Speaker 1: And I think it's important that when we go through
Speaker 1: struggles in life that you never know what doors are
Speaker 1: going to open after those struggles.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to She Pivots, the podcast where we talk
Speaker 2: with women who have dared to pivot out of one
Speaker 2: career and into something new and explore how their personal
Speaker 2: lives impacted these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman.
Speaker 2: Last year, I wrote a piece in Marie Cleric titled
Speaker 2: Let's make Sensitive the new Strong. It was inspired by
Speaker 2: my son, who was five but has the soul of
Speaker 2: an eighty year old man. He is quiet and empathetic
Speaker 2: and deeply sensitive. And I didn't see any representation in
Speaker 2: the media actually celebrating that. I only ever saw books
Speaker 2: and shows where the character overcame being sensitive. It's something
Speaker 2: I still feel like true. So when I heard about
Speaker 2: Laura's company, Snapology, I was immediately drawn to it. Her
Speaker 2: story stuck with me because she was inspired to create
Speaker 2: a company after her son had little interest in like
Speaker 2: the usual after school activities like football or soccer. Snapology
Speaker 2: is now a hugely successful program that focuses on steam education.
Speaker 2: What started off as a side hustle now has one
Speaker 2: hundred and seventy franchise locations across the United States. And
Speaker 2: although I love Laura's vision to create more after school
Speaker 2: options for kids, I have to be honest that Laura's
Speaker 2: interview was actually a complete and happy accident. We get
Speaker 2: a lot of pitches, especially from communications or PR people,
Speaker 2: into our inbox of founders. Basically, we get like a
Speaker 2: lot of pitches of founders, and when we're looking at
Speaker 2: how we put this season together, the most important piece
Speaker 2: for me is that we have diversity from every aspect,
Speaker 2: like from industry, from background. But the actual most important
Speaker 2: piece for me is that there is diversity in what
Speaker 2: I call like the intervening life event, like the personal
Speaker 2: reason that changed someone's perspective. So for that reason, when
Speaker 2: we get a lot of pitches of a lot of founders,
Speaker 2: sometimes it ends up feeling like we get pitched the
Speaker 2: same story over and over. So as I was looking
Speaker 2: through our inbox of pitches, I was actually trying to
Speaker 2: filter out the founders. When I said yes to Laura Coe,
Speaker 2: our guest today, I actually confused her with a different
Speaker 2: Laura that we had been pitched. So we booked it,
Speaker 2: we went through it. When I started looking at our prep,
Speaker 2: I thought, wait a second, I didn't realize that I
Speaker 2: had pitched another founder, and I wasn't sure we were
Speaker 2: going to end up airing this episode. I thought, you know,
Speaker 2: she seems nice, we'll do the interview. I wasn't sure
Speaker 2: we're going to end up airing it. But once we
Speaker 2: actually had the conversation, her perspective was so interesting and different,
Speaker 2: and in particular, what I loved that she came back
Speaker 2: to is that we often talk about how we're afraid
Speaker 2: of jumping into something new, and so staying the same
Speaker 2: is what's safe. But Laura actually really challenges that when
Speaker 2: staying the same was the least safe option for her
Speaker 2: and she was forced to try something new. So I'm
Speaker 2: excited to get into Laura.
Speaker 1: My name is Laura co and I am the brand president, CEO,
Speaker 1: and founder of Snapology.
Speaker 2: Did you always see yourself as starting a business, being
Speaker 2: an entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's interesting my parents owned a business.
Speaker 1: They started a business in my teenage years, so I
Speaker 1: think that's where I kind of started to maybe think
Speaker 1: that might be something I wanted to do. But I
Speaker 1: took a very traditional route, went to college, had a
Speaker 1: nice career, as an actuary. Always kind of in the
Speaker 1: back of my head, I think I wanted to do that,
Speaker 1: but I don't know, does anybody really know that's what
Speaker 1: they're going to do. Maybe they do, but for me,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was accidental or things just
Speaker 1: kind of fell into place.
Speaker 2: Being good at math and numbers took her down a
Speaker 2: mathematics path, studied accounting in college, and went on to
Speaker 2: become an actuary.
Speaker 1: In kind of, Once an actuary, always an actuary.
Speaker 2: And if you're wondering what an actuary does right now,
Speaker 2: so is I.
Speaker 1: Actuaries are basically mathematicians, statisticians. We have an expertise in
Speaker 1: data analysis, statistics, finance, and those types of things. So
Speaker 1: we're basically what we're doing is we're taking information that
Speaker 1: happened in the past, kind of taking a look at it,
Speaker 1: analyzing it, looking at what's going on in the present,
Speaker 1: and then projecting it to the future. So it's a
Speaker 1: lot of data, a lot of numbers, a lot of analysis.
Speaker 1: For me, it was really kind of cool because it
Speaker 1: wasn't just sort of looking in the rear view mirror.
Speaker 1: It was actually taking that information and projecting it forward.
