Ep 9: From Bullied to Bold - Edutainment Entrepreneur Scilla Andreen

Today’s guest is Scilla Andreen, CEO & Co-Founder of iNDIEFLIX and Founder of iMPACTFUL. Scilla shares her personal story of being bullied as a child, wanting to stay invisible and unseen for decades, and finally finding her voice to advocate for others through edutainment content.  

Scilla is an award-winning producer, director, author, entrepreneur, speaker, and parent. She works with corporations, nonprofits and thousands of schools around the world, using story to bond, bridge, and model empathy to build a more empathetic community.  Her work has been featured in The New York Times Good Morning America and Today. Scilla is a popular speaker at Sundance, Cannes, CES, SXSW, BeBold, Women in Film, mental health summits, educational institutions, and corporate HR and DEIB panels. She is a mother of 6 and resides with her husband Eric and two dogs in Seattle WA. 

Authentic, inspirational and relatable discussions with inspirational business leaders, gaining insight into what inspires them and how they got to where they are today. These conversations offer actionable tips for listeners to create their own path to success and shatter whatever glass ceilings arise and overcome any obstacles on their personal journey. Jeanniey Walden, Founder of Liftoff Enterprises, is the award-winning marketing, business & workplace expert and host of the TV show "LiftOff with Jeanniey Walden." Jeanniey dives into compelling conversations with incredible experts of all backgrounds to understand what makes them tick and expose how you, the viewer can learn from these experiences and start to "LiftOff."

Discussion points:

• Scilla’s current projects and companies
• Loving the law, watching Perry Mason, and advocating for others
• Bullied in childhood, and finding her voice later in life
• Studies of caregivers of all kinds find loneliness is pervasive
• Social media - damaging for all ages, including adults - the cause of a spike in mental health challenges
• Starting a business driven by passion - what should entrepreneurs know? You can’t be afraid to ask for money - especially women
• Now is a great time to shift our culture and mindset
• The courage to move from invisible to seen-pushing through with kindness
• Don’t be a bully to yourself!

Resources:

Scilla Andreen LinkedIn

Book: The Creative Coping Toolkit

Caregiver Statistics

IndieFlix

Impactful

Jeanniey Walden LinkedIn

Liftoff Website

See what we look like; subscribe to our YouTube channel

Watch the TV show"LiftOff with Jeanniey Walden"

Follow us

Transcript

Jeanniey Walden: Welcome back to Liftoff 

[00:00:09] Journeys. I'm Jeanie Walden, your host, and today we have an incredibly amazing and inspirational guest. If you don't get goosebumps at least three times during this conversation, I don't know what to tell you. Sheila Andre is the c e o and co-founder of a company called She's gonna share her journey with us of what inspired her to become who she is today.

The challenges she had in getting. And what she's doing now to make the world a better place. Sheila, thanks so much for joining us on Liftoff Journeys today. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you because you have some incredible stories to tell, not just about what you're doing now, but in your path that got you to the point where you are now.

But let's start out with you today. Tell us about who you are 

[00:01:00] Scilla Andreen: and what your business. . So Sheila Andreen, it's a funny spelling. S c I L l A, it's an Italian spelling of an Irish name, so, and I'm Chinese and Swedish, so nothing really fits, I guess, whatever that means these days. Um, and I'm the CEO and co-founder of IndieFlix, and I'm the CEO and founder of Impactful, which is really just a sister brand that lives within IndieFlix.

And IndieFlix is a global, uh, streaming service. It. It was just independent film. We've really moved more into edutainment, so we have Schwartz features, documentaries, web series. We have over 4,000 titles and we stream globally. It's a subscription-based business on the indie on the impactful side, which used to be IndieFlix Education.

That's more of a B2B business where we deliver social impact, social emotional learning programming to schools and corporations around the world. And it's. , it has become my passion. It was something that meant a lot to me. Uh, when I first started it, it started off with little school screenings of, uh, social impact documentaries, whether it was about bullying or empowerment or screen majors, which was about, um, , how old should your phone your kid be when they get a phone?

And you know how much screen time is healthy? Of course, that conversation has dramatically changed to online safety and privacy issues, which it's amazing. Even little kids understand like how the brain works. And so that has then morphed, um, impactful has morphed into, uh, the Creative coping toolkit, which is the main product we deliver to schools and corporations.

Basically houses angst like the upstanders and race to be human. These four film-based programs that also have social emotional learning activities for educators, employees, um, and students and their families. So it's a, it's a very inclusive program. I 

[00:03:00] Jeanniey Walden: love that. So you've got both ends of the spectrum covered with the business that you do, the entertainment side of the.

