Life Lessons from a Cross-Country Adventure | Teri M. Brown

Hey creative, are you ready to discuss profits, the money, the ways to make it happen? The Profitable Creative Podcast is for you, the creative, how you define it. Videographers, photographers, entrepreneurs, marketing agencies, you get it. CEO of Core Group and author Christian Brim interviews industry experts, creative entrepreneurs, and professionals alike who strive to be creative and make money at the same time. Sound like you? Tune in now. It's time for profit.

Welcome to another episode of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in San Antonio, Texas. No puedo traducir en español, but you know, you can follow along in English. Thanks for listening. Terry Brown, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here today.

Do you speak Spanish?

I do not. I can say no hablo español, and that's about the extent of it.

Yeah, I just said we're not translating in Spanish. My Spanish is rusty, to say the least. So give us the lowdown on Terry Brown. Downtown. I'm kind of getting jazzed with the name.

Are you getting jazzed? You're going to go with all the downs? Downtown Terry Brown. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I am an author. I'm a podcaster. And I am a speaker. So, those are kind of the 3 big things that I do. And they all have found a way to tie into one another.

That's my bird clock.

I hear that.

Yeah. It's a couple minutes slow. And it was a gift, so I can't get rid of it. But it is annoying. Sorry. So, what do you speak, write, and podcast about?

All right. So, I write mostly fiction. However, I do have a memoir that's out there because my husband and I rode across the United States on a tandem bicycle. So, we rode 3,102 miles on a tandem. And so, you know, you have to write about that. And then, my speaking has been a lot around that tandem ride and the lessons that I learned, which is why what my book is about, 10 Little Rules for a Double-Butted Adventure, and it's life lessons that I learned while on the road. And then my podcast, I talk with other authors who are kind of in the same place that I am, which is we've got books, but we're indie authors. We're not these well-known, big-name, everybody's heard of you authors, and trying to find a platform is really difficult. So I read their book and then we have a book discussion. And that's— so I kind of do the whole thing. And I've found a way to kind of massage it into one brand of me.

I love it. So how long have you been doing this?

I started— my first book got published in January of '22. My podcast started in January of '24. And I began speaking about the same time, January '24.

When did you do the bike ride?

In 2020.

Oh, so COVID.

During COVID Yeah, the COVID summer.

Yeah. Was this planned or was this a reaction?

No, this was planned. My husband, when he and I were dating in 2018, he said, I have always wanted to ride across the United States on a bicycle. I saw it happen in 1976. I was in the military, couldn't go, would give anything to be able to do that. And I had been wanting to do something big and bold and way outside of my comfort zone. So I asked him, are you planning to to talk about this for the rest of your life? Are you going to do it? And he said, no, I really want to do it. And I said, count me in. And what's crazy was, is at the time, I had no intention of marrying him. I had no intention of ever being married again. And yet we ended up getting married. And then we went on this, this great adventure together. So it was definitely planned.

In fact, it was almost canceled because of COVID Did he still feel the same way after the trip?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, it was, it was pretty incredible. Um, I wouldn't do it a second time, but I am so thankful I did it the first time.

Yeah, I mean, I, my wife and I took a road trip last month, uh, up to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and stopped, and we stopped in Montana and Utah, and I cut the last leg off because I was like, I can't sit in the car anymore. Right? Right. How do you— being on a bicycle for that long, did you train for this?

Or? Yes, so we did train. But I'm going to tell you right now, there's no amount of training that really prepares you for what you're going to get. Or at least we didn't prepare in a way that let me know what I was going to get. We did about 1,000 miles of training over a year. But they were little 20-mile rides here, 30-mile rides there. We live on the coast of North Carolina, which is very flat. So occasionally we would take our bicycles somewhere else to try to get hills. But the very first day of our trip, we started going over the mountain range in Oregon.

Okay, hold on a second. So you, you flew across the country?

We did. We took all our stuff across the country.

Okay.

And then road back to the East Coast. And the reason that, that most people choose to go that route versus from the East Coast to the West Coast is prevailing winds are west to east.

Oh yeah.

And you don't want to be doing the—

going into the wind, right?

