A Storyteller that is Changing the World a Conversation with Lorrie Grant

This week on Chasing Happiness, we welcome Lorrie D. Grant!

Lorrie is a storyteller with a message: She’s always looking for an adventure and has a story to tell. She captured a few of her life’s lessons a few years ago simply to save them for her two daughters. This unexpectedly led to her creating a blog, which led to the writing of her first children’s book, “Why is There an Elephant in My Basement?” released in 2017. The following year she released her second book, “Little White Flies,” and her third book, “I am Beautiful Too,” was released in 2019. 

Lorrie has a background in Corporate Business Operations but is most passionate about making a difference in the lives of others.

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Podcast Transcript

A Storyteller that is Changing the World a Conversation with Lorrie Grant

[00:00:00] Ryan: Hey guys, Ryan DeMent from Chasing Happiness Podcast. I hope you guys have a great day on the podcast this week. We have Lorrie Grant. She is an author and a storyteller. That’s always looking for adventure, Lorrie. Welcome to the show. Hi Ryan. Thanks. Good to have you. So how are things going with you?

[00:00:24] Ryan: And then we’ll get into your story. Things

[00:00:26] Lorrie: are going well. Yeah. The book writing children’s book writing is so much fun. Yeah. I love it.

[00:00:33] Ryan: So we’ll get into that. So before we get there, tell the listeners a little bit about who you are.

[00:00:39] Lorrie: So I actually am a corporate girl. I started my career with Boeing of all places aviation and aeronautics.

[00:00:46] Lorrie: I was an operations manager and I did it for a long time and it just paid the bills was a good job, but it never really captured me as a passion. And I started I actually started writing to write stories for my kids. Just crazy things that happened to me. And that turned into me writing a blog because people were interested in these just everyday normal people stories, but the outcomes kind of the I don’t know, the aha take away a moment.

[00:01:18] Lorrie: Funny things that happened to you. And that’s how the writing really all began was literally just for my kids. I never ever anticipated on being an author that was never on the radar. So from there I started blogging and capturing those stories and that just led into writing children’s books. So

[00:01:37] Ryan: you have three books now.

[00:01:39] Lorrie: I do I have three books. My first one was 2019, no, sorry. My first one was 2017. Second one was 18. Third one was 19. Then we took a little pandemic break and kinda hard to do any marketing. When one, you can’t go anywhere. So I’ve got two of ’em that are at illustration right now. So the [00:02:00] next one should be out.

[00:02:01] Lorrie: I’m hoping July.

[00:02:03] Ryan: Oh, that’s great. So can we talk a little bit about them in, in. What they’re about. I know they’re children’s books, but let’s get into the nitty gritty. Yeah. I’d

[00:02:12] Lorrie: love to tell you about ’em. So the very first one is called, why is there an elephant in my basement? And it’s about excuses and accountability.

[00:02:19] Lorrie: And so it’s very simple. My, my books are all very simple, but yet they’re very deep. So you can go as deep as you want. Actually it’s a fun story. I brought this, my first book to a, it was a music rehearsal. I was helping a high school age band. And so we would always get together before and Chi chat and see how everybody’s doing.

[00:02:39] Lorrie: And so I brought this book, I said, okay guys, I’m gonna read you this book. And they’re like, miss Lori, you’re not gonna read as the kid’s book. And they just gave me all kinds of grief. And I said just stick with me. So I read the book to them and I said, okay guys, so what does the basement.

[00:02:57] Lorrie: And they were just like, they gave me this [00:03:00] just blank. Look, and I said the basement’s your life it’s your life. It represent your life. And they’re nodding their heads, and I said, so what is the elephant? What is the elephant in the basement? What does that mean? And they just, they were now, they were actually intrigued and they said, they didn’t know.

[00:03:15] Lorrie: And I said the elephant is something that’s in your life. That shouldn’t be there, it’s in the basement. Shouldn’t be there. And I got, so then we talked about things that are in our lives that shouldn’t be there. And that whose responsibility is that to get the things that are on our lives out.

[00:03:28] Lorrie: The very last page of the book says, so why is there an elephant in my basement? And it says, because I let her in. So that’s the preface of the book. So it was, it had to been six months later, one of these high school students came up and she sits down next to me and she says, guess what?

[00:03:43] Lorrie: Miss Lori, I got rid of an elephant outta my basement this week. I thought, oh my gosh, they were here. They heard me, they were listening. So that’s how it started. So the first one is about excuses. Accountability. Second one is called little white flies [00:04:00] and it’s about honesty taken from it’s just a little white lie.

[00:04:04] Lorrie: And the third one is called. I am beautiful too. And it’s about a white peacock who doesn’t think he’s beautiful because he has no color. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a white peacock, but they are gorgeous. They’re

[00:04:17] Ryan: stunning. I have not. But I gotta go back to the first one because I can read your first book somewhat, and the only reason is in the coaching practice that I do.

