Aaron Muderick and Cheyanne Huke

[00:04] CHEYANNE HUKE: My name is Cheyenne hugh. I am 38 years old. Today's date is February 22, 2020 and we are here in New York City and I'm interviewing my boss, coworker Aaron Muterich with Crazy Aaron's Putty World.

[00:21] AARON MUDERICK: Thank you. I am Aaron Muterich. I'm 43 years old. It is February 22, 2020 here in New York City at the Toy Fair and I am sitting here with Cheyenne who has been my co worker for 10 years.

[00:36] CHEYANNE HUKE: Yes. Which I. This day is a very important day for me because we're here at the New York Toy Fair where I had my very first day with crazy errands.

[00:48] AARON MUDERICK: It was your first day on the job.

[00:49] CHEYANNE HUKE: First day on the job. Never even been to the office for an interview and came right here to New York Toy Fair.

[00:55] AARON MUDERICK: And you had never worked in toys before?

[00:57] CHEYANNE HUKE: Never worked in toy. Never worked in toy. I remember interviewing with you and we are very different people with very different upbringings.

[01:06] AARON MUDERICK: Yes.

[01:07] CHEYANNE HUKE: And I was interviewing with you and you were showing me this putty and getting my feedback and it was so interesting and so different. And I wasn't sure how the interview was going because again, we're very different and you talk a little bit more scientific than I do. And so as the interview was going on, I was like, this is not going well. This one. Really, I'm not getting this job. And then at the very end you said, well, I think this went great. And I was like, oh, okay, great. And then here we are 10 years later with significant growth and quite a road.

[01:46] AARON MUDERICK: It's been a real journey. Ten years ago it was a much smaller company. It was still like a small family business. We didn't really know what we were doing or where we were going. And now we're sort of a mid sized company in the toy industry. And Crazy Aaron still me guys still come up with all kinds of crazy things for kids to play with.

[02:07] CHEYANNE HUKE: Yes, you do. I would love to know more. I mean we do work very closely together. Sometimes I don't ask you these questions that I should know, but you came here, how did you even get to Toy Fair?

[02:21] AARON MUDERICK: So that's good. I mean I had been making putty for probably 12 years at that point. And first it was just for fun and then it became a side hustle and then it became a business. But Toy Fair always seemed like this big thing where real companies go and I just never felt like that was us. Even when we were selling considerable volumes all around the world of just the stuff we had on our Website, you know, that we made. And then out of the blue, I got a phone call from this guy, Jeff Kennis, whose company was Enchanted Moments. And I was very suspicious because it sounded to me like some kind of figurine or model, like doll company. But he said, listen, I've seen your product. I think that it could be successful at the New York Toy Fair. And I have space in a booth for you, but you have to say yes right now because it's in two weeks. And I was thinking and thinking and then I just said yes. And he said, great, send me a check.

[03:25] CHEYANNE HUKE: That sounds about right.

[03:26] AARON MUDERICK: And so then we were in. And I spent the next few weeks up almost 24 hours a day cutting with an X Acto knife by hand to create retail packaging for a product that didn't have any because it was just always sold online. It was sold to people that knew what they were getting. And now it needed to have barcodes and packaging that could work on a store shelf. But we went and people were skeptical. They were skeptical at the idea that you could take sort of what had become dollar store putty in an egg and turn it into something that had a lot more value. But once they saw it, once they touched it, once they felt it, they believed.

[04:06] CHEYANNE HUKE: Absolutely. And there's more of a story to it beyond just putty. It's not something that, you know, why don't you share how you packaged the putty and how that's all started? How did you even get involved in putty and the background of how it's packaged?

