How AquaBlock is Revolutionizing Playtime: An Interview with Founder Paul Sheppard

EP018_05-07-24_Paul Sheppard

Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Toy Business Unboxed, your gateway to the secrets of the toy industry. Here, Jason Hsieh, a toy entrepreneur and expert. “Every product we develop is really inspired by some of the real life experience that we have with our son.” “Major retailers.” “Yeah, yeah.” “We think this is cool.” “The thing with Amazon is just, It become more and more complicated over the years.” “Yeah, maybe you can also consider to create more online resources.” will guide you through the enchanting world of toy design, marketing, and manufacturing. Now let the unboxing begin!

Jason Hsieh: Hello, Welcome back to another episode of Toy Business Unboxed Podcast, where we uncover the story behind the toys that inspire and ignite imagination. I’m your host, Jason Hsieh. And today we are thrilled to have Paul with us, the founder of AquaBlock, which is going to share some of his journey behind starting his own toy company, and how is he planning to really revolutionize the playtime using all the [00:01:00] different, wonderful product that he’s currently working on with AquaBlock.

Paul, can you hear me? 

Paul Sheppard: I can hear you. Hi, Jason. How are you today? 

Jason Hsieh: I’m doing good. Thank you for joining me on the podcast. Can we start out by sharing with the listener your inspiration behind AquaBlock and what is your background that lead to its creation? 

Paul Sheppard: My background really has nothing to do with it, but I’m a commercial insurance agent.

I’ve been doing that for 20 plus years now and I guess it was probably eight, nine years ago, we were over at my brother in law’s for a family barbecue. They have four kids of their own. We have our two and then my wife’s other brother was there with his three. My brother in law is an engineer, a software engineer.

But he had put out some PVC pipe in the backyard and put a sprinkler on one end and hooked it up to the hose and he put different pieces out there and the kids could [00:02:00] construct their own sprinkler and they spent like hours out there. So I just remember thinking about it, that is something if you could have kids engaged in something like that for that duration of time there really is something there and then it just kept going around and around in my head. 

How could we do something like that? And as I started to go through the process I had a yoga block at my house and I was like these things don’t allow any water into them. So we drilled a hole in the yoga block, ran water through it. And I was like we could just use blocks like this. That’s how aqua blocks started. I turned 45 and the idea had been in my brain for so long. And I finally said, you know what, I’m going to go for it. And so here we are two years later, and we literally just launched two weeks ago.

Jason Hsieh: Oh, wow. Congratulations. How is the launch going so far?

Paul Sheppard: So far, so good. It’s a process. We’re still waiting for Amazon to [00:03:00] approve it because it’s a toy. We sent in all our testing and everything. We’re on our website and we’re also on Tiktok right now.

Jason Hsieh: I know you have a physical product would you might sharing to the audience. So for those of you that listening, you can also watch a video on our YouTube channels to see the actual product. 

Paul Sheppard: So this is the packaging for what we call the base set and for the full set, and this is 30 pieces. On the back you can see all the different pieces that come in it. It comes with two sprinklers, two hose connectors, it hooks up to any garden hose. Kids can design and build their own sprinkler system. They can go up with it, they can go out with it, tear it down, build it different. We include a bag in there, so when you’re done playing, you just put everything in the bag, let it dry out and go back out and build again tomorrow.

Jason Hsieh: What set AquaBlock apart from all the other water toy on the market? 

Paul Sheppard: As this product [00:04:00] evolved, it became very apparent that the steam component, the science, technology, engineering, arts, and math was a big part of the toy. It’s more than just an inflatable sprinkler or a sprinkler that you just put out in the yard and the kids splash around and play in, which is something as American as apple pie.

I have great memories of my childhood playing in the sprinkler. That’s the fun part of it, but what the kids do is they build their own, right. And there’s literally over a billion different combinations that can be done with our full set. 

