16: Running a Children’s Museum & Uplifting the Community (w/ Angeline Howell & Laurel Ginn)

Welcome, Angeline and Laurel.

Thank you for coming on.

I know you both are incredibly busy people, and you’re running a children’s museum, so you’ve got the child aspect of how wild that is.

I have a one and a half year old, and so I can’t imagine having 20, 50, however many little ones around and trying to get work done.

So first off, kudos to both of you.

I wanted to start by first thanking you out of your busy schedule taking this time.

And I want to understand from both of your perspectives right out the gate so that people know you’re both run a children’s museum, the most awesome children’s museum here in Florida, Great Explorations.

What does Great Explorations do?

And I know it’s hard to put it in a nutshell because I’m very knowledgeable about what you do.

And what makes it unique compared to other children’s museums?

And I know I’ve got two of you here, which is the first double person interview, however you say that.

So I’m going to let you sort through who answers first.

Well, I always let Angeline go first.

She’s the CEO.

Well, Great Explorations is a hands-on children’s museum.

And our mission is to stimulate learning through creativity, play, and exploration.

So we invite children and families of all abilities to come and learn through hands-on play and interaction and cause and effect.

But what a lot of people don’t know is we’re so much more than a museum.

We have an award-winning preschool where we have 110 children ages 2 years old through VPK attend every day year-round on-site.

We have an after-school program which we pick up from five area schools utilizing three of our vans.

They come on-site, they do homework, they have a snack, and then they learn through hands-on play as well until pick up.

So when Pinellas County schools are closed, we host school-age children as well.

In addition to that, we have outreach services and we partner with a lot of community partners to not only reach the children who come to us, but to break down any barriers and go to them, whether that’s the community, in the schools, wherever we can reach the majority of the kids of all ages.

But what makes us unique is we are the very first children’s museum of our size to earn an accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums, and that’s the highest honor any museum can receive.

So we are now held to the same quality of standards with museums such as the Smithsonian, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and locally the Dali.

That’s impressive.

And whatever else you want to add.

I don’t know, but I’m sure you can add.

Well, just like Angeline stated, we do work on breaking down barriers.

So we try and think outside the box on how can we provide a gap to our community.

We do a lot of community surveying.

We talk to our guests.

We talk to our donors and our sponsors of what else is needed.

And so we offer specialized programs around those things.

For instance, every second Sunday of the month, we host Great Connections, which is a sensory-friendly program at Great Explorations from 10 to 12, where we limit the amount of guests that we come in.

We lower the lights, not have our over-stimulating exhibits on, and we offer that to those families for free because we know the importance of coming to a place like Great Explorations, but how that can also be a financial barrier for those families who have so many other burdens to worry about when caring for their families.

And, you know, even outside of just what we do for children, we’re going to be bringing back a program to focus on adults with memory loss, which is called Memory Mondays because studies show the difference that that can make in those adults when they interact with children.

So I feel like Great Explorations does a really great job of finding out what the community need is and helping to facilitate that need within our capabilities, whether that be on-site, off-site, private rentals, really anywhere GreatEx tries to help.

It’s clear from my relationship having developed with you guys is you guys don’t just talk about doing stuff.

You absolutely do it and you’re out in the community.

You’re actually serving the community in so many different positive ways.

And it’s not just on-site, you’re out and about doing different things.

Like you have a traveling planetarium.

How cool is that?

That’s wild.

We have two.

Not just one.

Yeah, we have two.

We have one large one that we travel to the Pinellas County Schools right now for middle school and then we have a smaller one that we use for our outreach programs.

Or if we need to double book the schools for any reason for scheduling, we have another one that we’ll send out.

But we will take our mascot, Morris the Explorosaurus, who’s our chief executive dinosaur.

He’ll visit the kids at All Children’s Hospital, the place where they might not be able to leave and come to Great Explorations.

We will go and make an impact with those families as well.

It’s so commendable that you take advantage of that wonderful resource of Morris the Explorosaurus.

How can we utilize that figure, our mascot, to do more good?

And that’s like a beautiful thing because otherwise the suit would just be sitting there in the closet or wherever you store it, gathering dust rather than putting it to great use, making improving someone’s life or day or putting smiles on children’s faces.

It’s getting a little bit goose bumps just now thinking about it because it’s awesome.

I think what is a great thing that this interview will allow us to do is peel back the onion and discover the different layers of what you guys do because a lot of people think like, oh, children’s museum, so you go and you enjoy the exhibits and then you go home, but there’s a lot more to it.

Like you said, you have a preschool.

That’s unbelievable.

A major misconception within children’s museums is that we’re just an indoor playground.

We get that a lot.

A lot of children’s museums get that.

So not just Great Explorations, but that is one big thing that a lot of the communities where children’s museums are located, that’s one of the things that they refer to children’s museums are, but it is so much more than that.

Yeah.

And it makes sense.

You have this wonderful entity and space and infrastructure to do a lot more than that, which is what you do.

Because why wouldn’t you?

Children are everything.

And they’re the ones who are going to be running the world.

They’re running our lives as adults.

Speaking from experience now, having a one and a half year old, who my wife and daughter have been there and it’s just a wonderful place.

So right off the top here, I want to recommend anybody in St.

Pete, in Florida or visiting.

You’ve got to go by there.

It’s super duper cool.

But I want to reverse.

What brought you to working at a children’s museum, being a CEO of a children’s museum?

When you were little, did you always want to do that?

I had no idea this is something I would do.

My background is mental health.

I have two masters, one in mental health counseling and one in school guidance counseling.

And I went the mental health route and for 10 years provided services, therapeutic services.

I specialized in zero to five.

And I worked with the most vulnerable population, the kids who are abused, neglected, sexually assaulted, intervention, families.

And I believe in family systems.

I don’t think it’s a child’s fault.

I don’t think it’s a parent’s fault.

But I think that together, whether that’s a parent by biological or that’s your village, as we like to call, I think it’s everybody that can help a child progress and get better.

So I have two kids of my own, and when I had my youngest one, you know, it just hit me and took a toll on me, and I started to get burned out from mental health.

And this position just kind of fell in my lap of a referral.

And I was going to Great Ex every day with my son so he could run around his get his energy out.

He was two and a half at the time, and my daughter was a newborn, and I would go and sit in Great Beginnings, which is our exhibits for Five and Under, and he would run around and play.

And a former colleague suggested that, hey, there’s an opening here.

You should put your name in the hat for CEO.

And I thought, what would I do running a children’s museum?

I don’t even know if I want to be a CEO.

Like, I’m a therapist, and I loved my experience in mental health field, and being an advocate, and everything that I did do in the community, in the mental health arena.

But I decided, you know what?

Why not?

Let’s try it.

We need a new direction.

You know, I was, again, burned out from mental health, and so decided to try for this position, and I got it.

But what I have done is I’ve tried to bridge my two worlds together.

So over the past 10 years, I really tried to focus on bringing mental health to the museum in a more prevention and positive way.

So we do have therapists on site every day in our preschool working speech, physical therapy, but then also we partner with some of the other organizations, my previous organization, as well as some private practice therapists, and they come to play therapy, parent therapy, groups.

So it’s really therapeutic.

The entire Children’s Museum is very therapeutic, to play with your kid is very important.

Put your technology away and get on the floor and build something.

That says so much to a young child.

So that’s how I ended up here.

It makes sense though, that trajectory, because I mean, I, when asking the question, assumed that from an early age, it’s not like, oh, yeah, I want to be CEO of a children’s museum, but the things that led up to that make sense that that was your trajectory.