[04:24] AARON MUDERICK: Sure. So in 2003, my wife Elizabeth was pregnant with our first child. But we also, our business was really growing. We actually in the United Kingdom had a customer who basically would buy anything. We could sell them as long as we could make it. And we just spent nights and weekends. I had just then quit my job, my full time job. So we were both full time doing this 16, 18 hours a day, packing up the putty, making the putty, and it was just overwhelming. We hired a couple neighborhood kids and I just reached that point where it's like, it's not worth it. Like, I haven't slept in days. I just don't want to do this anymore. And then coincidentally, a neighbor said, oh, you know, my sister is intellectually disabled and she works at this facility and they help companies make stuff with their workforce and they would be interested in talking to you. And in high school, I had worked at a dog tag factory, like where they would sell, you would get a slip of paper it said, Muffy, you know, 501 Homewood Avenue. And you would punch it onto a metal tag and you would send it in the mail back to the person. Before those automated machines were built at the pet stores, and there were a lot of people that worked there. It was a very successful business. I was in high school. I was sort of passing through, but I noticed. I remembered in that moment when she suggested her sister and her sister's work center that there were some individuals with disabilities who worked at this pet tag factory, and they were the happiest employees there. And I wanted to make putty. I wanted to be in my lab. I wanted to be doing design. I didn't want to sort of become a manager of people and have to sort of spend a lot of my time doing that. And so it seemed like a natural fit. And so we got in touch with them, and they said, great. Of course we'd love the work. We have to, you know, test it and try it and price it out for you. And I sent them a whole bunch of product. And in my naivete, I was like, great. I got. I can have this order shipped to the United Kingdom next week because I'm going to be getting it back from my new work center. And it came back, and it was completely, completely unusable. The labels were off center. If they were not upside down, the weights were wrong. There was debris in the product. But I was so jazzed about this being a way to do business that I went back to them and I walked them through how to do it, how I wanted it done. I mean, I didn't give them any specifications. I didn't know that that's how a real company might do those things. But we worked with them. I found myself sort of on site a lot, developing relationships with individuals, helping to organize it, get it to wait the way we wanted it. And then. Then it did work. And then it worked really well. It just needed that, like, upfront investment. And probably you became very close with.

[07:20] CHEYANNE HUKE: A lot of those individuals at some of these work centers. And remember, Mikey would call you every day to tell you what his blood press.

[07:28] AARON MUDERICK: He would. His blood pressure and his blood sugar.

[07:30] CHEYANNE HUKE: Every day, his blood sugar, and tell.

[07:31] AARON MUDERICK: Me what he had for breakfast because he. Well, he had a sweet tooth, and he would get himself in trouble. So he wanted me to know that he did not eat a donut this morning. You know, that he had whatever yogurt or whatever he was supposed to have. Brian and Ralph, there was sort of a cadre of like, maybe Half a dozen who were really deeply involved for many years. And some of them still work on the product. And this is probably coming up on 16 years later.

[07:58] CHEYANNE HUKE: Yeah. I remember the one time when I used to have to manage. I was more involved in the work centers. And at that point, I really didn't know what I was doing whatsoever. None of us did. And I had asked one of the work centers to make, I think it might have been like, 54 boxes of one of our magnetic Putties. Way too many at that point. And we got the shipment back. Do you remember that? And the boxes came in, and I was like, oh, my God, we are never going to sell this many tins of putty. And now this. That's how much we sell in five minutes. And the growth and the story.

[08:35] AARON MUDERICK: That's when the warehouse was the pile next to your desk.

[08:37] CHEYANNE HUKE: Yeah, right.

[08:38] AARON MUDERICK: It's just next to your desk. And you'd pack up a couple boxes, and that was it for the day.

[08:43] CHEYANNE HUKE: Slowly get them out. Everybody was patient with us because they loved you. I mean, you were. You were always out. Always. Still always out. But I just always remember when Mikey would call you and we'd be waiting for you to come into a meeting or something, and it's like, oh, Aaron's on the phone with Mikey still. Or you were always going to these facilities. Just very involved.

[09:02] AARON MUDERICK: I very much enjoyed those relationships. Like I said, go back to the pet tags. People who want to do the job really can brighten your day. Right. You know, everybody wants to be there. And then we still do. Obviously, it's grown. There's a lot more people involved. It's harder to have, like, those close relationships when there's hundreds of people involved versus maybe just half a dozen. But. But I still think, you know, we have that connection. Or if it's not with me personally, it's with someone else at Crazy Aaron's who goes and visits and talks. And, of course, the Christmas parties. I get all the free cookies.

[09:35] CHEYANNE HUKE: Yeah, you're the celebrity.

[09:36] AARON MUDERICK: I love the cookies.