AI did the math. I did not, so you could be as simple as one block in the sprinkler. You can build it out, use all eight blocks. We include plugs. Some of the blocks have multi channel, some are single channel. It became apparent that the steam component really was something that we wanted to focus on and then not only the steam component, but also just getting kids outside off of their devices, especially in the summertime, they’re [00:05:00] not at school and.

Jason Hsieh: Can you show the audience a few part of what is actually in the set? Because I think you showed the picture, but it’s hard to imagine without seeing it in action. It’s a very neat toys when I first saw it. It’s almost like connecting like a puzzle, like a giant puzzle. 

Paul Sheppard: Yeah, but it’s a puzzle that you can do however you want, right? There’s no set way to do it. So we include like a little handbook and it refers to the child as your little scientist and walks them through what steam is and those various things. Then we have the the bag that you throw it all in afterwards so it can dry out. You don’t lose the pieces. And so this here is a cylinder, a red cylinder block, and you can see this is a single channel so the water flows through it and we have all these different connectors. These are all molded. So you can slide that in there. [00:06:00] Now you have a 180. So you grab a different block, this is our blue triangle block. And you just put that on there like that. So now the water could go in here and out here, right? This, the purple piece is the sprinkler connector. On this one here, we’d put it up here and just a super easy build. 

Jason Hsieh: You can also connect this with any other available water toy on the market too, right?

Paul Sheppard: Correct. This is a standard hose fittings. This is our hose connector. So you put that in there and you have a build right here. So this would be a very simple two block build. We include two sprinklers. Most of the kids love to hook up their own sprinkler. These are pretty basic, not a big spray.

There’s a build right there, right? So the kids are learning about how the water goes in, comes up and around and then exits through the top [00:07:00] there. That’s just a basic two block bill. The orange blocks, which are rectangles. And a little more fun.

So this is a two channel block. You have holes on that go through this way as well as this way. So on a block like this if you put the hose in here and you wanted to go straight out, you could put a plug on this side, so you stick a plug in right now, the kids are also having to think about where’s the water going to come out if I don’t plug it? How am I going to get it to go all the way? There’s a lot of engineering that goes into, and one of the cool things too is water pressure. If you try and crank it up and your house happens to have a lot of water pressure, you might have a hose blow out and then it teaches you the importance of controlling that and regulating it. We have flexible connectors as well. So these can go any, direction you want with them. that’s aqua [00:08:00] Blocks in a nutshell. 

Jason Hsieh: Can you walk the audience through the process of developing Aqua Block from concept to all the way to productions? 

Paul Sheppard: It’s been two years. I partnered up with a company and, leverage their expertise to try and help me get it because I had no idea. I just knew I wanted to make aqua blocks and I had an idea that using an EVA foam was going to be important to it. One of the other things that I noticed when the kids were playing with it back when it was just PVC pipe, they would argue over which way the water would go and whose turn it was and ultimately that ended in a little skirmish. And they’re hitting each other with plastic. So the phone comes in handy when there’s a disagreement as to who’s turn it is. 

Jason Hsieh: It’s a little safer, right? 

Paul Sheppard: The crazy thing is I had it in my mind, but I couldn’t articulate it in a way and I couldn’t quite envision how it would look and how it would work. 

We hired a industrial designer and she [00:09:00] drew it up and it was like, there it is, that’s aqua blocks. That was like really one of the coolest moments in the whole process. Cause now I could show it to people. I’m like, yeah, I’m starting this company called aqua blocks. Everybody’s you’re crazy. I can’t see it. And I’m like, yeah, cause I can’t see it either. I just know, I can’t see it. 

I have a visionary mind, but I can’t articulate it or draw it. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, that’s a typical problem to an entrepreneur.

Sometimes you have like big idea, but it’s hard to visualize and put it onto papers sometimes. 

Paul Sheppard: Yeah, that was probably the coolest, like first milestone that we crossed. Then we had to start dialing in. All right, what are the specifics? What size tubing do we need? What size this? How many molds do we need to make and just refining all that and then finding where we’re going to have it manufactured and wound up working with a woman I’ll give her a quick plug joy. She’s fantastic, she sourced everything for us and then partnered with a company here in Massachusetts.