And now you’re able to make such big change instead of even just one-on-one.

Now you’re, how many families are you able to touch with a decision or two that you make each day?

Right.

And we’ve seen such an impact on the children that we’ve been able to serve that now we are getting into expanding our demographic and reaching middle school kids.

So what more can we do with hands-on learning?

And that’s a huge initiative that I’d love to talk about later on, but I know we want to hear Laurel and how she came about because she’s been at the museum much longer than I.

Wonderful.

Let’s turn it over to Laurel because I do want to dive into the other stuff too.

Well, my background is finance.

When I applied to work at Great Explorations, I was a victim to the downfall of our economy and I was laid off with two very young children and also a single mom.

So I applied for Great Ex because it was a job I found on Craigslist.

Really?

And I needed work and I played at Great Ex when I was a kid.

So when Great Ex opened, I was four.

I am a St.

Petersburg native born and raised.

My mom still lives in the house I was raised in.

I graduated from Dixie Hollins, which is where my son goes to school.

And at the time that I started working at Great Ex, which was 16 years ago, I had a five-month-old and a three-year-old, or almost three-year-old, two and a half-year-old, and had lost all of the ways that I was supporting my family when I got laid off.

So I always tell everyone Great Ex kind of saved my life and my family, and they helped me get through some of the hardest things that you can experience as a parent and not knowing what the next step is for your children, and they were there for me for a very long time.

My oldest son was in our first VPK graduating class, and my youngest son, who will be 17 in May, started at two years old and went all the way through our VPK program and summer camp program, and actually worked at Great Ex for about six months, so came full circle back around.

But now at the point in my career, my kids are older, almost 20 and 17.

Now I get to be there for Great Ex, and so my job has evolved so much.

I started as a part-time bookkeeper in Accounts Payable.

I fielded all of the collection calls during the downfall of the economy, and as a non-profit, you can only imagine that financially we were also making it by, but not, I don’t know what the word I’m looking for is, but not an overabundance of giving, we were surviving.

So I fielded a lot of phone calls during that time.

And then as the organization continued to survive, of course we downsized some of our work staff, and I just kept volunteering for more jobs.

I can do that.

I can do that.

I’ll take that on until I found myself in leadership, which is what I ultimately wanted my entire life.

I wanted to be in a leadership role.

Growing up, my father was a franchisee or an owner of his own company.

He was always his boss.

And that was just someone I always looked up to.

And being in leadership was my ultimate goal and what I always wanted.

And in 2020, I took over development and moved into chief administrative officer.

I kind of still have my fingers in finance because that’s my comfort blanket, per se.

But I changed my positions completely and then I was able to be there for Great Ex.

I raised the funds.

I get to solicit donors and help write grants and sell exhibits and really help us become financially stable and kind of pay them back for all of the things that they helped me with along my life.

It, working at Great Ex starting 16 years ago changed the trajectory of my life.

I maybe didn’t change the trajectory of my career in the very beginning, but it really did change what I was looking, like what was my future with my family and how was I going to survive.

And ultimately being the first nonprofit I ever worked for really opened up my eyes to this is what I am.

I am a giver.

I like sacrificing for the betterment of somebody else or our community and that really aligns with the nonprofit and it just, I don’t think I could ever go back into corporate America or do those things without there being some kind of warm and fuzzy attached to it.

You know, that really just speaks to my soul.

So I just take on any challenge I can get with Great Ex because I always want to see us move on to the next level and I’m just grateful that they’ve kept me for 16 years, almost 17 this year and I get to be a part of that growth every year after year.

We continue to see us grow to the next step.

Doesn’t surprise me that they’ve kept you around.

I mean, it’s so meaningful too when you think about what you provide to contribute to Great X and what they’ve contributed to you and it embodies what that entity is.

I’m saying entity or organization that thing is where it’s much more than you go there, you play, you go home.

There’s so much there and you had hit on that as an adult, a children’s museum had changed your life and I’m wondering, I’m going off script a little here, but how do you experience or hear about how adults are affected from the museum?

I mean, obviously we could talk about the children all day because you have the preschool, their eyes are open to all the different exhibits and the programming that you have, which is fantastic or more is making a visit, but I’m kind of curious from an adult’s perspective and what you see happen with the adults, is there some things that stand out in that regard?

I would say our scholarship program.

I was just about to say that, I think that’s the biggest, right?

Just from an employee standpoint, we do offer great benefits to our employees.

Angeline has always been family first, but that’s also been kind of our thought process as at Great Explorations, regardless.

For personally, I was offered free childcare for my children, which I can speak for many parents, especially us in the room, like childcare is very expensive.

There are definitely families that work just to pay for their kids’ childcare.

And that was a situation that I was facing, right?

Do I pull my kids from preschool or do I survive?

When I kind of went through that transition in my life, and one of the employee benefits that was offered to me when I started was, and we still offer this, is childcare support, a family enrichment benefit for our team members.

But outside of that, we do offer scholarships.

We promise 10% of all of our programs are scholarship based, regardless of funding.

So even if we don’t get a grant or a private donor or a sponsor to support those, we take that out of our revenue streams or budget those scholarships in and we offer them regardless of whether or not it’s a funded opportunity.

And that really makes a difference.

So from a kid’s perspective, you know, the last thing we want to talk to our children about is, mom and dad can’t afford this or, you know, we have to go without or worse case, sorry, but here’s, you know, what you can make yourself for lunch and they’re leaving their children at home for summer camp or after school or things like that.

And we don’t want that to be a situation for families to have to worry about.

And so we do offer the scholarships.

Now, we’ve heard from families who receive them that are outside of employees and they always, I mean, we get thank you letters and how can we spread this to our, your donors or whoever else is covering this cost, just so grateful that they can afford to come to our preschool or come there and play because we also have it for our memberships.

And they’re very grateful on the fact that they can bring their kids somewhere and it doesn’t look like that they can’t afford it.

That’s enormous.

How meaningful.

I feel like I’m going to say the word meaningful about a hundred times in this.

There’s some that I always say like special or because this is, it’s incredible what you can do with an organization such as this.

And like for me, owning my own business, this is an extreme takeaway, not just in this conversation, but as I learn about what other businesses do, aside from their services or their main foundations.

And in fact, I’d argue that some of the things that aren’t necessarily on the face of the museum are pillars of the museum.

And that’s what drives its unique stance in the community and beyond, which is enormous.

With all that said, building something like this and how wonderful it is, there’s no way that it doesn’t come with setbacks or pivotal moments that were difficult.

Like, I already understand for a children’s museum, COVID was a, I mean, I imagine that might play into this answer.

But on top of that, what are some of the major setbacks that have hit the Children’s Museum and how did you overcome them?

COVID.

COVID was a huge hurdle to our organization.

I mean, the first time in history, we shut our doors to our preschool families, to the community.

It was awful.

We had to lay off employees.

We were down to bare bones.

The leadership team we met every day via Zoom, every day.

It was, it didn’t matter if it was a Monday, a Sunday, a Friday night.

I mean, it was, hey, you available to jump on?

And then we had our standing calls.

Laurel took over grants, wrote, personally wrote all of our PPE requests.

Everything that the government sent out, she would stay up all night and the next morning, she’d be like, okay, I got it.

I need your feedback on this area.

And we would review it as a team and decide, okay, let’s, let’s submit it.

Or let’s call a quick board meeting and get this approved.

And that was probably, I mean, the word COVID has so much PTSD, it’s not even funny.

