From Pandemic Parent to Innovative Entrepreneur with Jennifer Stalley creator of Meemzy Magic

Meet Jennifer:

Jennifer Stalley is a pandemic parent who genuinely wants to help a mother out! As the Founder and President of Meemzy Magic, a for moms, by a mom company, she has set out to bring sensory play to children around the world and help moms take a load off.

Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, she spent 15 years in the entertainment industry marketing the biggest entertainment releases of the year in theaters with Fox and Sony Pictures, streaming at home with Hulu, and in video games at PlayStation. She is a big believer in the power of play, for all ages, on screen and off.

Links & Resources:

• Website
• 5 Sensory Activities You Can Do at Home Right Now
• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube

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For the transcript and show notes:
https://laurakamark.com/48

Transcript

Laura Kåmark [00:00:01]:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Be Bold Make Waves Podcast, a show bringing you inspiring stories of women who are growing and scaling their business. I'm your host, Laura Kamark, a website and tech integration specialist who works with online business owners who love their work and not their website. Join me as we have incredible conversations about business mindset, productivity, and of course, the website and tech behind the business. Let's go ahead and dive in to this week's episode. Hello and welcome to today's show. For those of you who don't already know me, I'm Laura Kamark, website and tech integration specialist for women who love their work but not their website. I'm so excited to introduce you to my guest today, Jennifer Stalley. Jennifer is a pandemic parent who genuinely wants to help a mother out. As the founder and president of Meemzy Magic, a for Moms by mom company, she has set out to bring sensory play to children around the world and help moms take a load off. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, she spent 15 years in the entertainment industry, marketing the biggest entertainment releases of the years in theaters with Fox and Sony Pictures, streaming at home with Hulu, and in video games at PlayStation. She's a big believer in the power of play for all ages, on screen and off. Jennifer, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here today.

Jennifer Stalley [00:01:28]:

Thank you for having me, Laura. I'm so excited to have this conversation today and I have been such a fan of your podcast. I love it. I need lots of this Be Bold, Make Waves energy in my life, and I love hearing about these power ladies out there changing the world. So I'm really honored to be on here today to share my message and to talk about what that's looked like in my life and my journey. And thank you so much. I can't wait to get into it. Oh, thank you so much.

Laura Kåmark [00:01:55]:

I love hearing that. That's amazing. That's the whole purpose of this podcast is to just really highlight these amazing women like you who are just making a difference. And I love it. So can you first start off by telling our audience just a little bit about how you got to where you are today, how this all came to be?

Jennifer Stalley [00:02:12]:

Absolutely. So, as you said in the intro, I am a pandemic parent. My daughter was about nine months old when we had to shelter in place, and I had just started my new big, exciting corporate job at PlayStation. Not like I had anything going on in my life, right? So it was a real struggle for my family. When we were in the pandemic, we had two big corporate jobs we were trying to hold down and no childcare because we were really concerned about what would happen. In the beginning, there were so many unknowns. Now it feels a little different, but those initial months were very exciting in a not good way, right? And eventually my daughter ended up missing some of her speech milestones. So she was behind on her speech development. And I did what every good mom out there in the world does when they get news like this. I dove into the research on my own, and I was like, we're not going to wait nine months for an evaluation with a specialist, which is what the wait was here in the Bay Area. I know that early attention means a lot of difference on the back end, so we're not going to just sit on our hands for nine months and we will do something about it. And that's how I discovered the magic of sensory play. And the more I have learned about sensory play, the more I'm like, this is great for every child. And if I had never had this flag from our pediatrician that we were behind, I don't think I ever would have found this. And now I understand the importance of engaging the senses in play. If that's how children learn, is through play, then of course, leveraging every sense, whether it's tactile or actual smell or taste or sound or even just the way that you move your body through space, of course, that's going to deepen the learning that comes from it. And yes, that's very helpful for neurodivergent children, but it's super helpful for everyone, neurotypical children included. So I bought a lot of sensory kits online because I quickly realized I didn't have the time or bandwidth to make these on my own. And as much as I want to be a pinterest mom who can do all of the creative setups, creative amazing setups that are out there, and if I had the bandwidth, I absolutely would do it. But I did not have the hours for coloring the rice and dyeing the pasta and setting up the rainbow pieces just so. I quickly just found that these were already out there and I could just buy them. But after subscribing and getting the first six or seven kits, I quickly realized I couldn't buy any more. And it made me really sad because I felt like I was not being as great of a mom as I was before. My daughter really loved them. She found them so engaging, it was the only thing that she would do independently, so I could actually catch a break and cook dinner with a vegetable when we had no childcare, right? And she loved it. I felt like a great mom, but there was just too much plastic for me. There was too many plastic pieces. I was very quickly overwhelmed by all of the parts that go into a sensory kit. And the environment and my space. Being clean and organized are two things that are really important to me. My husband works at Rivian. He worked at Tesla before. He's literally trying to do better for the Earth every day. So the two of us were like, we just can't have this plastic in our house anymore, it's too much. And I was looking for a sustainable option and there wasn't anything out there like that. And finally I saw a comment on the internet from a customer who was looking for an eco friendly sensory kit and something that was diverse and inclusive and she never got a response and there was nobody out there doing that. So I said, okay, I have to be the change. Let's do this. I can design this and I feel a lot better putting the time in to design it if it's going to help lots of children out there and not just benefit my own daughter right here for the hours that she plays with it.

