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Brandon Held - Life is Crazy
This podcast is designed to help with suicide prevention. That is the #1 goal! This is also a Podcast of perseverance, self-help, self-Improvement, becoming a better person, making it through struggles and not only surviving, but thriving! In this Podcast the first 25 episodes detail my life's downs and ups. A story that shows you can overcome poverty, abusive environments, drug and alcoholic environments, difficult bosses, being laid-off from work, losing your family, and being on the brink of suicide. Listen and find a place to share life stories and experiences. Allow everyone to learn from each other to reinforce our place in this world. To grow and be better people and help build a better more understanding society.
The early podcast episodes are a story of the journey of my life. The start from poor, drug and alcohol stricken life, to choices that lead to success. Discusses my own suicide ideations and attempt that I struggled with for most of my life. Being raised by essentially only my mother with good intentions, but didn't know how to teach me to be a man. About learning life's lessons and how to become a man on this journey and sharing those lessons and experiences with others whom hopefully can benefit from my successes and failures.
Hosting guests who have overcome suicide attempts/suicide ideations/trauma/hardships/difficult situations to fight through it, rise up, and live their best life. Real life stories to help others that are going through difficult times or stuck without a path forward, understand and learn there is a path forward.
Want to be a guest on Brandon Held - Life is Crazy? Send Brandon Held a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/brandonheld
Brandon Held - Life is Crazy
Episode 54: We all have a second act waiting to be discovered. Ron Kinschert
Ron Kinsherf's unexpected journey from a 30-year career in IT sales to becoming a children's book author at 63 proves it's never too late to discover your true calling. After reaching a breaking point with corporate stress, a simple conversation with his wife and an observation of his grandson playing led to a completely new creative path writing stories about ant colonies that mirror human experiences.
• Growing up in Quincy, Illinois after losing his father at age 5, Ron was raised by his working mother who became the community's first psychiatric nurse
• Childhood dream of becoming a sports broadcaster like Jack Buck led to a communications degree and brief career in radio
• Transitioned to IT sales for financial stability while keeping creative outlets like play-by-play announcing on the side
• Found the courage to quit his stressful career at 63 when his wife simply said "Just quit, we'll figure something out"
• Created the "Baker's Patio" series about an ant colony facing human-like challenges after watching his grandson stomp on anthills
• Has published 8 children's books with 13 more written and ready for publication
• Focuses on subtle life lessons in his stories that stimulate conversation between adult readers and children
• Discovered passion for promoting literacy, refusing to visit classrooms without bringing books to give away
• Advises finding something you enjoy that makes others smile, even if you can't change careers completely
Visit https://papatellmeabook.com/ and use password "podcast" to get a free e-book copy of Ron's latest book "Adorable" about sibling jealousy.
Go to https://www.brandonheld.com and subscribe to my podcast and support the show!
Want to be a guest on Brandon Held - Life is Crazy? Send Brandon Held a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/brandonheld
BrandonHeld.com iPad drawing for Life Coaching clients
Welcome. Welcome back to Brandon Held. Life is Crazy. Finally back in the studio after a nice vacation that I took with my wife for her birthday and we had a good time. And it's time to get back to doing what I love and that is podcasting and introducing you to people that are motivational and help you in life and give you new information and just help you improve and be better people. And today we have Ron Kinsherf on the show. How you doing today, Ron?
Speaker 1:I am. I'm great, really looking forward to having a chat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, looking forward to having you here and talking about it as well. I'll let you introduce yourself to people here in a little bit, but I just want to tell people you find your passion late in life by becoming a kid's author, and we'll get to that part of your life later on in the show. But if you want, just tell people about yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm 63. I live in Quincy, illinois. It's a small little town, I'd say it's where Illinois is pregnant, on the Mississippi River, it's where Illinois is the widest and it's where Iowa, missouri and Illinois meet. So it's a town of about 40, 45,000. So this is where I was born. That's where I continue to live. I've been married for over 40 years, got married early and got into a career of IT, consulting, it sales, and was pretty successful with it. And then, about four years ago, I decided to make a pivot. I wasn't as happy as I thought I should be and after a conversation with my wife, we decided okay, let's just hang it up and we'll figure something else out to do. And that's the short story of how I became a kid's author, basically. So I found a passion for something that I never wasn't even on my bingo cart, wasn't even remotely close to my death or something I was thinking about doing. But I found that I'm good at it. I found I enjoy it and it's what I feel like I'm on this earth to do.