Oh, sure.

But it was with such great pride to be able to come out of it and to be stronger than we’ve ever been.

And I will say the leadership team, there are three of us.

And we started on a journey through EOS, Entrepreneurial Operating Systems.

It’s a training.

I got it.

Yes.

It’s a training that is all about being on the same page, using the same language, certain tools that you use.

And we started that right before COVID.

And you know, you never have time for leadership training.

It’s just, but we decided as a leadership team, this is going to be important to continue to grow.

And it could have not come at a better time.

We immediately started using these brand new tools that we had used and trying to figure out what these words meant.

But we did it.

And every day we would follow the same agenda, the same level 10 agenda that this program uses, and it was, okay, you know, let’s talk about something good before we dive into the issues.

And it really kept us going.

We started theming our Zoom calls, anything to keep us three upbeat and ready to take on another challenge.

And I really feel like that took us into being able to make that decision in May.

Okay, let’s reopen the preschool.

But now we have all these things we have to follow.

And we can only have 10 people in a room.

And what are we going to do?

And I was doing international calls with children’s museums around the world.

China opened before us.

And we quickly, or was it Hong Kong, one of the children’s museums quickly gave everybody the links to all of this iPad face temperature gauge that we ordered.

The shoe sanitizing mat?

I mean, we ordered everything that they had and we opened our preschool safely and slowly brought kids back as the parents were ready, as we were ready, as our teachers were ready.

And then eventually in July, we were able to open to the public with certain criteria.

But I would say that was our hugest hurdle.

And we look at our budget every week, once a week, and we still comb through it with a fine-tooth comb every Tuesday morning to make sure, are we still trending upward?

You know, if there’s any setbacks, what do we do?

Like we have, I think, so many things in place because of COVID that I’m actually kind of grateful because of COVID.

It was a reset that we didn’t know we needed.

Yeah, for me, it changed my trajectory in a positive way.

First there was an enormous dip into the darkness, but then I’ve popped back up way above that baseline of what it used to be.

And I hear this a lot.

And like in life, you don’t have the highs without some lows.

There’s a great quote from Vanilla Sky, a movie I like, Tom Cruise, and the guy says, you know, the sweet isn’t as sweet without the sour, you know, because you have a comparison of what or pushing you to a particular limit, forcing you literally to make changes to stay alive, to stay afloat, to still try to thrive in an awful situation that that is.

Or like I’m thinking about my hockey training when I was younger, playing hockey.

Like it was brutal during practice, but then we got on the ice come game time.

And I was prepared because they kicked my butt during training.

And so there’s a lot to be said about that.

Do you have anything to add on that, Laurel?

No, not really.

I mean, how do you function in a hands-off world with a hands-on children’s museum?

And I was really proud of how our team launched forward.

We launched our digital learning programs.

We launched Steam Kits to go home.

I was building Steam Kits in my garage having everything delivered to the house.

But we launched, we moved into a digital world that we did not know we had the capability to do, but we had no choice but to do it.

And just kind of seeing how everybody was so quick to think outside the box and come together and work outside of what their comfort zone was, was really inspiring.

It made us as leadership want to make those decisions to be better when we came out of it.

And so it was, COVID was bad, right, for everybody.

Like nobody wants to go through a national pandemic, but I feel like the companies that came out of it, they came out stronger.

And so it’s like a love hate relationship a little bit.

Indeed.

Yeah, I feel I feel the same way.

Naaman Creative wouldn’t be a thing without those events transpiring.

Yeah, I mean, we’re stronger now financially than we were pre-COVID.

We make more sound decisions.

We’re a lot more thoughtful, but it also gives us like a bigger focus too on how to make us stronger.

I was hopeful about what COVID did to the world in regards to our collective nature.

Like, for instance, I always think about like, okay, if an alien came and invaded, it wasn’t a positive situation, we would all band together as earthlings to defeat this, you know, and something like an international pandemic, I thought would bring us together a little more, but it’s great that in these pockets or in these communities or organizations and businesses, that it did so.

And that’s great to focus on.

The support we had from other children’s museums nationally and locally was amazing.

And you do really band together when you’re trying to work through things and think outside the box.

I mean, Angeline still gets very strong support from our other local children’s museums right here in the state of Florida on a regular basis, and they’ll reach out to us, too.

So if they’re trying to work through a policy or something that might be changing that we all probably would align with, it’s this collaboration of the CEOs from the area.

And it’s just really, it’s a breath of fresh air to kind of all work together when you’re on the same type of mission.

It’s so great to hear.

It doesn’t surprise me in that realm.

It seems like if you help one another out in the nonprofit realm in general, but specifically working with children, bettering, you know, families’ lives, why wouldn’t you want to help perpetuate that through the community past local?

It just makes sense.

My business coach, I think you know him, Eric Nutting, he always uses this term, co-opitition, and I really like that because it’s what you’re saying.

Like for me, there’s like however many businesses out there who do websites and branding and such, but it’s like I can be friends with them because they might not do something that we do and vice versa, and we can just lift each other up.

And there’s plenty of work out there.

So might as well be friends than not.

It makes my days more enjoyable, and so it sounds the same in the museum world.

Oh, yeah, it’s much easier to play nice in the sandbox than not be nice to your friends.

Do you have relationships with other museums outside of the Children’s Museum, for instance, like the Dali or the Art Museum, that you guys feed off of each other, collaborate on things?

Absolutely.

I mean, we do reciprocal programs for our memberships.

I believe today kicked off the Holocaust Museum, so our members can get in there for free and vice versa.

Theirs can get into ours.

Great.

During COVID, we were much more closer, the St.

Pete Community, Tampa Bay Area Community, all the museums, aquariums, we all band together because we were reopening together at a different pace than everyone around the world, really.

And so the Tampa Bay Community, really, we got on calls all the time to talk about, okay, I think Imagine was the first museum to open, and they were the one who said, okay, here’s our face mask policy, and then we’d get on a call the next week and say, did anybody not want to wear a face mask?

And so we talked through that a lot.

I know we shared policies because we had something in place for the preschool that Pinellas County Licensing Board had approved, and so it was like, okay, well, here’s what we have.

And it was just a lot of collaboration as we came out of it and reopened to the community.

But now, yes, we’ve kept those relationships, I wouldn’t say we meet as well as much as we used to, but we still do lean on each other through our different groups and our alliances.

And it’s just we’re able to kind of feed off of each other, be there for each other, and also our members.

We want our members to enjoy the other museums and arts and culture.

I mean, we just, St.

Petersburg is thriving in that area, and I think everybody should experience that.

That’s fantastic.

And great to hear, again, with the co-opetition.

It just makes sense.

You guys can feed off of one another.

And in supporting each other, you’re actually all succeeding more.

Because like, I’m not going to go to the Dali every day or every week or every month even.

I’m going to go and see new exhibits and things like that.

But I want to figure out what other museums to support.

And you helping one another out only brings people more to the forefront about what’s available to them right in their backyard.

Like you said, St.

Pete is absolutely thriving with arts and our culture.

It’s fantastic.

I’ve fallen in love with St.

Pete.

It’s my favorite city now and I’ve been all over the world.

I’m from Indiana and moved here in 2018 and just was really glad to have landed in Largo, which is, you know, a stone’s throw from St.

Pete.

But I’m very grateful to say the least.

We like to consider ourselves kind of the start to introducing art to children.

You know, you come to us to learn the importance of art and creating it and being able to see things on display because, you know, in our art hour that we have now, we display some of the artwork and it’s a sense of pride to a child.

