Kid Geniuses! – transcript – Joe, Lora, Joey, and Heidi Hudicka with Kurt Baker

Our host, Kurtis Baker, is joined by Joe, Lora, Joey, and Heidi Hudicka, founders of Fizzee Labs. Find out about app-making, fashion design, entrepreneurship, and more!

Kid Geniuses!

02:05 Kurt Baker: You’re listening to a podcast of Master Your Finances with me, Kurt Baker, a certified financial planner professional Sunday mornings at 9:00 AM on 1077thebronc.com.

 

02:17 Announcer: The financial views and opinions expressed by the host and guest on this program do not necessarily reflect the viewpoints of 1077 The Bronc, Rider University or Certified Wealth Management and Investment. The material discussed is not designed to provide listeners with individualized financial, legal or tax advice.

 

02:33 Announcer: Planning your financial future does not have to be overwhelming. 1077 The Bronc presents Master Your Finances with Kurt Baker, a certified financial planner professional with Certified Wealth Management and Investment. For the next 60 minutes Kurt and his expert team of financial guests will help to decipher financial terms, navigate market trends, interpret federal and state regulations and more, so you can make smart decisions with your money to increase your personal wealth. Missed an episode? Go to 1077thebronc.com and Apple iTunes to download and listen to previous shows. Just look up Master Your Finances. Master Your Finances is underwritten by Certified Wealth Management and Investment, focusing on personal, financial, and small business planning. For more information about all of Certified Wealth Management and Investment Services online its cwmi.us. Now, here’s Kurt Baker with this week’s edition of Master Your Finances.

 

03:27 Kurt Baker: Good morning and welcome back to another edition of Master Your Finances presented by Certified Wealth Management and Investment. I am Kurt baker a certified financial planner professional hosting your show. My office is located here in Princeton, New Jersey. I can be reached through our website which is www.cwmi.us or you can call me directly at 609-716-4700. Today we have quite a special treat. We have not only our largest group, but our youngest group of people here today, and I will explain here shortly. With us are Joey Hudicka, the CLO and Heidi Hudicka, CFO, Lora Hudicka, CHO and Joe Hudicka, President and CEO of Fizzee Labs. We’re gonna get into that in a little bit, but first I’ll give you a little background on each of them. Joey is a global accomplished young innovator and entrepreneur. Began his career when he was five years old combining his love of strategy games like checkers, and sports like hockey, creating the game he named Pucks. Get that right? Hopefully?

 

04:34 Announcer: Yes.

 

04:35 Kurt Baker: When smartphones hit the scene as joey turned seven years old, he was inspired to transform his board game into a video game, becoming the world’s youngest app entrepreneur, achieving sales and downloads in more than 60 countries that year. Today Joey has his sibling Heidi and joined innovative forces delivering interactive learning games and resources that teach the fundamentals of innovation and entrepreneurship from the classroom to the boardroom, proving that creativity is our strongest professional asset in life. And Heidi began her innovation adventure when she was just four years old creating a fashion clothing line for her 18-inch doll collection, desiring them to enjoy a truly unique experience unlike the clothes everyone else was buying in the stores. Heidi quickly became an expert in design, developing a unique ability to inspire creative experiences that her clients would truly love to be part of.

 

05:30 Kurt Baker: When Heidi realized how much she was learning about the power of her creativity, she teamed up with her sibling Joey to create Launch, an interactive board game designed to teach grade schoolers the vocabulary and fundamentals of an entrepreneurship. This team also created Outta This World, an accelerated innovation board game challenge that teaches innovation, collaboration, and communication in a fast fun way. It was these special moments that sparked their own launch of Fizzee Labs, and today through a strategic partnership supporting NASA’s education goals, these launch party fun and learning events are becoming a national competition series.

 

06:13 Kurt Baker: And with us, also, are their parents. The first is Lora Hudicka, who leverages her artistic passion and talents to transform experiences for corporate clients, transforming their identity and operations through through the creation of custom software solutions. Lora is also an accomplished award-winning artist, currently inspired by things lost and found, and nature itself. Combining seemingly random elements to find an otherwise unseen beauty is truly at the core of everything Lora accomplishes, both professionally and personally. Lora is continually inspired to learn as well as teach and empowering Joey and Heidi to achieve their innovation education mission is both a legacy worth dreaming about and actuality being lived which is truly what life is all about.

 

07:01 Joey Hudicka: And last but not least, would be Joseph, who’s the father. And he is a US Managing Director of Neuro Red, the leading global trade and logistics solution in the Salesforce.com app exchange. Recognized by CIO Applications as a Top 25 Logistics Technology Solution Provider, clients leverage Neuro Red to manage more 3 billion in shipments annually. Hudicka also serves on Ryder University’s Center For Entrepreneurship Advisory Board in the School of Business Administration where he also earned his MBA. Hudicka is a 25-year veteran of the supply chain industry and internationally recognized as both a published author and speaker on business process re-engineering, business intelligence, and technological innovation for fun. For fun? How do you have time for fun?

 

[chuckle]

 

07:54 Kurt Baker: Of course your job is fun, right? He volunteers with his wife, Lora, and children, Joey and Heidi, teaching people to transform their creativity into their greatest professional asset through these volunteer efforts as family, figure out how to gamify the teaching of innovation and launch Fizzee Lab’s LLC, which accelerates innovation for all organizations, from classrooms to board room. I think I’ve seen a little bit of a theme here. [chuckle] Throughout all of this. I think it’s fantastic. One, you’ve got your whole family involved in this very, very young. I assume you guys enjoy this, so you’ve found your passion really young and you’ve turned it into a business. No better than having your business be your passion.

 

08:34 Joey Hudicka: Of course.

 

08:34 Kurt Baker: Nothing better than having your business be your passion.

 

08:35 Joey Hudicka: Of course. Exactly.

 

08:36 Kurt Baker: So tell us the… I’m gonna start with you guys since you guys look like you’re raring to go. So Joey, you wanna tell us maybe first what first kind of sparked this whole thing? Just tell us that moment when you realized that maybe this was not just playing. This might be a little more than playing. And then how your parents responded to that.