Laura Kåmark [00:06:23]:

Oh my gosh, I love that so much. So what were some of the hurdles of how did you go from like okay, I have this idea to let's make this happen?

Jennifer Stalley [00:06:35]:

My background is in marketing, as you mentioned, at the top and I'm very comfortable getting the message out to people. I feel like a lot of marketing is just getting the right message in front of the right people and the really difficult part is at the right time. But designing a product and getting a product to market is a whole new thing and I understand why it's so difficult now. I have a whole respect for everything that goes through the process before it gets to the marketers. And my husband's parents actually run an ecommerce business. They were some of the first people doing ecommerce in the late ninety s. And I never put two and two together that they probably know how to do that. So one day I was like, something has to be done about this. I think it has to be me. I don't know where to get started. And we worked together next to each other in the garage and we have for how many years now? Since the pandemic, right? And I was like, you've been sitting here with this info this whole time and never offered it up. So that was really helpful to have his perspective on how to get started. And it was really challenging in the beginning because the toy industry is really not geared towards sustainability and eco friendly practices. It's just not one of the variables that the companies have optimized for. So I either had to go to a toy company and say, I want this toy, but in a sustainable material or format and they just weren't set up for that. Or I had to go to somebody who had the sustainable materials like woodpeg dolls or a bamboo bento box for instance, and say, okay, I need you to tweak it in these ways to make it more child friendly, kid friendly, so that it works with this sensory kit all around and people just didn't, it couldn't connect for them. It took a lot of communication to get them to understand what I was asking and then to get them bought in on the mission. It's taken me a year to get to market designing all of this together. And it's been a motto for a really long time for myself. Just get it together. We will perfect it later. We can find efficiencies cost efficiencies time efficiencies later. We just need to put it together and get it out there right now. And it legitimately took a year. I thought I could do it in three months. I'm an optimist now. I have a whole new respect for what goes into all the parts there.

Laura Kåmark [00:09:05]:

So when did it hit market?

Jennifer Stalley [00:09:07]:

So we are shipping now. The last pieces that we were waiting on arrived at the end of July, and we are able to ship starting last week, and we are ready for a holiday rush.

Laura Kåmark [00:09:21]:

Oh, that's amazing.

Jennifer Stalley [00:09:23]:

Yeah. I'm so excited.

Laura Kåmark [00:09:25]:

So what would you say? What kind of age groups are you focusing on?

Jennifer Stalley [00:09:31]:

Yes, very common question. I have a preamble before I give a number because we're talking about neurotypical and neurodivergent children, and I hate labeling any children anyway because we all develop at our own pace. It just depends on where your child's at in their development. Some kids, they just don't want to put things in their mouth from an early age, and they could handle it much younger. But one of the beautiful things about sensory kits is that it's open ended play. So wherever your child's at in their development, they're going to get something different out of it. Some children, it's enough to just sit and play with the kinetic sand or the slime or the playdoh. And then for some children who are at a different phase, they're working on social and emotional skills and they're relating to the characters and the expressions on the pig doll characters faces, and they've got a whole story and a narrative behind it. Right. That being said, I think age three to age eight is generally the sweet spot. But I don't want any parents out there who think, this looks amazing for my child, and we're not in that age range. I don't want them to think that they're not included. That absolutely. There's a lot of benefit that we can all get from this, honestly. I want one on my desk because in my research on sensory engagement, I learned that it's hugely helpful at reducing negative emotions related to anxiety and stress. And then I also read that children in the US. One in three are at risk of a health related issue related to anxiety and stress. So I think this is great for the kids. I think this is great for mom. I started to think about, well, that's why we love having a Zen garden on our desk is we get to play in the sand for a minute and it's just really grounding in the here and now. For anyone to engage their senses, to literally stop and smell the roses, to listen to the birds singing outside, to notice the way that the sand is moving or hear the ocean waves crashing. It's part of our nature as human beings to really queue into our senses like that. And so I think this is fabulous every day, but especially in times of transition or times of stress for the whole family, we should be thinking about how do we center ourselves and tune into what's happening in our body and not just what's happening in our head or the future or the worries that may not even happen. Right?

Laura Kåmark [00:12:06]:

Oh, I love that. Yeah. Transition. We're dealing with some transitions right now in our life because my children just went back to school this week, and my youngest started kindergarten, and this morning was her second day and she was, I'm not going.

Jennifer Stalley [00:12:21]:

Yeah, it's tough. I think it's a great back to school solution because kids are asked to do things all day long in school. They're on someone else's schedule, they have to give a lot from their cup. And when they come home and they're in the safety of home and they're in the safety of Mom's presence, that's when they can let down. Right? And I was reading in my mom group on Facebook yesterday, somebody said, my kid needs an hour of screen time when she comes home from school for the first few weeks because she just needs no one to talk to her, nothing to do, just tune out for a bit. And that's why I thought sensory play would be a great substitute for that screen. Put it on a table at their height somewhere where they can make a mess and it's okay. I like to put it in the middle of my kitchen because I have a tile floor in the kitchen and I can just sweep it up really quickly after. And the mess is kind of contained to the kitchen and let them go to town and just explore and follow where their body wants to go. And I think there's a bit of play therapy that happens, too, where children can reenact stressful or exciting things that they didn't have the time to totally process in school. They can have a quiet moment to think about that. It's something my daughter did a lot with her Happy Birthday kit when she was younger. We talked about the birthday, what was going to happen, lots of people were going to come, lots of attention, noise, crowds, things to do, excitement with the presents and the cake and the sugar and the play. Right. And she went back to her Happy Birthday Sensory kit for a week afterwards to just process and remind herself of everything that happened with that event. She did a lot of singing, trying to learn the Happy Birthday song. It was super cute. So I think just giving kids that space to process whatever it is that they need to work through is really helpful. And it's like muscle memory, right. Like they're literally engaging the senses in their body to connect those to that memory. And that's what's deepening the neurological connections that are happening in their brain.

Laura Kåmark [00:14:30]:

So I want to talk a little bit about some of the mindset that comes into play with launching something. I mean, this is a big thing and like you said, ideally three months would have been great, but it took a year. There had to have been some mindset blocks that kind of came up along the way. I would love to hear kind of what came up for you and how you overcame those mindset hurdles.

Jennifer Stalley [00:14:51]:

Absolutely. I love managing people. I've loved being a manager in my career, day to day. I thought that would be a very comfortable transition to me, to being CEO of my own company. Right. Even though I don't really have any people right now, I made it a long time on my own. Making all of this come together and being a jack of all trades is really fun. But I also have a hard time making mistakes and when I'm uncomfortable or when I'm nervous or trying something new, I find comfort in being prepared and knowing what's going to happen and being ready to pivot any direction that I need to. And at a certain point, business is just not like that. There is no handbook to follow. If there was, everyone will be doing it. At the end of the day, business is competitive and so it's a little bit messy because you are rushing and pushing and on the boundary of what has been done before. And I made mistakes and I had a really hard time moving forward from some of those mistakes that I knew better. Right. And in retrospect, you're going, oh, what was I thinking? Well, I was in a rush and I was optimizing for something and there is no checklist to follow. And I found actually hypno breath work was really helpful for just helping my body let go of. Like if I could have just told myself, it's fine, Jennifer, you're forgiven, let's move. Didn't it didn't resonate. It was like at a cellular level that I was feeling like, oh, my gosh, I've let myself down and I've let so many people down and just taking some time to slow down and breathe and reflect on it and meditate a bit about why is this so difficult. And it was really interesting because I found myself just kind of shaking my hands over and over, like literally sending it away. Like, goodbye, bad feelings, we're done with that. And after that, I felt like, I'm done with this, let's move on to the next thing. We are moving forward. I love being resilient. I grew up in a family that doesn't quit things. So that was never an option. I just really needed to put that energy somewhere and it needed to not be in my body. So that process of literally helping myself feel like I was ready to move forward was really important. And I think that in getting more comfortable, not too comfortable, but a little more accepting that mistakes are part of the process. And it's something I want to talk about, even though I'm very embarrassed of it. It's not something I would have thought I would be sharing publicly. But I think it's really important to share, particularly with female entrepreneurs, because I remember learning in college that women are less likely to start a business, but when they do start a business, they're way more likely to be successful. And I think part of that goes back to we are conditioned to be super organized on top of everything, have it all worked out before we move forward with something. And failure and mistakes is just not as acceptable. When you think about our social conditioning as we grow up, right? We have to make things happen. And moms especially, I think this resonates with because at the end of the day, your child's experience their life, what's happening day to day, it sits at the foot of mom, ultimately, right? And we know that and we feel that in our bones and in our cells. So when you translate that to business, it makes jumping in and just getting messy and making mistakes sometimes publicly in front of employees or customers really intimidating. And I don't want that to hold women back. I think that being more public and having a conversation about mistakes are part of the process and they are learnings and we move forward and the world doesn't stop is really important. So that's why I'm sharing that piece.

Laura Kåmark [00:18:59]:

I can relate to that so much. I am a total recovering perfectionist. I'm always trying to be like, done is better than perfect. Done is better than perfect. And just that's a mantra I tell myself constantly, because that's hard for me. It's hard for me to just do it messy, but I try to do it messy. I have a mentor that I've followed for years, and she sends out emails all the time with the wrong link. And her whole thing behind it is just like, I just made it part of my brand. People know, like, there's probably going to be a link wrong. It's not a big deal. No one died on the operating table. It's just a link that's wrong.

Jennifer Stalley [00:19:37]:

Amazing and so fun. Just own it.

Laura Kåmark [00:19:40]:

Just own it. She showed up one time for a thing that she flew into a day early because she had the date wrong. That's just her. She's like, I'm not really that good with dates and those little details. And she's like, but it's fine. You just send out a whoops email. It's not that big of a deal. It makes it more relatable absolutely.

Jennifer Stalley [00:20:01]:

She sounds like a great mentor. I should connect with her because she's amazing. I feel like my strength is that I've always been very strong at looking at the big picture, having the vision, connecting, where are we even going? Why are we even doing this? Let's go back to first principles. And I'm not the detailed person. So that's the other lesson that I'm learning and I know it, but I'm practicing it right. Like it's a habit to be practiced. It's getting out of the way of the people who know what they're doing. And it's so funny because going into it I would have said, oh, I'm fantastic at that. But now I'm learning that my under stress reaction is I know I'm already not good at the details. I need to over index on handling details. It's exactly the wrong reaction. You need to trust your team that much more and get out of their way. So there's a couple of things like that that I've had in the last couple of weeks that I'm going, I have to get out of these people's way. They are the experts for a reason. Why did I swoop in and think that I knew more than they do? They literally do this all day long. Let's let them do their work and instead take a deep breath. Rushing has never helped and I think that's the other thing. As soon as I start to feel a time crunch like holidays are coming, we got to get this together. There's a big expo, I need the stuff in time by the 6th that doesn't help people. So I just need to communicate what I need and then they will tell me if they can make it or not. And if they can't, we'll come up with a different plan. But we're not going to rush and cram it through. That has not worked for us.

Laura Kåmark [00:21:35]:

Yeah, absolutely. So I would love to talk a little bit about the tech side of the business website and tech person. I love hearing other people's kind of tech setup and their details behind all did. Where's your website hosted?

Jennifer Stalley [00:21:51]:

First off, it's hosted on WooCommerce. I went back and forth between Shopify and WooCommerce and the reason I picked Woo is because I was working with a web designer, best Coast Creative, Emily Wright. She is amazing and brilliant and I've worked with her in the past on small projects. But this is the first time I threw a big thing at her and she said, I like woo. Because it's a little harder to get set up initially, but they take a smaller percentage of your sales than shopify does and it's very custom and bespoke so we can make it exactly what we want in the long run. And Emily has those technical skills so she can make that happen. If it was just me all on my own, I would go shopify every single day of the week. But knowing that I had Emily and she can just make my vision come to life, I said, okay, let's do WooCommerce. And it has been a little more challenging, but in retrospect, knowing that it took a year to get the product together anyway, we have the time to get it right. And I am glad that we did that in the long run, but I do think shopify is a good option for plenty of people who are ready to go and they're scrappy and they're doing it on their own. I'm not knocking either one of them. But Woo took a minute to learn and in the long run, it's been working great for us. Oh, I love that. Yeah.

Laura Kåmark [00:23:15]:

Woo is definitely a beast to be tamed, for sure. You can do a lot with don't. I don't do e commerce sites. When people have come to me, I either send them to my friend Parisa who does shopify and makes like, these amazing shopify sites, but that's good to know that there's someone that you recommend that does Woo. I will add her to my list to reach out to and see connection with her. Yeah, because I'm always looking for people who do Woo because I don't do.

Jennifer Stalley [00:23:40]:

E commerce with amazing well. And from my marketing background, I knew that the importance of being able to track where sales were coming from and to feed the algorithms with the platforms that are out there, I understood all of that. I can theoretically talk about floodlight tags and the importance of the wrappers and what DCM is doing. And then I went to actually get in the system, hands on in the system, and set up my own Facebook tags. And I was like, what happened to this? This is not like it was in 2012 when I was an assistant. And doing this, I have gotten very far away from this. So that goes back to hand it over to the people who know what they're doing and back away. I understand it, and I think that that's important. But in the end, I did not need to do it myself. Exactly.

Laura Kåmark [00:24:33]:

So what other tech pieces are you using in your business? Do you have an email marketing system or any of that?

Jennifer Stalley [00:24:39]:

I do. I have an email marketing system. I worked with Path Insights. That's a connection through my college. I went to a women's college and I was really missing that energy. So I joined a female entrepreneur mastermind and have loved just the energy of other women who are out there fighting the good fight, trying to lead a business. Through that. I met a business sidekick who helped me set up our click up for project management. Because one of the things one of my mentors said is, you need to be ready to scale quickly, and you don't have a lot of people helping you right now, but you will, and you don't want to have to go back and recreate all of these systems later. Let's set it up now and get comfortable with it now. So it's really easy to onboard people and start to delegate some of the things that are not your zone of genius, whether it's accounting or product processing, inventory, all of that. So that's in ClickUp. Now.

Laura Kåmark [00:25:43]:

Oh, I love that. That's such good. Yeah, right there. That's the thing I see a lot of times with websites, too, is people will build on a platform that's not able to scale when they're ready to scale. And that's when a lot of times they come to me and we move them over to WordPress and build something that's able to grow with them.

Jennifer Stalley [00:25:59]:

Yes, exactly.

Laura Kåmark [00:26:01]:

Love that. Can we talk a little bit about one of the biggest challenges that you've faced since starting your business? I know we've kind of already touched on that a little bit, but maybe a little more.

Jennifer Stalley [00:26:13]:

Just one about that. I have a lot of moving parts with my product. There's a lot of different ingredients that go into a kit, and I have lots of big grand visions for where we're going with this. I have a phase two and a phase three that I am very eager to get to, but there's just a lot of elements and a lot of people to manage. And it's challenging for me because I'm not the most detail oriented person. But the ClickUp system has really helped me with that, keep track of the details. And I would love to have, like, a business operations person to hand that over to quickly because I've got so many ideas. But keeping up with the ideas and actually executing that takes a lot of time. So there's a lot of different suppliers that I work with to gather all of the parts. And I'm trying to find efficiency by buying the same item but different variations for different kits all at once. But then keeping track of, I need this color pipe cleaner for this and that color pipe cleaner for that, and then they come on the back end and I'm like, Why do I have 500 of these, but 1000 of those? It's just a lot of moving parts, and I want to be able to keep my head up and look at what's going on in the industry. What are parents requesting? What do the kids need? What's coming six months down the pipeline? And the more I get bogged down in those kind of details, it's hard to switch back and forth between the two. And that's where rushing to market is not helpful. I quickly figured out who I liked to work with, but there's just an element of like, when you're getting started, you just don't know. You've got to find those people. So there was one person I went back and forth with on the Pig dolls for I swear it was over a month, and he. Was like, we can do know what size, what shape, everything. I said, okay, you have to send me a sample, because I have learned that I've got to look at a sample before I'm ordering multiples. And when it came, it was just a bag of assorted wooden peg dolls. This is supposed to look like Santa Claus. Where's Santa Claus? Santa? And he said, oh, no, we're not going to paint them. You paint them. And I was, no, no, that's not what we were talking about. Literally, the first message was, this needs to look like Santa Claus. And so it was like, we're done here. And Connie, on the other hand, was like, here's, Santa. Do you like this shiny one or this matte one or which color red? And I was like, Connie. Yes. You're the kind of person I need. These are the details. I need somebody else watching. So that's been a real challenge, and I'm very eager to have an expert that could take that over and just take the vision and run with it.

Laura Kåmark [00:29:14]:

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I mean, products are a whole nother beast from just service industry. My husband is in an industry. He has a company that he makes custom boat enclosures.

Jennifer Stalley [00:29:26]:

Oh, fun.

Laura Kåmark [00:29:29]:

Between all the different inventory, he has to keep on hand. Everything with the pandemic, with supply shortages and just, like, materials changing, where he'll order a roll and then order the same roll, and it's different.

Jennifer Stalley [00:29:40]:

Yes.

Laura Kåmark [00:29:41]:

Kind of quality control, things getting damaged during shipping, like, all the fun things that come with having a product manufacturing.

Jennifer Stalley [00:29:50]:

Based business, shipping importing was a whole nother thing. That there was, like, a week. I became an importing expert, and I learned enough to realize I don't know what I'm doing, and I need an importing specialist. And that's not the kind of info that's out in the Internet. Right? This is a very niche specialty. And so I got put into my warehouse, recommended somebody, and I said, the company is asking what to put on the outside of the boxes. And I don't know. Just put the name of the product so I know what it is when it arrives at the warehouse. And she was like, you need an HSN number, because if you don't have that, it's going to cost you four months at customs, because they have to be able to open the boxes and see what's inside and connect it to the tax code, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, that is a hot tip right there. I had no idea about an HSN number, and I got really frustrated and flustered that my supplier didn't have this knowledge. It seems like they should be shipping stuff all the time, should know this and that's when I was like, okay, no, we're going with the experts. Tammy's in her zone of genius. She knows what she's talking about here. We're getting the HSN number. I looked it up. And I was like, I'm pretty sure it's this one. And then Tammy comes back with, no, it's this one. And I was like, I'm getting out of the way. You've got this, Tammy. Let me just put you two on an email. You can CC me or not. You've got this under control, clearly, but that would have cost us four months if we didn't know about that. So just like, there's so many random things like that that pop up when you're running the business, and it's nice to be able to have those skill sets so you can jump in and figure it out on your own. And a lot of the business setup I was able to do, and then I would hit things like this, where I would go, I don't need to be the one making this call. It's going to go wrong nine out of ten times. We need somebody who knows what they're talking about, and we will not waste the time and the resources. Let's just get it right the first time. So that's been a really difficult balance to understand. You could spend a lot of money starting up a business, paying a lot of experts, and so being really savvy about where you need help and where you can make it work for now is a really delicate balance.

Laura Kåmark [00:32:10]:

Absolutely. Oh, my gosh. HSN number. Never even heard of.

Jennifer Stalley [00:32:14]:

Yeah, exactly. And it's probably an details. Right? But details. There's a tax code number that goes on the outside of the box.

Laura Kåmark [00:32:23]:

It's important.

Jennifer Stalley [00:32:24]:

Yes, exactly.

Laura Kåmark [00:32:27]:

I would love to know. I'm such a huge fan of celebrating our wins, celebrating the little achievements that all add up to such big steps in our business. What is something that we could celebrate? You something that you're really proud of, that you've accomplished in your business.