[00:04:27] Ryan: I mostly deal with attorneys, doctors. And pilots, but lately, as I put more video out and more content, I’m getting younger people coming to me and saying, Hey, I want to be an entrepreneur. And I was speaking to this young gentleman, and I say, young, he’s probably guessing maybe 22, maybe 25 on the high end.

[00:04:49] Ryan: And he just sees so much pressure. Social media, his friends, and what he described as never lost in life. And what I mean that is he always showed up and he always got a trophy. And I think that’s part of the excuses. I think that I think your book ties very well into that and I never could relate to it because.

[00:05:11] Ryan: You and I both didn’t grow up in a generation where we won all the time. We struggled, and we lost. And this young man basically told me that he thinks he has to become an entrepreneur to succeed. And it’s the only way that he’s gonna be happy. And my first question is why, and he went on a long diatribe, and we won’t go there.

[00:05:33] Ryan: But the gist of it is. Pressure from the internet pressure from his family pressure, from his friends in pressure, from life in general, because right now being an entrepreneur on social media is the in thing. So I first asked him, are you willing to live on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? He looked and this was over a zoom call.

[00:05:54] Ryan: I wish I recorded it. I didn’t ask and I didn’t record it. And he looked at me like I was crazy. And I said, [00:06:00] guess what? First three years that I was an entrepreneur, I was living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Yeah. And it’s just, I think

[00:06:09] Lorrie: for me was kinda, yeah, and for me it was the same thing.

[00:06:12] Lorrie: I did this big girl corporate job and I did it for a long time and it paid the bills and, but I just got so tired of the rat race that. I didn’t have a choice that is what I had to do. And so when I finally took that leap and decided I really love this author stuff. I really love speaking to people and getting out, but it wouldn’t pay bills.

[00:06:37] Lorrie: Like you said, it wouldn’t pay the bills. So it took me years and years to kind. Want to do something other than what I was doing, something more on the creative side, vice I’m. I can be very analytical. That’s that’s what my career was, but it wasn’t fun for me.

[00:06:55] Ryan: And this young gentleman has skills.

[00:06:57] Ryan: He’s doing something in tech. And I don’t remember. [00:07:00] He has some skills that he can turn his passion into money, but it’s the concept of I’ve gotta go do it because I have to make money. And I said, that’s not gonna work. It just it’s hard to be able to just go after it, just for money. It has to be something you’re passionate about and willing to.

[00:07:20] Ryan: Sacrifice a lot of things in your life that most others won’t. And then backing back up to what you just said you were working in corporate America, did corporate America. From your standpoint I have two options. One did corporate America teach you how to fish or two kept you fed.

[00:07:39] Lorrie: Corporate America kept me fed.

[00:07:41] Ryan: And so do you think that transition from when you said, okay, I’m done with corporate America and I’m gonna start writing, do you think you were prepared because ultimately you are going into entrepreneurship you’re becoming your own boss. Do you think you had the skills to transition from being fed every two weeks or how you got [00:08:00] paid to?

[00:08:01] Ryan: Okay, now I’ve got to. Fish and survive on my own.

[00:08:05] Lorrie: I think my case is a little different because what I ended up doing is I went to work for nonprofit. So that gave me, I, I really stepped down the amount of time that I had to work and the pressure and the stress. And I went to a different type of work that was much easier for me to focus on other things.

[00:08:26] Lorrie: The big sacrifice for me was a paycheck, to be honest with you. I had to decide that I wanted this bad enough that I would take a different job that didn’t take so much out of me, my, for O for years in corporate. They owned me. They, I just, I didn’t really have time to do an awful lot of anything else.

[00:08:47] Lorrie: And so now I’m working, I actually work for a nonprofit, but now I have the time to write and I have time to blog and I have time to podcast and I have time to do all those other things. So I guess my world was a, I’ve done it in a little bit of a hybrid way, but I did work for small business. So as far as so I did the corporate.

[00:09:09] Lorrie: Piece of it, the Boeings and the big companies. And then I moved that to a small business, small contractor for the government doing the same work, but but working for a small business. So I would say that probably prepared me better than anything else. To be able to launch off on my own.

[00:09:27] Ryan: And I think you, you know how you said you’re doing this as in a hybrid.

[00:09:30] Ryan: I think that’s great because it’s also given you an opportunity to learn how to fish on the other side. Yeah. And you’re honing your skills and so forth. And it’s a safety net. I’ve had, prior to my businesses I have today, I had two failed businesses. And if I went back and wanted to change a bunch of stuff, one of the things I would’ve done is have more money in the.

[00:09:53] Ryan: And potentially transition out to a lesser role in corporate America. Like you did to be able to [00:10:00] allow myself to transition to full-time fishing. And people think it’s funny as an analogy, but it truly is, oh, I was fat and happy in corporate America making, yes, a very large salary and not having to worry about a thing to go into where uhoh, I gotta learn how to fish and also go put food on my table.

