Sharon Rowe, Author of THE MAGIC OF TINY BUSINESS
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[0:28]I'm here today with Sharon Rowe.
[0:30]Sharon is an eco-pioneer, founder and CEO of EcoBags Products Inc.
[0:35]She's the author of The Magic of Tiny Business.
[0:37]You don't have to go big to make a great living.
[0:39]She has spoken around the world about building profitable, mission-aligned businesses
[0:43]from Sing Sing to Nairobi to Yale University.
[0:46]She has been featured in Glamour, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and her bags made an appearance
[0:51]on Oprah's Earth Day episode.
[0:53]Sharon lives in the Hudson River Valley with her husband, her two grown children
[0:57]live out of state, and her son actually illustrated this book and is an illustrator for
[1:02]the New Yorker.
[1:03]Welcome, Sharon.
[1:04]Thanks so much for being on Monster and have time to read books.
[1:07]Well, I'm thrilled to be here.
[1:08]Thank you.
[1:09]So your journey is so interesting.
[1:11]You were an actress, a young mother, you decided to start EcoBags.
[1:18]You invented a new reusable bag to replace the plastic bags you saw flying around.
[1:22]Tell me how you went from being, you know, a crazy new mom moment to a successful entrepreneur.
[1:29]Yeah, well, they always say things happen when you least expect them, right?
[1:32]Or they all, like, everybody moves when everything else is falling apart.
[1:35]So it's kind of like that.
[1:36]I was working a job job that was a position I had downtown and I was a sales executive
[1:41]and I wasn't really into it, really.
[1:43]It didn't really matter to me personally.
[1:44]I was making some money, but that was about it.
[1:46]And then I got pregnant and I told my manager about that and he said, well, when are you
[1:50]coming back?
[1:51]And that was the first signal that maybe this wasn't going to work for me.
[1:54]But I started working from home when I had my son.
[1:56]At the same time, though, I just started being annoyed by the barrage of single-use plastic
[2:02]bags.
[2:03]I saw on the street and the trees and the river and also the fact that when I would take
[2:07]one home, it would break.
[2:09]It wasn't even useful for second use.
[2:10]So I thought, well, I don't want to be part of this anymore.
[2:14]I don't want to use single-use plastic bags.
[2:17]And I remembered using fillet in France, which are these French net bags.
[2:21]Long story short, some friends brought some back for me to the US.
[2:24]I started using them in my neighborhood.
[2:27]I got some really weird looks.
[2:31]And I got some interested looks.
[2:33]And I got some questions.
[2:34]And so I don't know.
[2:35]I just thought this could be a business, even though there was no demand, there was no
[2:41]market, and no one was talking about this.
[2:44]OK.
[2:45]So I went home one night, and I said to my husband, I think I have a business idea, and
[2:49]I told him.
[2:50]And had you ever started another type of business?
[2:53]I'm not a kid or anything, or this was out of the blue.
[2:55]This was completely out of the blue.
[2:57]I mean, I had been an actress in New York.
[2:58]So I knew how to be bold, even if I got crushed afterwards, right?
[3:04]And I had worked in my dad's retail store growing up, so I understood retail.
[3:08]But no, it kind of just came to me that I should do this because I could be in charge
[3:13]of my own time.
[3:14]But I had to make a living.
[3:17]It was not something I could leave on on the side.
[3:20]And so anyway, I sat down with my husband, I said, I have this idea, and he said, well,
[3:23]I don't know.
[3:24]And I said, what should we call it?
[3:25]He said, oh, eco bags.
[3:27]And he's a lyricist.
[3:28]So we said, okay, great.
[3:29]And we said, let's give it a couple months to try it.
[3:32]Let's see if there's demand.
[3:33]And that was basically it.
[3:35]And how did you copy the French bag, or did you make a prototype, or?
[3:38]I basically, well, I based it on the French bag, but back then there was no internet.
[3:44]So I had to contact all the consulates to find out who was exporting the kind of bag
[3:49]I wanted.
[3:50]And this was all by fax, right?
[3:51]And I went to the German Consulate, and the French Consulate, and the Italian Consulate, and
[3:55]the Spanish Consulate, and the first ones to respond with the Germans, who had about
[4:00]the same bag, not exactly, it was more square on the bottom, and the French never responded
[4:06]to me.
