Building Joy at Scale with Sara Schiller, Co-CEO of Sloomoo Institute

Sara Schiller (00:00:00)
And it was at that moment that we said, we have to bring this everywhere. This is something for adults. It's for families to come together. It's about connecting with yourself like Karen did originally and connecting with others like we saw my daughters doing. when the light bulb went off, a year later we opened our doors.

Sara Schiller (00:00:17)
I don't think we really, really knew what we were building until we opened our door on the first day and we had 3000 people outside. No one normal would do this. It's a true act of, of hopefulness. It's hard to do something that's never been done before. If you don't have complete trust with your co-founder,

Geraldine Lee (00:00:42)
you're listening to Signal, the podcast for attraction leaders shaping the future of guest experiences. This is Signal.

John Pendergrast (00:00:53)
Today we're joined by Sara Schiller, co-founder and co-CEO of Sloomoo Institute. But Sara's story actually starts long before Slime became a $30 million business. She's what I'd call a Space Alchemist.

John Pendergrast (00:01:08)
Someone who has this rare ability to take unconventional concepts and turn them into experiences that people just can't stop talking about. Before Sloomoo, Sara revolutionized corporate meetings through her company, Meet, where she created art-filled venues in downtown New York that were so compelling, global brands like Chanel and Lego chose her spaces over their corporate boardrooms.

John Pendergrast (00:01:31)
She also co-founded the Wooster Collective, which became the world's largest street art blog, and transformed an entire building into a temporary street art gallery that became a must-see destination. But here's what makes Sara's perspective so valuable for attraction operators. She built her career on taking things that shouldn't work as attractions like.

John Pendergrast (00:01:52)
Corporate meetings, street art, and yes, slime, and turned them into experiences that people seek out and pay premium prices for. Sloomoo Institute now welcomes over 500,000 visitors across five locations, with 75 % of their customers finding them through organic social media. That's the kind of word of mouth marketing every attraction dreams of.

John Pendergrast (00:02:15)
Well, welcome here, Sara. Uh, we're really excited to have you. Um, this podcast process is something that, uh, that we really enjoy doing, and, uh, we love talking to different people about what they do and what they love. Thanks for joining us today. Tim. You wanna add anything here?

Tim Samson (00:02:28)
You know, Sara, I've, I've known you for a couple year, a few years now, and I've just always found your story and, and really you just incredible with the stuff that you've accomplished.

Tim Samson (00:02:40)
So I'm super excited to have you join us today.

Sara Schiller (00:02:44)
Thank you. Well, I'm, I'm excited and I, uh, you know, Tim, you held my hand when we jumped into dynamic pricing, uh, two years ago. So, um, I think we have a level of trust that's, uh, pretty deep after that, that time together.

John Pendergrast (00:02:59)
So maybe we kick off today. And I think a really great podcast is just a really great conversation.

John Pendergrast (00:03:04)
And, you know, I've watched a bunch of podcasts over the years and the ones that are really formula and structure tend to be the ones I'm like, ah, I dunno. But the ones that are really engaging conversations is where I really like to sit. So maybe we start off with just having a, a good old fashioned conversation.

John Pendergrast (00:03:18)
So your origin story is a story that is like, it's got adversity in it. It's got like these highs and lows. You've got these moments where you're like, you suddenly realize that this, you know, this slime wasn't just a toy, this thing that you were doing wasn't just a toy, but actually had had something magic to it.

John Pendergrast (00:03:39)
Do you wanna walk us through a little bit of that?

Sara Schiller (00:03:41)
Yeah, so we call it a darkness to light story. Um, 'cause it gets pretty dark in the beginning and we want people to know that it, it gets better. But my, my co-founder Karen and I have been friends for 17 years. We, um, have, uh, met over a joint, collect a joint passion over contemporary arts.

Sara Schiller (00:04:03)
We used to go see a lot of art together. And, uh, 17 years ago, my older daughter was born with a rare genetic syndrome, um, called Angelman Syndrome. It really provided a lot of limitations. She's profoundly disabled. She can't speak, she can't do any activities of daily living, but a symptom of her syndrome is happiness.

Sara Schiller (00:04:23)
So she wakes up every day, um, joyful to see the world and it's, it's lovely to have her as part of my family. Fast forward to 11 years ago, my husband. Of decades woke up at the age of 50 and he had a massive bilateral stroke, and he ended up profoundly disabled. Wow. Unable to speak, unable to do any activities of daily living.

Sara Schiller (00:04:47)
And then three years after that, Karen's husband, um, lost his life due to a severe depression and, and mental illness. And then nine months after that, her cousin was murdered in the Parkland school shooting. Wow. So as, as friends, you know who your friends are when you're, when you go through major trauma.

John Pendergrast (00:05:10)
Yeah.

Sara Schiller (00:05:10)    
And I, I like to think too, that also when you're down and out, like you can really trust someone. And Karen was at her house when a friend came over with her 10-year-old daughter and she had slime with her, and Karen was playing with her daughter after being severely depressed herself and, and just mm-hmm.

Sara Schiller (00:05:30)    
Almost unable to carry on and. The next thing she knew her friend was leaving and she's like, why are you leaving? You just got here. And she's like, you've been playing with my daughter for four hours. And Karen was like, what? I feel really good. I gotta bring this to Sara. So she started to become what's known as an adult slimer ordering slime from all over the internet, from Etsy sites.

Sara Schiller (00:05:57)    
And she brought it to me and my two girls. So I had my, my older one who's disabled and my younger one. And we would just sit there and talk and play. And what we realized one day is that my, my older daughter with the syndrome was playing equally with my typically developing daughter. And they were having a relationship and connecting over slime.

Sara Schiller (00:06:18)    
And it was at that moment that we said, we have to bring this everywhere. This is something for adults, it's for families to come together. It's about connecting with yourself like Karen did originally, and connecting with others like we saw my daughters doing. I think when the light bulb went off a year later, we opened our doors.

Sara Schiller (00:06:36)    
Everything from raising money, writing the business plan, designing it, building it, launching it, the work.

John Pendergrast (00:06:42)    
That's, that's an incredible story. Like, and, and it's more than a story. You lived it, you're, you are living it. How did you, how did you find hope in the middle of that? Like, all that's going on? Was it that moment you saw like people losing themself in, in what you're doing and, and finding their own happiness there?

John Pendergrast (00:07:02)    
Where was that moment you went? Okay, I, I see Hope rising again, because I feel like there, there must have been some parts in there that were pretty hopeless.

Sara Schiller (00:07:09)    
One thing that I found out through this process is, uh, I'm super optimistic. So I think hopefulness is inside me. And I think for any entrepreneur out there, you wake up thinking things are gonna work.

Sara Schiller (00:07:22)    
Yeah. 'cause otherwise you wouldn't do crazy things. And opening an experience, an immersive experience around slime is crazy. If we knew what we were doing or, you know, we, we would, we, you, no one normal would do this. It's a true act of, of hopefulness. Of hopefulness. Right.

John Pendergrast (00:07:42)    
Can confirm.

Sara Schiller (00:07:43)    
Yeah. So we, we, um, what I don't think we really, really knew.

Sara Schiller (00:07:52)    
What we were building until we opened our door on the first day and we had 3000 people outside, and Karen and I were inside at what we call Lake Sloomoo, which is a, a lake of 300 gallons of slime. And these kids were just jumping up and down and up and down, and she and I held hands and started crying.

John Pendergrast (00:08:13)    
Mm-hmm.

Sara Schiller (00:08:13)    
Because we realized like we had done it, we had brought this to the world and other people liked it too. Yep. So it was, it was a great feeling. And the reason I, I like to tell the story about our friendship and what we went through is it's hard to do something that's never been done before.

Sara Schiller (00:08:31)    
Mm-hmm. If you don't have complete trust with your co-founder and Karen and I have this level of trust, that's mm-hmm. Um, it's unbelievable.

John Pendergrast (00:08:39)    
I agree about the part about you can't be a normal person if you're gonna be an entrepreneur. There's something. Inherently right or inherently wrong about you and maybe both, uh, in, in that, how that works.

