In honor of PTA leaders who want to give back to their community and teachers, we are giving free e-books away throughout the month of May and June.

May 8, 2025: Skip a Step is free on Kindle. – then on Saturday, May 10th, grab Unicorn Jazz will be free – followed by the wonderful Unicorn Jazz book series free every other day. To grab, check back here or follow any of our social media for announcements! FREE PRINTABLES FOR ALL OF LISA CAPRELLI’S CHILDREN’S BOOKS.                                                                                                                                                 Lisa’s Grief and Loss Book – Butterfly Whispers.

Watch 2 school principals on our fun game show “The Thing I Do” based on book and song with Host Puppet Trezekke:

Unicorn Jazz: Where Lessons Become Magic With Social-Emotional Learning

Leaving the corporate world behind, Lisa created Unicorn Jazz, an educational entertainment brand centered on a whimsical children’s book series. At its heart is a shy, musical unicorn named Jazz who longs to find her voice and her tribe. Jazz’s story – a unicorn who feels like she doesn’t fit in, until a crow friend helps her discover her unique talent – is a direct reflection of the lessons Lisa holds dear. Through a gentle narrative and a song called “The Friendship Song,” Unicorn Jazz teaches children about friendship, BELONGING, and the courage to be themselves. It’s a heartwarming tale that shows how Jazz bravely shares her special voice, turning loneliness into connection and fear into confidence.

Unicorn Jazz Book One – the Series that started it all

Author Lisa Caprelli with her Unicorn Jazz friends. After decades in business, she now spreads joy through creative storytelling (photo courtesy of UnicornJazz.com).

From the beginning, Lisa infused Unicorn Jazz with the wisdom gleaned from Skip a Step. The children’s series became an embodiment of those entrepreneurial life lessons, distilled for young hearts. In fact, the Unicorn Jazz stories celebrate three core themes that echo the principles every leader in Skip a Step spoke about:

• Creativity & Uniqueness: Embracing what makes you different. (Jazz’s musical tail and talent show that being unique is a strength, not something to hide.)

• Community & Kindness: The importance of friendship, empathy, and helping others. (Jazz only finds her confidence with support from friends – reminding us no one succeeds alone.)

• Believing in Yourself (and Others): Having faith in your talents and encouraging those around you. (Just as Jazz learns to trust her voice, her friends learn to believe in her – and each other – illustrating the power of mutual encouragement.

These themes are woven into every adventure of the series, wrapped in fun characters, songs, and imagination. Children might come for the colorful unicorns and playful stories, but they leave with gentle lessons in kindness, self-confidence, and creativity. It’s no surprise that Unicorn Jazz has resonated widely – the book series has earned awards and even a companion album of songs, expanding its reach in a touching way. For Lisa, seeing young readers connect with Jazz’s story – laughing, singing along, and realizing “I have that special something, too!” – has been the most rewarding result of all. In those moments, the wisdom that once came from CEO boardrooms finds its way to the heart of a child.

A CEO in Search of Meaning

Lisa Caprelli had spent over two decades building brands and mentoring entrepreneurs. As a marketing CEO, she worked with more than 160 business leaders to turn their companies into business success stories. By all outward measures, she was at the top of her game. Yet, deep down, Lisa felt a calling to do more – to share the meaning behind success, not just the metrics. Having grown up shy and longing for belonging, she knew firsthand the power of encouragement. (Her grandmother’s unwavering belief in her showed young Lisa that just one person can change a life through kindness and support.) So, armed with a rich background in business and a degree in social psychology, Lisa set out on a new mission: to help young people gain life’s wisdom early, or as she phrased it, help them “skip a step” on the journey to happiness and purpose.

Planting the Seeds: Creating Skip a Step

In 2018, Caprelli poured her entrepreneurial insights into a labor of love – a book called Skip a Step: Imparting Wisdom for Young Entrepreneur Minds. Over 2.5 years, 13 visionary entrepreneurs each hold a chapter in this book – all from all walks of life. These were leaders ranging from New York Times best-selling authors to tech innovators – even a 16-year-old prodigy – each sharing personal stories of adversity, triumph, failure, and redemption. Lisa wasn’t collecting business tips; she was distilling human wisdom. “We wanted true stories on what makes a meaningful, happy and purpose-filled life, not just a successful one,” she explains, emphasizing that success is so much more than material wealth. Chapter by chapter, her interviewees imparted lessons learned from slaying the dragons in their lives – revealing how courage, love, and passion mattered more than any profit metric. Through this journey, Lisa not only created a guide for young entrepreneurs; she also found herself absorbing the very lessons she was documenting.

