John Sargent, TURNING PAGES: The Adventures and Misadventures of a Publisher
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[1:03]John Sargin is the author of Turning Pages, The Adventures and Misadventures of a
[1:07]publisher.
[1:08]I loved this book, by the way.
[1:10]John worked at three different publishers before going to Simon and Schuster to run the
[1:14]children's book division at the age of 29.
[1:17]He spent six years there, followed by three years as the CEO of DK Publishing.
[1:21]In 1996, he went to work as the CEO of St. Martin's Press.
[1:25]Three years later, he was put in charge of Holt Springs, U.S. publishers and was responsible
[1:29]for forming the company that is today's McMillan.
[1:32]He worked there as CEO until the end of 2020.
[1:34]His new book Turning Pages is all about his life in publishing and stretches back to
[1:38]his upbringing on a Wyoming ranch.
[1:40]Welcome John.
[1:41]Thank you so much for coming on momstone have time to read books to discuss Turning
[1:45]Pages, The Adventures and Misadventures of a publisher.
[1:48]Thanks for having me.
[1:49]It's my pleasure.
[1:50]I have to say this is one of my favorite books of the year for sure, but I could not put
[1:56]this book down.
[1:58]I'll just check it out, no, like had to stop what I was doing, you know, and I'm like,
[2:02]well, this is ironic Turning Pages is exactly what I'm doing, so anyway, your stories
[2:06]are fabulous.
[2:07]The way you write is fabulous, the short little scenes and chapters, it's so like consumable
[2:12]and amazing.
[2:13]You must know what you're doing.
[2:14]That's all I have to say.
[2:15]Well, I've read a lot over the years.
[2:20]Well, congratulations.
[2:21]Why don't you tell listeners a little bit about your book, why you decided to write this
[2:26]book at this time and all of that good stuff?
[2:29]Okay, so I got fired at the end of the COVID thing and I had time and I had a great
[2:35]grandfather who was an extraordinary publisher and he had sick at the end of his life
[2:42]and he felt better when he wrote in a car because the vibrations helped them.
[2:47]So instead of just sitting in the car, he wrote a book while he was in this car driving
[2:52]around and he wrote it, it was never published.
[2:55]He wrote it for his family and for friends and people at work and it was called Memoirs
[3:00]of a Publisher, had a white cover with just plain type on it.
[3:03]It was before book jackets were what book jackets became today, right?
[3:07]It's back when they used to be very simple and it was passed down through the family and
[3:13]when I read it, I didn't actually finish it first time I read it, I was young and he's
[3:17]not a great writer so I didn't finish it and I finished it about, I don't know, 15 years
[3:22]ago.
[3:23]I couldn't read it again and it's spectacular and what wasn't spectacular was to talk
[3:28]about staff meetings in real estate and all that stuff.
[3:32]What was spectacular was the little stories in there.
[3:36]He just sort of dropped in so he dropped in, you know, well, we're doing this, this,
[3:41]this and it was hard to focus because Teddy kept calling and asking me go down to Washington
[3:48]to help him and I realized and I'm really, it's Teddy Roosevelt, you know, and Teddy
[3:55]apparently sort of dictated his memoirs to him in the White House, you know, wow, so anyway,
[4:03]I thought, well, maybe I'll do that someday for my kids and my family to see, you know,
[4:08]what was I doing while they were gone?
[4:10]So I did that and then Jonathan Gillespie for our Strauss and Drew said he'd help me.
[4:17]Well, the great thing about being me is I know a lot of editors and he's a good friend
[4:21]and he said, oh, yeah, let me help you with it.
[4:23]So he read it and he said, you have to move yourself in it and I said, I don't want
[4:29]to put myself in it and he said, no, no, you got to put yourself in it, you got to put
[4:33]your family in it.
[4:35]I've spent all this time sort of trying not to be pushed my family and I'm uncomfortable
[4:41]with that and he finally convinced me.
[4:44]He said, you know, the reader needs to know the narrator is what he said and I finally
[4:49]wrote his lunch.
[4:50]I said, I said, look, nobody wants to hear about little Johnny goes west, he does and
[4:56]he very kindly put his hand on my forearm and he said, everybody wants to hear about
[5:01]little Johnny goes west.
