Cymplify is a local group of lifelong friends from Gainesville who share a greater mission to help people learn how to get the most out of life. The “CYM” in Cymplify stands for “Change Your Mind” because we believe that thinking better leads to feeling better. We’ve all heard the old proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for the day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” At Cymplify, we strive to help people learn how to help themselves through educational workshops, books, worldwide webcasts, food truck events spotlighting worthy causes, custom screen printing and community outreach.
Learning is one of our company’s core values, and our passion to teach people to “think better” has opened the door to many rewarding relationships with good people doing good things. While we have been lucky to work with professionals like Kathryn Kvols, author of “Redirecting Children’s Behavior,” to co-write parenting workshops and a “Life Tips For Tweens” book, we also enjoy how much we learn from our collaborations with amazing kids right here in our hometown.
Our first student-business partnership emerged organically a couple of years ago while working with the Gainesville Soccer Alliance. Watching my three children play soccer most weekends (and weekdays), I noticed there was very little apparel and other merchandise that supported the kids, the teams or the club. With the help of Alan Womack, GSA staff, and our screen-printing team, we developed a Spirit Store in the concession stand that is kid inspired and parent approved. Selling club merchandise themselves allowed the players to acquire sales experience and learn about supply and demand. They gained confidence knowing they helped create a new stream of revenue to support their club and local athletic programs.
The next collaboration began last summer when our staff met with the Buchholz High School students from the DECA Entrepreneur program. Through their hard work with Dave Neal (Cymplify co-founder), they developed school merchandise and an apparel line for the 2014-2015 academic year. It was no surprise that the student-designed shirts sold the best and the fastest. Since the BHS kids were already gaining sales experience working in their campus Spirit Store, we were happy to offer our support with student-driven apparel design and marketing suggestions.
We’ve had an exciting spring working on a new project with Jessica Campbell, the technology administrator at Oak View Middle School and her seventh graders from the school’s CAAT (Center for Advanced Academics and Technology) magnet program. These students are trained to receive their Adobe Industry Certifications in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Dreamweaver. This year, they designed their own technology T-shirt and created the digital graphics themselves. Joel Cobden (Cymplify co-founder), facilitated the Artwork Submission Guidelines educational packet, which helped teach students how to format client artwork using vector or raster art, control pixilation and create original artwork in the correct file format. The clever CAAT designers topped it off with an excellent marketing idea to put each child’s first name and last initial on the back of the shirt. Looking to the future, we are currently in the process of designing Sell Sheet Guidelines to help kids learn more about breakeven points, profit margins and product choices.
The Cymplify team is honored to work with student programs and play our role in the “teach a kid to fish” and “think better” missions. Our educational business goal is to teach the basics of business in tangible and creative ways. Our hope is to inspire, motivate, and educate any group or club with the confidence that they can generate revenue for a particular cause or organization using a business model that works. Our teaching goal is to empower students with the knowledge that they hold the power to create pathways to their own futures with the right information, the correct tools and some helpful guidance. It all begins with a willingness to learn and the opportunity to teach.