 

08:50 Joey Hudicka: Okay. So I originally started out… I think that would be a good place to start. I originally started out… What my bio said, when I was five years old. I came home from hockey practice one day and I was playing with these hockey trading cards. Just throwing them against each other, and eventually as the weeks went by, it separated into two separate teams, and then formally into an actual game. So I think that spark actually came when I asked my parents, “Hey, can we turn this into an app?” Right? Because I saw these iPhones, and they looked a lot like an ice rink. And I said, “Hey maybe this could actually turn into something other than just a game that me and my parents play together. Maybe it could be something that other people can play on their phones everyday.”

 

09:32 Kurt Baker: That’s interesting because iPhones had basically just come out. This was like… It was a little brick, nobody under… Everybody had a flip phone.

 

09:38 Joey Hudicka: Yeah.

 

09:39 Kurt Baker: I don’t know if you’ve heard of that or not. [chuckle] , right? So this idea that you had this basically just small television set in your pocket that could make a phone call was really brand new. None of us really knew… Well, none of us… Many of us didn’t really know what to do with it. “I just wanna make a phone call.”

 

09:51 Joey Hudicka: Yeah.

 

09:52 Kurt Baker: Right? But I got this thing that they tell me does other stuff but I have no idea what that means.

 

09:55 Joey Hudicka: But to me, I didn’t know of previous phones in the past, since I was literally just born eight years ago. Or eight years before that. So I thought this was always here, so I was like, “Okay, so let’s use this technology.”

 

10:10 Kurt Baker: That’s why fresh ideas are always good, cause those that have been around too long, we get used to, “Well that’s the way we always did it.” For you, this is the way we always did it cause we just started doing it, right?

 

10:19 Joey Hudicka: Exactly.

 

10:19 Kurt Baker: So this is all… You have a clean slate. And I like the fact that you noticed the way the phone was shaped and you identified with a regular hockey rink. So did you play any hockey at that point? Physically hockey? Or just the card…

 

10:30 Joey Hudicka: Yeah I…

 

10:30 Kurt Baker: You did that too, right?

 

10:31 Joey Hudicka: Yeah I was playing since three years old.

 

10:33 Kurt Baker: Alright. So that was all fitting into what you’d been doing. So you’d been exposed to all this stuff, right? So you started off things and then you were the first… So explain that. You were one of the first apps on the iPhone, right?

 

10:43 Joey Hudicka: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it actually… When I was eight years old it was released. So I helped… I didn’t create the app since I didn’t know how to program back then. I was more into the design aspect of it.

 

10:53 Kurt Baker: Oh why not? You’re eight years old, you don’t know how to program yet?

 

[laughter]

 

10:54 Joey Hudicka: I know. Everyone asks me that question and I don’t know why. They expect me to know Java or something. I don’t know. But it was a really fun experience because we worked with a software development company in India, I think it was called, Xcube. And we had to hop on meetings at like three in the morning. I had to get Dunkin’ Doughnuts Coolatas just to… [chuckle] So I’m bouncing in my seat talking to them about how I want my app to be run and how I want it to be designed. And through, I don’t know, a three month, six month process, we got a finished product. And it was awesome just to have it on my iPod and on my parent’s phones to actually play it.

 

11:30 Kurt Baker: So when you first designed this thing… Cause it sounded like you wanted to just put it on the phone. Was this like, “We’re gonna sell this to 60 countries.” What was your initial motivation? Did you immediately think, “Oh this is gonna be a commercial success”? Or…

 

11:41 Joey Hudicka: No. [chuckle]

 

11:41 Kurt Baker: What was your thought about, “Let’s go call these guys in India, 3:00 AM, and let’s build an app.” You know? So I’m just curious about what you thought was gonna actually happen after you made this thing.

 

11:50 Joey Hudicka: To be honest, I thought just my friends would buy it.

 

11:53 Kurt Baker: Okay.

 

11:53 Joey Hudicka: At first, I didn’t even think we could sell it. Put it for $.99. But then after talking with my parents and talking with the development company, I realized that it cost money to pay this developer to actually develop my app.

 

12:07 Kurt Baker: Right. “I think I’d like to get paid.” [chuckle]

 

12:07 Joey Hudicka: So, I have to price it so I could actually pay them back, right?

 

12:13 Kurt Baker: Okay.

 

12:14 Joey Hudicka: So, I didn’t realize that there would be 60 countries, people from 60 countries buying my app. But it’s just amazing, because just a little kid telling his friends, “Hey I have more countries… [chuckle] People in more countries that you’ve ever been to are buying my app.” It’s just crazy.

 

12:31 Lora Hudicka: Joey can you tell them about the next app that you created like three months later?

 

12:36 Joey Hudicka: Oh yeah, and then I believe it was in 2010, when the World Cup was going on, right? So the original app is called Pucks, right? It’s the hockey app. So the second app I created is a spin-off off of it called Goals, right? So it’s the World Cup version, and I don’t know how many sales that got, but it was on the trending page like that, like in the first couple of days it was on the trending page, it was crazy.

 

12:57 Joe Hudicka: Well the concept there was Joey came to us one day and said, “You know, the soccer field looks kind of similar to a hockey rink. Do you think we could just change the surface of it?” We didn’t use words like skin at the time, right?

 

13:11 Kurt Baker: Right, right.

 

13:12 Joe Hudicka: “Do you think we could change the surface to be like grass instead of ice? And maybe put the teams of the World Cup in since that’s a big event that’s about to happen.” And so we went back in what we call a productive play, our family time when we explore ideas like that. So we went and played a little while and within a little bit of time, he releases Goals, and that was to the tune of nearly 1,000 sales on day one of the launch. So that blew away, and he already had amazing experiences with Pucks, but because he looked at an asset he had already created, saw an idea of how to leverage it in a new way, he ended up shattering his own personal goals. You know, in terms of sales off of that.

 

13:53 Lora Hudicka: One of the cutest stories is Joseph sitting behind the desk with Joe, his dad, researching all the national anthems [chuckle] so every time you get a goal, the national anthem would come up for that country. And it was just so precious, because a lot of countries have different sounds and it was…

 

14:12 Kurt Baker: Oh yeah, very much.

 

14:13 Lora Hudicka: It was just really great. It was a great experience.

 

14:15 Kurt Baker: Cool. So you learn more than just a little bit more about soccer, you learn all the national anthems, right?

 

14:18 Joey Hudicka: Yeah.

 

14:18 Kurt Baker: Can you sing them all now?