Speaker 1: So I'm a healthcare actuary. So we are the loved
Speaker 1: people who set premium rates at health insurance companies. So
Speaker 1: when your premium rates are high, it's likely an actuary
Speaker 1: that set that amount. And my specific expertise is actually
Speaker 1: in prescription drugs, so looking at some of those high
Speaker 1: cost drugs that come out, looking at you know, rare
Speaker 1: diseases and things like that, and trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how much does the insurance company have to charge today
Speaker 1: to make sure that we can we can cover all
Speaker 1: of your expenses in the next year.
Speaker 2: Did you feel satisfied as a healthcare actuary.
Speaker 1: I did enjoy being an actuary, to be honest with you.
Speaker 1: I still dabble in it here and there, and so
Speaker 1: I will never kind of get rid of that curiosity
Speaker 1: piece and that intellectual stimulation that kind of comes along
Speaker 1: with being an actuary. I want that challenge. I want that,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of predicting the future, kind of looking ahead,
Speaker 1: and in everything I do, I'm always looking behind me,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what happened, what went well didn't,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what we can do in the
Speaker 1: future to make it better.
Speaker 2: Using her keen math skills, Laura decided to take a
Speaker 2: leap in her mid twenties and follow the path of
Speaker 2: her entrepreneurial family. She carefully calculated and decided to make
Speaker 2: her move an in home senior care franchise.
Speaker 1: When I did the research and saw that we had
Speaker 1: this huge population in Pittsburgh, I thought, well, I need
Speaker 1: to do something with seniors. So I didn't have a
Speaker 1: lot of capital at my fingertips, and I didn't have
Speaker 1: a whole lot of credit yet either, right, you know,
Speaker 1: just a typical twenty five twenty six year old at
Speaker 1: the time, And so I chose a business that had
Speaker 1: a low entry to get in and that I thought
Speaker 1: would do well, that I thought would would make money.
Speaker 1: It was completely against all of the advice that I
Speaker 1: give everybody now and even give my own children. To
Speaker 1: be honest with you, I don't necessarily have a passion
Speaker 1: for that business, which is another reason why it wasn't
Speaker 1: a great fit, because I didn't have that drive, that
Speaker 1: desire to get up in the middle of the I
Speaker 1: didn't I wasn't doing the business for the right reason.
Speaker 1: Do what you love right, Do something you're passionate about.
Speaker 1: If you do something you're passionate about, then you'll want
Speaker 1: to work at it, you'll do well. You know, all
Speaker 1: the things sort of come along with it when you
Speaker 1: do something that you love well.
Speaker 2: Building her first business, she worked full time as an actuary,
Speaker 2: a field that has been historically male dominated, especially at
Speaker 2: that time.
Speaker 1: When I first started as an actuary, back in the
Speaker 1: early nineties, the women actuaries, women mathematicians. We were kind
Speaker 1: of a rare breed. I grew up with a brother
Speaker 1: who was less than a year older than me. We were,
Speaker 1: you know, best friends, and you know, I always kind
Speaker 1: of hung out with the boys. I was honestly a
Speaker 1: little bit of a tomboy and myself, I was into
Speaker 1: sports and so being around guys, being around men boys,
Speaker 1: you know, never like I never even looked at it
Speaker 1: that way. I never really thought about it. And I
Speaker 1: was in a well respected profession. And I understand the
Speaker 1: plight of some women sort of being held back because
Speaker 1: they're a woman. I was very fortunate that early on
Speaker 1: in my career I never really experienced that. So I
Speaker 1: was the only woman a lot of times. But I
Speaker 1: don't feel like, at least in the profession I was in,
Speaker 1: that that really ever held me from being able to
Speaker 1: do the things that I want to do.
Speaker 2: What was that transition like to parenthood for you, Because
Speaker 2: one of the challenges of being in really male dominated
Speaker 2: fields is there's a less of an understanding about the
Speaker 2: physical toll that it can take, the amount of leave
Speaker 2: that you might actually need, and the fact that you
Speaker 2: can actually do both your job and parent. So what
Speaker 2: was that like for you?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that is a real phenomenon, right, There
Speaker 1: is a real and I honestly experienced that to some
Speaker 1: extent still today. In the beginning, I kind of hid
Speaker 1: some of that stuff from the people I worked with. Right,
Speaker 1: A lot of the men didn't have the same struggles.