[09:37] CHEYANNE HUKE: It's great. So we in the office, we get mail sent to us regularly for you, and we started a binder. What does that make you feel like when you read some of these letters?

[09:49] AARON MUDERICK: The binder.

[09:50] CHEYANNE HUKE: Binder. The binder of goodies.

[09:51] AARON MUDERICK: Well, look, everybody likes getting mail. You get some great mail, and it's nice, you know, sometimes you'll get letters where. Clearly it was a class project to write to a company. And it's a great honor that that class decided that they wanted to Write to Crazy Aaron I think that kids are more willing to accept that Crazy Aaron is a real person than grownups. I think grownups sort of assume it's just this created in a marketing department or an ad art department. The kids, they think they believe and Crazy Aaron is real because he's me. So they send the letter and I'll write them back. I think they're often surprised to get a reply, enough that we often get another letter coming back saying, thank you for writing. So some of them are just, I am supposed to write to a business, so I chose to write. Those are nice. Then you get letters I say the most uplifting. Well, not most uplifting, but the ones that put the quick smile on my face is when the kids make their own art. So they might draw like, this is what I think Crazy Iron looks like when he's surfing. Or you should make this color because I went to the zoo and I saw this animal and it gave me an idea. And here's a picture of what the label should look like and they color it in and they draw, and that's adorable. The most touching letters are the ones where people really have hardship in their life. And for whatever reason, I think we're very lucky at Crazy Irons. I'm lucky that our product brings some comfort or joy or peace to those individuals. If it's kids with really, you know, severe terminal illnesses, I've had a couple of relationships over the years with kids where we're FaceTiming from the hospital bed and, you know, then you get that moment where you're not going to get a FaceTime anymore because they've passed on, but to give them that connection, you know, that's really special for a seven year old or an eight year old. Those are the letters that are meaningful. You know, the world's got a lot of problems if thinking putty, even as it seems like a trivial toy or a novelty, can help people, help make the world a little better, that makes it worth coming into work.

[11:58] CHEYANNE HUKE: I second that. I definitely second that. Why don't you tell us what to liven us up?

[12:09] AARON MUDERICK: Oh, we're going to liven this up.

[12:10] CHEYANNE HUKE: Tell me, what's the weirdest thing you found in your Facebook messenger other box?

[12:25] AARON MUDERICK: I don't really check my Facebook Messenger. My other box. Yeah, not bad. I don't know, someone must have prompted you with this question.

[12:36] CHEYANNE HUKE: There's a chance. There's a chance somebody prompted me with that one. How about, why don't you tell us a little bit about. Let's See, Is there a specific person, family, or customer that has really stuck out with you over the years?

[12:56] AARON MUDERICK: Sure. You know, we have. We tend to have super fans, right. Families that really buy all the product and which is sort of, you know, it's this pile of putty that they send in. They send pictures. They're so proud that they have it all. You have sometimes large families with lots of kids. I remember a family where they were homeschooled, and they took it as one of their homeschool projects to create the seven wonders of the toy world in putty. And they did it as a stop motion animation. And so they would use one putty and do a stop motion clip of the Slinky, and they would do another of Lincoln Logs and on and on and on. And of course, then at the very end, what was their favorite toy? The number one was the crazy Aaron's Putty itself. That video was adorable. And it just the creativity that this whole family, mother, father, four kids put into it. I mean, they must have spent weeks preparing this, learning how to do stop motion. I mean, these are children. These weren't professional videographers. That was really. That was special. And we emailed back and forth. They won a prize, you know, and we had a relationship. And of course, they didn't want money. They just wanted more putty. They wanted unreleased putty so that it would be fun and exciting for them. That was a good one.

[14:15] CHEYANNE HUKE: That is a good one. What do you hope that your toy future holds in your career? Where do you think you'll end up?