But then as you grow, we are introducing you to art.

So when you go to an art museum, you can take that in and have appreciation for how hard somebody works on something like that and the talent that these artists have.

That’s so important because, you know, it’s very easy to look at being a designer and an artist at heart myself.

A lot of people don’t see that final product.

Right.

You know, whether it be a song that you write or a painting that you do, nobody sees all of those failed attempts.

It’s that one last one that people see and so therefore the value of that thing can go way lower than what it actually is.

It’s unfortunate that, you know, artists over history have had to die and many years later their art is then valued when they can’t even know that their art had value.

And so raising children to appreciate the hard work that goes into all these crafts is enormous.

So that’s fantastic too, because I’m a big proponent of that.

Can’t wait to share in that with my daughter and go, hey, do you know how they produce that?

Yeah, and that’s a rabbit hole.

So your daughter can come create her own artwork at Great Hacks.

That’s fantastic.

And she will.

I know my wife is ecstatic to bring her there, and same with me.

And to be able to say, you know, hey, Papa works with them.

How cool is that?

But I don’t need to plug myself.

How do you determine, how do you decide, how do you find the inspiration for new exhibits?

Can you tell me a little bit about that process?

I know it’s probably quite dynamic, depending on partnerships, what comes across your plate.

You get that right on the head.

It really does depend on the partnership.

If we are going to be designing one in-house and we are not taking that to a sponsor, we have a little bit more, we always have creative freedom, but we just have a little bit more creative freedom.

So we do have specifically one in the museum that we may or may not go after a sponsor on.

It’s Busyburg.

It’s one that was designed internally.

It’s our take on Richard Scarry’s Busy Town.

So the little guy, little worm, who rode around in the Apple car was one of my favorite childhood things.

And it’s funny because I do have a younger staff than I am.

And when I brought that up, some of them didn’t know who Richard Scarry was, and so I had to pull it up.

And I’m like, no, no, no, no, like hear me out.

But it’s our take on Richard Scarry’s Busy Town.

We call it Busyburg and it showcases Morris and his orange car because, you know, Florida orages, so, but Morris and his orange car and all of Morris’s different traveling things.

So he has an airplane, he has a boat, he’s got a jeep, he’s got quite a few different vehicles of choice, and it has all of our landmarks, a lot of our landmarks from around the area.

So you’ll see John Hopkins All Children’s Hospital on there.

You’ll see the Albert Wooded Airport or Publix.

The Dali is on there, Vinoy, Don Cesar, Sunken Gardens, of course, Great Ex.

And they can explore that area.

And so that was, we were given that space as an internal department, and we were told, what do you want to outfit this as?

And so we sat down, we really kind of narrowed down that we wanted it to be a home for Morris.

And what did we want that to look like?

Because Morris can’t be there all the time that we’re open, we wanted it to continue to be interactive.

So that one, we had a lot of creative freedom behind.

We didn’t have to worry about certain branding or certain pillars that the donor would want to recognize because that was really our internal exhibit.

But when I am looking for an, when I have someone who’s interested in an exhibit space, I meet with them and I really understand as a corporation or an organization or a community partner, what is important to them to showcase to children?

What are their pillars of giving and what’s important to them?

You know, what they want to showcase for their times, talents and treasures.

Those are all very important things.

And then we marry our brands together and we do an exhibit proposal.

So usually I’ll meet with our head of operations.

His name is Alan.

He’s our other leadership team member.

And then my creative marketing specialist on staff’s name is Emmett.

He does all of my conceptual drawings.

And then we kind of start the process from there.

And we have a great educational team who puts the educational pieces and the developmental meanings into the exhibit.

So you’ve got your creative design and then you meet with education.

So they come up with, okay, this is going to focus on fine motor, gross motor, socialization, role play.

And they put the life in it, as well as programming during the day.

But they marry all of those things into a proposal back to a sponsor, and the sponsor is then able to say, okay, yes, this aligns with what we were thinking, our marketing vision, or here’s some other ideas we had.

So we really do work together as a huge team, not only internally, but with the sponsor.

So then when we do open an exhibit, everybody is benefiting, the children, the company sponsoring, as well as great acts.

Makes sense.

Why wouldn’t it be any other way?

That’s fantastic to kind of understand a little bit more about what goes on there with the process because it’s quite dynamic and there’s a lot to choose from on what’s going to go in this limited space.

How long do exhibits usually last for?

How do you determine its length, its lifespan?

Our sponsorships are based on five years.

So usually we will sell a sponsorship for a five year period and then that sponsor does get first right of refusal.

So they can either sign back on for another five years or we give them enough time to decide not to renew, which is very rare.

We typically do not have sponsors that do not renew.

They see the value, they see the impact, which is most important, and they also love that the exhibit is cool and interactive and reflects them in a fun way.

So they’re five years, but I mean, we’ve had sponsors in the building forever.

I mean, I have some sponsors that have been there since before I started and I already know I’m just going to send them a renewal and I’m going to expect to have a signature back.

Currently, we have probably four or five unsponsored exhibits that I actually have leads for every single one of them, so we don’t really have a whole lot of issue getting our exhibits sponsored.

We just run out of space and so we get very creative.

Wall exhibits or we build walls to put exhibits.

And so we just get creative with our space.

We want to be able to give more to our community, bring more exhibits in, make us more interactive, but then we do get capped on space.

What are you going to do once you run out of walls?

You were alluding to that earlier.

We are working on a new initiative to bring science back to St.

Pete.

And our dream is to open a Discovery Center.

So what a Discovery Center is when you take a hands-on children’s museum, which is what Great Explorations is, and you take a science center and you merge the two together.

And that is our vision for the future.

We are working on that.

We are actively looking for a building to open hands-on science to eventually get a Discovery Center.

But we do have science exhibits.

They are sitting in storage collecting dust, which is never good.

But we would love to kick off a science initiative.

We feel like hands-on learning in the science arena for our older children is kind of missing in this community.

Mozi is amazing, but it’s far, I mean, far as in over the bridge.

But we would love to bring it closer to home for our St.

Petersburg community, especially those who aren’t able to travel that far.

And again, we’re all about breaking down barriers.

So we are looking to expand and we’re working, I mean, that is our vision.

I love it.

For me, I’m a big proponent of anything science based.

We need more of it, STEM, and especially with the younger generation, you know, what’s the word, exposing them and explaining the value of what science and the scientific method is in relation to everything that we do and understanding the world around them is crucial.

For so many ways, interacting with other children, interacting with the world, making inventions, running their future reactions, you know, that’s a big, they’re not having the hands on learning so much anymore.

We want to bring back the dissecting and, you know, what happens when I connect these circuits and that chemical reaction, right?

Love it.

And that really goes hand in hand with children’s museums and what the next step is.

We want to be able to have a part of a child’s life from birth through young adulthood.

And by opening up a Discovery Center, it does open up those opportunities for us to be involved with them from the young age where the Children’s Museum side fits, through middle school, early high school where the Science Center side fits, and then hopefully encourage them to finish out their volunteer hours, Bright Future Scholars, connect with them as that young adult range of freshman year of high school to senior year of high school.

And then hopefully even still have sparked some kind of inspiration in them for a future career.

I mean, we’re talking about our future community leaders that we’re really trying to help mold and put them on the right path.

Yeah, that’s it’s invaluable and I love hearing that I kind of already knew that you’re up to that for everybody else.

You might have some insider tips.

Yeah.

And we do have a huge partnership right now with Pinellas County Schools and we are in all the middle schools right now.

We’re traveling our planetarium.

So by the end of the school year, every eighth grader enrolled in Pinellas County Schools will experience our planetarium.

And we partnered with the science department of the head of middle school.

Hopefully, I’m saying that correctly.

But they came up with a curriculum that aligns with the state standards.

And so we picked, we handpicked a video that the kids are exploring the sun in this planetarium and that aligns with what they’re learning in the classroom.

So we’re trying to do more because that’s the crowd that we want to impact.

Those are the kids we want to reach because hands-on learning and being immersed in such an environment is where they’re getting that educational, that informal education that is missing, in my opinion, in our community.

Certainly.

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Really quick, to make this highly productive, hopefully, maybe transformative, maybe someone listening, who do you need to meet?

What needs to happen for you to secure that building or that location?

What would be your dream of like, hey, person listening, if this is you, who’s that?

For square footage, we need a minimum amount of space, right?

So, we’re looking for a minimum of 2,500 square feet.

Ideally, we would love a 10,000 square foot space, right?

To start.

I mean, that would get a good amount of our exhibits out of storage.

We could station them properly to be able to launch something like that.

I mean, we do get a dollar per month rent from the city of St.

Petersburg.

So, we are very honored to be recognized as a community asset with Great Explorations that we do not have to pay a ton for our rent in a very prominent space on 4th Street.

So, we’re extremely grateful for that.

And at the end of the day, we want every dollar to go back into our programs and to go back into our missions.

So, yes, somewhere free.

Or very reduced.

Or very reduced.

A dollar per month would be wonderful.

And we would love to stay within Pinellas County.

You know, we know that there are many other well-deserving counties around the area, and we’d love to expand into those as well.

But our direct commitment right now is within Pinellas County and providing those resources for those kids.

You hear that person listening.

Who’s that person?

Our ultimate dream, like our big, whatever it’s called, our big goal is to have a giant location.

Let’s hear it.

I can’t even tell you the square footage, because I just want it to be giant.

Yes, with outdoor space.

Correct.

Yes.

Multiple stories.

I would love an extra story.

We’re one story building right now.

Exactly.

A campus.

Somewhere where we can merge all of our thoughts under one roof and really make a big impact in our community.

It’s inevitable.

We agree.

Baby steps.

It’ll happen.

We’re walking before we run.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

It doesn’t happen overnight.

We’ve put a lot of things into motion that I do believe are baby steps and is manageable growth, right?

Because the last thing you want to do is to give the community something that they need and then just take it away from them because it wasn’t a manageable growth.

And so I do thank EOS for teaching us a lot of our skills to make our growth manageable and for us not to have to hit that ceiling every single time we have accomplished things.

But that is one main focus.

We don’t want to offer something and then have to take it away because it wasn’t the growth was too fast.

Absolutely.

I have a one-page company manual, much smaller than Great Ex.

The very top of that, the first goal is scale appropriately because like the last thing I want to do is, oh, we put out bad work and then that’s no good and for anybody, for them, the client, for us, and trying to manage that growth because a lot of people are like, yeah, I want a 20X tomorrow.

And it’s like, what are you going to do with that?

Do you have a plan for that 20X?

Is that reasonable?

Yeah, Angeline keeps us grounded.

Alan and I often have very big plans and want to hit the ground running and she reins us back in and makes it a lot more easier for us to have sustainable growth.

You got to have that mix of people who are pushing the envelope, you know, Jordan and I sitting here, we have big visions for what this audio division is going to be and right now we’re in a pivotal moment where, okay, we need to grow this to the next level.

How do we accomplish that?

Salespeople, if you’re listening, looking for sales because we can’t do it all.

We’re too busy producing the work.

But yeah, this is fantastic.

I have one more question that we’re going to get into a fun segment and then wrap it up because I know you’re a little busy from what we’re just-

Just a little, just a tad.

So we talked about pivotal moments that were difficult, aka COVID.

I want to talk about a highlight.

What’s a memorable moment that just absolutely when you think of great acts or your experience there sticks out and that you’re so proud of or that holds a special place in your heart?

Can you speak about that?

Mine is reaccreditation.

So I spoke in the beginning about becoming accredited, the very first children’s museum to have the accreditation.

But honestly, I walked into the letter of congratulations.

I started in 2013.

We got the congratulations letter in 2014, which is the work of Laurel and Alan, our other team member.

They did a ton of work to become accredited.

And when I started, it was like, here, now you have to say a thank you speech.

They want you to present at this conference, because we were the very first of our size.

And I’m going, I don’t even understand what this means.

So I got a crash course from both of them.

And then I started becoming a peer mentor and an evaluator to help other children’s museums and science centers of our size to also become accredited.

Because again, you want the world to experience what we are all able to experience.

So I travel the United States helping other museums and through that work, I have been able to learn the importance of having this accreditation and being so important and being held to these standards.

And recently, over the past year and a half now, we went through our reaccreditation and we had to start over and I experienced what Laurel and Alan went through in the first accreditation.

But really, you go down to the very bottom and you work your way all the way back up and you evaluate everything that you do and every person that’s there and every material used to build an exhibit and every board member you decide to bring on and everything.

You look at everything and again, as an evaluator, I always saw finished product.

But going through that and hosting peer reviewers on site, seeing what I do and having them come in and evaluate our organization to get the letter that we were re-accredited was such an honor.

And not only did we get the re-accreditation for the 10 years, but our preschool was named exemplary meeting our community where they are and really viewed as a national model.

And so those, I have great pride in that, I think.

And it’s not just me, it’s not just the leadership team, it is the entire staff worked so hard to get this accreditation that it meant something to everybody.

And our board, our board really stepped in and they did so much also to earn this accreditation.

We engaged donors like we’ve never before.

I mean, it was really a huge community effort.

And so just a quick side note, we do have a community celebration on March 14th in the morning, 8 to 10, but to really celebrate for everybody because that I have great pride in all the work that GreatEx did.

You should be proud.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

I’m not surprised though.

So I’m going to say that because I know the caliber of your team from working with you guys directly to seeing the museum and experiencing it in so many different perspectives myself.

You had mentioned the process of accreditation and for me thinking about if I had to do that with my business, it would be neat.

It would be obviously really difficult, but I think it kind of helps you.

There’s so many positive repercussions to going through that process because you’re on the pulse of so many moving parts of that operation, which maybe without that, if I could say like reflection of it all or zooming out on the big picture to get that accreditation, you might be able to evaluate something in a different light or go, oh, I forgot about that.

That’s slipping through the cracks or we need to work on that or this is great.

We should be proud of that and you get to expose all of that and then document it.

So I’m kind of jealous about that.

I’m kind of glad we don’t have to do that, but it might be a neat exercise and much smaller operation than you.

So I just wanted to reflect on that because it’s fascinating.

How about you Laurel?

Well, not taking the reaccreditation because that was already talked about.

I would probably say the launching of Morris is probably my favorite thing that I could bring up.

Morris, so we rebranded in 2017 and that was when we came up with the concept of Morris.

And if those of you that don’t know who Morris the Explorist is, he is a T-Rex dinosaur that represents our brand.

But we established Morris with two different colored arms, with special patterns on him, with different textures and things so we could really showcase uniqueness and that not everyone is the same but is still able to be accepted and loved and treated equally.

So Morris doesn’t look like a normal T-Rex and that was a big thing is that we wanted to showcase diversity and inclusion with our mascot.

And it’s interesting you brought up earlier in our discussions talking about making days and we do look to Morris as being our day maker.

