Colin Cowie, THE GOLD STANDARD: Giving Your Customers What They Didn't Know They Wanted

2021-12-09  ·  25:18  ·  Colin Cowie  ·  Podcast Audio

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[0:01]Hi, I'm Sivi Owens and you're listening to the award-winning podcast,
[0:05]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[0:38]Enjoy the show.
[0:42]Colin Cowie is the author of the gold standard, giving your customers what they didn't know they wanted.
[0:47]Colin Cowie arrived in the United States from South Africa in 1985.
[0:51]His intelligence, personality, and stylish sensibility led him into the fast-paced glamorous world of planning over-the-top parties
[0:58]for royalties, celebrities, and business luminaries.
[1:00]Respected around the world as an arbiter of style,
[1:03]Cowie has been at the forefront of event and wedding planning for the past 25 years,
[1:07]creating trends and raising the bar for providing the ultimate guest experience.
[1:11]In addition to Oprah Winfrey, his celebrity clients include Jennifer Lopez, Ryan Seacrest, Kim Takardashian, Little Wayne,
[1:17]Nicole Kidman, and Demi Moore to name a few.
[1:20]Cowie's corporate clients include Dom Perigno, Warner Brothers, CBS, the Whitney Museum, Architectural Digest,
[1:26]Investment Bulletin, and InStyle.
[1:28]His previous books include Dinner After Dark, Colin Cowie's Sheik, The Guide to Life as it should be,
[1:33]and Colin Cowie Wedding Sheik.
[1:35]Colin's latest book, The Gold Standard, is out now.
[1:39]So go get it.
[1:40]Welcome, Colin.
[1:41]Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read books to discuss your new book, The Gold Standard,
[1:47]which was so amazing and helpful for so many reasons.
[1:51]So thank you for coming on to discuss.
[1:53]I'm very, very happy to be with you today, Zibi, and that's why I called the Gold Standard,
[1:58]because of giving your customers what they didn't know they wanted.
[2:02]Yes, amazing.
[2:04]Well, my listeners didn't know they wanted your podcast, and now they got it.
[2:08]So there you go.
[2:10]I have to tell you, I bought your book Effortless Elegance with Colin Cowie when it first came out,
[2:16]and it sat on my coffee table for like years and years.
[2:20]So I am just so excited to talk to you in general.
[2:24]And then was so thrilled when I realized your latest book is about you and your life story,
[2:29]in addition to your advice.
[2:30]And I was so pleased to get to know the whole backstory of how you became you, which was amazing.
[2:36]It's a good story.
[2:37]It's interesting, isn't it?
[2:38]And colorful.
[2:39]It is.
[2:40]Interesting and colorful.
[2:41]So why don't you tell listeners a little bit about your background that you shared,
[2:47]and how you decided that you were going to be the person,
[2:51]and how it came to be that you were the person who was setting the Gold Standard for not only events,
[2:56]but hospitality and sort of experiential customer service in general.
[3:01]So I grew up in Central Africa, Zambia, in a very small town,
[3:05]and we had one hotel and one restaurant you'd never put your foot into,
[3:10]and a country club we belonged to.
[3:12]So I can't think of a time that we weren't entertaining in our homes.
[3:16]We always had people for lunches, dinners and house guests.
[3:21]And as a result, you know, for me, entertaining was a natural thing to do.
[3:25]It's just what you did.
[3:26]You made people feel comfortable and you made people feel welcome.
[3:29]So fast forward, in 1985 was the height of apartheid in South Africa.
[3:35]It was a very unfair political system.
[3:37]I didn't believe in it.
[3:38]I didn't want to participate in it.
[3:40]And I didn't realize or think that it would be a future for the country.
[3:44]And I don't know what, I didn't want to spend my hardest working years,
[3:48]not knowing what the future would hold.
[3:50]So our finances were frozen and monitored and tracked,
[3:54]because we lived like in a police state.
[3:56]So armed with $400, one world cut suit,
[3:59]and on a prison, some tenant, big dreams, I landed in Los Angeles
[4:03]on the 16th of September, 1985.
[4:06]And I never looked back.
[4:08]I mean, it was amazing.
[4:09]I started working as a caterer, and then I owned my own cateoring company.
[4:14]And then I started planning parties and now seeing all this European sense of cuisine.
[4:20]I was doing, you know, Bronzino grilled.
[4:24]I was doing Bronzino cooked in sea salt.
[4:27]And I had all these fabulous European ideas.
[4:29]And it was a time when California cuisine was at its highest.
[4:33]And it was just a lot of layers of everything one on top of the other.
[4:36]And I had this European sensibility.
[4:39]And it just caught on very quickly.
[4:40]And I became like the young caterer to the stars.
[4:44]So the next minute I was doing Bruce Willis and Daniel Warren.
[4:48]So the best is to loan.
[4:49]And Barbara Streisand, there were my clients.
[4:52]Tom Cruise, the works.
[4:54]And I did all their parties for them.
[4:56]And along the way came the sort of magazine in style magazine
[4:59]because they had no credibility.
[5:01]So, and I had all the relationships with the celebrities.
[5:04]And that led to my first TV show.
[5:07]And then I started doing private labeling and designing a product for Linux.
[5:11]And all these other companies and 13 years later, I moved to New York.
[5:15]And I started work in the Middle East.
[5:17]And it was a big mega, mega fabulous, amazing events.
[5:20]And I mean, I've just hit the most extraordinary journey.
[5:23]And here we are 11 books later.
[5:25]And the gold standard, giving your customers what they didn't know they wanted.
[5:29]And this is my 11th book, The Beat.
[5:31]It's my first book, which is really a B2B at the business book.
[5:35]And it's really teaches us in a, how do we stand out in the crowd today?
[5:39]And a very crowded space.
[5:40]And I'm sure you'll agree with me.
[5:42]We don't need another product.
[5:44]We don't need another service.
[5:46]We don't need another app.
[5:47]We don't need another piece of technology.
[5:49]We're over assaulted in all those departments.
[5:52]But the thing is, how do we stand out in the crowd?
[5:55]And that's why, you know, I use customer servers,
[5:58]I hate senior currency today.
[6:00]It's how we make you feel.
[6:02]That's what's important.
[6:03]So I could go on and on and on.
[6:05]I totally agree.
[6:06]I love your messaging.
[6:08]And of course.
[6:09]And I loved how your first real experience hosting an event was in a tent
[6:13]where you made sort of a bar for the soldiers who were working with you
[6:17]when you were part of the army.
[6:18]I mean, who would have thought that's how you got your start with,
[6:21]you know, the wallpaper on the walls of tents and everything.
[6:23]So anyway, thank you for sharing your backstory with us.
[6:26]That was really phenomenal.
[6:27]That's a funny part of the story.
[6:29]Because just to fill your readers in and list us in was drafted
[6:34]to the majority for two years.
[6:36]Those mandatory.
[6:37]So I figured you know, how do I stand out in the crowd?
[6:39]And I became head of the medics and I became friendly with the major who
[6:44]was in the major in command of the whole camp.
[6:48]We were in southern and go south with David on the border of southern and
[6:52]go down this, you know, we need to do something for the troops.
[6:54]More or maybe I could serve an officer's bar.
[6:57]So I said, well, maybe someone can take me in a helicopter to
[7:01]go to the front end.
[7:02]So I came back with the tent and the jutes and the wallpaper and
[7:05]everything.
[7:06]And I bought with me a couple of those big beverage servers.
[7:09]You know, we could make like the daily cocktail of the day.
[7:11]You could make six year the time.
[7:13]Yeah.
[7:14]Well, the funny thing.
[7:15]Those are the first two I bought.
[7:16]And I realized then, I didn't realize then, but I realized 20
[7:20]years later, when I was working in home shopping network, this would be a great
[7:24]thing to sell.
[7:25]I went to to sell over 150,000 units of those in home shopping networks
[7:30]and saying, but it's an interesting how a small real idea and a very,
[7:35]very challenged moment in life ended up being such a big idea later on.
[7:40]Oh my gosh.
[7:41]I just love it and all the creativity.
[7:43]You know, the book itself and all the advice that you have throughout the
[7:48]the chapters after your life story resonated so much with me because,
[7:52]yes, I do this podcast.
[7:53]But I also just recently launched a publishing business and we're going to be publishing 12
[7:57]books a year.
[7:58]So I am also thinking very seriously about the customer experience and how
[8:03]to make people feel and all the things that you were talking about.
[8:06]So literally after I finished your book, I emailed my entire team and I was like,
[8:09]oh my gosh, I was just so inspired.
[8:11]I got my name book here at the like 18 things.
[8:14]I think we should think about and maybe we can do things differently this way.
[8:17]But let's like start from scratch and blah, blah, blah.
[8:20]So it was, it had a huge effect on me personally and I'm sure it will on all the readers.
[8:25]We attended with a lot of people said to me,
[8:28]well, tell me about this book and how long did it take to write?
[8:32]I said, you know, it might have taken a year and a half to put, you know,
[8:35]the content together.
[8:37]But it's a lifetime of my work.
[8:39]You know, it's all the lessons that I learned along the way.
[8:42]You know, the failures that I had while the failure was a necessity and what I
[8:46]happened from them and, you know, I never went to university to study in
[8:50]this.
[8:51]I'm a, I, I come to the university of, of whatever it takes.
[8:55]And I graduated in Knoxville Falls realizing that every time I got up,
[8:59]I got up smarter than I felt the last time.
[9:01]So it really is a lifetime of work, you know, between two covers.
[9:05]And I think there's something in here for everyone.
[9:07]It doesn't matter whether you're running a manicure store with three people on the corner
[9:12]running the fortune 500 store, all these, all these principles are planted.
[9:16]Everyone into everything.
[9:17]And it's very timely today.
[9:19]And, you know, I do a very big focus in the very beginning.
[9:22]I believe that in any business,
[9:24]we want to serve people or we want to sell something.
[9:28]We need to set the table correctly, which means you need to get everybody aligned.
[9:32]And I started writing the book, pre-COVID.
[9:35]And the interesting thing was this message has never been more important because
[9:39]during COVID, a lot of products changed, a lot of our messaging changed,
[9:44]our staffing changed, our work situation changed.
[9:47]Some people were working hybrid, some people were working remotely.
[9:50]So that this is a better idea now than ever to make sure that we,
[9:55]everything that we need in our company culture to go.
[10:00]to and deliver this type of customer service.
[10:02]And I call it culture because culture really,
[10:05]it's the fuel, you know,
[10:06]a lot of people say 100% is the goal.
[10:08]It's actually 120,
[10:10]because that other 20% is passion.
[10:13]And that's what's gonna get you ahead of the game.
[10:15]And that culture comes from making sure
[10:17]that we have a vision for what we want to do.
[10:20]That we have a mission that's gonna tell us exactly
[10:23]how we're gonna get there.
[10:25]And most important, what are the guiding principles?
[10:28]So if you to take 10 of your employees
[10:30]and put them in two in 10 different rooms
[10:33]and ask them a question,
[10:34]if they're gone through this exercise,
[10:37]80% of the answer will be the same.
[10:39]If not, you'll get a radically different question,
[10:43]a radically different answers.
[10:44]So I think alignment is very important.
[10:47]And then the other thing that I said,
[10:48]you know, what makes us stand out, right,
[10:52]is how I make you feel.
[10:54]The whole goal in this overcrowded arena
[10:57]is like, if we're gonna have a transaction,
[11:00]how do I create the emotional connection with you?
[11:03]That's what's important.
[11:05]Because once I have that emotional connection with you,
[11:08]you're going to be loyal to me.
[11:10]You're love receiving information from me.
[11:13]You're not presentative.
[11:14]You spend more freely and most importantly,
[11:16]you're gonna tell your friends about me.
[11:18]So that emotionally connected person
[11:20]is really, really important.
[11:22]And I call it the customer seduction,
[11:23]because we use the sensors
[11:26]as what you smell, touch, taste, see and hear
[11:29]to craft that guest experience.
[11:31]And I take and watch that further by saying, you know,
[11:34]it's all about delivering the two types of service.
[11:37]There's reactive service,
[11:38]which is what 95% of the world's service providers offer.
[11:42]And that when something goes wrong,
[11:44]it put their hand up and they can fix it.
[11:46]They can buy some loyalty with it.
[11:48]And it's done correctly.
[11:50]But only five percent of the world
[11:52]are able to deliver proactive customer service.
[11:55]And that's when we can really, really get interesting
[11:59]and we can use the information
[12:01]that's readily available to us.
[12:03]You can Google and find any information about anyone.
[12:06]It's amazing what people put in their social media pages.
[12:10]You just get to re-serve that and use that yourself
[12:13]to be able to make a message that you know
[12:16]is going to resonate with other people.
[12:18]And when that happens,
[12:19]that's when the magic happens,
[12:20]because proactive service allows us
[12:23]to anticipate the unanticipated needs of the guest.
[12:27]When you do that, you create that emotional connection.
[12:30]There's no question about it.
[12:31]So there's tons of fun stuff that Yamuna could go on
[12:34]and on and off from the whole time.
[12:36]And while the passion is not the subject now.
[12:39]No, it's absolutely true.
[12:41]And I think what you said is so true.
[12:44]I mean, even when you talked about the own positioning
[12:47]of your business where there were at the beginning
[12:49]only a couple big, you know,
[12:50]essentially event planning service firms
[12:53]who were doing these types of events.
[12:54]And then next thing you knew,
[12:57]like anybody with a website was saying
[12:58]they were an event planner, right?
[13:00]And so how do you distinguish yourself?
[13:02]And how do you stand by what you believe in?
[13:04]And how do you produce something exceptional
[13:07]that's straight from the heart?
[13:08]And that I don't know.
[13:09]I think that with everything, every market
[13:13]becoming completely saturated and crowded,
[13:16]you're right.
[13:17]There has to be something significantly different.
[13:19]And what do we have left?
[13:21]What to touch people where they feel, right?
[13:24]Exactly.
[13:25]Otherwise, you know, with a very thirsty consumer today,
[13:30]the new young consumers today,
[13:32]their program to look at life as though
[13:36]it's a revolving door,
[13:38]that's just gonna serve us
[13:39]in one great product off to the next.
[13:41]And it's true because there is one great product
[13:44]coming off to the next.
[13:45]And if we aren't able to create that emotional connection,
[13:49]they're just gonna continue shopping.
[13:51]And we're gonna sit there trying to sell.
[13:53]And it's not gonna work.
[13:54]So we have to connect those dots.
[13:56]And we have to make those connections.
[13:58]You know, the emotional connection is important,
[14:00]not only to the person on the outside,
[14:03]but you want your team,
[14:04]you want your stop to be emotionally connected.
[14:07]Because that way they find to everything
[14:09]that it is that you're doing.
[14:11]So if you were gonna try to sell a book, how would you do it?
[14:13]Like how are you doing this book differently?
[14:15]Like you have a new product on the market.
[14:17]How are you approaching it in a way
[14:20]that makes people resonate?
[14:21]Because it's your book.
[14:22]And how are you applying your skills
[14:24]to selling this book?
[14:26]You know, it's so much more difficult today to sell a book.
[14:28]First of all, you know,
[14:31]I've been doing 11 books over the period of the last 25 years.
[14:36]So when you look at it,
[14:39]you'd gone over one official years ago,
[14:42]you held up your book,
[14:44]everyone would run to Barnes and Noble
[14:46]and to Borders and to every other bookstore,
[14:48]three Amazon and go buy your hard copy book
[14:51]and you're doing the New Town fifth syllabus.
[14:53]It's not like that today.
[14:55]And at first it was so many people are competing
[14:58]with online publications versus things that are in print.
[15:02]I don't think people ever go away
[15:04]because it's this something about holding that tangible
[15:07]book in your hands.
[15:09]So for me, it's not about national television anymore.
[15:13]You know, I did quite a bit of television
[15:15]with Morning America, ABC, et cetera, et cetera on this book.
[15:21]And the needle didn't move it,
[15:23]like it's been moving on podcasts.
[15:26]So for me, the podcast has been the most beneficial way
[15:30]for me to move numbers on books for sure.
[15:33]So just doing exactly what I'm doing with you now
[15:35]and our finding alternative ways
[15:37]is kind of the way that I've been telling the book.
[15:40]The other things I've been in a lot of speaking engagements
[15:42]and because this is about customer service,
[15:46]a lot of people in the hospitality space
[15:48]want to hear what we have to say.
[15:50]So there was also a time when I remember writing books
[15:54]in the beginning where the publisher went out
[15:56]and did their best to help sell books for you
[15:59]and there were marketing budgets.
[16:00]Now everything pretty much lands up in the author's hat
[16:03]and what is it that you can do?
[16:05]So I do a lot of work on the speaking circuit.
[16:08]So the speaking circuit has been really, really good.
[16:11]Because instead of sending two books at a time,
[16:13]I'm buying 100 books, 200 books, 300 books at a time.
[16:16]And that's what's moving the needle for me.
[16:18]And then on the individual basis,
[16:19]as I said, the podcast would be the most important.
[16:22]And then going out to my friends who are influencers
[16:25]and I send them all a book and I send them 10 or 15 blurbs.
[16:29]I said, would you pick one of these
[16:31]and show me some love and support?
[16:33]I mean, the track you what it's like
[16:35]is reaching out to your network now instead of someone else's
[16:39]network and getting your network to promote
[16:41]you how they possibly care with its Instagram post, Facebook,
[16:45]post stories.
[16:46]So we do what we have to do today
[16:48]in a very, very different landscape of publishing.
[16:51]But it's working.
[16:52]We're working to us as hard when we're getting the same results.
[16:56]You think there's anything fundamentally we can change
[16:58]about books in general or book marketing
[17:02]or the experience of reading a book.
[17:04]Because your book, your book made me think
[17:06]about how I could make books different, right?
[17:09]Maybe there's something that people haven't thought of yet
[17:12]in terms of the book experience,
[17:14]the way you've rethought events or...
[17:18]Also the way they also, the way that I rethought the book.
[17:20]I mean, I wrote to a business book
[17:22]and I dedicated to a housekeeper.
[17:24]I mean, this is really funny.
[17:25]She sounds amazing by the way.
[17:28]I can't believe she walked you down the aisle.
[17:30]That's amazing.
[17:31]Yeah.
[17:32]I mean, this is a very beautiful 25 years.
[17:35]I mean, you know, I have a home in Miami now.
[17:38]And the most devastating thing in my life
[17:40]was her not pointing ways.
[17:41]Also, I haven't worked for me for 25 years
[17:44]and being 75 was time for her to start enjoying her golden years
[17:48]without having to work anymore.
[17:50]But that clearly, clearly for me was such an evident
[17:54]and ominous gold standard right in front of me.
[17:57]So, yes, it's been a fun project.
[17:59]I always like to look on finding things before they happen.
[18:04]I think that's what trend is all about
[18:06]and being ahead of the curve
[18:08]and figuring out new ways to do new things.
[18:11]Otherwise, we get left behind.
[18:12]There's a lot of small people out there doing a lot of things.
[18:14]There's a lot of product out there
[18:15]that we have to compete with on a regular and a daily basis.
[18:19]So, do you like to read yourself?
[18:22]Be myself.
[18:23]Do you like to read?
[18:24]Like, do you like to read for that?
[18:25]Because you like to be myself.
[18:27]And you say, yes, 100% authentically.
[18:30]No, of course you like to be yourself.
[18:32]Do you like to read?
[18:33]Like, is reading one of your go-to things or lacks?
[18:36]And if so, what type of books do you like to read?
[18:38]I always have five or six books next to my bed.
[18:42]And I always like to have, you know, one or two.
[18:45]There's always a self-hop book.
[18:46]There's always a book on conservation.
[18:49]There's always, you know, I liked an interesting material around me.
[18:52]So, whenever I travel, I like to grab a book with me
[18:54]so that I can set in an airplane
[18:56]and actually read a book and I look around
[18:59]and I realize I'm the only person doing it.
[19:02]Mm-hmm.
[19:03]I noticed that everybody is reading it,
[19:06]other reading online or they glued to their phones.
[19:09]And it's amazing.
[19:10]Your phone now tells you exactly how much time
[19:13]you spend a week on it.
[19:14]I find people that can't walk through the airport
[19:17]looking ahead because they're busy looking at their phone.
[19:19]We are obsessed with our phones in information.
[19:22]And the sad thing is, everything has been served up
[19:25]to us in bike-size pieces.
[19:27]So the idea of getting into a novel
[19:29]that you just can't wait to get home
[19:31]when you're owned to read another four-five chapters up,
[19:34]I think it's one of those last pleasures in life.
[19:38]There was nothing better than a winter's day
[19:40]to make a big pot of coffee or a pot of tea
[19:45]and light a frigging can and sitting from the fire,
[19:48]put a blanket up and get stuck into your book.
[19:50]Those are favored off the noon of mine.
[19:52]Now you've got 15 other things going on
[19:55]and you're multiple tasking
[19:56]with between four-five different instruments.
[19:59]So sad, man.
[20:00]favourite favourite favourite autumn author, died earlier this week.
[20:04]A journalist, my name is Wilbur Smith. He was the most iconic African
[20:07]adventure, epic African adventure writer.
[20:10]I read something that won't be his books.
[20:13]And the rhythm of the period of last 35 years that I started to read them all again.
[20:17]But I think it's something really amazing about
[20:21]reading and being able to be transported into another world versus
[20:26]sitting, watching all this information that is pushed towards us,
[20:30]you know, as in our phones, as in Netflix, Hulu, Showtime, whatever it might be.
[20:36]I mean, we are overloaded and barraged and targeted
[20:41]just to send content towards us, left, right and centre.
[20:44]So I like the idea of what you alluded to earlier,
[20:48]but going out there and us looking for the content.
[20:52]And being able to use content in a very meaningful way to to transport us to
[20:57]a magical place where we can fantasise in our mind about what love could be or put us
[21:03]on to a particular situation and make us think differently about a moment.
[21:07]Well, I love that. Okay. What advice would you have for people trying to write books
[21:15]like you just did and have done many times?
[21:17]And then also, I don't know, how can we make how can we make the customer experience for
[21:23]our families even better? Like what can we do at home to make life better
[21:27]using all of the tools in your toolbox?
[21:29]It's so interesting. First, I'm going to answer your second question first.
[21:33]You know, whenever I do a lot of public speaking and I speak to all the corporations
[21:39]and I speak to a lot of companies and I always say, you know,
[21:43]all these things that we're teaching you, just realise that not only do they make
[21:49]you a better person, but they make you a better parent, they make you a better sibling,
[21:54]and they make you a better friend. And everything that you can learn, that you use in the corporate
[21:59]space and anything that helps you be a better version of you helps you in every area of your life.
[22:06]So without a question, I think, you know, we practice what we preach because it is,
[22:10]that is what we learn and what we read. And you know, for anyone who wants to be
[22:15]an author up there, I think the easiest way to do it is go online and download in a
[22:21]hard-to-ride a book, a hard-to-book proposal together because it is very, very specific
[22:27]and things have changed from what we used to write a book 35 years ago compared to writing a book
[22:33]today. It's, you need to not only come up with a really compelling idea as to why you can
[22:40]sell your book, but more importantly, you need to prove to the publisher what can you do to sell
[22:47]the book. So the marketing plan of selling your book is equally important to the content of the
[22:54]book because the publishers don't have the money today to make them stand out in the crowd like
[22:59]they used to. So I think a lot of this is dependent on the author to come up with like,
[23:06]who is your network? How are you going to sell this book and how are you going to get us onto
[23:11]a bestseller list? And I think it's pretty easy, it's not easy, there's nothing easy about
[23:16]doing this at all. But, you know, you need a lot of all the eyes and cross all the teas in terms of
[23:22]marketing plan and laying out your table of contents and writing a sample chapter and writing
[23:28]the forward of the book so that you can give someone a really good idea as to an
[23:33]a company as to why they would actually buy this book. I've been very very fortunate. I've
[23:38]worked with an extraordinary literary agent, Margaret McBride from McBride with Tree Agency at
[23:43]San Diego. She's done all 11 books for me. Wow. And she's been over the first person's
[23:49]it. Every time I look at the books, it's a different world right now. It's a different world right
[23:53]now. We're going to publish and we'll publish it. We want to do your next free books. Let's tie you
[23:58]up and we'll give you an advance that was so huge and amazing. And the advances have come down
[24:03]tremendously compared to what they used to just because, you know, those publishing dollars are now
[24:09]being shared online and with digital content. So it's a very different landscape. And I just think
[24:15]you have to be very specific. Have a really really good idea. But more than you're good idea,
[24:19]you really need to know, what can I do to prove to the person who's going to publish my book
[24:25]that I can make this book move, fly, and sell. Love it. Wow. Colin, thank you for this. Thank
[24:33]you for all of your amazing inspiring advice and your story. And I just, I don't know, I've just
[24:40]laughed it up and we'll be using it often. So thank you for that. And thank you for coming on
[24:46]my time. Thank you so much. Okay. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[24:54]Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[24:59]Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zebi Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet
[25:04]lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for
[25:09]the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[25:14]now trim music.