Right, exactly, exactly.

So, okay, so you— how many miles a day were you going?

An average of 42, but some, some days we would do 90 and some days we would do 10. It, it depended a lot on what was the weather like, what was our personal condition, you know, like mentally, physically, where were we? Sometimes it had to do with where the town's located. You know, we had one day we had to do 70 miles. It didn't matter what we felt like. There was nothing in between.

So you were staying in lodging. You didn't bring like tenting?

Oh, no, no, we brought tents, but we tried to stay in campgrounds because I'll do a lot. But primitive camping is kind of like over the top. We did primitive camp 2 times. And it was fun for 2 times, but I wouldn't have wanted to do that the whole way across the United States. That's just— that's too much for me.

At what point did you question your life choices?

Day 1. So on day 1, I really did think that we'd bit off more than we could chew. It was up all day long, and we didn't make it as far as I thought we were going to make it that day. I, I was just really overwhelmed. Then I kind of calmed down a little. Then I really worried about getting over the Rocky Mountains. So that was a, that was a big fear. And then that day that I told you we had to do 70 miles, that day I was going to quit. I was done. When we, when we finally made it to our motel, and it would be a motel without the T and possibly without the L, um, when we finally got there, I thought, I'm done. And I don't mean done for today. I mean, I'm done. This ride is stupid.

Never get on a bicycle again.

I'm never doing it again. Right. But I put— I kept a blog and I put it out there to my friends that I was just completely done. I can't do this anymore. I don't see the value in it. And I had a friend reach out to me who said, you know, it's perfectly okay to be done with something. And what you've done so far is amazing. You've made it over the Rocky Mountains on a tandem bicycle. Few people can say that. However, don't quit on a bad day.

So, okay. Had you done endurance before?

So, when I met my husband, when I met Bruce, I had not been on a bicycle in 40 years. Okay. I am not an athlete. My idea of athleticism is a casual walk along the beach while looking for shells. I am not that person. My husband, on the other hand, is very athletic. He ran marathons, did triathlons. He was 25 years as a Marine. He, he was very fit and capable. And then there was me. And so it's one of the reasons I kept the blog, because most of the time when people keep a blog about an event like this, this big huge thing, they are like Bruce— fit, capable, ready. And, and very few people like me attempt it. Well, I made it. And that's why I tell people is it's more about determination and willpower than it is about anything else. If you really want something, then you can make it happen, even if the odds are against you, even if you're too old, too fat, too all the things I was, right? That you can make it happen if it's something you want. And if it's something you really don't want, I can promise you, you will not make it.

Yes. And I can see a lot of parallels to the entrepreneurial journey.

Absolutely.

I talk about in my book, Todd Henry, author of The Accidental Creative, among other things, Brave Habit.

He—

I interviewed him for the book and he was talking about the word passion and the Greek word for passion, which I don't remember, periklos, I don't remember anyway, actually means to suffer. And he, you know, and then I was like, oh, well, the Passion of the Christ, that makes more sense.

Exactly. So I just thought of that. It was like, oh, that's why that is.

Okay. It always seems strange. But he said, you know, as an entrepreneur, as a creative, that you have to be willing to suffer for it. Doesn't necessarily mean you will suffer for it, but if you're not willing to suffer for it, then you're not on the track.

You've got to be able to be uncomfortable. If nothing else, if we don't like the word suffer, if that scares you a little, how about just be uncomfortable? To be put into spaces that it doesn't feel good right now, that things aren't going the way you thought they were, that you're gonna have to figure out how to pivot quickly. You know, you thought you were going to do this and bam, now you're doing something else. And we ran into that over and over and over on the ride. And when we finished up that ride, you know, like I said, I have— I was the person who hadn't been on a bicycle in 40 years when my husband and I began training for this. And I am not athletic and I am so klutzy that my brother said, Terry, you can't chew gum and walk. How are you going to possibly make it across the United States on a tandem bike? So when I finished that ride, my thought was, is I can do anything I put my mind to. It's not a matter of can I do it, but what do I want to do? And 14 months later, my first novel came out. So it changed very much my thinking and what I was capable of and changed my feeling that I was kind of towards the end of my life. I was in my mid-50s. I had been divorced twice. I'd lived in an abusive relationship. I kind of thought that things were winding down and that my life was going to be more about being a grandma and just figuring out how to survive. And after that ride, it was like, oh, I've got so much left in me. I have so many things I want to do that I want to accomplish. And so it really flipped a switch for me.

Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now. That's fascinating to me that that, uh, happened at that point in your life. Like, can you look back and see times where you were presented with that type of challenge? Maybe not that scope, but something that was unknown, you hadn't done, and seemed like a big thing where you said no?

Oh, often, especially during those 14 years that I lived in the emotionally abusive relationship. It was too scary. I was already struggling. I was already drowning. I already had people telling me I was no good. I could not imagine putting myself out on the line to do something big and bold. Because I had no safe space. You know, if I failed at that, it was going to be one more huge failure. And I already felt like a huge failure. So there were a lot of times I got out of that relationship in 2017. But you don't heal just because you're gone. You know, I got out of it, but, but you're still left in this, this thing. And that's when I started thinking, I want to do something big. I want to do something big and bold. And so when Bruce said, hey, I wanted to ride across the United States, I thought, That's big and bold. That's huge. And especially for me. You know, it might not be huge for some people who are super athletic, and they do these, you know, mega marathons and all these other things. But for someone like me, who I'm a desk jockey, you know, I sit here.

It's a big thing for anybody. You know, there's the physically writing, yes. But you've also got the logistics, the weather, the, you know, I mean, there's a lot of stuff.

Well, and then we had COVID. Just throw COVID in there just to make everything even a little more fun because there were times where you would get to a campground and it's not open. And there were times where you would be planning to stop in a certain town to eat lunch and find that all the restaurants are closed.

Yeah.

You know, there were a lot of things that changed how we had to do our ride. You know, we had to definitely make sure that we had some instant meals with us at all times, just in case we couldn't find someplace open. We had to be willing to sleep on the side of the road in a tent. And you had to kind of be willing to like, you had to be willing to ask people. We actually asked a stranger one time if they would let us put our tent up in their yard. Because the campground was closed. Right. And they were kind enough to let us.

Yeah. I mean, okay. So one of the things that I think you're describing, um, the, the, the, the, the passion for something and the willing to sacrifice your comfort, if nothing else, uh, What was— so it wasn't like writing the novel, right? Like you, you there for— that was you creating something and putting it out there. This, what was the— what was your motivation to start it and finish it?

There were, there were a couple. One of them was I felt I needed to prove to the world that I had value. Now, turns out the world did not believe I didn't have value. I didn't believe I had value. So, it was me I needed to prove it to. I didn't know that when I got started. But that's, that was my big motivation is I wanted to show people that there was still something left of me, because I didn't really feel it myself. I also wanted to complete it because of my husband. This was a 40-year dream for for him, you know, and he wanted to do it. And I wanted to be part of that with him. And then just to make it a little better for both of us, because sometimes when you do something just for yourself, it's not enough to get you over the hard days. We decided to try to raise money for Toys for Tots, which was something that my husband was very, very involved in. And so our goal was to raise enough money that any child in our county who asked for a bicycle for Christmas that year would have the ability to get a bicycle. So that was kind of— so on the worst of the worst days when he was not feeling it and I was not feeling it, we'd say the kids, and then you could pedal just a little further.

Yeah. And I assume you were successful.

We were. We made it all the way, 3,102 miles.

Oh, I meant in the fundraising.

Oh yeah, we— oh, we were. It was so successful that, that it's crazy. We not only funded not for for our county, but an additional county. And every organization in our county that asked for help with children that year got the help they needed.

I love it.

So it was, it was, and then what was really cool is the following year, and now years, those same people that donated because of us have continued to donate. And so our ability to help children in our area has, has probably about quadrupled, because people are now aware of toys for tots and what we were doing.

I love that. Yeah. So you get back, you, you sit down, the first, the first thought to your mind was, now I can write this book. I mean, like, was this something that you'd been thinking about?