Supporting all of these independent filmmakers and giving them an opportunity to get started. But you've also got something that's about education and impact for families. And you're distributing that through businesses, 

[00:03:18] Scilla Andreen: right? Yes. Um, we work, the businesses will license the content for multiple years, and then we also have an engagement team that works very closely with, whether it's HR, wellness, D E I B, to.

Create, you know, to not only to roll it out through big virtual events or in-person events or fireside chats, you name it, to, um, ongoing programming updates in the program and engagement for, uh, employees and their families, which then connects to their e a p to provide more, um, direction, clarity and value to the other benefits that.

uh, invested in for their employees wellbeing. So it's, it's, it's pretty crazy. I think there was a Forbes study just recently that, um, showed in this order the three top priorities for corporations, and this was for a billion in revenue and up was, uh, employee wellness and satisfaction and care. Then the customer, which was just off by 1% and then brand trust.

Wow. 

[00:04:23] Jeanniey Walden: That's amazing. . Yeah. So you've always been passionate. I've known you for a long time about putting the right stories and messages in market. Stories that can change people's lives, that can have a good impact, that can really make a difference. Have you always wanted to do that since you were younger?

Is that a passion that you acquired over the years? How did you get to where you are today? 

[00:04:49] Scilla Andreen: What a great question. Um, I think, yeah, so two things come to mind. One is when I was born, I don't know, you know, I watched a lot of tv. I was an only child till my sister was born 10 years later and we lived in a little mining town at the time called Breckenridge, Colorado.

It's not a little mining town now, but. Uh, my dad was a developer and I love, I just came out of the womb loving the law, so I would like, wanna play sick sometimes to stay home and watch an episode of Perry Mason or, and then David Kelly shows. And, um, I just went on, I just love the law. I'm like, obviously law and order and, uh, all of those.

So that's one of my passions and I think it was because I wanted to. defend people. I wanted to protect people. I wanted to argue on behalf of people and not argue isn't really in my vocabulary, but, but, and fight isn't either. It was really more like represent, advocate, and. . The other thing is I was severely bullied as a kid, uh, being the, I don't know why, but I was like the only kid of color in the entire, in Summit County.

So I went to Summit County School, one school for like five city, little, little towns and I was so, uh, bullied and in those days it was physical bullying cuz we didn't have the internet. So I was, you know, kicked spit on, my hair pulled, I got locked in a, a little cupboard in the classroom. one day, and I was left there all afternoon.

Nobody even looked for me like it was, and I was afraid to say, I'm in here, because that was gonna be embarrassing. And I had a lot of time to think. I will never forget that third grade girl who sat in that cupboard afraid. And I, it was the most horrible feeling and I thought, I will do everything in my power for other people to not feel this.

And I also thought, gosh, if they just got to know me, they wouldn't see that I'm so horrible and they don't even have to like me. But if they could just know that I'm not this horrible thing, they must think I am. And of course, you know, for the next 30 years I did not fulfill on that promise. I became a bystander cuz we moved to Denver and then Seattle and I was just so grateful to be invisible, to be.

Not seen and to be, can you hear me okay? Yeah. I was, I was so grateful to be invisible and not seen and unnoticed and I felt safe and I spent. much of my life there. Um, of course I started to find my voice when I had kids, and, um, even then I was not the most helpful. I'd say just walk away. If they're acting like that, just walk away.

Kind of the same thing my parents said to me. And I will say that making these programs. , taking them out into the world, sharing a message of how important it is to safely stand up for ourselves and for others. Not in a way that's adversarial, not in a way that's going to bring harm to you, but in a way that shows empathy and compassion and union and kindness.

And it all starts with having that towards ourselves. And so it has been an amazing journey. Life changing to address anxiety, suicide, depression, social media addiction, cyber bullying. Belonging, mattering, resilience. And then my latest one raced to be human. How do we treat people equally with great respect and dignity, regardless of their ethnicity?

You, you 

[00:08:20] Jeanniey Walden: just, you just gave me chills hearing that story because I think that's the first time that I've heard you share that story and just to see that you've taken something that happened so personally to you since you were so young. and found a way to communicate and help others is really inspiring.

[00:08:42] Scilla Andreen: Well, do you share 

[00:08:43] Jeanniey Walden: that message broadly when you're in business, or do you just quietly go about with your initiatives knowing that you're driven for a different purpose more than just this is a great business model? 

