Work Builders – Dad's Blog

After saving for the last few months, Ryan’s hard earned profits had grown to the point where it seemed time to make his donation to United Way of Broome County. So, yesterday I picked him up from school and we headed over to the United Way offices here in Vestal, NY to do just that. Ryan had decided on his own long ago that he would give a full 50% of his Work Builders profits to United Way. This was his first chance to put that plan into action.

Ryan shows off his blocks for the TV cameras.

Last week I contacted United Way to let them know Ryan wanted to make his donation. They were already aware of his charitable activities supporting Toys for Tots and SOS Shelter as well as his intentions for supporting United Way once his profits accumulated. In fact they have been very supportive of everything Ryan has been doing helping to spread the word and even buying some of his blocks.

When we arrived there were already two TV camera crews there and two more would come shortly thereafter. There was also a reporter from the local newspaper who had come for the story. They took a little time to interview Ryan as best you can with a six-year-old and he shared a bit about the day’s donation and how he had raised the funds. At one point Ryan was surrounded by four TV cameras and a photographer. That was without counting me. I did come prepared with camera in hand and took a few photos of my own! Ryan seemed to take it all in stride. I was able to find the news report done by News 10 Now online. You can view the video here.

Ryan with Mr. Alan Hertel, Executive Director of United Way of Broome County.

Next Ryan got to meet Mr. Alan Hertel, Executive Director of United Way of Broome County, who was looking forward to meeting Ryan and would personally accept his donation. Mr. Hertel waited patiently as did the room full of news crews as Ryan carefully counted out the money he had brought to donate, $60.00 in all. Ryan then gave his donation to Mr. Hertel and in return received a receipt for his records. I’ll talk with him more about that later. Mr. Hertel talked with Ryan a bit about how his donation helps United Way and some of the things United Way does for our community. Before he was done, Mr. Hertel also bought a set of blocks from Ryan. A nice surprise that added to the fun.

When Ryan left the United Way offices he had a smaller stash of money in his shiny money box, but I do believe he had a bigger smile than the one he arrived with. He really enjoyed making his donation and I enjoyed watching him.

If I have had to do anything proactive throughout the process of assisting Ryan as he has started up his Work Builders company and building block business, it has been to keep the reigns pulled in a bit. You see, building blocks are not his vision for Work Builders. Not by a long shot.

The trick so far has been to keep him focused on a product simple enough that we can reasonably make it by hand, with a somewhat sketchy selection of tools to work with. His plans for product offerings are extensive and in some cases rather involved. But here is one we may be able to work on without too much in the way of retooling, or breaking the bank.

Ryan’s brother Collin has a birthday on January 5. This year he turned 4 years old and boy was he looking forward to that! You see, when you are four years old “everything’s fun!” as he puts it. In any case, Ryan decided to make a present for Collin’s birthday and that is what you see pictured here. Ryan’s bus. Some time ago Ryan had been playing around with some building blocks one day and it struck him that they looked like a bus. He’s been pondering that idea ever since.

The bus is made from materials we already had on hand, Easy Builder building blocks! I admire his resourcefulness using materials we already had. The only thing we had to get specifically for this bus was the wheels. His plan was to glue the blocks together paint them yellow (paint we also already had on hand) and draw on the details that would make the bus look good. Collin’s birthday was a perfect chance to build his prototype and give it a test run. I think he did a great job!

If he does decide to go ahead with this as a new product for Work Builders there will be some details to work on for sure. As you can see from the second photo, all four wheels don’t sit nicely on the ground and that is a detail not lost on Ryan. So we’ll need to do a better job with that. Also it adds some time and expense to be gluing the blocks together and such. We might find ourselves discussing other options for building materials. But these are things you learn when you build your first prototype, right?

So for now Ryan is pondering this bus as a new product offering. For the future, he has been writing down other ideas in a planning notebook. One he had me get at the store expressly for this purpose. In his planning notebook… All I can say is that he has the book broken down into sections each one containing a list of other products he is considering for production, soon.

As for me? I’m still holding the reigns, a little.

Ryan & Collin preparing Easy Builder building block sets for donation to Toys for Tots and SOS Shelter

It has been roughly two weeks now since the Work Builders Block Party took place and we have been busy here at home preparing to make the donations of Easy Builder building blocks. With the block party producing over 1,200 building blocks to work with, Ryan and the rest of us have been working on finishing the collection of 100 sets of blocks.

The work left to do after the block party has been to finish painting some of the blocks that didn’t get painted that day, separate the blocks into 12 block sets, package them into individual carrying bags and put on some identifying tags. With 1,200+ blocks prepared, this turned out to be more work than we would have guessed, but it is all good.