[00:10:17] Ryan: Otherwise I don’t. And a lot of people don’t realize that and it’s hard. And I really think your book is like really starting on that piece is your life you’re in control of your life. And you let things in that control you. And it also ties into change. If you’re unhappy in what you’re doing in life, whether it be personal business, whatever you have the power to change, you just have to be willing to do it and go through the agony and pain because there’s gonna be failures in.

[00:10:44] Lorrie: And you’re responsible. Ultimately you are responsible, so you can stay in the basement with whatever’s in there, or you can get up and do something. But the same thing with, as you were just mentioning the, learning, the learning curve of it all, you’ve gotta go out and find that [00:11:00] information.

[00:11:01] Lorrie: You nobody’s gonna wrap it up in a nice little package and drop it in your lap and say, okay, here you go. This is what you need to learn to be successful. You’ve gotta be willing to, you’ve gotta be willing to get out there and just try

[00:11:11] Ryan: And I think we’ve lost that in some aspects of future generations, because they see the instant gratification in social media and the internet to where they think everybody’s an overnight success like Gary V and Elon Musk or whoever you wanna put out there.

[00:11:27] Ryan: That’s on social media. They don’t realize all the years of struggle and pain that they go. To make change. And I think that’s really cool that we’re tying that all together with your book, because it’s truly a match because it is your life is what you make it, and you let these elephants into the room to control it and it takes over.

[00:11:48] Lorrie: It. Yeah, absolutely. I, this is really funny how it ties into exactly what you’re saying. I, a friend of mine, she worked for a large corporation and I’d given her, the first book and I was all excited about it. And [00:12:00] she actually has her new hires. She’s HR manager for a very large department of defense company.

[00:12:08] Lorrie: And she has them read why there is an elephant in my basement? And they talk about accountability. And I just thought that was hysterical.

[00:12:18] Ryan: That’s cool though. What do you get, has she told you any type of feedback or what happens?

[00:12:24] Lorrie: She just told me that she has, ’em read it and they talk about it and they just talk about being, being accountable for what you do and that you need to own your stuff.

[00:12:35] Lorrie: So I’ve got, haven’t gotten any more feedback than

[00:12:37] Ryan: that. That’s cool. That is really cool that, that’s being put out there. Your child, your children’s book has now become part of a very large defense contractor that you have to pat yourself on the back a little bit and say, Hey.

[00:12:50] Ryan: I’m doing well with that. You just,

[00:12:51] Lorrie: you just can’t, you just can’t dream this stuff

[00:12:53] Ryan: up really? no, but these are the wins that you want to see in your [00:13:00] entrepreneur or small business journey that you take along. And how I, I gotta ask before we go onto the second book, how does it make you feel when she called you and said, Hey, I want to do this.

[00:13:11] Ryan: What was your first reaction?

[00:13:12] Lorrie: My first reaction was, Hey, somebody gets it. You know that it’s not just this little elephant with a pink Tutu running around in my head and me trying, trying to give you a message or trying to convey something. Sometimes we have these ideas and even though they make sense to us, we don’t know if they’re really gonna be make sense to other people, or if we can present it in a.

[00:13:36] Lorrie: To make sense to other people. And I think that was that was one of the moments where I thought, wow, okay, maybe this is something special that I can do. A lot of times, if you have a gift, you don’t realize you have a gift because it’s just normal to you. And so getting that feedback is always super

[00:13:53] Ryan: important.

[00:13:54] Ryan: And, the thing is you’re not forcing your gift or your passion. It came to you [00:14:00] naturally. And I think that’s where the difference is. From this, these younger generations that they’re trying to force themselves into, I’ve gotta be a to sensation or Instagram or whatever the case is instead of just trying to find what naturally comes to them.

[00:14:13] Ryan: It just it’s lost, it’s gone. They

[00:14:16] Lorrie: need to, they need to go out and find. Where their gifts are not be so pigeonholed on what they want their gift to be. I never thought that I’d be a writer that was never ever on the radar. Had

[00:14:31] Ryan: no idea. I never thought I was gonna be a podcast host twice over

[00:14:37] Ryan: Yeah. So here I am. So we’re both in the same vote but do you think before we get to the next book, do you think, because the younger generations are being pigeonholed into what they think they need to do, that they don’t have the ability to go out and search and either succeed or fail from that because they don’t know, they.

[00:14:55] Ryan: Taught that growing up or am I stretching there?

[00:14:58] Lorrie: No, I think so. I think there’s a lot of that comes up with people who don’t really spend enough time trying to figure out and develop who they really are. They just fall in line with what’s cool or what’s current, and they don’t take the time to say, but I really like this, I knew I didn’t wanna be a corporate guru, but. I knew that. I, people are mean to me. I’m, I’m gotten sensitive, but that’s where I ended up, and I did that for years, but I, I don’t know. I think we really need to focus a little bit less on what we think looks successful and look more about where we’re passionate and where we’re happy.

