Brad Pedersen: Episode 1076

Transcript

[0:00:35] HA: In 1994, my next guest started his entrepreneurial journey in toys, making his first sale. In time, what began as a few simple mall kiosks, grew into a large distribution company that eventually evolved into a maker of toys, generating more than $100 million in annual revenue. Welcomed back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and my next guest is Brad Pederson. He’s here to talk with us about his new book, Startup Santa. Let’s dive in. Hello everyone. Today, you are all in for a treat. Just got to meet my friend Brad and we’re going to be talking about his new book. This is an exciting episode for me because reading about you, Brad, and reading through your book, I recognized there’s so many similarities, though we come from two different worlds. I’m really excited about that because my childhood had a lot to do with how you cultivated stories around those childhoods, especially around toys. In your new book, Startup Santa, you really take us through so many, the tapestry of not only the toy industry but how your personal growth and your intentions around creating those memories was so powerful and impactful. So, thanks again for joining me today on Author Hour. I really appreciate your time, Brad.

[0:01:56] Brad Pedersen: Thanks Hussein, it’s super great to be here. And yeah, in the initial jam session with you, just hearing about your background and things you’ve been through, man, there’s so many things that we have in common. So I’m really excited to dive in today.

[0:02:10] HA: Yeah, absolutely. I always like to start the episodes off by sharing with our audience a little bit about you and your personal background, and what got you into the toy industry. Take us back to where you grew up, how you grew up. I know your father was a huge influence on you. Was he into toys? Tell me a little bit more?

[0:02:31] Brad Pedersen: Well, it’s a great question. My background is not obvious for how I ended up becoming the real life Santa Claus. I grew up in the prairies of Canada, the area that I grew up in was actually primarily focused on agriculture and oil. So there was not an obvious path to getting to toys, but you allude to my father and we talked a little bit about this ahead of the program, was just my father has always been my hero and somebody who I’ve looked up to and in fact, this book is dedicated to him, and that is especially meaningful to me because he passed away recently. But my father was, while he was not in the toy business, he was actually a chiropractor. He was cheerful, very playful as a human being, and I can still just distinctly remember seeing him and that twinkle in his eye and the mischievous curiosity that was always part of his demeanor. As a kid, I was just always taught to dream big, to aspire to grand things, and be playful. And I think it goes to the saying that we don’t stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stopped playing. My background, again, from a place that wasn’t obvious for the toy business. In fact, I was going to be a chiropractor like my father. I was in school to be a chiropractor and it was kind of in my genealogy, because my father’s father and grandmother were chiropractors, and then my great grandmother—

[0:03:54] HA: Oh no way.

[0:03:55] Brad Pedersen: Yup. My great, great grandfather was the first chiropractor in Denmark. So you know, he was huge—

[0:04:00] HA: Wow.

[0:04:01] Brad Pedersen: Became chiropractors, that’s kind of what we were supposed to do with our lives, and I broke that chain.

[0:04:06] HA: That’s amazing. So tell me a little bit more. So you’re going to school to be a chiropractor but something obviously shifted, something happened. Tell me a little bit about that story. So how did you sort of make this shift into entrepreneurship?

[0:04:17] Brad Pedersen: Well, it’s this great dilemma out there, and I think people are always questioning, are entrepreneurs made or are they born? So is it nature or is it nurture? And I quite frankly think it’s a little bit of both. From an early age, I was doing all kinds of enterprising type things to make money, and I talk about that through my book in terms of things that I was doing early on in life. I was always very fascinated and curious with the opportunity to create businesses and business models, and as I was in my early 20s, I read a story in Success Magazine. My dad subscribed to Success Magazine because even though he was a chiropractor, he had businesses on the side, and the Success Magazine was one of the publications he subscribed to. I remember reading in his office and in that publication, I read a story about a kid who invented this flying toy that you could throw it real far and it would fly over 600 feet. And it was just like, “Wow, that’s incredible.” And talking a little bit about how I was playful as a child and then at the same time, fascinated with things that fly, I was super intrigued with this product. So I ended up buying some, playing with it, thinking it was incredible, and then I got the idea that, “Hey, you can’t find these things where I live in Canada, maybe there’s a business opportunity around this.” I contacted the manufacturer, fortunately for me he was as naïve about Canada as I was about the toy business. Our combined naivety basically put together allowed for an opportunity to be born. So I became a distributor for this product that I was incredibly excited about, passionate about, and that was really the beginning of this journey that would take me from being a Carnie, somebody that goes around throwing these things at events to try and demonstrate it and sell it, to building kiosks at malls, to eventually growing one of the largest toy distribution companies in Canada, and then eventually, into manufacturing and making toys.

[0:06:15] HA: Wow man, that’s not a big story at all. I mean, we have a lot to talk about. It’s amazing, I mean, because you go from, like you said, you go from your basement to a kiosk, and then you just keep evolving and growing and shapeshifting into what obviously, what becomes one of the biggest names in toys when it comes to this Canadian distribution, which is just phenomenal, and then manufacturing is a whole other beast. I owned a T-shirt shop for a very long time and I too started in the kiosk and started in the basement of my buddy’s barber shop, just printing T shirts for the school and stuff, but man, I mean, that’s a journey, because it takes a lot of hard work, dedication, which of course, all of these things I feel like were embedded within you. Having parents that are very supportive and all of those things, but also having those mindsets around entrepreneurship and hard work and all those kinds of things that are required to be an entrepreneur. Yes, you may have the idea, yes, you may be born with it, meaning you are surrounded with people who are seeking the best versions of themselves through entrepreneurship, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to create a successful business right away. I’m sure there was lots of ups and downs. You talk about your favorite toy growing up and how that was, that kite that you sent something up to it, and you talk about it very beautifully and for me it resonated so deeply. I can’t think of a kid right now, anywhere you are in the world, that hasn’t flown a kite, and I could be wrong. But I think there’s something about that, this idea of this freedom, this thing that you get to control that goes up in the sky. For me, that resonated deeply man. I was in that little refugee camp and I remember my brother taking little bamboo sticks and stripping them down, and literally took a trash bag and cut it up and he made a freaking kite. Like, we flew kites in these refugee camp. So it’s making things as a kid, being playful, seeing what you can turn into a toy. Our imagination is so remarkable, especially as kids. You really tap into that, you talk about that and you start to create this tapestry. Can you tell us a little bit about sort of that young human, innate urge to want to be playful? Of course you built a whole company, an organization, around this idea, but could you tell us a little bit about the psychology of maintaining and leveraging that imagination as you grow, but also to preserve it and maintain it as a child. I think it’s really important, but can you touch on that a little bit? Kind of share your ideas around that?

[0:08:56] Brad Pedersen: Yeah, I love it and I love the framing too, just in terms of talking about how you guys are in the middle of this very desperate and maybe desolate situation. Yet your childlike curiosity remains intact and you remain playful. I believe that’s an innate part of how God created us, that we are all given this ability to be imaginative, to use our curiosities to help drive the possibilities of what we can do and what we can overcome, and play is really a part of problem solving. It's how we grow as humans. While I made classic playthings, things that will ultimately become toys, if you just find kids in any part of the world, whether they’re in remote regions, far areas of Africa, or maybe they’re Polynesian, you’ll find that there is this common attribute where there’s play things, there’s rocks that we skip, there’s sticks that become weapons, there is just something that is inspired within all of us to use our imaginations. And with that, to create play and through play, we are actually indirectly doing problem solving. We’re learning about the world around us, about our environment, and really it’s the things that we play with that became very formative to who we are today as people. I would say, most moms today buy Lego sets for their kids because they look at it kind of like oatmeal. It’s a fun thing to play with but it’s also healthy, right? I mean, as their kids play with Lego, they’re using their imaginations to create structures or becoming engineers, they’re becoming physicists, they’re becoming — whatever you can conjure up through play can actually be manifested itself forward into future careers and opportunities and potentials. So yeah, as you talk about my favorite toy was a kite and after that kite, many other things that flew. Whether it was model rockets, parts of planes and gliders, and ultimately that led to a fascination that I have to this day. Sitting in the office, I’ve got a couple of pictures in my office, one of them is P51 Mustang and the other one in the other side of some Spitfires. You know, I was fascinated with these sort of muscle cars of the era from World War II and that led to following my passion to become a pilot. So I’m a recreational pilot today and enjoy doing that, but it’s all because of those curiosities early on and the playfulness around things that flew that led to that as an anchor. Now, I don’t do it commercially. I don’t make a living doing it, but it’s certainly something that I enjoy to do that gives me a lot of fulfillment.