I’m in new England, in new Hampshire, [00:10:00] which is funny. We’ve had these aqua blocks for a while now and it was snow on the ground. When we did our commercial, we’d fly down to Miami.

A company out of Massachusetts, they did all my packaging for me and really helped on the logistics. But it’s a lot of just, networking and I met the company down in Massachusetts at the toy fair in New York city last year. I think I met you at toy fest in Vegas. 

It’s just, it’s a lot, right? Like you got to constantly be talking to people about what it is you’re working on. What I found is entrepreneurs are really, kind to each other. Like they’re always willing to help, especially if you’re not in their space, exactly. 

Jason Hsieh: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. We shared a similar struggle as a small, medium sized businesses. We don’t have those VC bags, like a million dollar funded company.

So we need to try to save any single penny we can and while try to grow the team, [00:11:00] grow the business, grow the product line, figure out supply chain, figure out marketing. Pretty much a lot of work. 

Paul Sheppard: Oh yeah. I agree. Like I said, I’ve been doing insurance for 20 plus years. I can talk to anybody about insurance. I did go to school for accounting and I did public accounting for a few years in my life.

The financial, part I had, but there’s just a lot of facets to it that I’m just learning every day. What’s fun about the whole thing is it doesn’t feel like work. 

Jason Hsieh: True. That’s the fun part about the toy industry. Playing with toys. 

Paul Sheppard: My dream is to be driving somewhere someday through a neighborhood and see a kid out in his yard playing with Aqua blocks.

Jason Hsieh: What are some of the biggest challenges you have faced, so far in your entrepreneur journey, launching Aqua block in the last two years and how do you overcome them? 

Paul Sheppard: Everything is a hurdle, right? When you come up against it, do you go around it? Do you go under it? Do you knock that one down? There’s no, set path, right? There’s no instruction manual that says.

If you’re going to start a [00:12:00] toy company, this is what you have to do and this is how much it’s going to cost. Cause if there was right, everybody would have a toy company. How do you, surround yourself with the right people to ask the right questions, to get the right answers.

As soon as my business started, it was the number of emails I get trying to solicit me for various things now, right? Oh we’re the best at it. We’re the best at it. Everyone’s the best at it. 

How do you filter out and find the right, people to talk to that can see your vision too, right? This is just our flagship product. Our, mission is to keep innovating, keep developing steam toys. I personally really liked the idea of getting kids off their devices because I have two teenage boys now and it’s, like pulling teeth to get them to go outside and do anything. When I was a we didn’t have devices. Like we lived outside in the summer. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. One thing I mentioned to you when I first saw the product is you should definitely create an indoor version. That’s for like bath toy that’s much smaller scale. That might be a whole different market. [00:13:00] 

Paul Sheppard: We’re working on it. We’re working on it. And like I said, this is just a flagship product. We’ve got some other ideas already in the works. To me it was more of like, all right, I want to give it a try because it’d been on my heart for so many years. And I just felt like it was time. Through the process, I actually wound up starting two other companies. Totally different, spaces. One’s in the janitorial space, one’s in the construction space. But it was all just because of who I was talking to about various things and it just one thing led to another and I now have three patents filed in my name.

Jason Hsieh: Oh, whoa. Okay. Interesting. That’s also could be a double edged sword. So be very careful about shiny object syndrome as entrepreneur. I run into it many, times. So 

Paul Sheppard: I’m all in on Aqua blocks right now. This is our focus. So we just got the mom’s choice award. 

Jason Hsieh: Congratulations.

Paul Sheppard: Thank you. And then we officially got our steam accreditation through the toy association and Dr. Gummer’s a good play guide. 

Jason Hsieh: [00:14:00] Oh, I just interviewed her last week. 

Paul Sheppard: Oh, did you? 

Jason Hsieh: Yes. She was on my podcast last week. 