[5:04]So there you have how the book came to be.
[5:07]Well, I must say, I think he might have been right.
[5:12]He was not alone by the time I got through the process, you know, yeah, I got all the
[5:16]rejection letters and then finally someone said, yes, it was really a great experience
[5:21]after all these years being on the other side of the table.
[5:24]Yeah.
[5:25]And I knew it was a very small book, right?
[5:27]Because you have to have some interest in publishing or it's not going to be that compelling
[5:31]at all.
[5:32]So, but everybody after him said the same stuff that, you know, more you, more you, more
[5:38]you.
[5:39]I changed it substantially to be more me and it's uncomfortable, but I don't know that
[5:47]you have to have a real huge interest in publishing, but by the nature of people actually
[5:52]reading a book, they have some interest and it got into their hands or in their ears or
[5:57]whatever.
[5:58]Yeah.
[5:59]So that's a pretty big audience, like readers, you know, what's been always hope, but after
[6:06]spending all these years seeing how many small books, stay small books and that it's
[6:12]a fair publishing fascinating that there's all these books out there that are fantastic
[6:18]that are small.
[6:19]Well, you know, that's better.
[6:20]You know, that's probably better than I do, right?
[6:22]There's these books that you read and you love them, but you know, they don't, it doesn't
[6:28]happen for them and you look and you say, why did that book fail and why did this will
[6:33]work?
[6:34]Yes, it's kind of like a, I always thought after all those years of doing it, it's like
[6:38]a black box.
[6:40]You just have, there's, I mean, there's some trends and stuff you can see and it has
[6:44]to do with publicity and all that stuff, but at the end of the day, some books just, I
[6:50]some of these huge books I read them and I think, you know, it's okay, yeah, it was not
[6:56]great.
[6:57]Yes.
[6:58]Right?
[6:59]So there's no answer to that.
[7:00]I feel like there is no answer to it, right?
[7:03]I mean, we published a book called the nearly normal family, which I thought was utterly
[7:09]fantastic and we pushed it and it didn't work.
[7:18]And meanwhile, right next to it, we published a book which I thought was okay, it was good,
[7:24]but it was, it was, you know, it had been done before and, you know, it was one of those
[7:29]and it was, it was a monster to two first novels, both sort of dark mystery suspense
[7:36]thing and one worked and one didn't on the same list and I would have called, I would
[7:42]have a hundred percent said it would be the opposite way.
[7:45]So yeah, it's black box.
[7:46]You never figured it out.
[7:47]Well, how about you with your publishing?
[7:49]You figure it out?
[7:50]Oh, yeah, I've solved the black box, you know, it's pretty, I've done what you couldn't
[7:57]do in a lifetime.
[7:58]Yeah, sure, no problem.
[8:00]No, I mean, I haven't done it, but I think about it all the time and it's maybe
[8:06]I'm realizing a waste of time, but I just, I feel like those books that don't get discovered
[8:12]sometimes the odds are stacked against it, like it's before they even come out, they're
[8:17]already doomed, right?
[8:19]It's the way it's, it's a lot is in the setup, but then even the best setups can also
[8:23]fail.
[8:25]Yeah, and then the world does a terrible thing like 9-11 was a good example.
[8:32]We got a great list on 9-11 and that happened and like, yeah, no authors got any publicity,
[8:38]no book sold, it just, and you don't get it back, you know, you have your one shot when
[8:42]you get it public.
[8:44]I actually thought about that.
[8:45]In fact, I wrote about thinking about that because in the midst of all the chaos of 9-11
[8:50]and I actually lost my best friend that day, so I was like in it and had to come home and
[8:53]it was the whole thing, but I was like, what about all the authors?
[8:57]Really?
[8:58]Like, this is their big day.
[9:01]So for anyone who's tried to write and wants to see great books get there due, it can
[9:07]be very demoralizing and yet we continue to try, everyone continues.
[9:10]You spent like, you've written the great literary masterpiece, you know, eight years working
[9:16]on your book and that's the week it comes out and literally there were, you know, in any
[9:21]given week, there's, you know, thousands of books that come out.
[9:26]It's not a few books.
[9:27]It's a lot of books come out every week.
