Episode #125 The Impact of Entrepreneurial Resilience with Jeremy Padawer
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Today’s podcast guest has been called The Godfather of Toys and is a social media icon in the collectors toy space. Jeremey’s journey in toys started at a clothing and toy store called Only Kids in Memphis, Tennessee. In today’s episode Jeremy provides advice on “making it” in the corporate toy world and what it takes to be an entrepreneur. You’ll learn the difference between collectibles both physical and digital, and yep that means we talk about NFTs! The consistent theme in today’s episode is resilience. We explore moments in Jeremy’s past where his resilience helped him move forward and we discuss the relationship between that never-give-up attitude and success.
If you’re at a place in your toy journey where you need a little inspiration to push you forward, listen to this episode. At the end of our conversation Jeremy shares two of the best pieces of advice he received in his career. The first helped him feel empowered when taking on a challenging new role, and the second prepared him for the man he is today. Ready for a little toyspiration from a major leader in the toy space? Tap play and give this episode a listen.
EPISODE CLIFF NOTES
Jeremy shares how he nabbed Elon Musk’s email address and pitches him a business opportunity. [07:25]
Find out how Jeremy keeps showing up even when he gets knocked down in business. [10:30]
Find out how Jeremy did his job differently when he first started at Mattel. [20:00]
Hear Jeremy’s explanation on NFTs and the edge that digital collectibles has over physical collectibles and how so many people are misusing the technology. [24:07]
Hear an idea that Jeremy has for Kanye West’s music [32:12]
Where did Squishmallows come from? Find out here. [41:10]
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Connect with Jeremy Padawer on Twitter and Instagram.
Learn more about Jazwares by clicking here.
Want to know more about the toy that blew Jeremy’s mind as a kid? Check out the LJN WWF Wrestling Superstars Figures by clicking here.
This episode is brought to you by www.thetoycoach.com
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[00:00:00] Azhelle Wade: you are listening to making it in the toy industry. Episode number 125.
Hey, there, toy people, Azhelle Wade here. Welcome back to another episode of the toy coach podcast, making it in the toy industry. This is a weekly podcast brought to you by the toy coach.com. Jeremy Padawer was a kid from Tennessee with zero connections, and today is a toy industry.
Executive entrepreneur collect. Animated television creator and a widely recognized faced in the business of play. He's also got an entire following on social media in which he has this platform where he communicates with collectors about the value and benefits of investing in collectibles. So Jeremy loves engaging with consumers.
I'm so excited to have you here, Jeremy, welcome to the show.
[00:01:01] Ecamm Live Recording on 2022-05-09 at 13.46.42: Oh, I'm so excited to talk to you. And like I said, prior to the interview, you have this unbelievable energy that is so great for the toy space because we need it.
Listen, we, this is supposed to be the Willy Wonka big. Universe. It's supposed to be a little quirky, a little amazing, magical, and you've got all of those qualities. So I'm truly excited to speak to you today. Your. A true future leader in our, in our space. Thank you. I'm excited to speak to you and learn from you.
[00:01:32] Azhelle Wade: I wanna, I want to give a shout out though, to like your whole your, a little bit of your toy journey, how you sold your company, wicked cool toys. And now you're working at jazz as the chief brand officer you're part partner and chief brand officer. Correct. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
[00:01:46] Jeremy Padawer: Well, I still, I still, yes, I still own some equity in the, in the organization. I love it. I mean, I love it. It's just like a dream. I mean, it's, I think it's what I had envisioned for my future when I was coming up in the toy industry. It's like, I just think it's a dream for somebody that's the first step.
I mean, that is the first step, you know, and you're used, you're showing so many signs of being brave. I mean, you're putting yourself out there and, and that's the, that's the thing about entrepreneurship in general? Like, You know, there is a safe bet. There is the executive bat there, you can go down that path.
You can have a great career, you can earn a wonderful living. And maybe you can get to a CEO level where, you know, you have all of those wonderful perks and serious financial windfalls, but you know, it's always a good thing to invest in bed on your. Yeah, that's, that's, that's the strongest methodology to create wealth.
It's the strongest methodology to create connections and gain knowledge that will allow you to maybe achieve the dreams that you start out with. Because a lot of people discard those dreams along the way. And that's okay too, by the way, there's no right or wrong, you know, because things can change with where you're at in life.
If you'd stay consistent to that original dream. At some point in time, it takes a lot of investment and risk in yourself.
[00:03:10] Azhelle Wade: It is a journey I have, and I'm sure you did it at times, too, in your entrepreneurial journey. Just moments where I was like, why am I doing this? Shouldn't I just get a job and settle down and just do the regular thing all in order, instead of this crazy invention of a life that I'm kind of building and you know, there's no, there's no blueprint.
There's
[00:03:32] Jeremy Padawer: no, there's no blueprint. And if you didn't ask yourself that question, you'd be a sociopath. And then, and then you have bigger problems that, that, you know, I've said this before. I'll say it again. There are a lot of very successful sociopath's because they don't really, that's not what it takes, but it is an element of discarding, other people's feelings and thoughts.
Really benefits certain people in terms of the way they go. Now I'm a very emotive person. I'm very intuitive when it comes to emotional connectedness and ETQ. Yeah. So this is a harder path for someone who feels things. And, and, you know, especially when you feel risk, because risk is a very real thing.