Next up is the fun part, Ryan gets to finally make his donations. He is really excited about this! I have to say that I can see it in his eyes every time he personally delivers a set of his building blocks to a customer, his eyes light up and he is delighted to see their face when they receive the blocks.

One day last week I took Ryan out after school to deliver some of his block sets to his local customers. In each case I noticed that he waited long enough to see them open the bag and check out the blocks. The more they liked them, the more excited he was. He is truly enjoying this.

Ryan preparing blocks for donation

But back to his donations. This week he will be making donations to both Toys for Tots and SOS Shelter. On Wednesday a Marine Staff Sergeant will be coming to Ryan’s first grade classroom to receive Ryan’s donation of 50 sets of Easy Builder building blocks for Toys for Tots. Then he will be making his second donation to SOS Shelter on Thursday. When all is said and done all 100 sets of blocks will be on their way to some deserving charities.

It is going to be a fun week and I am truly looking forward to seeing Ryan’s face when all of this comes to fruition.

A great day for Ryan and his charities!

What a great day it was for our family! On Saturday (Nov. 21) we held Ryan’s Work Builders Block Party and everything went great. We had over 100 people attend and help with our project. By days end we finished over 1,200 building blocks which would fill out more than 100 complete sets of Easy Builder building blocks for charity!

We are so grateful to Binghamton University for providing a place for our event to be held and to the Binghamton Circle K student volunteer organization in particular, who supported our effort as university sponsors for the event. Without Circle K’s sponsorship we would not have been able to hold the event on BU campus.

The room was bustling with activity all day long and the energy was great. We had volunteers helping out from all age groups and all backgrounds. There were many Binghamton University students, Vestal Elementary School students and parents, Cub Scout members, professional colleagues, family friends and many others who heard about the event and made the time in their schedules to come and help.

Ryan was so energized that it was all we could do to get him to take a moment to eat a sandwich. He was busy showing people how to do the painting then took over moving hundreds of blocks to and from the outdoor painting area.

Collin hands out stickers!

His younger brother Collin spent the entire day greeting everyone who attended, giving them stickers and big smiles. If you were here on Saturday it is a good bet Collin “stickered” you before you left.

Over the next few days or week perhaps, we will be packaging all of the 1,200+ building blocks into the Easy Builders cloth bags in preparation for donation to Toys for Tots and SOS Shelter. I have been in touch with both of these charities and they are thrilled and look forward to our donations. Doing that will be great fun and I am looking forward to seeing the look on Ryan’s face when he gives them his building block sets. It is what he has been working towards all along.

There are so many people to thank for helping to make Ryan’s vision become a reality it is hard to know where to begin. But here are a few I would like to mention in hopes I am not leaving anyone out.

• Binghamton University
• Binghamton Circle K student volunteer organization
• 3i Graphics
• The Write Strategy
• Lowe’s Home Improvement
• The Johnson Family
• All volunteers/participants who attended!

At some point of the day during the Work Builders Block Party on Saturday Ryan came to me quite happy and said, “Daddy, I want to do this again… next week!” Well, we can’t quite manage something like that, but maybe again next year, who knows.

Early on in the process of building his start-up business, Ryan told us that he wishes to support charity and he has remained steadfast in that mission ever since. Since then he has identified three charities to support in various ways, two of which he wishes to support by making a direct donation of his building blocks.

After contacting these charity organizations to learn if they will accept hand-made toys and if so how many, we learned that the answer to those questions in both cases was a solid yes and “as many as you can provide”. This begged the question, “How many can we provide?”

Between the two of us we had an idea of what we could produce but we wondered if there might be a way to do more. So we talked and brainstormed together to try and figure out how we could make more, lots more. The result of that brainstorming is our “Work Builders Block Party”, and YOU are invited!

The Work Builders Block Party will take place on Saturday November 21, just over one week from now! This will be a volunteer effort to make as many sets of Easy Builder building blocks as we can in one day. Everything produced on that day will go directly to charity! So mark you calendar for November 21 and please plan to come. We need all the help we can get!

Between now and that date I will be cutting at least 500 wood blocks to have on hand for the project. The task for the day will be to sand the sharp/frayed edges so children will not get slivers and to spray paint them different colors that kids will enjoy. It is an easy task really, so bring a friend and spend a little time with us helping charity.

Our plan on Saturday Nov. 21 is to have a large window of time where you are invited to come and participate. You are welcome and encouraged to come for as much time as you can share whether that is 20 minutes or 3 hours. The final details of location and exact hours for the project are being finalized currently and I hope to have all of that information available to you very soon.