[0:11:31] HA: Yeah and I think there’s just something so beautiful about those connections. Early on in our childhood, I drew a lot. That was my, my father was an artist, man. In that camp, he was a poet, artist, writer. So I had this view in the world through his art, right? And so for me, drawing was my everything. It was the way I communicated. I mean, imagine a kid coming from – I didn’t know the language, I don’t know the culture but man, within weeks, maybe even the first few months of living in America and going to school and stuff, I had friends. In a way, I didn’t really communicate with them that well, but because I just doodled and drew, and I’m talking about the Spider-man in the comic books, and I was just like a really good drawer. That was the language in of itself. So it was so beautiful because it connected me to my peers. Though I didn’t know the language, I didn’t know the culture, there was something about that, that curiosity for me to then make up my own characters and make up my own superheroes. I know you talk about this a little bit later in your book, but that imagination and what we’re good at, and I grew up to obviously, to paint and I got into T-shirts. How those things connect going forward is really unique, it’s interesting. And then of course, I got into architecture and all those things through our college, because I loved the designing space. And think about this, right? We lived in a 10x10 tent for like almost two years and then it moved into something bigger. So I had no idea that you can have a kitchen and a bathroom and all these things. So when I came to America, it was like, “Oh wow, you can put all these things in different places and make them work.” I was like probably 10, 12, 13 years old, I was drawing plans for houses that I would dream up but you know, it all came from that ability to now want to not only play but also control my environment, design it in a way that what I thought was beautiful and cool, and it would have all these things. But again, that imagination was now evolving. It’s evolving to take my abilities, my natural gifts, and apply them to like you said, engineering or whatever it is that you — because then, you can still find that play in connection to being a kid and imagination as you get older, and there’s such an important role of play. I feel like in today’s culture, let’s be honest, that’s really removed, right? It’s removed play in our work cultures. I mean, there’s a few people making waves around that kind of stuff, writing books about them, going out there and educating teams on how they can reintegrate this idea of play in work, but I think it’s fascinating how those things are connected. You start, you go from this kiosk and then you start to build up, right? You start to say, okay, you have now multiple kiosks. So what happens, you start to attract more distribution opportunities, or how did you start growing this business?

[0:14:37] Brad Pedersen: Yeah. So I just actually want to just put a, just point to what you just said about playing and points on planning, and then I will answer the question about the business. Here’s an amazing thing. As children, there’s something really incredible that kids have that we should learn from and that we need to continue to be reminded of as we become adults, and start adulating, and feeling like we’re too old for that stuff, but it starts with having imagination, right? We’ve been given these lines. I heard a speaker once say that we’re the only species that doesn’t know how to be our species right. Trees will grow as tall as they can, squirrels will get as many nuts and seeds as possible for the winter, grass will grow through asphalt to seek out sunlight. Yet, as a species, we are allowed to become mediocre but as kids, anything’s possible, right? We have this imagination of all the possibilities. You can remember back as a kid, role playing in all the fascinating things that you could think up and again, was an active use of your imagination, which is inspired by hope. That kids are endlessly hopeful, right? They’re very hopeful about the future. They’re incredibly curious and they’re excited about the curiosity. So I remember my kids when they’re young and they would see a fuzzy cat along the trail and then they would touch it and it would move, and it would be exciting. There just was this childlike curiosity that we talk about and then finally, they just have this enduring faith, they just believe it’s possible. There is no limits to the possibilities. Something happens when we hit adulthood, we hit our 20s, where we start to — we’ve been through some teen years, we’ve seen some setbacks, maybe there were some judgments made, maybe there were some self-worth issues. But we stopped believing. Ben Franklin has this amazing quote that most people died at age 25, they just wait to suddenly get buried. What I really see is that the light and the twinkle in people’s eyes goes out and they go from living to just existing. The idea behind this book was really to inspire people to get back to those roots, that childlike curiosity and again, to exhibit those attributes of imagination, hope, excitement, and faith, and to continue to stay pliable and to truly make the most from your experience, too, on this planet. You were going down this path where I just had to add that point because that’s something that’s really—

[0:17:02] HA: I’m so glad you did.

[0:17:03] Brad Pedersen: Woven through this story in the book, and what I’m really trying to encourage people too, because my journey through the toy business has not been a straight to the right type of ascension, you know? I started from these humble beginnings of basement business that went to mall kiosks. So to answer your question about how it evolved, well, we start getting very creative with how we were selling this product. Again, it started off with doing demos at events. It eventually led to creating an infomercial, but the bottom line is we start moving volume and word got out. The word of mouth was, “Hey, there’s this company in Canada that’s doing some really innovative marketing and selling this product.” And so as a result, we had a few people that came to us and said, “Hey, we have products and we see you're doing great stuff in Canada, will you be interested in selling our products?” At the time, I was sort of focused on, well, create a portfolio of flying things, things that fly. So we had the cylinder you could throw like a football, and then all of a sudden we have boomerangs, ones that were indoor boomerangs and outdoor boomerangs, and then we had some kites that came along, so right back to the initial childhood passion.

[0:18:05] HA: Humble beginnings, yeah.

[0:18:06] Brad Pedersen: Yeah, right back full circle and then ultimately, we ended up with the distribution rights for Wham-O, which is the original creator of Frisbee. So we had all these companies that basically started to come knocking at our door because we kept the snowball of success, kept growing and growing and growing. Kiosks were a way that we were creating volume, particularly because we didn’t have the relationships with retail stores. But when we quickly knew that in order for us to grow into this sustainably, we had to break into retail, and we started to develop those relationships with the smaller mom-and-pop type retailers, and they eventually became relationships with sort of these mid-tier taste maker type retailers and ultimately, even the large mass market retailers started talking to us. So it was a gradual evolution, and the virtuous outcome of obscene success with the products we had is that word got out and we started to get additional products in our portfolio, and those sold well. And then we started to get attention from retailers who heard that there was these really unique products that were successful and they wanted to be able to retail them, and it just grew from there.

[0:19:12] HA: Yeah man, that’s so powerful. I love that. I love that you share that story because and woven, we don’t know all those stories of course, there’s many lessons, right? Because it’s not a direct line to that kind of success. It is a pretty squiggly line, I would imagine, in learning the business, learning the industry, and then further enhancing how you market. All of these things start to play a role. What’s one lesson you’ve learned from this industry that you’ve just literally started applying it to your own growth and now, you just apply it to your life. What’s something that this industry has taught you?

[0:19:49] Brad Pedersen: Well—

[0:19:50] HA: If you could boil it down, I guess. I’m sure there’s many.