[14:22] AARON MUDERICK: Well, I think I'm excited after spending 22 years sort of really just focused on putty and always being able to pull some crazy new thing out of the hat. You know, if it was our liquid glass or the ghostwriters, where you draw on them and they change color with the light, that's great. But I have this whole long list of ideas that aren't putty. They're harder because I don't know exactly how to make them. I know a lot of people in this industry. They work with a lot of different factories. But the way we ended up organizing, maybe because I was a control freak or maybe I just like to get my hands dirty and be in the details, is we built our own factory, right? And we make everything ourselves. But I'd like to learn how to make other things, how to make different kinds of things, and then apply some of those ideas of just classic play. You know, a child from 800 years ago is not really different than A child today, a child anywhere on this earth is not different than a child in North America or a child in Europe or a child in Asia. They all have the same sense of wonder and discovery. And I think we can create products that really speak across those boundaries to bring. Bring them together, maybe give them some common experiences.

[15:34] CHEYANNE HUKE: Yeah, you do that. Wow. How do you keep. How do you keep your drive? I mean, you're always innovating, you're always in your lab. How do you keep yourself creative? You're always coming up with something new all the time.

[15:47] AARON MUDERICK: Everybody has their ups and downs. You know, in business especially, sometimes you get great news, close a great new customer, things are going well. Sometimes you get bad news, you deal with it. But there's a separate track of sort of ideas and creativity. I try to be mindful of what the demands are on my time because in my experience, the more demanding the time pressure is, the less creative you're going to be.

[16:14] CHEYANNE HUKE: Well, we always laugh because when we're at these trade shows, we always have to tell you, well, store owners will come in and say, Aaron can you come to my store? Absolutely, I'll be there. Why don't you just name it? And the next thing you know, you're booked for the next year and we're like, Aaron you don't have the time to do this. You would give away your company if you could. We have to scale you back sometimes, which makes us laugh.

[16:38] AARON MUDERICK: That's why I have a really great team, right? Because you guys protect me. You look out for me. I do like to go to the stores. I like to be there, like, doing that kind of carnival show demo, like standing in front of a table, the kids come in, there's a pitter patter. There's a bit of a game to it of getting their attention, getting them interested, and then. And then you just see that light bulb go off for them and they're like, I want this. That's very rewarding. It's fun. But, yeah, you're right. I mean, I would. I overbook myself because I get excited in the moment.

[17:10] CHEYANNE HUKE: You're generous.

[17:11] AARON MUDERICK: And I like to say yes. I like. You know, the more you say yes, the more opportunities will keep coming your way. Right. So I like to. I like to be on that fine edge of, like, crazed versus insane.

[17:22] CHEYANNE HUKE: Yeah, you do it well. So what was your favorite toy growing up?

[17:31] AARON MUDERICK: I loved construction toys. I had constructs, which is long discontinued, but I just loved the way those plastic parts click together. It was also an interesting toy because you could sort of disassemble it even beyond. Like, some of the parts were, like, multiple plastic pieces together, and you could take them apart. It didn't really work anymore when you took it apart, but I just enjoyed taking things apart. I enjoyed connecting toys. So, like, in weird ways. Like. So I was a garage sale kid. Every Saturday, we would get in the car, my extended family, in a big, you know, Cadillac or something, like an old Caddy that could seat, like, 10 people. And we would drive around to garage sales on Philadelphia's Main Line. And my grandfather called it the cream of the crap. And if it was a quarter or less, I could have anything I wanted. And I would reach into his pocket and he had change, and I would get the change, and then I would go and get the thing. So a lot of the toys I got would be, like, incomplete or, like, half opened. But I really loved, like, putting the pieces together. I loved electronics, wires, lights. And so I would. I would set things up. Like, I had a record player, and I would cue up a record, but I would connect this on switch of the record player to, like, a light sensor so that, like, some other toy, I had this color dripper that, like the. You know, the water drips down and the colors change. But when it had all fallen to the bottom, enough light would go through from the flashlight. They would turn on the light cell, and then the record player would start, and it would start moving other little cars and things around, like, to kind of create these scenes or, like, these almost like systems. I didn't really have sort of like a single brand of action figure or something. I always, like, kind of hacking it together. And I think. I think I made my brother crazy because he was different. He liked. You know, he liked he man or he liked Transformers. And I was taking apart the Transformer to take the arm and attach it to something else.

[19:28] CHEYANNE HUKE: You weren't following directions. That's how I came in.