[00:15:33] Lorrie: What would really make me happy? Is this working man, we work a long time.

[00:15:38] Ryan: We do, and we work all those years to retire and then enjoy a few years. And that’s it. I don’t know. I don’t know whose quote is, but it just basically works for five years. Like no one else will, so you can live the rest of your life.

[00:15:50] Ryan: No one will, and it’s just it just resonates with me if you’re willing to really bust your hump for five, six years, And do well at it. You’ll live the rest of your life. Like [00:16:00] no one else will because you’ll have the freedom to do what you wanna do. And it’s, yeah. It’s amazing how that is missed through just life in society.

[00:16:09] Ryan: And I’m not just talking about generations because there are people all around that just don’t believe that. And it’s okay that’s why you’re at today where you’re at today, and you’re comfortable. And when your comfortable breaks, what are you gonna do?

[00:16:20] Lorrie: Absolutely. I talked to somebody once, and they gave this cool analogy.

[00:16:24] Lorrie: He said, we’ve got lunch, lunchbox employees. And if you’re a lunchbox employee, you’re the guy that gets up in the morning. You make your lunch, put it in your lunchbox, go to work, do your thing, and come home. And that’s a lot, you’re not really striving for something extra.

[00:16:40] Lorrie: You’re not really striving for. In retirement, you just go to work, and a lot of people are happy doing that, but a lot of people are not happy doing that.

[00:16:50] Ryan: there is, but they don’t try to make that change. And that’s crazy. I had a gentleman on about a month ago.

[00:16:55] Ryan: He was an NFL veteran, ten years, 12 years, something like that. And he used the analogy, and I keep using it. There are climbers, which people want to change. And there are people that are campers that are comfortable, and he uses the analogy of are you, what’s gonna be harder to fix you’re comfortable when it breaks, or when you decide that you’re going to move into your new world and become a climber.

[00:17:17] Ryan: And it, that just, it just resonated here, and it’s wow, that’s pretty powerful that you just look at that and you. The comfortable is going to be as difficult as the new world. So why not just put yourself in the new world and become a climber?

[00:17:32] Lorrie: Yeah. Yeah. I like

[00:17:34] Ryan: that. That’s cool. Yeah. All right.

[00:17:36] Ryan: Second book. Let’s talk about that. I’m sure we can go. We can digress on that one too.

[00:17:40] Lorrie: The second book was act is sassy. Actually. It’s little white flies. It’s about a piglet and it was a really fun book to write because all the food items in the book begin letter P all the names begin to peep.

[00:17:54] Lorrie: And it’s just a fun book, but it’s about Piper, the piglet with a little honesty problem. He doesn’t tell the truth all the time, and the consequence is that whoever he’s not telling the truth to doesn’t wanna hang out with anymore. So when he tells a lie, he gathers a fly.

[00:18:13] Lorrie: And then the fly starts buzzing around his head, and his friends don’t want to be around him because he has flies around him. So he realizes that he’s gathering all these flies, and he needs to make a change. There’s gotta be something different. And he realizes he needs to go back and apologize to the people he was not honest with.

[00:18:31] Lorrie: And then he realized at the end that the truth is. It is the way to go. So it, it was just a fun, it was a fun book that the funny thing about that book is that, of course, be new to all this. You don’t know what you’re doing, you’re just going for it. And I wrote it with six piglets. So there was Piper piglet and his five piglet sisters.

[00:18:54] Lorrie: Oh my gosh. Proofing a book like that. Cuz you’ve got six books running all six [00:19:00] piglets running all. They were like running a muck in my head. I could not wait to get that book done. I had these piglets running around crazy in my head.

[00:19:07] Ryan: So that was fun. So how do we take the analogy from that is, the little white lies.

[00:19:12] Ryan: For me, I get it. There are just so many things we can unwrap there. So let’s go down a little bit of a rabbit hole is, oh, that’s just life in general. And we can just go back to social media and all that stuff. Are those little white lies? I’m guessing so, but I don’t know those people’s lives, so I can’t say yes or no.

[00:19:30] Lorrie: So everybody has a different opinion of a little white lie. Isn’t the white lie really a lie. or is it just an exaggeration is an exaggeration of something a lie, or is it just an exaggeration? I guess that’s a, I guess that’s up to you to figure out what is acceptable and what isn’t

[00:19:47] Ryan: acceptable.

[00:19:49] Ryan: Does the book put that in, I don’t know, tranches or defines it, or you just leave it open for

[00:19:54] Lorrie: interpretation. I leave that open. Really what the book is talking about is that people don’t like to be around people who are dishonest. And that dishonesty is really.