[9:31]Anyway.
[9:32]But what do you think about that?
[9:33]Like, is it still worth trying?
[9:35]Like, for the aspiring, everybody keeps wanting to do, including me, you know, you just
[9:40]keep wanting to write books and put books out or publish books.
[9:44]Well, here's a question for you.
[9:47]Give me all your wisdom.
[9:48]Like, when you write a book, do you get pleasure writing a book?
[9:53]Is it work for you or is it pleasure?
[9:57]Me personally?
[9:58]Yeah.
[9:59]Oh, it's pleasure.
[10:00]pleasure if I can stress, you know, I don't know, should I have done this? What about this?
[10:07]But yes, when you're like fully in it and the characters are kind of talking to you or
[10:11]never. Yes, that's very cool. So it's worth it. Yes, but you know, if you just wanted that,
[10:15]you wouldn't have to publish. That's true. And the publishing is not the fun part.
[10:25]So you think there's nothing to be done that books to it just it is what it is. It's like any
[10:29]art form like why a movie hits. It is what it is. And sometimes, you know, the lightning strike,
[10:34]sometimes the lightning doesn't strike. If it's really, really good, it has a much higher chance
[10:40]and in publishing the what happens in, you know, I've always worked in the bigger publishing
[10:45]companies. What happens is the the collective inside the publishing house is what makes it happen.
[10:52]So, you know, the answer is if it's really good, you might have a publicist who just never gives
[10:58]up on it. Just, you know, a year later, the paper back comes out and they're still charged up
[11:04]and they're still trying to make it happen. And they're getting their friends in the publishing
[11:08]house to be that way too. And and just that level of energy and enthusiasm makes it so,
[11:15]I don't want to, I'm painting it wrong, right? The most of the good great books do find their way.
[11:22]Most of the great books, but there is this give complete element of just chance.
[11:28]Yeah. And I've always surprised that the non great books that make it so big.
[11:32]Right. So, what about a lot of those? Why? Why, why, why, why, give no answer.
[11:37]I have no answer. Okay. All right. Well, tackling an unknowable system fabulous. Great way to spend time.
[11:46]But obviously, and from reading your book, I see the interest in all of this and getting stories
[11:55]out and interest in the machinery behind all of it as well and how things work. And, you know,
[12:02]I was fascinated by what you did when there were changes that face the industry. You know,
[12:06]I feel like this is also a business book, which I also love. Like, what happens when an Amazon comes
[12:11]and an e-book comes in or like, what do you do with a market disruption factor? How do you
[12:16]navigate your ship? So, talk a little bit about that. And you took very strong stance and
[12:22]earned a lot of worldwide respect for your stances, which is great.
[12:27]For whatever reason, I took a lot of arrows in the, in the digital transformation.
[12:32]Look, it was like it was for movies, like it was for music. It was a hugely disruptive time.
[12:38]And my view was always, you had to protect the author's livelihood, right? That was the key to
[12:45]it all because publishers all we are is sort of the stewards of the author's work, right? We bring
[12:52]their work to the readers. And it has to have a system where authors get paid. And if you look
[12:59]what happened when music, if that had happened in publishing, that would have been a complete disaster.
[13:06]No bookstores, right? Because, you know, like no music stores. And authors getting pennies and,
[13:12]you know, authors can't sell t-shirts and play gigs to make their money, right? As it turns out,
[13:20]there's not generally speaking 150 people who want to pay 10 bucks to come into a room and listen
[13:25]to authors. So, you know, I always, when I looked at it, I, the price was huge that the sort of
[13:33]stakes were very, very high. And I have this great love of the business. So, separate from the
[13:39]profitability, the company and what was good for us and what was good for the profits and what
[13:44]was good for the sales and all that. For me, there was a heavy sort of weight of what's right
[13:51]for this industry and what's right for the authors. They're not the authors today, but the
[13:54]authors tomorrow and 10 years from now and, and, you know, how do you, how do you make it through?
[14:01]And so, I didn't, in fact, they take a fair number of, you know, stood up in front on a fair
[14:06]number of issues and paid to pay the consequent price and what it was like. But I would never
[14:14]trade that trade that in for anything. It mattered, you know? It did. The day that, you know,
[14:21]Apple came to town and the day that the department of justice took on Apple and stuff that
[14:26]when that that was happening, we didn't know whether there'd be a future for the business or not.