[19:31] AARON MUDERICK: And you told me there were no directions at all. But I also. You know, it's funny. I had my experience where I would see a commercial for a toy and I would want it so bad. I mean, we all did, right? Commercials worked for toys, and I would get it. And it was just so different than what I had seen in the commercial that I was, like, deeply disappointed. I'd be crying, I'd be upset. You know, sort of dreams crushed. And then when I got into toys, I just. I always wanted to make sure that whatever they think they're getting is actually what they're getting. And that when they play with it, like, there's that honesty and trueness to it, that that's why they'll come back and get something else, because they know that you. You were honest with them. And if you promised them a dream, you deliver it. And you've seen, you know, even the existing products we've had for years how many sort of subtle, secret improvements we've done. Is it the feel? Is it the color? Is it the way it opens all these little things so that there's just this continuous improvement to make it as. As good as it could ever be?

[20:34] CHEYANNE HUKE: Yeah, that's good. Let's see here, my list of things that I want to get out of you today.

[20:46] AARON MUDERICK: Well, let me ask you a question.

[20:47] CHEYANNE HUKE: Oh, no.

[20:48] AARON MUDERICK: Your first day on the job was Toy Fair.

[20:50] CHEYANNE HUKE: Yes.

[20:51] AARON MUDERICK: You'd never worked in toys before. You are hired in a job where it was a crazy guy who you thought you had bombed the interview. You never told me that.

[21:02] CHEYANNE HUKE: No.

[21:03] AARON MUDERICK: I mean, what was going through your mind that first day?

[21:06] CHEYANNE HUKE: It was interesting. When I got here, I know I walked around the show, and I didn't know anything about this industry. And I remember seeing that Gund had a booth, and so I went in, and they were like, oh, do you have an appointment? I was like, no, but I have a Gund at my house. I just want to see what you guys have. And they're like, yeah, beat it. So I learned quickly that this is an actual industry. It's not just fun and games with toys.

[21:34] AARON MUDERICK: That's right. Children all want to come to Toy Fair.

[21:36] CHEYANNE HUKE: They want to come to Toy Fair. That's why kids are not allowed at Toy Fair.

[21:39] AARON MUDERICK: That's right.

[21:39] CHEYANNE HUKE: So, yeah, I quickly learned this was a real industry, and there was a lot to learn. Going back to the booth. I mean, I didn't know anything about putty at all. It was interesting. A lot of stores came to our booth and were asking what this was. When I learned so much from you, just from that day and how passionate you were about this product that it makes me. It made me excited. Despite my fears of not knowing how it was made, how was it packaged? I had no idea. I was like, I don't even know how much it costs. But, you know, I was thrown into the wolves, and it was the best thing for me because I came back to work the next couple days ready to go. So it's been a ride. I mean, you have been a great influence on me and very patient with me. From the beginning. Not having any experience, you kind of took a Chance based on an interview that I again thought was bombing and have really provided me space to grow on my own and real guidance. And I think that as a president of a very successful company today, you don't hear that often. And I really do appreciate you and I think you should be proud of what you've accomplished. And I'm not alone in that.

[23:04] AARON MUDERICK: Well, that's very nice of you to say.

[23:06] CHEYANNE HUKE: Yeah, but that was my first day here.

[23:11] AARON MUDERICK: Uh huh huh. You know, when I was a kid, I didn't understand that this was an industry.

[23:21] CHEYANNE HUKE: Like, I didn't either.

[23:22] AARON MUDERICK: Right. It's just product on a shelf. And I remember someone said, well, who's your biggest influence? And I think for a lot of people in this industry, you know, they started very young, they worked with people in the industry, the people mentored them, like you were saying, right. You started here. And maybe one of the reasons I felt like Toy Fair or the industry in general was so inaccessible was because I was really coming to it from the outside. Because to me, you know, there were sort of two influences with like, sort of other cartoon heads, you know, like Uncle Milton, right? He made the ant farm so cool. And he was, his face was right there on the box. And you know, it was just like, it was sort of inspiration to be like, wow. Like you could create that kind of wonder for kids too. But also, you know, the Pennsylvania Cable network, which was on. If you had cable in the 90s in Pennsylvania, you had this channel that nobody watched. And they would do this series where they would do factory tours of Pennsylvania. And I watched this show a lot. And they would visit the Silly Putty factory and they would visit the Slinky factory and they would visit around and around they go to visit K'nex. I mean, Pennsylvania had a number of toy businesses. And I remember watching these factory tours. It was just a guy with a camera and he would just walk through the factory while it was in operation. And they would go to each station. This is the part where they connect the A to the B. And this is the part where they put it in the box. And now we're in shipping. Bye by. They wave to the camera. It's all one take, 45 minutes long. I was watch those shows again and again and again. And it was just sort of like almost through the TV that I was like, I want to be in toys and I want to be able to be in a toy factory. I want to be upside down under that machine. I want to make that machine be able to do something that no one else has ever made it do. So it can make some toy that does something no one else has ever done before. It was. Anyway. I mean, that was sort of what I did in, like, the late 90s. Sitting on the couch with my fiance, before we were married, watching these shows. She would fall asleep because they're. Let's be honest, they're not riveting.