Speaker 1: They weren't trying to, you know, make sure they were
Speaker 1: home at a certain time to get their kid off
Speaker 1: the bus, or they weren't. They weren't kind of experiencing
Speaker 1: the same struggles that I had. And so I made
Speaker 1: a lot of excuses when I was younger, and I
Speaker 1: had a lot of doctor's appointments for myself that really
Speaker 1: weren't for myself and those types of things. And it's
Speaker 1: not really that I was embarrassed about it. It was
Speaker 1: just that I didn't really feel like explaining it. I
Speaker 1: didn't become a parent until I was in my early thirties,
Speaker 1: So I had a good ten years of the working
Speaker 1: world before I had my first child, which I think
Speaker 1: was a benefit because I was able to kind of
Speaker 1: prove myself before I needed to have that flexible schedule.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean it's tough for working moms. It
Speaker 1: really is. You know. I was talking with somebody about
Speaker 1: it the other day and kind of thinking about, like,
Speaker 1: I think it's really hard for people who either don't
Speaker 1: have children or aren't the primary caregiver to the children
Speaker 1: to understand it. I mean, I'm basically working at least
Speaker 1: two full time jobs every day, right, I've got my
Speaker 1: job at Snapology, but then you go home and you've
Speaker 1: got another whole full time job. Right, it's making time
Speaker 1: in your data. And I think I've done a load
Speaker 1: of laundry every day for twenty years now, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's how do you fit that in? It's like mixed
Speaker 1: in with pouring a cup of coffee. I'm switching a
Speaker 1: load of laundry and doing different things, and so it
Speaker 1: is a struggle, but I think that it's a great struggle.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't trade motherhood for anything in this world, and
Speaker 1: so you find a way to balance it, you find
Speaker 1: a way to make it work, because the reality is,
Speaker 1: I'm not working a shorter day. I'm just working a
Speaker 1: very different day, right I mean, I'd get up, get
Speaker 1: my kids to school, then i'd work a regular day.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'd even be doing emails before i even woke
Speaker 1: my kids up for school. Right then I'm waking my
Speaker 1: kids up, getting them ready, then I'm getting back to work.
Speaker 1: Then I'm getting them taking a little break to get
Speaker 1: them off the bus and get them a snack, and
Speaker 1: then I'm going back to work again, right where everybody
Speaker 1: else is probably done at that point. I'm still working
Speaker 1: like these different shifts and juggling when I'm working and
Speaker 1: when I'm doing stuff for the kids, and then I
Speaker 1: put them to bed, and then I'm going to be
Speaker 1: going back and checking my email again and doing stuff.
Speaker 1: So it's a different lifestyle. I think that I didn't
Speaker 1: really explain to people before at hand, but i think
Speaker 1: people get it a little bit more now. But I'm
Speaker 1: not afraid to say it because I've proven myself. They
Speaker 1: know I'm working hard, but I'm not working the same
Speaker 1: schedule that a lot of the men that are working
Speaker 1: side by side with me are and that's okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I find that pre wake up that time is
Speaker 2: actually my most productive in many ways, like the clutter
Speaker 2: of the day hasn't gotten to me. That's when I
Speaker 2: find I can actually be more productive most of the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure that we're the poster children for wellness,
Speaker 1: but I think we're definitely not in and alone. I
Speaker 1: do envy. I've got a couple of coworkers that I
Speaker 1: really respect that they get up and they walk right,
Speaker 1: they clear their head and they walk and they start
Speaker 1: their day. And I think to myself, man that I
Speaker 1: would love to be able to do that, but I
Speaker 1: just it's just not going to happen. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean what works works and I've been successful with it.
Speaker 1: I probably need a little more of those wellness have its,
Speaker 1: But I don't know old dog new tricks. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure it's in the cards for me.
Speaker 2: May Yeah, maybe we're not going to work it in
Speaker 2: just yet. But I love this point that you made
Speaker 2: about how you had proven yourself in your career and
Speaker 2: then you were able to take whether it was flexibility
Speaker 2: or some chances. I really felt like I didn't start
Speaker 2: having kids until even later until my mid thirties, and
Speaker 2: I felt like I had earned it, and I felt
Speaker 2: like I still was able to get the respect of
Speaker 2: my colleagues even if I was showing up to the
Speaker 2: office at different hours or in a different way, because
Speaker 2: they knew what I was capable of and I had
Speaker 2: banked all that time before me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's absolutely true, right. That's what gives
Speaker 1: you the confidence to be able to have a flexible
Speaker 1: schedule is you're not worried. But even when you leave
Speaker 1: to do something, you feel almost guilty, right because you're
Speaker 1: leaving everybody behind and they're working so hard, and you're
Speaker 1: leaving to do something, and you're wondering, Okay, do they understand?
Speaker 1: You know, are they going to think less of me
Speaker 1: because I'm leaving to do this kind of thing. I
Speaker 1: feel bad for young mothers, right because they maybe haven't
Speaker 1: banked that time, but they're yet still so productive. I'm
Speaker 1: hopeful that society is changing a little bit, that we
Speaker 1: maybe understand that a little bit more. So.
Speaker 2: You working as an actuary, had two kids sounds like
Speaker 2: pretty close together.
Speaker 1: I did. Yeah, my boys are seventeen months apart, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't really until after I had the children I
Speaker 1: was married, had children that I had sold that other business,
Speaker 1: realized that it just wasn't a good fit for my lifestyle.
Speaker 1: I just didn't have the support that I needed to
Speaker 1: be able to do that type of business. And then
Speaker 1: in my early thirties, actually bought a different franchise that
Speaker 1: my husband at the then time that he ran, and
Speaker 1: really watching him kind of start this business and kind
Speaker 1: of help him from the side made me realize, I
Speaker 1: really want a business of my own. I really want
Speaker 1: to do this on my own, do it full time.
