SPS 236: Startup Santa: From Toymaker & Inventor To Author with Brad Pedersen

In 2008 , he founded and scale one of Canada's top toy companies called Tech for Kids , and then they merged to create a company called Basic Fun , which was a maker of one of the most world's most iconic toys , which is , if you know Brad , he's a very understated guy , so it's like I feel like I knew a lot about Brad .

Eyes somehow did not know this for years Because since then , in 2018 , they kept . They co-founded Pila cases new category sustainable smartphone covers , essentially that are compostable and biodegradable and I've had one on my phone for years now .

They scaled that business over $100 million in revenue and then launched a big Kickstarter for a product called Lomi , which is the world's first waste kitchen composter , and they crowdfunded about almost it looks like just shy of 10 million for that .

I think it was an Indiegogo campaign , hugely successful campaign , and then now kind of parlaying off of all that stuff . He's author of a book called Startup Santa and so it's a toy makers tale of 10 lessons learned from timeless toys , so teaching entrepreneurs what he learned from that process .

So it's a long way of saying like really sharp innovator , really great entrepreneur business mind , just really great person . So we got a lot to unpack on this interview . We'll talk book stuff , we'll talk invention stuff . It's gonna be fun . Brad , welcome , Great to have you here .

You know , gone through bankruptcy not only once , but three times . So I've seen some low lows when it comes to business . So I had some shame that I just was like well , I don't think that there's a lot of value I can bring in light of some of those things that happened in my past . Secondly , it seemed incredibly daunting , like writing a book .

I know about myself as an entrepreneur . I'm really good at starting things and finishing things . It's that messy middle that I don't do so well in , and this seemed like a lot of messy middle and I can confirm it really is a lot of messy stuff .

Okay , I'm going to write a memoir because in my 30 years as a toy maker I need to kind of capture some of the stories , because it's been a bit of a story , you know , forced gum kind of story , with some crazy things that have happened .

I thought I just got to write this out and unpack some of the lessons from it and kind of a crazy thing happened along the way .

Number one I discovered there's something called narrative therapy where as you write , you actually process and you heal , and I actually found myself going through and moments of writing my book I was actually in tears because I was just kind of reflecting and then like closing loops and you know kind of thinking , just quarreling my ideas and this is what it meant

and how I was letting it land on me and things that I just kind of like moved on from but never really fully unpacked right . And then second is people like Dan Martell , friend of ours , said hey , I hear you're writing something . Do you want to share with me ? So share a chapter with him . And he comes back to me says Brad , you get that .

Look , brad , you'd be doing the world of disservice if you didn't share this .

So , with a little bit of encouragement from some of my peers , I said , okay , I'm going to turn this into a book that I want to focus on founders , kind of twofold founders that are just starting out and can benefit from the wisdom of my wounds and that was be my first sort of avatar for this and the second is maybe some founders who've got some battle

scars and some wounds , and maybe feeling a little fatigued and defeated and that this would be something that they could relate to , because they're you know they're not alone .

I understand that I've I'm a subscribing member to that AA group , so that is why this book is out and , you know , I'm hopeful that it's going to land on those people and make a positive impact in them .

It's like , okay , I want to tell a book about my story , but should I just do the story part ? Is it memoir , is it nonfiction , is it somewhere in between ? Like , how did you land on that ? And and what you feel like would be most helpful for the reader ?

Like you start with curiosity and then you apply creativity to it and then you have the courage to actually lean into it and as you're doing that , you start to go , oh hey , what if we did this ? What if we changed that ? So it was a memoir . And as I was going through and doing the memoir , I started to say , hey , wait a minute , I was a toy maker .

I'm , like , I'm a big believer in the power of play and the importance of toys and that toys are a part of our development as humans . That you know , when we're growing up , a toy is a medium that promotes play . And when we're playing , we're developing three things where we're becoming creative , we're learning how interactions and we're problem solving .

And so why don't I take some of these iconic toys and tell a little bit of the backstory of the toys and then tell what they're teaching us , like , what is it they're teaching us ? And then take one of my stories , one of the things that I went through .