[4:07]And I'm not kidding.
[4:08]To this day, they never responded.
[4:09]The Italians responded about a year later with the most beautiful bag and the most expensive
[4:15]bag.
[4:16]And I can't remember what happened to the Spanish.
[4:17]I actually have some of those prototypes in my attic still.
[4:20]That's the most.
[4:21]You should post them on Instagram.
[4:22]I should post them on Instagram.
[4:23]Yeah.
[4:24]Yeah.
[4:25]And so the Germans were the first to respond, and they said, we have them.
[4:28]And I said, OK, I'll take a case.
[4:30]And I started bringing them in, and I started using them and giving them to friends and
[4:33]walking up and down Amsterdam and Columbus Avenue, knocking on doors, saying to store owners.
[4:39]I have this idea.
[4:40]It's called reusable bags.
[4:41]I'd like to introduce this.
[4:42]What do you think?
[4:43]And slowly, I got responses.
[4:46]Some people were like, you're, why?
[4:49]Even in the natural products industry, when I got into that, they were, what's a reusable
[4:53]bag?
[4:54]You know, use a durable bag, carry your own bag.
[4:57]It's so easy.
[4:58]It's so cheap, you know, to have a plastic bag.
[5:01]So there was no market when I started.
[5:04]It's so impressive.
[5:05]Yeah.
[5:06]Because now it seems so obvious, right?
[5:07]Of course we should have your reusable bags.
[5:08]Yeah.
[5:09]Why would we have it?
[5:10]Yeah.
[5:11]But someone has to be the first one.
[5:12]And I know, I mean, when I started, I didn't have any other touch points for people doing
[5:17]what I was doing because there was no internet.
[5:18]I couldn't Google it.
[5:20]You know, I just, I was in Washington Heights.
[5:21]I had to make a living.
[5:22]I had a young child.
[5:24]I had a husband who was a musician and a part-time teacher.
[5:27]And so we were just hustling.
[5:28]Yeah.
[5:29]We were just making it work.
[5:30]And I just, I wanted it to work.
[5:31]And I wanted it to work according to my terms.
[5:33]Yeah.
[5:34]You know, I didn't want to be jerked around it.
[5:36]And the reason I started the company too, it overlapped that job job by reference.
[5:41]One day I was at home doing my work.
[5:43]I was sitting at the computer, you know, and talking to clients and whatnot.
[5:46]And I went to use the loo.
[5:48]And I got a phone call from my manager and he started screaming at me like, why aren't
[5:52]you at your desk?
[5:53]And I thought, this is crazy.
[5:54]I was one of the top performing salespeople for them.
[5:56]And so I picked up the phone and I said, you know, I quit.
[5:59]Good for you.
[6:00]And he said, you can't quit.
[6:01]And I said, no, actually, I can't.
[6:03]Yeah.
[6:04]Click.
[6:05]And that night my husband came home and I said, I don't have a job.
[6:09]So that's when the business of EcoBags got real.
[6:12]Have you seen the movie, a star is born?
[6:14]No, I haven't seen it yet.
[6:15]So there's this great scene in the beginning where she has a manager, basically be totally
[6:20]rude in that same way.
[6:21]Had the same thing as you said, when you watch it, you can see yourself putting your
[6:24]job.
[6:25]Yeah.
[6:26]It's like, why do we have to have people be rude in a workplace?
[6:28]Yeah.
[6:29]It was bold, but you know, you have to sometimes, if it's getting you in your gut, if
[6:32]you're getting to that point where, ah, right, it's not healthy.
[6:37]And you have all these fantastic tips for how to run a business.
[6:41]And I don't want to say work life balance because that's such a trade expression.
[6:45]But you really like lay out in very clear terms some really great suggestions for how
[6:50]people, especially moms, since that was sort of what you were going through at the time,
[6:55]like you in particular say, and I'm looking at my notes to make sure I get it right, that
[6:59]you block out first time for your family, then your workouts, slash meditation.
[7:04]And then you put your actual work time in your calendar.
[7:06]Yeah.
[7:07]That's right.
[7:08]Do you really do that?
[7:09]I really do that.
[7:10]You really do that.
[7:11]Yeah.
[7:12]Well, right.