[00:20:05] Lorrie: Off-putting and, let’s just tell the truth, sometimes, I get it. Sometimes the truth is harder than a lie, but let’s just tell the truth; it’s okay. When we exaggerate, I think sometimes people will exaggerate the truth because they want their story to be bigger and better.

[00:20:18] Lorrie: But it’s still just a story, and it’s okay to just tell the truth. I’m not gonna like you any less. If you walked two miles and you tell me you walked 10

[00:20:29] Ryan: right. I’m still gonna like you. Yeah. I get it. I’m trying to relate back to it and some of the things I’ve heard on this journey and it’s I don’t know why you’d wanna.

[00:20:39] Ryan: Make it any different? I guess I’m more of a realistic person. And when it comes to that, in the sense of, I’ll just tell you how it is. And from my perspective, at least for me too. And some people don’t like that they’re put off by it, and I’ve learned from it. Social media and I don’t use social media to amplify my message.

[00:20:58] Ryan: It’s more about telling [00:21:00] a story and the stories a lot about me and my struggles. Even though I spent 25 years in the financial industry, I had financial struggles myself, and living paycheck to paycheck happened truthful lots of debt, hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt that got paid off.

[00:21:15] Ryan: And people don’t want to hear that, and they think it’s an exaggeration. And I tell ’em, I can show you my bank accounts. If that’s what you’re looking for and it’s just, I don’t get why, when you’re truly honest about something, people think that you potentially could go the other direction and say that it’s exaggerating the truth.

[00:21:30] Lorrie: But you’re being honest.

[00:21:34] Ryan: So that, I brutally honest. So sometimes for just embarrassed. Yeah, I was embarrassed. Yeah,

[00:21:40] Lorrie: Yeah. This, I think this is definitely the second book is definitely. You don’t dive as deep as what you can do in the first book. It’s just a little piglet that he just bends the truth.

[00:21:53] Lorrie: Somebody says, did you eat that cookie? And he says, no, not me, but he is got crumbs on his face, and then people [00:22:00] don’t like that, cuz he’s blaming his stuff on other people,

[00:22:02] Ryan: Not to spoil the end, but. Does he actually learn and actually change his ways?

[00:22:08] Lorrie: We’re assuming he does at the end. So at the very end, his very first lie in the book was his mother; all the piglets have a job. His mother asked the piglets if they had done their jobs. And he said, yes, but he had not done his job. And his job was. To take the trash out and put the lid on. He did not put the lid on.

[00:22:30] Lorrie: So this is where the flies came from. So we go full circle to the end of the book and he apologizes to everybody. He has lied to and then he goes out and he puts the lid on the trash can. So we’re assuming yes. He learned his lesson.

[00:22:45] Ryan: Okay. We’re getting there, go to a Piper. So the third book, let’s talk about that.

[00:22:51] Lorrie: The third book is my favorite right now. It’s go figure it’s special. It, it really digs deep [00:23:00] into peer pressure and feeling like we’re not okay, or we’re not enough, or, you’ve got this. A white peacock is one of the most beautiful things ever. It’s not an albino peacock.

[00:23:14] Lorrie: It is a white peacock. It’s a white bird. And when it opens up it’s just, it looks like lace. It’s just gorgeous. And so his name is lb and his name is lb because he is not. And albino, that would be a little Lori that’s because I’m quirky. And yeah, I’ve got a dry sense of humor, so that, that will.

[00:23:36] Lorrie: You’ll find a lot of that here and there. But so he goes through the zoo and he thinks everybody’s beautiful, but he doesn’t think he’s beautiful. And so he goes through the wishing lake and he just wishes that he’s beautiful. And so every time he goes to see one of his friends in the zoo, he starts taking on their color because he thinks they’re beautiful.

[00:23:55] Lorrie: As he goes through the zoo he just becomes this hot mess. He’s just a [00:24:00] wreck. And he doesn’t look like this beautiful white peacock anymore at all. He’s just a mess. So he goes to the wise white snow owl and says, I want it to be beautiful. And I just don’t look anything like myself.

[00:24:13] Lorrie: And the owl says I’ll be, you’re most beautiful when you’re just, you. So he walked away and just thought about that a little bit. And the next day he goes over to the wishing lake and he looks at his reflection and he says, I am beautiful too. And I think it’s just a story about realizing that I don’t need to be like you.

[00:24:36] Lorrie: And I have my own path and I have my own, whether it’s physical or emotional or intellect, I’m my own person. I don’t need to be like everyone else to be beautiful. And that book has been really well received. People love it. It

[00:24:52] Ryan: relates very well to what has been going on for the last 24 months.

[00:24:57] Ryan: Yeah. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of that shift. [00:25:00] Wow. Look at that. You’re on top of the shift.

[00:25:04] Lorrie: Lucky I dunno if the next one’s gonna be on top of the ship,

[00:25:07] Ryan: but who knows? The, you think about it. We’re back to I’m back to social media, but that’s everything.