But no, I mean, look, we need more people with a big heart who try to take on opportunities because. Responsible for so many other individuals who may not have the same ambition in terms of owning or driving or creating something from scratch. You know, that's, by the way, ambitions changed too. A lot of well after they have one big hit, entrepreneurially are perfectly happy being an executive again.
And, you know, even for me, like I like I I'm on some advisory boards, et cetera, et cetera. I really like where I'm at right now. And a lot of where you're at too.
I believe in you. I know that you can, oh,
I love how this has turned into a coaching session for me. I love that.
[00:05:08] Azhelle Wade: Is it life as a coaching session.
So, okay. I do want to ask about some of the things in your toy story. Well, it honestly is like your entrepreneurial story that kind of led you into the toy industry I remember when people were still buying dot-coms and like flipping them and turning them. And I remember thinking, oh, maybe I should buy some they're like $8, $6. And you, this story of what you did with like z.com. Oh. Would you care to share it again?
[00:05:34] Jeremy Padawer: I had some big wins early on in my career when it came to domain names and it came in the fashion of, I paid for college. So I, I was in a situation where I had student loans and didn't have a lot of access to capital, but I did see a show one time where a lady was talking about the fact that she was creating websites and then benefiting from people, visiting those sites on banner.
And I thought, well, how hard would it be to create websites? And I had a theory I had, my first theory was that Yahoo, which was essentially an alphabetical search engine that went from a to Z as long as it looked like you had a reasonable website would list things. If I put two ways or three days, I'd be first in the phone book.
And that turned out to be the case. So I did a lot of toy oriented and collectible oriented things on Yahoo and got placed. And then my second year, Was okay. I've got a little bit of revenue coming in. I'm going to invest in other thoughts. And one thought I had was that domain names had direct navigation traffic.
This was in 1997. So my thought was, gosh, if you have a generic domain name, people are typing that name in to see if something's there. And there's value to that because anytime you have eyeballs that are coming towards something, you can monetize it. So to make a long story short, I had some big successes in buying things like act.com.
had a lot of traffic and it was very valuable and sold it to Symantec for many, many times what I paid for it, uninsured.com and other things like that. But I also had some interesting swings and misses and one was x.com. And so you know, X is an interesting word because X marks the spot or various things like.
And I thought, gosh, there could be something transactional here. Right? And network solutions only ever dropped three, one letter domain names and.com, X, Z, and Q. And so I reached out to the person that owned x.com, a guy named Eric. And I said, how much would you sell this domain named to me for? And he said $10,000.
He said, but I, I can only give you 24 hours. There's other interests. And I said, okay, I was like, give me 24 hours and I was scrambling. Cause I, I had loans. I didn't really have, I had a little bit of cash flow and I couldn't convince anybody to let me borrow 10 grand and pay them back soon. So I reached out to them again the next day and I said, Hey look, Eric, I need one more day.
And I was going to figure it out. I was going to take my, if I had to do I'd take my student loans not a good plan, but. So I reached out and he said, I'm sorry, Jeremy, I'm going to sell it to someone else. And I said, okay. I said, tell me who it is, because what I'd like to do is an offer them maybe $12,000 instead of the 10.
And maybe they'll flip it for 20% gain in one day he said, okay, so the guy's name is Elon Musk. He said, here's his email address? I reached out to this unknown. Elon Musk that no one knew. And I said, hi, Alon. I said, I'd like to potentially offer you 20% gain on your name and one day. And he wrote back and he said a one word answer.
No. And that was it. Never heard another word, but x.com became PayPal and PayPal now has a turnover of like $40 billion or something like that. But anyways, the point of the matter is that I feel a little bit of entrepreneurial-ism is like being Forrest Gump, because you're, even if you're not winning necessarily your.
You're in the mix. You're like in the, you're in the arena with some huge, remarkable talent. Like I fully believe that I'll look at this conversation 20 years from now and I'll say, listen, there was another giant that I was around there. She was right there, I believe.
[00:09:18] Azhelle Wade: Okay. Well, I, so, like, I, I love the story for a couple of reasons.
One, I really paid attention to the fact that you messaged somebody and said the way that you. You wanting to buy their product was how would you like to turn a 20% profit? And one day I just thought that's so smart. I know it's hilarious.
[00:09:44] Jeremy Padawer: That is the way to position smart. 'cause offering someone $12,000 when they just paid $10,000 may not trigger the type of thing that's saying you could earn 20% in a day could trigger, but Alon must being someone who on a bad day, a complete freaking genius and on a good day is like one of the world's greatest thinkers.
Oh my God, probably wasn't going to be persuaded by my tactics.
[00:10:12] Azhelle Wade: So here's the thing. How did you not get. When you had that moment where he said no, because like you said, like it's like being in the space with the other people. And I find an entrepreneurs I know in the Twain tree fine. When they go to that pitch meeting, they get a maybe or they get a no, and they just feel like I don't belong here.
I should just stop. How do you keep showing up? Even though you're, you're getting shut down.
[00:10:35] Jeremy Padawer: Well, I mean, I think it has a lot to do with resilience and I think some people are naturally more resilient than others and that's okay because you can teach yourself how to be more resilient. You just have to be, you just have to be okay with recognizing that you're not going to be everybody's cup of tea.
No matter who you are, no matter how good looking you are, no matter how much money you have, no matter how charming you are. You're not going to be everybody's cup of tea. That's okay. And so if you're okay with not being everybody's cup of tea, then that allows you to continue to take swings until you find the right opportunity or the right people where you are their flavor and that's okay.