[7:13]When I had, yeah, family first, and it should be noted though, when I was running the
[7:18]business, I had child care and I actually shared a babysitter with my neighbor upstairs.
[7:22]So it was perfect.
[7:23]And then when my kids were a little older, they went to daycare and stuff like that
[7:26]because I would never be able to work around them in the house.
[7:30]Yeah.
[7:31]Yeah.
[7:32]But yeah, no family first.
[7:33]So I would take care of the kids in the morning and my husband when he was there, you
[7:35]know, we'd share.
[7:36]Walk them to school or get them on the bus, whichever situation, you know, was at that
[7:40]time.
[7:41]And I would always have in my calendar, go for swim, go for a walk, you know, whatever
[7:46]I was going to do that day and I would call it a business event.
[7:49]I would make it a business event for myself because I knew that if it was a personal event,
[7:54]I might override it.
[7:56]Oh, yeah, I can move the swim.
[7:59]But you know what?
[8:00]If I moved the swim from two to three, I get to the pool and at three, you know, the swim
[8:04]teams there and I don't get a lane and I have to wait and it's not efficient.
[8:08]So I kept it in my calendar as business events.
[8:11]And then I would schedule the work in blocks around those times.
[8:15]And in the book, you said it's really important.
[8:17]Like when the work, when your work time elapsed, that was it.
[8:20]You just stopped or you got off even in the middle of things and that was it.
[8:23]Absolutely.
[8:24]Absolutely.
[8:25]That's so impressive.
[8:26]It's so hard to do that without tying up loose ends and everything.
[8:27]It is.
[8:28]Yeah.
[8:29]And it takes practice and I wasn't always successful.
[8:32]And I say if you're successful, at least 80% of the time you're good, 20% of the time
[8:36]things just fall apart.
[8:38]And to be honest, sometimes 30% okay, sometimes 100% falls apart.
[8:41]Just be kind to yourself.
[8:43]Right.
[8:44]You're working hard.
[8:45]You are enough.
[8:46]You know, you're doing what you can do and then get back on the practice schedule and
[8:52]over time, you build a muscle.
[8:54]And that's not to say that I don't challenge that muscle even now, you know, 20 years later.
[9:01]You do.
[9:02]Yeah.
[9:03]And I'm glad that you didn't use work life balance because I think we have a life.
[9:06]Yeah.
[9:07]And part of our life is our work.
[9:09]And our work is business and it's also family, family is work.
[9:14]I mean, it depends how you want to look at it, but it's all basically a practice.
[9:18]That's true.
[9:19]And it's how you want to set it up.
[9:20]And because you're in charge, you can change your rules, which is nice.
[9:23]Which is nice.
[9:24]It's a huge freedom.
[9:25]I mean, we have an enormous amount of freedom if you actually get to choose.
[9:29]And I think even if you feel like you can't choose because when I had two children, right,
[9:34]I got even more done.
[9:36]It's interesting.
[9:37]The more could you have?
[9:38]That's right.
[9:39]Because you know you have to do it.
[9:43]Yeah.
[9:44]And you have to stop at a certain point.
[9:45]And then it also forces efficiencies.
[9:48]Because maybe that thing that you were tying up the loose end on the day before maybe
[9:53]wasn't so important.
[9:55]And you could tie it up with, you know, just by biting that last sentence or putting
[9:59]the
[10:00]period as opposed to trying to make it perfect.
[10:03]And sometimes people are like,
[10:04]well, how do you have four kids and YouTube podcasts?
[10:06]You ready?
[10:06]How do you do it all?
[10:07]And I've been trying to answer that question.
[10:09]I'm sort of like, well, I use every minute of my day.
[10:12]Like, I'm not sitting on the couch watching TV ever.
[10:15]Like every minute, I'm like, am I being as productive as I can?
[10:18]And it's like, go, go, go, go, go.
[10:20]Yeah, until I read for this stuff to go to sleep.
[10:23]Right, you just have to be more strategic.
[10:25]Right, and you have to be strategic about your downtime too.
[10:28]And the time when you don't have the phone near you and nobody can interrupt you.
[10:32]Even if it's 10 minutes a day, I've been doing meditation.
[10:35]I think I'm on a seven day streak.
[10:36]That's like for you.
