Amy Shoenthal, THE SETBACK CYCLE: How Defining Moments Can Move Us Forward
[0:02]Hi, I'm Sivi Owens, and I am the host of this podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:08]I am also a newly minted USA Today best-selling author of The Novel, Blake,
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[0:29]Amy Showenthal is the author of the setback cycle, how defining moments can move us forward.
[0:36]Amy is a journalist, marketing consultant, and the author of the setback cycle,
[0:40]a book about how today's prominent founders and leaders overcome obstacles to find success.
[0:45]As a contributor to Forbes, Women, and Harvard Business Review,
[0:48]she shines the spotlight on leaders who have been historically underestimated,
[0:52]yet are doing the work to solve society's biggest problems. Her work has included
[0:56]interviews with a wide range of leaders, such as Senator Maisie Hirono, Tory Burch,
[1:00]Marie Kondo, Norma Kamali, and more. Amy also boasts a two-decade marketing career,
[1:05]working with some of the world's largest brands from Procter and Gamble to Google.
[1:08]She now works with founders, corporations, non-profits, and small businesses to shape their
[1:13]brand narratives and captivate audiences through strategic storytelling. After completing the
[1:18]setback cycle, she began working with organizations to help their employees and managers
[1:22]confidently leave through tumultuous times, offering the tools to help their teams navigate
[1:26]their own inevitable setbacks together. Amy previously wrote a children's book,
[1:29]a magical day in Sunnyside, a tribute to the independent owned businesses in her own
[1:33]beloved neighborhood of Sunnyside Queens, where she lives with her husband and five-year-old daughter.
[1:37]Enjoy. Welcome, Amy. Thank you so much for coming on mom's Don't Have Time to read books to
[1:41]discuss this setback cycle. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, it's my pleasure. Okay,
[1:48]tell everybody what your book is about, and was there a setback that spurred you to write this book?
[1:55]Well, I was mostly inspired to write the book because I spent the last decade or so interviewing
[2:01]some of today's most incredible founders and leaders and innovators and people who I think are
[2:07]really doing the work to solve some of society's biggest problems. And I noticed a pattern
[2:12]when you do something enough, you notice patterns and trends. And I kept seeing that every time I
[2:18]interviewed someone, the part of their story where they really lit up and started getting really
[2:24]excited to tell me how they built the thing they built that I was interviewing them about was when
[2:30]they came up with the idea for it after climbing out of their own personal or professional
[2:36]career setbacks. And it went beyond just like, oh, I learned from my mistakes or fall down seven
[2:44]times get up eight. Like it was more than that sort of like cliche, you know, we know that, you know,
[2:49]it wasn't like the Silicon Valley fail big and go make mistakes. Like it was something different and
[2:55]I couldn't quite articulate what it was. And so I started asking around, right? I couldn't quite
[3:02]figure out like what was this thing that wasn't like necessarily as dramatic as post traumatic growth
[3:09]because not every setback is a trauma, but it wasn't as simple as learning from your mistakes. And I
[3:14]talked to executive coaches and neuroscientists and psychologists. And what I realized was, you know,
[3:20]no one had really gone and done a thorough exploration of what a setback is and how transformative
[3:28]it can be, especially when it comes to business and careers and transformation.
[3:34]Yeah. It's so true. Some people they hit a setback and then they stop. Yes. It's the people who
[3:39]have to get who get through the setback that end up having the success. But like, why do some people
[3:45]stop and some people push through? And like, what is it? Is it something you're born with? Is
[3:50]it something you learn? Like, where does it come from? The answer is yes to all of that. You are
[3:55]born with it. You also learn it. And frankly, the understanding of how to work through it comes from
[4:01]having worked through it before. So there are four phases of the setback cycle. The first phase
[4:07]is established. And that sounds really obvious, but it's not always obvious when you're entering a setback.
[4:13]Some people and some of the people I interviewed didn't realize that it was a setback that brought
[4:19]them to where they were today until like 40 years later for some of them. You know, because once
[4:26]you start talking about it and you start seeing things through this lens, you kind of understand
[4:32]these experiences for what they are. And it kind of casts a whole new light on it. And so I think,
[4:39]yes, some people get stuck in the established phase because they want to deny that they're in a
[4:44]setback. And so that's where I think, you know, where you're asking people get debilitated or
[4:49]they freeze before they know how to move forward because they don't want to admit that they're
[4:53]having a problem or that they're having a setback. People who recognize setbacks for what they are
[5:01]can more easily identify them, can more quickly work through the established phase and move on to,
[5:06]you know, complete the cycle and emerge from whatever setback they're in, whether it's a big dramatic
[5:11]one or a more subtle one. Interesting. I mean, it's really crazy for anyone to think they will not
[5:17]have a setback. Right. Who did that? Who doesn't have a setback? If you don't have any
[5:21]setbacks, it means you're not trying things, right? Yeah. I think it's paramount to the human
[5:26]experience. It's just, it depends on what you do with it when you encounter them. That's what
[5:31]they say about parenting too, right? So, each your kids to fail and parenting is its own form of
[5:37]setbacks. Any parent, any parent who tried to get their kid out the door to school today
[5:42]has already encountered at least I would say a minimum of three to five micro setbacks to
[5:46]go 100%. We've had tears today. By the time eight o'clock rolls around, I've like, you know,
[5:51]I've had an emotional roller coaster like no other. Yeah. You've been through a battle. Yeah.
[5:57]Wait. So you talked about establishment. I know you have four phases. So go through the other
[6:01]phases. Yes. So first phases establish and that can last a very short time or a very long time,
[6:07]depending on how long it takes you to admit what you're in and what you're experiencing.
[6:12]The second phase is embrace. That's when you acknowledge what you're in, but you kind of have to
[6:18]deal with it. And this is the phase I actually hate. I can't stand it. But you have to go through
[6:24]it to get to the next phase. Embrace is really just like taking stock and doing like an evaluation
[6:30]of where you are, why you got here, what may have led here, why you're feeling a certain way about
[6:35]it. You know, if you got laid off from your job or you didn't get that promotion, you were going
[6:41]for or you didn't get that big grant you were hoping to get like, yes, of course, there's the
[6:47]logistical and financial implications of it. But is it a level deeper? Does it sort of bring up some sort
[6:53]of self doubt or insecurities that you've faced at another time? And so like, why are these setbacks
[7:00]so impactful? And it's like you've to like do the feel your feelings thing and embrace and it's
[7:04]it's not that fun. It's just like we should get like a bottle of wine and you should do a special label
[7:08]that says step two embrace. Oh my God, I think you just figured out what I'm going to do for my mailers
[7:16]alternatively, you can put it on like a pack of M&M's or something like whatever you're going to
[7:20]drown your sorrows in. So literally CBGummies, whatever your thing is. Okay, I got it. All right.
[7:28]So one is we're having a setback. This is when you email someone and be like, okay,
[7:32]this just happened. And step two, we're embracing it. We're coping. However, okay, next time
[7:37]we're dealing. The third phase is my favorite actually. So once you've gotten through the okay,
[7:42]we're dealing with it. It's like you're collecting the data and you're just like trying to understand
[7:46]why this is what it is. When you get to the third phase, that's explore. That's like if you just
[7:52]collected the data and now you're able to sort of go and beat a test. Sorry, I worked in tech for a
[7:57]long time. Totally fine. But you're now able to go and say, okay, I understand why that happened
[8:05]and why I felt this way. Now let's go see what's possible. Let's play with different options
[8:10]and talk to people. Maybe if you're considering a career pivot because you're just disengaged with
[8:14]your career, which by the way is a setback that you kind of sleepwalk into. Many of us do that.
[8:20]Maybe it's time to explore a career pivot. So go talk to people in those other fields that
[8:23]you're interested in. If you're thinking of leaving the corporate world to go start your own
[8:28]business, talk to people who have done it, you know, start to figure out like what it would take
[8:33]for you to walk away. If you're thinking, I mean, we're here on this podcast, if you're thinking
[8:37]about writing that book, what's preventing you from starting? Why, you know, is it the self-doubter?
[8:42]Is it just like the getting caught up in the day to day? Like I'm sure you talk about this with
[8:46]a lot of your writers. And I think this is just the explore phase where you get to have fun,
[8:51]but you don't really have to commit to a path forward. So it's kind of nice. Like dating.