I can tell you right now that some of the most amazing people I've ever met don't mix well together. It's fine. You know, and, and deals are the same way. Some, some deals were never meant to be. And you can't take it super personally. Now I will say one thing. I hate the concept where people say it's business.
It's not personal. I hate that. It's, it's one of my least favorite phrases because people say that when they're looking to do harm, okay. Because what I've noticed is because when you, when you've, when you have been entrepreneurial for quite some time, you tend to find that the world of business in the world of law have moments where they clash.
And the only time someone has said to me, listen, it's not, it's not personal. It's just business is when they're looking to take something or they're looking to. Play a real serious offensive game with you. It's if someone says that to you, I'm just saying, be very aware what I like, what I I'll rephrase it and just say that when you're in a, when you're everything.
Everything in business is personal to some extent, because.
You know, you can't separate who you are from what you do. And you know, if, especially if you're passionate, especially if you love what you do, it's hard to separate that. So, you know, people that I work with are also colleagues, but they're also friends. People that our vendors or colleagues, but they're also friends because I can't live 65% of my life in personally.
It's not, oh, it's yeah. It's business and it's personal. But the, the bigger point is that it's also okay. If a friend, a colleague, a business deal, a relative. Decides that they want something else. All of these things are okay, this is long as you can go into it, recognizing that it doesn't necessarily mean that it's you, the part of the equation that needs to be fixed.
It allows you, I think, often to really that, that is the part that allows you to be resilient. That's the part that allows you to smell introspection is important because sometimes like I was on the. I was on an elevator with a group of people once. And one of the people said, oh my God, you guys are all crazy.
And I said, I said to the person, like, you know, it's a bad sign when only one person in the elevator thinks everyone else is crazy. Right. No perspective also comes in play as well. But if you see over and over and over and over again, a pattern and then maybe a little introspection is, is critical to PR.
So introspection and resilience can go hand in hand in that regard. I would love to just, just backtrack a little bit, because I wanted you to tell your toy story. How did you get it to the toy?
What was that first job? Share that with us, please.
my first job in toys was when I was in high school. I worked at only kids. It was a small clothing store and toy store in Memphis, Tennessee. And I work there when I was 15 years old. And I worked there from 1988 yeah. So 15 years old I was always a collector my whole life, you know, even from the earliest stages of my life and.
Oh, sports memorabilia, coins, stamps autographs just really deep, deep into collecting stuff that potentially had secondary market value. Wow. Always that, you know, so some people are wired. So worked in high school in that regard. And then I went to, I did undergrad and then I did a JD MBA, and I felt like I could stay in school a long time because I was paying for it. And because I was doing the domain name stuff and the web stuff, it was allowing me to.
It was allowing me to, to try things and I was able to be an entrepreneur. So I went to Mattel out of a business school after I finished at Vanderbilt. And what was there for with my MBA there. And I was there for about three years and went to a company called Jakks Pacific, which was kind of early days.
And we really grew that business significantly. And then I about 10 years ago we went down the path of starting something new and focused on things like gaming and social media where other people weren't playing really had to focus on trend because You know, it's hard to compete as a brand new toy company against people who are trying to get Disney, universal Warner brothers, Nickelodeon, but being the Kings and Queens of the independent scene and focusing on a whole new way to play like gaming really separated us.
So after doing that for quite some time in 2019, we sold a private equity and Like I said retained a little equity ourselves after the sale. And that was to Allegheny capital. And now under the jazz where's banner we're the number four toy company behind Hasbro Mattel Lego for the last few months on NPV.
You know, obviously these things are subjective, but we have brands like Pokemon Roblox, Fortnite, halo, AEW, cabbage patch, kids. And cocoa Mellon Blippy and we own something called Squishmallows and that was a, that was one that that we acquired post the, the wicked cool toys acquisition.
[00:16:36] Azhelle Wade: So I, yeah, I'd like to talk about Squishmallows too, but I do have to roll it back real quick. When you got into the toy. I know, there's a story there about how you initially weren't accepted into that first Mattel and you, and you just pretended like, oh, I'm starting to get that. I'm going to get that message.
[00:16:58] Jeremy Padawer: That's right. And this is part of resilience. One sub category of resilience is compartmentalization, meaning that something bad happens. And you can kind of persuade yourself that the thing that's bad that happened isn't necessarily. Now at some point, you have to accept it, but here's what happens.
So I went for an interview when I was at Vanderbilt for Mattel and they sent me a note a couple weeks later saying, I'm sorry, but you were not selected to continue along this process for whatever reason. I, you know, I, I may have not had my best day. I don't know. Or, or alternatively, there were some really strong candidates that outshined me and that's fine.
They did a great job. Now what happened was I got the letter and I ripped it up and threw it away. And in my mind, ripping it up and throwing it away was equal to it, not existing at all. And I called Mattel and this person named Ramy Quick who I'm always going to be appreciative of. They put me in touch with Ramy and I said, hi, Ramy.
And I was like, I haven't heard back yet. I live. And maybe he said, oh, okay. Because of course, Ramy knows they're all buttoned up. And they of course had written that I did I don't do a lot of lying. I really don't in a manner where I maybe I really believed it for a minute, but I, in my mind, I, they made a mistake.
Clearly they made a mistake. And maybe it was passion that she heard and, and again, very appreciative that she picked up the phone, but she said, Hey, you know what? She's like, there's a Harry Potter job. They were just about to launch it, you know, why don't you come in and have that conversation?