Speaker 1: So at this point I had sold the first franchise,
Speaker 1: the Senior Citizen franchise I'd sold that. My husband was
Speaker 1: running the cleaning business and doing his thing. I helped
Speaker 1: him on the back end with pricing and financials and
Speaker 1: some of the more technical things and a little behind
Speaker 1: the scenes. At the time, my husband and I were
Speaker 1: going through a divorce, so I was kind of itching
Speaker 1: to do my own thing.
Speaker 2: With the divorce and being a new mom of two
Speaker 2: kids under five, she needed to adjust.
Speaker 1: I needed more flexibility in my life. I wanted to
Speaker 1: be there for my kids right I wanted to be
Speaker 1: able to take them to activities my youngest was starting kindergarten,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to be able to go to the
Speaker 1: book fair, and I wanted to be able to do
Speaker 1: some of those daytime things that moms do. Also kind
Speaker 1: of needed to have a job that didn't require me
Speaker 1: to travel. You want to find a motivated woman, Tell
Speaker 1: her she might lose custody of her kids if she
Speaker 1: doesn't change what she's doing in terms of travel, in
Speaker 1: terms of her job, and so as I was sort
Speaker 1: of all of that stuff happening at once, I needed
Speaker 1: more flexibility. I needed not to be traveling. I needed
Speaker 1: to kind of change my job, my role. I needed
Speaker 1: to support these kids, now going through a divorce. Now
Speaker 1: I was going to be a single mom. I needed
Speaker 1: to be able to financially support these kids. How was
Speaker 1: I going to do all that? That's really how Snapology
Speaker 1: was born.
Speaker 3: Kids, it's not just about building towers these days, thought Legos.
Speaker 3: You can build some truly amazing things. So now your
Speaker 3: kids can to learn how with the help of Snapology.
Speaker 3: That's a traveling program that uses legos to teach science
Speaker 3: and technology and engineering and arts and math.
Speaker 4: Us.
Speaker 2: But beyond the flexibility that she found in the work,
Speaker 2: Laura finally found something that she was passionate about and
Speaker 2: that was personal to her.
Speaker 1: My older son, Sebastian is just a really really neat kid,
Speaker 1: but just not interested in traditional activities for boys. He
Speaker 1: just wasn't interested in sports, and I was having trouble
Speaker 1: finding something that was kind of in his wheelhouse. Both
Speaker 1: of my boys very academically inclined, and I needed something
Speaker 1: to get them socialized. So I realized that the thing
Speaker 1: that was going to bring me that flexibility was owning
Speaker 1: my own business, and the thing that was going to
Speaker 1: give my kids what they needed was owning a business
Speaker 1: that was for my kids, right. So took the idea
Speaker 1: of the Lego bricks and doing different things with legos,
Speaker 1: did a ton of research on what was going on
Speaker 1: around the country and found Lego Robotics. That was really
Speaker 1: what what made me start it, and I went to
Speaker 1: my sister, she lived four doors down. I walked down
Speaker 1: the street and said, hey, you know, I really want
Speaker 1: to do this. I need to do this for my kids.
Speaker 1: What do you think about this Lego idea. We could
Speaker 1: do birthday parties, we could have robotics, we could have
Speaker 1: summer camps and stuff, you know. Would you want to
Speaker 1: do it with me? And she was all in. She
Speaker 1: didn't have kids at the time. She does now, but
Speaker 1: she didn't have kids at the time, and she was like,
Speaker 1: that's great.
Speaker 2: Did it feel very risky or it felt natural?
Speaker 1: It was risky for sure, and it felt risky. I'm
Speaker 1: very blessed to have. I mean, first off, my career
Speaker 1: as an actuary is fairly lucrative, right, so I'd saved
Speaker 1: a little bit of money. I had a little bit
Speaker 1: of comfort and a little bit of a buffer there.
Speaker 1: I went to my sister, to be honest with you,
Speaker 1: because I needed that support. And not only that emotional support. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm moving into, you know, single motherhood. I'm investing a
Speaker 1: lot of my own money. To have her support on
Speaker 1: the back end, both emotionally and financially, gave me that
Speaker 1: little bit of extra comfort, right. But it was a risk.
Speaker 1: It was a pretty big risk. I put it all
Speaker 1: on the line, and you take all of your four
Speaker 1: oh one k or you take all of your investments,
Speaker 1: and you go all in with it. I think sometimes
Speaker 1: the greater risk in what you're doing is by not
Speaker 1: doing it. What happens if you don't do it? Didn't
Speaker 1: have to choose being an entrepreneur. Didn't have to choose
Speaker 1: setting out my own business. I had to stop traveling.
Speaker 1: I was going to lose custody of my kids, or
Speaker 1: there was at least a fear that I was going
Speaker 1: to lose custody of my kids if I didn't change
Speaker 1: what I was doing. So I had to change something,
Speaker 1: and the fear of that if I didn't change anything
Speaker 1: was not a scenario that I even would ever want
Speaker 1: to consider, and so the fear of not doing it, honestly,
Speaker 1: was a huge driver in what I did, and still
Speaker 1: to this day, I make a lot of decisions out
Speaker 1: of what happens if I don't do this. I think
Speaker 1: it's something that's overlooked a lot sometimes is everybody's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you took this big, you did this, you did all
Speaker 1: these things, which yeah, was a huge risk, but the
Speaker 1: risk of not doing it in some cases is actually
Speaker 1: greater than the risk of actually doing it.
