't work out. But like any disciplinary practice, like it's years of focus, years of intention, years of listening to the opportunities that are like just on the fringes of your mind that you're almost not seeing.
Now, number two, what I would tell you to manifest your idea, show up for it. Right. So the problem is that most toy creators start really strong. They join Toy Creators Academy, or they hire me as they coach and they get super hyped. They're like, I'm doing this. And they start researching. They survey their market. They start developing with a factory, or if they already have a product, they're posting a few times on social media, they're emailing some retailers and they're feeling the energy.
And then life happens, something bad happens and the whole thing stops. Their whole progress stops. They pause and they say, I don't think anything was really working. But the truth of the matter is, like the things that you have done in the past three months are not going to show up into your business as a result, probably for another three months.
So consistency is so key. So what do you need to stick with the toy idea? Well first you're going to need discipline. This is something that I took from the book Outsmarting Reality. And this line really stuck with me. Manifesting is all about telling the universe what you want, right? So you can get it, but you can't tell the universe what to do if you don't have the discipline to tell yourself what to do.
I mean, like, I love that line. I absolutely love that. I'm going to say it again. You cannot tell the universe what to do if you cannot tell yourself what to do. All right. So I want you to pick one thing in your toy business that you will do consistently without fail. Something that will, over time, drive your business forward, but slowly and steadily.
Not something you're trying to race for. And I want you to hold on to that one thing for the duration of the development of your toy brand, because it's going to be that discipline is going to be one of the most important things you do toward the manifestation of your toy business. So what I would recommend for you to pick up as your consistent disciplinary thing to do would be to create and post some sort of SEO content.
So this is something that I teach inside of Toy Creators Academy, and SEO content is something that your ideal target market would find when they're searching for a solution to a problem that would lead to your toy. So let's say they are looking for a birthday gift and your toy is like the Happy Birthday plushie. Writing SEO content to say like, what are the perfect birthday gifts for kids aged three?
The Happy Birthday plushie is and like making a whole story out of that and doing that same type of content for different ages. So no matter what age they're looking for, they're going to find your toy. Similarly, an example I give often is like if you have a brand of toy products that are all cork products, like cork toys, you could do articles on sustainability and why cork is the most sustainable materials available for toys.
And then within that article, link to or promote your product. The frequency of how often you do it will just allow the results to compound quicker. But if you are doing a full time job and developing your toy and you have a house full of kids, let's say and you really can't commit to weekly content, I would highly recommend at least doing monthly and doing video content so that you can then turn the transcripts of that content into a blog.
Then you will actually end up with a video one week, and then you could release a blog the following week and just keep that cadence up. But the most important part of this is like just not skipping it. All right. Now the next part of sticking with it is doing one thing every single day that can move the needle forward.
So you need to keep a running list of all of your connections, all your factory contacts, retailers you've ever met, every fellow toy creator you might meet in Toy Creators Academy, any person who said, let me know when this is ready because I'll be interested. And then every day you just do one thing that can drive your goal forward, and that could be something as small as following a retailer on Instagram and saying hello and letting them know what is going on with your toy, when it will be ready for purchasing.
Now, if you were a client of mine and Toy Creators Academy, the question I would want you asking yourself every day is this what has Azhelle given me in this program that could help me drive my toy brand forward, that I have not used yet, and then just take a small action on that thing? Today it could be writing ad copy, it could be just starting a Facebook ads account.
All of that. Those little pieces of work add up so much faster than you think. Okay, if you're sticking with me this far in the manifestation train, I would love to hear which of the methods of visualizing your future toy brand do you think you're going to stick with? Is it going to be illustrating your vision of your future toy brand?
Maybe yourself winning an award for your toy brand on a stage, or you're going to write it out? Or are you going to voice record yourself describing this future toy brand? I'd love to hear it in the comments. Now, I know with the idea of showing up every day to do something toward your toy brand, you might feel like it's hard to protect your energy that you're getting burned out.
But that is what brings me to the third thing I would tell you to do. If you're going to manifest your toy idea, stay focused on your main goal. Once you start putting yourself out there, you're sharing more online. You're connecting with people more. You're sharing what you're working on. More people are going to start to see that you have momentum, and naturally they're going to want to be a part of that momentum.
And because of that, you may find yourself being invited to join all kinds of new things, new projects, new collaboration, new coaching programs, even. And before you know it, there will be no time left for the thing that you actually set out to do. So while momentum is great, do not think that everything that comes your way deserves your focus and attention.