One by one, the entrepreneurs’ stories illuminated a common truth: a truly successful life is one driven by purpose, fueled by passion, and shared in service of others. Lisa listened as a co-founder of Kiva described the adventure of building a global non-profit, and as a teen CEO spoke about innovation unbounded by age. They spoke of embracing failure, following one’s heart, and the importance of believing in oneself even when the road gets tough. Each insight was a seed planted in Lisa’s own heart. By the end of the Skip a Step project, she had gained something profound: clarity. In reflecting on all these conversations, Lisa later wrote that using the Skip a Step philosophy “took over 2.5 years [and] led me to fulfill my own life filled with purpose, happiness and meaning… This is how I created my best-selling Unicorn Jazz books.  In other words, the very act of teaching young minds about a purpose-filled life propelled Lisa to start living her purpose in a bold new way.

A Leap of Faith: From Entrepreneur to Full-Time Author

Emboldened by the wisdom she’d gathered, Lisa made a life-changing decision. She stepped away from her 25-year marketing career to become a full-time author and storyteller. It wasn’t easy to leave a successful business behind, but Lisa felt a pull of passion she couldn’t ignore. “It was time for me to do what I loved,” she recalls. Drawing on the courage she admired in the entrepreneurs she interviewed, Lisa embraced the unknown. She knew that real success meant living a life true to one’s values – and her heart was telling her to bring positive messages to children. All her experiences suddenly clicked into place: a childhood of introspection, a flair for creativity, decades of communication and branding know-how, and a parent’s love. She realized she could leverage her gifts – her creativity, writing talent, and understanding of human behavior – to shape young minds and spirits. And so, in that pivotal moment, Lisa Caprelli, the businesswoman, transformed into Lisa Caprelli, the author. She traded boardroom meetings for school assemblies, marketing plans for storybooks – carrying with her the same drive to uplift and inspire, but now focused on the youngest of audiences.

Eye See You Choosing Kindness is about the Choice We all Have to Choose to be Kind

A New Chapter Begins

Today, Lisa Caprelli’s journey continues to unfold in magical ways. Unicorn Jazz was just the beginning. She has since written many more stories in the series, each one carrying forward the torch of inspiration. In Eye See You: Choosing Kindness, children learn about empathy and standing up to bullying. In Bee-ing Happy with Unicorn Jazz and Friends, readers discover joy in simple moments and the power of positivity. And in The Thing I Do, a zebracorn (half zebra, half unicorn) helps kids explore their talents and passions, showing that careers – and dreams – are born from doing what you love. With every new book, Lisa weaves a tapestry of lessons that encourage kids to be bold, be brave, and be themselves.

And she isn’t stopping anytime soon. Lisa’s vision is as vibrant as ever: she envisions a world where children everywhere are imbued with an entrepreneurial mindset and heart, where they grow up embracing their uniqueness, supporting one another, and believing in endless possibilities. It’s a vision rooted in the wisdom she gathered by asking leaders one simple question: “What truly matters in life?” The answers now live on in her stories, touching thousands of young lives.

Book an author visit with Lisa Caprelli for the next school year!

As we look ahead, the Unicorn Jazz series is poised to expand into new media (including two of her children’s books turned into plays for theater or drama students). Now is the perfect time to join Lisa Caprelli on this journey of imagination and growth. Pick up a Unicorn Jazz book, share it with a child, and spark a conversation about dreams, kindness, and creativity. After all, Lisa’s story teaches us that it’s never too early – or too late – to “skip a step” and leap into a life of purpose and joy. The next chapter is being written now… will you be a part of it?

It is a hard thing to lose a pet or loved one. Which is why Butterfly Whispers is so dear to my heart: