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Jo Packham is Made to ReBloom
302 Plays8 months ago
When you trust that your creative heart is on the right path, good things are bound to happen. Jo Packham’s has been on more than one right path and there is so much to admire about her creative journey! As a leading innovator in the handmade publishing market for more than 45 years, she was a successful entrepreneur as the creator and owner of the very successful publishing companies: WOMEN CREATE, WWC Press, Chapelle Ltd., and The Vanessa-Ann Collection. And if this were not enough, Jo is ReBlooming again with a new career in online video and live-streaming TV with the introduction of MadeT.V Network. Working with and supporting women has been Jo’s focus her entire career … and she always looks forward to tomorrow, the women she will meet, and the stories they tell that she can share. We are proud to tell her inspirational story in this podcast!
Enjoy her story and learn more about Jo on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jo_packham/ and on MadeT.V. https://www.instagram.com/madetv.network/
ReBloom is proudly sponsored by Jet Creative and UrbanStems! Jet Creative is a women-owned marketing firm committed to community and empowerment. Looking to build a website or start a podcast--visit JetCreative.com/Podcast to kickstart your journey.
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Transcript
Introduction to Rebloom Podcast and Hosts
00:00:01
Speaker
Do you have a dream that is a small seed of an idea and it's ready to sprout? Or are you in the workplace, weeds, and you need to bloom in a new creative way? Perhaps you're ready to embrace and grow a more vibrant, joyful, and authentic life. If you answered yes to any of these, you are ready to re-bloom.
00:00:24
Speaker
Welcome to the podcast where we have enlightening chats with nature lovers, makers, and artisans as they share inspiring stories about pivoting to a heart-centered passion. Hello, I'm Lori Siebert, and I am very curious to hear from friends and artisans about the creativity that blooms when you follow your heart. And I'm Jamie Jamison, and I want to dig deep into the why behind each courageous leap of faith and walk through new heart-centered gardens.
00:00:54
Speaker
Each episode of Rebloom will be an in-depth conversation with guests who through self-discovery shifted to share their passions with the world. Get ready to find your creative joy as we plant the seeds for you to Rebloom.
00:01:10
Speaker
Welcome to the Rebloom podcast, where we are having so much fun talking with different people who have pivoted in their careers and lives to find something that really brings them more joy and authenticity to every day. I'm Lori Siebert. And I'm Jamie Jamison.
Introducing Joe Packham and Her Creative Journey
00:01:31
Speaker
And today we get to talk with my good friend, Joe Packham. Hello, Joe. I've known you for a long time.
00:01:38
Speaker
a very long time and thank you for asking me. Like I've said, it is such an honor to be part of anything you two do. Thank you, thank you. Okay, so I'm just gonna have to tell a little bit about you before we launch into our chit chat. You have had a very long and illustrious career in publishing. A lot of people know you as editor-in-chief
00:02:04
Speaker
of where women create from 2008 to 2022. But your career is always focused on working with creative women and supporting them.
00:02:15
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And I admire you for that. You've done so much for so many. You started a couple of your own publishing companies along the way. Where Women Create, or WWC Press, Chappelle Limited, and the Vanessa Ann Collection. You have now,
00:02:35
Speaker
made another pivot, which we'll get into. I'm not going to read your whole bio because we want to talk to you. But you recently made another pivot into the world of online video and live streaming TV with made TV. So I've known you through many a pivot. So I just want you to take our listeners back to like the early days of what you were doing.
00:03:05
Speaker
I don't know, you can even start from when you were a kid because we've talked to other people and sometimes those seeds that we nurture as children kind of find their way through our lives.
00:03:17
Speaker
I have to say my mother was probably the strongest woman I ever knew. She was uneducated and came from a very, very poor background, but worked hard her whole life and never gave up. And for her, you just didn't give up. If you wanted to do something or did something, she never bragged about it or talked about it or anything. She just quietly did it and took care of it, right? And she took care of us.
00:03:46
Speaker
And I always just wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. I had no dreams of working or being, my mom was kind of creative, but she sewed all of our clothes, made everything because we couldn't afford to buy. So she would, my very favorite story that I always tell is that she would, I remember it being every Wednesday because I was a teenager, but I'm sure it wasn't every Wednesday.
00:04:14
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But, you know, when you're a teenager and your mom wants to take you somewhere, it seems like every Wednesday. And so we would go to Keeley's, this hamburger place, and we would have a hamburger and a Coke. And then we would go to L.R. Samuels, which was kind of like Nordstrom's in those days in our small town. And she would let me try on as many clothes as I wanted and for as long as I wanted. And then I was allowed to pick my very favorite outfit. And then she would go home and make it from memory.