Sara Schiller (00:08:48)    
One thing I did wanna say, don't tell you guys, 'cause I think, um, it's, it is also a unique part of my story mm-hmm. Is, um, not only do I like love the art and the, the guest experience piece, um, but I also have my MBA in finance, so I have the other side of the brain. You do, um, fully ticking. And one of my landmark projects that I did at Starwood Hotels was I built a financial model with a team to calculate return on invested capital by name of customer, um, which only like five companies in the world have ever done.

Sara Schiller (00:09:26)    
It's a big effort. That ability I think, as an entrepreneur to go. Like across all of your operational part components, um, was really critical in helping us get through the pandemic and get off the ground and do something that's never been done before where there is no financial model. Parent and I say that we have a Venn diagram of skills and in the middle is building a brand and knowing exactly what a branded experience feels like, and then she and I divide and conquer everything else.

Sara Schiller (00:10:00)    
She's on that marketing side and storytelling side. And I have a lot of the, the, the business part of it

John Pendergrast (00:10:08)    
that is, once again, just underlying the fact that, uh, entrepreneurs aren't, aren't always normal people. They have a lot of skills and a lot of things across a wide category. Yeah. And you sound like you found a partner that just really, really suits.

Sara Schiller (00:10:22)    
We, we suit each other well and, um, I, I can't tell you how many times we've walked into meetings and we'll have our, you know, our VP of ops with us and he is hanging out and the person in the meeting will turn to him and start asking him questions. And Karen and I are sitting there going like, you know, we, we can raise money, we can build a business.

Sara Schiller (00:10:44)    
Yeah. Like, don't just assume.

John Pendergrast (00:10:47)    
Yeah. I, uh, I always try and describe my job description. Uh, I put that together. I'm like, well, um, taking out the garbage, uh, and mm-hmm. Fundraising and, uh, everything in between, right. Like, that's just the job description. So Yeah.

Tim Samson (00:11:01)    
We often ask people, especially in the attractions industry, like, when did you fall in love?

Tim Samson (00:11:07)    
Like, when did you fall in love with slime? During this process because there, there had to be a tipping point.

Sara Schiller (00:11:12)    
So I fell in love with slime when Karen brought over a butter slime that smelled like fruit loops. And I was in my late forties. I'm now in my fifties and I was taken back from the smell of fruit loops to my 7-year-old self.

Sara Schiller (00:11:28)    
I have two brothers. My mom bought one box of sugar cereal every two weeks, and we're fighting over, you know, we just, we would eat the whole box in one Saturday morning cartoon sitting. And that was a great memory for me. And the slime triggered it. It also really makes you feel good by, by playing with slime.

Sara Schiller (00:11:49)    
So it's releasing endorphins and dopamine in your brain. So between the scent and that butter slime, which is a creamy, squishy, lovely slime, I, I was hooked.

Tim Samson (00:11:59)    
I remember when I. Heard about Sloomoo and, uh, I, I was having difficulty pronouncing the name. I didn't quite know how to pronounce it in general, but from day one, you know, you guys chose the name Sloomoo Institute, not a, not a museum, not a playground, not a attraction, not a thing.

Tim Samson (00:12:16)    
It feels very deliberate. Like what was the thought process behind that?

Sara Schiller (00:12:20)    
Yeah, so we, we took a long time figuring out our name. Uh, I have since found out that a lot of entrepreneurs hire naming companies, which Karen and I did not do. Um, but in 2017 there was an amazing trend in the slime community. And the slime community is really an incredible group of diverse people.

Sara Schiller (00:12:40)    
And the trend was, get your slime name by replacing the vowels of your name with double O. So Sara becomes Sooroo. Tim becomes Toom, John becomes Joohn. And we knew, we always knew when we were launching Sloomoo that it was gonna be more than just slime. So calling it Sloomoo made a lot of sense. Sloomoo is a slime name for slime.

Sara Schiller (00:13:03)  
And what we love to say is that it gives people permission to play. So when you come into Sloomoo you, you get your slime name and a lot of people really transform themselves into someone else when they change their name. And we love it when people come in with their grandfather who's known as papa, and they become poo poo.

Sara Schiller (00:13:24)    
And we still get letters from kids. They're calling their, their, their grandpa or their papa, you know, poo for years. It, it is stuck. So that was an important part. And then we did also spend a lot of time thinking about museum. And for us institutes seem to make sense because it taps into all the science behind slime.

Sara Schiller (00:13:49)    
Slime. Slime is, um, a non-Newtonian mm-hmm. Particle. It's not a liquid. Mm-hmm. Or a solid. It's a craft that you make in a slime kitchen. It's a polymer. It has all these great attributes. There's also a really lovely part of having an institute around slime because we attract a lot of young girls. Hmm. And as a, as a nerdy girl, a science girl myself, I think it's kind of cool to lean into that.

Sara Schiller (00:14:15)    
Well, nerdy girls are cool too. We can, you can love science and math and still Yeah. Stem be, be hit. Yeah. Hit be cool. Yeah.

John Pendergrast (00:14:22)    
That's really cool. So your mission is deliver joy. And clearly that's what you're doing for people. I, that poo poo. I like. That's hilarious. That, that like, that grandma's oo, like, I don't like, there's, it's great.

John Pendergrast (00:14:36)    
Like how do you track KPIs around deliver joy? Like what is the KPI that you track that goes, we're doing it.

Sara Schiller (00:14:43)    
That's a, that's a really good question. We probably revert back to what more traditional attractions, experiences or retailers use. So we're tapping into, uh, mystery shop scores. We're tapping tapping into our NPS scores.

Sara Schiller (00:15:00)    
So we do like hard data, we love data around here and we wanna get that survey data. We get a lot of handwritten letters. So the one thing that you, you may remember in the back of your mind, when you're around seven or eight years old, one of your school projects is to learn how to write a letter.

John Pendergrast (00:15:20)    
Mm-hmm.

Sara Schiller (00:15:21)    
And mail it.

John Pendergrast (00:15:22)    
Mm-hmm. So we

Sara Schiller (00:15:22)    
get a lot of mail, which is really, really fun, the cutest stuff ever. Um, and we're tracking our Google scores. We are, we're tracking our customer satisfaction from a, from a numbers perspective, but I think all you have to do is visit, visit the locations and stand there and watch and you can really feel people coming together.

John Pendergrast (00:15:44)    
It's really interesting to see when people are engaged in something and they lock in on something. It's like everything else just kind of fades away and you can see that they're just super focused. You see it. I remember doing it with my kids, going to these kinds of like really kid focused or really like knowledge focused.

John Pendergrast (00:16:00)    
We went to a lot of like kids' museums and things like that. And you'd see your kid lock in and then you'd lock in and then you'd be like. Okay. Oh, hold on. It's, it's, it's two o'clock in the afternoon. We should probably get some lunch, you know, like in these moments.

Sara Schiller (00:16:13)    
Yeah. The, the great thing about slime also is that you have to use both your hands.

Sara Schiller (00:16:19)    
Mm. So you can't be on your phone. So it's, it's,

John Pendergrast (00:16:22)    
oh, great,

Sara Schiller (00:16:22)    
great for adults. 'cause they're forced to put their phones in their pockets and the kids really, really notice that their parents are connecting with them.

John Pendergrast (00:16:32)    
Mm-hmm.

Sara Schiller (00:16:32)    
One of my favorite audiences that come in are, um, these like single dads with their daughters macho, uh, you know, cool guys.

Sara Schiller (00:16:43)    
Who are like, well I'm, I'm not really gonna touch the slime. I'm just here for my daughter. And 20 feet in the experience. You see them like grinning and stretching and pulling and they'll leave saying like, I needed this more than my kid. Like mm-hmm. This was awesome. And they're caught off guard. And there's a beauty in, in having children, 'cause they do allow you to do things that either you forgot how to play or you forgot to do.

Sara Schiller (00:17:09)    
Yeah. And it gets you to, um, you know, surprise yourself with how much fun you can have. 'cause we, we've all forgotten how to play.

John Pendergrast (00:17:17)    
Yeah. I mean, we all have an inner or nine year olds, right. There's that inner 9-year-old that never goes away, but mm-hmm. But we don't, we don't live that life anymore. We don't really have that freedom to do that very often.

John Pendergrast (00:17:27)    
And I can definitely see how that would come out in those environments because what else are you gonna do? Stand around and. Not enga, like, I don't know how you don't engage with that, especially with that much joy in the room. It's contagious.

