Christina Geist, SORRY, GROWN-UPS, YOU CAN'T GO TO SCHOOL
[0:04]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
[0:08]I interviewed today's guest, Christina Geist, a while back. Her new book, which just came out,
[0:13]is called Sorry Grown Up, So You Can't Go To School. And her first book was Buddy's Bedtime
[0:17]Battery, which was fantastic and essential if you're trying to get your kids to sleep.
[0:21]I originally interviewed Christina, thinking it would go on my kids' podcast,
[0:25]which I've put on hold for the time being. It was called Kids Do Have Time to Read books,
[0:31]and it's now on hold because I just don't have time to do everything. So
[0:35]I'm bringing Christina's episode onto moms don't have time to read books. Pick up,
[0:40]Sorry Grown Up, So You Can't Go To School, it's a perfect back-to-school type book. So
[0:44]definitely check that out, and I hope you enjoy this episode. Thanks so much to my sponsor,
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[1:33]bookstore. And the best part is that I have my own playlist on Librao FM, which is so cool.
[1:39]So the books that have been on my podcast and that I'm recommending are now in my own playlist.
[1:44]If you go to librao-fm-playlists, you can find it, which is so great. So welcome, Christina.
[1:50]Thanks for coming on momstone. Have time to read books. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
[1:54]We've been chatting for like half an hour, and I feel like I could talk to Christina all day.
[1:58]So we're going to structure this now for the podcast. Yes, actually turn the microphone on.
[2:02]That's the point. So I've just read your bio. You do a million things. Two big jobs,
[2:08]boom box, gifts, company, branding, two kids. How do you manage your time and when do you
[2:16]accomplish everything? And I know it's not all at once and things happen, but I need some secrets.
[2:21]Okay. Well, first of all, I think the first thing for me is timing and life is a long game.
[2:28]And all of these things don't happen at the same time. They happen sequentially. So if I were
[2:33]to go back and talk to myself in my 20s, I would tell her to just do exactly what she's doing and
[2:38]to kind of like use your 20s to learn and like have your eyes and ears open and really absorb as
[2:44]much as you can. And then for me, my 30s were about starting my family. And that was a whole
[2:51]journey and enough itself and kind of self discovery and awareness. And now my 40s have become this
[2:56]sort of like renaissance in my career that I needed all those other things to happen in order for
[3:04]the three hats I wear now professionally to actually work. And so I think first and foremost,
[3:09]like moms in particular, but women in general, we tend to like look at someone we think is awesome
[3:15]and then kind of like beat ourselves up in return or like doubt ourselves or question ourselves
[3:20]or we either do that. Or we look at someone we think is awesome, not to say that I'm awesome,
[3:25]but I'm just saying this as a cultural phenomenon that I think you're awesome. But I look at
[3:30]someone that I think like, oh my god, that's so cool. She's doing all these things. And then I feel
[3:35]myself say, well, like, you know, she must have like two nannies or there's no way she's ever making
[3:40]dinner or like, you know, maybe she's not working out five times a week or like and I look for
[3:46]the thing that must be wrong, right? Like she can't be doing all of this without some kind of consequence.
[3:54]And I think culturally as women, we do that. We do it subconsciously. We observe someone doing a
[4:00]lot of stuff and we then like talk ourselves into the things she must not be doing because she's
[4:06]doing all these other things. And like I see it. I see it because I sort of tend to do it myself. So
[4:11]I think, you know, there's a lot in that as women that we need to sort of let go of. But
[4:16]I also see this like wonderful thing where we're celebrating each other in ways like you are here,
[4:20]which is so cool. So the question of how to do it all for me, it's like I wake up each morning
[4:25]and I look at that day and I try to make forward motion on like each aspect of my life,
[4:34]where my jobs, which right now is sort of have three, they're like three pots on the stove.
[4:39]They're not all boiling at the same time. One of them is not even turned on some days.
[4:44]But I try to make forward motion on the things that need it most that day. And then that's enough
[4:49]for that day and try not to see like a week out or be stressed about the thing that's happening
[4:55]next week or even for me, there's a thing happening tonight. I'm not thinking about that yet
[5:00]because this morning I was thinking about this. And it's like compartmentalization for me.
[5:04]Do you have like structure out your time? Or is it more? Is it more just in theory? Like do you
[5:10]say this this? I mean, yeah, I do have like a whole to-do list process where I found a couple
[5:16]years ago that I tend to absorb information best if I write it by hand. I write best when I'm typing
[5:22]but I absorb best if I write by hand. And so I was writing my to-do list out by hand. I would
[5:27]take a plain piece of paper from the printer and I would write in four corners. I would write
[5:31]true guys, which is my branding and strategy firm that I run with a guy named Todd True. It's not
[5:36]all about me, true guys. It is truly his name. So I'd write true guys in one corner. I'd write
[5:42]boombox in another. I'd write books in one corner and I'd write life in another corner. So what
[5:48]happened is all the to-dos were segmented into these four corners. What happened then is I never
[5:54]felt successful. The list only got bigger and then it would turn into like, you know, the whiteboard
[5:59]in homeland where she's got like just like crazy scary stuff all over the place because I would
[6:05]just constantly be adding it to it. And nothing was taken away. It also didn't allow me to prioritize
[6:12]that thing at life right now, which is make the kid's doctor's appointments before school gets
[6:16]out and you can't get a doctor's appointment. That's actually more important than writing the client
[6:22]memo that morning. And so if it's down in the bottom corner, it never actually gets to take
[6:28]priority over the thing it needs to take priority over that day. So I started to do this just in a
[6:34]word document on my laptop. And when I open my laptop, I move things around in one list and it's
[6:40]mixed together. So life and work are mixed together because that's how we live. And if it's the
[6:45]most important thing is to sign up for camp this morning. I put it at the top and I give it the
[6:51]space it deserves in my mind. And when it's halfway done, I put a strike through through it.
[6:56]And when it's all the way done, delete, it goes away. And so then I'm constantly copying and
[7:02]pasting things to the top that are at the top right now for the next half hour or the next hour.
[7:09]So like you're at the top of my list today because this is time that's spent and good time.
[7:15]So if I don't write it down, it doesn't get what it deserves, which is a big chunk of time,
[7:20]right? And then you only feel guilty about the stuff that's in the bottom corner of a list that
[7:23]you didn't get to. And so I figured that out like a year and a half ago because I felt like I was
[7:28]failing all the time. I love that. I'm going to try them. I can't say it works every day,
[7:33]but it helps me. I'm like you too. I have to write everything by hand, but then I have to type.
[7:38]Yeah. I know. I'm the same. And it's like a mess. Yeah. And you see it, everyone has a system
[7:42]with this like scrolling list itself. Yeah. I've become more interested lately in people's systems.
[7:48]Yeah, me too. Because I'm like, how is everybody doing it? When you said a minute ago,
[7:53]like you think about what the moms or the other people who are accomplishing things,
[7:56]you know, I look at you. And I'm like, oh my gosh, she's writing children's books and she's
[8:00]running this company and did it like when you say, oh, well, she must not go to the gym or whatever,
[8:04]that may be true. Like I don't know that there's anything wrong with that necessarily.
[8:08]Right. Right. You can't like someone told me in a pick three things, like you can't do
[8:13]everything. Correct. Right. Like I used to work out all the time. Now I don't work out all the time.
[8:17]Right. This is not the time where I'm, you know, exploring a hundred new gym classes. Totally.
[8:22]Like yeah, because I'm working on this or whatever. Right. And it'll come at another point.
[8:26]You can't do everything all the time. I think that's okay. Totally. Yes. I don't know. Yes.
[8:30]Anyway, we're getting off of, I mean, this isn't really book, but this is
[8:33]sorry. No, no, I mean, I think I'm a real talker warning to the listeners.
[8:37]No, who doesn't want real talking? I mean, I be a talker on a podcast.
[8:40]I think, are you kidding? I told you already. I get hard to you all day long.
[8:44]So as a branding expert, you had to figure out your own brand, right? You have your true
[8:49]guys website and who you are. Like what are some of the key characteristics you wanted to convey
[8:54]when you when you think about yourself as a brand? Yeah. I mean, I think in like this is the world
[8:58]we live in right now, right? So like the Instagram era is like you are everyone's a brand.
[9:03]And you can see it in kids that are like starting in this world. It's like you're it's kind of scary
[9:07]in a way. And I didn't join really any social media. I was on Twitter because my husband works
[9:13]in television and he works in news and that's kind of the format people follow. So a long time ago,
[9:17]I joined Twitter just basically to like understand what to spy on him a little bit and see like
[9:22]into that world. And then I had to embrace Instagram and Facebook when I launched True Guys and
[9:28]when I launched Boombox because that's how brands are built these days. And so in doing that,
[9:34]I really kind of thought, all right, when you look at a lot of it, it does give you the sense of like
[9:39]someone said to me in a business meeting, Instagram is puppies and flowers, you know, and there's
[9:44]no crying on Instagram. Everybody's perfect. So I think there's like these two sides of the fence,
[9:48]like either people are like totally in these, you know, Nirvana kinds of worlds of everything
[9:54]looks beautiful and perfect, or they take the opposite direction and are super revealing behind
[10:00]of everything that's like, you know, going wrong,
[10:03]or like, you know, mom fails or that kind of stuff.
[10:05]And for me, that I don't live in either of those worlds.
[10:07]I kind of just live in my own in the middle.
[10:09]So I feel like if you see me on social media,
[10:13]you should be seeing the same me
[10:15]that you will see right here talking to me.
[10:17]And so I try not to say anything publicly
[10:21]that I wouldn't say to you right here right now.
[10:23]And I try not to depict my life in any way that's dishonest.
[10:30]And I also try not to overshare my kids' stories
[10:35]because those are theirs to share when they're old enough
[10:38]and their decision to make.
[10:39]So my kids are certainly a part of that world
[10:42]and it's hard, especially with my husband's position
[10:45]in television.
[10:47]It becomes difficult to completely cut your children off
[10:50]from the way that your life is shared publicly.
[10:53]And that was a big transition for us,
[10:55]particularly when he joined The Today Show
[10:57]because that's just a different type of television show
[10:59]than Morning Joe is.
[11:01]And there is a lot more of your own life
[11:03]that makes its way into that world.
[11:04]And we both kind of had to figure out
[11:06]how to adapt to that.
[11:07]And where do you see our kids and where don't you?
[11:10]But that's a conscious decision for me.
[11:11]In the way that my brand is,
[11:14]I hate to say my brand, but like my brand is out there
[11:18]as myself and it's not my children's brand.
[11:23]That's up to them.
[11:24]And when they're old enough, you know,
[11:26]God forbid I'm dreading it.
[11:28]But when they're old enough,
[11:29]it will be their story to craft and mine should be mine.
[11:33]Of course, they're a part of that,
[11:34]but I want to give them some freedom
[11:38]to have control over their own narrative,
[11:41]which I think is a button that we've pushed a lot
[11:44]in our generation of parenting.
[11:46]That I'm going to be curious to see how
[11:49]as technology develops and as our children develop,
[11:51]because we're all new to this,
[11:53]like kind of what the pathway looks like for them.
[11:55]And we really don't know yet.
[11:56]Yeah, I'm like terrified.
[11:58]I am a little bit too, boom box gifts.
[12:00]So I was just saying, I can't believe I haven't heard of this.
[12:03]This is going to be our new sponsor.
[12:05]And it's the coolest thing.
[12:07]You make memory boxes.
[12:08]You can collaborate with someone else.
[12:10]They're these beautiful keepsake items.
[12:12]Tell me more about how you started.
[12:14]How did you come up with the idea for this company?
[12:16]Sure.
[12:17]And yeah, so boom box was born when my big sis
[12:20]from my sorority in college.
[12:22]I went to Vanderbilt University.
[12:24]And Amy, who was my big sis in our coyotes
[12:26]sorority house, kind of classic Southern school experience,
[12:30]she was the first of my friends to turn 40.
[12:32]And this is exactly five years ago now.
[12:35]And we live all over the country, went to school in the South,
[12:37]and now everybody lives elsewhere.
[12:39]And we were gathering for her birthday
[12:40]and decided to get a jewelry box at the time, see wonder,
[12:44]which is now, I loved to see the business.
[12:46]But they had these beautiful lacquer jewelry boxes
[12:49]that were monogrammed.
[12:50]And they were kind of rectangular in shape.
[12:52]And my friend Kristen and Chicago said,
[12:54]why don't we get one of these with an A on it?
[12:56]And we'll try to collect messages, 40 messages, for her birthday.
[12:59]And I sort of raised my hand, because I'm kind of the crafty
[13:01]creative one in my group of friends.
[13:02]And I was home not working at the time,
[13:04]and I had some free time.
[13:05]I said, I'll take it.
[13:05]I can do it.
[13:06]And there's a C-wunder down the street.
[13:07]So I'll go grab the box, and I'll do this.
[13:10]I set out over my 1997 Yahoo email account, which I still use.
[13:14]It's like a time capsule, it's amazing.
[13:16]And I just tracked down as many people as I could in her life.
[13:19]All of a sudden, I was privy to these messages
[13:21]from her two older brothers in Alabama
[13:22]who are not the most emotive guys.
[13:24]Her parents, her first boss, her neighbors in Nashville,
[13:28]who I've known her, she's a very close friend of mine.
[13:30]But I don't know her day-to-day friends.
[13:32]All of a sudden, I'm getting to know them,
[13:33]her beloved high school friends, who I did know a little bit.
[13:37]But getting their notes made me so happy
[13:39]because I knew how it was going to make her feel.
[13:42]So the boom is kind of twofold.
[13:44]You feel a boom as a gift giver, collaborating behind the scenes for this person.
[13:48]And then, of course, it was a huge pain in the neck
[13:50]to try to print all these cards, get them in the box, make them look pretty,
[13:53]and get on the plane and bring it to her for the 40th birthday weekend.
[13:56]But we watched the slideshow once and she read this box again and again and again and again.
[14:01]And that weekend, we were on our way to dinner.
[14:03]And my maiden name is Sharky, so my college friends call me Shark.
[14:07]And in the taxi, Kristin, the same one in Chicago,
[14:10]who really had been her idea, was like,
[14:12]this is a thing, Shark, this should be your thing.
[14:15]And I said, you're right, this could be my thing.
[14:18]So a month later, I made a box for my dad, he turned to 70, he'll be 75,
[14:22]Memorial Day weekend.
[14:23]And I found a watch box and did the same process.
[14:27]That one really blew me away because we were tracking down his college roommates.
[14:31]He went to Yale in the 1960s before women were admitted to Yale.
[14:34]I mean, they said, amazing.
[14:36]Oh my God, we have so much confidence there.
[14:38]So we really tracked down a lot of people in my father's life.
[14:42]And that just kind of blows you up to know how that's going to make him feel.
[14:46]So they were sort of boom box number one and number two,
[14:49]but this was long before it was a business.
[14:51]But I knew it was something powerful.
[14:53]And I just kept making them for friends.
[14:55]And about a year later, I said, okay, I'm going to make this happen.
[14:59]And I hired a web developer and said, how can I build this?
[15:02]Why isn't there any technology to help us do this?
[15:05]Yeah.
[15:06]So my analogy for boom box is that it's like, if paperless post, and I photo,
[15:12]and the best toast you ever gave had a baby, it would be a boom box.
[15:17]And all those things are kind of combined into this beautiful experience.
[15:21]The company is now three and a half years old.
[15:23]And we've made thousands and thousands of boxes for people from all aspects of life,
[15:30]from birth to immemorial and everything in between.
[15:33]So if that's my life's work, I'll be totally happy.
[15:37]That's so amazing.
[15:38]Thanks.
[15:39]And the people, if I'm a part of someone else's boom box,
[15:42]like if someone's making a boom box for a girlfriend of mine and I send in a toast,
[15:45]do we all get to see all this stuff or just the gift, just the recipient?
[15:49]Just the gift giver and the recipient because of privacy, right?
[15:53]So you may write something deeply personal and emotional to your friend
[15:56]that you don't necessarily want her sister to see digitally.
[15:59]So the gift giver is kind of the project manager, the gift giver's the customer.
[16:04]And they're interact with a dashboard that looks a lot like a paperless post dashboard.
[16:08]People are RSVPing to a party.
[16:10]Well, instead of collecting RSVPs, you're collecting messages and photos,
[16:13]sort of like a digital dashboard.
[16:15]So that gift giver can see all of that content.
[16:18]They proof all the card layouts in five by seven format in our design genie.
[16:22]They give us comments and feedback.
[16:24]We print everything and we pack it up.
[16:26]Certainly sometimes the recipient will get the box and then it'll be out at the party
[16:30]and people can leave through it.
[16:32]They can get an electronic PDF of all the card layouts.
[16:34]If they want to share that, it's perfectly up to them.
[16:37]But we would never share it just because of privacy issues.
[16:40]I was wondering about the digital piece.
[16:42]That's so cool.
[16:42]I cannot wait to start making this.
[16:45]Well, now I don't want everybody to know in a part because now my friends are going to get
[16:48]this box, but anyway, so that's okay.
[16:50]They'll still love it.
[16:51]They'll still love it, it's true.
[16:53]So your two children's books, buddies bedtime battery.
[16:56]And now your latest one, sorry grownups, you can't go to school, are so great.
[17:00]I mean, buddies bedtime battery, my little guy is four and a half years old.
[17:05]And I've been reading it to him every day and my husband calls my kids,
[17:09]oh buddy and Peabuddy, my big kids.
[17:11]And then in here, it was row buddy.
[17:12]And we were like, that's crazy.
[17:15]I know.
[17:16]It's so great for so many reasons.
[17:18]The illustrations are so great.
[17:20]They're so visual.
[17:21]The message, it's about like a boy.
[17:23]Well, maybe you should say what it's about.
[17:24]But it's like a perfect wind down at the end of the day with the tone and like the melody
[17:30]almost with the words and the sense of humor to it.
[17:33]And it's just so great.
[17:35]How did you end up writing buddies bedtime battery?
[17:37]Yeah, thank you.
[17:38]It's the first story I wrote.
[17:39]And for me, the challenges came with bedtime when our kids transitioned to big kid beds.
[17:45]So in my imagination, buddy is about three and a half.
[17:47]I don't know how old you guys thought he was without me telling you that.
[17:51]But he's about three and a half.
[17:52]And his sister lady is five and three corners.
[17:55]I'm not that anyone asked.
[17:56]But yeah, so bedtime for us was really challenging in those toddler years when they're out of
[18:00]a crib and they're sort of too young to be in a bed and they're like wandering around the house.
[18:05]And the bedtime stories are all about putting other things to sleep.
[18:09]So I love good night, good night construction site, but good night, good night construction site
[18:13]is about the construction site.
[18:15]Not about the sleeper, the little person who's reading and same with good nightmoon.
[18:19]You know, everything in the room is going to sleep.
[18:21]And that's kind of the typical format of a bedtime story.
[18:25]They're either like that, you're either tucking other things into bed or they might capture
[18:30]the frustration of the parents.
[18:31]So dinosaur versus bedtime is like it's a struggle, right?
[18:36]There's a conflict there.
[18:37]And even the little critters I loved those, those little critters.
[18:40]There's one called just go to bed, you know?
[18:42]And the dad's like losing his mind.
[18:44]You read that all.
[18:45]Yeah.
[18:46]And it's fun, but they're conflict based, right?
[18:48]And there wasn't sort of like this thing in between, which is a technique called progressive
[18:53]muscle relaxation that I learned in a high school wellness class, believe it or not,
[18:57]where you kind of wiggle your toes and then you release them same with your knees.
[19:02]You move up your body from toes to your head and you stress a muscle and then you relax it.
[19:09]And you gradually sort of turn your body off.
[19:11]And it's like a stress management technique.
[19:13]It's a relaxation technique.
[19:15]It's a real thing.
[19:16]And I sort of come to it throughout the course of my life if I couldn't sleep, which is rare for
[19:20]me. I'm a good sleeper.
[19:21]But like every now and then I would sort of remember that from high school and use it.
[19:24]So here I was with like toddlers popping out of bed.
[19:27]And just one day it was my daughter who's the older one.
[19:30]I just sort of started to like beep, beep, beep, like turn off her little joints and little parts
[19:37]of her body to help her comprehend that this is done.
[19:41]Like we've read enough books, you're not going to pop out again.
[19:45]This is done.
[19:46]And so that's kind of where the idea was born.
[19:50]Was that notion of we're done?
[19:52]We've turned you off now.
[19:55]And of course it doesn't work all the time.
[19:58]But it's I look at it.
[20:00]just like another tool in your toolbox.
[20:02]And we quit all these more tools.
[20:03]Yes, I guess many people can add to my toolbox.
[20:07]It's great.
[20:07]Yeah, and what about, sorry, grownups,
[20:09]you can't go to school, this is your latest book.
[20:11]Yeah, so sorry, grownups was written about the same time.
[20:13]I mean, I wrote these when my kids were three and five.
[20:17]By the time this book comes out, they'll be 10 and 12.
[20:20]And sorry, grownups for me was inspired by, obviously,
[20:23]the going off to school process.
[20:25]And for me, off to preschool, in particular,
[20:28]or off to even summer camp.
[20:30]When my kids were three and one, there was a little camp program
[20:33]that was lovely, that my daughter, three years old,
[20:35]could go to for a few hours in the morning.
[20:38]And we were out at my in-laws house on Long Island.
[20:41]And so I was there with my in-laws
[20:44]and who we called Jo and Bumpa.
[20:45]And one morning, I put a backpack on and said,
[20:49]sorry, Bumpa, you can't go to camp, you know?
[20:52]And sorry, Jo, Jo, you can't go to camp.
[20:55]And I was like, but I can go to camp.
[20:57]And Lucy's like, no, you can't.
[20:59]You can't go to camp.
[21:00]So sorry, mommy, you can't go to camp.
[21:02]And establishing this little chant for her,
[21:06]but then she'd puff up a little peacock and go to camp.
[21:10]And it was all about rejecting all of us, even the dog.
[21:14]And so with back to school books,
[21:17]I feel like a lot of them follow the three S format.
[21:19]Someone's sad or shy or scared.
[21:23]In a lot of off to school books,
[21:24]the kissing hand is a beautiful book.
[21:26]But it's like, makes me weep, you know?
[21:28]And llama llama is shy or scared.
[21:32]And sometimes even the teachers
[21:34]the one that turns out to be scared.
[21:35]And isn't that funny?
[21:36]But somebody is shy, sad or scared.
[21:39]And I needed the book that was not about those emotions,
[21:44]that didn't even mention those emotions.
[21:46]It was all about empowerment.
[21:49]And the kids rejecting the grown-ups
[21:52]who are trying desperately to go to school.
[21:54]Because those were the kinds of strategies
[21:56]flipping things upside down,
[21:58]that would work best for me as a mom.
[22:00]So in this case, everybody's trying to go to school.
[22:03]And the refrain is, sorry, grown-ups.
[22:05]You can't go to school.
[22:06]Only kids and teachers, only kids and teachers.
[22:09]And that repeats throughout the book.
[22:11]So by the time I get to the third,
[22:12]only kids and teachers, only kids and teachers,
[22:15]I was just reading in a kindergarten classroom at PS87
[22:18]on Monday.
[22:19]They're all kind of like, you know, moving their shoulders
[22:22]and like, kind of like chanting it along with me.
[22:25]So it's pretty fun.
[22:26]It's too bad.
[22:27]You can't include some sort of like DVD or something,
[22:28]because I didn't know I was supposed to chant it that way.
[22:30]That's not the way I was reading it at last.
[22:32]Yeah, yeah.
[22:33]That's the struggle with picture books.
[22:35]Are you doing, do you really like audible picture books?
[22:38]They don't.
[22:38]But because of the social media,
[22:40]I do a YouTube something, right?
[22:42]Yeah, exactly.
[22:43]Exactly.
[22:44]Because I do notice when, I noticed that when buddy came out
[22:46]three years ago, that all of a sudden I heard other people
[22:48]reading it.
[22:49]Yeah.
[22:50]And I was like, oh, that's not how I read it.
[22:52]But you then have to accept that your idea becomes
[22:55]someone else's and maybe that's OK.
[22:57]Maybe they read it a certain way and it's not the way I read it.
[23:00]But in my mind, when I write, I write it in my voice
[23:03]and it's my voice like this, out loud.
[23:06]So it is a bit of an adjustment with a picture book
[23:09]to realize that you're putting it out there in the world
[23:11]and other people are going to take it
[23:13]and give it a voice that might not be your own.
[23:16]Interesting.
[23:16]But yeah, I will definitely do something audio based.
[23:19]Because even the kids would love to listen to that.
[23:22]Yeah, this is the author and she's reading
[23:24]and listening to how she reads the character.
[23:26]They would love them.
[23:27]Yeah, yeah.
[23:27]And it's fun.
[23:28]And I get to tell them some of the secrets behind the book, too.
[23:31]Yeah.
[23:32]So that's what we do when I visit a classroom.
[23:34]So I sort of show them behind the scenes
[23:36]and how the sketches are made and the process of collaboration.
[23:40]And you have to come to my kid's school, then.
[23:42]I will.
[23:42]Absolutely.
[23:43]Yeah, I love it.
[23:44]So you said you wrote 12 of these stories?
[23:47]Yeah, I mean, I think all at once.
[23:48]Yeah.
[23:49]I had this kind of sprint, we call in the design world.
[23:54]The web development world, this creative sprint.
[23:57]And I had about, I think I had like 10 manuscripts with me
[24:00]in a Word document.
[24:01]That's kind of how you, with a picture book,
[24:03]you just put in a Word document unless you are the illustrator,
[24:06]you don't illustrate out of the gate.
[24:08]And really just wanted somebody to read them
[24:11]and tell me what they thought.
[24:13]Is there anything here?
[24:15]And that was a long journey, but it got me one day
[24:19]into Random House, into my editor's office,
[24:23]where she sort of picked up the manuscript for Buddy
[24:26]and said, this is ready to go.
[24:29]And I said, what do you mean by that?
[24:31]I had no idea how these picture books get made.
[24:33]I had really just wanted to have coffee with someone
[24:35]who makes them to understand the process.
[24:38]So I could put myself at the beginning of the road
[24:40]and go down it.
[24:42]And here I was being told, this one is ready to go.
[24:45]And so I ended up selling a manuscript.
[24:48]And then the question was, well, what about the rest?
[24:51]Are they a series?
[24:53]Do they have to be bundled together?
[24:55]Do they have to go this way or that way?
[24:56]And I was like, look, you're the experts here.
[24:58]I'm gonna let you go.
[25:00]And I'm not gonna be super prescriptive
[25:02]about my artistic vision.
[25:04]And let's get a book made and have some fun
[25:07]and kind of let me learn about this process as it happens.
[25:11]So sorry, grownups is definitely a companion story to Buddy
[25:14]because they're the same brother and sister.
[25:17]They're a bit older now.
[25:18]They're about two years older.
[25:19]So in this one, I see Buddy as a kindergartner
[25:21]and ladies in second grade.
[25:22]And I have many more about them.
[25:24]I think ultimately it'd be great to have a third
[25:26]and to kind of round out this little collection
[25:29]with one more title, which I have a couple in mind
[25:33]that are from that original collection.
[25:36]Can you give a preview of some of the other topics?
[25:38]Yes.
[25:38]Is it like all the kids, do you have like an eating?
[25:41]Is something meal time?
[25:42]Well, so one, the one I think when I sort of describe
[25:45]a few of the ideas to kids, they love this one,
[25:48]which is Lady Breakable versus Dr. Destructo.
[25:51]It's like my version of the sibling rivalry moment
[25:54]where Lady is having this gorgeous,
[25:57]absolutely ornate tea party in her room
[26:00]and with mom, whose name is Princess Penny Hose.
[26:04]And then Buddy comes in from Karate
[26:07]and he's Dr. Destructo and the door slams
[26:11]and there's this rivalry on either side of the door.
[26:13]Let me in, let me in.
[26:15]And the parents, using their cell phones
[26:17]to negotiate this piece of cord through the bedroom door,
[26:21]calling back and forth and the negotiations there
[26:24]that happens very regularly when you have small kids
[26:26]in small New York City apartments
[26:28]or really anywhere else is like this kind of,
[26:30]don't come into my world.
[26:31]This is my imaginary world.
[26:32]So that's kind of the companion
[26:34]in that it's more about Lady's imaginary world
[26:36]where Buddy's bedtime battery is Buddy's imaginary world
[26:39]as a little robot.
[26:40]But it sounds like now you've gotten to know the market
[26:42]really well, like being able to say the three S's
[26:44]of children's going to school books
[26:47]and you have some sort of market awareness now
[26:50]of the children's world obviously from being in it.
[26:53]Actually, it's really just from being a reader.
[26:55]I don't really, like that's my perception.
[26:59]Well, because in my real job at TrueGuys,
[27:01]that's what I do is like I look at a category of things
[27:05]and then sort of drill it down to its simplest form
[27:08]for a client and then figure out what's the storytelling
[27:11]or the brand strategy to break into that world.
[27:14]So that three S format, I just sort of observed it on my own.
[27:19]I don't actually get a lot of data from,
[27:22]I probably could if I had more time,
[27:24]like really immerse myself in the children's publishing industry
[27:27]as an analyst and look at it that way,
[27:29]but sometimes the analysis inhibits the creativity.
[27:32]So I don't know, sometimes knowing too much,
[27:35]like it doesn't get you the idea.
[27:38]And so I had an idea on the elevator this morning
[27:41]for just like a simple story
[27:43]that's just like, and I don't know if this is out there,
[27:46]but it's like, that's a good idea.
[27:48]And the next page is, ooh, that's a bad idea.
[27:51]And you can just imagine the pictures, right?
[27:56]And like all these stories, a little bit,
[27:58]there's like, there are no words on the page
[28:01]other than, good idea, ooh, bad idea.
[28:06]And it's like the stuff that I love that every day.
[28:09]So that may not involve Lady and Buddy,
[28:12]that may be a different idea altogether, yeah.
[28:15]But so these things I tend to just kind of like jot down,
[28:19]or my nephew turned five a few weeks ago,
[28:22]and I thought, oh my God, wouldn't it be funny
[28:24]if Billy, now that he's five, he can speak dog.
[28:29]And all of a sudden, he can talk the same language
[28:31]as the dog, right?
[28:32]And wouldn't it be funny to have this idea of,
[28:34]now that I'm a big kid, I can do this.
[28:38]And you say, no, you can't speak like a dog,
[28:41]but you can do this.
[28:43]Learn to tie your shoe, or pack your own backpack.
[28:46]Like these things that are kind of,
[28:49]in this imaginary, like, amped up world
[28:52]of things you might be able to do in your big.
[28:53]And then the reality of the thing you can do,
[28:55]but it's still awesome.
[28:57]And like that juxtaposition could be really fun.
[28:59]So those are things that just start to like,
[29:01]percolate, and I put them down in my phone
[29:04]in like a notes page.
[29:06]And then I'll either sit down and write that,
[29:08]or it'll sit there for a while.
[29:10]And then not maybe go anywhere, but maybe someday it will.
[29:14]Do you have, you must have an agent who's helping you?
[29:16]I just got an agent.
[29:17]You didn't have it.
[29:18]But you just met with the random asset.
[29:20]Yeah, so it was weird.
[29:21]I got these first two, I sold buddies by time battery
[29:25]in like about two years before it actually hit bookstores
[29:29]because the artwork process and the illustration process
[29:32]takes a long time.
[29:33]And then after Buddy was out and did well,
[29:36]I was able to sell the next manuscript.
[29:38]So it's sequential.
[29:39]I don't have like a three book deal or any of that kind of stuff.
[29:42]And that's with the same publishing house,
[29:44]with Random House, again, my same editor Maria, who's lovely.
[29:47]And then now I will release, sorry, grown up this summer
[29:52]and then kind of say, okay, what might come next?
[29:55]So it's part of the reason why I'm capable
[29:57]of doing all these jobs is because I am not writing everything.
[30:00]single day and I'm not promoting a book every single day and so I just got an agent about a month
[30:06]ago and we'll think about children's ideas but maybe we'll think about other ideas too because
[30:11]she kind of spans. Yeah I was wondering if you were gonna do something with all of your branding
[30:15]expertise and obviously you have this ability to sort of take everyday life and make it into art
[30:20]and make it really relatable and like connect people through it right? You see the opportunities
[30:26]like you were saying even just in moments throughout the day like they'd be great to have some
[30:30]sort of advice thing for parents or for people looking to do more branding for themselves or even
[30:36]like the Instagram branding you're talking about? Yeah I mean let me just suggest some more books
[30:40]people. Yeah no I appreciate that I mean I think it's weird because I've never seen myself as an
[30:45]authority on anything so I sort of shy away from like that's what's so great it's that's your tone
[30:51]like that's what's like when people are too prescriptive I think it's off putting sometimes like
[30:56]yeah I know what I'm doing yeah that you know there's no one knows what they're doing. No
[31:00]and I don't really know what I'm doing either I've just been lucky that like I have a forum for
[31:04]ideas in like all for me of my jobs and it took me a while in life to actually like look
[31:11]myself in the mirror and be like oh you're creative like that's actually your thing that you should
[31:17]be doing because I think if you're good at project management or you're good at other things you
[31:21]can just do them because you're good at them but the thing you're supposed to be doing
[31:25]is maybe the like the pathway that's a little curvier that takes a little longer to get to
[31:31]so I don't know that I have a playbook that I could ever map out for anyone else I think if
[31:35]there's any like one singular thing that's like my message in life is to like use your words
[31:43]and that you know your words are really powerful and you should use them and you can in a lot
[31:50]of different ways especially in this world and culture that we live in. Thank you I have so much
[31:54]more to ask but I think our time is up so thank you for coming on my time to read books.
[32:00]Thanks again for listening to Kristine the Geists episode her book is sorry grown-ups you can't go
[32:05]to school you can buy it through my Amazon influencer store available on Zebioans.com
[32:11]and through my Instagram accounts please follow me at Zebioans and at mom's don't have time
[32:15]to read books thank you. Thanks again to my sponsor Libro FM audio books. Thanks for listening
[32:21]to mom's don't have time to read books you can follow me on Instagram at moms don't have time
[32:26]to read books. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at texture sound for the sound editing and thank
[32:31]you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.
[32:35]Thanks for listening you can always email me at zebioans.com