Yes. So I had been writing, I, I call it secret writing. No one really knew anything about it other than Bruce and a couple of my children. I mean, I just kept very quiet.

So not published?

Oh, no, not— I wasn't even showing it to people. I mean, I was, I was— and I didn't have a writer community. I didn't have friends that were writers. I was very much doing it on the quiet because I didn't believe in myself. I get back from the ride, and I said, I have this manuscript here that I like. And so I started querying it, and I found a publisher, a small press. And what's crazy is they shouldn't have taken it. It was in terrible shape. But I think that they saw that with editorial help, that it would be, it would be worth it. And they gave me that editorial help. And bam, the book came out. And so I just feel like the stars really aligned for me. I decided I wasn't afraid, and I was going to put it out there. And I happened upon someone who said, here's someone who's not afraid, and they have something that we can turn into to a book. And that my first book actually won 12 awards.

I love that. And so then you've continued writing. Yes. And wrote a book about your, your trip. Right.

So I've got 3 novels. So they came out in January of '22, January of '23, January of '24. Then in February of '25, 10 Little Rules for a Double-Budded Adventure came out. It, it had been written, but kind of sitting there. I didn't quite know how I wanted to put it out into the world. And then in April, I also wrote a children's picture book.

Tell us about the 10— 10— 10— not steps—

10—

10 Little Rules. Rules.

Okay. For a Double-Budded Adventure. Yeah. I tell people to make sure they understand this is not about bicycle riding. This is about— this is about living life. And yeah, there's a lot of bicycle things in there because that's how I learned how to live life. Um, these are 10 life lessons, things that helped me get through, and I didn't realize I was even learning them. I kept a blog the whole way, and it was a very detailed— how many miles we rode, what the weather was like, how many flat tires we had. It had everything, but it also had my interpretation of the day. How did I feel? And, and, and all of the things. And when we finished the ride, it was hard for me to believe we had actually made it because you don't ride every— you don't ride from the coast to DC. You ride a day and then you put that day away and then you ride another day and then you put that day away and you ride another day. And at the end, all those days made it across the United States. But in my mind, it was hard to piece all of that together. And I was going through my blog, trying to like settle that feeling that I had, like, did we really do that? Like, how did we do that? And I started noticing these, these things that I was learning, that these themes that kept coming up over and over, and I thought, there's my book.

So were these things that you knew before that became more clear, or these were like revelations that you learned?

I think a little of both. I think sometimes it was I'd never considered it before. And I think sometimes it were things that maybe I knew a long time ago and had got buried beneath a lot of living yuck that, you know, you just kind of forget who you are and what you're capable of and what you can do. And, you know, like, keep dreaming is something I think I've always known. But I had forgotten. I had pushed it down so deep because I didn't want to keep dreaming. But one of the ones that I had never considered before was don't quit on a bad day. You know, I'd never considered the fact that quitting is okay. Because sometimes stopping something is exactly what you need to do. I needed to get out of that bad relationship. Sometimes you're in a job that's going nowhere, and it's not suiting you anymore. Or maybe you're in a relationship that is no longer healthy for you in some way or another, right? Maybe you're living somewhere and it's horrible for you and you really should be somewhere else. It's okay to say, "I'm done here." But to do it on a bad day doesn't make sense because you're emotional then. You're not able to stop and think. And anything can stop you on a bad day. So you need to be able to step back and then reevaluate. And if it's still bad, Well, then sure, quit, move on.

Yeah, I, yes, I think, you know, for me, quitting, very, very strange belief that, that I had acquired over my lifetime that quitting was bad. But to your point, quitting is not bad. And You know, I think as entrepreneurs, we tend to have a lot of stick-to-itiveness.

Yeah. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think that's actually a very good quality. It's recognizing though, when your stick-to-itiveness is now detrimental to you.

Yes, 100%.

You know, I stayed in a relationship for 14 years that I should not have stayed in. And I knew it for 10 of those 14 years. 14, right? But I was determined to make it work. And so my stick-to-itiveness was actually detrimental to me. And so you have to be able to step back and say, you know, evaluate, look, is this still good for me? Which is why I think they often tell people to make a goal and then check it out quarterly. You know, where are you? How do you feel about the goal? Is it still the right goal? You know, those questions are really valuable.

