Creativity Meets Entrepreneurship

Speaker 2: hi welcome to the sheo fit experience with Melanie you're here because you want to scale and grow your business Master business strategy and learn about new tech Innovation join me and my inspiring guests as we dive into the topic of how how to create build scale and operate the business of your dreams in addition to being an entrepreneur I'm also a twin mom and Optimist who loves empowering you to experience the life that you crave Magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so grab a coffee or cocktail get comfy and let's dive in Marcy tible is the co-founder of solving fund an online and virtual company that offers puzzles activities and games for kids that focus on perseverance and problem solving they bring groups of friends and kids together for a fun twist your brain think outside the box and laugh with other solvers virtual experience Marcy has a background and art Direction and is a graduate of Washington University in St Louis she's extremely creative and has always had a love of problem solving and games we are so thrilled to have you with us today Marcy please tell us more about who you are and what gave you the inspiration and the courage to make your

Speaker 3: leap and launch solving fun I started out with a background in advertising I went to school to college with Fine Arts and creative direction as the goal then went to graduate school for it my first job was actually at games magaz magzine as a graphic designer which was a goal that I had wanted as a child to design for the magazine and do puzzles for kids worked in advertising for 20 years as an art director and became a creative director and had a bunch of freelance clients and then moved out to California became the time of my life where I was like okay I want to have kids and a family and how do you balance those I think that's like the ongoing struggle of balancing between family and career path how do you do both of those really well which you understand the background in design allowed me to do that part-time and do both of those things simultaneously I realized along the way it wasn't as much fun without a partner as a creative person you're always having ideas I was going to wait and find the right person to do that with a lot of it is timing I ended up meeting my kids school principal having kids in elementary school and we were talking one day about the notion of engaging children in the classroom and really providing that extra curriculum that some of those kids need and the extra challenges and decided to develop products that would fill that void for kids the timing was great I met her and thought okay this is someone I want to do a business with it kind of took off

Speaker 2: from there I understand the want for a partner because sometimes you know you might have a certain skill they have another skill and then you can bounce ideas off of each other and really kind

Speaker 3: of get the momentum of the business going yes and to have complimentary

Speaker 2: skills but also similar goals and finding someone that you truly just want to hang out with and want to work together with is really hard it's a marriage in a different way but really nice to have that Synergy with someone that you complement each other's strengths and interests but have the same passion and someone that you can trust and be yourself with and I think it was one of the pieces that I that I am not doing another business without

Speaker 3: that person as a cheerleader right yeah it can also be more fun celebrate the successes when they happen exactly how has your business shifted during this time it seems like you launched in a perfect time I know my daughter Parker has attended solving fun with her friends and she's absolutely loved it and what I like about it is it's fun she's on zooms all day right now with classes we're in the process of getting back to school but not quite yet and this is something she can look forward to where she can interact with her friends and have fun and stretch your

Speaker 2: brain and do something that's inspiring for her yes we love solving with her and her friends it such a treat to get to see them and watch their little Minds at work and twisting their brains and getting that more self-confidence and answering questions it's interesting about the timing because we really started it just before covid and the idea was to come up with products that would help teachers in classrooms and engage kids in like the normal school world that no longer exists and then all of a sudden Co hit and it was like oh my gosh like this is not really like what we had intended but it was like okay let's be flexible let's figure it out kids have needs we still want to engage kids we still want them to learn and grow and persevere and be self-confident we just use that as a an opportunity to work more together and to really develop products with the same goals but almost in a different direction because it was like okay now we have to help kids at home too it expanded our Horizon tremendously as we were developing products for at home we said okay let's really go back to the basics of we want to help kids in the classroom whether that's virtual classroom or real classroom or hybrid or any of the things that piece still was important to us and over the year we've tried to really figure out is it engaged learning is it puzzling what is that core thing that we're trying to teach and really we've come to the decision that it's more about creative thinking and problem solving and teaching kids to persevere and to feel that love of learning which not everybody's has this especially now so how can you like bring some of that

Speaker 3: back for kids that's so great that you made that pivot because in a lot of my conversations with women and especially business owners and Founders Co hit and maybe they were more brick and mortar and sold a little bit online but then all of a sudden had to shift everything to an online platform so it was great that you were able to Pivot but I can also see how solving fun would be

Speaker 2: beneficial in schools exactly it's fascinating CO's been hard on everybody and certainly nothing that we planned for or expected or were thrilled about but it's taught us resilience it's taught kids resilience I think it's the hardest on kids what they're going through really missing all those social interactions really missing the play time with each other those are the pieces that they're just not getting right now and just that engagement is just so hard to provide over Zoom even you know the kids that are in person there's lots of restrictions now that they just didn't have before kids are on the iPad in the classroom so it's interesting to think about adding solving fun to where a teacher can say okay if you're done with the school work that you have to do for the curriculum now you can go have some fun still continue learning and take a solving fun game right and it's really fun to help teachers who are kind of fried and need a new way of thinking and so to really give them a new way of engaging kids has been really amazing too and just the notion of bringing kids together whether they're on Zoom from home whether they're in school we work with classrooms now where half the kids are at home and half the kids are in school but they're all together over Zoom so we're connecting them in a different way that the technology just we didn't have that before so it's amazing to kind of keep going moving forward technology-wise and learning wise in a way that that's fun and helpful I know Parker really loved that part she said I get to do a solving fund with all my friends she got really excited over the fact that it would just be her group and

Speaker 3: her group of friends how do you hope that solving fun will inspire children

Speaker 2: and and families so our goal is for solving fun to teach kids love of learning creative problem solving and most of all more self-esteem better self-confidence self-awareness all those social emotional skills that are just so important we really hope that kids will learn through puzzling the idea that they can have those aha moments they can struggle through something and then figure it out and that's so much better than someone just giving you the answer for something and doing it together really collaborating with each other teaching brainstorming techniques where kids are working together to solve problems I