Paul Sheppard: She was just playing with aqua blocks probably last week too. Cause I just got that.

Jason Hsieh: That’s really nice thing about toy industry. You know each other because it’s not a Giant industry. So a lot of people that we all know in common. 

Paul Sheppard: There’s the big boys, the big established toy company. And then there’s people like us, that are doing something that obviously we have a passion for and a reason for doing it. I found everybody to be super helpful and, very nice and willing to point and guide and share their experiences, very similar to this conversation we’re having right here. When we first spoke about this podcast, I’d mentioned to you that I’ve had several parents approach me and say, this is great for my son with autism or my daughter with autism. And I had never even thought of that. So you and I had talked about it and you told me a little bit about [00:15:00] your experience and why you’re doing what you’re doing. That is something I would like to talk to you a little bit more about as we, move along.

Jason Hsieh: For sure. I’m willing to help whichever we can. What, some of the new product or like new development you have on the horizon. You mentioned you are currently working on that as well. 

Paul Sheppard: Yes. We’ve got several different things. One of the things that I really want to focus on is the steam component and working with educators to say. Okay, what would you like to be able to teach your class in the, fluid dynamics sphere? And work with them and create something that they can bring into their classroom.

I’ve been lately working with somebody on, curriculum. So yeah, we pretty much have our preschool curriculum mapped out. It’s a five week program with every day a different facet and a different way to learn with aqua blocks in the classroom and outside of the classroom, obviously with the water. And then we’re going to roll into first grade, second grade and just keep, 

Jason Hsieh: I [00:16:00] might need to get that referral from you. There’s a project I’m working on this year as part of my nonprofit, trying to create some additional resources. For classroom using like sensory toys, et cetera. I’ll definitely get that referral from you after the interview. Actually, just out of curiosity, how long does that take to create a curriculum like that? Like a five week curriculum? 

Paul Sheppard: Not really long. If you, partner with the right educator, they’re in that space. They know. Yeah we can, certainly talk about that offline, but it’s just one of those things that I think would be very important for the future of aqua blocks is having that relationship on our website, we actually have a tab that says for educators and we’re getting ready to publish our first newsletter and that’s going to be things for kids and educators and parents. Just really build it out ultimately down the road, I’d love to have classroom kits that are self contained and that could teach kids [00:17:00] about, there’s so many different things with water 

Whether it be pressure, whether it be flow. There’s just so many things you can teach with it and all the way through collegiate level, fluids and viscosities.

Jason Hsieh: What is the main age group that you’re trying to get into? You mentioned about preschool earlier? 

Paul Sheppard: Yeah, so with aqua blocks the testing said three plus. And I think a three year old is fine, but they’re not going to be building anything really by themselves.

So on the box, we put five plus. What’s really neat is I’ve had people my age, or a little bit older that have grandkids now, and they’re like, I’m going to buy this so I can play with my grandkids with it because they want to build and play. So there’s a, bit of nostalgia attached to Aqua blocks too.

Because again, folks my age we, spent a lot of time outside and running through the sprinkler playing in the sprinkler was, something we did. 

Jason Hsieh: I feel like kids don’t spend enough time outdoor nowadays even my kids, [00:18:00] they are always indoor when on the weekend a lot of electronics nowadays.

Speaker: Oh yeah. 

Jason Hsieh: What role do you believe, your toy in particular that can help in the children’s development process? 

Paul Sheppard: Beyond just the, they’re going to learn about science through the fluid dynamics. They’re going to learn about engineering, art. It’s all about imagination, right? If you can envision how you want it to look and then build toward that. I’ve seen some really cool builds done by some kids so far. Which is something I want to tie in as well as, is form a community, right?

Show us what you’re building to inspire other kids, and then just teamwork. You give this to a couple of kids and they’re gonna, figure out how to work together on it or not. Which is also part of learning. It’s also part of learning. Not everything’s positive there’s negatives, but you can learn from them. And then just dexterity, hand eye coordination. Honestly, there’s just so much that kids will benefit from by playing with this toy beyond [00:19:00] just turn on a sprinkler and run through it. 

Jason Hsieh: I want to take a step back to the product development cycle that you went through because your product is very unique. Like you mentioned you need to make sure the water pass through it. 

Do you have any specific challenge that you face while developing or working with a designer on making sure it’s production ready? 

Paul Sheppard: The plastic parts were easy that’s just injection molded. So buy a mold, run it through. The EVA foam was much more difficult. Particularly with the colors getting those right. I wanted my oranges to be fun, even the logo we’ve changed to a newer logo for digital purposes, but this was stuck in my head from the beginning. I want the aqua to be watery. And then I want the blocks to be blocks and then the B and the S, you could see the water coming through it. 

We’ve changed away from that, but I still love it. I think we’ll probably keep it on the blocks, but as far as big challenges, cost, money, that’s always the biggest challenge. 

Jason Hsieh: Especially for the [00:20:00] size of the product too, right? Because I think last time we talk didn’t you went through a process of trying to redesign it to make it a little bit smaller and fit into the box better? 

Paul Sheppard: Yeah. So this, lessons learned one, if I were to do it over again I wouldn’t have launched like the Cadillac . I probably would have come up with a smaller kit as an entry level because obviously with the Cadillac, you’re more parts, more cost. And then on top of that, my box, It doesn’t weigh very much because these are very light, but I get hit with the dimensional weight.

My shipping on it is pretty crazy. And then what ad spend everything else, how do you market it? How do you get it out there? And I’d say money is always the trickiest thing, but it’s not necessarily something that I view that could stop you. Where there’s a will, there’s a way and somehow, some way I figured it out. And here we are. 

Jason Hsieh: For us that work well for our toy company is we have an [00:21:00] entry level product that’s like a $10 range. Then we have a meat here, about $50. Then we have something that’s a $100, like a bundle.

And when we’re doing advertising, we focusing on the lowest tier, almost like a loss leader, so to speak. So we can spend as many money, try to promote that because the potential rate of people buying a $10 product is a lot higher than buying a $100 product. Because when it comes to a $100 product, people will double think, they will compare, do a whole bunch of research and figure out if that’s the right investment. But if it’s just a $10 product, it’s almost like an instant impulse purchase, especially if you are doing digital marketing. And we did a lot of digital marketing with our own toys brands, with Facebook, Instagram, and all the other channels.

And that has been One of the thing that was really successful for us to have a loss leader to bring the customer into the door so they can try at least one of the product. And then now we have them on our email list, on our SMS list, on our mailing lists that we can also send them physical promotion as well.

I think that’s [00:22:00] definitely something sounds like you already considering that. So that will be beneficial.

Paul Sheppard: Our next order is going to have what we’re going to call an entry level kit. They won’t have as many pieces or parts, probably won’t have the bag. You said it earlier, it’s very unique, right?

What was really cool to me is I had the vision, we were making progress, but in your mind you’re always like, all right, are we really on the right track here? Is this something that the market’s going to like? And we went to Toy Fair in New York City and that was probably one of the coolest experiences because we were validated there. So many people that have been in the industry for 20 plus years came up and they’re like wow, this is the only thing here that’s truly unique and original and new. There’s other sprinklers there. There’s other STEM, steam toys there, but nobody had brought the two together. Just the feedback we got was really overwhelming. We really do have something special here. 

Jason Hsieh: [00:23:00] Were you able to got into a few retail store on the toy New York fair?

Paul Sheppard: We have the opportunity to do some retail. But again, with where we’re at this stage going to retail, you give up so much in margin. That we need to build from the top down direct to consumer, through Amazon, Tik tok, Facebook, Insta, our websites hosted on Shopify.

We’re out there. And again, I think that version two, smaller base set, smaller packaging, less shelf space, lower price point. I think, that’ll probably be what we take to retail. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. Retail is a totally different ball game. Even with our own toys brand we have been focusing a hundred percent on D2C since the inception of the brand.