Typically , you know , we don't learn from success it tends to be a sucky teacher , but one of the things I fail that and then tie those lessons together . So the book takes you through 10 of those experiences , through 10 different toys and actually there's 11 because I had a bonus chapter in there and I just I think it's .

It's a fun way to tie together these concepts in something that you can relate to , because we can all relate as kids . Christmas morning you woke up and there was that thing that you were like , wow , that's so cool . It was all the possibilities around the play that was going to be experienced with that thing . So

, yeah , that's that's the .

They have a lot of these toys and they are , to this day , the dominant companies out there , but they're iconic toys that you will relate to . You'll remember the moments that you interacted with them . You had them , your kids might have them . It'll , it'll . It'll be a meaningful connection .

I know you're , you're a humble guy , but can you do , like , what were these big ones that you created and what's the one that gets featured in the book ?

So those are all , I think , pretty iconic toys . The one in the book that I feature is none of those .

It's actually Mashems , and Mashems were a collectible that were squishy toys and we basically took this idea that stress balls were sort of popular and that's like called the mid or mid to late 2000s , and then fidget toys started to become a thing If you remember that craze and we created these liquid filled squishy toys made out of iconic licensed characters and we

got super lucky in that we had licensed it with Angry Birds back when Angry Birds was just becoming a thing and that kind of created the initial momentum and then from there we ended up licensing with all the major properties you can imagine Marvel , warner Brothers , you know my little ponies , I mean pretty much every character you can imagine .

By the time I left the toy business we had sold over half a billion units around the planet . So it was one of those rare moments of seeing something go from small to massive numbers very fast . It doesn't happen often , but when it happens it's very exciting and it continues this day .

It's still a brand that's in the marketplace that you can still go find at major retailers .

But I mean it just seems like from the toys to Pila cases to Loamy , like this is obviously in your DNA and I don't know that I got that same DNA . What , like ? What tips do you have ? Or what like I don't know , how would you , how would you describe , like that , that core kind of skill set of what it takes to invent , you know , products that stick ?

That's what I was going to do , so it made no sense that I ended up in the toy business . So I just want to kind of start there from a baseline and , by the way , I didn't work at a toy company that I actually wish I had . That's my one regret in life . It would have been saved me a bunch of pain , a lot of challenges along the way .

But I've come up with this sort of like framework that I call the courage flywheel and the way I think about it . It starts with curiosity .

You were curious about something we and as kids , were designed to be curious and to you know , we see a caterpillar on the ground , we see a leaf that is , you know , colorful or something that just captures our imagination . That's the curiosity phase .

And then , when we spend time in curiosity , creativity flows out of that , because we start getting creative with what we could do and the possibilities of extending that . And I think that's part of our God given imagination to project the future .

Everything's created twice First in our minds and then we manifest it physically if we follow the third step , which is courage , the willingness to try , the willingness to lean in , to attempt things and we got to be willing to suck before we can become successful . It's just , there is no other way around it .

I mean , you know , michael Jordan had to be a poor dribbler before he could become a great dribbler or shooter before he could become an expert shooter . And that's just the way life is . You have to be willing to start small and not good until you eventually build mastery in it .

But on the other side of courage , because you're probably going to make mistakes , you're going to face challenges , that's just guaranteed .

And we're kind of joking about , like you know , entrepreneurship is like hard , and for those entrepreneurs who tell me they haven't seen hard things yet , I said you just haven't lived long enough , it's common , don't worry , it'll find you . So challenges which , in turn , you can choose those challenges to actually define you or to refine you .

And if they refine you , they build your character . And as your character develops and you build more grit , tenacity , wisdom as a result of that .

That creates confidence , and confidence is what leads to more curiosity again and that flywheel just continues to go around and around and you just want to continue to grow what I call your courage flywheel , if you just do that enough times . So with toy creating I mean , I started off in toy distribution . That was my start there .