[25:43] CHEYANNE HUKE: I can see why.

[25:43] AARON MUDERICK: But they were riveting to me. They were very riveting to me. And then when it came time to actually build a factory, to say, oh, yeah, I saw a machine like that. Right. I kind of recognized what it did. I saw it in motion. This is before YouTube, when you could go and type in anything and see a video about anything. Right. You were very limited in how you could learn things. Still, being an outsider, you know, I didn't have an experience in manufacturing. I was in computers. I didn't have experience in toys. I really. I came at it upside down.

[26:12] CHEYANNE HUKE: You absolutely did.

[26:13] AARON MUDERICK: Pretty lucky. It seems to have worked out all right.

[26:16] CHEYANNE HUKE: I love how you started with the blob of Silly Putty at your desk. That story just doesn't get old to me. It's just so. Like, this is how you got involved.

[26:25] AARON MUDERICK: So it's funny because last night I was seated at the Toy of the Year Awards with who? The guy. The gentleman who's currently the head of Silly Putty for Crayola. And so we made pleasantries. Nice to meet you. And he said, but I gotta ask you, like, how did you get into this? And I told him. I said, well, it was your product, right? I mean, he wasn't there then, right? He's young guy. But I said, I had this egg of Silly Putty, and I was writing code, and we called it programming back then. And I just needed something to fidget with, something to play with. And then I realized that that egg wasn't enough. So I bought more eggs and I put them all together to make a big blob. And that was enough. And I was happy. But I thought, like, it'd be nice if it was a different color, or maybe it could glow in the dark, or it could have some kind of effect. Maybe it could be magnetic. I had all these ideas, but I had no idea how to. How to get it there. Then I noticed my piece kept getting smaller, and I couldn't figure out, is it evaporating? And meanwhile, I'm telling him this story. He's shaking his head. He's like, it doesn't evaporate. I'm like, I know that, right? But if it was anybody but you, you might consider that as an option because he's a putty expert and I'm a putty expert. I said no, my coworkers were actually stealing it when I wasn't looking and they all wanted some. And so we called and we convinced someone to send us a hundred pound blob of Silly Putty and we distributed it in the office. And it just changed the whole office culture. This was a computer consultancy. There were a hundred people working there, it was dripping off of monitors, it was everywhere. And it changed the meeting culture of people were giving it to clients, helping with brainstorming. And that's when I was like, oh, I'm gonna get into this. Like I go to the arts and crafts store and just start buying materials and try and figure out how to make this read patents. The government had just at that time put the patent database online. So you didn't have to go to the reading room in Washington D.C. to read patents, you could pull them up online. I had to learn how to read patentees, which is theoretically English, but it's not English, it's lawyer English. And sort of reverse engineered it and then realized there were reasons that it was the way it was, there were reasons how it could be better and that why people didn't do that. And maybe because it was a hobby, I was less focused on that. It might cost a lot more money to do those fancy things, but I just did them just because I wanted to see if it could be done. And then people really, you know, they started responding. The best thing that happened was that company went bankrupt because everybody lost their job all at once. They packed up all their stuff in a box and they took it with them to whatever new job they found. And when they unpacked that box and they had this giant blob of putty on their desk that they had bought from me, their co workers, their new co workers said to them, where'd you get that stuff? And they told him about this guy that they had named Crazy Aaron And I started getting phone calls and emails and I would drive to different office parks at lunch and open my trunk and sell it in plastic bags with a little scale. Weigh out a half pound here, quarter pound there.