This is only like in 2024. We even start to consider getting into retail because the complexity is a little bit different. The margin is not as good and the supply chain need to be different than [00:24:00] my current supply chain. My current supply chain is optimized. For online retail, not for in store retail.

I actually don’t have a physical location here to ship it to the store right now. So that’s a lot of a thing to consider if you want to do retail. And another big problem for my toy brand is when we design a whole product line, the packaging is like the last thing we ever think about. Because everything’s online, people don’t see the packaging anyway. So we didn’t really spend a lot of time and effort trying to make the product line. Packaging as enticing as possible. We just put the toy in the box, make sure it doesn’t break. With minimal description. That’s about it.

But when you’re going into retail, like the packaging is almost like everything. That’s the only thing people see. That’s the challenge I’m facing with my own toy line, it’s hard to get into retail and make it effective.

Paul Sheppard: Yeah, retail is a whole different animal. It really is. I read a great article, I think it was in the toy book probably six, seven months ago now. And it was saying that [00:25:00] if an entrepreneur approached me about starting a toy company. Should I license or should I develop it? He said I would have 100 percent told you to license it. 

Jason Hsieh: What’s the reason that they say that? 

Paul Sheppard: But with the advent of the internet and Amazon and just everything the way that the world has changed. We as small toy developers Can actually go compete in the marketplace because we have a platform. In the past, it was always, you had to have major backing to get into a Walmart or Toys R Us or target. Even those places now, I think there’s more opportunity for us because we could go make a name online, get some brand recognition and then go pitch to them. I found that very interesting and encouraging, right? Cause. I didn’t really want to just give away my baby.

Jason Hsieh: [00:26:00] The currency nowadays for digital marketing is really attention. If we can get the parents the consumers attention, just look at Ryan toy. Like they start out with just a YouTube channel. They have a whole huge toy line nowadays. That’s everywhere. And they make millions because amount of the subscriber, the attention. The eyeball they get onto their YouTube channel and they can sell pretty much any kind of toy because they have so many kids following their channels and getting a lot of attentions.

I feel like for any kind of successful toy brand nowadays, you almost need to be a toy company and a media company at the same time in order to be successful, especially on the D2C platform, and that’s something I have been really trying to work on this year for the toy brand. We want to try to create, actually same as my the toy launch, the marketing company I also own I know about creating content.

That’s why we do the podcast. That’s why we do the webinar, because content and getting people’s attention is like so key to any kind of online businesses, not just toy businesses, [00:27:00] but very, important. And, It’s also getting harder to get people’s attention nowadays because there’s a hundred different million electronic devices that’s all fighting for the customer’s attention.

And how can your product stand out and how can your content go viral? There’s a lot of like arts and science. 

Paul Sheppard: And then no matter what you think, It should be it all comes down to the algorithm and whether it grabs you or not. So certainly I’ve watched enough how to’s and listened to a lot of experts talk about what has to be in the first two seconds and then what needs to be in the next six seconds and all of that. But at the end of the day I think a lot of it’s just shooting in the dark and 

Jason Hsieh: yeah, at the end of the day, it’s about consistency and you just need to go out and make the content like right now, this week, I’m like recording for podcast episode, just in one week. That’s how much content I’m recording right now. And we spend a lot of time on repurposing the content. Turn it into audios, [00:28:00] turn it into different videos. It’s about repurposing and also being only channels. And that applies for toy marketing as well. Like how can you create more content? Maybe hiring some teenager that’s really good at TikTok and just create a lot of TikTok videos. That might work. But it’s just easy to try. And as the digital marketing space is evolving so quickly, sometimes it’s hard to keep up, but you just need to keep on trying and reinventing yourself. That’s why I love digital marketing so much.

I’m really passionate about digital marketing and toy marketing because there’s a lot of different things you can try. And I think for your brand, that’s a lot of potential for the content to go viral as well, because the product is very unique. It’s about like, how can you showcase the product to the potential buyers and show how unique it is? And how is it different than any other backyard water toy they have tried in the past, right? 

