If you’re anything like 98% of the population, you probably asked yourself “Doodle-what?!?” when you heard about Doodlestix or found our site online. We have to admit, it’s a question each of us has asked too. At least Bob and I (Matt) have…it was Richard’s crazy idea to get this whole thing started! So today, I’m going to sit down and provide a little bit of background on who and what Doodlestix is and the folks behind it.

It’s probably a good idea to start with the person that came up with the idea. That’d be Richard. In his non-Doodlestix life in an alternate universe, he’s a department chair at Lipscomb University’s new College of Pharmacy. Throughout the years he’s had varying roles in helping kids learn about character education and finally decided to combine his passion for teaching kids valuable life lessons with his passion for writing. As a freshly minted graduate of the Institute of Children’s Literature he began brainstorming ways to positively impact children’s lives and came up with the idea for a character that writes letters to children from a peer’s perspective to teach them about character traits and other life lessons. It was about this time that he ran into Bob in an airport while both were dropping their daughters off for a senior trip.

Bob has known Richard for over 22 years, when both were fresh out of pharmacy school and starting out at Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem, NC. There they started a newsletter about drug information for nurse educators; little did they know they’d start another mailing in the future. Like Richard, Bob’s non-Doodlestix job is in the pharmaceutical industry, working with companies to help improve drug safety and get effective treatments to the patients that need them. When he bumped into Richard at the airport, he had no idea that two years later he’d be working alongside him in a startup for children’s character education. Richard told him about his idea for a character, tentatively named “Doodlestix”, and Bob thought he was crazy! But the idea stuck and grew on him and the two began meeting regularly to discuss and plan a potential company built around this “Doodlestix” character.

Since both were busy working during the day and had other commitments at night, most of the meetings happened during lunch. And since college students have an innate ability to sense a free meal, I (Matt) soon started showing up at these lunches about Doodlestix. Richard and Bob had come up with a solid foundation for Doodlestix, but were missing that one key ingredient – how it would work with the internet. I had previous experience with starting an online store and online marketing so I started helping Doodlestix get its arms around the internet. It’d be nice to say I was able to answer all their questions and come up with a solution but that’s not the case…shoot, we’re just now ready to launch (two years later)! As my dad (Bob) says, “two years, that’s kinda embarrassing….but it sure turned out to be a lot more complicated than we thought.”

During the process of creating Doodlestix, we looked around and realized we were missing something. That something was the wise and insightful input of someone who is around elementary school aged children 24/7 and has two X chromosomes. We had to be honest, our surveys had shown primarily moms were interested in the Doodlestix concept. A second glance around the group and it was apparent the three of us guys might have some trouble connecting with and developing a useful product for moms on our own. To make the Doodlestix letters effective and a tool moms would actually love to use would take the perspective of an educator and mother.

So we recruited Nina, our newest team member, to fill the void. Nina, who also happens to be Richard’s sister, has taught 2nd grade for over 30 years in Nashville and won Teacher of the Year, not once, but twice! Nina heads the Doodlestix Advisory Panel, a group that reviews the story in each letter and provides feedback before it is mailed. In this position, Nina plays an instrumental role in making sure each Doodlestix letter is spot on for age appropriateness, proper reading comprehension level, and content. Basically, she makes sure that each Doodlestix letter your child receives will be “just right.”

There’s obviously a bit more to the history of Doodlestix, but I’ll save that for another post.