[14:31]We really didn't. And boy, it mattered. And there was consequence. And I, you know, it was,
[14:38]it was great. It was great. Amazing. I feel like this should be a movie, you know, even just that
[14:44]scene. I don't know if you saw this movie about the blackberry. Did you ever watch that?
[14:48]Oh, no, I heard about it. I haven't seen it. Nobody watched this movie. I think in the world,
[14:52]except for my husband and me for that sign because I've been watching it three times.
[14:57]I watched it to so, but I mentioned to so many people because I find those moments in history
[15:02]fascinating when there's something that is so huge, you know, like Kodak, right? Who ever thought
[15:07]right? I worked on the Kodak account at my first job at Ogilvy and neither advertising,
[15:12]like nobody would have thought it was like the God. But these things happen all the time over
[15:16]and over. So you have to expect all of that. Yeah. And if you're lucky, if you're ambitious,
[15:21]which I was and you're lucky, you find yourself in one of those moments that, you know,
[15:28]your decisions and what you do make a have a significant impact on an industry or on authors or on
[15:40]people you care about, then that's a remarkable thing. And you know, I saw that from the inside.
[15:47]And that was one of the reasons to write the book was to let folks know publishing people who
[15:53]were who were interested in publishing, you know, readers who were interested in publishing,
[15:57]what that it was like from the inside is opposed to as opposed to just a telling of the,
[16:03]you know, sort of a mechanical telling of the events, you know, what it felt like to be in the
[16:07]middle of that, that stuff. I mean, from reading your book, you learn what kind of person you are,
[16:14]right? So we see all the patterns of why it's no, it's almost no surprise by the time we get to
[16:19]those moments in your life that you have the confidence and the way you're thinking about it to
[16:24]take those stands. But when you think about how many people don't speak up or don't feel empowered
[16:30]to do what they want because it's so unpopular. Like is that just something you have to feel deep
[16:37]down? Like can you teach somebody that or is it something that just comes from who you are?
[16:42]Yeah, a lot of it comes from who you are. I'm sure you can work on it. You know, if you want to
[16:47]be one of those people, you can work on doing the only way to do that is to experience it, right?
[16:52]You have to be adventurous. You have to take risk. You have to like adventure and you have to
[16:58]push yourself to do that. You have to get some reward from that. And there's some people who just
[17:03]adventure just scares them and they don't want to do that. And so I think it is a little bit of
[17:10]who you naturally are. But I've seen many people over the years, you know, develop it because
[17:17]it's you have to have self-confidence, right? To do that. And if you're in a nurturing environment at
[17:24]work and you're getting the right feedback and you're having success, it was one of the best things
[17:31]about my job for all those years. You see these young people who if you give them responsibility
[17:37]and you let them make their decisions and mistakes and you don't punish the mistake, but you
[17:44]instead say, okay, well, we're not going to do that again because, you know, and you discuss it.
[17:50]And you see their confidence built and you see them become the people who everybody has to become
[17:55]that, right? You start with your born and you become something and you become for a long time.
[18:00]And that was one of the great rewards the business was to see these people become strong.
[18:07]I'm strong people. But thanks for saying that about the book. I was attempting to do that without
[18:13]doing it, you know, having it be sort of just you sort of you get to the point of the bigger
[18:18]stories at work and and know enough sort of just through reading the other stories, not being told
[18:24]just reading through the other stories that there's some sort of thread that makes sense going to
[18:29]the book. Yeah. I also though back to agreeing with John and glossy, the way you write about your wife
[18:35]is so nice. I mean, Connie, right? I feel like you could have like a whole like side book on that
[18:42]like like bridges in Madison County, little love story or something like you're so devoted. It's so
[18:47]sweet. She's fantastic. What is the secret to that? What is the secret to that? She's fantastic,
[18:52]right? Um, it's fantastic human being. I don't know. I tried the in the book. I tried to not,
[18:59]you know, sort of hit that over the head, hit that over the head, but I tried to put in
[19:03]little things about Connie and my two kids that they're the most important thing to me, right?