Sara Schiller (00:17:40)    
So we launched a new exhibit today in New York, um, that starts to take slime and, and transforms it into other things.

Sara Schiller (00:17:50)    
So it's a room when you walk in, it has te a table with 10 different vats of slime. And when you touch the slime, the energy that's in your body that's in the water in your body is transferred into the water that's in the slime, that's transferred into the copper bowl that has a, a reader on the bottom of it that, you know, you can't see.

Sara Schiller (00:18:10)    
The reader triggers lights to come out from your bowl and on above you on the ceiling. And each bowl has a different musical instrument that turns on. And as you play, the more you play, the more the beat starts. And if you have 10 people in the room, the whole song is going and the whole table and ceiling starts, um, spinning in rainbow colors.

John Pendergrast (00:18:35)    
You got disco. Slime. So

Sara Schiller (00:18:37)    
it's disco slime. It's it's grooves, groovy grove. And it's tapping this into this science slime music. Um, obviously sent from this, from the, uh, yeah. Slime. And then just visually it's this candy store,

John Pendergrast (00:18:53)    
man. Yeah. I gotta get to New York, Tim. We're gonna have to book some time in New York.

Tim Samson (00:18:58)    
Yeah. Or, or Atlanta. Or Chicago. Or Houston. And Chicago's close or la la or la Yeah. Yeah. LA yeah. Yeah. You mentioned how parents become involved. You know, you, you go into these experience thinking it's gonna be all about the kids, and then the parents end up becoming involved. I think that's a testament to how you guys have built the, the whole experience and the, the careful thought behind everything that you've put into it.

Tim Samson (00:19:21)    
And you mentioned. They put their phones away because you need two hands. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. But this trend came from social media, right? Which is, which is directly from phones. So the satisfying slime video, you know, was born on phones, but then you translated that digital piece into something that's become not digital, where you don't want the digital piece in your hand, right.

Tim Samson (00:19:45)    
While you're experiencing the traction. How did, how did you do that at scale?

Sara Schiller (00:19:50)    
Yeah. When we did something really conscious that I think, um, most people won't notice, but they'll feel, which is we really pioneered the experiential entertainment retail space to be for adults in a visual language perspective.

Sara Schiller (00:20:08)    
So, um, taking in our love of contemporary art, we wanted to create a space that adults would feel really good in a building. The vats, the custom vats that we have for our slime are like these gorgeous. Statues almost. And we like to say, well, you could put slime in a trash can and kids would love it. But when you put it in these custom vats, the adults are like, Hmm, I, I guess this is for me.

Sara Schiller (00:20:33)    
When they see our curvy walls that really tap into the slimy nature of slime, everything is elevated and sophisticated. So you don't feel like you're going into a play space or a play a children's playground. You actually feel like you're going into a, a museum and that it happens to have all this crazy fun slim in there.

Sara Schiller (00:20:53)    
So we're, we're, you know, we're tapping into that design sense that people have.

John Pendergrast (00:20:59)    
That's interesting. So you've built sort of the intention of creating a space that adults would be comfortable in and then layered kids into it in a way that. That's, that's really smart, like really, really smart way of approaching that.

John Pendergrast (00:21:17)    
Because then, because there's lots of kid places that adults are like, oh my goodness, that's a lot of neon, or that's a lot of flashing lights, or, that's a lot of like kind of difficult things as an adult to process, but kids love. I love that you've done that because I just think that's a really interesting idea.

Sara Schiller (00:21:35)    
Well, and it makes sense 'cause Karen and I were the ones that first fell in love with the slime, right? Yeah, of course. As adults, of course.

John Pendergrast (00:21:40)    
Yes. Yeah.

Sara Schiller (00:21:41)    
As adults. Yeah.

John Pendergrast (00:21:43)    
Yeah. That's, that's really cool. Who are your, so this is totally off topic, but who are your favorite contemporary artists? I'm just curious. Do you have some favorites?

John Pendergrast (00:21:52)    
Oh

Sara Schiller (00:21:52)    
boy. So, well, I will, I will just start by telling you that, um, for. Over a decade, I was the mouthpiece for the Global Street Art Movement. So in the early aughts we did major, major exhibitions, uh, published books, uh, spoke around the world on creativity from street art as a passion project. So this was just my a side gig.

Sara Schiller (00:22:17)    
So I love artists like JR. Shepherd Fairy Swoon, all the artists who really looked at public space architecture and cities and how people were moving through cities to be a part of the piece of art they were creating. And I think that influence and that love really works well when you're creating an immersive experience because if you take that street art.

Sara Schiller (00:22:46)    
Passion of mine combined with my background at Starwood Hotels, focusing on the guest experience we've curated from the moment you approach the building, um, a guest experience that taps into your senses visually what the journey is and then what the actual experience is from beginning to end.

John Pendergrast (00:23:08)    
Mm-hmm.

John Pendergrast (00:23:09)    
Yeah, that makes sense. I'm glad I asked that question 'cause I immediately did some Googling and pulled up those artists and swoon is incredible. Mm-hmm. Like, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna go explore a little bit on that after. It's funny 'cause I mean, you're such an art based mindset. Like I can see that you're just, you're an artist.

John Pendergrast (00:23:24)    
Yourself. I don't know if you also create art, but clearly you're creating an art of sorts. Um, and the definition of art is well beyond the scope of what we can talk about in this podcast. 'cause I, I think that's a pretty broad definition. But when you think about how you're going on the business side, so you're acquiring customers and you know that, that had to have been a, that you're like, okay, there's, there's things to learn here.

John Pendergrast (00:23:47)    
75% of your acquisition right now is coming through organic social, right? So you're pulling people in through organic social. How do you balance creating like analog experiences, these kind of really tactile analog experiences with digita, like the digital shareability? Mm-hmm. Like how do you bring these things together because it's, we're just inundated by videos on our phones, and now AI is creating even more kind of digital garbage.

John Pendergrast (00:24:14)    
So how do you manage to bridge that?

Sara Schiller (00:24:16)    
Yeah. So, um, the good news is I have a genius business partner and Karen, who, um, really created the field of influencer marketing. And, um, that's what she was doing before she and I joined Hands and built Sloomoo. So she fundamentally understands, um, influencers and how people think amazing can move online as part of her DNA.

Sara Schiller (00:24:41)    
And from the very, very beginning we've focused on creating meaningful content. We are always creating. Reasons for people to come back. 'cause we, we don't wanna have to keep acquiring, right. We know how expensive that is. Mm-hmm. So trying to get the repeat visitor rate up and doing that with almost a continuous stream of activations, which result in a lot of content that we can put online that people love.

Sara Schiller (00:25:06)    
The one that we have going right now is called a PSA and a play. It's a public ofer mm-hmm. Service announcement from kids to adults saying, you know, make sure you take time out of your day to play. And for us, we want people to play with slim, but that could mean just having a dance party or, you know, running down the supermarket aisle and, and shouting with joy.

Sara Schiller (00:25:30)    
So, um, and yeah, it's so, it's been so cute. The kids are so cute. But also we have people coming into this space. We have, um, these big walls that people are drawing on and writing on and messaging. And we have coloring sheets. So we're, we're doing things that seem so basic, but people then take that and they share it online and it, and it just grows.

Tim Samson (00:25:53)    
Yeah, it's, it's really fascinating. You launched the original location, New York location four months before COVID and then the world shut down. And, um, you know, I think as an industry in, uh, attractions and passenger vessels and tours, it was really an unsure time for everyone. And we were trying to think like, how do we get through it?

Tim Samson (00:26:16)    
Um, but you guys did something really smart. You, you pivoted to virtual cams for companies like Google. What's the most important lesson you learned during that period? Your business is just getting started and you're hit with this adversity. Not that. Your life didn't have adversity before it, you know?

Tim Samson (00:26:34)    
But this is different. Yeah. This isn't a business perspective.

Sara Schiller (00:26:37)    
Well, I think it taps into those parts of you being an entrepreneur that you may not know you have, which is that fearlessness without being reckless, I hope. Um, and we we're fearless to experiment. We literally turned on initially summer camps for kids and we, we made up what a camp looks like, and Karen and I were doing the camps.

Sara Schiller (00:27:02)    
I mean, it was us. And the next thing we know, there were these communities all over the US of young kids who were knowing each other through the digital camps, but also their parents were like, wow, I can make dinner while my kid is on this online camp. And so we'd see the parents in the background cooking and baking and helping and watching.