[8:56]What am I going to do next? All right. Yes, exactly. Serving the options. Exactly. Take the
[9:02]lottery class, you know, do the do the paint and sit. Like just kind of figure out what's
[9:06]lighting you up and what you're getting excited about. Have conversations. And then the fourth
[9:10]phase is emerge. It's when you emerge from your setback. And the beginning of the emerge phase
[9:15]can be surprisingly difficult because it's like you've made all these plans. You know what the
[9:20]path forward looks like. But I have to get up off the couch and go do the thing that you planned
[9:26]to do. And so that can be its own sort of like challenging situation, but the end of emerge is
[9:33]when you work through your setback and you get to look back and say, wow. And that's the part
[9:38]where you're going to light up when you go tell that story. I'm literally like living out your cycle
[9:44]right now. It's like my first massive, not my first, but one writing world massive setback was
[9:50]trying to sell a novel when I was like 28 years old. And having it get rejected everywhere
[9:55]that my agent sent it out and realizing it wasn't going to sell. That like I think it has to
[10:00]in me 20 years to go through that process.
[10:03]But no, finally, you know, I've gone through everything.
[10:05]Should I do this?
[10:06]Should I do that?
[10:07]So the setback cycle can be a long one, right?
[10:09]You don't have to do this in like 20 minutes.
[10:11]Because this was like a 20 year cycle.
[10:13]Not only because you look back
[10:14]or when you're maybe like trying to sell your second book
[10:17]for someone who has been through this
[10:18]and maybe pivot it away from it.
[10:20]You're trying to do something that sent you
[10:22]into a setback another time.
[10:23]All of a sudden you're kind of like dredging up those learnings
[10:27]and those kind of like not so pleasant feelings.
[10:31]A rejection that came up the first time around.
[10:33]And by the way, like like getting a book deal
[10:36]or writing a book is a process that is so rife with setbacks,
[10:41]no matter where you are, I think,
[10:43]from the author for starting out
[10:44]to the most accomplished author
[10:46]just because I think the stakes get higher.
[10:48]You should really just try to get like bulk sales
[10:52]by going to all the different literary agencies
[10:54]and things like you can buy all these books.
[10:57]You can give them to your authors
[10:58]when they start pitching.
[10:59]But like I know what's coming next and all of that.
[11:03]Or every time you send out a rejection letter,
[11:05]please accompany the book with exactly exactly.
[11:08]Refer to page 73 of this book and you exercise.
[11:12]Yeah, it's all good, you're all good.
[11:15]Exactly, exactly.
[11:17]But what about setbacks that are totally random
[11:20]are not your fault or, you know,
[11:22]setbacks in the world like things that are going on now
[11:26]which are completely out of our control
[11:27]or, you know, trauma type setbacks.
[11:30]Like we don't things that we don't expect.
[11:32]It's not because we worked hard and couldn't achieve something
[11:34]but more like our life has taken a setback
[11:37]by something out of our control.
[11:39]setbacks are generally out of our control
[11:41]whether it was a societal level setback
[11:44]a professional setback or even a personal setback.
[11:47]Right?
[11:48]I mean, I feel like the last few years
[11:50]we have just seen one societal setback after another.
[11:55]And it's almost to the point where we're like getting
[11:57]desensitized but we're also sort of like,
[12:00]okay, this happened.
[12:02]This is how the conversation's going to go.
[12:04]This is how the news cycle is going to go.
[12:05]And this is, it's almost like we can predict
[12:07]the, you know, the cultural reaction to it.
[12:10]Not that obviously the larger implications, right?
[12:14]We have an election year coming up.
[12:16]So that's going to be a whole probably series
[12:19]of setbacks leading up to that
[12:20]or at least it's going to feel that way for some people.
[12:23]And I think when you start talking about societal level
[12:25]setbacks, I mean, think of some of the more divisive issues
[12:29]like abortion.
[12:30]So the overturning of Roe v. Wade,
[12:33]so many people saw such a setback to women's reproductive rights
[12:36]but then other people saw it as a huge step forward
[12:40]in what they were pushing for.
[12:42]And so you and I probably agree on certain societal
[12:46]level setbacks and other folks might be like,
[12:49]oh no, that was a win.
[12:50]Like that was progress.
[12:52]No, no, you ever know exactly exactly.
[12:55]But I mean, when you even, you can kind of apply that lens
[12:59]to a personal setback.
[13:01]So think of a relationship ending, a divorce.