[00:08:57] Scilla Andreen: Well, first of all, I did not plan this. I didn't have some big blueprint or roadmap that.

Okay, let's do school screenings. Let's create the marketing and messaging materials. Let's come up with the tip sheets. Let's do the posters. Let's do the, oh, they wanna keep that conversation going. Let's come up with classroom discussion guides, reflections and prompts and activities, and then let's measure that impact so that we can create more.

That was all organic. And thank God that the schools, the corporations, employees, families, parents, Took the time to reach out to us to say, we need this. We're hurting here. This is hard for us. Do you have anything that addresses this? And when you hear that enough, like when I learned recently with one of our major corporate clients that, uh, there was a study done and the, um, I think it's, oh my God, I have to go look in my books, but it's something like over 70% of caregivers.

Are lonely and are struggling with, um, mental health challenges. And that's whether you're taking care of a baby, a newborn baby, or a special needs child or a senior that's going through some issues. Um, it's a very lonely road. And so, um, being able to make content that addresses that or how do we address grief after school shootings, even if it didn't happen at your school, but you're hearing it on the news in the background cause mom and dad are watching it.

How do we create content for. How do we create content for parents? We are, they, it's surprising, it's shocking, and it's so wrong how we leave parents to fend for themselves, to navigate just giving your kid a phone, right? Yeah. The, the sex trafficking, the drugs, the stupid, you know, like choking challenges and things like that, and kids are.

and educators don't know what to do. Parents don't know what to do. The platforms aren't really doing anything. So like we are ha, we're all out there on our own on so many levels. So the content that we create helps provide evidence-based, expert approved things that we can do. , I wish we learned this as kids, so that by the time we came, parent became parents.

Since we know there's no real manual, um, other than how to get through the actual like have carrying a baby and giving birth , then you're on your own. Right? And wouldn't it be nice if we had information? You have to, and you, we've all heard this, you have to have a license to fish. You have to have a driver's license.

You learn how to drive safely. There are rules. We need those. for, especially like the internet, which is where we get up most of everything we need. 

[00:11:30] Jeanniey Walden: Exactly. And I was just gonna ask you, do you think that the internet and social media has caused a lot of this anxiety and loneliness and concern? Because look back when we were kids, you got tossed outside, go play, see you later.

Just come home for dinner and that was it. Nobody really worry. Today, nobody lets their kids even go outside the house for fear that something would happen despite the fact that so many have cell phones on their personal 

[00:11:59] Scilla Andreen: belonging. 100%. I believe that technology has not only created a spike in mental health challenges across the board, not just in kids, but in grownups too, that, um, social media has created this comparison lifestyle.

TikTok, you know, and other, other social media platforms has reduced our ability to pay attention and to focus. Um, schools almost need to start teaching how to pay attention. Like we have to get back to such basics. And why, because of anonymity, someone can be so mean online to act out of character of who they really are because there's some anonymity or the fact that we follow.

Toxicity and negativity. And then you have like the predators, the people who prey on the, um, the vulnerable to recruit for a whole host of things. Um, and I'm, I, I sound, here's the thing is like, I'm sounding like the people and the messaging that we, um, address, but in a positive way. Like, yes, there's all this unknown and scary stuff in the world and there always has been.

But more than that, we have power. We have agency, we have, we have more power as individuals than we've ever had and why people spend their time, which by the way is important cuz it takes all of us to create change, right? So we need the people who are out there advocating to change laws and create change policies and hold platforms accountable.

And designers who create this technology, the design, the addictive design, like we all have to sort of, um, pledge to do no harm, right? And shine the light on the good because there's way more good than there is evil in the world. It's just that our news cycle only shows, because that's all that really like helps make money and gets people to watch is the negativity.

So my goal is to flip that and to just really, or or just create some balance, right? Yeah, yeah. Focus on the things you can do as an individual right now that doesn't cost. and you don't need a law change and you don't need to sign a petition, and you don't need to write a check that you can do for yourself and your family.

I love it. You 

[00:14:16] Jeanniey Walden: took this really impactful and traumatizing set of situations that happened to you when you were young, and that passion has driven you to create ways to change the world for the better, and you're doing it through your own business. How do you balance the passion? and the logistics of running a business and needing to cover the cost of running the business at the same time.

For the listeners out there who are entrepreneurs or are thinking about creating a passion-driven business, what should they be considering? Oh, 

[00:14:52] Scilla Andreen: that's a really good question, Jeanie. Um, first of all, I just wanna say that I am a living, breathing example of you don't need to have a certain set of, um, prerequisites, box, prerequisite boxes checked in order to do something that you are passionate about and that you also want to spend your life, um, making your living at.