He will often go out with his wagon of plushies and find kids in at-risk neighborhoods and give toys.

We went to John Hopkins All Children’s Hospital and made groom appearances to kids that may or may not ever leave the hospital and he made those children’s day.

We deliver food during Thanksgiving with Morris.

Morris will deliver your Thanksgiving meal to your house through a partnership with Radiash Church and he stuffs the meals and he stuffs the bags and he really showcases and really encompasses everything that Great Ex is and that I feel like you can’t be unhappy when you’re with Morris ever because he just gives you that serotonin and everyone’s always happy to see him and that I feel like was a huge step and investment, thank you Angeline, for us to have Morris.

It was something that we always thought he was going to end up being 2D and we ended up bringing him to life in mascot form in early 2021.

And it really has just changed some of the ways that we make impacts in the community and anyone who knows Morris loves him and it just, that’s my favorite, my favorite thing that we’ve done.

And now you can make your own Morris.

You can make your own Morris.

Indeed.

How cool, like build a bear, essentially, that’s so cool.

It’s wonderful that you said that because literally my last question in this portion was what’s the story of Morris, the mascot?

It’s neat to know just how meaningful he is because, you know, on the face of it, you might not recognize all of what is done with that character, that facet of the organization.

And it’s just like the other things that we were talking about earlier is how can you use the entity that is Great Explorations to do more with, to get out there, to change, to make a positive impact?

And it just goes to show that you’re pulling out the correct threads.

He’s just another piece.

Yeah, you know, and that was one thing is when we established him and came up with him on paper, we really also wanted it to obviously reflect our brand, but we had no idea the impact of making Morris a real life dinosaur would have on our brand, on the museum’s presence in our community recognizable, you know, how people recognize him and associate him to great explorations.

Just even when he comes out on the gallery floor and interacts with the guests, he makes appearance at Great Connections.

Those families never get to experience situations like that because they’re too overstimulating.

I mean, I’ve had families tell me many times, my kids never met Raymond from the Rays or the Easter Bunny or any of those.

And we break that down, make it more friendly to those families.

And Morris just helps us along the way with all of that too.

How special.

I knew I’d say that word.

We’ve reached a point.

You’ve made it here into a special segment that we do with all of our episodes.

It is called The Rapid Fire and I’m going to go for yours.

So I’m going to ask you a set of questions.

And now that we have two of you, I am going to pressure you a little more to keep it a little shorter because some people, you know, elongate the rapid fire is not so rapid and it’s okay, but you just get points docked.

So I’ll be keeping score, but the points don’t matter.

Oh, oh, we like to have fun here at Naaman Creative.

Okay, so I’m going to start maybe we’ll go Angeline first then Laurel and just keep it in that order so that the listener knows who’s answering what.

So Angeline first, what is your biggest source of inspiration?

You’re doing so much throughout the day, you know, avoiding burnout has got to be a thing that you battle, you know, continually, what keeps you going?

My source of inspiration would be my own children, although they are almost 11 and 13.

They started at grade X, they went through preschool and watching them continue to grow.

It just makes me love my job even more because I know I’m making an impact on such young children’s lives.

That’s the correct answer, okay?

My biggest inspiration would be trying to figure out how families can go, not go without.

So I was that mom, right, I told you that in my story where at one point in time and many times even still through that, I had to choose between one or the other.

And I like focusing every day on how do we break down more barriers that kids don’t have to go without anything.

And so that is what inspires me.

Love it.

Love it.

Those both inspire me too.

So we’re on the same page there.

Now having a daughter, that’s my go-to.

It changed my entire life where, okay, really that’s the top now of my hierarchy of needs is making sure that she’s taken care of and I do my very best.

She’s changed my entire life.

So that’s tippy top there, but I love that too.

I mean, play is a necessity and not people, a lot of people, you think about your basic necessities, right?

Food, shelter, clothing, Wi-Fi, right?

So you think about those, okay, I can’t live without food.

I can’t live without shelter and nobody wants to see me walk around naked.

So we definitely need clothes, but play is a necessity.

But when you have to make the choices of your main three necessities, what goes without?

And we never want play to be the one that goes without because that does help mold children’s thought processes.

It encourages people to be kind.

Like, I feel like everything that we want in our lives kind of goes back to what did we learn as children?

100%.

Also, who wants to live in a world without play?

No one.

Well, I don’t.

Yeah.

I mean, think about the world without art and film and, you know, music.

Music.

It’d be boring.

Yeah.

I mean.

What are we doing?

I would be trapped in my own mind, which.

You know, I mean, most of the time, I turn on music just to turn off my thoughts.

And so, you know, we rely on the arts and those creative outlets so much more than I think that we actually realize.

Oh, 100%.

For me, silence is deafening.

Oh, I get it.

Yeah.

Something’s just on.

And so speaking of, do you have, and this is a hard one, I know, do you have a favorite musical artist or album?

Dave Matthews Band.

Oh, great.

Oh, yeah, you can’t go wrong.

Yeah, no, I do love Dave Matthews Band.

I’m actually going to see him five times this year.

Oh, awesome, they are so good live.

Oh my gosh.

You know, they are who I would definitely say is like the music for my soul.

I do believe that there’s music out there that speaks to everyone’s soul.

You just have to figure out what it is.

And that’s the music for my soul.

That’s a truly soulful band, and there’s so much dynamic to their music.

I can speak highly to that because there, I’ve listened to them for a long time, seen them live several times.

They’re better live than on the recordings.

It’s a whole different experience when you see them live.

Plus, Carter Buford, their drummer is one of the best in the world, and as a drummer, I mean, I’m just drooling.

I just love their camaraderie too, and I tell all my friends, if you are a Dave Matthews fan, let me take you to a concert.

You will be a Dave Matthews fan at that point.

You went out of turn, so you lose ten points, but that’s okay.

The points don’t matter, Josh.

It’s funny because I’m going to bring my wife to their show here when they’re coming around.

I think their tickets are on sale or just went on sale.

I mean, I’m a member of the warehouse.

Of course you are.

I bought tickets a long time ago.

Well, I’m going to see you there.

I would recommend we should meet up.

Yeah.

I would definitely recommend if you ever want to see him and it’s in Florida, go to Jacksonville.

The Daly’s Amphitheater in Jacksonville, although we don’t want to take anybody away from our area.

It’s very intimate and just it’s an opportunity to not be stuck in the lawn because I can never afford pit tickets.

No kidding.

But there’s something special about the lawn.

Oh, the lawn.

You make friends.

That’s one of my favorite things.

I’m barefoot the entire concert.

And I literally make friends with everybody in the lawn.

How can you not?

Everybody’s having such a good time.

Yeah.

Also at those shows, you’re not going to have a bad time.

No.

It’s so enjoyable and so positive.

That’s the beauty of music that I believe is so powerful in society, culturally, worldwide, is that it’s universal.

For me, I was in Turkey in August and my wife for our anniversary brought me to some shows and a festival.

And I speak Turkish okay.

But I don’t know all of what they’re saying and it doesn’t matter because I feel it.

It’s so awesome and everybody is feeling that.

There’s just more cigarettes being smoked over there as opposed to other stuff here.

But how about you, Angeline?

Well, I do like Dave Matthews, man.

I’m just not as diehard as Laurel.

But I relate more to country music.

I mean, I’m a Texas girl and I love country music.

I feel like every song tells a story, some heartbreak.

But a lot of wins.

And I don’t know if I have a favorite artist.

I mean, I guess my favorite artist right now would be Jake Owen.