Paul Sheppard: Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, but again, it’s what I learned pretty quick is, I’m not the guy to do that. Yeah. Facebook was really all [00:29:00] I used and LinkedIn and even LinkedIn is changing to more of a sales platform. But I quickly realized that I’m not the person to do that.

I was always asking my kids, Hey how do I, share this to? What’s a story. Give me your phone. I hired somebody to do that for us now. My brother bought four sets for his kids. He’s got four kids out in Indiana. He was the first purchase off of the website and they got delivered. He, opened it up with his kids and they were all super impressed and thought that uncle Paul was like this mad genius that invented this toy. 

What was really cute is his daughter, I think somewhere in the manual that I included, I have a little note from me to the buyer. Yeah. It says president on the top there and she’s uncle Paul’s the president. My brother said he’s not president like you’re thinking of president. 

Jason Hsieh: Different kind of president. 

Paul Sheppard: But then they [00:30:00] FaceTime me after they’d played with it. And honestly, that just melted my heart. Cause that’s, what it’s about. Seeing little kids just happy. 

Jason Hsieh: As we’re wrapping our time together on the podcast and the last question I’d like to ask all the, guests is if you had to just share one piece of advice with someone that’s just getting started in the toy industry, what would that be?

Paul Sheppard: Keep going. Just keep going, right? You’re going to have challenges. You’re going to have some victories. You’re going to have some losses. Things aren’t going to go exactly as maybe you’d, planned them in your mind. But if you are passionate enough about it and it was put on your heart to bring the market, just keep going.

Jason Hsieh: Really good advice. That’s true for any kind of entrepreneur endeavor. It’s always going to be up and down. It’s like a roller coaster, but if you have a big enough of why you will keep you going. Going and that, that’s true for me too. I went through a lot of different struggle in my entrepreneurial journey.

Like during COVID, I was on the edge of [00:31:00] bankruptcy because all the school shut down and we sell majority of the revenue back then to schools. And I, went from 50, 000 a month to 10, 000 a month. We lost, I lost 80 percent of our revenue overnight. Because of the situation but my wife is really trying to empower, support, and educate kids like my son to have learning differences.

That’s like the only reason that keep me going. I could have given up so many times in the past. It’s a lot easier to just give up, right? I say, I’m going to give up and go back to my comfy day job, which I just sit in my cubicle and doing boring financial stuff because my previous career was also finance.

Actually, I was in corporate finance for over. 10, 12, 12 years. But it’s just not as fun as toys. Like it’s just not as fun. 

Paul Sheppard: You don’t have the same. Why 

Jason Hsieh: exactly? Yeah. 

Paul Sheppard: There it’s a paycheck. This is, something that you have a why for, and if you have that, why just keep going, you know.

Jason Hsieh: For sure. So where can the audience find [00:32:00] you? 

Paul Sheppard: So our website right now is the best spot. That’s a http://www.aquablocks.com. We’re also on instagram, Facebook, and Tik tok. Facebook is just that aqua blocks. Two words instas @official_aquablocks and tik tok is official_aquablocks. 

Jason Hsieh: Thank you again for being on as a guest and sharing. 

Paul Sheppard: Oh, thank you for having me. I hope we can do this again in a year from now. 

Jason Hsieh: Oh yeah. That’d be cool to have a follow up episode and the progress in the last

Paul Sheppard: exactly. Yeah.

Jason Hsieh: I’d love to do that too. For sure. A hundred percent.

Outro: You’ve been listening to Toy Business Unboxed, hosted by Jason Hsieh. Thank you for joining us and exploring the fascinating world of toys and the ingenuity behind them.

To stay updated with the latest episodes and continue your journey into the toy business, remember to subscribe and follow us. If you found today’s episode insightful, please leave a rating and review and share this podcast with others who [00:33:00] share your passion for toys. Until next time, stay curious and keep innovating.