Speaker 2:I'm good at it, I enjoy it and it's what I feel like I'm on this earth to do. I can identify with you differently because podcasting was not something that was even on my radar even as much as 2024. Yeah, but here we are in 2025. I'm doing it, I love it and I don't plan on stopping anytime soon. I totally get what you're saying, like an unexpected gem that you found. So you know what we do on this show. We like to talk life story. We like to talk how you got from point A to point Z, and so let's just start with your childhood, like where you grew up. What was that like?
Speaker 1:It was different than all my friends. I can tell you that much because, like I said, I was born in this little town. But if you go back a few years, my mom and dad moved from out East. They were born my mom was born in Manhattan, my dad was born in Brooklyn. So they moved out to our area here because my dad got transferred, basically. But a few years after we landed here he was diagnosed with cancer and the age of five and a half he passed away. So it was my mom and six kids at that point, and this was in the late sixties and I think everybody knows what was going on in the late sixties. So I had four older brothers and sisters and a younger brother at that time.
Speaker 1:Now my mom was getting pressure from her family out East to move back because back in those days women they were stay at home moms. I was the only person who had a mom that actually left the house and went to work. So I was the first latchkey kid that I knew of. So my mom ended up going back to school and getting a degree. She was the first psychiatric nurse, ironically, in our community. So that opened up a whole new world to our family because she almost had an extended family of the patients that people she were taking care of that would call all hours of the day seeking help and advice from her. So it wasn't unusual for her to get a phone call and then leave, like at eight o'clock, nine o'clock at night, just to go help somebody that was suicidal or in a bar causing troubles and stuff like that. My brothers have stories of driving her there and just sitting outside the bar hoping everything would go smoothly and she'd come back.
Speaker 1:So that was my childhood, was I was alone a lot that's my memory at least and spending a lot of time with neighbors and in community, if that makes sense, because there's four families in our neighborhood that all looked out after each other. Another family lost their patriarch. They had eight kids, so we bounced around a lot taking care of each other and we didn't know that at the time, but I'm sure there's a lot of phone calls going on in the background and say hey, can you watch Ron, he's got, I got to go grocery shopping or whatever. Can he come over and play, and that type of thing. I don't know what president said, but it takes a community to raise a kid. That was definitely true back in the late sixties in my neighborhood.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those were different times, for sure. You're just a little older than me in about 11 years and the same thing for me growing up, where all of us kids would be different areas, different houses, different moms telling us what to do. Didn't matter they were our mom or not, they still told us what to do. We listen to them different times.
Speaker 1:You don't really see that as much anymore now you always gravitate, always gravitate to the house.
Speaker 2:It's best kool-aid, yeah that's what we did we gravitated to the house had the most like freedom, the least restrictive rules gotcha, gotcha. We gravitated to the house had the most like freedom, the least restrictive rules.
Speaker 1:We were born to the Kool-Aid. At that standpoint, yeah, the rules. Yeah, the rules are all basically the same, but there was a strong Catholic. Our community is very Catholic and there's, like I said, we had six neighbors had eight. There's another neighbor with eight kids, so it was just one big community that we're looking out for each other.
Speaker 2:So did. When you were in that time frame, were you developing things that you liked? What made you feel like this is what I'm going to do, or this is what I'm going to be when I get out of high school, to help you make your next steps or next moves.