Speaker 2: Another piece that you jumped into was moving into a
Speaker 2: business and financial relationship with your sister, which I think
Speaker 2: is also a risk. How did that play out for you?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's funny. We still laugh about it
Speaker 1: to this day when we first started the business. The
Speaker 1: huge story for Snapology was that two sisters and I'm
Speaker 1: going to obviously exaggerate this could actually like each other
Speaker 1: enough to go into business together. I mean it's not
Speaker 1: the way it was pitched, but two women going into
Speaker 1: business together. I think the story that were women obviously
Speaker 1: is important, right because we're women in stem field. My
Speaker 1: sister's a pharmacist, so she has very much a science background,
Speaker 1: And for us, it wasn't hard. We're a very close family.
Speaker 1: My brother and my sister are my best friends. My
Speaker 1: brother was actually involved in the business as well for
Speaker 1: a long period of time, and I loved every day
Speaker 1: being able to work with my brother and my sister.
Speaker 1: But the reason that works, and I think this happens
Speaker 1: too with unrelated partners, is you have to stay in
Speaker 1: your lane. So my sister, Lisa and I we knew
Speaker 1: our lanes, right. We're very very different people, which is
Speaker 1: why I think we're able to get along so well.
Speaker 1: I'm the finance, I'm operations, you know, kind of boots
Speaker 1: on the ground getting stuff done. She's more of sort
Speaker 1: of the strategy and marketing and sales, and she's our
Speaker 1: safety officer. So what's important to me, was never important
Speaker 1: to her in it, and so she would yield. And
Speaker 1: when we would get to an area where I knew
Speaker 1: Lisa was more educated, or more experienced, or more passionate about,
Speaker 1: I would yield to her decision. But yeah, Lisa and
Speaker 1: I have never had any problems working together. But I've
Speaker 1: heard a lot of horror stories about families working together,
Speaker 1: and I'm just thankful that that's never happened to us.
Speaker 2: So how did you start? What was the first Stepology?
Speaker 1: So the first Stepology was in Pittsburgh, and so the
Speaker 1: very first event was a summer camp. It was kind
Speaker 1: of like a friends and family thing. So my good
Speaker 1: friend growing up, my best friend in high school, was
Speaker 1: actually a school teacher. So I called her up and said, Hey, Nindy,
Speaker 1: will you write a some curriculum, Like, here's what we're
Speaker 1: trying to do. We're going to use lego bricks. We
Speaker 1: want to teach a little bit of engineering. We want
Speaker 1: to use the lego bricks for this and that. Can
Speaker 1: you write us up something? And so we started with
Speaker 1: two programs that she wrote, started with just a group
Speaker 1: of friends, and it expanded really quick. It clearly wasn't
Speaker 1: the only mother who was looking for this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, we had probably that first summer, we probably
Speaker 1: had forty sixty kids come through a couple of different camps,
Speaker 1: just really piloting it and testing it.
Speaker 2: They wrapped their pilot program in August and just a
Speaker 2: month later opened up publicly in September, just in time
Speaker 2: for an after school program.
Speaker 1: So we moved quick. We knew we were onto something.
Speaker 1: Our first legit program where we went out to the
Speaker 1: public was in a recreation center that was phenomenal as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, we opened up enrollment, we were waitlisted within hours,
Speaker 1: So our first legit program was actually in a local
Speaker 1: rec center here in Pittsburgh. We move fast, I mean,
Speaker 1: and we still do. With stepology. I think that's the
Speaker 1: secret to a lot of business's success is that being
Speaker 1: able to build the plane as it's in the air, right,
Speaker 1: or build the plane as it's flying. It's you don't
Speaker 1: have to button it up. You just have that idea
Speaker 1: and go for it and then fine tune it as
Speaker 1: you go along. But if you're waiting for it to
Speaker 1: be perfect, if I waited for that curriculum to be perfect,
Speaker 1: if I waited for the marketing to be perfect, or
Speaker 1: to have that a location that was maybe a little safer.
Speaker 1: If I had waited for all of those things, right,
Speaker 1: I might get passed up by somebody, or it might
Speaker 1: cost too much money, or you just sometimes I think,
Speaker 1: just have to kind of bite the bullet and just
Speaker 1: go for it.
Speaker 2: With the experience of building two other franchise systems, one
Speaker 2: in her twenties and one with her husband, it would
Speaker 2: be natural to assume that Laura created Snapology as a
Speaker 2: franchise from the start.
Speaker 1: We actually didn't decide on franchising initially. So I had
Speaker 1: mentioned that my parents opened up a business when I
Speaker 1: was a teenager. That business was actually under a licensing concept.
Speaker 1: So licensing is what I knew, and so when Lisa
Speaker 1: and I first kind of started it, we thought, well,
Speaker 1: we'll just license the curriculum, we'll license the name, and
Speaker 1: we'll approach it that way. And so for two years,
Speaker 1: so basically we opened the business we started, and then
Speaker 1: we'd always kind of had dreams of multiple locations or
Speaker 1: dreams of expanding it, and never quite where we ended up.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was beyond our wildest dreams, where we've
Speaker 1: kind of ended up with this, and you just kind
Speaker 1: of take it and just keep running with it. But
Speaker 1: we started to have people we actually took the idea
Speaker 1: we were in the rec center. We actually got a
Speaker 1: physical space, so we got what we call a discovery center.
Speaker 1: Is very small, it's about nineteen hundred square feet. People
Speaker 1: started coming to us from out of town, and we
Speaker 1: started to have people saying, Hey, this is cool. Can
Speaker 1: we take it back to Texas or wherever they were at?
Speaker 1: And so we were like, okay, yeah, So we started
Speaker 1: cataloging everything we were doing to try this licensing model,
Speaker 1: and we grew for two years. Under the licensing model,
Speaker 1: we grew to maybe about a dozen locations, so, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, so we're five years in business. Then we
Speaker 1: moved to a franchise. I got smart, I got educated.
Speaker 1: Actually met a franchise attorney who really kind of explained
Speaker 1: to me. He's like, I don't understand why you're not.
Speaker 1: Franchising is a great concept. You know, you have access
Speaker 1: to all these different tools and resources and people and network.
Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, I don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: Seems complicated. But he stuck with us, and he convinced
Speaker 1: Lisa and I took him about three months of convincing
Speaker 1: us to move to a franchise system. It's the best
Speaker 1: decision we ever made, and it just opened up so
Speaker 1: many doors.
Speaker 2: They're wondering exactly what a franchise is. It's when they
Speaker 2: are individual owners of each location who pay a fee
Speaker 2: to the parent company to use the business model, trademarks,
Speaker 2: and proprietary knowledge. Think McDonald's or Subway.
Speaker 1: They call the franchising model like a three legged stool.
Speaker 1: My understanding of the difference is, are you dictating what
Speaker 1: somebody's doing on a day to day basis? Right? Are
Speaker 1: they following like a very specific system. Are you dictating
Speaker 1: how they do things? When they do things? And it
Speaker 1: was kind of a gray area for a stapology. Like
Speaker 1: in the beginning, we're like, eh, here's the curriculum, here's
Speaker 1: our name, just go out and have fun. And it
Speaker 1: was very loosey goosey. It was very much a licensing
Speaker 1: type thing. But then as we started to go through
Speaker 1: time and we started to realize, you know what, not
Speaker 1: everybody knows how to do this on their own. Like
Speaker 1: we were having some people who were struggling and we're like, no,
Speaker 1: this is the way you should approach schools. This is
Speaker 1: how you do things. We want you to teach the
Speaker 1: curriculum in a certain way. We've designed it to have
Speaker 1: these like elements in it. You can't just give up one.
Speaker 2: So you started a growing and successful business based on
Speaker 2: in person meetings right when COVID hit, What was that impact?
Speaker 1: Yeah? That was interesting, right, because what we're doing with
Speaker 1: stapology is stem or steam education, and the whole idea
Speaker 1: of it is children are in person, interacting side by side,
Speaker 1: and they're learning those social skills. Right. I mean we've
Speaker 1: been teaching those academic elements for years, right, the engineering,
Speaker 1: the science, those are just academic elements. What makes it
Speaker 1: true stem and steam learning And what's really I think
Speaker 1: sometimes sets apart stapology is that social emotional learning part
Speaker 1: of it. That those social skills, those soft skills, those teamwork, collaboration,
Speaker 1: problem solving and so to have kids working side by
Speaker 1: side is the crux of our model. And so when
Speaker 1: schools started closing, when the world kind of started to
Speaker 1: shut down, we were like, oh, no freaking you stay
Speaker 1: at home.
Speaker 2: That is the order to night from four state governors.
Speaker 2: As the coronavirus pandemic spreads new you talk about the
Speaker 2: coronavirus crisis is changing so fast that these maps can't
Speaker 2: keep up. The Great Shutdown of twenty twenty is underway.
Speaker 2: Positive cases and resulting classroom closures in quarantines have spiked
Speaker 2: in public schools, has.
Speaker 4: Younger kids and younger kids. Has caused one summer camp
Speaker 4: company to close all its camps for the next two
Speaker 4: weeks starting Monday. Kay, when you Lucy Cale shows us
Speaker 4: how one summer camp had its last day for a while.
Speaker 1: That was everything that we were was was the in
Speaker 1: person learning. But again, I've got a great team that
Speaker 1: works with me at Snapology, and we all kind of
Speaker 1: pulled together. Our curriculum director at the time took sixty
Speaker 1: hours of our curriculum and said, okay, we can do
Speaker 1: these online. And what we can do online. What's happening
Speaker 1: to children now? And if you remember in the beginning,
Speaker 1: it was tough on kids. Right. They literally one day
Speaker 1: were in school playing with all of their friends, and
Speaker 1: the next day they were locked at home with their parents. Right.