 

14:20 Joey Hudicka: NO. [laughter] Not yet.

 

14:21 Kurt Baker: That’s great. Well, we got a lot to talk about today. We’re gonna take a quick break here, we’ll be back, and we got definitely a lot to talk about. So we’ll be right back.

 

14:28 Announcer: We are talking finances, so you can make informed choices for a better financial future. Missed an episode? Go to 1077thebronc.com and Apple iTunes to download and listen to previous shows. Just look up Master Your Finances. Now back to Master Your Finances with Kurt Baker, a certified financial planner professional with Certified Wealth Management and Investment. Exclusively on 1077 The Bronc and 1077thebronc.com.

 

[music]

 

14:56 Kurt Baker: Welcome back, you’re listening to Master Your Finances. We have the Hudicka family here, Joey, Heidi, Lora and Joe. And we were talking in the first segment, just a little introduction. Plus we talked about how Joey was instrumental in creating one of the first apps for the iPhone, which is really cool. It’s now in 60 countries. And you had a little bit of help from India, they kinda did the back end for you, right? So you were the creative guy, you kinda held to your expertise and your parents encouraged you along, which is fantastic. But we also have another great entrepreneur here we wanna talk about Heidi and what you did and how you got started. So just like Joey, what was… When did you first realize… What were you doing when this all started to happen? Can you tell us the story?

 

15:38 Heidi Hudicka: Yeah, so I was playing with my American Girl dolls. And every year we go to New York City for my birthday and we go shopping at the American Girl Doll store and I always see all the outfits they have, but I never really like how this shirt went with this skirt. So when I got back home I decided to make my own outfits for my American Girl dolls. And it was hard to sew, so I did not know how to sew, my mom didn’t know how to sew. So I had to go on YouTube, learn how to sew when I was like four.

 

[laughter]

 

16:16 Kurt Baker: You’re learning how to sew when you were 4?

 

16:18 Heidi Hudicka: Mm-hmm.

 

16:19 Kurt Baker: Oh my goodness, wow!

 

16:20 Lora Hudicka: On a sewing machine.

 

16:22 Kurt Baker: On a real sewing machine?

 

16:23 Lora Hudicka: On a real sew… Not a kids sewing machine.

 

16:24 Kurt Baker: I hope you didn’t have to have the pedals on the bottom. Cause that’s the one I remember, we had the little pedals on the bottom. You probably couldn’t reach the pedals. I hope its plugged in. Did it plug in?

 

16:30 Heidi Hudicka: Yes. Yeah, it plugged in.

 

16:31 Kurt Baker: Hopefully yeah, I hope so.

 

[laughter]

 

16:34 Kurt Baker: That would be a challenge.

 

[laughter]

 

16:35 Kurt Baker: So you… Wait a minute. So you’re four years old, you wanted to create dresses ’cause you didn’t really like the American Girl, which is where all the young girls go, my daughter loved that place. It was like… And it was a little expensive by the way, so you’re probably helping out your parents our from that perspective. [laughter] So you brought it home… [laughter]

 

16:50 Lora Hudicka: That was brilliant, thank you Heidi. [laughter]

 

16:53 Heidi Hudicka: Welcome.

 

16:53 Kurt Baker: Yeah so I don’t know if you realized that but you’re saving them a lot of money too. But you go, “I like the… I want to do it a little differently.” Cause you didn’t like the way it matched, right?

 

17:00 Heidi Hudicka: Mm-hmm.

 

17:01 Kurt Baker: But then you decide you’re gonna learn how to sew, and you knew to go to YouTube to learn how to sew back then?

 

17:05 Heidi Hudicka: Yeah.

 

17:06 Kurt Baker: That’s amazing. So what did you do, how did you learn? Did you know how to search? You’re four years old, right? At this time.

 

17:13 Heidi Hudicka: Yeah.

 

17:14 Kurt Baker: I have trouble searching on YouTube a lot of times. So you search?

 

17:18 Heidi Hudicka: Yeah.

 

17:18 Kurt Baker: You just do a little search? Wow! So can you tell me about that? What did you do? Watch the YouTube and then go over to the machine or how did you do all that?

 

17:26 Heidi Hudicka: Yeah, so I watched the video and then I did practices on scrap fabric and then when I felt like, “Okay, I got this, I’m not gonna sew my finger”, I went on the…

 

17:37 Kurt Baker: [laughter] That’s a good thing.

 

17:38 Heidi Hudicka: I did my actual design that I wanted to. Like the actual clothings.

 

17:43 Kurt Baker: Okay, so how many designs did you start off with?

 

17:45 Lora Hudicka: Well, I just want to interrupt.

 

17:46 Kurt Baker: Sure.

 

17:46 Lora Hudicka: Heidi’s four so she had to learn to measure. So that was something else she had to look up. How do I use a ruler? What are measurements, what’s 1 and 3/4? What is that? And that was a whole lesson in itself, that she had to teach her… To teach her and to teach me because I’m like, “What do you mean? I have to put like an inch… I don’t understand this sew.” She’s like, “Mom, let’s watch the video.”

 

18:08 Kurt Baker: And I don’t sew either, but from what I understand, that sewing clothes for an 18 inch doll is actually harder than sewing real people’s clothes. Because it’s a… You’re tiny little things there. Right?

 

18:21 Heidi Hudicka: Yeah.

 

18:21 Kurt Baker: Right?

 

18:21 Lora Hudicka: And no patterns. So, she did not have a pattern. Now there’s tons of patterns that she can go online and look for it, but she had to design it all herself.

 

18:30 Kurt Baker: How did you do the pattern? Did you draw these out or how did you do all that?

 

18:33 Heidi Hudicka: Yeah, so for… I think it was either for Christmas or for my birthday, I got this little design thing. So it had these little mannequins and I could just draw my designs on them. And then I showed my mom, we went to the fabric store, I got the fabrics I needed, and I came home and I made it.

 

18:52 Kurt Baker: Okay, so now you started making this, so what happened then? These are just for you then, correct?

 

18:57 Heidi Hudicka: No.

 

18:58 Kurt Baker: No?

 

18:58 Heidi Hudicka: At first it started off just for me, but then my friends started seeing them and asked if I could make them some and I was like, “Sure.” But it didn’t really seem like too much for me. But then someone I didn’t know asked for me to make some of the outfits for their daughters for Christmas, and I was like, “Wow, that is really big.”