Yeah. And I wonder in both of our situations how much fear, like, like stick-to-itiveness or persistence. Yeah, that's probably a better word. Better word is kind of a You can use it as protection, right? Like from your fear of like the fear of stopping something. In my case, it was being in charge of the marketing side of the business. And I'd always been in charge of it, but it became very clear to me that, you know, if we were going to take it to the next level, I was not the right person. And, and it wasn't, it wasn't the ego saying, well, I have to be the person. That wasn't what was keeping me there. It was this persistence that I had to keep doing it. But, you know, the results lined up. Like, it was like, no, this is not— this, this can't continue. But it was the fear of the unknown. Okay, like, well, if I'm not going to do it, who is going to do it?

Who is going to do it? How are they going to do it? How much, how much influence are they going to have? Are they going to listen to me? Am I going to, am I going to have no input anymore? Is it going to get out of my hands? All of the things, right? And when I was in the bad relationship, it was fear of looking like a failure, like a loser. You know, I've already, I've already been in one failed relationship, and now I'm in another one. We can't have that. You know, and so there was a lot of of, and then that, and then eventually it became a fear, a financial fear of, of being afraid, like, what am I going to do? I actually told my son one time, he was an adult at this point, and he was like, Mom, you've got to get out of that relationship. And I said to him, which is crazy looking at me now, it's just crazy, but I said, I'll end up living in a box on the side of the road and being a Walmart greeter.

I'll tell you the truth. You know, people ask me from time to time, what would you tell your younger self? Yeah. And I said, beware the power of self-deception. And I'm constantly amazed at what we can take as gospel truth.

When it's not.

Exactly. In the face of all evidence.

Right.

Um, but it— and, and that really is a distinction between fact and belief, right? Like, facts are facts, beliefs are what they do with those facts.

And you, you can ignore the ones you don't want, right?

Exactly. And, and, but, but, but beliefs have the same power in our brain that facts do, right?

Oh, absolutely. In fact, I think sometimes they have more power.

Right? But you can convince yourself, yeah, uh, in, in, in, um, uh, what's the word I'm looking for, in opposition to all the facts of something. And I've done it so many times, and, and now I can, I can see it in others. It's easier to see it in others where people— it is, right? Yeah. But, you know, being able— and that's why to your point you made about the community of writers in this community and the podcast that you've created, why it's so important to have people around you that you know and trust and they love you. They care about you, right? That can speak into your life and say, hey, Terry, I know you probably don't want to hear this, but this is something I see. And you can do whatever you want with it, but I can't tell, I can't ignore it and let you not see it. That's, that's not love, right? I'm not going to hide it from you.

Yeah. And I like being surrounded with people who see my value and are willing to tell me when I'm doing something that maybe goes against that, or that I'm stretching too thin, or that I'm, you know, whatever it is that they see at the moment. Yeah, having a community, I think, is very valuable. When you're, when you're a creative of any kind, you know, trying to run a business of any kind, having people around you who've experienced similar things, not necessarily the same exact, but something in that that general field. It, it's someone you can bounce your ideas off of, someone who understands where you're coming from, gets a sense of where it is you're trying to go, and can offer some insights based on the things that they've experienced as well.

Yes, I think, you know, I think it really depends on the intention of the group. Like, why is the group organized?

Right.

Because if you go back to think about just family and friends that ostensibly care about you, we don't know, we'll just assume and stipulate that they care about you. How many times when you say as an entrepreneur, because entrepreneurs are crazy to the rest of the world, I see this, I envision this, this is what I'm going to do. And they're like, hmm, I don't think so, right? And so you have to filter those relationships. And in my experience, it comes down to very few people in my life that I love talking to people. I love hearing people's ideas and thoughts. But the people that have the authority to speak into my life are very few, right? They have to love me. They have to have And I'm not talking like, you know, it doesn't have to be a family member, a spouse, something like that. Not to that level, but they actually have to genuinely care about me.

Right?

Right. So that I know when they're speaking, they're not doing it out of some manipulative reason for their own purposes or their own fears. They're saying it because they care about me. And two, that they've walked that road. Like, you know, I don't want to hear what Joe Blow says about being an entrepreneur when they've never been an entrepreneur.

I don't care. Right. And a lot of times, so like when family become naysayers, oh, I don't, ooh, it's their fear that's speaking because they've not done it. Right. And they'd be terrified to do it. And so they're trying to save you from yourself.

Well, what it is, is it's, if they keep you from doing it, that just assuages their fear, right? So, it's, I'm miserable together, right?

Right, right. And I don't think that they're doing it in a mean-spirited way. They really believe that they're saving you from yourself. Yeah, yes. You know, like, oh, we do, whoo, that's a scary thing. We don't want him to go down that road. And so, you do have to make sure that you recognize that. But like you said, you can't listen to everyone. Because if you listen to everyone, well, first of all, then you'd be completely immobilized. Because everyone has a different opinion, and you'd have nowhere to go. But yeah, you do have to find those people around you that have walked the same path and really don't have anything to gain if you succeed or fail. Yes.

Yes. And I would say I've been in Entrepreneurs Organization for 13 years, and one of the paradigms they use is the Gestalt protocol where you don't give advice, you only share experiences.

Right. I do that as a parent of adults.

Yes.

Well, let me tell you, this is what I— because I was in your shoes.

The reality is nobody wants advice. Very few people want advice. And if they really ask for advice, they're like, they're really saying, I want you to fix this problem for me. Right. And the reality is that it's your problem and you have to fix it and you have to own it. And if you're paying a professional, a medic, you know, a doctor or a lawyer or accountant, that it's perfectly fine to get advice. Right? But when you're an entrepreneur and you're trying to decide, do I go this path or that path, or how should I handle this situation, um, advice, advice doesn't land. Uh, people don't take it. And, and if you will listen to other people's experiences, um, even when it's not directly applicable to you, like you, you I have been fascinated where in my forum, I'm not the one presenting and doing a deep dive on an issue. But, and so it's not my problem, right? Like I don't have a similar problem. But in hearing the experience share, I'll get some insight into something else that I'm struggling with.

Right? Yeah, I think a lot of times, you know, when you're, when you're asking for asking for advice, what you're really asking for is, you know, tell me what you did. Because from what you did, I may glean something. I'm not going to be able to do it the way you did it because my situation is not your situation. And I feel that way when I talk with other authors. You know, I'll be struggling with something in the way I'm writing. And I know that there are 4 million ways to write a book. You know, I've got, I've got books on a bookshelf behind me that are all these different possible ways to, to write a book, and none of them agree with one another. And I don't follow any of them, and my books are fine. So I know that that isn't the answer. But sometimes you're struggling, and you'll hear someone and you'll think, 90% of what they said won't work for me, but that piece will. I'm going to start doing that in my life and see if that changes things a little. And it's another reason I love having my podcast is not only am I helping authors, which I love that idea of the I give, you give, you know, we're trying to create something together. But I learn a lot because I ask these questions and they give their answers. And I think, ooh, I've never— or sometimes it's even a tool that they use. And I think, oh, I've never even heard of that before. And I'm jotting it down because That's going to make my life easier if I can figure that piece out.

Yeah, I don't see creatives running into this as much as others, but the collaboration and the cooperation is so much more productive than the isolationism of like, I got to protect what's It's mine. Right. I can't share anything with you because you're going to take advantage of me. Right.

I don't notice that among authors. I can tell you that generally. Now, not to say that there's never one, but generally speaking, if an author has figured out something that's working for them and you ask them about it, they'll tell you everything there is to know about it.

Yes.

They'll just give it to you. Here, this is what I've done. Go ahead and try it. And I love I love that aspect of what I'm doing right now is that it's a very cooperative. It isn't someone kicking you in the head while they scramble to get above you, which just doesn't suit my personality at all.