Sara Schiller (00:27:23)    
And those parents then were like. We need to do a family day at Google, at Bank of America. So those companies were like, let's do family Zooms. 'cause everyone was on Zoom and we started making slime with them. We also even did digital walkthroughs of the space with some of our corporate clients. So we would take a whole team through Sloomoo digitally, but we failed at things too.

Sara Schiller (00:27:48)    
I always like to bring up our failures because no one wants to talk about 'em. We launched an in-home brochure to sell slime. 'cause we're like, okay, we, we should be selling slime to every home in America. Everyone needs it. We put together a, um, gorgeous little brochure that got mailed out, 80,000 people or something.

Sara Schiller (00:28:08)    
Crazy number. And we were working with a company that has a lot, works with a lot of lists of families in our target audience. And the day that it hit in home was the day that the Black Lives Matter. Uh, protest started.

John Pendergrast (00:28:25)    
Oh no.

Sara Schiller (00:28:27)    
The company said they had never seen in their 15 years of being open a worse performing mailer ever, ever.

Sara Schiller (00:28:37)    
Like literally we flushed the money down the drain. Like there was no coming back for it. There, there's no messaging you can say to follow up from something that really tapped into so many people and was so tragic. So we just moved on, we continued to move on, and when we could open our doors, we did. And we let in, you know, 20 people an hour.

Sara Schiller (00:28:57)    
Mm-hmm. And again, Karen and I were there manning the store, manning it, working ourselves. We had taken wiping down things.

John Pendergrast (00:29:04)    
Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Sara Schiller (00:29:06)    
yeah. But what, what's been this like, blessing in disguise with the pandemic besides keeping us super, super thin? Like we're, we're, we are very hungry and thin as just as a company.

Sara Schiller (00:29:19)    
Mm-hmm. But the blessing in disguise was that. People needed slime more than ever when they got back, when they were allowed to be free. 'cause they'd now just been on their devices for three months, six months, a year.

John Pendergrast (00:29:34)    
Mm-hmm.

Sara Schiller (00:29:34)    
And what, what would you want more than to put your device down and go hang with your kids and do something really fun?

Sara Schiller (00:29:40)    
So we, we actually really popped out, like we popped out of the pandemic in a, in an amazing way.

John Pendergrast (00:29:47)    
Yeah. It's, it's so interesting how like, there was such a desperate need for people after that, that, you know, I call it the time that shall not be named, uh, but, uh, but COVID, um, but like, there's such a need for people and also such a, I don't know how we do it.

John Pendergrast (00:30:04)    
Like what are we gonna do? And so I can see how slime would be that thing that's like, really different that also brings people together and, and just, I can see why it suddenly became really popular all of a sudden. Mm-hmm. Like I can see how that would play out, you know, I think and that.

Sara Schiller (00:30:20)    
I was just gonna say that fearlessness then kind of took us through to things on the other end where a year later we opened, or two years later, I guess we opened two locations on the same day.

Sara Schiller (00:30:34)    
We opened Chicago and Atlanta on the same day. And I still don't know why we didn't think that was crazy, but we were like, we have to get open, we need to make money and we need to grow. And with construction delays and everything that happened, like they both basically finished at the same time. So we opened the doors on the same day on a Saturday and we were in one location and then we flew to the next location on Sunday.

John Pendergrast (00:31:00)    
Did. Okay. So, okay. So I was like, did Karen go to one and you stayed at the other, or No, you, you, but you just, we couldn't

Sara Schiller (00:31:06)    
separate, we had to be together. Mm-hmm.

John Pendergrast (00:31:09)    
That, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah, it absolutely makes sense. So, I mean, a lot of major attractions, license and franchise and, you know, go through that process.

John Pendergrast (00:31:19)    
Um, you've kind of built an entire, like, well you built a SL averse, I dunno if I'm saying exactly correct.

Sara Schiller (00:31:25)    
That's what we call it. Yeah. The sloomoo

John Pendergrast (00:31:26)    
averse. It's just, it has its own mascot. It's got like all these different things. You took this kind of like, you created IP from the concept of joy and you've gone ahead and like, now you're going from feeling to a fictional world like this process.

John Pendergrast (00:31:42)    
How on earth do you, like, do you, do you look at it and go, ah, we're gonna figure out a franchise model someday? Or is this like, you're gonna run this the way it feels like you're gonna have to run this yourself in many different ways for a long time, maybe forever. I

Sara Schiller (00:31:56)    
hope not. Um, but I will, I will tell you what the strategy is.

Sara Schiller (00:32:01)    
'cause Karen and I with our different backgrounds, we've had a strategy from day one.
John Pendergrast (00:32:06)    Yeah.

Sara Schiller (00:32:06)    
Um, and so none of none of this is by accident. The experiences in North America or the, the five in the us we do own and we manage, and that is very deliberate. We wanna control the guest experience to the nth degree.

Sara Schiller (00:32:21)    
And we know that by creating an unbelievable guest experience, we're getting an emotional connection and building a brand. So building that brand is top, you know, top in the totem pole of things that we wanna do.

John Pendergrast (00:32:33)    
Yeah.

Sara Schiller (00:32:33)    
We wanna license internationally, so we are willing to license and they'll be licensing the ip, which is not just the character Sloomoo.

Sara Schiller (00:32:42)    
So Sloomoo is a character, but also a, a species, which I'll get into, into a second. Um, so we, we wanna license. The, the visual, you know, the visual IP components, but also the recipes, the mm-hmm. Operating procedures. Mm-hmm. The ordering of all the supplies, the vats, Sloomoo falls, where you put on a biodegradable poncho and have falls dumped on you, is run with, uh, like pharmaceutical grade pumps.

Sara Schiller (00:33:13)  
So someone's getting the full, full experience when they, when they license. And we have deals that we're working on in Europe, in the Middle East, so we will let it go. Uh, and people can bring it to life in other countries. We can't control it everywhere.

John Pendergrast (00:33:29)  
Mm-hmm. Um,

Sara Schiller (00:33:30)    
but we're also focused on taking flu. The character and bringing her to life through media.

Sara Schiller (00:33:39)    
So we have a graphic novel that we're working on. And what's so incredible about this novel and this story, um, you, you really can't make this up, but the woman who went to Karen's apartment with her 10-year-old has 22 New York Times bestselling novels in the young adult space and is now our writer for our graphic novel.

Sara Schiller (00:34:01)
Yeah. And she is a stroke survivor and like, just, just so much joy and love with the team that we've built and we're on this journey with, which is so cool. So the graphic novel, we have a series of novels, we're actually working on the third one, even though the first one hasn't come out yet. Those novels will, will be translated.

Sara Schiller (00:34:20)
And Tim, this gets back into your digital piece, into animated shorts, into animated feature films. We have, um. Spotify Music Channel. We're launching our album this week in, uh, conjunction with Grooves, groovy Grove. And, um, we are gonna take that full circle. We hope to, um, live performance. So, you know, you could go to Sesame Street Live or you could go to Sloomoo live where our characters, because we have a species, we have over a hundred characters are dancing, singing, playing with, with slime, and thus Deli fulfilling the mission of delivering joy.

Sara Schiller (00:35:06)
Mm-hmm. So that's, the vision is really to take, like we, we've created the theme park. Now we're creating the movie studio.

John Pendergrast (00:35:16)
I was gonna say, I'm waiting for the, the major theatrical release across the all theaters of the Sloomoo universe. Uh, um, yeah, that's that's incredible. Uh, Tim, I'm gonna steal, I'm not stealing one of your questions.

John Pendergrast (00:35:28)
I'm gonna, I'm taking us another direction. 'cause now I'm really curious. Okay. So I remember as an early stage entrepreneur making that first million dollars where you're like, okay, we made a million dollars. And that always takes longer than you think it's going to. It's like this big hill climb. You're trying to figure it out, and then you make your first million.

John Pendergrast (00:35:45)
And some people make their first million very quickly. It's just they hit at the right moment and it goes like that. And it's always like, well, once we make a million dollars, it's gonna be easy from here on in. I have my own opinions on this topic, but I'm very curious, has it gotten easier? Have you, have you arrived?