Speaker 1:I listened to a lot of baseball. I was a Cardinal fan and my family were Cardinal fans, so go out in the backyard and shoot hoops or do whatever. We did play wiffle ball. We always had the Cardinal game on the radio and Jack Buck was the play-by-play guy for the Cardinals for zillions of years and he's a Hall of Famer and I idolized the guy because he could paint the picture, he could tell the story of a baseball game and he had humor in it and he was never the star of the game. There's a lot of people that broadcast that have to be the star. So I wanted to be Jack Buck. When I grew up I remember doing play-by-play in my head. I remember doing play-by-play, watching games on TV, stuff like that. I was very sports oriented and wanted to do play-by-play. I wanted to get a job where I traveled with a team and do stuff like that. So that was out of high school. That's what I went to college for my degrees in radio and TV.
Speaker 2:My undergraduates in communications, because I do play by play. Completely different story, though. I was looking at getting out of the air force trying to figure out what I wanted to do with myself, and I was actually watching Marv Albert interview Michael Jordan and I thought here's just this regular guy standing there with Michael Jordan like the greatest basketball player on the planet and I was like, yeah, I want to do that. So I followed in that same footsteps, but mine didn't go anywhere. I didn't get anywhere. I got to call games and stuff during college. Outside of college. I never really got to get my play-by-play career going anywhere. I know how you feel there. And isn't his son, joe Buck, a football commentator?
Speaker 1:Joe started early. He did some games with the Cardinals early on and, yeah, he does everything on Fox. He's done the US Open golf, he's done World Series. He does Super Bowls. So, yeah, he followed in his dad's footsteps, although he's much more in a national scale than Jack ever was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I believe he's Troy Aikman's sidekick. Yes, he is for football. All right, that's cool. I didn't necessarily look up to a specific play by play guy, but there are a lot of great ones that I can think of over the years, just because I did pay attention to the play by play guy more than the color analyst, because the color analyst is just the former athlete talking about the game Anyway you went to college for that, and how did that go after college?
Speaker 1:I got a job in radio Locally here. I got lucky and so I was in talk radio for five years. I hosted a talk show, a sports talk show, did interviews. I was living the dream. That's what I wanted to do. I was living the dream. That's what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1:I was big into theater of the mind, but it was the stage of radio where stages were being sold. I was sold like four times in a five-year timeframe, so formats kept changing. I was doing talk radio completely. Then they would just play easy listening music where there was no talk. We could only talk for 30 seconds at a time, four times an hour. And then satellite radio was coming along with Larry King and stuff like that, so I was becoming obsolete. Then I was married and started having kids. I need to buy a house and live life and radio was not going to pay enough for me to do that. That's when I got into e-sales and I had a 30 plus year career of peddling products and consulting on business solutions and went pretty well. But I was able to still get some creative juices going because I still did play by play. So I did play by play like for 25 years around the area, so I still got to do that.
Speaker 2:So you started in radio, which is a way I never wanted to go. I wanted to go straight for TV, which is why I think mine never took off, because when I tried to go get hired at a TV studio where I lived, they always wanted me to sign these contracts where I would work behind the scenes as a comptroller for years before I would even try to be on TV. And it's just nothing I never had any interest in doing, so it just completely turned me off. Yeah, and that's just nothing. I never had any interest in doing, so it just completely turned me off, yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's what I had to do too. I was your low man on the totem pole and you're listening to people do play by play that you don't think are very good. And it got my third or fourth year. I was doing a hundred games a year and I wasn't traveling far, but I was on the road two days, three days a week during football and basketball seasons, and I at the time I loved it. I just loved the ability to tell us, especially the road games. I love being able to tell a story of what was going on to people and imagining that they're sitting at home basically listening to what I'm saying and then they're. They're basically every word I say is important to them because they have a rooting interest in what's going on. So I just really enjoyed that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I would say, more than anything, what took me out of it was I was with my who became second wife. At the time she wasn't my wife yet, but it was the hours she just was like I can't have a relationship with you and see you if you're going to be going into a station at two o'clock and not getting home till midnight and I'm working a day shift, we'll never see each other.