[29:29] CHEYANNE HUKE: Again, our childhood uses of scales were much different too.

[29:34] AARON MUDERICK: Well, maybe for you than for me. And you know, that's when it started to accelerate into actually becoming a real business, to becoming a product. When it wasn't just my friends right then, it was people. I Didn't even know. Through friends and relatives.

[29:47] CHEYANNE HUKE: That was a risk. So that was a risk. But it's a good thing you made that risk.

[29:52] AARON MUDERICK: I, I had no idea what I was doing. I mean, there wasn't a plan. It was just always following. Well, that next step seems exciting. Let's try that. Yeah. I mean, even now, I mean, we can. We sit around at the office, we try to have strategic plans and everything, but this is the business we're in. It changes so quickly. It's an illusion. If you think you have a lot of control, you know, the best thing you can do is try and just go from your gut. Try to be true and honest and transparent and, you know, you throw it out there and see what sticks. And if it doesn't, you just move on to the next thing.

[30:26] CHEYANNE HUKE: Yes, we've done it.

[30:27] AARON MUDERICK: Well, not a lot of time to lick your wounds.

[30:29] CHEYANNE HUKE: You've done it. Well, thank you so much for chatting with me.

[30:34] SPEAKER C: Still got about 10 minutes left. I was going to ask if I could ask you a question.

[30:38] AARON MUDERICK: Please do.

[30:41] SPEAKER C: Can you talk about what your wife thought when you told her that you wanted to go into the putty business?

[30:47] AARON MUDERICK: Sure.

[30:48] CHEYANNE HUKE: Should I ask that?

[30:49] SPEAKER C: Yes, that'd be great.

[30:50] CHEYANNE HUKE: Okay, so when you would come home with this putty, how. And you told your wife, Elizabeth, this is what I want to do. How did she react to this?

[31:01] AARON MUDERICK: So she was in college. She was at Franklin and Marshall College. And I remember she lived in a suite with four women. And I came, I was so proud of myself. This was the moment where it had gone from putty at the desk to I had figured out how to finally make it. And I had figured out how to color it. And at the time, these colors, you know, just did not exist. Like there was nowhere on earth you could get something that looked quite like this and felt quite like that. I was really excited. So I drove out to Lancaster County. It was about an hour and a half drive. And I came to her suite and I just plopped down on the table in the common room. All these bags of putty, eyes like, look, I did it. And these four 20 year old women looked at me like, what are you? And why are you here? Including my fiance, Elizabeth. And I think they had a little secret pow wow about like, maybe this guy's got a screw loose and you're going to put your future on. Like he's, you know, seemed great when he had this computer job and he was working for these Fortune 500 companies, but maybe he's going off into Uncharted territory, and he's going off at light speed. She actually came on board for an odd reason, and that was, she loves to mail things. She loves the post office. She loves packaging packages, she loves mailing them. She has pen pals all over the world to this day writing letters and back and forth. And so when the business got to a point quickly where I needed to start shipping boxes of putty, then she was like, sweet. Something I like to do, right? You do the putty, I'll do the packing. And then we worked together, you know, crazy errands for 17 years. And of those 17, she finished college. She worked at a pastry shop in pastry arts for a little while, maybe a year or so, and then that's when crazy errands really took off. In 2003, when I quit my job, she quit her job and we worked together in a home office, which was a small living room, maybe 12 by 12. We worked there every day for seven and a half years until we got an office and started expanding. And then you came on maybe two years. Two years after that.

[33:17] CHEYANNE HUKE: Yeah. Never looked back.

[33:19] AARON MUDERICK: Never looked back.

[33:20] CHEYANNE HUKE: Never looked back.

[33:21] AARON MUDERICK: No. I do not miss my. I love computers, but I don't miss sort of work. I was done. It was time. It was, you know, when I did them, I was in it 110%. And once that sort of putty bug caught my eye and I was into something else, I was into that 110%. And you saw in the past six months when this opportunity for a new product line, this dough, this sort of all natural, sustainable dough for small kids to play with. But you saw once, it sort of caught my eye. I think I even came over to your desk and I said, do you think this is something we should do? And you said, yes. And it just sort of all clicked. And then, I mean, you've seen the last six months. I mean, awake or asleep, I'm thinking about dough and all the different technical challenges and how can we make it and how can we make it beautiful?