[13:04]That is one of the most common personal setbacks
[13:08]because again, the definition of a setback
[13:09]is a reversal in progress.
[13:11]So whether it's the traumas, the dramatic ones
[13:14]or the subtle ones, right?
[13:15]The getting your kid out the door.
[13:16]It's we've made progress, we've moved forward
[13:19]and then we were unexpectedly bumped backwards.
[13:22]So that can happen on any level, personal, professional
[13:26]or societal.
[13:27]And you know what, they're all connected.
[13:29]They're all intertwined.
[13:30]How many women do you know who created incredible businesses
[13:32]after going through a divorce?
[13:33]Because they saw what they needed in the moment.
[13:35]And what other people did.
[13:36]I know, there's a reason I'm using that example.
[13:40]I don't know.
[13:41]This is so funny because my kids had this assembly
[13:44]every day and they were reading the Fox, the mold,
[13:46]the horse, you know that book, Fox, the mold,
[13:49]who was the other one, the boy, the Fox, the mold
[13:50]and the whatever, the famous book.
[13:52]Anyway, but there was a part where they've been going
[13:54]on this journey the whole time.
[13:55]And of course, they did it so nicely in school
[13:57]with music and whatever.
[13:58]But basically, they get lost.
[14:00]This group of unexpected friends and they're like,
[14:03]don't you feel like we're all the way back at the beginning?
[14:06]And they said, well, no, we're not lost
[14:07]because look at how far we've come already.
[14:09]And even at the end, they were like,
[14:11]this is just a step on the way.
[14:12]So it's not really just another way of being like,
[14:15]don't get discouraged that this is all on the path.
[14:19]These are just concrete things.
[14:21]Anyway, totally.
[14:22]And I think about women who have created businesses
[14:26]at 40, 50, 60 and so many women
[14:31]when we get to these ages think like, oh, it's too late.
[14:33]I can't start over now.
[14:34]And it's like, you're not really starting over.
[14:37]It's, I couldn't have gotten a book deal at 20.
[14:41]You know what I mean?
[14:42]He's like, it had to be when I was closer to 40
[14:45]because that's when I had the connections
[14:46]and I had the understanding of what more I could possibly do
[14:50]because of all the setbacks I went through
[14:51]in my 20s and 30s, do you know what I mean?
[14:53]Like that is, it's again,
[14:56]it's the knowledge and the recognition
[14:57]of when you're going through the setback cycle
[14:59]or people around you are going through it.
[15:01]And they're identifying what those people need.
[15:04]Yeah.
[15:05]And so, okay, what was a professional setback for you?
[15:09]I had a very common, very undramatic,
[15:12]but very commonly experienced professional setback
[15:15]when I became pregnant and I was working
[15:19]in the corporate world, I was at a marketing agency
[15:22]that valued, you know, boozy lunches
[15:25]and all the happy hours.
[15:26]I mean, this is pre pandemic when there was a lot more
[15:29]in person socializing.
[15:30]And also there was a lot more drinking going on.
[15:32]I feel like our culture has sort of like stepped away
[15:34]from drinking, but this is this is before all that.
[15:37]And it was like a very like,
[15:40]they always said like, business is done at the bar, you know?
[15:43]And so I was, I think the most senior woman on my team
[15:47]in my department and I got pregnant.
[15:50]And I mean, I had all the literature,
[15:53]I had all the articles, I had all the friends who had done it
[15:56]and I even had people like at other departments
[15:58]at my agency who had done it and succeeded.
[16:01]And they were still like on a very good career path.
[16:03]And so I thought, okay, I can probably overcome this.
[16:07]And yet I still waited such a long time
[16:10]to tell anyone that I was pregnant because I kind of knew,
[16:13]right?
[16:14]And sure enough, I shared my news, which everyone knew
[16:17]because I was like already showing
[16:18]by the time I admitted it.
[16:20]I knew this as I like bumped into the door frame.
[16:22]I know they were like, you know, we know in me and so.
[16:26]But there was a reason I was so hesitant to share my news.
[16:28]Because sure enough, I was no longer invited
[16:31]to the boozy lunches.
[16:32]I was no longer invited to the happy hours.
[16:34]So I was cut out of conversations
[16:37]then of course I go on maternity leave.