Um, I have had incredible mentors. They're not even mentors. They're just incredible people that appeared in my life and plucked. From oblivion and saw something in me I didn't see in myself. Remember, I spent three decades being invisible. I didn't wanna be noticed, but I always had a big, uh, intention in my heart to help other people.

I'm, I, I, I am one of those super empathetic people. If someone tells me a story, like I feel it, I feel like I'm in their. , I'm the kind of person that thinks if someone cuts me off in traffic, I feel like maybe they woke up on the wrong side of the bed and they found out that their significant other is cheating on them.

Or maybe they got some terrible news about a family member or something. And so I'm, I always want, and I'm not excusing people, but I feel like every, I think we are born good. I think that we, um, are, we learn how to not be so kind. That's a learned thing. , how do you take all of that and monetize it so that you can eat and, you know, go on a trip or pay, put gas in the car.

It's really, um, there were really tough times for me. I remember times where do I get new tires because they're bald and I gotta drive carpool, or do I fix my teeth because I need a root canal, right? Like, I had to decide what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? You know what I. . Anyway. I bought tires, . But you do have to take care of yourself and you can't be afraid, especially as women, to ask for money because we can't.

Yes. People say, why are you, why do you charge for your programs? It helps people so much. It is so powerful. It's such impact. You should make it free. Okay. Help me figure out how to make it free so that we don't become like a, I don't have a bunch of account executives selling the license. I have a bunch of people on my team who strictly are service people.

They're there to help you use the program. So yes, am I out there working to figure out a way to make it free? In California, they have one of our programs, every public school has access to it. Now, 10,000 campuses, county offices. Staff and their families. So now we're working on engagement, and I'm working to make it free throughout the country, but start with a seed that meets.

Start with the idea that you are so passionate about, because every single day you're gonna have to get up and you're gonna have to do it. And it's go, there's gonna be tough stuff, just like training. If you have an art or you're really good at archery or you're really good at running and you wanna go to the Olympics, you train, you work hard, and, but there's joy in it.

So don't think working hard is not fun. Working hard for me. I open up my computer every morning and it's like an advent calendar. Like, I can't wait to see the, the gifts, the, the opportunities, the opportunity to help and to receive and to give. , it's my life. I don't necessarily separate work and my personal life, they are one because I, I believe that what we're doing is creating real, real good in the world, and it is empowering other people.

And don't be afraid to ask for money. Don't be afraid to charge for it. Don't be like, those are things that it's expected and isn't there That weird phenomenon, like if it's free, it doesn't seem to have the same. . It's so true. It's really interesting that we've put so much emphasis on money that if it doesn't cost or cost a lot, it's not as good, which is ridiculous.

Love is free. It's the greatest, most powerful thing in the world, right? So I think because of Covid and Black Lives Matter and all the stuff going on in the world, I. We have a great opportunity to shift our culture and our mindset. I think people really value being home with family and not spending two hours in a car, commuting or a train that they have time to work out and work life balance.

And guess what? Mental health, it's like having, you know, we should be able to talk about a mental health challenge as if we had a headache openly and not be judged. Right? How do we learn to be there for each other? Um, there's a lot of money in. , I think, and the people who are paying for it will benefit and they can then even go and make more money.

I think it's all connected. Yeah. I think you're so 

[00:19:44] Jeanniey Walden: right. So last question for you. You were invisible. Now, you're clearly not. How did you get enough courage to move from behind the scenes to in front of. . 

[00:19:57] Scilla Andreen: Well, I still, even before this, I get anxious. I learned making angst that I have. I'm classic social anxiety.

I always thought I was just a little bit broken, a little bit less than other people. And god forbid I would never tell anyone that. Um, but when I learned that I'm classic or textbook, um, and I also learned that I created tools as a kid to get through things. because nowadays there's a lot of accommodations for people to, um, get through something and not have to do it like everybody else.

Right. And by the way, when someone is saying that they're struggling and they can't do something, they're not looking to get out of it. They're looking for help to get through it. And so I think, yes, I still get nervous. To get in in the front, and I'm definitely someone who likes to do all the work and I don't need to take all the credit because everything we've built is, is all the people that have given us feedback, right, of what they need.

