Meet Steve & Dawn Woodburn | Chief Adventurer & Amusement Director

We had the good fortune of connecting with Steve & Dawn Woodburn and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Steve & Dawn, what habits do you feel play an important role in your life?
Starting one’s own business is rarely something you jump into with both feet. For those who feel compelled to own a business, it’s a matter of finding the right product or service, determining who your customers are, how to market it, where to market it, getting funding, etc. My wife and I had a crazy idea and after much persuasion we decided to turn that idea into a business, Marvelous Moosey Adventures. We too had many decisions to make and processes to go through prior to even considering selling our product. We had to create it, get the product patented, create prototypes, write a children’s book, design packaging and so much more. The main habit that kept was going through all the trials and tribulations (and fun times as well) was persistence. We always kept the goal in sight, which was to take our idea and product and use our creativity to develop something people would see the value in and want to purchase. Being organized, setting goals, asking for help when needed, being willing to take risks and knowing you will succeed, no matter the challenges, are other habits that helped us stay in course. While some look at failure as the end, we’ve always looked at it something that happens and we take the lessons learned to ensure we do it differently the next time. There truly is no success without failure along the way.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Dawn, one-half of the partnership that created Marvelous Moosey, has worked for 36 years with basically the same company (through multiple mergers and acquisitions) as an executive and marketing assistant. It’s her organizational skills (she loves creating spreadsheets!) and eye for details that kept us on track. She’s also very creative, something she hadn’t realized before, and has a great sense of humor that has kept us going the past five years. Steve’s first career was working on-air in radio at a handful of stations over a 20-year span, winding up that phase of life by moving to Atlanta from his home in California to run a company that gave traffic reports on multiple radio stations. His next career was selling promotional products (those things every one has with corporate branding on them) along with helping companies ensure their logos met branding standards. After three decades, he left that industry when Covid hit, and worked with Dawn to launch Marvelous Moosey Adventures. Between the two of them, they’ve used their multiple talents and skills to create a unique plush moose with blue hooves (as a reminder it’s OK to look a little different), wrote a children’s book to tell his story and created the Moosecase, branding and stories that give Moosey so much personality. They work many festivals each year, using their storytelling gifts and marketing ideas to spread Moosey love throughout the U.S.A,

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Atlanta and the surrounding areas have so much to offer residents and tourists that it’s hard to know where to start. The first day we’d visit Stone Mountain, the largest piece of exposed granite in the world, and hike to the top where the vistas of the metro area on a clear day are stunning. The Atlanta History Museum in Buckhead is another place to while away the hours learning about the history of this vibrant city as well as home to the Atlanta Cyclorama, Called the largest painting in the world and one of only two cyclorama’s in the country, it portrays the 1864 Battle of Atlanta in vivid detail. The restaurants in Buckhead are numerous, but The Palm is one of the best for dinner as well as the decades old Bones. Heading downtown, the tour includes the amazing Georgia Aquarium, the Coke Museum and Centennial Park, built as a centerpiece for the 1996 Olympic Games. Taking the elevator to the top of the circular Peachtree Plaza Hotel downtown is another place for 360 degree views of Atlanta and a famous restaurant, the Sundial. The next day, in Mid-Town, stops would include the fabulous High Museum, the Margaret Mitchell home (actually an apartment where the author of Gone with the Wind lived) and the Atlanta Botanical Gardens with dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant, Pasta Da Pulcinella. We’d spend a day at Lake Lanier or Lake Allatoona, swimming and relaxing with dinner at one of the nearby fish houses. And, if it’s baseball season, we’d take in a Braves game and enjoy Battery Park with a plethora of restaurants and shops built around Truist field.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
We were given a lot of valuable feedback by friends as we progressed with the project, however it was our adult children and immediate family that gave us the best feedback and encouragement…and continue to. They helped us narrow down the options we developed for the plush and our daughter-in-law designed our logos as well as our package we call his Moosecase® as it looks like an old-time suitcase with stickers. Also a shout out to the woman who made our prototypes, Karen Laude, a former toy designer who now helps people create plush animals.

Website: www.marvelousmoosey.com

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