[16:39]And I think that I'm gonna come back
[16:41]and everything's gonna be exactly the same.
[16:44]And I come back and I'm so excited to dive back
[16:47]into my accounts that I had spent, you know,
[16:50]however many years building before I went on leave.
[16:53]And sure enough, my workload was reduced by more than half.
[16:59]Like all the business that I ran before I left
[17:02]was given to other non-parents to run.
[17:06]Because I had to end up,
[17:06]they had done a great job in my absence.
[17:08]And we wanted to give them all the opportunities
[17:10]that they very much deserved.
[17:12]But there was no consideration to what I might have energy
[17:16]to do upon my returning.
[17:17]There was a lot of coddling.
[17:18]There was a lot of like, oh no, no, no, like you take the time
[17:21]like be at home with your baby, take a lot of workload.
[17:24]But that decision wasn't discussed with me.
[17:27]It was made by other people based on assumptions.
[17:31]Got it.
[17:31]But what happens when you sidelined an ambitious woman?
[17:35]She turns her energy and ambitions elsewhere.
[17:37]And it's really not scary.
[17:39]Exactly.
[17:41]So it's not a coincidence that my writing career,
[17:44]my freelance writing career took off,
[17:45]the senior, my daughter was born.
[17:47]It's not a coincidence that I started really focusing
[17:51]on the setbacks stories of founders and leaders
[17:53]who I was interviewing because I was obviously
[17:55]a little more in tune to that.
[17:57]But my established phase lasted for years
[17:59]because I didn't realize I was on a setback.
[18:00]I just sleep walked into it.
[18:02]I don't really realize how far aside I had been cast
[18:07]at my agency until two women on my team came to me separately.
[18:13]They weren't really friends.
[18:15]They came to me separately and they said,
[18:16]we saw what happened when you came back from maternity leave
[18:19]and I'm very afraid to become a mother here.
[18:22]And that was, I mean, that knocked the wind out of me
[18:25]because it was like not only had I not done a good job
[18:29]of sort of advocating for myself in that moment,
[18:31]I hadn't made a better for the woman who came after me.
[18:33]And so it was like talk about a reversal in progress.
[18:37]Like, yeah, so I started talking about it.
[18:40]And I let my boss know and I let other people know,
[18:43]hey, this happened, it wasn't cool.
[18:45]No one was, you know, pumped to talk to me about that.
[18:48]No one liked hearing this,
[18:49]but I at least raised the awareness of the issue
[18:52]at this one agency and this one department
[18:55]at this one time.
[18:57]And in the meantime, I wrote the book.
[19:00]And here we are.
[19:01]Yes.
[19:02]What about a personal setback that you don't often share?
[19:06]That's a really great question
[19:08]one that I have never been asked, a personal setback.
[19:13]I mean, I think that as women as an apparently,
[19:20]people who have really close friendships and relationships,
[19:25]you know, friendships really take the form of, you know,
[19:29]strengthening and weakening throughout different seasons
[19:31]of our lives.
[19:32]And I think sometimes it's really easy to maintain
[19:35]these friendships and sometimes it's really hard.
[19:37]And I think when people like move far away from each other,
[19:41]you experience a little bit of a loss of connection,
[19:43]a loss of community and especially, you know,
[19:46]becoming a parent and then being sort of surrounded
[19:50]by just like the people who live near you
[19:52]and the people who your kids are playing with,
[19:54]like that becomes your community, which is great.
[19:56]But then you feel a little bit of a distance
[19:58]from other communities and it's, I think.
[20:00]I think those, to me, are like relationships setbacks
[20:03]and personal setbacks because you're like,
[20:05]oh, I wish I could tell this person what's going on,
[20:07]but they don't have the context for all the other stuff
[20:09]because they moved across the country
[20:11]and I haven't caught up with them in three months.
[20:13]And you all of a sudden,
[20:14]like you kind of feel that loss of friendship
[20:16]of relationship just because of time and life season.
[20:21]I mean, yeah, I think those are,
[20:23]that's a personal setback that I think we all.
[20:26]Okay.
[20:27]Well, that was not personal enough for me.
[20:28]So you keep thinking,
[20:29]if there's another one, keep digging into your traumatic past
[20:35]and I will free it to volunteer.
[20:38]I'll bring my therapist to our next step.
[20:39]Yeah, that would be great.
[20:41]Okay, great.
[20:42]So you have all this expertise in marketing
[20:44]and branding and strategy, right?
[20:47]People come to you, you're the consultant of,
[20:49]you know, just, this is your jam.
[20:51]So when you think about releasing a book,
[20:53]which is another product, it's another brand,
[20:56]how have you approached the marketing of your book?
[20:59]I have a handful of clients that I work with
[21:03]to help kind of like shape their narrative
[21:05]and organize their thought leadership
[21:09]and really focus on sort of like the areas
[21:11]that they need to lean into
[21:12]and the audiences that they wanna reach.
[21:15]And I just treat my book marketing as its own client.
[21:18]And I'm thinking through like,
[21:21]who wants to hear me talk about setbacks,
[21:23]which probably is your audience and other similar ones.
[21:27]And how do I get to the right folks
[21:30]to get the message that they need to hear?
[21:32]And so that happens, I think,
[21:34]a lot on podcasts focused on women focused on writers,
[21:38]focused on people in creative fields,
[21:41]focused on, I think when the pre-sale went live,
[21:44]it hit number one in midlife management
[21:47]because I think midlife is an area right with setbacks.
[21:50]It's ripe with like this,
[21:52]I think a lot of the people that I talk to now are like,
[21:54]wow, I reached this incredible pinnacle of my career,
[21:58]this thing that I have been working towards
[22:00]for 10, 15, 20 years.
[22:02]Is this all there is?
[22:04]That's kind of like,
[22:06]is this, am I in a setback?
[22:08]I can't tell you how many people,
[22:09]just friends of mine are like,
[22:11]I reached this thing.
[22:12]I did the thing, I need your book
[22:13]because I don't know what to do next.
[22:15]I think I wanna start all over again.
[22:17]And again, back to my point of I think
[22:19]that's why so many 40, 50, 60 year olds,
[22:22]come up with incredible business ideas.
[22:24]It's because they're sort of ready for change.
[22:28]So yeah, wow.
[22:30]Can you like give me the two second version
[22:32]of your like where did you grow up
[22:34]and what jobs did you have to get to here?
[22:35]And how did you end up,
[22:36]how do you pick, this is a totally separate question,
[22:38]but I don't wanna forget,
[22:39]how do you pick all the women for your Forbes women column?
[22:44]Oh my God.
[22:44]Okay, so you can start with that either way.
[22:47]I can do my origin story,
[22:49]because the origin story, please.
[22:50]origin story is like group in New York in the suburbs.
[22:53]And then I went to college at the University of Maryland
[22:57]where I majored in journalism.
[22:58]And I got a job my senior year doing public relations
[23:02]for a technology institute that had like an entrepreneurship
[23:06]incubator as part of its programming.
[23:10]And so they had students in their dorm rooms
[23:12]creating businesses.
[23:14]And I was the one that went and crafted their stories
[23:17]to tell their stories to the press
[23:20]to get press for this incubator.
[23:23]It was called the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute.
[23:26]It's like, it's a gorn into my head.
[23:28]And one of the people I interviewed in his dorm room
[23:31]was Anthony Cassellina.
[23:32]He was just a fellow student.
[23:34]And he went on to create a little company called Square Space.
[23:40]So he was like the first entrepreneur I ever really interviewed
[23:43]and wrote about when we were back in college.
[23:47]And so yes, then I graduated
[23:48]and I always had this big career in marketing
[23:52]and public relations, marketing, social media, digital.
[23:55]But I never stopped doing freelance writing.
[23:58]So it was like just this little hobby.
[24:00]I mean, it took me so long.
[24:01]I don't even think I called myself a writer
[24:03]until like a couple years ago
[24:04]because it just felt wrong to call myself a writer
[24:07]when it wasn't my full-time job.
[24:09]I got it.
[24:10]And there, yep.
[24:11]That's something I know we all struggle with.
[24:13]Like what does it take to actually call yourself a writer?
[24:15]Like I was already writing for Forbes for quite a while
[24:18]before I felt comfortable introducing myself in that way.
[24:21]So that's a whole other story.
[24:22]And I'm a formally trained journalist.
[24:24]So I don't know what it takes to call yourself a writer,
[24:27]but I really, really struggled with that for a long time.
[24:30]So that's my origin story.