Jennifer Stalley [00:32:45]:

So a lot of the sensory kits that are out there, when I look at the marketing and the advertising that people are using, and I totally get how they end up there. They're using probably their own kits. There is just not a lot of diversity and representation in the design of the kits and in the marketing and product photos. And I totally see how it could happen, because at a certain point, I was like, I just need a picture of a kid playing with this thing, because people don't understand, what do you do with all the parts? And so I'm like, okay, my daughter, get in here. We're taking some pictures. And I went, I have a kid.

Laura Kåmark [00:33:25]:

We can do this.

Jennifer Stalley [00:33:26]:

Another little blonde, adorable white kid. And I want a rainbow of children representing the product and feeling that they're included in what we're doing here. And so when we got our product and our lifestyle photos together, being in the Bay Area, I was like, I want everybody to come participate. Send all of your photos, send all of your children. I want to make sure all walks of life are represented here. And putting that photo shoot together was so stressful. It's just a lot of coordination. Finding a time when twelve kids are available is extremely difficult. Even in the summer, apparently there's never a good time. But we made it happen. And we have a lot of diversity and representation in our product photos and I am so thrilled with that. And I want to keep that going. And I want any child out there to look at our toys and feel like they have a place in our customer base. Because right now we've got a North Pole kit for the holidays. I want to have a Dwali kit, I want to have a Hanukkah kit. There's so many things that I want to do with these kits. We just need to get started. We needed to get it together first. We need to get shipping. And as we scale, I've got so many plans for this. So I'm really proud of that because I think that's different and I think it requires scale and empathy and time to recognize the importance and think about what needs to be included. And it's definitely different from what's out there.

Laura Kåmark [00:35:05]:

I love that. I love how you're being bold and making waves in the industry. For sure. I love it. It's amazing.

Jennifer Stalley [00:35:10]:

Thanks.

Laura Kåmark [00:35:11]:

Laura, what would you say is one piece of advice you would give to someone when they're starting their business to help them be bolder, be louder and make waves.

Jennifer Stalley [00:35:26]:

You got to ask for help and not be shy about it. I think that women in particular lead in a different unique way. We love to help one another. We're collaborative find other female business owners. They will support you. They will lead you to the right website person. They will lead you to the right email person. Stick with women. We know what we're talking about. We support each other. But you have to just ask. You have to make noise about it. People are especially business owners, right? They've got 100 things in their head every minute of the day, particularly moms who are business owners. But if you ask, somebody will come and support you. And it's scary to say, I don't know, and it's uncomfortable. And it goes back to what we were talking about earlier with women really want to feel prepared and have all the answers. And those two things don't go together. So just embrace the discomfort and ask and people will provide.

Laura Kåmark [00:36:40]:

I love that so much. It's so true. Such great advice. Jennifer, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Can you tell our listeners a little bit more about where they can find you and hang out with you online, where they can find out more about your kits, all the things?

Jennifer Stalley [00:36:54]:

Absolutely. So our website is memesimagic.com. M-E-E-M-Z-Y. That's my nickname for my mom. My daughter came up with that very early on. So I wanted to send that grandma's visiting energy out to everybody. And that's how we landed on the name. So we are also on Instagram. It's at Memesy Magic, spelled the same way. We're on YouTube where we have cute little stop motion videos with our pig dolls featured and they're adorable. They're super innocent. You could go with it for a very young age. And we are also at Museum Magic on YouTube and we're on So. And something I wanted to do, Laura, for your listeners, I also have a free download that is five sensory things you could do right now with your children, with things that you already have in your house. I would love to offer that for everybody. And a 10% off code for anybody who's interested in going out and purchasing some kits.

Laura Kåmark [00:37:59]:

Wonderful. I will link all that up in the Show Notes. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Everyone.

Jennifer Stalley [00:38:04]:

Go.

Laura Kåmark [00:38:04]:

Follow Jennifer. Go check out her stuff. This sounds amazing. I can't wait to go check out the Santa Claus kit for my kit.

Jennifer Stalley [00:38:12]:

Thanks, Laura, I really appreciate it.

Laura Kåmark [00:38:15]:

Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode. Be sure to check out the Show Notes at laurakamark.com/podcast. And if you're ready to turn your website into a marketing machine, get more sales, save time and simplify the back end of your business, grab my free Resource Power integrations for your website. Head on over to Laurakamark.com/Power. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to subscribe. And also, I'll just love you forever if you leave me a review, it helps get this podcast in front of other people that can help inspire. Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you next week. Bye now.