So I did met with this lady named Tia. Who's awesome, but I didn't get that one. And they said, why don't you come back for this hot wheels opportunity? And, and that's, that's where I got in. And that was. Two years ago, he did brand management for hot wheels at that time. Right? I did, I did hot wheels.
And then, you know, I was, I was okay on that business, but I was really, really strong on the entertainment business. So, you know, Mattel at the time was getting the Warner license, Batman stuff like that, and SpongeBob and He-Man was being relaunched. And so I had a really great opportunity to focus on those brands.
I want that to be just inspiration. There are a lot of people who want to break into the toy industry. And I'm not saying like, you know, pester them until they give you a job, but just keep in mind that, you know, a company as big as let's say Mattel has so many different departments, just because you'd not right, the right fit for one department doesn't mean there might not be opportunities lying for you in another.
I have a, a slightly similar story where when I was applying for a job after tr you closed, you know, I was enjoying my time off for a bit. Then I was freaking out and I was like, I needed a job. I applied to a hundred jobs. Seriously. I like wrote a list and I checked them all off. And this one company I'd been seeing their job posting come up and their job listing was for such a junior position, but the way they were describing the job, it sounded senior. So the salary was way too low for me. The job was way too low. I go. And I'm like, yeah, hi I see your job description, but that's not what you need, you actually need me.
And I'm going to be like twice as expensive to that job description. Let's have a conversation and it worked. So I always, yeah, I think people should just go for it. If you really believe that you have the skills right. To fit what they need,
go for it. Yeah. And then the other thing is once you get the job, do it a little differently.
I mean, well, because. It's, especially when you're early in your career, it's easy to be part of the pack and being part of the pack is fine, nothing wrong with it, but if there's something special that you can bring to the table, it gets noticed and it gets noticed pretty quickly. So what I brought to the table was remember, I had a whole history of dealing with collectors and specific categories of business online with my serious websites.
Absolutely. Absolute series two eight. It'd be listed first on every, no, that okay. Like you know, because Yahoo's algorithm was as simple as a phone book, that's hilarious.
And so, so I brought that to the table and whether whatever it was on hot wheels or He-Man, I had a very specific engagement with the collector.
Where I put myself in front of it. Yeah. Because conquers don't want to talk to a machine. They want to talk to a perk. And so people found it interesting. They found it fascinating people, my colleagues and they found it entertaining. It was a subject of, of much humor. But never got in trouble for it was always very respectful of the fact that, you know, Mattel was paying my salary end of the day. Right now I think the more normal thing for especially fig action brands and maybe big fashioned all brands is, is that there's a human being that you know, or is attached to the brands that you're communicating. And that you feel is guiding the brand in the right direction.
And I was definitively one of the very first that was doing that sort of thing,
[00:21:55] Azhelle Wade: but wasn't it hard to kind of come out and change some the norm, because I always positioned myself as like a designer with a business sensibility. So I would like come in and say like, I'm going to design for you, but I actually will look at it, had the buyers want to look at it.
But I always came up against a lot of contention. Like, did you ever come up with against contention for what you were doing?
[00:22:15] Jeremy Padawer: No. I lucked out, but I also had some street cred from some of the things that I had done with domain names.
So people were kind of like, okay, We're going to let this person do something. Cause we're not exactly sure what he's doing. Right. And so, because, because it was a little bit more difficult to figure me out, they leeway and again, right. Like they say, you know, you give people enough rope to harm themselves.
And essentially that's that's, that was never, that never came to play. No one ever had to, you know, get me in trouble. But. But I will tell you when you're in a scenario and you're a creative lead and you are in a scenario where you've also got business sensibilities, that the thing that gets really appreciated the more leadership role that you take on within the organization.
[00:23:09] Azhelle Wade: Yes. That is very true. Early on, early on they're like, what are you doing?
[00:23:14] Jeremy Padawer: Like it could be off-putting depending on who's in the nurturing or mentor type role, if you've got it. If you've got someone who's threatened easily, a young person that has that kind of mentality can be threatened, but you know what as your career continues to roll on, I guarantee you that you will find that more and more and more valuable.
[00:23:35] Azhelle Wade: Oh my gosh. You're just the best. Okay. I know we're supposed to talk about NFTs and we will get there. So how about, how about we get there now? So yeah, you, you talk a lot about entities. You talk a lot about the metaverse. But I am still learning about the space. I'm getting involved as kind of like a consultant on the toy side with some projects just to learn. So I'd love to hear how you would describe NFTs. I heard you say them, they're essentially digital goods, similar to our physical goods, but they. So much more possibility. So please how would you explain NFTs?
[00:24:07] Jeremy Padawer: Well, I, I will say this before I even start. I have a strong preference towards physical collectibles. My portfolio of collectibles is like 95% physical. But I think digital collectibles are interesting. If they're not. And there's a lot of abuse going on in the NFT space right now.
And I'll explain what I mean. So first I will tell you the benefit of a digital item. Okay. So if you accept the concept that you could have a trading card, like a Pokemon card or a sports card, that's worth a million dollars. And there are plenty of them that are actually worth a million dollars. It's kind of amazing, but it's the truth.
I mean, there are some trading cards that are worth $30 million. Wow. A mind-numbing mindblowing. It's a 1952 PSA, 10 pops, Mickey mantle, rookie, where there's only three in the population report at that grade. That's worth 35, 40 million. That's upsetting. But we do live in a world where, you know, people want to diversify their portfolios and they.