00:04:44
Speaker
Wow, it was a fabulous seamstress. We never had the same fabrics, of course, but we always I don't know where she got them all the time, but we always had great fabrics around the house and she could make anything. And so and there was just no question. And at the time, I didn't know how creative she was. I just thought, you know, that's what you did. Right. But I wanted to get married and have lots and lots of kids never dreamed.
The Influence of Arts and Crafts on Joe's Career
00:05:12
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of being a working mother or wife or career woman.
00:05:18
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I got married when I was 18 and I dropped out of college and my husband, my first husband, Scott went to, graduated from college, went to graduate school, went to law school. We were living in California and I hated California from the bottom of my heart. Really? Yeah, we were in Sacramento and I could
00:05:42
Speaker
taught for six hours about the stories about Sacramento. But the time we were there, I met my friend Martha, who I give 100% credit for me being who I am, because I was desperately lonely. And we had one car and Scott took it to law school and I was home alone all the time. So there was this, we lived in this gay community.
00:06:09
Speaker
And we were the only straight couple. And there was a junior high school on the corner, and they taught craft classes. So I thought, I wanted to do anything to meet people. I was desperate.
00:06:24
Speaker
And so I went down to register and the only class they had was batikin. And I had no idea what that even meant. And the lady said to me, would you like to sign up? Are you a good experienced batiker? And I said, yes, actually I am.
00:06:41
Speaker
great so she signed me up so I go to class and oh my hell it's wax pots and all this paraphernalia and I'm sitting on the very back row and thinking you know I should just sneak out of here and this woman walks in and
00:06:57
Speaker
with all the confidence in the world and she sat down next to me and we started talking and she said, how long have you been betticking? And I'm like, oh, you know, not too long. Yesterday. But anyway, one thing leads to another. Well, we got to be very good friends. And Martha said to me, I love arts and crafts. And if you're going to be my friend,
00:07:25
Speaker
then we're going to do what I want to do." And it was just that simple because she did not want to give up her time making arts and crafts and taking classes and traveling to exhibits to do something else. And I knew nothing about arts and crafts except sewing, so I said, sure, I'm in. So for three years,
00:07:47
Speaker
We traveled up and down the California coast and took classes in everything you can imagine. And then we went to all the galleries and all the museums and all the places and she shared her passion with the arts with me.
00:08:04
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And I learned I actually graduated. I went back to school and graduated from Sac State in art, had my own private showing as part of my graduation diploma. And so she completely changed my life. And so Scott said we were driving home from
00:08:26
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San Francisco. He graduated from law school. I graduated from college. We had a brand new baby and we were driving home and he said, we're going to move to Walnut Creek and I have a job as a lawyer.
00:08:40
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Oh, boy. Yeah, that's not going to happen. And he said he was so excited. You know how when you're excited, you're talking a mile a minute. And I said, I'm not going to go to Cal. I'm not going to stay. I ate it here. And he's like, well, what are you going to do? And I don't know why I said this. And I don't know where it came from. But I said, I'm going to go home and open a retail store and sell art and craft supplies to the university.
00:09:06
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It just was midnight.
The Success of Cross Stitch Books
00:09:08
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We were driving home in this car. I have no recollection of ever thinking that my whole life. And he said, no, we're moving to Walnut Creek. And I said, I hope you have a wonderful life. Oh, wow. I came home and.
00:09:22
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packed my things and we talked about it. He finally did come home with me and I called my best friend in Utah who was a fabulous artist who I lived in her shadow growing up. We've been friends since we were in kindergarten.
00:09:38
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And I said, Linda, let's open an art supply store. And she said, OK. So we just started. We just got together and started ordering stuff and found a building. And it was right next to the university. And we started selling art supplies to the university. And then Linda started teaching classes. And one thing led to another. We were doing really, really well.
00:10:05
Speaker
But of course, me being the person that I had become all of a sudden, Counted Cross Stitch hit the US. And so we started selling cross stitch books and we were selling them by the hundreds in this little teeny tiny store, you know, by the university. And I said to Linda,
00:10:26
Speaker
We need to become publishers. Let's be publishers. Because we're selling hundreds and hundreds of cross stitch books and they're all the same. They're really, really boring. They just gave you the design and the cross stitch and that was it, right? The colors and everything. And I said, we need to tell people,
00:10:46
Speaker
what to make out of your cross stitch. We need to give them ideas to sew into pillows or to put them on pockets on jeans or on the back of your shirts. I still have some of those. And she said, I don't want to do that. No, I'm not going to do that. And then she looked at me and she said, because I'd always lived in her shadow, and she said, and you can't do it without me.
00:11:10
Speaker
And I thought, oh yeah, not by myself maybe, but I've learned that if there's one more person in my life that I can, I'm really good at what I do, but I need somebody else. I'm not much of a loner and I can't do the creative part and I can't do the business part. I'm terrible at it.