I went to college with him.

So I was good friends with him.

So I do follow him very closely just because I’m really proud of his successes.

But yeah, I’m a country music girl.

Right on.

I feel you so strongly.

And I listen to like different flavors of country, like Nickel Creek, we just saw them and they’ve got a country twang.

A little more bluegrass folk.

Ryan Adams is top on my list.

But I have a good friend who I grew up with from Indiana.

He’s from Indiana.

He’s a drummer of Sam Hunt.

Oh, if you know Sam Hunt.

And so he’s their drummer and been their drummer for a while.

And so I catch him on shows.

Super cool.

You know, like he calls me after like in Indiana.

He called me right when they left the stage and, hey, where are you are in the lawn?

Let me come to you.

And you know, seeing him succeed, watching him perform at, what is it, Emily Arena in front of 10,000 people.

I’m just like, dude, so proud of you and so inspiring.

There’s nothing more inspiring than that in my book.

So I feel you.

That’s really cool that you’re able to support and enjoy that person’s music.

Yeah.

Neat.

We can talk about music forever, right, Jordan?

I know sometimes, a lot of times during interviews, it’s hard for him not to talk.

One day we’ll get you a microphone.

He’s good at sign language now.

Okay.

So moving away from music, because otherwise we’ll be here all day.

What about a favorite book?

Do you have a favorite book?

I have a favorite author.

That’s acceptable.

Just five points less.

Right.

I know.

Sorry.

It’s okay.

Emily Griffin.

I think that’s her name.

But I love her.

I just like to escape sometimes into reading her.

I don’t get to read very much at all.

I can’t tell you the last time I read.

Well, when you made me read the books for EOS.

Oh, that is the last time I read.

That is pretty sad.

And I can’t say those were my favorite, but they were interesting.

I think, I mean, the last book series I probably read, and this is going to be horrible, was The Hunger Games.

I mean, I thought they were great books, so I read them, but I couldn’t tell you who wrote them.

I think her first name is Suzanne.

Don’t hate me, people in the podcast world.

Oh, it’ll be okay.

But she was good.

I don’t have a whole lot of time for reading, and if I do, it’s probably for professional growth or something that I’m trying to learn to move the museum forward.

I’ve read books on grant writing when I had to learn that.

And I have an entire library in my office of HR books, so they’re riveting.

Sounds riveting.

Yeah.

But if you like it, there’s fascinating stuff there.

It doesn’t matter.

I mean, you can geek out about whatever it is.

You could read a book about pencils or whatever it is.

I don’t know why I brought up pencils.

I mean, I have ones on becoming a boss instead of their buddy.

And those, I think if I’m not stepping into a fantasy world, if I can learn something from it, I take value from it.

Absolutely.

So that’s kind of where I would place, like, if I chose a book to read, it would probably be for professional growth or because I just really needed to get out of reality.

I feel you.

It’s funny because for me, when I read fiction, it’s still, I like hard science, sci-fi.

So it’s like, it’s sci-fi.

But the hard aspect is that it’s rooted in like kind of real science and that this could happen.

So I enjoy that because like, oh, this like could be, you know, and it’s not like super out there, although they’re out there.

But for me, it is good to escape, you know, TV shows also, you know, help.

I’m going off cuff here.

Do you have a favorite TV show?

One that I’m proud to say.

I love to watch The Bachelor, Bachelor Act, Bachelor in Paradise.

All the trashy bachelor television.

It’s my escape, you know, it’s like the kids are in bed.

And I can just lay on the couch and watch the reality show.

But that’s why they’re there.

That’s the only time I have.

That is really the only show that I think she takes the time to watch.

The only show.

Personally, I love Law & Order SVU.

They just released their 25th season.

So that’s kind of what I’m doing.

And it’s funny because we’ve watched it so many times, but I’m still not allowed to watch it without my husband.

But The Office is pretty much my life.

I quote The Office often.

They just released season seven of The Superfans, which is magic.

You have to watch it if you’re an Office fan at all.

So Superfans on Peacock, it’s got all the extras in it.

Johnny and I have been wishing for Superfans to come out with season seven for what felt like a year.

And it finally was released like in January.

And we’ve watched it like 10 times at least.

Oh, yeah.

I watch The Office every single night, every night.

It’s what I’ll fall asleep to The Office.

Like we quote The Office all the time.

I had to break a lot of habits in The Office because I would answer people like Yersh or Yepers.

And those are both direct quotes from Michael Scott.

And other people would not know what I was talking about.

And I’m like, okay.

Or you could start talking like a baby like Andy or short.

It’s funny when Kevin is like, when you say few words, you save time.

We’ve wasted so much time trying to figure out what you’re saying.

The office is great.

I usually sneak in an office quote in most of our podcast episodes.

I haven’t found the right time here.

But Michael G Scott.

I don’t know.

I have signs in my bathroom, my kids bathroom, the main bathroom in my house.

And they’re all the office theme.

So like giant one is like just pooping.

You know how I be.

And it says Michael G Scott.

And it’s like what you look at when you’re in the bathroom.

So we try and have fun with it.

I can’t go a day without an office quote coming out of my mouth somewhere.

It’s like part of the ether now.

Do you have a poster that says you miss 100% of the shots that you don’t take?

Michael Scott.

I know.

Jody and I have other signs up, but we try and pick quotes that like aren’t as popular.

But yeah.

It’s reasonable.

Well, we connect very deeply on that.

It’s a great show.

When you have a great show, it’s solid.

For me, when I work, just like when we were talking about The Silence is deafening for me, the office is one of those go-to’s where I can put it on, on my second monitor.

It’s not distracting.

It keeps me company because I’m alone working in my silo, and I don’t have to think about it.

I know where they are, what’s coming, but it’s still like a friend.

You’re speaking my language.

Yeah, right on.

It’s background noise most of the time.

It’s good background noise.

It’s good background noise.

You don’t get distracted, but you still know exactly what’s going on.

Yeah.

I didn’t know about the superfans thing, so you just opened Pandora’s box.

Oh my gosh.

Have you not watched any of the superfans?

The first seven seasons are all on superfans, and it’s all extras, and I’m telling you, there are times where I’m yelling at the TV, like, why did you cut that out of the show?

That was such a good extra.

Like, it is not the bad bloopers you would watch at the end of a movie or something.

You know what I mean?

They’re like, they should have been used.

There are some that I’m, like, super cringed that I know why they took them out, but there are so many good ones.

Oh my gosh, Josh, that’s your homework.

All right.

That is your homework.

You need to watch the seven seasons of superfans.

This weekend, I know what I’m doing.

This weekend, right?

We better not talk again until you have some superfan quotes.

Deal.

Oh, I need new quotes, so this is fantastic fodder.

Wonderful.

I need new material.

Last question on Rapid Fire.

You’re both doing so well.

We’ve gotten here.

How do you define success?

Geez.

I mean, like…

Well, that’s a hard question.

Like personally or in the organization?

Both, or in general, all together.

I would say for the organization, it would be when we have a…

Well, two.

One, when we have a graduating class for our preschool.

I love to see them walk across the stage in their caps and gowns.

They’re five years old, and they are so cute.

But they all go on, and they’re ready for kindergarten, and they’re excited for kindergarten, and that to me shows we did our job.

The other thing for grade X is, this is going to sound terrible, but when a kid leaves crying, it actually is a good thing because they don’t want to leave.

I was like, where is she going with this?

They’re like, I don’t want to go.

The parents are like, we have to go.

We’ve been here for five hours.