[0:19:54] Brad Pedersen: There’s so many. There’s so many that I actually have 10 of them in my book but let me just – I think the first thing that comes to mind is, nothing fails like success. It’s going to kind of tease out a little about what happens in my story, but what I’ve come to learn is that quick success often leads to ego, ego leads to overhead, and overhead can be the quick demise of any rising enterprise. I certainly learned that the hard way and have the battle scars to prove it. But I think it’s, you know, Jim Collins talks about level five leaders that have this attribute called productive paranoia, and I really don’t like the world paranoia because paranoia means irrational fear, and I don’t believe we should ever make decisions based upon your irrational fear, so I refer to it as active uneasiness. Not that I’m trying to one up Jim Collins, but it’s just an easier term for me to digest, but the idea being is that you are actively uneasy about where you are, that you are never arriving, that you are never feeling like, “I got to a place where I am truly successful,” because I think it is really healthy for business leaders to have that, that attribute. Jim Collins further elaborates that level five leaders are always putting their team and their mission ahead of their own personal trust. So I think they are one and the same. Again, if your ego gets out of place, which is again ego puts yourself before others, whereas a level five leader puts the enterprise and the mission ahead of their own personal trust and maintains an active uneasiness, I think that is a really healthy mindset for building something enduring.

[0:21:31] HA: Yeah, that’s really powerful man. I mean, I think it is one of those things that — it is like you will learn those lessons in the challenge when you rise up to the challenge of what is presented to you, there is a good chance you may have to go through it a couple of times to get the lesson.. And I feel like for me even just owning a little t-shirt shop, I too feel like I went from printing things for local schools and then all of a sudden you have some Nike work and Nike orders, and just being in that neighborhood obviously it is going to get you there, but you had to learn some serious lessons real quick, because dealing with a school organization and dealing with a corporation like Nike and dealing with those super quick turnarounds and different fabrics, different types of inks, you have to step your game up. That challenge sometimes brings out more of you, more than you thought was there, right? Your ability to navigate those things, so that is really powerful. I am glad you tapped into that. You wrote this book and obviously you’re in the work of helping entrepreneurs recognize certain things, especially through your industry, but who would you say that you wrote this book for? Like your intention, who is this audience that you are trying to reach out?

[0:22:52] Brad Pedersen: Yeah, great question. Early on, I was coached that I should pick an avatar and really think about writing this book for them. Don’t write the book that you want to write, write the book that you want to read if they were in that place in life. So I picked a primary avatar as my daughter, and she is a 24-year-old entrepreneur-founder who is starting out. She is incredibly bright and incredibly very proud of her youthfulness, her creativity, and her passion for wanting to do meaningful work. So my thinking was, she will be the type of person I would want to pass on these lessons because there is so many lessons. I was the real Santa for close to 30 years, and during that time, went through a bunch of different challenges and quite frankly, we don’t learn from success real well. We tend to learn from our failings and mistakes we make, and certainly I joke that I have a PHD in DUMB. I made every mistake, sometimes multiple times, so I have learned these lessons real well. So if I can unpack some of that wisdom for her, there are two different ways we learn in life. There is knowledge, which is learning from your own mistakes and that is an important part of the way we learn, but then there is wisdom and this is learning from the mistake of others, things that you can just avoid altogether. As somebody who has been through bankruptcy and seen some great dark days in business, my hope is that I can help other founders navigate business and to learn from these lessons, so that they can avoid some of my pitfalls. Because, at the end of the day, the principles of business are universal. We all just play in different sandboxes but we are basically doing the same thing. So what I have learned in the toy business applies to what you are doing if you are scaling a SaaS company, the principles of time. So that is my primary avatar, and then there is a secondary I have another friend who is at similar age as I am, who is also founder, been in business quite a while, got quite a few battle scars from getting knocked down and is feeling a little bit weary and disillusioned, and this book is really designed for him as a way to inspire hope, because there is two different things that motivates in life, hope and fear, that’s it. Fear is the greater motivator, it’s that scarcity mindset. It is the reason when we turn on the news they report all the worst things in the world, because they know that that you’re going to be triggered by your reptilian brain to go there first, but hope is a more powerful motivator and it is the reason that you see teams that are down going into the final quarter or period or half suddenly rally and come back and even win the game because they are inspired by the hope that they can overcome. So my goal was to really pass on some inspiration to those founders who are maybe a little long in the tooth filling, weary, and maybe almost hopeless about the future, and to maybe inspire that it is possible and that life is long. There is still so many opportunities to make impact.

[0:25:58] HA: That’s so powerful. I got to be honest with you. So I sold my business, I mean, and I want to connect it back to what you just said. First of all, your 24-year-old daughter, I just wonder where she gets all of these from, all her intuitiveness. Sounds like you’ve been an amazing role model, you and I’m sure your wife and the people around you. So I think that is the most powerful thing we can do no matter what business we run and manage and all of those things, is to create an example that we’re all going to fail throughout things but I hope that you can learn from those things and make better judgments. I feel like that is something you are passing on indirectly and directly throughout the writing of this book, I think that’s really powerful. Second of all, I am that second avatar. Having read just a few portions of your book really, I was like, “Man, I got to sit down with this this weekend and really digest a lot of this book,” because I feel like your friend, and having sold my t-shirt business and moving into this what I feel the next phase of my life. I love coaching and speaking and writing and just being an artist, and I really just want to indulge myself more with that creative process, but I also feel like there is a part of me that, “Oh, I miss this super entrepreneurship stuff and did I lose out on something? Did I miss out on something?” You have those fears. But also, you’re a 100% right in the idea that hope is actually way more inspiring. Because when I look at my wife and she’s really inspiring me and pushing me to go in this direction, and my friends and colleagues and people are like, “Dude, this is the coolest stuff that you’ve done” or “This is the coolest thing that you’ve created,” and that is really inspiring and very hopeful to me. So this idea of where you were, where you are now, and where you can be are very powerful to me. Your book really resonates with that because are talking about toys. We are talking about the impact that toys and creativity has on all of us, but where does it go? You claim this in your book. You claim that we’re all born creative but I think it’s our goal, it is our – I mean, you also say this, it is our gift back to the most high how you choose to live your life and through creativity, we can live a very inspired life. Can you just touch on that a little bit? This idea of born creative and then sort of the management of allowing that to thrive in our lives.

[0:28:29] Brad Pedersen: Yeah. No, thank you for sharing from your own personal journey as well. We all are on these journeys towards becoming the best and brightest version for ourselves and it’s interesting if you’ve ever – I live in British Columbia and as I’m looking outside of the mountains, if you have ever spent any time climbing mountains, you’ll realize it is all about perspective. From the bottom of that mountain looking up, it looks one way and you start climbing and you get to a point where you can take a look around and suddenly your perspective changes, and maybe even your ideas around the best way to ascend then changes, and as you continue to ascend the mountain, your perspective is constantly changing about the possibilities, to the point where you ascend the mountain and you realize that, “Hey, this is maybe not even the best perspective.” This is amazing, I appreciate that I am here, I am grateful for this experience, but there is another mountain over there that inspires me even more. So I think that is a part of our human journey, and we’re not necessarily supposed to take on our Everest out of the gate, but it is a process and a progress to get there to explore what’s possible within you. So to your question about what is it that’s unique about us and how do we continue to make sure that we’re malleable in terms of maintaining that youth-like, that childlike curiosity and creativity. So what separates us from every other species? There is three things. Number one, I think we’re called to create. I actually believe it is built right into the DNA of who we are. We are creators and I believe we have been called by the most high to be co-creators with him. We’re born for relationships, we thrive in relationships. Every other species is protective, they may live in packs or schools or something like that to coexist and to benefit from that, but as humans, the more meaningful relationships we create, and there is a caveat like not superficial relationships but meaningful relationships, the more value we build for ourselves and we build for those around us. Then finally, we have been empowered to choose. We get to choose how we would advance and everyday we’re either growing or we’re decaying with our choices. There is no stasis, you are either green and growing or ripe and rotting. We never sit still. And those three things are such incredibly powerful gifts that I believe that we are bestowed with in our design and really have been a part of how we are to, not just exist, but to truly thrive in our human experience. I think that as kids, we manifested so well. We are super creative, right? We go to school and we get joy from building relationships with kids and lots of different kids and playing together, and you know, gosh, I go back as a kid playing duck-duck-goose and red rover and all of these things, we should go do that again, kick the can. All of these things that really created community. Then our ability to choose is just something uniquely human and as kids, we often make bad choices but it is a part of the forces of growing as that we tend to learn again, from our mistakes more than we do our successes. As I’ve come to learn, mastery is found on the mountain top of mistakes. So the challenge is that we start to calcify as we get older and it is mostly a – it is a protection. It is a survival’s instinct within us because we start to experience failings and we start to have relationships that don’t go the way they want, and so there is this hardening and instead of leaning into life, we tend to lean away and try and protect. Instead of hoping more abundantly for our better future, we have a scarcity mindset that says, “I got to protect what I have. I don’t want to step out and try.” As a result, the wealthiest place in the world is the graveyard, because most people go to their grave with the best within them still within them. We never actually explore all the possibilities. My mentor, Jim Rohn, used to say, “In life you may not be able to do all you find out, but let’s make sure you find out all you can do.” So I think the mandate for my life is that I want to wear out, not rust out, it is actually the title of one of my chapters, and ensure that I am exploring everything that is within me, the potential is within me. And that’s going to mean being outside my comfort zone because that is where really true growth begins. It is having the conversation with the person you feel uncomfortable with. It is trying a physical activity that intimidates you. It is taking on some sort of challenge that you think is maybe too much, and feeling like you have the potential to actually make positive impact and your dent in the universe.

[0:33:16] HA: Man, I love that so much. You know, you share with such eloquence but I know it is through your learning, through your learned experience, through your trials and tribulations that you are sharing these stories in such a powerful way. Because it takes a long time to really understand the gist of those quotes that we love. You can read them, but to live them is a different kind of mindset. It is a different kind of life and you can totally sense that these are things that you’ve gone through, and you’ve had to really get uncomfortable, really learn and humble yourself and educate yourself, and see this brightness in the future that you lean towards, which is very inspiring in and of itself. So man, I just got to say like congratulations to you, the world in which you live and the continuity of inspiring the youth through toys and toy making, and how much you really stay true to that essence of innocence and that essence of creating something that a child can pick up and feel inspired to evolve into. It is very much a hero’s journey if you ask me. You talk about that a lot, and like I said earlier, I fell in love with drawing comic books and superheroes and all of that because for me, that was my way of wanting to fight the guys who protected the refugee camp and kept us in this box, this prison essentially. There is a part of us that wants to fight injustice but there is such a beautiful way to do that through your own creativity, through your own — we went on and started this refugee saying, where we give back to refugees and all of these beautiful things. Again, all connected, however, it comes from that urge to use your creativity. Use your human, like you said, built in mechanisms and make an impact in the world, but you can still make it in a very beautiful way. I think what you have done here with your work, your book, your business, your family, you’ve really leaned into those things and I just appreciate that. I just want to say it’s been an amazing honor to have met you and talk with you today. Again, congratulations. I do have one more question, and you eluded to it earlier, but if there is one thing that you hope that avatar, whether it be me or your daughter, would walk away from this book, what would that one thing be? What would you hope that their thoughts are around that one thing?