Sara Schiller (00:36:02)
So I like to say the kids are all right. We are no longer on, uh, complete panic, but I do check the bank accounts every day.

John Pendergrast (00:36:15)
Mm-hmm.

Sara Schiller (00:36:16)
And we made our first million actually really fast. Mm-hmm. This caught on like wildfire, but we lost it equally fast when we refunded hundreds of thousands of tickets when the pandemic hit.

Sara Schiller (00:36:28)
So we know what it's like. It's getting harder because we have to let things go. And as entrepreneurs, you know, you don't wanna do that. Like, I wanna control the guest experience. Mm-hmm. So it's trusting and relying on people. We have way more moving parts than mm-hmm. We've ever had. Yep. But we're having probably way more fun because we're less panicked.

Sara Schiller (00:36:53)
And that's why I say the kids are all right. Like, we wake up feeling like, okay, we got this. What are we gonna, what are we gonna nail today?

John Pendergrast (00:37:00)
Solve the problems of the day. You know, and try and plan for the problems of tomorrow. Yeah. Mm-hmm. No, I understand. I was listening to a interview from, uh, the CEO of Nvidia, which of course is probably the world's most valuable company now.

John Pendergrast (00:37:14)
Um, and someone asked him this question, if you knew what was going to happen, would you do it again? Would you do this all? Would this, do you do this journey again? And his answer was really interesting. He said, absolutely not. And I thought that was a fascinating to say thing to say when you've reached, quote unquote the highest level of, of business.

John Pendergrast (00:37:36)
So what would you ask? How would I would do it

Sara Schiller (00:37:37)
again? I would do it again. And, and I do think starting, and so this is not my, my first time at the rodeo, I'd started another company that I sold. I actually had to choose at one point, am I gonna keep my hospitality company? I had a meetings company, formu, and I was like, okay, I'm gonna sell this, this company.

Sara Schiller (00:37:57)
But one of the things that Karen and I have been able to do is. Uh, work in a business that delivers joy and I, I think it's, yeah. Most people don't wake up every day and get to do that. And we've tied in our experience into the fabric of the business. So we have a neurodiverse workforce. Hmm. 10% of our employees are, uh, on the autism spectrum or need a job coach or someone to come to work with them.

John Pendergrast (00:38:24)
Yep.

Sara Schiller (00:38:25)
I call it my pay it forward project. 'cause I hope someone hires Samantha at one point. Mm-hmm. But it's super cool that you can have a profitable business and literally be doing good, like giving people jobs who have no meaningful work and. You know, I, I, I don't think I could have gone to work for American Express, but I don't think I would've been able to do that.

Sara Schiller (00:38:49)
And the same thing is true with our partnership with the Goldie Ha Foundation that she is created called MindUP, which delivers mental fitness for children. So breathing exercises, everything that can make your brain feel good when you're growing up in a really hard situation. And tapping into those, those two philanthropic arms has been really powerful as an entrepreneur

John Pendergrast (00:39:14)
that really resonates with me.

John Pendergrast (00:39:16)
And I, I love what you said because I feel very much the same way. I like how you answered it because the way you answered it was because of the people and because of the impact on people. That's what gets me up in the morning, and I would a hundred percent agree with you. I think that's also the most challenging part of business.

John Pendergrast (00:39:35)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Sara Schiller (00:39:36)
The people is the hardest part. We had an employee who came up to us one day, I was actually taking garbage out, and she stops me at the garbage bin mm-hmm. And says, I want to thank you for hiring me. And of course we're big enough now. I, I don't, I don't even know who she is. Don't know who

John Pendergrast (00:39:51)
she is.

John Pendergrast (00:39:52)
Yeah.

Sara Schiller (00:39:53)
And she said, I am autistic. And I always thought someone would hire me because I am autistic and I have these certain skills and no one would ever hire me. And I was about to lose my, my, my rent. Like I'm about about to lose my apartment and you guys hired me because I'm autistic and you see the traits that I have and you value them and you're putting them to good use.

John Pendergrast (00:40:16)
Mm-hmm.

Sara Schiller (00:40:17)
And if, if that doesn't bring a tear to your eye and make you make the whole year good. I, I don't know what else can. Yeah. And then the, the opposite is true on our guest side because. All of our spaces are fully capable for classrooms mm-hmm. Of children in wheelchair. So bring the, bring the class.

Sara Schiller (00:40:34)
Mm-hmm. We can take you for our, for our visitors who have children on the autism spectrum or with special needs. Come on in. We, we've got headphones, we've got nose plugs. Our staff is trained on how to work with you. You need to, you need a space to hang, come here. Like we, we want people who are shunned or turned away.

Sara Schiller (00:40:56)
'cause we believe we can give you a great experience. And I know that we do, we have so many people who come back and say, this is the first time we actually felt good as a family. We didn't feel weird. We felt great coming into Sloomoo

John Pendergrast (00:41:06)
Me of all things you said, that is the thing that gets you. Up in the morning.

John Pendergrast (00:41:11)
That ability to help like that is, is how I, I'm interpreting what you're saying. I think, I think all great entrepreneurs that come out and build great things have to have a motive like that of some sort. I think they're the ones that last, and the ones that build things that actually change the world. I think that's what you guys are building.

John Pendergrast (00:41:26)
But anyways, I've stolen Tim's, uh, question time, so I'll let him get back to this.

Tim Samson (00:41:30)
No, you brought up a really interesting point and you, you moved into the accessibility with guests, and that's something that, um, I think the industry is striving for in traditional attractions, but lots of times they're, they're, they're left out because of how the attraction is built and how it's designed.

Tim Samson (00:41:47)
Um, but you've thought about this from the beginning of how to make it accessible to everyone, you know, kids. Mm-hmm. Uh, individuals. Who might be in wheelchairs, neurodivergent, the whole thing or the whole, the whole gauntlet of, uh, different types of humans. And I think others in the industry would, would wanna ask you, you know, how do you keep the design philosophy going?

Tim Samson (00:42:09)
And is, is there a slew design guide or bible that they can steal and take into their own attraction? If not, you probably should write one, but

Sara Schiller (00:42:20)
we probably should. Mm-hmm. So we've been lucky enough to partner with method design, and I kid you not, the first hand sketch that was made first Sloomoo, New York, our architect put a person in a wheelchair in it, hand drew it and someone with that sensibility from, without even going deep into what, what our mission is and who we're trying to be is a great partner to have.

Sara Schiller (00:42:44)
So we've had a great design partner. We've had to sacrifice in certain areas and I'll, I'll say the trade offs. Can be difficult, you know, to build something that's super accessible usually costs a lot of money. And so as entrepreneurs, okay, where are we gonna take the money from? And I was lucky enough to work for Steve, hire at Starwood Hotels who taught me about branding.

Sara Schiller (00:43:08)
And one of his philosophies was, um, if, if it's not better, different or special, like don't invest in it. So if you come into our spaces, and I'm, I'm probably gonna be mad because I'm now telling the world about this, but you look at our, our ceilings and our lights, they are not unbelievable. They're, uh, pretty basic lighting our floors con polished concrete floors.

Sara Schiller (00:43:30)
Mm-hmm. Not the nicest floors. Like we haven't invested in a lot of things. I think traditional. For sure traditional retailers invest in, and if it's not like guest facing, touching the guests and something memorable, we pretty much don't invest in it. And it's allowed us, I think, to invest in the things in the right way so that people can access 'em.

John Pendergrast (00:43:52)
That makes sense. I mean, you, you figure out where the things that are important to you, right? You figure out the things that are like, these are the things that are really important and these other things we can do less with, with those and spending in those areas. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. You have the balance of those things.

John Pendergrast (00:44:09)
Yeah.

Tim Samson (00:44:09)
I think we, we all don't have Disney universal money, right? You know, so, so how do you get the most bang for the buck on the guest experience and make it the most successful, which I think you guys have been really, really successful with. But, um,

Sara Schiller (00:44:22)
well, and the design. The design is married with our staff, right?

Sara Schiller (00:44:26)
Like I always say. The, the slime is the star. So people come because of the slime, or their kids want the slime. They don't even know they want it yet. But the people are who makes the memories? It's our staff. And I always say to our staff, I've never gotten an email that says, you know, the Red Fruit Loops slime, you know, fifth, that in was the best slime ever.