00:11:32
Speaker
So I, through an introduction from somebody in our building, he said, you know, they had a real estate office and Chip came in one day and said, what are you going to do now that you're closing the store? And I said, I don't know. And he said, well, I have a friend who just moved back and his wife worked for Sunset Designs. So he said, you need to meet her. And I said, no.
00:12:00
Speaker
And he said, why not? And I said, I don't have time. And he said, okay, let me know when you have time. So we're packing everything up and I'm getting a little frantic and I think, okay, I have time. So I called and introduced myself and she said, come on out for dinner. And never met her, never met Rocky, her husband, and Scott and I went out and they lived in this, they just moved there, right? They had a very nice home, but no furniture anywhere.
00:12:29
Speaker
And they had, I don't know if you remember in those days, but we had those fold up chairs and crates, like orange crates for tables. So there were two on each side and orange crates by each one. And then this great, big, long, expensive living room. And that's all that was in it. None of her artwork, absolutely nothing.
00:12:55
Speaker
So we're sitting there talking going on and back and forth and he said, you know, why are you here? And I said, well, I wondered if you wanted to go into business with me. I want to do cross stitch books with finishing instructions. And I would give anything if I had recorded it because it was like somebody flipped up a cue card and both of our husbands stood up instantly. I mean, just like popped out of those really low chairs and said, we forbid it.
00:13:25
Speaker
Really? Well, I mean, you know, we were in our late 20s. It was, you know, that was 46 years ago. You know, why did what husband said, right? And Scott didn't want me to work. He wanted me to play bridge and be with the ladies and be a stay at home mom and all those kinds of things.
00:13:49
Speaker
Tiese and I walked to the center of the room and shook hands and we started the Vanessa Ann collection. Wow. And that was Counted Cross Stitch Books and that was my first run at publishing and it has a whole history of ridiculous stories. But we were in the right place at the right time with the right idea. So how did you navigate the response from your husbands? Did you just sort of say, sit down, we got this?
00:14:18
Speaker
I don't even think I said that. I think we just went in the back room and started planning our new company. Scott was really busy as a new lawyer, and I've always been very independent. Not very many people tell me what to do. But I feel like I'm a team player too, and I'm always willing to ask for help. I'm never embarrassed to ask for help because there's lots of things.
00:14:45
Speaker
I feel like some of us who live our life in extremes are when we're really good at something, we're really, really good at it. And when we're really bad at something, we're really, really bad at it. I just learned to let it go. I just learned to find somebody who could do what I didn't do well and what I didn't want to do. And then I focused on the rest. And I've been very fortunate in my career that
00:15:13
Speaker
I have always found that person or that company or whatever it was that let me do what I wanted to do. And then they just picked up everything that I just can't manage. I think it's so interesting that you didn't really, this sort of found you. Like you had that person, Martha, who was a catalyst that started the journey and
00:15:39
Speaker
I do think that that's important in some people's lives is to find those people that are going to encourage you to see things in a different way and maybe explore things in a different way. Well, if you had not met her or if you had not put yourself out there to go to that class, even like your whole journey would potentially be different. Totally different.
00:16:08
Speaker
I'm not a really religious person, but I do believe passionately in guardian angels. Not only did somebody bring Martha to me,
00:16:22
Speaker
But they brought me a person who was so passionate about arts and crafts. She didn't just dabble in it. And her husband was extremely wealthy, so we got to do lots of over-the-top things that I would never have been able to afford to do.
00:16:39
Speaker
And I wanted to be Martha's friend. And you know how when you're with somebody and they're so excited and passionate about something and they throw their arms around you, you just can't help yourself, right? And it was every day for four years that we were
00:16:56
Speaker
together and did things and she saved my sanity and my life. I think I probably would have been a housewife and had lots of kids if I hadn't met her. I don't know. I would have changed track.
00:17:12
Speaker
What a great story. So you did the cross stitch company with, what was the woman that you started? And you started Reese Beasley. And so how long did that last? We had a really, really good, very exciting 10 year run. We literally sold millions of cross stitch books. We printed six new books every six weeks.
00:17:40
Speaker
It had a big warehouse, lots of employees. I mean, we would go to shows in those days and, you know, the distributors would order $100,000 worth of cross stitch books. I mean, it was insane.
Challenges and Pivots in Publishing
00:17:56
Speaker
And then one day, Tisa's husband,
00:18:00
Speaker
was an accountant and he walked in and he said, do you guys realize that your sales have fallen 80% in 30 days? Oh my gosh. No. And so what happened was the world, the universe,
00:18:21
Speaker
got together and there had been so many cross stitch books published in 10 years that everybody had enough cross stitch books to do 10 cross stitch designs every day for the rest of their life and never be done. And it just, and the, and the frenzy stopped, right? And then the physical fitness craze hit and women started, started doing that. And then those who weren't stay at home moms and doing physical fitness went back to work. And that, that
00:18:49
Speaker
whirlwind of three things hitting all at once. After Rocky said that, we're standing at HIA, which was an enormous show in those days, and I'll never forget it. JC Penney came on the loudspeaker and sears both of them.