You know, right now we're seeing maybe more than ever the need for diversification is the stock market's down and housing. Market's going to take a hit with interest rates and all that other stuff. So physical goods are an interesting thing, but all right, let me describe digital famine. Well, if you accept the fact that you could have a physical trading card, that's worth a million dollars in my, in my left hand, I can't even find it anymore, but whatever.
And one hand when the question is, why can't you have a digital item that's worth a million dollars. They're both meant to be collectibles. They're both meant to have scarcity. There's a demand and supply. And if the demand is significantly higher than supply, and it's a really well structured system of collectability, the only real difference here is that the physical good that sells for a million dollars, that card may have costs 5 cents to produce 10 cents to use.
So the physical atomic structure of that. Only grips at a 10 cent advantage over the digital collectible. So the other nine, the other $999,999 and 90 cents is Goodwill. And so the question then becomes, well, what can a digital collectible do that? A physical collectible can't do? And a digital collectible can be a, can give you access.
It can give you a. A group of other people that you're a part of, it can give you a country club. It can give you a concert with Snoop. It can give you all kinds of stuff that, that physical good can't give you because it's sitting on your shelf that there's no indicator other than the fact that you hold it, that you own it.
And so the digital good has a lot of potential utility. Now what's happened in the space though. And the reason why. A lot of disasters going on right now is that the barrier to entry and physical goods is high. You've got to manufacture ship, you've got to invest in corrugate. You've got to, you've got to invest in all the hard costs of developing and shipping and selling into a retailer or selling through to a consumer.
It's a different thing. And also licensing comes into play more often than. Digital item that may be the barriers to entry are so low. Like anybody can go create a digital JPEG and salt as an NFT. Right? So if you have people who are only doing it for the immediate benefit, the money right off the bat, that's it it's just the money game.
They don't really have a roadmap or a plan to provide utility or access. Then what you essentially have is something that's valueless. And the value is only based on expectation, which will never be met for the challenge right now on NFTs is that you've got a lot of utility potential that is almost always unmet and you don't have roadmaps, but you've got a lot of hype.
Yeah. Investors will only fall for that. So many times before they get fed up and say, this isn't for me, unfortunately, that will also impact the legitimate projects that are, that do have a lot of potential utility. We'll give you access. We'll give you the opportunity to essentially be kind of like an owner within a world of other people that may have similar interests.
And one of the other things I liked about NFTs earlier, Is that cause I, you know, for me, I TA try to get involved with stuff really, really early. And so clubhouse was a, was a critical place to talk about it like a year and a half ago. And it was really cool because what you were finding is that the digital collectible space was cutting through all barriers, gender, culture, religion, race, everything.
It was just blasting everything to smithereens because you were. You know, you were all crazy cats or board apes or whatever you were wearing a different badge than the ones that you wear in your physical universe. Yeah. But the problem is when you have one or two or five or 10, you can kind of follow it when there's a million of them.
All of a sudden, nothing really connects with you anymore. So that's my dissertation on NFTs and physical versus digital .
[00:29:37] Azhelle Wade: So I'm an entrepreneur at heart. I try to sell, I sold things to my family. All growing up, had jewelry businesses. I've always been this way. Love it. So when I see the NFT world, I'm just like, okay, so you're telling me you are going to make a product, price it, sell it and not know exactly what's included in that product. And therefore not be able to accurately price it because who knows what part of your event you're going to have in the future that all these people can come to? Who knows what physical good you're going to release when you hit a certain number and then you have to give it back to all the people who helped who bought the entities when they first minted or whatever. So I don't understand. And this is probably where the roadmap comes in, but still I'm, I'm just who in the world is able to build such. Robust defined structure of a business. And, deliver on it either year after year, month after month and price it in a way that it will make up for all the things that they're promising.
[00:30:34] Jeremy Padawer: And, and NFTs will evolve to where there will be certain programs that actually persist. There'll be some very big ones that are born out of this big franchises, like ward apricot club, yacht club, world of women crypto punks, these types of things over the, over the course of time may have ups and downs, but we'll, you know, board eight, I think has I forgot what it was. $500 million investment to build it out, to be a total franchise. Well, there's some real money being poured into these things to turn into something else. Now, with all of that said 99.5% of them will go directly to zero and in all flames burn up the atmosphere. So I'm saying there'll be some huge winners and a lot of, a lot of unfortunately folks that lose a 100% of their investment unlike physical collectible, Where you've got a long, long history and a seated collectible community. But I'm not anti NFTs. I'm just very pragmatic. I'm very pragmatic. I hold some, like I said, if you look at my total diversified portfolio of stuff, right. NFTs and digital collectables are gonna be part of it. the way I think it's going to evolve. Is NFTs are going to be utilized promotionally and for utility NFTs in the music space, haven't even begun to become something that's meaningful, but just wait until, you know, someone like.
I don't even know. I'm trying to think of something super, super crazy. Like Kanye Kanye is like genius of an artist, right? Also a genius. He's a genius genius genius of an artist. And so if Kanye drops an album and it's going to say, you know, I'm going to create a hundred thousand NFTs, and this is the only way you can hear this particular single.
And that's an interesting path and then there's a secondary market for it because just simply owning it is. So when you take a digital asset and you turn it into a digital collectible, you just have to find the right attachment.
You just have to find the right pairing. And I don't know if art is going to be the number one use for NFTs. It was certainly the first use. It was the way we all caught onto it and it gave the power to the artist. But you know, I think that there's a lot, there's, there's a lot more, there's a lot more to this space than just this, and it's not something that's going to go away.
