We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Azhelle Wade. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Azhelle below.

Azhelle, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

Funny enough, my entire business model is a diverge from the industry standard! The toy industry is known for being secretive, and not being that easy to break into. When I created The Toy Coach and started my podcast Making It In The Toy Industry I created an open space where insights and lessons from the toy industry could be shared. This has resulted in increased awareness of the toy industry, increased knowledge for aspiring toy and game creators, and more opportunities for getting toy jobs, networking with toy executives, pitching products, and selling ideas.

When I first started my podcast, toy industry executives that I respected would message me and tell me how much they loved every episode and how valuable the insights I’m sharing are. I honestly didn’t believe them at first. But a few months in I started winning various awards for my work as The Toy Coach from a TAGIE “Game Changer” award in 2021 to a Women In Toys Wonder Woman “Storyteller” Award In 2022.

I’ll never forget the first toy industry event I went to where an experienced toy pro told me how clever my approach to my business was. This gentleman told me that my distinguishing of toy inventors, entrepreneurs, and executives was really smart and he’d never seen it positioned that way before. It made me realize I had a true vision and that I should trust myself.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I studied Toy Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC. I chose toy design because I love kids and I love creating things. I know that sounds simple but ever since high school art class I remember telling my teacher I wanted to just “make things” even though I didn’t know what things I could “make” for a living.

For 10 years of my toy career, I worked the corporate toy life. I sketched out toy concepts, doll fashions, toy cars, and play sets. I built prototypes out of wood, foam-core, and fabric. My toy jobs brought me to China to work with factories while developing and testing new products. The BEST part of working for corporations was seeing my product on shelves at stores. It’s always a surreal moment seeing something that once lived in my mind, on shelves at a store and watching someone put it into their cart.

Today, I offer an online program for those who are just getting started in the toy industry and 1:1 coaching for those who already have sales and are looking to generate even more. I help my clients stay on track, keep motivated, focused, and help them with copywriting, design, and marketing. For my students, I help them increase their toy industry knowledge, and contacts and provide them with all of the resources and guidelines that I WISH had been in place when I first started in this industry.

I remember when I started my very first job at a major arts and crafts company, I had just finished designing a product that would end up in Walmart. My boss gave me an email address to our factory contact and said “Azhelle, develop this product with them!” And that was it. I was so lost! I remember writing the most unnecessarily lengthy email to that poor factory manager. It took me a few years and a few incorrect samples to figure out the right way to communicate with factories efficiently. I watched and learned while developing hundreds of products, and so now in my online course, Toy Creators Academy, I provide my students with templates, guidelines, and contacts that allow them to skip the decade-long learning process and get a head start!

I’m most proud when my students message me to tell me about their wins. A student recently texted to tell me her product would be in Barnes & Noble, another student messaged to tell me a toy company is interested in licensing her game, another got a major national news feature for her doll line, and another wrote to let me know her new sales strategy was paying off! I love hearing about those wins, and I’m always encouraging my students to share their wins in our private Toy Creators Academy Facebook group to inspire others. I believe that SEEING what is possible is half the battle of achieving it because it helps you believe that it can happen and that YOU can get there.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson I had to unlearn was this: Hire out for any and all low-level tasks as soon as possible to free up your valuable time to generate more revenue.

In the summer of 2021 I had one of my best months so far. I immediately wanted to free up my time by hiring someone to help with social media. I eventually hired an agency but realized quickly that the “low-level” task of posting on social media, actually required a “high level” of planning from me. Since I invested quite a bit into hiring this agency, I left the planning to them but didn’t feel that the resulting posts matched my personal style. I ultimately decided to stop working with the agency, realizing I needed a full social media strategy of my own before bringing in a task focused team.

Later on, I would hire various team members to manage my podcast but later realized that the team needed “high-level” organization to act efficiently.

The lesson I’ve learned is this. When you’re a small business, every bit of money you spend should be closely tied to revenue generation. Low level tasks typically are not tied to revenue generation but hiring out for those tasks too soon can actually cost you time and a lot of money.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

My audience on social media was built on other platforms. I encourage everyone to do this! Get yourself on podcasts, get interviews on YouTube, pitch yourself for local TV, send your product out to gift guides. Build your audience away from social media, and they will find you on social media.

Once they find you, give them a reason to be there. It can be for entertainment, education, or simply for sharing snippits of your life.

Don’t feel too committed to any one style for social media, I say do whatever you want and change your style or delivery whenever you want to.

Consistent posts are boring and for my channel don’t get as much engagement as the off the cuff posts. Try new things often, and don’t be to hard on yourself if you need to take a break.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thetoycoach.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/thetoycoach
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetoycoach/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azhellewade/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/thetoycoach
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/thetoycoach

Image Credits
most were taking by my husband Christian Castro