00:19:07
Speaker
came on the loudspeaker at the show and told their buyers to go home because they were closing their craft departments at JCPenney and Sears. Oh my gosh. So that was, you know, those, they all had huge craft departments in those days and ordered hundreds of thousands of books. So it was, and you know, we, we had, we were lucky. I mean, we were, I don't know, the universe just,
00:19:35
Speaker
I just believe that if you don't lock yourself away and if you're open to it, the universe will just kind of help you get where you need to go if you're listening.
00:19:45
Speaker
I think that's true also. This happened, this 30-day drop. What happened? What did you do? We had to sell our inventory. We had a huge warehouse filled with hundreds of thousands of cross-stitch books.
00:20:05
Speaker
I had an idea, which is one of my craziest stories. Did you ever know Cecilia Toth? She was the editor in chief at Meredith at Better Homes and Gardens. I just know her name. I don't know her. We got to be really good friends. And so when the bottom fell out, I said to T, sweet, we need to do hardbound books. So I called Cecilia and I said, Cecilia,
00:20:34
Speaker
This is what happens when you don't know anything and you think you know everything. I called her up and said, I'd like to meet the president of Meredith. And she laughed just like he did. She's like, yeah, Joe, nobody meets the president of Meredith.
00:20:49
Speaker
I said, I have this great idea. I really want to meet the president of Meredith. And it's not going to happen, she said. And I said, Cecilia, I have a really good idea. It'll make you look really good. I had no doubt that it would work great.
00:21:06
Speaker
And so she said, one of the reasons too that I have to say that I have always had so much confidence. I have good ideas, but you all have the talent. I could pick and choose between all of you who I wanted to do the books or work with
00:21:24
Speaker
And I could pick the best of the best for the category. And it's very it's so much easier to promote someone else than yourself. That's right. Right. I never when we had the Vanessa and collection when we did cross stitch books, I never told anybody who Vanessa and was my name. Joe Packham wasn't on anything. My picture wasn't anywhere. People would come in the booth and say, I met Vanessa and
00:21:50
Speaker
I love her. You must love working for her." And I'm like, yep, I do. She's the... Was she non-existent? She was named after our daughters. Oh, that's great. All of our books were designed by different artists and I didn't want him to know the Vanessa Ann collection. I wanted him to know all of you because I could promote all of you, right? And it's so much easier. So Cecilia called a month or six weeks later and said,
00:22:20
Speaker
Okay, the president of Meredith is going to be in New York City at the offices on such and such a date, at such and such a time. If you want to be here, he'll give you 10 minutes. And I'm like, yeah, of course I want to be there. So I fly into New York.
00:22:35
Speaker
I fly into New York just like, oh, I've got this idea and I know it will work. And I considered myself an expert because I'd been doing it for 10 years and I was very successful at it. It's not like I scrimped and saved. I mean, we were crazy successful. And so she got it all set up. One of my friend from Busilla came and got me to take me over there.
00:23:00
Speaker
I went in and they escorted me up to the top floor and she said, she opened the door and there was this, I can see it right now as clear as I could that day.
00:23:11
Speaker
There was this giant, giant, giant corporate, um, executive meeting room, you know, with the big tables and the big job. And there was a guy sitting at the end of it, which I assumed was the president of Merida and then all these men. And then there was an empty chair right next to him. And, um, I would you please all excuse me for just one second. I'll be right back. I went in the bathroom and threw out my gun.
00:23:37
Speaker
I was so scared and so sick. And I'm like, I have on this little linen suit that was brand new and really expensive and my little flat shoes and I'm really short. And I felt so intimidated. So I walked in the door and I sat down. He stood up. He was very gentlemanly. And he stood up and he said, I hear you as Cecilia says, you have an idea. And I said, actually, I do.
00:24:02
Speaker
And he said, what is it? And so they in those days when the large publishers produced any kind of how to book took them about two years, they were always behind the trend. They weren't very good. They would have the designers. If you didn't Afghans, they'd have you come in, drop your Afghans on the desk. They would write the instructions. They would do the photography. You never got to see it again. All those kinds of things. And they were two years behind the trend.
00:24:26
Speaker
Uh-huh. So I said, I can do books for you in like three months, six months at the most. You guys can hit all the trends. We can tell you what's most popular. I've got designers all over the country.