[10:37]That's a lot, right?
[10:38]Yeah.
[10:39]But I realized it's only 10 minutes in the morning.
[10:42]I'm using one of the apps.
[10:43]I don't even get out of bed.
[10:44]Are you, you know, sit straight.
[10:46]Your spine is aligned.
[10:47]I'm like, no, I'm lying down.
[10:48]This works for me.
[10:51]You know, but it's how I'm getting back into that practice.
[10:56]And we'll see how long ago.
[10:58]And you have a nice quote in the book about how you don't want your family life.
[11:02]You say allowing work to bleed into everyday family activities is not only draining,
[11:06]but can lead to some pretty ugly situations and mistakes.
[11:09]Absolutely.
[11:09]Yeah.
[11:10]And you give some good examples of it.
[11:12]Yeah.
[11:13]I don't know.
[11:14]I actually can't remember all the ones in the book, but I remember one where I was working
[11:17]and my son came over and he was playing in the drawer and he picked up really sharp scissors
[11:22]and I'm on the phone and I'm like, OK, it's a really big climb.
[11:25]My son, my two year old is walking around with really sharp scissors.
[11:28]OK, this isn't working.
[11:30]Yeah.
[11:31]You know, I think kids are kind of like, well, don't take this the wrong way or kind
[11:35]of like dogs though in a way.
[11:37]They want your attention when they want it.
[11:39]And if you give it to them fully for that minute or that two minutes or you solve their
[11:44]problem, you can, if you engage with them, they'll redirect or you can redirect them.
[11:49]But if you keep saying not now, not now, go away mommy's busy, not now, no.
[11:54]If you say no and it's not a conscious no, it's going to come back to you because they're
[11:59]going to be more persistent.
[12:01]It's true.
[12:02]Yeah.
[12:03]And I think it's so hard now that work, like everything is intermingled on the phone and
[12:08]you can be doing it.
[12:09]Sometimes you have to be on the phone, like sometimes I don't know, like all the emails.
[12:14]It's not like work is like when I started out in the workplace, I would go to an office
[12:18]and work emails would be on that computer and then I could leave that office and I wouldn't
[12:22]be able to access those emails.
[12:24]Right.
[12:25]And obviously now it's like just constant and sometimes I find myself even like walking
[12:28]at the stairs with my kid and I'm like trying to email back or confirm an interview or
[12:33]something and I'm like, and then I have your voice and I had nothing, like, don't let
[12:36]it bleed into your life because that's really what it's doing.
[12:38]It's doing.
[12:39]It's like I'm with the kid but I'm not really.
[12:41]Yeah.
[12:42]Yeah.
[12:43]I think I was lucky because the phones didn't come out to my children were like, I think
[12:47]Julian was 10 or 11, 12, but they weren't so pervasive.
[12:52]I didn't have that as much but I remember when they were teenagers, actually it's really
[12:56]important when they're teenagers because when they finally want your attention, that's
[13:00]special.
[13:01]Yeah.
[13:02]Because most of the time they're just like, no, I'm good.
[13:04]Yeah.
[13:05]I'm not close the door.
[13:08]Don't look in my room.
[13:09]I'll get to it when I can.
[13:11]Yeah.
[13:12]I know.
[13:13]I wish there was like a way to have a separate personal email account except I'm blended.
[13:17]Right.
[13:18]Me too.
[13:19]I tried that.
[13:20]I did too.
[13:21]I mean, they'd all just go.
[13:22]So I've learned better at swiping, you know, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete,
[13:26]and then I'll crap.
[13:27]I just deleted something.
[13:28]Yeah.
[13:29]I've got to go back in.
[13:30]Yeah.
[13:31]So back to this magic of tiny business.
[13:32]You define tiny in an interesting way in the book because you don't mean a small business
[13:37]in terms of employee or even revenue.
[13:39]No.
[13:40]So tell us what you mean by a small, tiny business.
[13:42]Tiny business is really a state of mind.
[13:44]Like a tiny house.
[13:45]It's very intentional.
[13:47]The business is built on something that really matters to you and fulfills your personal
[13:52]goals.
[13:53]So for me, it was a cultural impact goal.
[13:56]You know, I wanted to see a reusable bags.