Sara Schiller (00:44:50)
But do I get the, the emails saying, you know, oh, Audrey was incredible. She really smiled and taught us how to make bubbles. Yeah.

John Pendergrast (00:44:59)
So my introduction to slime would've happened on Y tv. Like on Y tv we had, uh, uh, I dunno, maybe this is a Canadian thing, but we had a show called, it's a Canadian thing. Yeah, show code.

John Pendergrast (00:45:10)
I was gonna ask. Yeah, it's probably Canadian thing. So there was this, there was this show, and on this show, if anyone said these words, I don't remember what they're at the moment, you would immediately get dropped green slime on you from mm-hmm. Above the lights. And it would just crash into you. And they would have guests on and they had some pretty, pretty big guests.

John Pendergrast (00:45:29)
And, um, inevitably it was a word that people would use accidentally, and all of a sudden they would get slimed. And so that was my first introduction to slime. You know, I'm a Gen Xer when I think of that and I'm like, oh, interesting. Like, you are so far from that idea. You're so far into a much more tactile that was just gross in many senses that that idea what they called slide.

John Pendergrast (00:45:51)
So it's just interesting. How do you advertise, how do you bring in people on slime? Because some people are gonna be like, oh, that's kind of, that's kind of messy, or that's kind of gross. So how do you get them across that line? Yeah. Or do you not have to?

Sara Schiller (00:46:04)
So John, one of our sayings is this is not the slime of your childhood.

John Pendergrast (00:46:10)
I love it. It's

Sara Schiller (00:46:11)
very different, very, very different. And we're in, which many people in the world of attractions and experiences is in, is we're. We're only allowed to market to adults. Right? Yeah. But it's the kids that wanna come. Of course. So how do you get that messaging across and that messaging through?

John Pendergrast (00:46:30)
Yep.

Sara Schiller (00:46:30)
And we have, uh, really cast a, a full approach for marketing that is not just online where Gen Xers are, which, right.

John Pendergrast (00:46:42)
Yeah.

Sara Schiller (00:46:42)
Um, is Facebook, but you know, the Instagram and TikTok of the other kids.

John Pendergrast (00:46:47)
Yeah, totally.

Sara Schiller (00:46:48)
And we, we actually do CCTV. We have television ads. We do outdoor advertising, both in billboards as well as wild posting.

Sara Schiller (00:46:58)
We do radio. Har and I went on a Sunshine tour. Through, uh, the Midwest in the middle of winter, in yellow snowsuits, bringing slime everywhere, uh, to, to get people in Detroit and Grand Rapids to say, come to Chicago. Have a great weekend. Have fun. So we believe that if we can get someone in, they'll also come back because everyone who comes leaves with a slime, like when you buy a ticket, you get to custom make your own slime.

Sara Schiller (00:47:29)
So they're going home with a piece of SL that probably their kids will take, and then they're like, oh, well I wanna go get more. I've gotta get more.

Tim Samson (00:47:36)
Really? Uh, it's really interesting transition that they leave with slime. 'cause your, your model is slightly different than most immersive experiences. You have an 80 20 split and there's an old saying in, I don't know how old it is, but there's an old saying in the space of exit through the gift shop.

Tim Samson (00:47:52)
So like, all these attractions do it, but, but SL is really built around the retail component with your, with your split.

Sara Schiller (00:48:00)
Yeah, so this was probably not the smartest business move to create a business where you give someone the product. I think we did not wake up to this until like a year later when we were like, do people really need to buy another slime when they're custom making their own slime, right.

Sara Schiller (00:48:16)
As part of the experience. So ironically, slime is the number one bestseller in our retail store. People are still buying slime, and I think part of it is that the variations are endless and they're, they're, um, they're super cute. Like there's lots of different ones with clay pieces that are fun to push in.

Sara Schiller (00:48:33)
And then we have a large merchandise piece that's all around our IP and our characters. So, um, you know, it, it is the experience and we like to believe that people will come back and test that out. So the store is secondary. It is secondary. Yeah. But you do exit through the gift shop. So we're, we're, we are trying to tap in.

Tim Samson (00:48:55)
Well, but it does, it does transfer that experience to home. It does. Mm-hmm. Right. They can, they can relive it when they get home.

Sara Schiller (00:49:02)
Yeah. And our, our charms that are in the sign that you make, have a QR code on the back that then tie back into the characters and, you know, our, our digital reality. So we are trying to create a, a 360 world where, yeah, you might go online, but then you'll come back to us.

John Pendergrast (00:49:20)
Okay. So I've got a comment on you guys dressing up in sun suits essentially to walk around in the winter in the Midwest. So I'm Canadian, so I have a snowsuits

Sara Schiller (00:49:28)
Snowsuits snow suits. Sorry.

John Pendergrast (00:49:30)
Snow suits. Yeah. So I, um, I'm a Canadian, so I have a deep relationship with snow, but um, that idea is so hilarious and I mean, this is proof of how not normal entrepreneurs are.

John Pendergrast (00:49:42)
Like who thinks of doing that kinda stuff? Entrepreneurs. I often look around and, and, and look at other team members and go, not everyone's gonna be an entrepreneur, you know, and, you know, but that level of passion that you bring and entrepreneurs bring to things, I think everybody should have that. How do you help the people that you are bringing up with you and that that can, I know you're mentoring people just by doing what you're doing.

John Pendergrast (00:50:05)
You're mentoring staff and team members and people around you. How are you bringing people into that mindset? Because I can only imagine that you're a pretty contagious person that way. Um,

Sara Schiller (00:50:15)
so we, we definitely make an impact. You can see I'm wearing hot pink right here today. Yeah. That's awesome. For our interview, Karen and I were very, very honored recently to win an Entrepreneur of the Year Award from Ernst and Young, which is a, which is a big award.

Sara Schiller (00:50:33)
That's huge. And when we went in, we were, we were dressed up. We happened to have, uh, like slim oo letter jackets. And I, I kid you not, but everyone at worked at Ernst and Young was running up to us saying, you must be the slim oo girls. You must be the slim oo girls. Right. And so immediately everyone knows us and, and are coming up to our table and talking to us.

Sara Schiller (00:50:57)
We had the same thing happen at um, chase recently. We went to an event at Chase and we were dressed up and we have bags of slime with us too. That doesn't hurt 'cause we're passing out goodies. But everyone's coming up to us, and I think our staff is learning by seeing mm-hmm Seeing that we're the only table in the room with everyone flocking.

Sara Schiller (00:51:20)
Mm-hmm. We're, we're the ones where the head of payments for Chase is coming up and saying, I research you guys, I know you. And that leaves an impression on people.

John Pendergrast (00:51:29)
Mm-hmm.

Sara Schiller (00:51:30)
And when you're. Really excited about what you're doing. I, I don't, I don't see how you could work here and not be

John Pendergrast (00:51:40)
Yeah.

Sara Schiller (00:51:40)
Not be passionate

John Pendergrast (00:51:42)
Yeah.

Sara Schiller (00:51:42)
About it.

John Pendergrast (00:51:43)
Yeah. That's, but

Sara Schiller (00:51:43)
I, amazing. I wanna say, for me, it actually translates a little bit back to my older daughter because, um, I used to always say to my younger daughter, like, let your freak flag fly. Because we'd be walking down the street and my older daughter might be moaning or screaming or laughing hysterically, and we might be in a store and she just, she can't stop laughing.

Sara Schiller (00:52:09)
And she's crying, she's laughing so hard. And, you know, at some point it was like, either we're either we're gonna not go out ever, or we're gonna go out and just be like, yeah, this is how we roll. We're laughing and screaming and having fun. And I think you lose that inhibition. Um, if you have someone in your life who's, who's different.

Sara Schiller (00:52:27)
And it's definitely part of, uh, our family's DNA.

John Pendergrast (00:52:31)
It's an incredible, uh, way of seeing things. And here I am, I'm wearing the, uh, the banker suit, essentially the light blue shirt in the van.

Sara Schiller (00:52:38)
Yes.

John Pendergrast (00:52:38)
And, you know, uh, and uh, but I love that, that whole mentality

Sara Schiller (00:52:42)
though. But Tim, Tim, uh, dressed Formu today. He is rocking it.

Sara Schiller (00:52:45)
Yeah,

John Pendergrast (00:52:45)
yeah, yeah. And Tim always rocks it, it's just, uh, it's his thing. You've, you've made a, an interesting statement kind of publicly that you believe that immersive experiences are the future of retail. That. That's kind of a profound statement, especially given that more and more people are buying online and you have the advent of a lot of malls closing, a lot of boarded up buildings in the space.

John Pendergrast (00:53:11)
Tell me a little bit about your thoughts there.

Sara Schiller (00:53:13)
Yeah, I, I think immersive means something really specific. 'cause I think people hear that and they think a room with projectors.

John Pendergrast (00:53:21)
Yeah. Yes, yes.

Sara Schiller (00:53:23)
For us, immersive is your senses. It's tactile, it's emotional, and it's, it's a connection. And I think my 6-year-old will basically grow up only knowing immersive experiences.

Sara Schiller (00:53:36)
Yep. Right? Because if she needs socks, she's never gonna go to TJ Maxx or a Walmart. Mm-hmm. Right? Like for that kind of stuff. But if she wants something that's more specific, she actually wants to engage in the product and the brand and, you know. On a very simple level, that's why Sephora is so effective, right?

Sara Schiller (00:53:56)
You go in, you can try things, there's people to help you experiment. Mm-hmm. And it is somewhat immersive. I don't think big brands who are trying to create immersiveness by being just digital and doing screens are missing the point of a guest or a, a customer experience. And it's only when they take off their hat that you're, they're trying to sell something.

Sara Schiller (00:54:20)
Mm-hmm. And they turn it into, this is the core DNA of our brand that we wanna deliver. And then, oh, by the way, how do we sell it? Right? Are, are that, are things really going to evolve? So it's a really a branding question. What is at the core of your brand and how are you gonna get people to feel that? And the kids, young kids today will only wanna feel they're, they're gonna want that emotion.

Sara Schiller (00:54:42)
'cause they can get everything else. They can buy it online or they can just watch it online.

John Pendergrast (00:54:48)
It's interesting. We, um, we're on a call where we're all digitally connected to each other and, and we're having a good talk. And yet if we were to sit in a room together, we would connect better. And I'm a, I, I love brain science.

John Pendergrast (00:55:00)
I'm fascinated by how our minds work and, and the ways that they work. And they don't know how to describe it yet, but we have some sort of like brain wifi that connects us when we're in a room together that you don't get digitally and they can't replicate digitally. And it's something to do with being in person with each other.

John Pendergrast (00:55:19)
Wow. And I think it's sort of a fascinating environment that what you're saying is we need to connect with people and connect with the brand. And, and when we say connecting with the brand, I think we're saying connecting with the people that are the ambassadors of the brand. Mm-hmm. Because that is what the brand really is.

John Pendergrast (00:55:37)
It, it is more than just a, a nice pretty picture or a logo and, uh, you know, a thought process. It's. Where's that ethos coming from? Mm-hmm.

Sara Schiller (00:55:46)
What I love about what you're saying, 'cause it taps into some research that was done by the National Institute for Play.

John Pendergrast (00:55:53)
Mm-hmm.

Sara Schiller (00:55:54)
Um, I don't know, I've heard of this in Super

John Pendergrast (00:55:56)
report.

John Pendergrast (00:55:56)
Yes. Yeah. So,

Sara Schiller (00:55:58)
um, there, 92-year-old founder, um, discovered that play is the second most important thing to your health after sleep,

John Pendergrast (00:56:11)
really.

Sara Schiller (00:56:11)
And the absence of play can lead to severe social consequences, like interesting. You actually need play to be human, to be a good human to connect and be out there.

Sara Schiller (00:56:26)
There is something about playing that makes your brain go to the, to the place. The same thing as having a good night's sleep. Right. You need to play.

John Pendergrast (00:56:35)
Yeah.

Sara Schiller (00:56:36)
And I believe that, especially for slime, it's connecting you to yourself because you're, you're triggering things in your hand and the scent that, you know, make your brain feel good, but then looking and smiling at other people.

John Pendergrast (00:56:49)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The shared experiences and

Sara Schiller (00:56:51)
sharing it together. Yeah. And that smile and that connection. So you're, you're firing on like three different levels when you come to Sloomoo Institute because you're playing, you're connecting to yourself, and you're connecting to others. And that's why I think people feel so good when they've left.

John Pendergrast (00:57:07)
So I agree with you and I think, uh, we're way off topic here, but this is a fascinating part of the conversation, so let's keep going. They did this study about interconnectivity between people and whether you could get that brain wifi connect going and they only found one other place that they were able to do it digital.

John Pendergrast (00:57:22)
And it's fascinating. It is in extremely immersive and cooperative video games. Hmm. Where you are working, so like, like a, maybe it's a, like a World of Warcraft or some game where you're on a group together, you believe the same, you're, you're achieving the same goal together. It takes effort. There's, you know, ups and downs.

John Pendergrast (00:57:40)
There's these kind of things. You have these communities that get built and then in that they've been able to replicate that same kind of belonging or capability and they don't know why. That

Sara Schiller (00:57:52)
community piece. Yeah, yeah,

John Pendergrast (00:57:53)
yeah.

Sara Schiller (00:57:54)
That community piece is critical. We did a study with good quests where they were looking at loneliness for adults, and one of their philosophies is that.

Sara Schiller (00:58:04)
People aren't necessarily more lonely than they were in the past, but we have a whole language to talk about loneliness now. Right. We have the words and the dialogue to talk about it.

John Pendergrast (00:58:12)
Yeah.

Sara Schiller (00:58:13)
And so they measured people's loneliness and, and happiness and connectedness before and after they were sent slime to their office.

Sara Schiller (00:58:23)
And putting slime in the conference room meant that people would pick it up, start playing, what color do you ha did you choose? What scent did you choose? Mm-hmm. And they were starting to get to know their colleagues. Mm-hmm. In a way that was fun and playful, not just, where's my spreadsheet? Or Why are you losing money?

John Pendergrast (00:58:42)
Mm-hmm.

Sara Schiller (00:58:42)
That for the first five minutes of a meeting, allowed people to be connected. And at the end they were like, the percentage of people who felt connected to their business, connected to each other, less lonely, went way up just from having like a little bit of fly in their meeting rooms.

John Pendergrast (00:59:00)
I have to order a bunch of slime, Tim.

John Pendergrast (00:59:02)
That's what we're gonna have to do. I was thinking the same thing, like,

Sara Schiller (00:59:05)
wait, when we first started and one of the, one of the things when you know you're onto something, we had a meeting and the meetings would go on and on and Karen are like, we're entrepreneurs. Like we, we gotta get going. And in the end of one of these meetings is this woman goes, this is the best meeting I've had all year.

Sara Schiller (00:59:21)
I've never had a meeting. That's so good. Because we've been sitting here playing with Simon. I'm like, no wonder the meeting lasted an hour and a half. Like

John Pendergrast (00:59:29)
everyone was just having fun. Uh, okay, we are, um, we're getting close to the end of our podcast here, which I'm sad 'cause this has been absolutely fantastic.

John Pendergrast (00:59:39)
We're gonna go to something we call the lightning round. We're gonna ask you quick questions and see if you can Oh, boy. Answer quickly. We've never done the lightning round before, so this may be one of those trial and error things that we find out doesn't really work, but let's, let's go for it. So, and the irony of the lightning round is that the very first question?

John Pendergrast (00:59:56)
Super long, which, uh, is, is kind of funny, but, uh, so, okay, so I'm gonna read, I'm gonna read the question out and then you're gonna laugh because it's really long. It says, um, looking at the competitive landscape, meow, wolf's dense narratives, camps, licensed ip, you've forged a third pass for operators who want to build original brands, but don't have a sci-fi universe or Disney movie to start with.

John Pendergrast (01:00:20)
What's your advice?

Sara Schiller (01:00:21)
Tap into something that. Is meaningful in that your love and you're passionate about.

John Pendergrast (01:00:27)
Wow. You just nailed that answer. That was, uh, perfect. That is, yeah. Lightning round. Answer the check mark. It's

Sara Schiller (01:00:33)
a wait a minute. Okay. Is the lightning round like a, a short answer, or is it, did you want like, longer answers?