 

19:20 Kurt Baker: Oh, my goodness. Are you still doing this now, or what do you do? You still doing the dolls now?

 

19:25 Heidi Hudicka: Not as much, but I still have interest in design and I still make clothing for… Yeah.

 

19:29 Kurt Baker: Okay. Well, that’s a great profession if you… Cause it sounds like you’re really talented. If you’re talented at it, we’re always looking for good designers out there ’cause I know people like to buy nice clothes that they like, right?

 

19:40 Heidi Hudicka: Yeah.

 

19:40 Kurt Baker: And not just for the dolls, but also for people, right? So that’s amazing.

 

19:43 Heidi Hudicka: Thank you.

 

19:44 Kurt Baker: Well, so what are you gonna do next, now that you did that? So you like that, right?

 

19:47 Heidi Hudicka: Mm-hmm.

 

19:48 Kurt Baker: Okay.

 

19:48 Heidi Hudicka: So next I’m working on a project to help save the pollinators because.

 

19:55 Kurt Baker: Save the pollinators? Okay.

 

19:57 Heidi Hudicka: ‘Cause I’ve noticed that there’s a decrease in the bee population because everyone is using pesticides on the flowers, which is killing the bees even though they think they’re saving the flowers.

 

20:09 Kurt Baker: Right.

 

20:10 Heidi Hudicka: So I’m coming up with a solution.

 

20:12 Kurt Baker: Oh, you are?

 

20:13 Heidi Hudicka: Yes.

 

20:13 Kurt Baker: That’s really, really important. I know, a lot of people are concerned. I know we’ve changed like what we use on our yard and things now because as this becomes more… People become more aware, as you probably know, there’s a lot of things that we can do that are much more friendly, right?

 

20:27 Heidi Hudicka: Yeah.

 

20:27 Kurt Baker: So you’re starting to talk about that. So you’re trying to find solutions for that? Oh, wow.

 

20:30 Lora Hudicka: So Heidi’s been working on this initiative for three years. And she just won… She belongs to the Girl Scouts and she just won an award for her efforts for three years of working with saving the pollinators. And the award, Heidi, is called the what?

 

20:43 Heidi Hudicka: The Hoven award.

 

20:45 Lora Hudicka: The Hoven award.

 

20:46 Kurt Baker: The Hoven award.

 

20:47 Lora Hudicka: Yeah.

 

20:47 Kurt Baker: Okay, can you describe what you actually… The project, what it was. Can you tell us a little bit? Or no, is that? Can you tell us what you did?

 

20:51 Lora Hudicka: Well, why don’t you say all the things that you did leading up like growing the sunflowers.

 

20:56 Kurt Baker: Okay.

 

20:57 Heidi Hudicka: Yeah, so, I grew like, I don’t know, 100 sunflowers?

 

21:00 Lora Hudicka: 400.

 

21:01 Heidi Hudicka: 400 sunflowers.

 

21:02 Kurt Baker: Oh my goodness, 400, wow.

 

21:03 Heidi Hudicka: I gave them out to everyone I knew so they could… And they were all organically grown, so I hope they didn’t use the pesticides on them. I told them not to. But… [chuckle] So they were all organically grown, so the bees would go on there and they wouldn’t get hurt.

 

21:22 Lora Hudicka: She’s been to different events where she actually teaches children how to grow their own garden, and she had egg shells. [laughter]

 

21:32 Heidi Hudicka: Oh yeah.

 

21:33 Lora Hudicka: She saw this crazy thing on YouTube where you get egg shells, you put soil in it, and you put the seeds in it and then you can grow it and it’s all organic, and we had to eat how many eggs for you Heidi? [laughter] It was a lot of eggs, like over a 100 eggs.

 

21:47 Kurt Baker: You had to eat 100…

 

21:48 Heidi Hudicka: Yeah.

 

21:48 Kurt Baker: A lot of omelets and stuff? [laughter]

 

21:51 Heidi Hudicka: Yeah, but they were good. [chuckle]

 

21:52 Kurt Baker: Yeah, eggs are great. I know use them in the compost and stuff. I know we feed them… We actually feed them to our dogs, believe it or not. We grind them up and cook them and they’re actually… They had protein, I don’t know what they do. They’re supposed to be good for your dog, too. Calcium? I don’t know what they add, but.

 

22:05 Joe Hudicka: Probably Calcium, yeah, yeah.

 

22:06 Kurt Baker: Probably the calcium yeah, so it’s part of what we feed our dogs. Yeah. So that’s great. Yeah, all organic, all natural. So you help saving it, right? So I understand you guys are doing something relatively new, right? And I came across the term first time since I met you guys. Can you tell us… There’s a new term, it’s not STEM but it’s…

 

22:25 Joey Hudicka: STEMIE.

 

22:27 Kurt Baker: STEMIE. So could you describe what that whole acronym means?

 

22:29 Joey Hudicka: Sure, so it’s STEM, which everyone knows STEM is. Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, right? And the IE stands for Invention and Entrepreneurship. So, it adds like the business aspect to creating your ideas, right?

 

22:48 Kurt Baker: Yeah, I think that’s great ’cause you long hear… These skills that we talk about that seem… That people just think are natural in the United States, they can actually be taught. People think you just all of a sudden you become an entrepreneur, but you have a pa… Entrepreneurs tend to have passion, but they don’t always have the business knowledge, right? And that’s always the issue with entrepreneurs is like, “Oh, I love… I’m very creative. I like to do this. I find solutions.” But once they find the solution, they’re not really sure how to make that into an actual business model where they can sell their solution, right? So can you tell us a little bit about how you came up with the… Did you guys come up with it? Where did this come from?

 

23:27 Joey Hudicka: So, we didn’t come with STEMIE. We actually participated in the STEMIE competition this year. There was a national convention, we went as independent inventors, and together we won, me and my sister. We submitted our game, Outta This World. So how the whole process works, is someone finds a problem and they have to create a solution for it, and they go through the different sets of prototypes. And then by the time the conventions come around, the regional conventions, the state conventions, and eventually the national conventions, depending on if you make it or not, right?

 

24:02 Kurt Baker: Okay.

 

24:03 Joey Hudicka: You have to make a tri-fold and display each of the parts of the process. What was your problem, the solution, and everything. So, that’s how the whole thing works, and then through that we won two national awards through STEMIE. And because we were so amazing, they were like, “Okay, so since New Jersey doesn’t have a STEMIE coalition in New Jersey, right? Why don’t you guys start it up?” So, we were like, “Sure, we’d love to do that.” Because that’s exactly what our mission is, to bring innovation and entrepreneurship to as many kids as possible.

 

24:36 Kurt Baker: Oh, that’s great.

 

24:37 Lora Hudicka: So, just a real quick story about STEMIE, they have been running for 35 years.

 

24:42 Kurt Baker: Oh, wow.

 

24:43 Lora Hudicka: They started in Connecticut. The Henry Ford Museum has actually took them under their umbrella.

 

24:48 Kurt Baker: Okay.

 

24:50 Joe Hudicka: Yeah, so STEMIE’s now merged as part of the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation. And so collectively, STEMIE really has a coalition. The coalition formulated just three years ago over the top of the series of invention conventions that were happening in a select number of states. But now, you can see, with the relationship between what the STEMIE coalition set out to do, joining forces with the Henry Ford, right? You now see the reach and the ability to really achieve that bigger goal they have of reaching millions of students every year with this STEM, plus Invention, plus Entrepreneurship education.

 

25:29 Kurt Baker: Yeah, we’re definitely gonna talk about that after the break. This is amazing.

 

[chuckle]

 

25:32 Kurt Baker: So we don’t wanna end there, but yeah, we gotta break for just a few minutes, and we’ll come back, and we’ll talk a little bit more about what that means, and how it’s gonna be implemented, and what we’re gonna do about it, and why it’s a good thing. Be right back.

 

[music]

 

25:40 Announcer: We are talking finances, so you can make informed choices for a better financial future. Missed an episode? Go to 1077theBronc.com and Apple iTunes to download and listen to previous shows. Just look up Master Your Finances. Now, back to Master Your Finances with Kurt Baker, a certified financial planner professional with Certified Wealth Management and Investment, exclusively on 1077 The Bronc, and 1077theBronc.com.

 

[music]

 

26:08 Kurt Baker: Welcome back. You’re listening to Master Your Finances. I’m Kurt Baker, a certified financial planner professional here with the Hudicka family, and we’ve been having lots of fun here. Very creative family, and probably one of the most creative families I think I ever seen. It’s amazing! [chuckle] You guys are all involved in this, so a lot of the creative juices are flowing. Before we had the break there, we were getting… We were kind of in the middle of this STEMIE thing, which frankly, I had never heard of. I’ve heard of STEM, but I’d never heard of STEMIE which adds the Invention and Entrepreneurship to it, which is really great, because having grown up that way in my young life, not as young as you, but loving to create things, and start businesses, and all that kinda stuff, I just, I enjoy it, and there’s a lot of people that enjoy it. But it’s like you create it, and then you learn the business side later. And you hope it works out. And a lot of people, it doesn’t work out. So the fact that you’re actually paying some attention to this, I think is gonna increase the success rate of business owners and people that get into this area, because we all tend to do it a little bit backwards. It’s kinda nice, at least you can do it kinda together. It’s kind of at the same time. [chuckle]

 

27:09 Joey Hudicka: Exactly.

 

27:09 Kurt Baker: Which I think is fantastic. So, Lora, you were talking a little bit about how this was all working to create, the Ford Foundation, how that got involved. Can you kinda go back…

 

27:17 Lora Hudicka: Sure, so part of STEMIE is that their goal is to reach one… How many millions of children?

 

27:25 Joe Hudicka: 10 million children a year, just within the US. And oh, by the way, now reaching internationally pretty rapidly.

 

27:31 Lora Hudicka: So this year, for 2017-2018, it was a 110,000 kids, and 450 made it to Nationals, which was held at the Henry Ford Museum.

 

27:44 Joe Hudicka: The National Convention is called NICEE, so it’s the National Invention Convention for Entrepreneurship Expo.

 

27:51 Kurt Baker: NICEE, I love that. [laughter]

 

27:52 Heidi Hudicka: Yeah. [laughter]

 

27:54 Kurt Baker: So you guys went, so what’d you guys think of that?

 

27:57 Joey Hudicka: We thought it was awesome. It was very professional, I had a lot of fun, I met people from Georgia, Connecticut… There’s a lot of people from Connecticut.

 

[chuckle]

 

28:04 Kurt Baker: Right.

 

28:04 Joey Hudicka: Out of the 450, a third of them were from Connecticut.

 

28:07 Kurt Baker: So did you learn things from some of your peers? ‘Cause that’s kinda what conventions are all about, you kinda just share knowledge. What’d you come away from that? What kinda things, one or two things that you maybe learned while you were there?

 

28:17 Joey Hudicka: How to use a Raspberry Pi to make a health monitor.

 

[chuckle]

 

28:20 Joey Hudicka: Which is really cool, and someone even used… Whoa. [chuckle] Someone made this fire hydrant, that if a car goes in front of it… You know how it’s illegal to park in front of a fire hydrant?

 

28:33 Kurt Baker: Yes, it is. Very much so.

 

28:35 Joey Hudicka: So he made a sensor for the fire hydrant, so that if someone stands in front of it, or someone parks in front of it for more than two minutes, then it alerts a police station.

 

28:43 Kurt Baker: Oh!

 

28:44 Joey Hudicka: Which is really cool.

 

28:46 Kurt Baker: That’s great!

 

28:47 Joey Hudicka: Yeah. Learning how .

 

28:48 Kurt Baker: Did you go as well, Heidi? Did you get to go?

 

28:50 Heidi Hudicka: Yeah.

 

28:50 Kurt Baker: So what’d you think of the convention?

 

28:51 Heidi Hudicka: I thought it was really great, not only did I get to see other people be creative and innovative, I also got to learn how to be more social. ‘Cause I used to be very shy, but now I’m not.

 

29:03 Kurt Baker: You’re shy? You’re not shy now!

 

[chuckle]

 

29:06 Kurt Baker: That’s great! You’re talking about it, ’cause it’s something you love, that’s always good. One way not to be shy is to have something you really love to do or talk about, and then it makes it a lot easier, right?

 

29:14 Heidi Hudicka: Mm-hmm.