Somebody else made the toys , I just did the distribution . I crashed and burned that company . That forced me to reimagine and choose again . I went into toy manufacturing . Toy manufacturing recorded a completely different skill set , but I'd learned a few things in the initial company that I could then apply to the second company in terms of sales and marketing .

And now I had to learn skill sets around design , manufacturing , development . And look , I think today it's never been easier than ever to be a creator , like the tools that are available to all of us today , that are just open source .

If you decide that you have an idea in your mind , if you're curious about something and your imagination can project something highly creative . It's never been an easier time to actually lean into that , to try and create something , and I used to have to spend $50,000 , $60,000 on a prototype .

Now you can go to a 3D printing lab and print something like a few bucks just to see if it might be cool . The options and optionality have never been higher and greater . For anybody who's a creator .

And it just keeps coming around to give you curiosity again . So let's use that . When we go snowboarding together You're curious if you could actually do a big air Right . So then you get kind of thinking about well , how would I have to position my body before I launch ? Which side of the hit am I going to go straight off , Going to go to side angle ?

So then you apply that creativity , you have the courage to actually do it the first time . You probably don't get it right . You may be Tom Hogg .

and they represent all the things that we , as humans , would call it our best attributes to promote possibility . And you think about it as a kid , anything's possible , like I was gonna learn to fly , I was gonna be climbing mountains and there was no limits to the possibilities .

And I actually believe that when Jesus called us to be like little children , I think he really meant embody these attributes , don't lose them , because Ben Franklin said most people died each 25 . They just wait to 70 to get buried and what I cute you know happens is that we lose that zest for life .

And you know , like when you see someone , like , for instance , let's say , dan is in our group , and even as I look at you , when you say this camera , you can .

Eyes are the windows of the soul and when you look in someone's eyes you can tell if they're alive , like when I mean alive , like not just breathing , but they are truly living an abundant life , like they're thriving , they're excited , they're leaning into the possibilities .

And on the flip side , you can see people who've numbed out just by the fact that their eyes no longer twinkle .

And I just it's a part of something we all face is that as kids , everything's possible and then we start facing resistance , we're told what we can't do , stop , don't do we fail , we make mistakes , and we just start to layer on these layers of apathy that we get to a point where we just suddenly we're just in motion and we're , in effect , versus that cause .

So I say all that to say that I think it's really important that we all understand that this is a part of our human experience and that we work against it , knowing that it's the natural tendency to migrate .

There , like gravity weighs us down , we naturally migrate to destructive behavior patterns Like my mom didn't have to teach me how to say bad words , that came natural . Or steel cookies from the cookie jar again , that came really natural .

But to actually live a life of abundance and to be thriving and to be exploring possibilities requires you to lean in and to be engaged and to not lose those important childlike attributes of possibility and faithfulness and hope .

And so , as I think about the creative process , in order for you to truly unleash your creative genius , you have to have those childlike attributes intact and not let them wither and not become apathetic . And apathy the root of that actually means loss of passion . And you think about it .

It makes a lot of sense , right , and you're apathetic , you will lost passion . And we really know knowing , like my coach says to me all the time , a skilled hunter knows how to hunt , but the master hunter knows how he is hunted .

So if we know that apathy is something that we will just gradually drift towards unless we're working against it , just like if I don't look after my health , I will just naturally drift away to being unhealthy . That's just the way it is . So we have to work at it .

We have to constantly reinvest , lean in focus on how we can continue to be engaged and be at cause versus in effect .

I'm just like things that my dad would do that would drive me crazy . I'm just like I'll never be . My mom would laugh and it's just like oh my gosh , I can't believe it .

I hope you're loving this episode so far . It's time to go from inspiration to implementation . All right , so if you've learned something , we want to help you implement what you've learned with your book . So what I want you to do right now is go to selfpublishingcom forward slash schedule book a publishing consultation with one of the experts on my team .

We'll talk about your goals for your book , your dreams , your challenges , your next steps and we'll start putting together a plan . All right , so go to selfpublishingcom forward slash schedule book a call with the team . Let's see how we can help with your book . It's time to implement .