So the third thing I would just tell you to do to manifest your toy dreams is just to protect it, you know, and to ignore anything that is going to pull you away from the ultimate goal and know that it's okay to say no. What will help you protect your time and your energy really well is becoming very aware of what lights you up and what drains you, what motivates you and excite you, and what just takes away all of your energy.
Is drafting a podcast exciting for you or is it draining? Is hopping on a call with an old friend to catch up exciting for you, or is it draining? So ideally you want to have this running list. Whether you write it down or you just think about it internally to understand which activities are draining you and which activities are lighting you up, and making sure that there's enough of a balance so that the draining activities are not halting the amazing momentum that you are building up.
So the way that I maintain my energy so that I can maintain my momentum is I do something called time blocking where I block out my calendar and I call it my ideal week. That's literally the name of my Google calendar for my calendar. And in this calendar, I block out two days where I dedicate to client calls, and then I have two days to working on my business instead of in my business.
And then I have an open day where I can kind of do anything I need for my business, whether I need to take a last minute urgent client call, I want to do podcast recordings, or I just want to work on a new idea or improve an old funnel, like kind of a free for all day. That balance allows me to know that on Mondays and Wednesdays, I need to show up full energy to give positivity, clear instructions, and results to my clients.
And those days are not about me. Those days are not about moving me forward. Those days are not about me looking good or me getting what I want. It's all about giving. And then my Tuesdays and my Thursdays are all about executing for myself and for my clients. So those are my output days where I get to work in my head and then, like, execute projects without having to have a ton of meetings on the calendar.
In fact, I have no meetings on the calendar on those days, and then Fridays are mostly open. I like to keep those days free to do work, but also for emergency meetings, so I would highly recommend you build yourself an ideal calendar that is going to protect your energy and free up time for you to be creative when your creative energy is at its highest.
Because without the ideal calendar, I found that almost every day was filled with client calls until like 3 p.m. and then I would be completely drained and have no energy for content creation, copywriting, meeting with my team, building new projects, working on client work. So you have to protect your time for this toy brand. Okay, so I said at the beginning of this video, I was going to share a time where I kind of, like, protected my calendar and said no to something that seemed pretty great.
Well, a company that is launching a new development platform reached out and wanted to just meet with me to talk about how we could work together, because they saw was doing something similar and it was really hard for me, but I just had to say no. Like, no, not really an explanation. I did say I'm just too busy.
I do not have space for a new project on my calendar. And this team, you know, followed up and tried to say, oh no, we just want to talk. And I had to say, I totally understand what you want and where this might go. And I do not have the bandwidth for it. And it is it has been really hard for me to say no to new projects.
If you know me well, you know I love to start a new business. That was not the only opportunity I had to shut down. I've had an opportunity to co-create programs with another creators. I get offers all the time from brands who want just one off consulting or something really custom, but they don't have a huge budget. And I have to say no to those two, because every one of those creates more logistics in my business, and they pull me away from my main focus.
And saying no has actually been one of the best things I've ever done. I know cliche, everyone says that, but it really lets me focus on the things that are the most important and my ultimate goal for the next five years. Making a toy and building a toy brand takes a long time, and the people that make it in the toy industry are not always the ones with the best idea, but they are the ones that have tenacity and keep on going.
And the good news? That tenacity is something that you can build by protecting your time and your energy, giving you the freedom to have that discipline to show up again and again, day after day. Your vision is going to help you know which next step you should take. And protecting your calendar is going to make sure you actually have the time to take that step.
So here's what we learned today. To manifest your toy. You've got to see it. You've got to do it, show up for it. And you have got to focus and protect your time. Your action item this week is to write, draw or record your five year vision for your toy idea. I want you to send me a message on Instagram and tell me that you got it done.
My Instagram is at the toy coach. You can even tag me in a story if you want. I would love to respond and cheer you on. If you want me in your corner while you build your toy, well that is what Toy Creators Academy is for. Get on the waitlist so you are the first to hear about our pre-sales.
We are relaunching the program with major updates. The link is waiting for you in the show notes. As always, thank you so much for spending your 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 in to this one.
Until next week. I'll see you later. Toy creator. Thanks for listening to making it in the toy industry with Azhelle Wade. Visit TheToyCoach.com or text TOY IDEA to 1-812-515-5052. If you're ready to develop or launch your own playful product.
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🎓 Unlock dozens of trusted factory contacts, develop your idea, and grow your toy company contact list TODAY by joining Toy Creators Academy®, learn more here.