[00:25:13] Ryan: You’re the you are an original and why not be proud of your self out of yourself in who you are? And there’s so much, we could go down, multiple rabbit holes on this because it ultimately boils down to is self-esteem again, winning all the time. And it’s you don’t get to become the person that you are without struggles in life.

[00:25:34] Ryan: And it’s just, it’s amazing that people struggle with

[00:25:37] Lorrie: that piece. I think social media has made everybody. I think not everybody, but that’s a, that’s a generalization, but I think it has made people think that they need to be special. Like outwardly special. I have to prove to you that I am something and whatever [00:26:00] happened to the word average, I’m just an average person just going through life.

[00:26:05] Lorrie: Trying to find things that I love. And, but instead, we’re all just working so hard to be something maybe that.

[00:26:13] Ryan: we’re not, that we’re not. Yeah. And I saw, I can’t remember where the article I found it at. It was sometime this week that someone was talking about you, and all of us are gone.

[00:26:24] Ryan: And it’s basically the whole you piece of just being, you have left because of everything that’s happened, social media, internet, pandemic, whatever. They’re blaming everything in just the divisiveness of, unfortunately, a culture right now. And this person was talking about. it’s okay to be you, but it’s not okay to be something that you’re not because it will ultimately lead you down a path you don’t want to be on.

[00:26:48] Ryan: And you need to realize that it’s okay to sit down and say, I need to figure out who I am. Yeah. And then I’ll start putting it out there. And it was very well written. I and I don’t know where it’s at. It was in one of the business journals. I was reading something. It was an op-ed or something, but it’s okay to be just the way he wrote it.

[00:27:05] Ryan: It’s amazing that we’re not as a society okay. With that.

[00:27:08] Lorrie: Absolutely.

[00:27:09] Ryan: It’s it’s frustrating to say the least. So is this book out already, too? Yes.

[00:27:14] Lorrie: This, yeah, this that one was the third one. I am beautiful too. Is the third book that was released. So that one went out in 2019.

[00:27:27] Ryan: And it’s well received. We’ll talk a little bit about your business really quick, and then we’ll go from there, but, okay. How do you typically get, and I, this is me asking questions, cuz I have no idea. You’re an author. How do you get your books out to people, what channels do you do and how, and then I’m going to ask the question: marketing.

[00:27:44] Ryan: That’s key. It’s. It’s all part of business and learning how to fish. So I’m ready.

[00:27:49] Lorrie: Okay. The marketing piece is the worst. That’s I haven’t figured that out yet. I’m working on that, plus when I’m working full time, trying to market [00:28:00] is hard and then you get a pandemic and you can’t go anywhere anyway.

[00:28:02] Lorrie: I would say, received means everybody that sees them, loves them. I will say that I’ve never had, I don’t know. Maybe people are just nice. They don’t tell me they don’t like ’em. I don’t know. But honestly, I, I. I have done very well for not knowing how to market. I don’t know how to market.

[00:28:18] Lorrie: I don’t I, it’s mostly word of mouth. I show ’em to people. They, and it’s networking. So I show ’em to someone and they show ’em to someone else. And that’s how I’ve done all of it.

[00:28:28] Ryan: And have you, are you self-published, are you working with a publisher?

[00:28:32] Lorrie: I am self-published. And there’s a reason for that.

[00:28:35] Lorrie: The reason is, remember I told you about the six piglets running around in my head. Yes, I have I have a vision of what they look like, and if you go traditional publishing, you give them their story. You’re basically selling them your story, and then they will illustrate it. But I love the creation of the books because I put of a lot of.

[00:28:54] Lorrie: Funny things in the pictures. And so I hire an illustrator and I do it myself and it’s. So it’s [00:29:00] just really fun for me. It’s part of the creative part I love to do. So I do self ping. That was quite the learning curve.

[00:29:07] Ryan: so I gotta ask the question. How difficult are you on? I think you’re on Amazon, right?

[00:29:13] Ryan: I am Facebook . So how difficult is that process?

[00:29:15] Lorrie: Getting on Amazon. Yes. Very easy. I publish I have a printer called Ingram sparks and Ingram sparks helps you put your stuff on Amazon. So it’s, that part was very easy.

[00:29:30] Ryan: So I’ve been I’ve had some other people on EV on my other podcasts that are publisher or not publishers authors.

[00:29:37] Ryan: And every time they launch a book. I get these emails that say, Hey, I need you to come in and write a review for my book, cuz it’s launching so we can get on the Amazon’s, best seller list, blah, blah, blah, and start driving traffic. Is that something you do? Yeah, I haven’t

[00:29:51] Lorrie: done any of that.

[00:29:53] Lorrie: Okay.

[00:29:53] Ryan: I probably should. Yeah. I know nothing about this industry. That’s why I’m asking. Yeah. I am

[00:29:58] Lorrie: probably not the person to [00:30:00] talk to about any of that. I just. I do content and get it out there. And at some point when I stop working full time, I will probably start doing more traveling and start figuring out how to do the marketing part right now.