[19:09]Over at all and and work was was there and that's more interesting to folks, but but it would have
[19:16]been kind of false not to have them be there and try to show just through the little stories,
[19:23]couple little stories, try to show how spectacular they are as people, you know, their spectacular,
[19:30]all three of them are spectacular. And I wanted to just let folks know how important that was
[19:36]to me, but I didn't want to make it a big part of the book. So tried to do it just in little ways
[19:42]here and there. Love it. When you said, you know, you've been in publishing a long time,
[19:47]I was when I referenced the fast paced nature of it and shorter chapters, like what are the things
[19:53]that you said? Okay, well, I have to make sure to do X, Y, or Z in this book because I know this
[19:58]works and this doesn't work.
[20:00]and like how involved for you with the cover
[20:01]and like all the details, knowing what you know,
[20:03]what decisions did you make?
[20:05]That has great question.
[20:07]Books are the best books are a good story, right?
[20:11]This sort of unequivocally, a great story is a boy.
[20:15]So my thought was just give the great stories.
[20:20]Don't put any of the filler in between.
[20:23]It's not necessary, right?
[20:25]So I didn't want to make it a book of short stories
[20:29]so I wanted to have some sort of form
[20:32]and that was the hardest part,
[20:33]was giving it a structure that made sense
[20:35]narrative art, all that stuff.
[20:37]And just telling the stories,
[20:39]not filling in the stuff in between.
[20:42]So very conscious effort that storytelling is,
[20:46]I've always been good at sort of verbally.
[20:48]It's been one of the things I'm reasonably good at,
[20:50]public speaking things like that.
[20:52]And I thought just tell, just tell the stories.
[20:56]And the publisher was great.
[20:57]Hey, let me, I sort of art directed the jacket.
[21:00]And that thing on the jacket is a sculpture
[21:03]my daughter made for me of one of my favorite books,
[21:07]leaving Cheyenne by Larry McMurray.
[21:09]And she made that for me when she was a teenager.
[21:13]And you can see it is actually,
[21:16]that sculpture sits on my bureau.
[21:18]And Connie took the picture.
[21:20]I asked Connie to take the picture.
[21:22]And the publisher did the type, I did the colors.
[21:26]I did the title and the subtitle,
[21:29]the publisher added misadventures.
[21:32]What did I want the adventures and publishers,
[21:34]what I had, and they said, no,
[21:35]no, adventure misadventures, which is a good idea.
[21:38]And I love their types of election.
[21:40]I chose the red and the white, anyway.
[21:42]It's great.
[21:42]Yeah, it was more involved in the average guy probably,
[21:45]because they were great about it.
[21:46]They knew I had the history.
[21:48]But what is it, is this the actual book?
[21:51]And she turned the pages down?
[21:52]Like what did you actually do that?
[21:54]And she cracks the spine.
[21:55]If you look and see the spine,
[21:58]you cracks the spine.
[21:59]And those are, the pages are varnished.
[22:01]Each individual page, she puts spacers and varnished it.
[22:05]And it's a, as you can see, it's a cool object.
[22:09]Yes. Wow.
[22:11]And it's a great book.
[22:11]If you haven't read it, leaving Cheyenne by Larry McMurtry
[22:14]is a great book.
[22:15]Oh, who knew?
[22:16]I have a light that does like a night light.
[22:18]Have you seen that?
[22:19]Yeah, yeah.
[22:20]So my kids were like playing with them.
[22:22]And I was like, look, I have a book.
[22:23]It looks just like your light.
[22:25]So they thought that was cool.
[22:28]So where do you see things going now?
[22:31]Like, is there any, do you see a big disruptive force?
[22:34]Do you see like everybody always bemoans publishing, right?
[22:38]Oh, I said, he's always been there.
[22:41]Everybody's, oh, publishing's dead, you know, oh, God.
[22:44]I am so old that I do remember when color television
[22:48]was going to be the end of book publishing.
[22:53]So it's here to stay, right?
[22:54]It's, no, yeah, it's this sort of, I don't know.
[22:57]It's self absorption of publishing, right?
[23:01]And the sky is always falling, you know,
[23:04]tails were down 3% this year.