00:24:41
Speaker
You know, and he said, no, no. And I'm like, why no? And he said, it won't work. And I said, how do you know? And he said, I said, no. And I said, you can't say no because you don't know if it'll work or not. It will work. I promise you it will work.
00:25:00
Speaker
And so he goes into the big dissertation about how they've always done it this way. And I said, but is it working for you? I said, how many books are you selling? And he said, well, we sell 10,000 or so. And I said, well, we're selling millions of paperback books.
00:25:16
Speaker
And so he said, okay. And I said, you said, what's your, what's your offer? And I said, I will do a book for you in half the time for half the money. And you don't have to pay me.
00:25:31
Speaker
until we deliver the book, you sell it, and it reaches a certain number of sales. Now you guys have to remember that I had to let my whole team go, and we had to let our offices go. We had nothing. We were down to nothing. And so he said,
00:25:49
Speaker
And he said, no. And I said, you cannot say no because you don't have anything to lose. If I do it for free, if I deliver it, all you have to do is print it and sell it. You're going to print and sell books anyway. You might as well you pick the subject.
00:26:05
Speaker
And he said, counted cross stitch. And I said, Oh my hell, I don't know if that's a good idea because, you know, I didn't want to tell him that we just lost the company because I'm like, you know, we think that, that, uh, wave has is gone. And he said, that's what I want. And I want it to be 365 designs, counted cross stitch designs, one for every day of the year. And I said, so I stood up and shook his, and I said, how many do you have to sell? Do I have to sell?
00:26:35
Speaker
And he said, 10,000. And I said, OK, if I sell 10,000, I get a 10% royalty instead of six. And I get a three-year contract. And he just laughed. And he goes, you're on. And he said, you have to deliver it in three months from today.
00:26:53
Speaker
Okay. So I went back out the door and threw up again and flew home and called everybody that was on my team, told them what had happened. And so we designed, um, tree Springs designed the designs.
00:27:10
Speaker
The whole team did all the cross stitch. My photographer photographed it. My layout person laid it out. And they all said, we'll do it for free. And then when you sell your books, then you can pay us later. And so we did. We delivered it in three months to the day. And they printed it and published it. And we were.
00:27:31
Speaker
When he hit 10,000, he called me up and gave me the contract. He was very gracious and very, very nice. And I flew back to like they're in Des Moines. Aren't they in Des Moines? And so, and we sold almost a million books. Wow. So that was my beginning into the hardbound book publishing career, which lasted 17 years.
00:27:55
Speaker
What an amazing story. Oh, they're crazy. You know what? They sound, even when I tell them sometimes, they sound like I make them up, you know, because it's like nobody does that kind of stuff to the president of Meredith. I just, in my own ignorance, I had no idea how big Meredith was, you know? And in those days, I didn't do my homework. I just thought, because we didn't have computers and all that kind of stuff.
00:28:20
Speaker
Sometimes it's good to be a little bit naive and just, if you maybe knew, you probably wouldn't have even pursued it. So sometimes ignorance is bliss. Let's take a quick minute and thank our amazing sponsors.
Sponsorship and Further Career Transitions
00:28:38
Speaker
Our podcast is proudly brought to you today by Jet Creative and Urban Stems. Jet Creative is a women-owned marketing firm committed to community and empowerment since 2013. Are you ready to rebloom and build a website or start a podcast? Visit jetcreative.com backslash podcast to kickstart your journey.
00:29:00
Speaker
They will help you bloom in ways you never imagined. And bonus, our listeners get an exclusive discount when you mention Rebloom. And a huge thanks to Urban Stems, your go-to and our go-to source for fresh, gorgeous bouquets and gifts delivered coast to coast. Use Bloom Big 20 and save 20% on your next order.
00:29:24
Speaker
And don't forget to subscribe to this podcast and follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Rebloom Podcast. Thanks to our sponsors and thanks to you for joining us today.
00:29:39
Speaker
Well, plus I believed in everybody that was all of you. I believed in the designers that could design a best selling book. And I I just, you know, and the people that we'd worked with in the small shops and all those kinds of things, I believed in all of that. So I was I've always spent my life selling someone else. Yeah. Never walk in and say I can do this ever. But you kind of did. I mean, in that story, you said,
00:30:07
Speaker
I can give you a book in three months. But I always use the term we, if I said I a minute ago, I always would. I always said we. Yeah. It was always we. Yeah. I still say that. I still. Well, I knew that's what you personify in everything you do. So so how did you go from the the book publishing realm into the magazines?
00:30:33
Speaker
Well, that's another disaster story. Every time I've made a pivot, it's because the bottom has completely fallen out and just left me
00:30:49
Speaker
broke. I have accountants and lawyers. I don't do this myself. It's just that when you get involved, after the first cross stitch books, I spent the rest of my career being involved with big corporations.