 

29:14 Kurt Baker: So you guys are doing something here in New Jersey, which I think is amazing, ’cause we wanna be like the Silicon Valley of the East Coast, is what everybody here talks about professionally, but I’m a little surprised we don’t have this presence really, is that the case?

 

29:29 Joey Hudicka: Yeah, we just haven’t had it for… I don’t know, ever since STEMIE was created 35 years ago.

 

29:33 Kurt Baker: Wow.

 

29:34 Joey Hudicka: And we’re trying to bring it this year, and hopefully have even more kids than Connecticut. We have a little friendly competition going on with them to try to get more than 150 this year.

 

29:45 Kurt Baker: Oh, that’s good.

 

29:45 Joey Hudicka: Most in the National Convention.

 

29:46 Kurt Baker: So what are you guys gonna do to get more people involved? What types of things are you gonna do to get more students aware of this?

 

29:51 Joey Hudicka: So we’re talking to lots of schools. The high school outreach of STEMIE isn’t as great, so we’re trying to target high schoolers, so we could bring an even mixture between middle schoolers, elementary school kids, and high school kids. So there could be an even distribution between everyone, and we’re targeting a lots of schools, public schools, private schools.

 

30:11 Lora Hudicka: So STEMIE is a not-for-profit organization that provides free STEM curriculum for K-12, and it is core and…

 

30:23 Joe Hudicka: NGSS.

 

30:24 Lora Hudicka: Approved. So, thanks Joe.

 

[laughter]

 

30:27 Joe Hudicka: No problem, I’m here for you.

 

[laughter]

 

30:32 Lora Hudicka: So it is something that the school systems can use and it is a free curriculum.

 

30:37 Kurt Baker: So, what’s GSS? I’m sorry, I heard you… The core.

 

30:39 Joe Hudicka: It’s a sciences, it’s a sciences sort of guideline, education guideline, right? So to become CORE aligned is really important, right? And similarly, from a STEM perspective you want to be aligned from a science education specifically. But have that added element of invention plus entrepreneurship. The way we look at it as a family, it’s one thing to teach how to make stuff, and I think STEM does a great job of teaching how to make stuff. But you’re largely going to attract an audience that is already inclined to being a scientist, technologist, an engineer, or a mathematician. You might miss out on the kids that are interested in creating something to solve a problem. And so when you look at the shift in this curriculum when you look at the STEMIE curriculum you’re starting to teach why to create something.

 

31:28 Kurt Baker: Okay.

 

31:29 Joe Hudicka: And when you can help someone learn how to connect with their passion to find the impact that they wanna make in the world. And then teach them it’s possible and you don’t have to be the expert in all the skills necessary, the collaboration, and those kinds of elements start making a whole lot of sense and start happening naturally. I think that’s gonna be the real true genuine impact that we’re all gonna see as New Jersey takes on Joey and Heidi’s challenge here to launch New Jersey’s first invention convention with the STEMIE curriculum.

 

32:01 Kurt Baker: I just think that’s totally amazing ’cause one of the things I think all of us, including businesses that have been around a long time, is that outsourcing and collaboration and communication with people who do things better than you do and finding out what you are best at and what you should spend your time at and then allowing others to partner with them to do those other pieces that need to happen. That’s what a lot… Even large businesses have trouble with that. They’re constantly reorganizing and trying to figure that out. So the better you get at that, I think the more successful you’re gonna be.

 

32:29 Lora Hudicka: So their game that they created and won at STEMIE is called Outta This World, and it actually teaches people innovation in a fun way that also incorporates collaboration, communication, and creativity. So that just goes hand in hand, what you just said.

 

32:47 Joe Hudicka: Imagine being handed five random criteria, and you need to invent a brand new product or experience, brand it, pitch it, price it, and get your competitors to invest in you, in 90 seconds.

 

33:01 Kurt Baker: In 90 seconds?

 

[laughter]

 

33:01 Joe Hudicka: Yeah. Welcome to Outta This World.

 

33:03 Kurt Baker: That’s pretty quick.

 

33:06 Lora Hudicka: The game itself is made in the United States, Launch was made in New Jersey and it was something that was important to the kids, so they could see it being made just because they can do quality control. They could say, “Oh that cards wrong.” And actually see it. But they’re learning the value of different things.

 

33:24 Kurt Baker: That’s amazing. I’d… Use this for older people too, right? ‘Cause this applies to everybody, I think.

 

33:30 Joe Hudicka: That’s exactly right. Joe, you wanna talk a little bit about the adult use?

 

33:34 Joey Hudicka: Sure. So we do many events, we do school events, we even do corporate events. We’ve worked with Chambers of Commerce, to produce more innovation and more ideas and all that stuff. So we work with a lot of different types of groups.

 

33:46 Joe Hudicka: So, professional audiences, both shared, as well as within companies literally are working with Joey and Heidi and starting their events with the Out Of This World breaker… Brainstorm as like an ice breaker.

 

34:00 Heidi Hudicka: And we also found a study that NASA did where when you’re five years old, your creativity level is at 98%, but when you’re adults, you only have 2%.

 

34:09 Kurt Baker: Oh no, we gotta fix that. And with that, we’re gonna talk more about NASA when we come back from the break right? And you guys gonna tell us what’s going on with NASA. So these guys are truly are out of this world. We’ll be right back.

 

34:19 Announcer: We are talking finances, so you can make informed choices for a better financial future? Missed an episode? Go to 1077thebronc.com and Apple iTunes to download and listen to previous shows. Just look up Master Your Finances. Now, back to Master Your Finances with Kurt Baker, a certified financial planner professional with Certified Wealth Management and Investment, exclusively on 1077 The Bronc, and 1077thebronc.com.

 

34:50 Kurt Baker: Welcome back. You’re listening to Master Your Finances. I’m Kurt Baker, certified financial planner professional, here with the Hudicka family, Joey, Heidi, Lora, and Joe. And we’ve been doing all kinds of fun things and learning, and we’re getting better and better at learning. And now New Jersey is bringing in the STEMIE, you guys are like entrepreneurs on that. And before the break, Heidi told us that a little bit about NASA, but there’s actually more about NASA. So what’s going on over at NASA now?