Sara Schiller (01:00:40)
No, to me, lightning round is like, um,

Tim Samson (01:00:43)
you did perfect. We only have three questions in the lightning rod,

Sara Schiller (01:00:47)
so I, so I can, we can alternate and I can ask, uh, I can ask you guys a, uh, you guys a question. Yeah, we can do that. Yeah,

John Pendergrast (01:00:53)
totally. Go for it. Yeah. Yeah.

Sara Schiller (01:00:55)
All right. So my, my question that I have, 'cause you're looking across a whole industry mm-hmm.

Sara Schiller (01:01:01)
Is, um, how do you think the world, and I'm gonna use specifically of family attractions, family entertainment is evolving.

John Pendergrast (01:01:11)
Good question. Uh, Tim, you wanna go first? I'm happy to

Tim Samson (01:01:16)
jump in. Um, it's been interesting because you have successfully gotten people to put their phones down. But the attractions industry in general have been fighting phones for a number of years.

Tim Samson (01:01:28)
You can't take it on a ride. You can't take it in this experience. We don't want you to take videos, we, we don't want you to share. It really goes against everything that you have built around SL Boo, right? What the attractions industry is doing. And I think that we're starting to shift in a way. We see Disney building rides, like the Tron Light Cycle ride, that actually has a compartment in front of you to put your phone in, right?

Tim Samson (01:01:55)
So you take it on the ride with you, which is something that was really unheard of. But I think that we're shifting back to the guest, right? Like we've tried to fit the, the guest in this cookie cutter, and now it's more of a, what does the guest need to feel connected and disconnected at the same time within the experience to really accelerate that.

Tim Samson (01:02:18)
So I think that we're seeing that more and more. And I think the adoption of smart technology, like I think Disney went too far with, with some of the stuff that they've done in the park. 'cause you can't really experience it without looking at your phone the whole time. But I think the industry is moving, especially family based attractions to the adoption of smart technology.

Sara Schiller (01:02:38)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

John Pendergrast (01:02:41)
So that's a fantastic answer. Also, you completely failed the lightning round 'cause that was like a long answer. And ispo,

Tim Samson (01:02:51)
have I

Tim Samson (01:02:51)
ever given you, have I ever

Tim Samson (01:02:52)
given a short answer in my life? No. So I'll try and answer the question as well. And, and, and that is, I think the definition of family continues to, to change. And I think some of the, you know, more traditional parks out there are continually trying to figure out what that means.

John Pendergrast (01:03:06)
We still think in the idea of two twos and fours, like two, uh, two, uh, two adults, two kids. I think that continues to change. And then I think that the absolute purpose of any attraction. Is to separate you from reality and give you a belonging in a different reality that you can share with the people around you.

John Pendergrast (01:03:25)
Now, that doesn't mean necessarily always your family, although that would be optimal because those are the people you're gonna spend the large portion of your life with, but give you a memory or something else that is just going to be something that you can share with someone else and that's unique to you.

John Pendergrast (01:03:43)
I think that's really hard to do at scale, but I don't think it's impossible. I also, I

Sara Schiller (01:03:48)
agree. I mean, I am finding, and Karen and I have found sources of information through performance art, and I think that what cont, that's what continues to tap our, our, uh, our spirit and our inspiration is going in and seeing artwork where an artist.

Sara Schiller (01:04:08)
Has gone out on the edge and is doing something not scalable. Mm-hmm. But totally unbelievable. Mm-hmm. And trying to be provocative and get you to think differently, see differently, feel differently. And we are always going to try to experience things and bring little nuggets of that back with us.

John Pendergrast (01:04:28)
Mm-hmm.

Sara Schiller (01:04:28)
Um, we just went to an immersive experience in New York City called Viola's Room where you took off your socks No phone, no anything else, by the way. Yeah, Tim. And, um, you know, you had to crawl through tunnels and you had a headset that triggered music. Okay. And you followed light through a maze and, you know, it was good.

Sara Schiller (01:04:46)
It wasn't perfect, but it gave us little ideas. Right. 'cause it was, it was a super cool, interesting way to tell a story. And that's where I think the, a lot of the digital components miss is the storytelling.

John Pendergrast (01:04:59)
Mm-hmm.

Sara Schiller (01:04:59)
Because that's what families want is. To have their own story that's wrapped inside a story that you've been able to create around them.

Sara Schiller (01:05:07)
And if something's really digital, sometimes it's, it's missing that

John Pendergrast (01:05:10)
I agree. I, so, uh, I like to tell stories, so I'm gonna tell a very brief story and then like they can cut it out later. But basically, one of my most profound experiences that I ever had with an attraction, I think I was 11. I, uh, I grew up in Thunder Bay, uh, Ontario, in Canada, and we had something there, an attraction called Old Fort William, which was a historical, um, old British fort up in the middle of the woods protecting the river where they would bring all the materials up and down the river.

John Pendergrast (01:05:40)
And I went there and I spent there, there as a day camp. I remember not wanting to go. But I went as a day camp. There was about 20 kids that went and they spent the day teaching us the history of this camp and how it would've operated. And they had live actors in all the roles. So there was a guy making, there was a guy making canoes.

John Pendergrast (01:05:58)
There was a guy making like, uh, there was a, you know, a blacksmith there were making bread, all these things. And some point at the end of the day they said, we're gonna do something, we're gonna pick six of you. And somehow I was one of the ones picked and they said, go in that room and change into those clothes that you have in the room, in the corners and the numbers we give you.

John Pendergrast (01:06:15)
And I got a gentleman's outfit. And so I put on the beaver hat and the, you know, the suit jacket and stuff like that. And I walked around and all of the people in the park treated me as if I was actually a gentleman of that time. And we got br, we walked through some of the back parts of the place you couldn't see before.

John Pendergrast (01:06:38)
It was just so profoundly magical that there was not a digital thing in sight. Mm-hmm. But I got to be something and pretend to be something and be in a different world for a little bit of time. And they curated the whole thing. But I walked around and I'm like, I wanna go in that building. They're like, okay, you gonna let you do that?

John Pendergrast (01:06:56)
And something about that just got in my head that that's what we're trying to do. We're trying, and

Sara Schiller (01:07:00)
it's so simple. It's so simple. So simple. That's what I love about it. It's analog. Yep. It's storytelling. You got to transform yourself. You got to go to a different place. You were part of a story. Yep. I mean, it's, it, it's awesome.

John Pendergrast (01:07:13)
And I remember it vividly and now I'm 50. Right. So like, these things just stay with you. And I think we're trying to do that in a lot of different places. It's really

Tim Samson (01:07:23)
these curated

John Pendergrast (01:07:23)
experiences,

Tim Samson (01:07:24)
a hundred percent that, that are, that are one off. Like we're, uh, we're experts at building for the masses. And I think the industry is shifting to creating these magical moments.

John Pendergrast (01:07:36)
Yeah.

Tim Samson (01:07:37)
Yeah. That space and you can do it without spending a lot of money. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I do have, uh, I do have one last question for you, Sara. Um, so, so you and Karen, I, I feel weird asking this, but you and Karen are both serial entrepreneurs at at heart, um, and Sloomoo not done. It's just getting started. But what's next?

Sara Schiller (01:07:59)
So we, we may be crazy, but we wanna start another business together, so we're in this together. Um. I, I think we would like to really revolutionize something in the arts. If, if we made a ton of money and didn't have to work, it would be doing something around the arts and, um, performance, art, performative, immersive art experiences and enabling those to come to life.

Sara Schiller (01:08:24)
I think that's what creates, like to John's story about dressing up, is it really can impact kids

John Pendergrast (01:08:32)
mm-hmm.

Sara Schiller (01:08:32)
And change how they view the world as, as well as adults. So I think that's something that we'd, we'd wanna do is to. Tap into all of our artist friend.

Tim Samson (01:08:42)
Mm-hmm. Very cool. Well, we'll be there when it opens.

Tim Samson (01:08:45)
Yeah,

John Pendergrast (01:08:46)
absolutely.

Sara Schiller (01:08:46)
I love that. I love that.

John Pendergrast (01:08:48)
Well, thank you so very much for taking the time with us today. It's been fantastic. I, I hope our, you know, our paths cross again. I'd love to come and see one of, uh, one of your attractions. It sounds like a really good time.

Sara Schiller (01:09:00)
You definitely have to come and we gotta, we'll send you boxes of slime.