[34:12] CHEYANNE HUKE: And. Yes, and you've really improved it. And it's amazing what you can do in a lab.

[34:19] AARON MUDERICK: We like to play, we like to mix. We like to do a lot of, I call it sanity checks. You know, you find somewhere in the world where it exists, even if it's like the poop of a strange African beetle, like, if that's what it is, but you can prove that that beetle can make that thing, then we can make it too. And then I keep calling companies until they finally won't take no for an answer until they finally give up and they just say, yes, we will provide you with ingredient X. Or as sometimes has happened, calling everybody that you can find online through a hundred different ways. But really there's only one person behind the scenes that actually makes it. Everyone else is a distributor, they're a salesperson, they're all fronting. But finally that core person realizes, wow, there's a lot of people asking about this. But what they don't realize is that it's all crazy errands and we're just the ones asking. And then they say yes, and we. Then something new and magical comes out. Yeah, it's fun.

[35:17] CHEYANNE HUKE: And here we are with Land of Dough.

[35:18] AARON MUDERICK: That's right. Do you have another question?

[35:22] SPEAKER C: Yeah. Well, I'm just out of curiosity. Were you already into making putty like at home when you met your then fiance or girlfriend?

[35:32] AARON MUDERICK: No, actually. So my wife and I have been together for a very long time. We started dating when I was 15 and she was 12 years old. We met in Hebrew school in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and we have been together ever since. 28 years. Coming up on, 29 years together. So we were even in college and such. You know, we were. We had been together for a pretty long time. Kind of crazy.

[36:03] CHEYANNE HUKE: That is crazy.

[36:05] SPEAKER C: And you said when you were starting out with this putty, like experimenting, making at home, that she was pregnant.

[36:15] AARON MUDERICK: She. At the beginning. She was just finishing college when the business started taking off. And we were sort of producing at home but running out of steam. Like, we just couldn't make enough. She was. Yeah, she was like seven, eight, nine months pregnant.

[36:29] SPEAKER C: How did your kids take to putty.

[36:31] AARON MUDERICK: You know, once they were born and they grew up? I mean, when they were babies, the swing was in that 12 by 12 office we had. It was two computer stations, a baby swing, a large office printer that I, using my computer skills, I had programmed to be able to print the labels and packaging for our product rather than using, like an outside printer because we just didn't have the volume to be able to, you know, place big orders. And we just all sat in that room and the swing would swing or she would breastfeed on the phone with a customer. I mean, that went on for years. And we had my second child, and it was. It was tight. It was tight quarters. We. I used to mix. So there's like a secret sauce of mixing some of the colors so that they don't actually come off on your hands when you use the product. And given the tight quarters I could only do it outside and I could only do it when the sun was shining. So if a customer ordered in the wintertime and maybe the weather was. And it had to be above freezing. And so we sort of. I remember watching the weather report against the order list and wondering, like, can I sneak out two hours out back to be able to mix that stuff so I can make it work? Or do I have to tell the customer they might have to wait another week or two because I can't make more product right now? We were. We were in a. Yeah, we were. We were definitely bootstrapped from the very beginning.

[37:58] SPEAKER C: But your kids, do they play with the putty now?

[38:00] AARON MUDERICK: My one daughter tells her friends. She tells her friends that her father is a dentist. She is not interested in sort of your dad's crazy. Aaron My other daughter is definitely a secret super fan. I bring product home for her, I ask her her opinion, ask her what she thinks, and she gives me good feedback, artistically minded, and, you know, make suggestions about how it might be better or what it connects to that she might see on YouTube or Instagram. And. Oh, did you. This reminds me of. So we have a nice relationship there, but to the other one, I'm just a dentist.

[38:40] CHEYANNE HUKE: That's hysterical.

[38:44] AARON MUDERICK: All right, well, thank you, Cheyenne, for doing this with me.

[38:48] CHEYANNE HUKE: It's enjoyable. Thank you.

[38:50] AARON MUDERICK: It.