Also the utility of, being able to track and pay a creative. Royalties on second and third sales. That's amazing and really good for music. I mean, really good for music. Think about all the great musicians who have been so screwed over throughout the years, because there were not really, you know, the, the world was kind of tilted against them.
[00:33:21] Azhelle Wade: Now I'm thinking with jazz. Where's didn't you guys just partner with world of women, women, women, world of women what's that all about?
[00:33:29] Jeremy Padawer: So what a women is an NFT program that is a female created. World of 10,000 different, very empowered, very diversified, very interesting art women. And so when I looked at it, I thought, well, you know, what, if someone came to me with this and by the way not for nothing, but it had really great traction and had Reese Witherspoon creating a movie and TV series around it and all those other things happening.
And so I saw it and I thought, yeah, If someone came to me with this art, it would be something that would be really interesting from a fashion doll standpoint. Even if God forbid the worst case scenario happens and I wake up tomorrow and NFTs are all zero. You have this interesting basis in art that we can create a program around where we can celebrate really empowered, strong women for women.
And that's, and that's what led me towards it. That's what led this jazz wars towards it, because we saw it as really having the right theme and the right play pattern, regardless of what the source was, whether it was TV or movie or NFT program, whatever, just had a really good, strong playback on that we could sink our teeth into.
[00:34:47] Azhelle Wade: So is it going to be dolls?
[00:34:49] Jeremy Padawer: Yeah. It's going to be a great fashion doll line. That's based on the art from an NFT program called world women. And we will sell certain things directly to the community, like, and offering value and utility to the community. And then we will also sell things off that roadmap to consumers who just think it's really.
[00:35:10] Azhelle Wade: There is one quote. You said that the metaverse is a multi-verse love that.
[00:35:14] Jeremy Padawer: The metaverse is people MIS think it, they think like that a versus a place that every program is going to be on.
And that it's just one place in the meantime. And our physical universe, there are more stars in the sky than there are grains of sand on planet earth. Really? That's a fact. And so when you think about what the metaverse is going to be, it's just going to be a bunch of disconnected ways to engage with other people on a digital platform.
Now over time, the metaverse will become more and more. Since driven. So right now you have your sense of sight, your sense of hearing, but you know, think of it like console gaming, every single time, a new console. Generation has launched the experience becomes more rich. And so after a few of these, maybe I'm, you know, I'm 48.
Maybe I'll be 80, but at some point in time, I'll be 80, but I'll be plugged into something and I'll be like, wow, this is exactly how I felt when I was 25 years old. Maybe it'll be reinvigorating. I don't know. But the challenges that we all need to maintain our humanity. As we continue to become more and more digitally focused and driven because we, because no matter what it is that we face in the digital world, there's a lot of stuff happening in the physical world that we can't lose sight of.
The more people that have wealth and access are lost in a world that is fantasy, the more people who don't have those things are harmed in a world. That's reality.
[00:36:45] Azhelle Wade: This, this brought me back to a colleague of ours had posted about his kid, like getting upset because something that happened to them on, on roadblocks, and he was just like feeling hesitant about the metaverse cause he's like , my kids all upset about something that happened in roadblocks and I just want her to play outside and not be bullied by random strangers on the internet. I did go into the Jazwares roadblocks worlds because I had to do my research and I loved it.
But how do you navigate that? Like, were you nervous to have to now take care of a digital space? Like.
[00:37:18] Jeremy Padawer: No, no, I'll, I'll say this. I think that it's just the reality of, you know, your life. You, you know, you've got kids today that are teenagers dealing with social media. It is, you can't shield people from it.
I mean, yeah, you can, but then if you shield them, you disarm them from what's the. Like, you know, when most dating is done through online services, what happens if you, if you send a babe in the woods you know, to deal with that and defend with that? Never no one ever said anything mean to them on Snapchat.
And then all of a sudden they're having to deal with dating in the world of like, don't do that to a kid. Let, let them deal with what the reality is.
So what I would say. Yeah, roadblocks is a fact of life, you know, and on roadblocks, if you play a game there are certain transactional and trading things that can happen. You might get ripped off. Now, if you do get ripped off, then you've got to teach the kid what and how not to get ripped off again, not by roadblocks, but by another user who's acting badly.
And then, you know, there are certain children, of course, just like there's certain adults where resilience is low and it's, it's impossible to describe in a very brief number of words, how to empower those kids.
But it requires a lot of time and effort and energy that as a parent, you will. the big statement here is don't, don't strangle your kids with your own morals and values because you don't understand what's going on. Most parents don't understand the medium, they just freak out because they'll see something else.
Oh my God. My kid got ripped off. Well, what, so did you, when you were trading your trading cards in 1987? Yeah. If, if. Your parents told you after that bad interaction where you traded a hot wheels card or car or something that you could never play hot wheels, again, who are you going to be mad at? The person that ripped you off, or the parent never took five minutes to understand what it is that you're doing in the first place.
I also want to also mention the fact that there are kids that, that truly don't have the skillset to defend themselves and that we require extra time and energy and effort. And that's not what this conversation is about. This compensation is about kids that fall within a range that do have that capacity.
And I think most parents understand whether their children do have the capacity in that particular moment. And there's really no value judgment, you know, about it. It's just a matter of saying. You know, our kids are going to experience things that are different from us. There are certain elements of mores and ethics that transcend whatever the medium is and you know, partake a little bit.
So you understand what they're experiencing?
[00:40:03] Azhelle Wade: I, I like dove into the roadblocks world, cause I just wanted to know what all the hubbub was about. And I, I don't know it to me, it looked like the Sims live. I don't know if you know what the SIM. I was very into really I'm like I was like with the Sims, so same, that's kind of what it reminded me of. I'm like, oh, so this is, or Habbo, I don't know if you know that or like sort of those like virtual worlds, it seems like, you know? Yeah. It seems like, kind of like that.
[00:40:32] Jeremy Padawer: I know all of it, because when you are a toy maker and you are in a stereo where you've constantly got to recreate yourself and your business, you have to know what kids are into.
And so for me, what it always meant is it gives me a great excuse to play. We're in this business, so go play, go have some fun because you know, It's research. Yeah, exactly. It's total research. We're working. Okay. Since we're talking about squish, mellows, I would like to kind of switch a little bit into the inventor entrepreneur route, if that's okay.
[00:41:07] Azhelle Wade: Squishmallows was an inventor item, right?
[00:41:10] Jeremy Padawer: Squishmallows was, was not an no. So Squishmallows is an interesting so a guy named Jonathan Kelly at Kelly toy, which was an acquisition by us. So we wired. So our CEO Judson Bursky has a really good eye. And I can say that as someone that has a reasonable I, myself, he has a real guy and he identified that this business was doing.
Really well, and Kelly toy historically had done things that were more commoditized in basis. Like, like, you know, what's next year is plush going to be, it's going to be, you know, zebras or it's going to be you know, whatever nor walls you know, and so, but Jonathan was inspired by the idea of creating his own planet.
And he came across the concept of the, just the way that the materials were treated. And he put it out there in, I think 2017 and I think launched at Walgreens and a certain number of stores and it blew out. Wow. And then they started leveraging social. And then a couple years later in 2019 late in the year, early 2020, we acquired a Kelly toy and Jonathan stayed along for the ride like myself.
And now it's become, you know, one of the biggest brands on NPD. I think it's number two behind Pokemon, all the crazy and the thing that made it so special. Well, I mean, I think. Timing sometimes helps. Once you, once you've carved out your leadership position, it's hard to, it's hard to compete. Like fun has done an amazing job in figural universe.
And it's, it's difficult for me to say, Hey, I've got this new platform thing and we're going to go directly up against Funko. And I'd like to think that we've achieved the same thing in plush, where we've got this irresistible. Group of characters that people are very emotionally invested in, and that we really care about the community of collectors.
That, and it is, it tends to be an older age consumer, which is really interesting. Really interesting. And the other thing is, you know, I love the collector market and the secondary market and squishy. Tends to be about the primary market and just about the experience and owning it and hugging it.
And it being part of your primary collection with no specific objective to sell it. So it's awesome. It has all the indicators of something that'll be around for a very long time.
[00:43:48] Azhelle Wade: What advice would you give somebody if they were thinking I've got an idea. That's like a squish mellow. I just want to do it.
I just want to launch it. I just want to make it is now the time. It's a bad time.
[00:43:58] Jeremy Padawer: I don't know if there's ever a good or bad time for anything, right? I mean, because in life, if you're young, you may have all the energy and enthusiasm, but not the experience we're old. You may have less energy and enthusiasm, but a ton of experience and your risk more risk averse than ever before.
There's no, there's no perfect time. Really. I mean, the one thing that my my wife's uncle told. At one point, he was like, you were born an entrepreneur. You've been working as an executive for a long time before you're 40, you should start a company or you should get involved as a, as an entrepreneur again.
And I was 39, you know? So I, I like, in my mind, I, you know, I had those little things sticking in the back of my mind. Well, we'll shoot. Like if I'm not 40, if I'm 41, it's too late. There's no, there's no magical time. There's no magical. Maybe there's things that are act as catalysts, they get you to try something because you set a kind of like you set your own, you set the standard, you set the moment, 50, 40, 30.
Yeah. This much experienced VP director, whatever it may be. But you know, at some point in time you just have to an idea and a really reasonable plan. If you don't have a good plan, you probably are not ready. If you have a decent plan to match your idea, you're probably. Okay. Yeah. That's fair. All right.
[00:45:21] Azhelle Wade: I'm going to ask you some closing questions. Okay. Ready? All right. What is the best piece of advice that you got in the first year of your toy career?
[00:45:32] Jeremy Padawer: Oh, goodness. I don't, I don't remember specifically, but I can tell you early in my career, I received advice that was very valuable and I'll never let go of it, which was, it was an Irish guy that said. Because we just took over. We just acquired at a company that worked for a different category. And I didn't have a background in this category. And I told the person, I was like, I don't, I don't know this category. He goes, don't worry, mate. He goes, it doesn't matter what, you know, he goes, all that matters is, you know, people that know stuff. And it's so true. And that was really helpful because I was always a type of personality that felt like I needed to know a lot about what was going on. And then. From that I was like, okay, I can get a lot more done if I just trust people a little bit more. It's so true.
[00:46:23] Azhelle Wade: And a lot less stress, like you can get more sleep.