[00:30:17] Lorrie: It’s just the writing part that I’m,

[00:30:19] Ryan: really. So if you had somebody listening to the show and they asked you for one wish, what would it be to help you grow your business?

[00:30:30] Lorrie: Teach me how to market .

[00:30:33] Ryan: Okay. And when you say market, it’s very broad because I’ve been I’m down your path with you I’ve learned for the past eight years.

[00:30:40] Ryan: No, by no means, am I an expert, but I think I’ve had my failures a lot to learn a lot about it. When you say marketing, are you talking about. It could be website optimization, SEO optimization, it’s social media. It’s putting out. Marketing is so broad. What would you want help with?

[00:30:56] Lorrie: Actually I think what I would like to do I think I would really [00:31:00] like to do some speaking. And so I think the books

[00:31:03] Lorrie: One of, one of my ideas is to use the book. For a pre Prenot speaker or a, or, so you’ve gotta, if you’ve got a speaker coming on, let’s say, let’s say Ryan, you’re going someplace to, to do a talk on Some kind of a business finance talk, about, about planning ahead or maybe retirement or the in the basement would be a great book to open with.

[00:31:24] Lorrie: It would just be fun to open with it. And so it would lead in, Hey, stop making excuses about saving for your retirement, so it would be really fun to just maybe hit the circuit. I think that would be a really good way to not only. Sell the books and get, I really just wanna get ’em out there cuz the messages are fun and I think they’re really good.

[00:31:47] Lorrie: They’re good help to sometimes open up discussion about some topics that people don’t talk about anymore.

[00:31:55] Ryan: So that would be fun. I know that all too well, because what I put out is not [00:32:00] sexy and many people don’t want to talk about it. And I too I struggle with marketing in the biggest piece that I’ve put to myself today.

[00:32:08] Ryan: Isn’t beginning of this year in January, I said, I’m gonna put out five videos a week on YouTube on some type of financial coaching, financial literacy housing market, whatever, give it a year and see what happens. So we’re six months into it. And it’s going. I could do better. So I’ll keep on going about it.

[00:32:26] Ryan: Have you ever thought about challenging yourself to something and I’m not saying video, I just something that challenge yourself to push you outta your comfort zone to help you learn some of the marketing.

[00:32:36] Lorrie: that’s so funny that you asked me that April 1st, I started a podcast and that’s the storytellers with the message is cool.

[00:32:45] Ryan: That’s what I was gonna ask. What’s the name, but you just told us yes.

[00:32:47] Lorrie: Storytellers with the message and it is. All about real life people, real stories. So right now I only have two guest storytellers at this point. But the idea is to get more people to tell [00:33:00] stories and they’re just more like experiences.

[00:33:02] Lorrie: And then at the end of it, you tell your story, whatever the story happens to be, and then at the end it’s but what’s your message. What did you learn from that experience? And that’s really the way I blog. That’s really the way I write kids books, same thing else in the basement. What’s the message.

[00:33:19] Lorrie: What did she learn from having an elephant in basement? You learn that you let her in, you gotta let her. Yeah, so that’s what I’m doing. And I promise myself, I would do one a week for a year and see if that made any kind of an impact as far as marketing for the books.

[00:33:34] Ryan: Awesome. And how’s it going so far?

[00:33:36] Lorrie: It’s going great, actually. Yeah, I’m really surprised I’ve got, I’m averaging a hundred views a month. Which think is pretty good to start

[00:33:46] Ryan: that’s to start I’ll be honest. I’ll share it here. When I started this podcast and chasing financial freedom, I averaged 18 downloads per episode, 18 1 8.

[00:33:57] Ryan: And the average out there for a podcast [00:34:00] is 25. So I said I’m below average. What do I do? I have to figure this out. And it’s been a journey. The website that we’re on pod match, is done great for me. I’m booked out till 2023 now. Awesome. I’ve got people, I’ve got people coming on that have millions of followers that I didn’t reach out to.

[00:34:18] Ryan: They found me. Yeah. And now I just, I’ve got more demand than what can be put out there. And we’re back to the, we’re back to our original conversation. I went after something I’m passionate about and I stuck to it and I figured it out. But in the end, it’s not about monetization. I’m not people always ask, are you gonna monetize?

[00:34:36] Ryan: And my response is I have no intentions. This is, these are my passion projects. It’s what I love to do. And I’m not working a day in my life when I’m doing this. So if it comes along great, I’m good if it doesn’t look great. But that’s no,

[00:34:48] Lorrie: I’m still learning for sure. It’s easy for me to tell a story.

[00:34:54] Lorrie: That, because I do that and I blog, and that’s how I do it. It’s harder for me to get someone else to tell a story because people want to come on my podcast to tell me either their whole life story or their whole, and that’s not what it is. It’s just a story that you would tell when you are meeting your buddies at the coffee shop, you walk in, you go, you are not gonna believe what happened to me.