00:31:09
Speaker
And big corporations use you as long as they need you and then they chew you up and spit you out. And they really don't care, right? So when I was working with Meredith, they only wanted like
00:31:23
Speaker
four books a year, right? And that's not enough to keep a staff busy. So then I became what in those days was called a book packager. So I went to every publisher, Rodale, everybody, Sterling, every single publisher there was in the country and made the same proposal.
00:31:46
Speaker
We can do hard bound books for you in any subject that you want. And we were, that lasted, I was working for Meredith longer than three years. And then that whole thing lasted for about four or five years. And then Sterling Publishing, Lincoln Bohm came to me with Sterling Publishing. And he said, I want you just to package books for Sterling. And I said, yeah, no, that's, that's not going to happen either.
00:32:15
Speaker
And he said he's because I was afraid to put all of my eggs in one basket after what had happened before. Right. And so he said, you can do as many books a year as you want. You can choose the subjects fly off, fly back to New York once a month. You tell me what you're going to produce. I think you can produce five a year, a hundred a year. I don't care. And so we signed the contracts and it was the most wonderful experience any entrepreneur could dream of for 10 years.
00:32:45
Speaker
Um, Lincoln, let me do what I wanted. If I wanted to do 25 books a year, if I had a good idea, I just had to fly back to New York and presented. He never said no, never. Oh, one time.
00:32:57
Speaker
He wouldn't let me do laundry rooms. I really wanted to do a book on decorating laundry rooms because in those days, a lot of crafters would do, they had really nice laundry rooms, right? And they had their sewing machines in there and stuff. But what I didn't realize is that all of the people who made the decisions on Yes or No lived in
00:33:17
Speaker
New York and their laundry rooms were in the basement and they were creepy, scary places. So that was their visual image, right? So we argued about it, buddy. That was the only book he ever refused to let me do. So we were rolling and life was great. And one morning Lincoln called me and he said, I want you to know this before it hits the New York Times.
00:33:45
Speaker
And I have sold Sterling Publishing. Oh man. And I said, you sold me with you, right? I mean, you just have like mine Chappelle limited in there, right? And he said, no, I don't think it's in your best interest to sell you with us. So I didn't.
00:34:05
Speaker
I'm like, Oh my hell. So I got on a plane, flew to New York, met with him. Charlie was the new president. Charlie said, you know, with the new owners, we're going to, we're going to, you know, do this and you keep going and we're going to grow and yada, yada, yada. And so we were at that time, we were doing a hundred books, about 50 books a year. And Charlie said, we want you to double. We want you to do a hundred books a year.
00:34:33
Speaker
heartbound books. So of course I doubled my staff and did the whole thing and we started for a year. So when you do heartbound books, if you're creating a hundred, you're actually working on 300 because you've got a hundred that you're trying to decide what they are. You've got a hundred that you're working on and you've got a hundred that you're finishing up. So in that timeframe, you
00:35:01
Speaker
have invested in 300 books and I was still an independent business person. So I had and I always had so much faith in everything that all of you could do that we took a very minimal amount to produce the books and we made all our money on the royalties. Okay.
00:35:22
Speaker
Right. Because in those days, the royalties were big. Yeah. Those were the days. Those were the days. So we were going. Life was great. Lincoln would check on me, you know, all those kinds of things. And then Christmas Eve, Charlie called and said,
00:35:41
Speaker
The company that we're working with has decided to stop publishing books. And so we're stopping everything right now. Because he's Jewish. He was not a big deal to him, right? So I said, well, you can't do that. That's illegal. And he goes, yeah, actually, we can. And so I want you to stop everything now. We're not going to pay any more money. We're not going to do anything until we decide what to
00:36:11
Speaker
Wow.
Legal Challenges and Reinvention
00:36:12
Speaker
So of course I go get a lawyer the day after Christmas and we had airtight contracts, airtight contracts. And I go to the lawyer and we go through the whole thing and he says, you know, are you delivering? Are you adhering to the contracts? And I'm like, yeah, I am. And he says, okay, well, we can get this taken care of.
00:36:34
Speaker
you know, two months, can you keep going for two months? And I said, well, I'm pretty conservative. I have enough money in the bank. Yes, I can keep going for two months, but I have an enormous staff. I have 45 people on staff. We're producing 300 books. I own three buildings. I mean, I can't go much longer than two months, right? With those, that kind of overhead.
00:36:58
Speaker
absolutely no problem. Well, when you get tied up with those big corporations, at the end of the day, the conversation was that
00:37:10
Speaker
when I was standing in my same little linen suit with my flat shoes with the lawyers from the big corporation. And he said, he was a wonderful man. And my lawyer was with me. And he said, the lawyer from the corporation said, we're wrong. We really are wrong. And you can, your contract is there tight and you can win this. But they are going to make sure.