Speaker 1: I mean, good for them if they had siblings to
Speaker 1: play with, but if they were an only child, they
Speaker 1: were locked at home with adults and there was no
Speaker 1: way for them to see or talk to their friends,
Speaker 1: and it was hard. It was hard on the kids,
Speaker 1: it was hard on the adults. And so my curriculum
Speaker 1: director really pretty quickly, and also our operations director has
Speaker 1: a behavioral health background, we pretty quickly learned that what
Speaker 1: the kids were going to be lacking was that social element.
Speaker 1: So if we could get them online interacting with each other,
Speaker 1: even just seeing each other was a big deal in
Speaker 1: the beginning, but if we could get them online interacting
Speaker 1: with each other, then we could at least be doing
Speaker 1: the core elements of what snapology is meant to do.
Speaker 1: And that's the kids are having fun, they're getting a
Speaker 1: social component to it, and they're getting some academics in it. Right,
Speaker 1: So we still use lego bricks, We did some really
Speaker 1: cool online digital escape games to help them kind of
Speaker 1: use their brains, and so we had all of the elements.
Speaker 1: We just focused much more heavily on that social component
Speaker 1: and it was it was amazing for kids. I mean,
Speaker 1: just even the first time they were able to get online.
Speaker 1: Probably I think we had the sixty programs done before
Speaker 1: the first school even closed, and our online program started
Speaker 1: like March fourteenth, so just probably a week after they
Speaker 1: were kind of or a week or two after they
Speaker 1: were at home, and so they were able to just
Speaker 1: their eyes lighting up when they got to see their
Speaker 1: buddies online. Was just amazing.
Speaker 2: What do your sons think about this, that they were
Speaker 2: the inspiration for it, that your business has built as
Speaker 2: big as it has.
Speaker 1: My oldest now, Sebastian, that I started the business really for.
Speaker 1: He's a sophomore in college, and he's kind of getting
Speaker 1: to the point where he's old enough to understand that
Speaker 1: he was a little challenging as a child, and that
Speaker 1: you know, he understands snapology and why we did what
Speaker 1: we did, and he understands the benefits and the things
Speaker 1: that it brought to him. So I don't think they
Speaker 1: understood so much when they were younger. I think they
Speaker 1: just kind of got drug everywhere with me, and they
Speaker 1: enjoyed playing with legos and doing different things. But now
Speaker 1: that they're a little bit older, I think they get
Speaker 1: the business aspects of it, and they understand it and
Speaker 1: the motivation. And now he's in school for entrepreneurship. He
Speaker 1: wants to own his own business, right, so he sees
Speaker 1: the benefits of it and really has learned a lot
Speaker 1: from it. It's been neat to watch my kids kind
Speaker 1: of go through it and see what they pick up,
Speaker 1: not only just in kind of my career and kind
Speaker 1: of what's going on, but even just from being in
Speaker 1: the snapology program. So it's been a really fun experience
Speaker 1: to watch them learn and grow through it.
Speaker 2: You know, that is something that I think about a
Speaker 2: fair amount. My son, my oldest, he's six now. Last
Speaker 2: year I wrote an article in Marie Claire called Let's
Speaker 2: make Sensitive the New Strong because my son is incredibly
Speaker 2: sensitive and I didn't feel like I had good parenting
Speaker 2: tools to help him see his sensitivity as a positive
Speaker 2: and not as something he had to overcome, Like I
Speaker 2: felt like all the picture books about kids and sensitivity
Speaker 2: were about how to overcome the sensitivity. But really I
Speaker 2: want him to be proud of the fact that he
Speaker 2: is sensitive and the flip side empathetic. I wrote the
Speaker 2: article because I felt like there must be other people
Speaker 2: struggling with this too, and it ended up becoming an
Speaker 2: incredibly well performing article, So either it did resonate or
Speaker 2: they or people were reading it, you know, for interest factor.
Speaker 2: But I think about that, you know, how much do
Speaker 2: I put out there about him? He gets so embarrassed
Speaker 2: about extra attention, Like when I drop him off at
Speaker 2: school in the morning, he makes me turn the music
Speaker 2: down so that the teachers can't hear what music we're
Speaker 2: listening to because he gets so embarrassed. He's going to
Speaker 2: probably hate this interview one day once he can hear it.
Speaker 2: You know, how much do I put out there? So
Speaker 2: how do you balance that?
Speaker 1: You're right? I mean, kids that are sensitive are exactly
Speaker 1: the kids that we're talking about with your son and
Speaker 1: my son, and they need to understand that that isn't
Speaker 1: a weakness necessarily. And as we're going out and we're
Speaker 1: talking about it, I think Sebastian in someday you're son too.