A lot of people have expressed interest in helping Ryan and I along with this project for charity. Now is the time so please plan to come to our Block Party, help us make some building blocks to go to kids this holiday season!

If you are planning to help us on Nov. 21st please drop us a note via email and let us know you are coming. If you have a group that might be interested in getting involved then please let us know as soon as possible. We’d love to have you there with us!

If the turnout seems good I may have to cut more blocks for the day. That would be a great problem to have! So continue to watch this blog and Ryan’s Web site for more details as our plans are finalized.

One other way someone may be able to help…

If you know of anyone who might be in a position to help with providing materials for this growing charity project, I would be grateful for help of that nature. As the scale of this seems to be growing so too does that side of the equation. The spray paint and the sanding tools (sanding blocks, sand paper) are the greatest expected expense. Please email me if you have any leads in this regard. Thank you!

Having the right tools really does make a difference. Up until this point Ryan and I have been doing most all of the work on producing these sets of Easy Builder building blocks by hand. Starting with 2x2x8 white pine boards I have been cutting the wood with a handheld electric circular saw. The cutting is at times a bit imprecise depending on a steady hand. The smallest blocks are the trickiest to cut accurately and consistently. I’ve been getting better at it though.

After the blocks are all cut to size Ryan and I forge ahead with sanding the sharp and slivered cut edges to be sure no one will get hurt. This has been a process of sanding by hand with sanding blocks or sandpaper. By far the least fun of all the steps to the production process. After sanding is completed we paint the blocks with cans of spray paint of various colors depending on the orders we are filling at the time. All in all a labor intensive process but one which yields a nice product in the end.

Enter some friends with generous hearts… Learning about Ryan’s business and our tools of choice to date, my friends the Johnson’s made a generous offer of tools. Today we visited the Johnson’s home and picked up a chop saw and a couple of palm sanders to try out. Niiiiice!! Ohh, these make such a difference! Thank you to the Johnson’s!!!

Ryan and I immediately gave the sanders a go. Ryan is a bit skittish with the noise from these (or any power tool), so he’s not so sure they are for him. That is OK really. I’d be just as happy if he is not trying to much with power tools just yet. But Ryan did very quickly come up with a distribution of duties which allows me to use the sanders on some parts of the work while leaving other parts of the sanding for his doing.

The saw of course is off limits for Ryan and he is perfectly fine with that. I am delighted though in that this will make things much more efficient as well as accurate in the end. These tools are borrowed so this is a temporary solution, but they will be a great help to our production capabilities. A critical need right now with a special event we have in the works. More on that as soon as some details are worked out.

Stay tuned!

Early on in this process Ryan told me that he wanted to use some of his money to support charity. After much discussion over the last few weeks around our house Ryan has now decided on some charities that he plans to support. He has selected three charitable organizations to help with a variety of reasons for each one. It is a lofty goal that we will work towards together. Stay tuned, we may ask for your help along the way!

First is Toys for Tots Syracuse NY. This was an obvious fit for Ryan and he liked the idea right away. His reason for choosing Toys for Tots was very simple. “They give toys to little kids that might not have any.” Ryan would like to provide some of his Easy Builder building block sets to Toys for Tots for distribution this holiday season. Although there is no local office for Toys for Tots in the Binghamton area, we may have some interesting plans in the works to facilitate Ryan’s donation.

Next on his list to support is the SOS Shelter here in Binghamton, NY. The SOS Shelter provides emergency shelter for victims of domestic violence in our community. Ryan learned of this organization from his mother as she explained that she has made donations to them in the past. He has a natural sense of empathy for all kinds of people in need and seemed to feel a connection here knowing of his mother’s previous support. Like Toys for Tots, Ryan plans to provide some of his Easy Builder building block sets to the SOS Shelter for the benefit of those families with children who find themselves in the care of the shelter. As he put it to me, “They need toys in case they left all their toys behind when they left their house”.

And last but most certainly not least is the United Way of Broome County. This may be the toughest one to manage some support for in that this will be monetary support. As such it will require that Work Builders become financially successful in order to facilitate making a donation. We are working on that! What attracts Ryan to the United Way is that, “They help lots of different charities”. That pretty much says it all.

Now I’ll put on my proud Dad cap and say I could not be more proud of Ryan for his sincere interest in helping others. This has given us great opportunities to discuss and learn about how fortunate we are as a family and how we can help others in our community. I will also repeat for the sake of clarity that this plan to support charity truly originates with Ryan. Where he gets this I can’t know. At his age I was probably most worried about which toy to play with next or picking on my younger brother. Although he does have his moments with his younger brother, in so many ways he amazes me on a daily basis!