00:37:37
Speaker
But they are going to make sure it costs you $10 million and takes 10 years. Wow. So we turned around. And of course, I was delirious. And in those days, you know, we had imprints like where women create, you know, cross stitch in a minute. I mean, we had I don't know how many we had 100 plus imprints. Right. And so when they said and they said we're going to take over the imprints,
00:38:06
Speaker
you can't publish for anybody else, they're ours. And so, and I'm like, in my, I'm sure I had a nervous breakdown. I'm pretty sure that I completely lost all sensibility. And I can remember stomping my foot and saying, well, I'm gonna keep where women create the imprint. Because we had just come out with that book three months before.
00:38:31
Speaker
after 17 years, three months before, and it was doing so well, and I loved it so much. And I said, I'm gonna keep where women create, or I'm going to the mat. Everybody looked at me like, okay, she's nuts, right? And so the lawyer, for the opposing lawyers, Charlie said, no, absolutely not. And the opposing lawyer said, Charlie, let her keep it.
00:38:58
Speaker
And so back and forth, back and forth. So I walked out that day with the imprint of Where Women Create. And I lost everything. I lost my house. My dad paid for my dinner for a year and gas in my car. And I had to sell the buildings. And I mean, it was just, it was a disaster. Wow. And then that all went to Where Women Create the magazine. Oh my gosh, Joe.
00:39:28
Speaker
I've known you but I didn't know any of this. Well it sounds like I make it up because I call everybody sometimes and say like this is the way it happened right? I mean I'm not making this up because it's so extreme you know and I've always felt like I had the courage to do it
00:39:49
Speaker
Because one, I believe in myself as far as my ideas are concerned. But I believe in all of the artists that I work with that you guys are so good that if you had an opportunity like to write your own book or your own cross stitch book that you could do a best seller. I never doubted it for a moment ever.
Community, Resilience, and Teamwork
00:40:10
Speaker
So you've pivoted mostly out of pure necessity.
00:40:16
Speaker
Oh, 100 percent, not muscle. So what advice do you give to someone when they really something catastrophic or something happens where they are kind of forced
00:40:33
Speaker
to make a change? Is there advice you can give people around that? Well, yes, because I think if you're like you or all the people that we know that are in business for themselves, you have to do whatever you have to do to get your confidence back in yourself to start with. And it's not easy. I'm not saying like you just do it. I still throw up.
00:40:57
Speaker
when I make presentations and I have a thing where I'm a crier too, right? It's not like I just make, I decide to come to New York and I just bag my suitcase. I mean, I had a little nervous breakdown before I got here, you know? But, and I cry. My granddaughter says, Grammy, I've never seen anybody cry as hard as you.
00:41:21
Speaker
So it's not just tears coming down my face. It's I mean, I really cry. But what I do is I give myself a limited amount of time. So sometimes it's five days because it's really a big deal. And sometimes it's still tomorrow morning. But when that time hits,
00:41:39
Speaker
then I'm done. I'm sorry for myself done crying all those kinds of things. So and then I move on and I I know it's because I have so much faith in all of you. I would never have done what I did. If it wouldn't have been that I was selling all of you and your skills. Huh? That's interesting.
00:42:02
Speaker
Yeah, I feel that way too. Like now my daughter's entering into the world of licensing and it's so much easier for me to sell her.
00:42:13
Speaker
in meetings than it is myself. So I don't know if that's a, is that a woman thing? I don't know something. I don't know either. Cause I've never been a guy, but I do think, you know, yeah, it's just, you have to, you know, my advice is don't give up.
00:42:33
Speaker
unless you're really ready to give up. I mean, if you're done, you're done, right? When I sold the company a couple of years ago, I was done. I thought, oh, I want to retire and I'm pretty much done, right? And it wasn't going well. And I thought, I'm not going to end my career like this.
00:42:51
Speaker
Yeah. But after two months, I realized I wasn't done. I was just done with that particular situation. So whatever it takes for you to regain your confidence in yourself is what you need to do. Yeah. Because you are where you are for a reason. And I think partially it's putting yourself out there like you did long ago, going to those crafts
00:43:17
Speaker
craft classes, you were seeking something. You knew that there was something that you needed. So you went out and you sought something out. And I feel like when you do that and you meet people, like that's, that's how it happens. That that's what gets the ball rolling. And look at all the people that you've met through your career.
00:43:40
Speaker
in all the artists you're supporting through what you're able to bring to the party. And that all started with you being brave enough or longing enough to get yourself out and go do something.
00:43:52
Speaker
And because Martha was so passionate about the arts, and she was a pretty good artist, not a great artist, but a good artist, respectable. She just did lots of things. But she had such a passion about it. And when I started to meet all of you as artists, you are all crazy passionate.