[0:35:47] Brad Pedersen: I hope that they are inspired to feel hopeful. The world needs more of it. There is, quite a lot has happened if you think about the last two years. I was reflecting on this, we had our staff Christmas party here this past week and I sat back and said, “It is hard to believe that 24 months ago the pandemic was in full effect.” Where we went from being in relationship to locked away. Downtown cities that were usually hustling and bustling and thriving with life became ghost towns. I mean, who would have thought in their lifetime that they would have seen something like that happen, right? Then we go from the anxiety and the fear that is incited by that to on the other side, and suddenly there is a war. It’s like, “Well, wait a second, that wasn’t in the plan. We are supposed to be coming out the other side and rejoicing that we are back in relationship.” But instead, we’re in a war and then from the war, we are in inflation and interest rates and now, a recession. So there is a lot of reasons for people to feel hopeless and feel anxiety and depression, and I just want to remind people that the most powerful force in the universe is hope. Hope is what leads to a better future and to an ability to know that we are loved, and that we love those around us. When we have that, we’re unstoppable. We truly have what we need to be able to build and design the futures that we can. I know it is going to be hard for people to see it now, but often the best gifts come wrapped in ugly paper and I think –

[0:37:28] HA: From a toymaker, that’s a big statement.

[0:37:33] Brad Pedersen: But I think yeah, well, you know, we try to wrap ours in as nice a paper as possible but, in the moment, you can’t see it. It feels oppressive, it feels difficult. But as time unfolds, you realize that these are gifts. These are opportunities for you to reach inside and grow yourself. It is really easy to sail a boat on calm seas, it is when it’s windy and wavy that your true character shows through. So I’m just going to encourage people that at this time with uncertainty, scarcity as the prevailing mindsets, that I want you to think with abundance and I want you to be hopeful. This book is really there as a guidepost and I think you’ll find it fun, because we’re going to talk about ten of the classic toys that you’ve played with or have had or friends of yours had during your lifetime. Maybe these subtle, unknown lessons that you were learning while playing with these toys, tie it to the lesson from my life and I mean, shared experience, and how that all comes together. But I really think for any founder, these would be really helpful in terms of just understanding some principles that are timeless, and how you can look at the adversities and turn into your advantage, and how the challenges can help form your character, because that is truly what they are there for.

[0:38:52] HA: That’s so powerful. I’ve got to be honest with you, like that is the deepest – I talk about this in my book, but it is the deepest thing that I can point to. I think anything beyond hope is transcendence, and that’s I feel like where profits reach the people that were so in lined, but hope is a beautiful thing that I know for sure rescued us out of that camp and out of that war situation. I feel like every time in my life where I have felt this urge, this need to grow or be uncomfortable or whatever, I knew that if I just leaned into hope and just trusted something bigger than myself, that it would lead me to the right place. I just want to second everything you say because you are a 100% right. It is very beautiful to lean into that and I know we’re going to come out of this world dynamic in a beautiful way in the years to come, perhaps the months to come. You never know, but other than that, I appreciate you. Just really giving that context and really allowing us to go there with you, Brad I am inspired today. Thank you for sharing your stories, your experiences. The book is called, Startup Santa: Business and Life Lessons from a Toymaker in the North. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you?

[0:40:12] Brad Pedersen: Yeah, if you go to my website, bradpedersen.com, get a chance to know a little bit more about me. There is also a way to stay connected. I actually, by choice, don’t do social media. It’s a [inaudible 0:40:25.5] of my life, and I talk a little bit about it in the book why I choose that, that life design, but in any event, I am interested in connecting with people who are creators, who are innovators, and who are going to be abundance purveyors in the future. So feel free to reach out to me on either LinkedIn or my website.

[0:40:45] HA: I love that. Brad, thank you so much again for coming on the show. I appreciate you and your time today brother. Thank you.

[0:40:51] Brad Pedersen: Thank you.

[0:40:51] HA: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Author Hour. You can find, Startup Santa: Business and Life Lessons from a Toymaker in the North, right now on Amazon. For more Author Hour episodes, subscribe to this podcast on your favorite subscription service. Thanks for joining us, we’ll see you next time. Same place, different author.