Speaker 1:Then my wife. She got it. She knew that's what I wanted to do and when she was a basketball widow. I was talking to somebody the other day and I don't think we've ever gone on a trip from the months October to February. We've always been here. So if there was a trip, it was going someplace in Iowa to spend the night because I had a game on Friday that I broadcast on Saturday and come out home.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I didn't get to live that dream. But, side note, in about a month I'm starting another podcast with my best friend covering Ohio State football. I'm looking forward to that. I will get to do it to some extent here in the near future. But anyway, you got into sales. You're getting to live your creative juices on the side, but eventually you said that before we get there, let's just talk about the highs and lows of sales. What were the really good parts about it and what were the parts that you just couldn't really care for?
Speaker 1:The selfish part of the money was the best. Obviously I was able to make a living and be comfortable and get my kids where they needed to go. It just was allowed my wife and I to buy a house and just that typical stuff that you want your family to have. But what I really enjoyed was the relationships, just getting them going out and talking to people. I like to talk and there's a lot of people who are my customers, that are friends today, that I've now known for 30 some odd years around here, and then it's also satisfying to be able to provide somebody's having a problem, come up with a solution and it solves their problem. So that part I really enjoyed.
Speaker 2:And was that so? Was this like a cold calling type of job?
Speaker 1:It was the start, yeah, and I hated that aspect of it because you got to remember my degrees in radio and TV. I knew nothing about what I was doing and my boss was somebody who went to high school and grade school with him. He just said just go out and talk to people, just meet people and say we can help you, and then go get somebody smarter than you to come in and help them. That was my job. In and help them, that was my job. I didn't claim to be. I picked up knowledge as I went along, but it was just a liaison between the smart people and the problem these guys had.
Speaker 1:Now you also have to remember this is before cell phones, before internet. Basically, the only operating system was DOS. There was no windows, there was no email. I don't even know if there's fax machines yet. So I got in. I got very lucky that I got in right when the explosion occurred. Most businesses didn't have PCs at that point. They're still doing all their accounting on pencil and paper. I was fortunate in that regard and I was able to build up some trust and kind of go from there.
Speaker 2:And also you have to give yourself credit for some skill and some ability to do things A lot of people can't do. A lot of people can't just approach people and have a conversation, knowing that essentially the pressure is on them to try to build that relationship. If you don't, then it's a wasted effort if you will, because now you have to move on to the next person. Some people just don't have that in them.
Speaker 1:That's very kind of you to say.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. I know people like that. I've done some sales jobs myself and I like to talk to people and build relationships with people and get to know people.
Speaker 1:I find getting to know people fascinating, which is why I love doing this right here and my philosophy was very simple just treat people like you want to be treated. Just be nice to people, and odds are. I wanted to make it hard for them to say no, but I've had people say r God, I would love to work with you but I just can't, and they would feel bad, they couldn't do it. Buy something from me, but it's their money. They can do with it as they see, but again in this tree, people and get back. I got so much business just by getting back to people that blew me away, so I'd get a. Like the biggest sale I ever got when I first started is I'm just curious, why did you buy from me? And the guy goes you got back to us, the other people didn't. Wow, this is pretty easy. So even if I didn't have an answer, I'd reach out and say hey, I'm still working on it, I'll get back to you when I can, and people really appreciated that.
Speaker 2:It's the golden rule life too. Unfortunately, not everyone gives you the same respect, so that can be frustrating sometimes but all you can do is what you can do right.
Speaker 1:Yep, there's only two things you can control your attitude and your effort. Everything else is out of your control.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so good lessons for young people. By the way, I'm sure you probably told your kids this growing up, but I told my kids all the time, like, you can't control what other people do. You can only control what you say and do. You can't control what other people say and do, because some of my kids had a hard time understanding that when they were little, because they were good, well-behaved kids and they didn't understand people that didn't behave that way or talk that way or act that way. So it was a lesson they had to learn for sure.