[13:59]I wanted to see reusable bags enter the market and I wanted to see people be more thoughtful
[14:03]about the waste that they're creating.
[14:05]But on top of that, I had an income goal, right?
[14:08]I needed to make a living for my family.
[14:11]And I had an environmental goal and a social goal, which was to produce a product that had
[14:16]a message sustainably that wasn't produced on the backs of other people.
[14:20]You know, I knew what was going on in other countries in terms of not fair wage or fair
[14:25]labor.
[14:26]So that's where I came from.
[14:27]So I think it's very personal.
[14:28]But it's a mindset.
[14:29]And it's something that when you're starting a business, you may not have all the answers.
[14:33]You don't know what you want, but you can look at what you don't want because most
[14:38]people know what they don't want.
[14:39]I didn't want to work 10 hours a day.
[14:42]I didn't want to work on weekends.
[14:44]I didn't want to purchase goods at the cheapest available amount from sources that I
[14:49]there was no transparency.
[14:51]And this was 28 years ago.
[14:52]So again, you know, nobody was really talking about this stuff.
[14:56]I just, I kind of don't even know where some of that stuff came from.
[14:59]Maybe it came from my dad in the retail store and the fact that we always knew Joey who
[15:03]was the, I forgot what they're called, but he would bring in the jeans, my dad's old
[15:07]jeans, pre-gap.
[15:08]Wow.
[15:09]You know, so we knew and we used to come down, Hank Math, I was brother.
[15:12]Walters, Walter Math, I was brother, Hank used to have a loft in Soho and we would
[15:16]come down here to get all the Army Navy stuff.
[15:18]Wow.
[15:19]Yeah.
[15:20]So we always knew our supply chain.
[15:22]Maybe we didn't know it to the manufacturer, but I wanted to know it all the way back.
[15:26]So all these influences combined gave me my why.
[15:30]And then I had to really look seriously, what's my how?
[15:34]How do I execute and how do I stay true to what I value most as part of this company
[15:39]so that I don't get pinged.
[15:41]Right.
[15:42]You know, that kind of awful feeling you get when you compromise to the point where you
[15:46]know it's not worth it.
[15:48]And that meant, again, going back to priorities, I really had to do a deep dive and this
[15:53]is over time.
[15:54]So I don't, I mean, I can't expect anybody to do this right away.
[15:56]In fact, I would never do it if somebody asked me to do what I would take time.
[16:00]And look at what's the most important and what was the most important was raising my
[16:04]kids, putting food on the table, having friends over for dinner.
[16:08]I mean, these are, and going for walks in the park.
[16:10]These are all really manageable at any stage.
[16:14]And if you have your health, and I love how you just like outlined it in the book, like
[16:18]you're not afraid to put your walk or your swim or whatever, it's important to you because
[16:21]otherwise, I mean, you only get to live once.
[16:23]You're not going to have it in your life at all, right?
[16:25]Yeah.
[16:26]And I'm right now, I'm getting this a lot that at my age, a friend just died last week, you
[16:31]know.
[16:32]And I'm sorry.
[16:33]And she's my age.
[16:34]And my cousin just died last week and he was only 10 years older.
[16:38]And you know, you think, oh, I'm going to live to 100 because all, you know, invest
[16:42]for your future.
[16:43]Well, you know what, there's a lot of things conspiring in this world and we're not always
[16:47]in charge.
[16:48]It's true.
[16:49]So live every day as full as you can.
[16:51]And again, I, this is a lot of this is in retrospect.
[16:53]I mean, I hope I was present in as many moments as possible while I had my children in
[16:57]my husband.
[16:58]I know I was not perfect, but I'm still married to the same guy.
[17:02]And I said, man, I said, man, I said, man, you know, so, you know, but you found love.
[17:08]Yes.
[17:09]You found what you have.
[17:10]Yeah.
[17:11]Yeah.
[17:12]Yeah.
[17:13]That's what's important.
[17:14]You found what doesn't compromise and what really lights you up and what you opened your
[17:15]heart.
[17:16]True.
[17:17]Yeah.
[17:18]And you found kindness.
[17:19]Well, I'm not going to talk about it.
[17:20]Okay.
[17:21]Okay.
[17:22]And I can't talk about this.
[17:23]Okay.
[17:24]And another piece of advice in the book.