00:44:13
Speaker
about what you do. And when you work with people that have that kind of passion and lose themselves in it the way you do, you can't help but get sucked up into it. You just have to stay there. You can't start to doubt yourself. Like, I would never have done what I did if I was trying to sell myself. Never in a hundred million years. Interesting. But there are some people that I think have... Well, you have so much confidence and I guess it comes from
00:44:43
Speaker
your community of people that you surround yourself with. So I guess that's something people can really go seek out. Like I just went on a trip with several artists and it was amazing to be with that community of people and learn from one another.
00:45:00
Speaker
Oh, and they're artists are good people. You know, they're, they're a little, a little crazy and a little extreme, right? But they have honest hearts and good souls and they will share with you and not, not a hundred percent of them, of course, but the vast majority. And, you know, when you surround, the only thing we all want to do is surround ourselves with good, honest people.
00:45:29
Speaker
I don't care what you do. I don't care if you work in a grocery store. You want all the checkers to be good, honest checkers, right? And this community, it's why I fight so hard to keep this community, why I won't ever, why everything I do has to be community driven. Because I believe in all of you, which enables me to really, really believe in us.
00:45:59
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And you've rebloomed now into the world of video and live streaming and, you know, like that's another thing, I guess, facing fears and and knowing, like you said earlier, when you don't know things, just finding the people that do. I had to learn that lesson a long time ago because I used to early on in my career, I thought if I don't know how to do it, I'm not going to say yes.
00:46:29
Speaker
And then I learned, you know, when we started doing like signage projects and things, I'm like, well, I don't know how to do this, but we'll team up with an architect who does. Or, you know, like knowing that you don't always have to do it yourself. You can reach out to those people that will support you and help you and, you know, you do it together.
00:46:52
Speaker
And you treat everybody like a team. It's like the Super Bowl yesterday. I mean, they don't play as individual players. They play as a team. That's how they win, right? And that brought it home, really, really brought it home to me during the Super Bowl because that's what I felt like we do. I want to be the captain.
00:47:16
Speaker
I don't want anybody to tell me what to do. But I want to build a team so that all of us can be successful. Yeah. Yeah. So give give our listeners one little challenge and then I think we were going to need to wrap it
Encouragement and Community Building
00:47:32
Speaker
up. I could talk to you for like days. I think you're going to have to actually edit it. So what how can we challenge our our listeners to get them on the path of like
00:47:46
Speaker
doing things that are more authentic to them? Well, I think if you sit down, some people make a list, some people it just comes to them. But if you have a dream, I don't care what it is, whether it's to paint the perfect painting, to have it in a gallery. I don't care what your dream is. Own your own company. But if you have a dream, then I would sit down and make a list of all the people you would surround yourself with to make that dream come true.
00:48:15
Speaker
because it's impossible to do it by yourself. And you have to start focusing in on on their talents, their ability to work with other people, their drive, all those kinds of things. And not everybody you'd like to work with is going to be involved. And they come and go. They drop in, you know, and stuff. But I would challenge you to before it's over, decide what that one dream is. And then
00:48:42
Speaker
and do whatever you have to do. And you know what, Lori, I think I can honestly say, whoever wants to do that and who's listening could call either one of us. And you know, we can help them get people to help you don't be afraid to admit that you can't do it all. Right, right. And I even a small challenge I would give people is
00:49:05
Speaker
because a lot of people work in isolation sometimes and I call someone up and have coffee and just start there, a small little, build a little community that you can support each other and be accountability partners for one another. I think that's helped me through the years is I'll find somebody that I think is really interesting and I'll just say, can we have lunch?
00:49:34
Speaker
And then that's how it happens. It starts there and then you never know where it's going to take you. Exactly. And people want to help. People want to feel important and they want you to have faith in them. So they work really hard. Right. Absolutely. Well, we have to wrap this up.
00:49:54
Speaker
I am so sorry. I learned so much new stuff about you today. That was amazing. I have quite a few stories to tell and I won't be offended. I get so excited about talking about all of you that I just never shut up, right? Well, that shows and that's why you've had a long illustrious career. So thanks for sharing all of the pivots. I'm sure there were many that we didn't get to today, but there were.
00:50:24
Speaker
Thanks for joining us, my friend. Oh, thank you my friend for having faith in me to be part of your program.
00:50:31
Speaker
Life is too short not to follow your passions, so go out there and let your heart plant you where you are meant to be and grow your joy. We will be right here sharing more incredible stories of reinvention with you. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast so you never miss an episode of Rebloom. Until next time, I'm Jamie Jamison. And I'm Lori Siebert. Peace, love, and Rebloom, dear friends.