[00:46:26] Jeremy Padawer: Yeah. No, it's so true. So that's one that I'll never forget. Another piece of advice I received later in my career. Was I was sitting with a guy named Jack Friedman, who was the CEO of a Jack specific. You'd created three publicly traded companies. THQ LJN and jacks. And I said Jack, I was like, what's it like to be rich? I was like, I was like, I I'm desperate to know. You know, I moved eight times at the time. I was 13 all over the south, like I said, paid for school and, and had some wins, some real wins. But yeah, I like like a real rich guy, you know, I wanted to know like, what's it like to be Oprah? Or what's it like to be there? Right. And I said, so I asked, I said, screw it. I'm going to ask this question. And he said, well, he goes to. He said, here's what it's like. He said, every potential good or bad thing that you can do, you do it to a much bigger degree.
He said, so if you're bad, you can be a really, really bad guy. He said, if you're, if you're good, you can be a philanthropist. Everything is magnified and that's power. And the value that being rich provides for you. And I thought that's pretty cool, you know, because I was pretty sure that I wasn't a bad guy, so I knew it was at least I wouldn't do harm with success. A lot of people that go down the entrepreneur real route tend to not necessarily have the strongest. Well I'll just come out and say they tend to be a little sociopathic.
Not a tendency, not, not us. We're in paths, impasse, why to compartmentalize, but yeah, no. And so, so listen, you can do both. You can, you can maintain your sense of integrity, your sense of self, and you can take risks. Yeah. Yeah. You can. People always ask me, how did you do all this stuff? And I'm like, just don't research.
Anything, just dive in. Because once you start researching, you'll be like, oh my God, that's a horrible. Less research can kill idealism. If you're an idealistic personality and you involve yourself in a lot of research, you can talk yourself out of everything.
[00:48:41] Azhelle Wade: Yeah. Last question. What toy blew your mind as a kid?
[00:48:46] Jeremy Padawer: Oh, what toy blew my mind as a kid. Well, the LJN Wrestling Figures in 1983, they were like these big rubberized action figures of junkyard dog and whole Kogan and all those guys that I loved. And cause it was the first time I had seen license. Wrestling figures. I didn't have to use my star wars figures anymore to wrestle.
[00:49:13] Azhelle Wade: Cool. Thank you so much for coming on the show today and giving just amazing quotes. I appreciate you. Thank you. It was a pleasure having you here. Oh my gosh. You're the best. Thank you, Jeremy.
[00:49:25] Jeremy Padawer: Thank you so much.
[00:49:26] Azhelle Wade: Well there, you have it. My interview with Jeremy of Jazwares . now, before we dive into the summary of today's episode, I've got to give a listener shout out to Jazwares. At Jazwares has been attending the TCA virtual pitch event. The toy creator's academy virtual pitch event ever since the very first one. So I just wanted to give a shout out and thank you to the company and to David winter, who I first connected with to invite them to the TCA virtual pitch event. And now connecting with Jeremy, it's just been fantastic.
I so appreciate your support Jazwares. And I know that my students really enjoy the process of pitching and working with you on new inventor ideas. Let's dive in to our quick conclusion you don't want to miss this. Now today's conversation was intended to focus on the world of NFTs, but we ended up talking about entrepreneurial journeys and corporate paths working in and around the toy industry while also addressing what NFTs are the future of them, digital goods compared to physical collectibles.
Now, there are a few things. I want you to walk away from this episode with, and I want to recap them right now. Now, number one, if you are a newish toy creator or an aspiring toy creator, I want you to know about the company Jazwares, where Jeremy currently works as the chief brand officer Jazwares is one of them.
Largest toy and collectible companies, the global master toy maker for Pokemon Fortnite, Roadblocks Micro Machines, UFC AEW, halo, Coco Mellon, Blippy Cabbage Patch, and so many more. If you don't know what a master toy maker is, essentially it means this is the company that currently holds the license to produce toy goods for those brands.
If you want to learn a little bit more about licensing, we've done a few episodes about it here on the podcast, but I'm sure we'll do more in the future. Check out the toy coach.com forward slash 23 and also check out episode number 39. The toy coach.com forward slash 39. Those are two great episodes about licensing and specifically a big licensing event that happens in the toy industry. If you want to learn even more about how you can license your ideas, what that means. I want to encourage you to check out toy creators academy. You could do that@toycreatorsacademy.com.
Well, let's keep on going. The number two thing I want you to take away from today's episode. Well, I've got to restate a quote that Jeremy gave us in this interview where he said, quote, as we continue to become more and more digitally focused and driven. in the digital world. There's a lot of stuff happening in the physical world that we can't lose sight.
I love that quote, because we're just talking about staying human, even though we are going to be living a little bit more digital in our lives, we can't forget about the physical world, the people in it, how they feel, how we're interacting with each other still matters. Even if we're doing online or in some sort of digital space.
The last thing I'm going to recap today. The third thing I want you to take away from this episode, if you are currently facing a struggle in your toy journey, whether it is a lack of direction in where you're going with your idea or your career, maybe it's a lack of funds, you're not making enough money, or if you're having a hard time climbing the ladder in the corporate world, I want you to walk away understanding the importance of resilience in any success story. We talked a lot about resilience today. There's an old saying that goes, it's not about how many times you get knocked down, but it's about how many times you get back up. That is true. Don't let the rejections keep you down for too long, a big part of what it takes to succeed in this industry and in this industry as an entrepreneur, in many careers is a never give up attitude. Now, the connect with Jeremy, you can follow him on social media at Jeremy P dour. The link and spelling will be in the show notes. So just head over to the toy coach.com forward slash 1, 2 5. If you want the direct links to connect with him. To learn more about the company, Jazwares, who does work with inventors, head over to Jazwares.com.
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