 

35:12 Joey Hudicka: So they’re actually partnering with us to bring our game Outta This World to as many kids as possible to help increase innovation in the younger generation. So it all started with our game Launch, right? So we put on an event with Chamber of Commerce and the YMCA and we had all these different political leaders, like all the leaders in New Jersey come out to speak. And after the event, everyone thought it was a great, they thought it was awesome. So, one of them actually came up to us and said, “Hey, I know someone who works in… ” I believe it’s the Strategic Partnership Division of NASA. And he’s like, “I want to introduce you to him.” And literally, five days later, me and my family, we took a road trip down to the the Goddard Space Center to meet with, I think his name’s Darryl Mitchell, right? And what was supposed to be a one hour interview, or a two-hour interview about our games, turned into a four hour experience where we got to tour around NASA. And he was like, “This game is so awesome”, talking about Outta This World, that he wants, like I was saying before, that he wants to bring it to as many middle schoolers and work into his program Oppspark.

 

36:24 Kurt Baker: So one thing about the… Well, that’s great. So one thing you just taught us is networking is important, right? Getting out there and preparedness meeting opportunity, right? So you were prepared and you found the opportunity and you took advantage of it. That’s fantastic. So when you had your meeting you were already to go. So can you tell us a little bit about what the game does and why NASA found that so interesting.

 

36:41 Joey Hudicka: Sure. So what the game is, is… Imagine creating an idea based off of five random variables. Seems really easy, right? One tell… Two of them tell you who and where your idea’s gonna help. So let’s just say people under water. And the other three are homophones that you have to incorporate into your idea. So I believe it’s homophones, I’m not that good at English.

 

37:05 Kurt Baker: Okay.

 

37:05 Heidi Hudicka: Homophones, yep.

 

[laughter]

 

37:08 Joey Hudicka: My sister’s…

 

37:08 Kurt Baker: She’ll help you out over here.

 

37:12 Joey Hudicka: My sister’s better than me. She’s only in fifth grade, but she’s…

 

[chuckle]

 

37:13 Kurt Baker: See that’s partnering, right? Absolutely. Everybody has their specialty.

 

37:15 Joey Hudicka: Collaboration.

 

37:16 Kurt Baker: Collaboration, yep, absolutely.

 

37:18 Joey Hudicka: Yeah. So you have to incorporate those into your idea. Now the great thing about homophones is that there are two different meanings to one word. So like baseball bat and a flying bat. So it gives more options to the person creating the idea. So now you have to do it in 90 seconds. And then…

 

37:35 Kurt Baker: 90 seconds?

 

37:36 Joey Hudicka: Yeah. You have to come up with the idea, collaborate with… You could collaborate with the rest of the members of the game. And once you create that idea, the next 90 seconds is flipped over where you pitch it, price it, and sell it to those same competitors. Which is pretty fun. Now our money’s in billions cause we’re partnered with NASA and everything is all space themed, hence the name Outta This World, cause we’re also partnered with NASA. Before it was actually named The World Changer Challenge and the board itself looked like a football field. But after our meeting with NASA Darryl said to us, “If we’re working with you, let’s try to make it more space themed so it fits with our theme of being a space organization.” So yeah.

 

38:21 Kurt Baker: So what’s the theme now?

 

38:22 Joey Hudicka: Space.

 

38:22 Kurt Baker: Okay, so space. Well, space…

 

38:27 Joey Hudicka: Yeah.

 

38:27 Kurt Baker: There’s more than just space in it, right? So I assume you… [chuckle]

 

38:29 Joey Hudicka: So how the journey… The background of what the game is about, is you’re on a space ship trying to go to the next strange rock.

 

38:40 Kurt Baker: Okay.

 

38:40 Joey Hudicka: And you only have a selective… You only have a couple bits of stuff you can bring with you on space ship cause there’s not enough room to bring everything, right?

 

38:48 Kurt Baker: That’s definitely true in space, absolutely. [chuckle]

 

38:50 Joey Hudicka: So you have to… So you’re travelling from rock to rock, planet to planet, and you have to pitch to these aliens, these alien civilizations…

 

38:58 Kurt Baker: Pitching to the aliens, I love this. [chuckle]

 

39:00 Joey Hudicka: That your idea is actually worth buying. And it’s a lot more innovative…

 

39:05 Kurt Baker: They have different currencies no matter what you’re… [laughter]

 

39:07 Joey Hudicka: No, no, it’s all in billions of dollars. Outta This World cash.

 

39:11 Kurt Baker: So it’s the galactical currency now? Not not just the international currency? The dollar now? Okay so it’s still hanging in there a little bit.

 

39:17 Lora Hudicka: We would love to see some of those billions on the space ship when they go up the next time. And so maybe just leave it up there and frame it and take a picture of it for us to see the money there.

 

39:28 Kurt Baker: Oh.

 

39:28 Joe Hudicka: Imagine when it gets played on the space station. How cool is that gonna be?

 

39:32 Joey Hudicka: Rockets flying every where.

 

39:33 Kurt Baker: Oh that’s…

 

39:34 Joey Hudicka: Literally, cause our pawns are actually rockets. They’re injection molded rockets.

 

39:37 Kurt Baker: Okay.

 

39:38 Joey Hudicka: Yeah. Funny story with that. Originally, they were three 3D printed rockets. But what we found is that it takes an hour and 30 minutes to print four of them. And even though we have a lot of maker spaces and libraries to help us out printing them, it just takes a lot of time.

 

39:52 Kurt Baker: Right.

 

39:52 Joey Hudicka: And if we’re mass-producing these games, we can’t… We need a faster way. So that’s where injection molding came in. We found a great company in New Jersey who did it for us.

 

40:02 Heidi Hudicka: But before they were 3D printed, or injection molded, they were quarters cause that’s always important.

 

[chuckle]

 

40:09 Heidi Hudicka: To start somewhere.

 

[chuckle]

 

40:12 Joe Hudicka: And I’d just like to add one more important point there. There’s an amazing organization, it’s called the NJMEP, the New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Program. When you look at the journey… As Joey and Heidi have been explaining it to you today. There’s been really key really key relationships that they’ve been able to find as a result of just getting out there and sharing their ideas and experiences with people. And each of those bring greater introductions. Well, the New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Program literally single-handedly stepped up to help Joey and Heidi answer that challenge they had of, “How do we make the games here? We want to see the games get made. We don’t want it to just show up in a box.”