Speaker 1:And I really didn't get that and use it as a life principle. That might be too strong of a word, but until four years ago when I coach and it was a very uppity group that always complained about the refs and stuff like that and I started thinking about it. There's only two things in life you can control, and that's your effort and your attitude. And if you take care of those two things, everything else you take care of itself. And if you think about life, I can't control what you're going to ask me, I can't control your, but I control how I'm going to answer it. I control my attitude.
Speaker 1:And so I think if you're true to yourself, I think people hopefully will be true to you in response to that and life's too short to worry about that stuff You're going to make yourself so anxious and so stressed out about what your neighbor across the street thinks about how you cut your grass with the guy who flips you off the stoplight. You can't control that. He did that. You didn't do anything wrong. You just got to brush it off and off you go control that.
Speaker 2:He did that. You didn't do anything wrong. You just got to brush it off and off you go. Yeah, and usually people's frustration and rage towards you isn't really about you. It's about their own internal issues going on. So, yeah, definitely, the way people respond and act in situations is really just more about who they are and what they're about and what's going on inside it.
Speaker 2:It's not really directly attributed to you and who you are and sometimes people have a hard time seeing that. And when you get two people together that got both of those going on, then you know it turns into some of the horrible stupid things on tv or in videos. It always takes one level-headed person to prevent that. I'm 52. And I'm not saying I've never had verbal altercations with anyone or anything like that, because I played sports most of my life and I was in two branches of the military. I was in college. I played intramural sports in college and in the military. So stuff happens but at the end of the day I was always level-headed enough to prevent fisticuffs. I've never been in a fight in my life Never. And it's not because I'm a pussy or I back down or anything like that. It just never got to that point because at the end of the day, level heads prevailed and life went on.
Speaker 1:What I have found out is the people who try to start stuff up. If you communicate to them in a level headed way, they'll back down yeah, it's happened to me and it's happened to me a few times. And you just go hey, what's your name, I'm just curious what your name is and where you're from, just that type of stuff and it takes them. They get taken aback that you actually are trying to get to know them rather than spit back stuff at them about whatever the topic happens to be. And luckily for me, I haven't been hitting with a tennis racket or anything like that and these things are going on, but it seems to have worked out okay for so far. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the onus back on them.
Speaker 2:For sure. And you also are leading by example, right? You don't want to behave in a certain type of way and then go tell your kids to behave differently than how you behave. You want to lead by example, whether it's your kids or if you're supervising people or a coach, like you are now. Whatever the case is, I'm not going to say I'm perfect and I've done that every time.
Speaker 1:I've never been in a fight either, but the case is, I'm not going to say I'm perfect and I've done that every time. I've never been in a fight either. But there are instances where I and it's generally something that I feel it's just isn't right, and then I go off a little bit. That's why a lot of us aren't nobody's perfect.
Speaker 2:No, I definitely stepped up in some situations where I thought someone was being wronged and I was ready to fight If I had to. It just didn't go down that way. You got to correct injustices. I can't stand when I watch videos of people being abused or mistreated and others around see it happening and they just ignore it and let it happen Like that drives me crazy. I get it. Sometimes people have died in those situations because they interfered. That crosses people's minds and stuff like that. But we were just a better society when we looked out for each other.
Speaker 1:So I think cell phones is a lot. This is going to sound weird, but the fact people could pull out cell phones and record everything I think prevents a lot of them from getting involved, because they know what's going on is wrong, but they feel recording it is a step in the right direction. Yeah, maybe stop what's going on rather than just saying, hey, guys, settle down a little bit. What are we doing here?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it could be true too. One of my favorite superheroes is the Punisher.
Speaker 1:I feel like I got a little bit of him inside of me.
Speaker 2:I was not expecting that Was Superman when I was young. Now that I'm a military man, I love the Punisher. So you worked your way through your IT career and you had reached a point. 30 years is a long time. You'd reached a point where it just wasn't doing it for you anymore. So just talk us through that transition right there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I wasn't happy and I didn't know. I wasn't happy, if that makes sense, because I was just going through the same thing and I would wake up nervous and I worked remotely and I still would be nervous at my desk and just waiting for the next shoe to fall from management or whatever. I just got tired of these quotas and Terry, viewing my territory around ringing your next sales.