Hey creatives, Delaina Ely here. I have a question for you. If you could pay yourself more, why aren't you doing it? For real. S corp is an option. For you, the creative entrepreneur, to move your business to the next level, to pay yourself more, and to cut your tax savings down. Yeah, less money to the IRS, we want that, right? So why haven't you done it yet? What's going on? The reality is you probably have 50,000 questions in your brain, you don't know which way is up and down, and you're still too busy to do all those things plus also create, right? Well, the good thing for you is that Core Group is actually We're officially the place to be to get that S-corp election rolling. Yeah, we have an assessment. Let's see if you qualify. Come chat with me. Core Group, turning passion into profit.

I'm going to pivot here for the last part of the show and come back to what we like talking about on this show, the business aspects of it. Right. So as a new author and as doing podcasts and speaking, What are some of the business challenges that you encountered that you didn't know you were going to have or that, you know, were significant?

Well, I'm going to, when I say this, it always makes me sound like, well, I was very unprepared. I didn't know anything. As an author, I figured I would write a book. I would, I would, I would get it published. It would go up on the different platforms. And it would sell.

Yeah, guess what? Along with the other 100,000 books that were published that year. Millions.

Yeah, there are now like 6 million books a year published, and most of them aren't any good. But the problem is, is how do you get your scene in that swarm of, of stuff? How do you get yours to rise above? I knew nothing about marketing. Zero. So the first thing that I did was I sat in front of the computer and waited for my book book to sell. And when that didn't happen, I said, uh-oh, I'd better figure something out. And I found a guy that had a podcast that he was a book publisher, author, marketer kind of guy. And he had this podcast, and I listened to it, and I took copious notes. And I started doing the things that he suggested that were low-hanging fruit. What can I do first? And I started doing those things. And then once I had that going, I would say, okay, what's the next thing that I can try doing? And, and I've been doing that. My book came out in January of '22. I started listening to his podcast in March of '22. So from March of '22 till now, I've— I now have a website, which I didn't have. I now have a newsletter and a list. My list is now 1,300 people strong, which, given that it started with my daughter, um, I'm, I'm feeling really good about that number. Um, I, I've learned about Facebook marketing, which is something that works really well for my genre of books. Um, I am getting ready to do a little bit of— now that I know TikTok is here to stay, I am going to do a little bit of trying to understand it to see if it works for me or not. I, my people, my readers tend to be 40 plus, and I really don't know they're going to be on TikTok. And so I need to determine, is this a good place for me? But marketing was like one of the biggest issues that I had. I knew nothing. I didn't have a social media presence. I had, I didn't, nobody even knew I was an author. Nobody knew that I wrote, right? I was a quiet, quiet, you know, I started getting on podcasts, I started doing things. And my first book, I mean, it did, it did okay. My second book did better. My third book is doing much better. I'm, I'm getting that figured out. So I would say that that was one of the biggest things for me. And I tell new authors all the time, you know, that are getting ready to debut their first book, is it would be better to hold off your debut by 3 months and get your marketing in place.

100%. I remember I, I had to self-publish my book contractually because Mike Michalowicz's Profit First publisher required it, but I hired a publisher to, uh, you know, walk me through the process, editorial, etc. And as I was getting close to releasing the book, um, the conversations with her switched to marketing. Actually, she'd been talking about marketing beforehand, but I realized at that point that the publishing of the book was just the beginning. Like, that's, that's—

Yeah.

Yeah. You, I think as an author, you feel like you wrote the end. You hand it over to someone who puts it in a pretty package and ta-da. And that's really not what it is. I mean, it can be, Well, if you don't intend to sell your book, yes, you know, if the idea was I wrote the book and that's really all you want out of it, well, then yes, you're done. But if the intent is to be an author that has name recognition at all, even if it's just local, you've got to figure out what you're going to do in order to, to get yourself out into the world.

Yeah. And, and, you know, my gut as a small business owner for 28 years, having marketed pre-internet and watched all of the technology changes, what I see is this strange dichotomy. In one sense, the technology has allowed us to do things that we couldn't do before in connecting with individuals. Right. But the flip side of it is empowered a whole bunch of people to produce a bunch of noise.

Yes.