So this is built by all of us and we will all benefit from it. Exposure therapy is a really powerful thing that I've learned for anyone. You don't even have to have any kind of disorder or diagnosis. We all get nervous, we all have anxiety. Anxiety's actually a good thing. It's when it becomes an unhealthy.

So how do we push through the things that we are afraid of? The first thing you gotta do when you look in the mirror every single morning, say something nice to yourself. Be kind to yourself or even just think something nice about yourself. We are sometimes our worst enemies. We can, and by the way, I learned in making the upstanders that we are all bullies.

And I had a hard time swallowing that pill because I'm like, no, I'm the kid that was locked in the closet. I'm the one who's devoting my life to helping. I am not a bully, but I was, I wrote a book called The Creative Coping Toolkit, and in fact, it's right here, . And um, I was going on the news to promote it and I looked in the mirror and the first thing I said was, you did not get enough sleep last night.

You should have been drinking more water. You should have stopped eating carbs three days ago. , you know, and I, I thought, would I ever say that to someone else? If you had written a book Genie, and you were going on to the news, and I'm like, well, did you, did you drink enough water? What are you wearing? You don't you sh did you, have you been eating?

You look puffy. Like you would never say that to another human being. Why do we say those things to ourselves right before going to a big party? Oh, you know, I feel fat. I don't look good in this outfit. I don't wanna really go, I don't wanna see that person. Like we fill our brains with all the negativity.

why can't we? And we don't need to be pompous, like arrogant. We don't need to swing that way. We need to think, look at you. You're gonna go and you're gonna talk about something that's important to you, and you're gonna get to share it with other people. Like if we can practice that kindness for ourselves, we can then show other people how we want to be treated.

More importantly, we can show them how they can treat themselves. And I believe that that will shift society. It starts with. . And then we also need to recognize other people and acknowledge them. We need to let people know they matter. Being kind to someone doesn't mean you have to take them under your wing, bring them into your house, feed them, take care of them.

That's enabling. You need to respect people where they are. You need to see them. So many people don't feel seen. They don't know that they matter. They don't know that they belong. And I think if we could focus more on that, I don't think a kid was gonna go get a gun and go shoot up their classmates. I think that we can be kinder to each other regardless of what color our skin is, regardless of our socioeconomic background.

I didn't think we needed to teach these things. I thought we kind of came out of the womb. And your family is all good. I mean, I grew up watching, you know, my three sons and, and Gilligan's Island and, and where, where it was a happy families, right? That's not reality, but we are all able to be kind and we are all able to show up as our best selves and that's something we need to work on every single.

because it will have a dramatic effect. Wow. Such 

[00:24:07] Jeanniey Walden: impactful advice. I'm gonna take that one section about reminding myself not to be a bully to myself. I'm gonna listen to it every single day because that was me this week. . I was like, wow, why did I not stop eating carbs ? Why? Why didn't I drink? My daughter matter?

[00:24:25] Scilla Andreen: Well, and who cares? Because now you know, you see models everywhere and they represent real people. They're not necessarily, that's great. You know, underweight. And so why should we be doing that to ourselves, especially as women, right? Yeah. 

[00:24:38] Jeanniey Walden: So true. Well, Sheila, this has been an incredible conversation. , it's been great hearing about your journey.

Where can people go to find out more about you IndieFlix, the programs that you're creating? 

[00:24:51] Scilla Andreen: Uh, indieflix.com spelled like Netflix, but indie Netflix and or impactful.co. And it's not forgetting the m it is the new like URL lots of people are using, so we're impactful.co. And uh, I'm also really reachable on LinkedIn too.

With my funny spelling of my name. S C I L L a@indieflix.com. Got it. 

[00:25:18] Jeanniey Walden: Well, I hope to see you soon in New York, or I'll come out to Seattle 

[00:25:22] Scilla Andreen: and Oh, I'll be in New York. I'm there every month starting in April. Perfect. Perfect. Thank you for having me and I wish you the best. I love what you're doing and I appreciate that.

Um, you know, you're giving entrepreneurs like us a platform to be able to share what we're. Absolutely. It's 

[00:25:38] Jeanniey Walden: the journeys that other people take that inspire us and give us the courage to take our own 

[00:25:43] Scilla Andreen: chances a hundred percent. Great. Thank you so much. 

[00:25:48] Jeanniey Walden: Awesome. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Liftoff Journeys and that you are inspired by Sheila's story.

As we continue to share more inspirational stories and business journeys with you, we hope you continue to tune in. Or tune into our TV show. Lift Off with Jeanie Walden. Check our website for more 

[00:26:09] Scilla Andreen: details.