[00:35:17] Lorrie: And you tell that story. Those are the stories I’m looking for. And I’m having a hard time getting people to understand that. So I need to work on my presentation and how the

[00:35:27] Ryan: pitch yeah. I need to work on and I’ll leave it with this or we’ll end here and then we’ll wrap it up here. Is, are you putting out video?

[00:35:37] Ryan: I’ve not seen very much video from you, so I’m just asking. No. Thought I’m not a, good looking guy, look at this. I need a haircut. I got all this gray and everything like that. But once I got over the fear of being in front of a camera and I wasn’t scared I did a lot of public speaking. I had to get in front of large groups while I worked in corporate America.

[00:35:57] Ryan: That doesn’t bother me. I just think that I’m just [00:36:00] average, Joe. So I’ve gotten over that, but once you get out there and start putting videos short three to five minute videos about what you’re doing, and you’re not trying to sell anything, it takes. People start coming into the fold and they’re like, wow, you got a message.

[00:36:13] Ryan: And it’s just, and that’s

[00:36:14] Lorrie: where, that’s where I wanna go. I don’t wanna do my podcast. I don’t mind saying, Hey, here’s my friend, Ryan, this is what he does. And he’s got a story for us. But these people I’m talking to want to just get on my show and sell and sell and sell.

[00:36:30] Lorrie: So I’ve done like 13 interviews at this point, and they’re not what I’m looking for.

[00:36:37] Ryan: so if anybody’s, when someone’s listening, when this comes out, it, Lori’s looking for some help. We can help. Yes. We’ll make sure we put some out there and don’t be bashed reach out to me.

[00:36:47] Ryan: I’m I love telling stories and

[00:36:51] Lorrie: I would love for you to come tell a story. I would love it. I’m sure you’ve got great experience.

[00:36:55] Ryan: I’ve got a hundred thousand dollars story that would I’ll probably even cry. [00:37:00] It’s a hundred thousand. It’s a big deal. But no, but. There’s a group that I follow on YouTube.

[00:37:04] Ryan: And I think it’s called, I think I know it’s called think media and the guy talks about just one thing. You can’t put something out there until you hit record. So until you get the record button, you can’t put anything out there and he says, until you do that and you just start doing it, it’ll never happen.

[00:37:24] Ryan: So I’ll leave you with that. If you wanna start recording video, I’ll be willing to, give you some feedback by no means, am I a professional? We’re on riverside.fm and I’m gonna move up to a couple other things and we’re just gonna keep going. But it’s an evolution for human beings.

[00:37:39] Ryan: That’s what we do well, and that’s

[00:37:41] Lorrie: kind of circling right back to what we started with at the very beginning of our con of our conversation is I am not look, I’m looking for average normal people that are okay. Just telling me their normal everyday story and the lesson they learned from it, that’s it, let’s just be real people and share our [00:38:00] stories and our life’s experiences.

[00:38:01] Ryan: That’s it’s just being real. I don’t right. For me average, I don’t even look at average. I’m I don’t consider myself average. I’m just who I am and I’m right. I. I am comfortable in who I am and that’s where I’m at. So that’s just where that’s where we’re going. So love it to wrap everything up.

[00:38:18] Ryan: Where could the listeners find you? Okay.

[00:38:21] Lorrie: There’s a couple places. You can email me storytellers with a message.com. You can find me there. Okay. Or you can go out to my website. which is www Laurie D grant it’s L O R I E D G R a nt.com. And that has my blogs, has my books and a little bit about me there.

[00:38:45] Ryan: Cool. We’ll also put it in the show notes, so it’ll be linked there and we’ll link to that. So we’ll do that. And then by the time this comes out, cuz it’s gonna be a few weeks. Maybe you’ll have a video that we can tie into it that could share some of your experiences. And then people [00:39:00] can see that also.

[00:39:01] Ryan: And we can put it out on social. That

[00:39:03] Lorrie: sounds like

[00:39:03] Ryan: homework. You giving me some sounds like it sounds like homework. Here’s my phone right here. You can just start taking, you can start taking video. It work on that. We all have a very powerful camera in our back pocket and it’s our, it’s called our phone.

[00:39:16] Ryan: These are shooting 5, 10, 12 megapixels. That’s better than anything I had when I first started.

[00:39:23] Lorrie: Absolutely. That’s

[00:39:25] Ryan: absolutely. Laura, thanks, Ryan. You were welcome. Thank you for coming on. It’s been a blast and I look to have you back on and talk more about this.

[00:39:31] Lorrie: I would love to, and I’m going to take you up on your offer.

[00:39:35] Ryan: Cool. I’m more than willing to come on. Okay. Sounds good. All right. Thank you. Thanks, bye.