Yes. And I think, I think where this ends for small businesses is not only do you have to carve out a very definite niche, but, and then that, I don't care what business you're in. That's, that's critical. But also building community because what's missing in the modern technology is any level of trust, right? And it's like you've got to build the trust by building the community. And that will drive your marketing. That's my opinion.

What say you? No, I absolutely agree. As an author, it used to be that the gatekeeper was the publisher, right? Very few people could get to the publisher. Well, once self-publishing came about, now anyone can publish a book. If you want to publish a book, you can get a book published today, right now. You could put something out there in an hour. Yes. I don't— I'm not saying it's any good, but I'm saying you could put it out there. So now the gatekeeper is how do you rise above all all of that? Like you said, the noise. How do you make yourself seen above this crowd of essential crap? How do you get above that? Community is one of the things. It's one of the reasons why I started the podcast. That's helping me build a community of both readers and authors. Readers listen to it, authors come on it. I'm starting to build this community. People know I exist in this scenario and there's— I'm starting this community. I decided to start a new podcast. It hasn't come out yet. It's short. I'm calling it a bite-sized podcast. I'm calling it The Book Hook. And I reached out to all of these authors that have been on and I said, hey, I'm looking to get the author to read the first paragraph of their novel.

Oh, okay.

That's it. And then ask the question, will you put this book on your TBR, your to-be-read list? Mm-hmm.

Right.

And that's all it's going to be. They're going to be little short clips, but it's just another way of getting, getting it out there and creating a community of readers. That's what I need is a community who loves reading.

Yeah. And I can tell you, I mean, you know, there are platforms like Goodreads and and, you know, whatever. But, um, when I, when I finish a book, I'm, I'm— and I'm talking about novels, not a business book, um, because I, I read probably 40 novels a year. I mean, I read a lot, um, and when I'm trying to find what's, what's next, it's really kind of hard. I feel like I fit into probably somebody's niche. I, I read a lot of I read a lot of fantasy and science fiction, but I also read like historical fiction or occasional biographies. Someone recommended, well, you need to go read the short stories of Hemingway. And I'm like, oh, right. And he was spot on, right? Right. And because I was like, oh, this is really good. But, but my point is that I need it. I need a place. I need a community that has like minds, not because I want to hive mind, but like, what have you found?

Yes, right, exactly. And so Online for Authors, which is my podcast, I, I talk with authors from all genres. The only one that I don't go into, I don't do horror because I can't read it. And I am a I insist that I read the book before I have the author on. So if I'm talking about the book, I've read the book. Um, and I can't read horror because my imagination is entirely too good and then I can't sleep. And so I don't do that. And then I also don't do erotica because I absolutely refuse to talk about that on a podcast. So those are the two I don't do. But other than that, I go across genres, which also has been an amazing thing for me. Because I had— I love historical fiction, and I tend to read there, like, on my own. If I'm gonna go and pick, that's where I'm gonna pick. But because of this, I'm now reading fantasy and science fiction and thriller and, and, and, and, and I'm finding out that there's, there's variations of these. It isn't just fantasy. There's high fantasy, and there's all of these other things, right, that, that I was perfectly unaware of because I stayed in my little, my little zone. But Online for Authors, and there are others out there who do this, are really great ways to go and find what you're going to read next because you can listen to the author. You can get a sense of what is the book going to be about, get a sense of sometimes knowing the behind the story story. Now makes what you read even a little more interesting. It's like, ooh, I want to read that because I want to know now what happened because she thought this or he thought that. The hook.

The hook.

Yeah, exactly.

I love it. So Terry, how do people find out more about your podcast, your speaking, your books?

The best thing to do is go to my website, which is my full name, Terry M, like Mary or Mike, Brown, terrymbrown.com. There you'll be able to find my books, my podcast, all my social media links are there. I have a newsletter you can sign up for. And I also just have a Contact Me page. So feel free to just reach out and say hi.

Perfect. Listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you'd like what you've heard today, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like Terry, I don't know what's wrong with you, but shoot us a message and tell us what you you would like to hear, and we'll try and replace her. I don't know if we can, but, you know, we, we will give it a shot. Until then, ta-ta for now.