We tried that didn't necessarily work or , like you know , just like it feels like little things like that creep in . So it's easy to theoretically understand that , but then hard to actually implement it . How do you do that and how have you done that kind of throughout the course of your career , whether it's creating toys , products , books .

You know , in the book I talk about a framework that I think is really helpful to kind of think about it . But again , it's sort of thinking through that . Okay , understand that . How do we know ? The propensity of our humanity is to again , gravity weighs down and we will naturally drift towards apathy if we don't actively work against it .

So I talk about the quality of life quadrant and the idea being is that engagement from zero to high engagement , satisfaction from zero to high satisfaction , and we all start off in life as the rookie , where we have high engagement but low satisfaction because we have nothing . We're bootstrapping from our basement but we're inspired because we see the possibilities .

But what happens from that point forward determines how we land in one of three quadrants and we may end up in all three quadrants at some point during our life . So the first is in the bottom corner , where you have low engagement and low satisfaction and those people are the victims , and those are the people that are actually in effect .

In other words , they are defined by what happens instead of refined by what happens . It's easier for them to blame a person or a situation for their circumstances in life than is to actually take ownership . And the problem with that is that you actually give up your power to something or someone else . You are no longer .

It's a nice excuse like , well , I'm this way because of that , but you no longer have the power to actually make anything possible in your life .

And unfortunately in today's society there's so much victimhood like that is just there's people who have just claimed I mean , I drive on the highways here in Florida and I see billboards out so and so got me millions of dollars . Well , I guess it was probably a victim in this case , right ? So I'm not saying there isn't .

There is some legitimate victims situation , but the vast majority of people just go to that by default that they are a victim of some situation there . And those people suffer from what I call the four B's . They are blind to how they were involved in the process of landing where they are .

They're begrudging other people because they see other people that it didn't happen to them . They're comparing and when you compare you despair . So they're comparing , so they're begrudging that person , they blame other people and other circumstances for what happened and ultimately they have bitterness .

They're super bitter people and I think it was Nelson Mandela saying trying to harm your opponent by being bitter against them is like trying to drink poison to kill them . The only person you're only gonna harm is yourself . So that is the first place you get it up . Is being this person a victim ?

The second spot , which is call it reasonable satisfaction but low engagement , those are the bystanders and those are the people who maybe they start off , they get some initial success , they go through life , but their comfort zone is only gonna stretch so far and they don't wanna get on the other side of it .

So they choose to just not do the most or not to explore the most . They just stay contained within their comfort zone and they start to define the quality of life by their power . They have the possessions that they have the power .

They have the possessions , the pleasure that they're able to indulge in , and or the prestige of the status that they are in society , and those people ultimately are the people who know it all , show it all and owe it all right .

But ultimately , where we wanna get to is high satisfaction and high engagement , and this is where the champions are , and this is like people that are a hero's journey , and they're the people who really focus on what I call the four C's , where they understand the most meaningful things in life , all to come down to how they create important memories , like going

to ball face . So they are thinking about from the four C's challenges , things that they are came running a marathon , doing a 360 on their surfboard , doing something that is truly a challenge . You've been trying to believe it's got high satisfaction to it right .

Creativity , where they build something , they take their creative genius and unleash it and they make toys or devices that are gonna turn organic matter into dirt or painting of some sort right Charity , where they're giving of their time and their money , the resources to out make a difference in some of this life .

And , ultimately , connections connections with people making magic memories with those that matter , and that , ultimately , is what I think we all wanna try and strive for and continue to just be aware that at any time , we could be in any one of those brackets .

But if we wanna ultimately live out the hero's journey , we wanna know that we're leaning into life , that we have high engagement but also high satisfaction because we're pushing our possibilities and we're expanding our comfort zone and knowing that , hey , we're doing more than we even thought was possible .

Like I'm sure you as an entrepreneur , as a founder , can relate to the fact that you're probably at a place that if you went back 10 years from now , it'd be hard for you to envision you being here . It was just you taking the risk to lean into the possibilities that actually allowed for that to happen .