Speaker 1:I don't know, I can't make people do things and and so that'd been going on for a while. And then just one day at one night at supper, my wife and I were sitting there talking and she said just quit, we'll figure something out. You're serious? She goes. Yeah, this is not worth it, we'll be okay. She worked, we should be okay for a while. So that's what happened. So I just put in my two weeks and so the following Sunday or a couple Sundays later, we were just sitting around and people were bouncing ideas of my next step. And yeah, honestly, it's like bus driver or working in a restaurant or all these less stressful positions that.
Speaker 1:And then my daughter-in-law suggested why don't you think about writing kids books? I was like, why not? She goes, well, you play very creatively with the grandkids. And I'm like, okay, we do, and I I do tell them stories sometimes and they go down. And so I was like, okay, what's the next idea? Let's move on. And then the next Sunday I was outside grilling and my three-year-old grandson at the time was out back stomping on all the anthills and I'm just watching him destroy all these poor little ants homes and I got an idea for a story and that's how it all started. So I wrote a story, a picture book, about, from the ant's point of view, from having their anthills smashed. Yes, so I've created this community of ants that live underneath an older couple's brick patio and the problems they face, which are that mirror the things that we go through every day, and that's how I tell my stories.
Speaker 2:That is really cool. I don't have that in me. I don't think I could do something like that. Creativity is something I've always struggled with, but you wrote it and now you make this book that I'm sure you're feeling pretty good about after you read it. What makes you feel like, oh, this is so good, I should see if someone will pick this up and take it.
Speaker 1:That's the crazy part about this because to me it's no different than a comedian or a songwriter, because you just have people read it and everybody that knows me is going to say, Ron, that's really good. And then I wrote three or four of them and they go you should think about publishing these. So I go okay, I got nothing better to do. I'll look into it. I'll just publish a book. It'd be cool to have one. I did. I got the Baker's patio done and I just loved it. I loved the entire creative process. I loved working with the illustrators. I knew nothing about what I was doing, but I was able to get it on Amazon and off we go and I was able to sell them around here. And then I did another one, then I did another one. I kept getting all these ideas and actually, four and a half years later, I've got 21 stories about my aunt Connie on this laptop right here.
Speaker 1:I published eight of them, but I still got 13 more that I've written that are ready to go, because I keep running into things in life that would fit with Prince Andrew or whoever character I have in my colony. That's something he would go through and then his mom, the queen, would figure out a way to solve that problem. What I have discovered through this whole process is that I have a unique ability to tell stories. I didn't think there was anything unusual about what I was doing four years ago. I was just making stuff up like I always have, but apparently I'm pretty darn good at it. So I've heard that from enough people that I don't know that are in the industry and stuff like that, that I said you've got a gift for telling stories, and especially to kids. So that encouragement, yeah, has led me to be in situations at the gym or wherever I could be and just say you know what? That's something that always happens to people and there's a lesson to be learned there.
Speaker 1:An example of that is this past winter. I was reading to some kids at schools a school here in town and I lost my coat literally lost my coat. I couldn't find it. I had asked for help and I was sitting there walking around. I wonder what would happen if, prince, I have a queen and a prince in my book and I go. What would happen if the prince lost his crown? How would his mom, the queen, react to the second in command losing his crown on him just someday?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So there was an idea and I worked it out in my head and I wrote a story about it.
Speaker 2:And all of your books are based off the ant colony.