[23:05]Oh, my God, you know, you go through these cycles
[23:10]where publishing struggles and doesn't,
[23:11]but look at COVID.
[23:13]I mean, if you ever have an example
[23:15]of how resilient books are, right?
[23:18]Now, books exploded during COVID.
[23:20]And I remember in the beginning of COVID,
[23:22]the owner of the company was really thought, you know,
[23:25]it's all over, you know, and I looked
[23:28]and you could tell book by book
[23:29]because the supply chain was screwed up.
[23:32]So, you know, Amazon would run out of a book,
[23:34]but then you see sales at Target go up
[23:37]and then, you know, Target would run out of a book
[23:40]and then you see the sales go up at Barnes and Noble.
[23:43]And you could tell people were searching for the books
[23:48]and finding them and you think, you know,
[23:50]wow, that, that says something.
[23:54]And if you look at independent bookstores, right,
[23:56]well, you know this, in the community,
[23:59]it's more than just a bookstore, you know,
[24:03]it's a place that makes it feel like home
[24:07]and the power of that is huge.
[24:10]And look at the artifact, the artifact is fantastic.
[24:13]Look at your house, look at the same book.
[24:17]The artifact is, I know,
[24:20]having you describe what happened
[24:22]to so you organize those books.
[24:24]They're like your friends, right?
[24:25]You look at the book and you say,
[24:27]oh, I remember when I read that and oh, I love that book
[24:30]and or you think of the character in it
[24:31]or, and so there's this, the artifact is spectacular.
[24:36]And so I don't worry about it, you know,
[24:39]people carry on the death of publishing.
[24:41]It's been that way every five years
[24:42]we have a debt publishing moment, you know.
[24:45]I look at the young people that people
[24:46]say, oh, the young people today
[24:47]and publishing, they don't appreciate freedom of speech,
[24:50]they don't appreciate this asset.
[24:51]Oh, there's some issues.
[24:53]But the young people in publishing are fantastic.
[24:56]You know, the people age 22 to 50 in publishing are fantastic.
[25:01]They're bright, hardworking, great love of books.
[25:05]I don't know, freedom of speech will change a bit.
[25:08]That freedom of speech generally does change a bit.
[25:11]And it might change more now than a dead.
[25:12]And there's a moment where, you know,
[25:15]publishers can't publish certain books
[25:17]because of this that or the other that's going on
[25:19]in the culture.
[25:20]And that allows ourselves out.
[25:22]Those are pendulum swings, they come and they go,
[25:24]so great confidence that it's, that's all gonna be fine.
[25:27]And you look at, you look at how many
[25:30]truly difficult things have happened.
[25:32]Digital transition, I remember,
[25:34]I remember when the bookstore changed,
[25:36]we're gonna kill publishing.
[25:37]There will be no independent bookstores.
[25:38]Amazon was gonna kill independent book retailing.
[25:41]That didn't happen.
[25:43]The Kindle was gonna dwarf the physical book
[25:45]that didn't happen.
[25:47]It'll be an interesting vibrant business,
[25:49]you know, for a long, long pun.
[25:51]I think right now you have all sorts of,
[25:52]you know, the library lending thing
[25:54]is a really interesting issue.
[25:56]The freedom of speech stuff is a really interesting issue.
[26:00]And people who have to stand up, you know,
[26:03]there's gonna be moments when people gotta stand up
[26:07]and really, you know, fight for what they believe it.
[26:10]Oh, I love that.
[26:12]So what are, aside from promoting your book,
[26:14]what are you doing with your time now?
[26:16]Oh, man, I, you know, I can think that it was gonna be,
[26:20]you can't walk on the beach and, you know,
[26:22]this on the other, but I've, I got involved
[26:25]with a tattered cover bookstore in Denver.
[26:27]Oh, I was just on a call with one of the board members
[26:31]yesterday who was asking for advice
[26:33]that I'm like, you're asking me, but okay.
[26:36]Yeah.
[26:36]She was so nice, but yeah.
[26:37]Who was to?
[26:38]What's your margin?
[26:40]Margie, Margie.
[26:41]Margie is fantastic.
[26:42]Yeah.
[26:43]We can be in.
[26:44]So I'm on the board of that with Margie.