And it’s like, that means we’re doing our job because ultimately, our crowd is to the kids, and we want them to want to come back.

We don’t want them to want to leave.

Personally, I measure success through my children.

I feel like as they succeed and do things well, my husband and I did our job.

And when they show good manners to somebody, it’s a source of pride.

Like, wow, I think we taught you that.

And they say thank you to a stranger.

It’s like, oh, good job.

It’s my kid.

So, I feel like personally, I measure my own successes just from watching how they grow into young adults and successful kids.

That’s beautiful.

It’s a first on the show that someone’s, one of someone’s definition of success is crying children.

Don’t take it out of context.

No, I couldn’t help myself.

How about you, Laurel?

You know, from an organizational standpoint, I think it’s that aha moment that we see in the children.

We don’t have a lot of instructional signage around the museum that tells you, this is how the exhibit functions, right?

We want a lot of self-interpretation.

We want that parent-child engagement, sibling, older sibling, younger sibling engagement.

Like, what are they interpreting that they should be learning within this space?

And when it finally happens and you can tell like, I got it, I got it, I got it.

That moment for me tells me that, okay, we’ve done our job.

And so I think it’s the aha moment from a professional standpoint.

Personally, I’m a checklist type of girl.

I will make unattainable lists every day that I know that I’m never going to check all the boxes off.

But I like to torture myself, which is why I turn on music because my brain makes unattainable lists that are not going to happen every day.

I send myself way too many one-worded emails with my random red light thoughts.

But checking off those boxes, even if I don’t accomplish all of my boxes in one day, I really feel accomplished and successful when I check off one box, two box, three boxes.

If I get the whole thing done, like that’s amazing, but it really typically doesn’t happen.

And so I don’t set myself up personally to feel let down by not having full success.

I celebrate all of my little wins because I know that my mental health and my personality will not, if I don’t celebrate little wins, will not let me celebrate unless I have that big win.

And those sometimes are just not attainable for me.

So checking boxes is a big success point.

I feel like that’s a successful and a productive day.

And being a productive person is really important to me.

I can’t sit still.

I can’t not have a project going.

I just I’m constantly thinking of the next challenge.

And so accomplishing any little bit of my random thoughts makes me feel successful.

And you are.

That’s we align in many ways.

I have a checklist.

It is unattainable each day.

But the best you can do is, you know, erase.

The best you can do is the best you can do.

Right.

And I just I give 100, 100%, 150%.

You don’t want to see my color notes with it scrolling.

I try and give over 100% every single day and everything that I do.

And so it just isn’t attainable to have them all.

But yeah, well, number one, it’s clear that that’s the case because you guys are thriving and successful.

Number two, I think if you don’t have more tasks, then you need to be fed.

You’re missing out on opportunities.

For me running a business, there is never going to be a time that I don’t have something that I can be doing or improving on or building a process or working on internal things and projects.

It’s never ending, and that’s a good thing.

But it’s very important along the way, no matter what you get done to celebrate small successes.

Sometimes Jordan helps me with that, my team helps me with that, because I’m just on to the next task.

But it’s important to go, hey, even if that was a small email or whatever, I did really good on that, and I’m, yay, on to the next one.

It’s important to celebrate the little wins for sure.

Absolutely.

And we learned a lot about that in EOS, and so once a quarter our leadership team will go and celebrate because we have milestones.

Every 90 days we have wins.

So with that, we did learn that in EOS as well.

What does EOS stand for?

Entrepreneurial Operating Systems.

Nice.

I know.

Ooh, that’s fancy.

Well, it sounds like it’s doing wonders, so that’s great.

Yeah.

That’s what it’s all about too, is like lifting yourself up as a professional, as a leader, as someone running such a big organization.

It’s enormous.

So we’re at the tail end.

I want to congratulate you both for winning Rapid Fire.

Oh, thank you.

It was a tie.

It was a tie.

You both won.

Everybody gets a trophy.

Everybody gets a trophy.

We’ll let the listeners decide that.

All right.

I have two more things.

I always ask this to every guest.

What’s the biggest piece of advice you could give anybody listening, whoever they are, what resonates with you or something that you would have wanted to be told early in your career or at any stage or now?

What can you tell the listener?

This is your biggest piece of advice.

I would say, find early on in my career, I found something that I enjoy doing.

So work never felt like work.

It’s something that I’m passionate about, something that I enjoy doing.

I look forward to doing.

And I would say that would be my biggest advice, is find something that you truly are passionate about that brings you joy.

It’s so funny because I was going to say kind of almost the exact same thing.

I mean, I get up every day and I go to Great Explorations.

I don’t get up every day and go to work.

I never look at my day as something as like, I’ve got to go to work.

I go to the Children’s Museum.

And because it brings me joy, it gives me something to look forward to every day.

Sometimes our days are not always rosy and sunshine and filled with glitter.

And that’s okay.

And there are days definitely that I get up and I’m like, I just don’t want to do it today.

But then I think about all the things that I get to walk into and really finding your people and having strong support and also following your passions because I literally don’t get up every day and go, well, I’m going to work today in my brain.

I’m getting up and I’m going to Great Explorations.

And that’s where I make a difference.

Love it.

Yeah, and clearly you do.

That is a common answer.

And I feel the same.

You know, for me, this is technically work.

It feels great.

It’s fun.

So let’s have fun.

Why not?

That’s great.

Last thing, just to be practical about it, how do people connect with the Children’s Museum, both in Florida?

How can people connect out of Florida?

Obviously, they can visit and visit the museum.

But what can people do listening?

Well, they can visit our amazing website, Josh.

Yeah, that’s launching real soon.

Which will be launching potentially next week, possibly.

I know you got a big meeting with our marketing manager, but it is done by Naaman Creative.

And we’ve seen the back end of it from a leadership standpoint.

We’re very excited about that.

Our current website right now is still a great place to go.

It’ll still remain the same at greatex.org.

But next week, we’ll show our 2.0 version of greatex.org.

Also social media platforms.

We’re on Facebook.

We’re on Instagram.

We are on TikTok.

On TikTok and Instagram, we mainly…

Well, let me reverse a little bit.

On TikTok, we are only under Morris Underscore Explorers because Morris does explore St.

Petersburg, so you can watch his fun antics.

And then on Instagram and Facebook, we are greatexkids.

You can just search Great Explorations Children’s Museum on either one, and of course we’ll come up.

But Morris also has his own Instagram, Morris Underscore Explorers, where he posts a lot of reels.

He’ll post visiting some of our exhibit sponsors and getting his teeth cleaned at the dentist and fun things like that, showcasing our community partners.

And then obviously coming right on site to Great Explorations, which we’re on 4th Street, 1925, 4th Street North.

We share a lobby with Sunken Gardens, so you can really make a full day out of it, visit the botanical gardens during the day, and then escape the heat or the potentially bad weather and come and play at Great X with your kids.

It’s a one-stop shop.

Love it.

I can’t thank you enough for coming on to take time out of your busy, as an understatement, day.

And I love getting to know you better, the people I work with, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the opportunity to work with you on such a large capacity on such an important area of the business.

Obviously, the website isn’t everything, but it’s how people interface when they’re not there.

And I just want to tell you both that it’s a great pleasure to work with you.

It’s meaningful for us, and I look forward to our ongoing partnership because it’s super cool.

Big fan of what you’re doing, and I hope more people come through the door from this episode.

Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Thank you, Josh.

Yeah, we’re really honored for the opportunity, so thank you.

Me too.

Have a great one.

Yeah, you too.