[17:25]And then I want to talk about how you ended up making this into a book.
[17:27]Oh, sure.
[17:28]Nice to do versus need to do lists.
[17:30]Do you still keep this?
[17:31]I do.
[17:32]I do.
[17:33]Well, it's not always a list.
[17:34]It's basically a choice of what I do next.
[17:37]I mean, my desk is not a orderly place.
[17:40]I love all the new scientific studies that are coming out saying, you know, people who
[17:44]are messy are really creative because my desk is a mess.
[17:48]So I, in sides of my cabinet, I try to keep the outside clean and good for you.
[17:52]Everything inside is.
[17:53]Yeah.
[17:54]I file things really carefully.
[17:55]That's interesting.
[17:56]But I can never find them.
[17:57]Yeah.
[17:58]But I do.
[17:59]I write everything on stickies and I write the same thing multiple times because my brain
[18:03]doesn't work in a linear fashion.
[18:05]I'm much more circular and spirally.
[18:08]So I'll revisit the same thing, you know, three or four times.
[18:11]And that's why I'm like, that's important.
[18:13]And the things that are less important kind of just continually fall to the bottom.
[18:18]And then every, I don't know, it's not even on a schedule every now and then I just
[18:22]look at my desk and go, that's a mess.
[18:24]And I just take everything.
[18:25]And I mean, there might even be good ideas on those papers, but I'm practicing impermanence.
[18:30]They go in the recycling bin.
[18:32]If it's really important, it's going to come back or I'll call someone like Andrea.
[18:36]And I'll say, what did I say?
[18:39]You know, call a friend and say, well, is that thing that, you know, because we can always
[18:44]find it somehow?
[18:45]Right.
[18:46]Yeah.
[18:47]Yeah.
[18:48]It's true.
[18:49]Yeah.
[18:50]And so how did you take all this and decide to make it into a book?
[18:51]OK.
[18:52]So the book thing was an evolution.
[18:53]First of all, it started with me being really bored with my business.
[18:57]And just like, I don't want to do this anymore.
[19:00]Because it started turning into a commodity business as opposed to a culture shift business.
[19:05]You know, I really started to spread a message and to seed an idea.
[19:11]And especially in the recession, it was really, really tough.
[19:13]So I decided I needed to do something to light myself up.
[19:16]And I'm an actress, but it's really hard to find roles and then commit to the schedules
[19:21]and you have to show up for rehearsals, blah, blah, blah.
[19:24]So I thought, oh, what can I do now that I can do for the rest of my life, no matter what
[19:31]my health situation is, and if my hand works, I said, I could write.
[19:34]So I started writing every day.
[19:36]And I started writing 10 minutes every day, then 15 minutes every day.
[19:40]Then I think I got up to a half an hour.
[19:42]And I would use my phone and I would set the timer.
[19:45]And whenever it ended, I stopped.
[19:48]Even mid-sentence, I just stopped.
[19:50]And I knew I had to do that because it made me hungry to go back to it.
[19:56]And the ideas would have an opportunity to kind of mature and just sort of...
[20:00]or go away if they were not so good and I wasn't writing about anything in particular like if I was writing to
[20:06]I'd say oh the microphone the chair the cat it just freeform writing so that in combination with
[20:13]the fact that I would sit at the piano and also we have a piano and I was thinking oh I should play
[20:17]an instrument I was like oh there's a piano okay and a friend had given us one of those sand timers
[20:24]that's actually where it started so I started improvising on the piano for about 10 to 15 minutes a
[20:29]day and I'm not really a pianist I mean I studied when I was a kid but my husband's a pianist and
[20:34]just getting those vibrations going so somehow all of that led to this idea of maybe I'll write a book
[20:41]which was prompted by a woman I know and a friend who's part of the women's president's organization
[20:46]and this is an organization with women with businesses well over a million dollars and some of them
[20:51]are extremely successful and one of these very successful business women said I love how you live
[20:56]your life and I was like oh well you know she kind of woke me up she said I like what you're doing
[21:01]I can see and I said and in my own self critical way I was like but yours is much bigger your
[21:08]business is you know 10 times mine and she said but yeah you have you seem to move in and out
[21:14]of things with more ease you're not carrying that stress and I was like oh okay if that's what you
[21:20]see I you know I didn't I tried not to I worked to not negate it which is another practice yes I
[21:26]like oh I like your shirt oh I only got it at Marshall's instead of thank you
[21:31]train we know that yeah yeah I really like yeah whatever that's how yeah so Deb is her name
[21:39]she got me thinking about that and then I chewed on that bone for about three years with a friend
[21:43]of mine when I would walk with her in LA and finally she said would you just shut up and write it
[21:48]so you know she really pissed me off and I said okay fine and I continued the writing practice so
[21:52]you know mostly it was every day I got pretty good at writing every day yeah and I wrote a play
[21:57]not very good I wrote a couple of short stories I should say I say not very good because I had a
[22:02]red so I need to go back to it and my friend Tessa who said you know just write it
[22:08]she really pushed me over the edge she's a producer so she's like just come on so I wrote on Facebook
[22:14]does anyone who know anyone who knows anyone in publishing and a friend of mine said yeah you
[22:19]should talk to Neil over Barrett Kohler turns out because we're in the same social business circle
[22:25]my madam at a conference I pitched to my idea which was based on something my sister said
[22:30]on a couch in her house she said oh yeah you have a tiny business I said oh I could work with that
[22:36]so she gave me tiny she didn't expand it right but she gave me that I pitched him and he said
[22:42]yes amazing and then I had no idea what to do I mean I had never written a book right I just I had
[22:49]run a business for all these years and I'd never had nowhere no idea where to start so I figured
[22:54]out that I had a writer proposal and I hired someone Jeff Davis from tracking Wonder Quest so I
[23:00]used him and he really helped me see what I needed to do for a proposal and while I was writing it
[23:06]after Neil said yes because he said submit it by X I got a phone call from a friend of ours
[23:11]daughter and Kayla said can you recommend any business books every single business book I see is
[23:16]boring I can't do it she's a makeup artist and I realized at that moment that my business was going
[23:24]to I wanted to solve the inaccessibility of business books for creative people love that you know
[23:31]and I'd already seen show your work by Austin Cleon and I loved his approach because I too
[23:36]couldn't read all those other business books I just okay put me to sleep now you know just too thick
[23:42]too cramps so all those sort of influences got me to the point where I put the proposal together
[23:49]and then they said yes to the proposal and then I had to get busy and do you have any advice
[23:56]to either an entrepreneur with an idea tiny or not tiny or to anyone aspiring to write their
[24:02]best practices in the way that you have yeah I would say get started don't be afraid to share
[24:07]your idea with people and listen to the people who are positive and negative because in the
[24:14]negative responses or the not like yeah yay responses there's a lot of information you know I
[24:20]remember I called up a friend of mine who was in publishing and I pitched her the same thing that
[24:24]I pitched the publisher and she was not really you know kind of like she didn't give me thumbs up and
[24:31]I met with an agent before I met with the publisher and also it wasn't her cup of tea but I could
[24:37]see that things have to fit a market and you either have to meet a market or make a market and
[24:43]they're the same in different in many different ways but you have to have your intentionality in
[24:47]place so that you can at least walk in with some ideas and they can shift it's kind of like setting
[24:53]up for a road trip you know you set up to go to Nashville but you're like oh you want to stop
[24:57]there there's some you know some barbecue yeah and the next thing you know you're this person
[25:02]at the barbecue saying oh yeah you got to check out this tee shop down the street and you're sort
[25:05]of wandering off yeah well thank you so much thank you so lovely chatting with you yeah and I'm
[25:12]so impressed with everything you've done and the way you just sort of saw a problem and solved it
[25:17]and thank you amazing and thank you for sharing your advice and such a relatable easy to follow
[25:22]action away it's really really helpful oh well thank you thank you for that because my goal with
[25:27]the book is to have more people seeding their ideas and specifically more women too to see their
[25:33]ideas to not think that has to be perfect to go out of the gate yeah you know it can be as imperfect
[25:40]as it is just work it listen and listen and be kind to yourself so that's my mixed message
[25:46]no that's fantastic yeah awesome well thank you thank you thank you this episode has been sponsored
[25:52]by bookhampton bookhampton dot com thanks to Ryan and Steve at texture sound for the audio editing
[25:58]and mixing thanks for listening to momstone have time to read books