I've actually never even heard of that , but I just always joke that you know , writing a book is like free therapy , so maybe that's what you're talking about is narrative therapy actually is probably what it's called , but it's just the therapeutic process of writing and creating . You work through all this stuff .

But it also , I think , a great benefit is it helps you create frameworks , and maybe this is just how you think , but it's just like there's been three , four , five frameworks on this interview alone that I've thought to myself that's good , and I can't help but wonder and think that maybe that got distilled and sifted throughout the creation process of this book ,

which I think is a really cool kind of benefit of going through the process .

like , yeah , I kind of relate to that . I was writing and actually processing , connecting , correlating ideas and learning what I actually thought about my thoughts , which was helpful .

Y'all were bringing in questions from the audience , so this question is from Brooke says as an entrepreneur , as an entrepreneur myself , I'm curious what was the most unexpected lesson that you learned from writing a book versus starting a business , and did any part of the bookwriting process catch you off guard or surprised you compared to launching a company ?

I had kind of a basic idea what I wanted to do , but how it actually turned out is better than I initially thought , just based upon the creative processes and getting in the process and the juices flowing in , like , oh , we could do this and that and oh , this story . Oh , I forgot about that , you know .

So here's the other thing I've learned about me and maybe it's unique to me is that my mind is really good for coming up with ideas . It's terrible at retaining them . So the book process actually forced me to really recall a bunch of things .

Fortunately , I had been journaling , and I highly recommend , if you don't journal , you should , because you just want to capture life , and even you'll be amazed at just trying to remember last week , like it's , it's , it is a surprising part of our humanity . That is a bit that just needs to be supplemented , and I think a journal is a great way to do that .

But I don't think that it's anything really different than a business . It is the you know businesses or ideas . To start with an idea , to start with a thesis , and then it's a series of experiments to see if you can actually prove it through .

And you know , kind of using Eric Reese's language , you either persist or pivot , or maybe you put a bowl in it and shut it down . It's up to you . But it's a series of just try , trial and error and there's going to be more error than success .

You just have to recognize that , going in , that when we see success we're only seeing the polish shiny surface level stuff . Beneath that is a whole bunch of layers of crap and problems and things that didn't work out , that you rarely hear about . And there's also something called survivor bias right when you only hear from the survivors .

Behind the survivors there's a whole bunch of people who didn't make it . But I think it's encouraging to know that it's possible and that if you're willing to just persist and continue to lean into the possibilities , that you can eventually land in a place where you get it right at the right time .

I'm still learning . In fact , I've got new ideas since this book came out that I'm still kind of like oh and where I'm changing some of my beliefs , even just in terms of new discoveries about myself and the way that the world shows up and I show up in the world . So don't despise the process . It is a part of you becoming .

We're not human doings or human havings . We're human beings . Therefore , the most important thing for us to be thinking about is how do I , who do I need to become ? Who's the person I need to evolve into that can write a book ? Who can , you know , build a business ? Who can make impact from my family and my community ? That's cool .

I also did a number of videos .

Actually , my pastor and I we have a whole series of videos together that just unpack some of the lessons from each of the chapters and I think it's a really you know , I think that some of those videos would be really helpful because it's telling the stories behind the story , like even going deeper into what happened , and he asked some great questions , some

questions that actually at moments made me emotional and uncomfortable , which was actually the whole point .

So if you're self publishingcom author , definitely buy Brad's book . We want let's support one of our own and let's blow this thing up . It's going to be really really , really big and really really good . So buy the book , share it with someone

. Startup Santa bookcom . And then our new segment that we've got with questions live from the audience . If you want us to have one of your questions in a future episode , submit that .

All you have to do is leave a comment on one of the episodes on our YouTube channel , or leave a comment and then we'll have a YouTube channel or leave a review on the podcast with your question and that's how you could submit for the for the future . Brad , you're the man . This was a lot of fun . Thank you for being here , yeah it's awesome .

But we're excited to keep supporting you over the next year and then guys grab a copy of the book .