Speaker 1:A lot of them are. I have any idea a lot of them are. I have another series where I'm working on the fourth book now, where it's a grandpa putting his grandson down for a nap and the grandson asks him to tell a story and the grandson picks the topic and he basically looks around a room that he's he's sleeping in or going to sleep in and finds a topic and this is actually happened to me with my grandson. So the first one's about a ceiling fan, blanket, elves, and the next one that we're working on right now is about an elevator. So the grandpa makes up the story, the boy falls asleep and dreams the end of it, and there's two different styles of illustration one when the grandpa's talking and then when the boy falls asleep it goes into a south-ish type childish animation or illustration to the conclusion of the story. And what's fun about those is writing as a three-year-old would think, because anything's there, the world is wide open for a three-year-old's thought process.
Speaker 1:Now, I'm not three, but I've got a group of three-year-olds all over my life right now I've got five grandkids and a lot of the stuff they say are in those books and a lot of the stories I have told them and made up with them are in those books the one now elevator that we're doing. How that all came about I was with my grandson and his family the first time they ever stayed in a hotel and fascinated with this elevator because it was one of those that was glass, enclosed and they could see out of it. All he wanted to do was ride that elevator. So that led to the thought of the story.
Speaker 1:And then I have bird feeders in my backyard yes, I'm that old Bird feeders in my backyard and I was having troubles with squirrels and I was talking to my grandson and he goes Papa, how do we keep the squirrels out of the bird feeder? And we were just going back and forth and somehow we got on a topic like a topic of they can't climb up there. They could use an elevator. And we was going back and forth about an elevator for a bird feeder and that's how flightless birds would get into the bird feeder. And so I combined those two things and wrote a story about it.
Speaker 2:First of all, that's a lot of creative juices that I'm glad that you figured out. That's a skill you have in life. Second of all, I have my wife specifically has bird feeders in our backyard. You're not that old.
Speaker 1:So it goes back to my mom and we can talk about her in a little bit. She had I don't know how many bird feeders in the backyard. We had the fattest birds in the neighborhood in our backyard. She had suet packs. She had everything back there, and so that's why I get teased by my kids and everything about the bird feeders in the backyard that I'm turning into my mom, so ours are designed for hummingbirds. So, yes, we have one of those too.
Speaker 2:All right. So have you ever thought about doing like an animated series or an animated movie?
Speaker 1:Yes. So I get asked if I ever want to write a novel and all that type of stuff. We're young kids, young adult, and I started thinking about that and I have, but I just write it and install it. I've got eight books in this Baker's Patio series, which is the end colony, and each book is a chapter and I can see it and I've had other people tell me you don't look at the put knees in an animated series and I could see the stories being fleshed out because I keep the personalities the same throughout the book.
Speaker 1:So in a nutshell, it's a colony underneath a brick patio and there's a queen in charge. Second in command is the prince, and then there's various groups of ants that have their own jobs. There are ants that dig, there's ants that gather, get all the food and supplies. There's police ants that patrol, make sure everybody's safe, and then there's the flyer ants that go out and make sure they fly around the patio and they have their jobs to patrol and all that type of stuff. So everybody's got their jobs and that's the gist of it. But something will happen to one of the groups, or generally it's the prince who gets in trouble. We could develop those personalities more and flush out the stories more where I think it would be pretty interesting to take a look. So but that's hard to find or hard to get into development.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got the base of the foundation there. You could always change what the story would be, every episode or whatever the case would be. I would think that would be something your publisher could help you with, but I don't know.
Speaker 1:That conversation has been, has been had, has been had, has occurred, but they don't necessarily have a division that does that type of thing. I have talked to some people. We'll just see how it goes. I don't want to say one, but just see how it goes. I would love that challenge to take what I've got and flush it out and see what can become because, like I said, I've got, I wrote one today.
Speaker 1:I keep getting ideas and and yes, yes, they're about ants, but they're ants that go through what we go through and we constantly are going through things on a daily basis that could be lessons, and I don't. They don't have to be lessons. Some are just fun things that happen to people. There's not a moral at the end. So I've written some where there ends up having a moral at the end, because a lot of the challenges we have in our lives subtly have a good ending to them just because of the way they have to be.