Speaker 3: think that's such a life goal right yes

Speaker 2: it's going to help them in their life and work and in the future so we hope if kids can learn that now that when they become adults and throughout their lives they'll be able to use those skills for everything I also love the perseverance aspect sometimes when you're in the class and you could say an answer wrong or something that can be intimidating so it seems like with solving fun they can learn to maybe make mistakes and then have others help them along the way or maybe get to the point where they can figure it out on their own and that it's okay absolutely and that's a learning process not only is it okay to make

Speaker 3: mistakes but it's great to make mistakes because they help you think of new ideas and that's what makes kids more creative and when they see other kids are making mistakes they feel better that it's okay and the truth is the best ideas come from people working together and providing each other with parts then then you create a new hole and if kids can learn if I make a mistake or I brainstorm something it might help somebody else think of something

Speaker 2: differently which is awesome 100% I love that we are all so busy managing our work and our daily lives I know we were talking about building and growing a business as we're homeschooling and managing life at home what is your management strategy for staying on task

Speaker 3: as you build your business wow we have to stay on task I know it's a tough one I I just I love this question because the conversations I have with women today who are building a business and juggling the homeschooling family aspect it's such a challenge and so i' love to hear how everyone approaches their management from day-to-day for building their business yes we are constantly as partners working together on how can we keep on task get all of our tests done we are huge to-do list people so I'm that person that sometimes I create things to put on my to-do list so I can get things checked off my to-do list right absolutely this feels good the the checking feels good like okay like check those off so we basically like create to-do lists and carry them over every day for the things that we don't get done and prioritize usually by time and by deadlines but also we make sure that we do things that we love and things that have to get done and balance both of those because that Joy if you don't have that forget it there's things you have to do in a business that you don't always love but they have to get done and so we make sure to not only do those things but also the things that we love

Speaker 2: I love that in my conversations that I have with people across the globe businesses due to co have had to shift in so many ways we're all shifting and pivoting and I love how we can learn from others about how we've overcome obstacles like we were talking about before with you were going to go in the classroom and then now you're online can you share a recent business challenge that you came up with and how you were able to overcome it cuz I think we can really learn from listening to the stories of other women as we experience obstacles ourselves and our daily lives in

Speaker 3: business yeah Co is it seems like such the obvious thing to say but it really does completely change the way we viewed our business and because our goal was to be in the classroom and then have classrooms not exist or exist completely differently we had to really shift Focus I think that really taught us to be flexible in our thinking and that's kind of our motto is be flexible whether it's like okay we're going to learn new software we're going to now we're working with kids Mexico City and we're working with kids like all over the country because that technology enabled us to do that so how great is that so great yeah it's amazing right so the reminder that it's okay again like teaching kids the same perseverance like we teach it to ourselves like okay it's okay that we had to shift and use the Silver Linings as a way of moving

Speaker 2: forward are there any Tech platforms or apps that you use in either your business or personal life that you

Speaker 3: couldn't live without we depend on Google meet and zoom to work together we work every day over zoom and over meet and to work with kids in the classroom so those are definitely the two big ones we're always looking for ways to interact with kids that's more interactive so we have a puzzle club that meets and we've recently introduced Jam board with them so they can actually like move around pieces and work together to solve puzzles and and do it in real time so we're huge fans of

Speaker 2: techology yeah it's really fun um and really fun to be able to watch kids solving together and cooperate yes I

Speaker 1: don't know what I would do without Google Docs right on it all day long every day yeah all the Google products and then of course like all the Adobe products for design and there's just so many pieces I can't imagine doing our jobs without them well and that's part of the fun too is like how can we take what was you know more traditional and put it into a more modern spin where it is more interactive and I mean kids are on their screens all day but they still want that interaction and human connection and especially because they're on screens all day yeah and I don't see that changing now that we've introduce the screens I mean Elliot now when he ends a zoom in his room turns the television on downstairs to what he wants to watch so that when he gets downstairs it's on so you know Co has introduced a lot of interesting things into our house I mean many of them are great but to your point I don't see the screen time changing so finding ways to bring the Maybe person board games which we will still continue to do but bring them to a screen is is really great

Speaker 2: magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy what is one tip you can leave with us today about how you find

Speaker 1: and live your joy that is such a wonderful question I would have to sumon up with find a great partner and surround yourself with people you enjoy being with and that are supportive and I'm so blessed with all of that having family that's really nurturing and Friends and a partner that it can be myself with and that we compliment each other skills and are there to share the joys and help each other through the struggles and then also just being flexible and open-minded to whatever comes whatever there's new challenges or new excitement to just know that like it may not be what you expected but you can still have it be wonderful really good

Speaker 2: advice and it's so important to surround ourselves with positive people and the people that help us to celebrate our successes and our wins B and small absolutely thank you so much for being with us today Marcy thank you so much Melanie for this it's wonderful what you're doing bringing women together and sharing in their successes and their their interests and goals um you can find me Marcy solving fun.com solving fun on Instagram and Facebook or you can go to our website solving fun.com filled with puzzles and games for kids and adults if you are new to built it we'd love for you to join us we offer Community memberships masterminds Innovative virtual events and meaningful connections to entrepreneurs and corporate leaders please also check out our shebu it shop curated products from women-owned businesses who put their heart and soul into their beautiful and Innovative products we offer Sheil tip business Consulting and the Sheil tip blog thank you to everyone around the world who joined today thank you to my editor Rich stalino please download And subscribe wherever you get your podcast and until next time together let's let nothing stop us from experiencing the life that We crave