Speaker 1: I mean, Sebastian understands that I did this business for
Speaker 1: him to help him to celebrate his strengths. Right, he
Speaker 1: wasn't good at football, you know, or he wasn't the
Speaker 1: star baseball player. You know. He had fun dabbling in
Speaker 1: those things, but just wasn't his thing, right, What his
Speaker 1: thing was was he's a good friend. He's a really
Speaker 1: good friend. He's really smart, really engineering in klined, academically gifted,
Speaker 1: he's got a great sense of humor. Those are the
Speaker 1: things that I want to celebrate with him, and I
Speaker 1: want him to know that the reason that I'm talking
Speaker 1: about this stuff, the reason that I started snapology, was
Speaker 1: so that more kids like him that don't fit in
Speaker 1: where people think they should fit in, that we can
Speaker 1: celebrate their differences.
Speaker 2: But he does have that anxiety, and figuring out how
Speaker 2: to parent him when he is actually so different from
Speaker 2: me has been I think one of the most formative
Speaker 2: challenges of this point in my life.
Speaker 1: One of the things that we really talk about with kids,
Speaker 1: and one of the reasons why we set up our
Speaker 1: stapology programs the way we do is because we want
Speaker 1: kids to fail. We want them to learn, learn to fail,
Speaker 1: fail gracefully, fail forward right, learn from your mistakes. We
Speaker 1: want it to be okay, because it's not really failing,
Speaker 1: it's just trying, right. I mean, when he reads a
Speaker 1: word wrong on a page, he's not failing. He tried
Speaker 1: it and it didn't go so well, So okay, try
Speaker 1: it a different way. Maybe maybe that'll be the way
Speaker 1: that everybody else reads that word right. So everybody makes mistakes,
Speaker 1: everybody fails, or whatever word you want to use for it.
Speaker 1: But that's just a part of life.
Speaker 2: Something that we ask all of our guests that I'm
Speaker 2: really curious to hear what your answer is to this,
Speaker 2: That what is something that at the time you thought
Speaker 2: was a negative and now in retrospect do you see
Speaker 2: that it really was a positive and your.
Speaker 1: Trajectory gosh, I mean, probably the biggest challenges we had
Speaker 1: was it kind of goes back to the legal group
Speaker 1: and how I met the lawyer. I was using a
Speaker 1: full service firm here in Pittsburgh, and I was using
Speaker 1: them for all kinds of legal work for the business,
Speaker 1: for person and all, and I had a situation where
Speaker 1: I had to stop using them, and it was devastating
Speaker 1: because we had all of our contracts with them, we
Speaker 1: had everything with them. It was going to cost us
Speaker 1: a ton of money to move over to a new firm,
Speaker 1: and it was pretty abrupt and quite frankly, there were
Speaker 1: some things going on in my personal life that were
Speaker 1: really kind of challenging at the time, and it was tough.
Speaker 1: But changing legal firms was the best thing that ever
Speaker 1: happened to me. It introduced me to franchising. It took
Speaker 1: Snapology to new heights, and where we ended up with it,
Speaker 1: we would have never been where we are today if
Speaker 1: that misfortune with the other legal group hadn't happened, And
Speaker 1: I would say that, you know, most people who have
Speaker 1: experienced success, that success is kind of paved with those situations, right,
Speaker 1: A struggle that moved you in a different direction. COVID actually,
Speaker 1: in some ways was actually good for us. It gave
Speaker 1: us a chance to really demonstrate how important socially Snapology
Speaker 1: programs are to the public. COVID really heightened that social
Speaker 1: component of it. And I think it's important that when
Speaker 1: we go through struggles in life that you never know
Speaker 1: what doors are going to open after those struggles. And
Speaker 1: that's what entrepreneurship is about, as my grandma always said,
Speaker 1: the taking lemons and making lemonade.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Laura, it's great to have you on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, thank you.
Speaker 2: Last year, Snapology sold to Unleashed Brands, another pivot for
Speaker 2: Laura as she continued to work on Snapology. The company
Speaker 2: continues to grow and was the number one ranked Children's
Speaker 2: and Richmond franchise in entrepreneurs Franchise five hundred for the
Speaker 2: past two consecutive years. Laura remains passionate about educating and
Speaker 2: socializing our future generations. Although her two boys are a
Speaker 2: bit older now, she is still proud of what Snapology
Speaker 2: has accomplished and how it's impacted their lives. For more
Speaker 2: about Laura and Snapology, you can visit them at snapology
Speaker 2: dot com. Thank you for listening to this episode of
Speaker 2: she Pivots, where I talk with women about how their
Speaker 2: experiences and significant personal events led to their pivot and
Speaker 2: eventually their success. To learn more about our guests, follow
Speaker 2: us on Instagram at she pivots the podcast. Leave a
Speaker 2: rating and comment if you enjoyed this episode to help
Speaker 2: others learn about it. A special thank you to our
Speaker 2: partner Marie Clair and the team that made this episode possible.
Speaker 2: Talk to you next week. She Pivots is hosted by
Speaker 2: me Emily Tish Sussman, produced by Emily eda Veloshik, with
Speaker 2: sound editing and mixing from Nina Pollock, and research and
Speaker 2: planning from Christine Dickinson and Hannah Cousins.
Speaker 1: I endorse she Pivots