Ryan, excited for his first out of town shipments

Today is the day for Ryan’s first out of town Easy Builder building block orders to be shipped. Our first order of business this morning was to get two orders all packaged and ready for shipping, then we were off to the local FedEx Kinko’s location to drop them off for shipment.

In a way this was a good reminder to me that Ryan is 6 years old. For him the simple process of putting his blocks into their shipping boxes, taping them up and taking them out to be shipped yielded great delight. Maybe it was using the packaging tape gun on the boxes or adding the large air bubble filler into the boxes to keep things from bouncing around too much I don’t know, but he was delighted and that is what counts.

If you are in Illinois or Florida and waiting for your order of Easy Builder building blocks, sit tight they are on their way right now!

What would you expect to pay for a set of Easy Builder building blocks? Please share your thoughts by commenting below.

As the date approaches for Ryan’s story to air on WICZ FOX 40 TV I’ve had a growing concern, pricing. As things currently stand, we are simply not able to make any money. There just isn’t any profit margin. Maybe this is another learning opportunity with Ryan. So far I have truly left all final decisions throughout this endeavor to Ryan. The question of product pricing has been one he’s expressed strong opinions on from the start.

Ryan’s preference has been to keep the pricing of his blocks as low as possible, very low. His thinking? If the price is too high no one will buy the blocks. NO ONE. However, the pricing he started with was excessively low. $1.15 per set to be exact. At that time he was selling only through personal arrangements with his grade school friends who simply do not have any money to begin with. Even at pricing below $2.00 per set, the vast majority of those original sales were never paid for. It makes sense and it is something Ryan has learned from.

So, a week or two ago Ryan and I did a little math to figure out what it really costs for us to produce these sets of blocks. The results were eye opening for both of us. For Ryan it was a big surprise to see how much it really costs to make his product. For me the eye opener was in learning which of the materials represented the greatest expense. It was the paint, followed by the nice muslin bags we are using as packaging.

So now with an accurate picture of what our costs were the discussion moved to what we should really be pricing the Easy Builder building block sets at. Ryan’s initial answer was… the exact cost we had just arrived at. So, Dad continues with the discussion in hopes of a better answer. Ryan’s final decision on the matter left us with less than $.50 “profit” on each set of building blocks sold which is where our pricing currently stands.

Now I worry that should we get a surge of sales (even a small surge would be significant) by virtue of good publicity with the upcoming tv news story broadcast, will we find ourselves spinning our wheels? Without any appreciable profit margin we create no income for Work Builders and we also are not able to support charity as Ryan intends.

So the question I would pose to you here is simple. What would you expect to pay for a set of Easy Builder building blocks? Each set contains 12 blocks of varying sizes, they are sanded smooth and painted as you see here. The blocks are sold with a nice muslin carrying bag and there are a number of color choices you can choose from. Please leave your comments right here in this blog post. I appreciate any feedback you might be willing to offer. Keep in mind, Ryan will be giving some of this money to charity. More info on that coming soon!

Update: Ryan’s story is scheduled to air on Thurs. Nov. 19, 10:00pm news broadcast.

Today we had a special visitor at our house, Chris Whalen a reporter for FOX 40 WICZ TV here in Binghamton, NY. Chris was here this morning to capture some more video and get some interview footage with both Ryan and I. Fox 40 is planning a story which will run sometime in early November about Ryan and his Easy Builder building block business.

Ryan was excited to have the reporter here and to have a chance to tell people about his business. Chris captured video of Ryan and I working on some building block sets, cutting wood, sanding and painting the blocks and finally putting them into their muslin bags for delivery. Then he spent a little time interviewing me followed by Ryan.

I’ve been second guessing everything I said in the course of that interview ever since, but I think it went ok. Ryan did great with his interview answering questions and showing his excitement for the whole project. It’s a difficult thing for a 6 year old to handle something like that and I felt good about how well he did.

Now I am left with an odd feeling not knowing how their story will come across after they have edited the footage and put their spin on the story. I am used to being on the other side of the camera and being in control of that side of the equation. It is a daunting feeling to have the presentation of Ryan’s story now out of my hands or control. I am sure they will do a great job, but I have to concede that I will not be comfortable with it until I’ve seen the final result. (fingers are crossed…)

Around the house, I always joke with my wife about who gets the most media notice. Her work puts her in that position from time to time and I have had my moments occasionally in the past. But now Ryan is on track to muddy the waters in that regard. Why not. Go Ryan, go!

As soon as we know when Ryan’s story will air on Fox 40 WICZ I will mention it here so you can catch it if you are interested.