 

40:56 Kurt Baker: I love this. Great.

 

41:00 Joe Hudicka: And it’s… It’s literally John Kennedy, and Lenoir Desantes, and the leaders of the New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Program that sat down with Joey and Heidi, introduced them to several organizations. MM Molding, in particular, that stood up and helped Joey and Heidi solve that time problem of how do you produce the rockets faster. And taught them how to switch from the prototyping technology of 3d printing to the injection molding process, and then helped them make it happen. That kind of learning, sure you could probably pick it up from textbook. But having an idea that you really want to see come to life, creates a whole different level of experiential learning. And that’s what we aim to see happen statewide with the New Jersey Invention Convention next.

 

41:46 Kurt Baker: So that’s great. So it’s actually being produced right here in New Jersey. Sometimes people forget we actually do produce stuff here.

 

[chuckle]

 

41:52 Kurt Baker: Cause everybody’s… Everything’s going somewhere else, right? Overseas, down South, wherever, right? But we actually do make stuff here. And they help to keep the… They’re keeping the business here too, right? So now they’re getting a young entrepreneur family to do their work right here in New Jersey. And of course, now you don’t want to ship it as far ’cause people are gonna buy stuff here too, right?

 

42:09 Joey Hudicka: Exactly. Yeah, you can buy this on our website, fizzeelabs.com, F-I-Z-Z-E-Elabs.com. Double Z, double E, that’s how I remember it.

 

42:17 Kurt Baker: Okay.

 

42:17 Joey Hudicka: And you can buy it there, it’s only $55 which is really cheap for education games. They’re crazy nowadays, it’s crazy. But for Launch, it’s also on our website, $75. But with that, you also get the IACT, Which is our young entrepreneurs dictionary. It has all the words that me and my sister came across during our entrepreneurial adventure and it’s written by kids for kids. I actually spent a couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks, I’m kinda putting it off. But I spent two weeks on it to just to get back to what I was talking about. And my sister edited everything.

 

42:54 Heidi Hudicka: To make sure kids my age would understand.

 

42:57 Joey Hudicka: Yeah. That’s the good part about it.

 

42:58 Kurt Baker: That’s just great, ’cause you get two… ‘Cause you guys are five years apart, so you get a different perspective from an age standpoint, too. That’s fantastic.

 

43:04 Joey Hudicka: We have a good brother sister relationship. Yeah.

 

43:06 Joe Hudicka: And frankly, I learned a lot more about business than I actually understood, it turned out, by the time I got to read their take on these words too.

 

43:14 Kurt Baker: That’s pretty good considering you have an MBA, you’re learning from your kids, because they have real life experience, right?

 

43:18 Joe Hudicka: I’m proud enough to admit it. [chuckle]

 

43:19 Kurt Baker: But that’s true. That’s so true, ’cause you gotta match the schooling, which is important, with the real life experience and the on the job training, which is really, really important. And more and more schools are finding that out. You gotta put people out into the real world ’cause that’s where you start really… This all starts to gel, right? As to what it’s really supposed to be.

 

43:40 Joe Hudicka: Well, and how awesome is it, guys, that we’re doing this interview right now where? But at the radio station of Rider University, who has stepped up, right? To be your lead strategic partner in providing the venue for New Jersey’s first invention convention, too.

 

43:56 Joey Hudicka: Which will be on Saturday, March 16th, of 2019, which is gonna be really fun. There’s gonna be a lot of people here, so hopefully any kids listening, if there’s any, try to bring it to your schools and we hope to see you there.

 

44:09 Kurt Baker: Yep.

 

44:10 Lora Hudicka: Or email us. Joey, you know our email address. Email us and we can definitely talk to somebody in your school too. So Joey tell them our email.

 

44:18 Joey Hudicka: Alright, so it’s either Joe, Lora, Heidi, or Joey @fizzeelabs.com. F-I-Z-Z-E-E, double Z, double E.

 

44:27 Joe Hudicka: If you wanna hit us all at one time, it’s just innovate@fizzeelabs.com. We’ll make it even easier for you.

 

44:34 Joey Hudicka: I’m more complicated. [chuckle]

 

44:35 Kurt Baker: Alright. Go ahead.

 

44:36 Joe Hudicka: We’re here and not only are we ready to provide that free curriculum, we’re gonna be here to help train and mentor every step of the way. If you’re ready to help the children in your community spark their creativity through STEMIE, you’re not alone. We’re gonna be here to help. We can’t wait to see you as part of the first ever Invention Convention.

 

44:54 Kurt Baker: Absolutely. Fantastic. You guys have been a wonderful family. I just love everything you guys are doing. You’re working as a family. Family that works together, has fun together. What more could you ask for, right? So again, thanks everybody for coming. We talked about a lot of things today and so we appreciate it very much. And now… You started off with an idea when you’re very young and now you’re working with NASA and you’re literally in outer space. You’ve gone all the way down the road. Just keep it up and keep going and keep up the great work. We love the fact that you enjoy what you’re doing. You’ve been listening to Master Your Finances, and you can reach us at 609-716-4700, or www.cwmi.us. Our Facebook page is facebook.com/masteryourfinances. You can listen to this podcast as well as all of our podcasts at MasterYourFinances.us. Together we can master your finances so you can enjoy financial piece of mind.

 

45:47 Announcer: The financial views and information provided by Master Your Finances and its guests are intended for general informational purposes only. The material discussed is not designed to provide listeners with individualized financial, legal, or tax advice. Always consult your financial planner for professional advice.

 

[music]

 

46:02 Announcer: You’ve been listening to Master Your Finances with Kurt Baker, a certified financial planner professional with Certified Wealth Management and Investment. Exclusively on 1077 the Bronc and 1077thebronc.com. Tune in every Sunday morning at 9:00 to learn everything you need to know about personal and small business financial planning, including investing, estate planning, insurance, employee benefits, 401 [k], 43b plans, retirement planning, and more. Missed an episode? Go to 1077thebronc to download and listen to previous shows. Master your Finances is underwritten by Certified Wealth Management and Investment, focusing on personal, financial, and small business planning. For more information about all of Certified Wealth Management and Investment services online, it’s cwmi.us. Be sure to listen every Sunday at 9:00 to Master your Finances exclusively on 1077 the Bronc and 1077thebronc.com.