[24:32]Okay.
[24:32]And I'm always freelance writing
[24:34]and I think how do I pick people to write about?
[24:38]So my, I guess my guardrails, you'll call them
[24:41]that might be marketing terms.
[24:42]So sorry to be annoying and jargon-y,
[24:43]but the guardrails that I put into place
[24:46]when choosing who to profile are,
[24:49]what obstacles do you overcome to get to where you are?
[24:53]And what are you doing to further society in some way?
[24:58]So when I get pitches from publicists
[25:00]about like some great new beauty product,
[25:03]I mean, I wanna know about it.
[25:05]I'm a consumer of beauty products,
[25:07]but like I'm not gonna write about a beauty product.
[25:09]You know what I mean?
[25:09]There's plenty of journalists that do that.
[25:11]And that's not me.
[25:11]I wanna know, and I'm always very candid with people.
[25:14]I say like I don't write about this.
[25:15]if you have a great founder story of someone who,
[25:18]you know, I wanna know like the messy middle of your story.
[25:21]Right?
[25:22]I don't want, you know, the kid whose parents
[25:27]gave him 300 grand to go start a coffee company.
[25:30]Like that's great for that kid,
[25:32]but that's not an interesting story to me.
[25:35]Like who was successful despite the odds?
[25:38]Right?
[25:39]Despite what they had to overcome.
[25:40]Like tell me your story and tell me what you had to deal with
[25:42]because that's the relatable piece.
[25:44]That's what people care about.
[25:45]And then how are you using what you learned to benefit society
[25:48]and further culture in some way?
[25:51]Very cool.
[25:52]Is there anybody on your wish list of women?
[25:54]Like some famous person that you haven't had
[25:56]a chance to put value at that one too?
[25:58]There is, oh my God, there's so many.
[26:02]I really wanted to interview Whitney Wolf
[26:03]heard for so long, and then I just got to.
[26:06]And that was very cool.
[26:08]Gosh, I don't know.
[26:09]I'll probably think of someone as soon as we get off
[26:10]this podcast, but yeah.
[26:12]I mean, anyone who has had to overcome something,
[26:16]barriers, obstacles, setbacks, and found success
[26:21]despite the odds.
[26:22]Those are the people I want to talk about,
[26:23]whether you're famous or not.
[26:25]You should interview this woman, Jen Drummond.
[26:27]I just read her book called Breakproof.
[26:29]And she was in a car accident,
[26:31]but she's also a big consultant and motivational speaker.
[26:33]Like she does all these things.
[26:34]She has seven kids, and she decided after her setback
[26:37]to climb all the seven men's at the world.
[26:40]Oh, I've heard of her.
[26:41]Yes, she would be great for that.
[26:42]Yeah, could be a fun story.
[26:43]Yes, not like you need help, but anyway.
[26:45]Okay, well, any advice to aspiring authors?
[26:48]Don't let the setbacks get you down.
[26:49]I can't tell you how many times I was rejected by agents,
[26:52]by editors, but they gave me feedback.
[26:54]In those rejections, there was feedback.
[26:57]Take the feedback, because when I first came around
[27:01]with this book, it was just a collection of stories.
[27:05]And almost every single agent and editor,
[27:07]I shopped this around to said,
[27:09]we don't want to publish an anthology.
[27:11]That's hard to sell.
[27:12]We don't want to sell an anthology.
[27:14]But there's something here.
[27:16]Like I heard back from a lot of people,
[27:17]he said, there's something here,
[27:18]but right now it reads as a lot of different stories.
[27:21]And I had to make that thread,
[27:23]that connective tissue so much stronger.
[27:25]And I spent like a year doing that.
[27:27]And that's how I strung these stories together
[27:30]and realized that they were all going through the same cycle.
[27:33]And that's what led to this book.
[27:34]So take the rejection with the feedback
[27:38]and use it to fuel your next stuff.
[27:41]It's amazing.
[27:42]Well, thank you so much.
[27:42]Thanks for coming on mom's dinner time to read books.
[27:44]And I hope that there are not too many setbacks
[27:47]in your new feature.
[27:48]I hope the same for you.
[27:50]Thank you.
[27:52]Thanks for listening to mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[27:55]If you love it, please leave a review.
[27:57]And follow us on social at Civi Owens and at Civi Readers.