[26:46]Oh, great.
[26:46]Okay.
[26:47]And now I ended up taking the slot
[26:49]as the chairman of the Ocean Conservancy.
[26:51]And, you know, that's really important stuff.
[26:53]I, you know, 15 years ago,
[26:56]we started the carbon emissions work at McMillan
[26:58]and made, you know, tremendous amounts of headway.
[27:02]There's a lot that we can do.
[27:04]And everybody's so negative about that all the time.
[27:06]But, you know, there's a lot we can do
[27:08]because we're in a, we've gotten herself in a pickle
[27:12]by being really bad about it.
[27:14]So there's a lot of steps you can take to me better about it,
[27:17]right?
[27:18]I spent a lot of time working on those issues.
[27:20]I have a very complicated Wyoming life.
[27:23]My mother died right after at the end of COVID.
[27:26]Sorry.
[27:27]You know, she still had all these interests in Wyoming,
[27:29]which now she gave everything to the University of Wyoming.
[27:32]So I'm managing it all on their behalf.
[27:36]But, you know, I still have a bunch of full-time employees
[27:38]in Wyoming.
[27:39]I'm busy at all ranching property development.
[27:41]You know, it's, it's good stuff.
[27:44]Well, I'm having a great time.
[27:45]I advise some people, I advise so it's,
[27:48]I don't get paid and the alarm clock doesn't go off
[27:51]at 4 a.m. anymore.
[27:54]Those are the two, the two are just differences.
[27:57]Still having a great time.
[27:58]Wait, you used to wake up at four on purpose every day?
[28:03]We battle every day.
[28:04]It was either four on the days I exercise.
[28:07]So I always got home for dinner.
[28:09]And I always did about 12 hours of work a day.
[28:12]So that meant the average day I was worked by 6 30 in the morning.
[28:17]And somewhere between 6 and 6 30, I got to work.
[28:20]And I'm a big believer in exercise.
[28:23]So I exercise before I left for work.
[28:26]And so, you know, the three mornings we can exercise,
[28:30]it was 4 a.m. and the other mornings it was 5 a.m.
[28:32]that I set the alarm for.
[28:35]But I got up early every morning.
[28:36]What time would you go to sleep at night?
[28:38]How much sleep are we talking here?
[28:42]Ideally, I would just sleep, but you make me sound
[28:45]hideously boring.
[28:47]Ideally, I went to sleep in 9 30's.
[28:50]I do not feel like this is boring at all.
[28:52]I just wanted to know if you were one of those people
[28:54]who doesn't need that much sleep
[28:55]or if you just went to bed early and got it early.
[28:57]I do need sleep.
[28:58]And by Friday of every week, I was pre run down, you know,
[29:03]it was because on the average, I would probably get,
[29:06]I don't know, six hours sleep a night in reality,
[29:09]something like that.
[29:10]And it was particularly when I stressed
[29:12]what was a lot of trips to Europe.
[29:14]I used to fly coach because if everybody in the company
[29:18]was going to fly business or everybody was going to fly coach,
[29:23]I'm not one of those guys who says,
[29:24]okay, the executives go one way
[29:26]and everybody else goes the other.
[29:28]And we couldn't publish things within margin business.
[29:30]So we all went coach.
[29:32]So the red eyes to Europe, you know,
[29:35]once a month on coach is not, was not ideal.
[29:40]Oh, my gosh.
[29:41]Well, it all paid off turning pages.
[29:43]And I'm looking out of it so anyway.
[29:47]Well, this has been such an honor.
[29:49]You're such a legend.
[29:50]The stories were amazing.
[29:52]And the book was great.
[29:53]And I'm just feel so lucky.
[29:55]I got to sit in chat with you for half an hour.
[29:57]So thank you.
[29:57]What fun.
[29:58]What fun.
[29:59]Thank you.
[30:00]Thank you for having me.
[30:01]Alright, take care.
[30:02]Good.
[30:03]Take care.
[30:04]Bye-bye.
[30:05]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[30:08]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at Zebioans, and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[30:12]Books.
[30:13]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebioans.com and sign up for my virtual book club and
[30:18]meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[30:20]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texturesound for the Sound Editing.
[30:24]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.