A lot of people ask me where the idea for Doodlestix came from.  Sounds kind of crazy, doesn’t it? — a fictitious pen-pal who writes letters to children to encourage them to do what’s right.  It’s actually a bit challenging for us to try to describe what Doodlestix is in a brief sound bite that can be used for advertising and such.

The idea for Doodlestix is actually a convergence of several things in my life that just happened to coincide with this idea.  I have always loved writing.  In high school I was the editor of the school newspaper and I even won an award as a reporter for the newspaper in a nearby city.  Then when I went to college, my English teacher tried to talk me into changing my major from pre-pharmacy to English!  She said I could make a living writing just as well.

But writing seemed too easy for me.  It just kind of came naturally and it didn’t feel like I was actually working when I was writing.  So I stuck with pharmacy, which has been a great career for me.  I’ve worked in community pharmacies, hospital pharmacies, manufacturing laboratories, nursing homes, pharmacy school, medical school, and even in the pharmaceutical industry.  And, yes, while I was in graduate school, I took a part-time job writing medical abstracts for a pharmacy journal!

Fast forward about five years.  In 1983, my wife, Lauren, and I had the first of our three children, a son.  Two daughters followed in the next three years.  During that time, I happened to see an ad in a newspaper magazine for the Institute of Children’s Literature in Connecticut.  They were offering a free writing aptitude test and since I had three kids, I thought it might be kind of fun to write some stories for them and try to get them published.  Long story short, I was accepted into the Institute and began my writing coursework.  It was really cool to be able to write stories and send them in and have them critiqued by some of the best children’s writers in the country!

Well, like a lot of things with me, I got about halfway through this course and got bogged down.  I had changed jobs and had a lot of new responsibilities.  I was also commuting to a medical school about an hour away from where I lived.  So the writing kind of fell by the wayside – for about 10 years!  But it always nagged me that I hadn’t completed the coursework, because I really did enjoy it, so about ten years later, when life was a lot less hectic, I re-enrolled in the Institute and completed the course and received my diploma.

By this time I was working for a large pharmaceutical company and began to get interested in business.  In fact, I got so interested in business, that I enrolled in a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) degree program with the University of Maryland University College, U of M’s distance education program.  I especially liked the part of the program about entrepreneurship, starting up new businesses from scratch.  I thought about trying to start a business in pharmaceuticals, but that takes a lot of investment financing and has a ton of regulatory issues to deal with, so I didn’t want all those headaches.

Then we had a course in the MBA program on business ethics.  This was right after the Enron and Worldcom meltdowns and was a very hot topic at the time.  It occurred to me then that it was kind of sad that we had to have an entire course in business school to teach adults the basics of right and wrong!  But as I reflected on how our culture as a country had changed over the last several years, with less emphasis in schools on good behavior and fewer people attending religious services, it kind of made sense that business ethics was a much needed course in MBA programs.  Also, I observed that a number of people I knew who had small children, realized this was important, but just didn’t know how to go about teaching their children the basics of right and wrong.

Then it all clicked!  Here was a need that a lot of people have.  What if their children could get a letter regularly from another child who would help them understand why it’s important to do what’s right?  The perspective of another child would not appear as an authority figure telling them what to do.  And with the availability of databases and the internet, the letters could be customized to reflect the unique situations of each child and delivered either electronically (to keep costs down) or in the mail if preferred.

Where did the name, Doodlestix, come from?  Believe it, or not, thin air!  My wife and I were driving around one afternoon and I was describing the concept of the business to her.  But I told her that we would have to come up with a really catchy name that kids would like and parents would remember.  Something like, like, like, Doodlestix!  Honest to gosh, that just came out of thin air.  But it stuck, and Doodlestix is alive and well today!

I quickly realized that I was in way over my head for what I envisioned this becoming.  I have a bit of a creative streak and love to write, but I knew I was never going to be able to pull off the technical aspects of this, because I am not that technically savvy.  But I remembered an old friend that I had worked with in the past who was really, really good with databases and operations stuff, so I approached him about my idea.  He quickly brought in his son and a friend of his son who both had previous experience in starting online businesses.  They are responsible for the user friendly website, the customization capability, and the great images and Doodlestix logos you see on our website!  It also just happens that I have a sister who has taught second grade for over 40 years and has developed an entire character education curriculum for her elementary school, so I roped her into being an advisor for us to review the content of our letters and to lead advisory panels with customers about our product and our business.

We are really happy to be able to provide this service for you.  Our primary goal is to help kids learn to do what’s right and stay out of trouble and to provide an easy way for parents to get some help to teach their kids.  If we make some money off of this along the way, we won’t complain, but we have really tried to make it as affordable as possible so that any child could receive these letters without it being a financial burden on the parents.  We welcome ideas, suggestions, comments, and even complaints or criticisms if you have them.  We’ll do our best to respond quickly and use your insight and wisdom to improve our product and service.

Richard Thompson, PharmD, MBA
Founder and CEO
Doodlestix, Inc.