Speaker 1:Like prince andrew lost his crown, the moral of the story is does he get in trouble? How does the queen handle that situation? Is it a big problem? Not necessarily, but there's always a, like my grandson's grandson, who's seven now, the one that got this all started with. I go, papa, what's your problem in this book? And so there's got to be somewhat of a problem in order to create the interest. But in order to have a problem there's got to be a solution, and it could be. Generally, it's usually some sort of lesson that can be learned either by the kid or by the reader. So some of my books kind of have a dual message at the end.
Speaker 2:And I think the great thing about a series or even a movie is we identify with the individual and their characteristics and the thing about them that makes us like them and want to follow their story. In this case, they happen to be ants. They could be ants, it doesn't matter. They could be ants, humans, whatever.
Speaker 1:When my kids were little little, they loved to show, and I have no idea what those creatures are in that show I think it's almost safer if they're not people, because it's not necessarily a mirror reflection of what that person is going through, but they see somebody else going through it and I'm very subtle. I don't want a hit because in life, your message, your messages and whatever's going on isn't a over the hammer or head over the hammer type situation. There's subtle things that occur and the solutions are generally subtle at the end. That's the way I try to approach my writing is to keep it simple and economic and just let the story occur without the ending being well, let that be a lesson to you never lie to to your mom, don't ever run away again.
Speaker 2:Or you have to love your brother.
Speaker 1:That's not the way life is, and so that's the approach I use when I create these things.
Speaker 2:Plus, that's a little too on the nose. Like you said no, I know, but you want lessons just like a life lesson, right? You go through something and in the end you need to reflect, you need to figure out what happened, how you can learn from it all, that there needs to be some type of critical thinking skills that need to take place.
Speaker 1:The best compliments I get, or I like appreciate, are the ones where we got done reading your story and we talked about it. Yeah, there you go. That's what I'm trying to stimulate some sort of conversation between the reader and the child. That is a big reward for me, that type of conversation.
Speaker 2:And what I like about your story and the reason I wanted to have you on the show is not because I care or even want to talk about kids' books. I like the fact that you were doing this thing in life because you were compelled to do it as a father, a husband, whatever, and you wanted to provide for your family. But you reached a point where you were like life isn't over for me. I still have another chance to do something else, something else.
Speaker 1:It reinvigorated me. It reinvigorated me. I'm happier than I've ever been and it's given me a passion to go after something. And yeah, you could say I'm trying to sell as many books as all that as I can. But also literacy is a big problem in my community on this year, so I'm trying to get as many books as I can in kids' hands. I won't visit a classroom without books to give out to those kids, so that's become a passion. For me, too is to just talk to kids about reading and how important it is, because if you can't read, it's going to lead generally leads to a life of crime or drug use or all the bad stuff that happens in society. I just feel like I have found what I'm supposed to do. I think I mentioned that earlier, but I feel like I've been put on this earth to create kids content and make kids smile, and that's the point.
Speaker 2:That's the idea, right? Is you found what you're supposed to do. I still have a passion for things and I still want to go after that passion, and that's what I love about it. Coming upon the end here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to just leave people with whatever message you want people to take away from your path and your story.
Speaker 1:I guess it would be. I was fortunate because when I made that pivot to writing kids books, we my wife had a job and we were able to take some time where we had money in the bank and all that types. We have some savings we could use. I know not everybody's in that same situation and they may be in a rut. And I've talked to some people about is, even though you're in that rut, find something that you enjoy.
Speaker 1:Just don't be that guy that comes home at 4.30, has supper, reads the paper, drinks a beer, watches Netflix and goes to bed. Find something else that you can do that would make somebody else happy, whether it's changing the way all of a neighbor or whatever you like to do. It could be gardening, it could be baking, it could be shoveling somebody's snow. It could be something that you're giving to somebody else where they're going to smile and that smile will make you feel good.
Speaker 1:That's my message to people that were in my situation, because I've known a lot of people that have been in those jobs where they're not happy but they go through it because they don't feel like they have another choice. They just feel like that I'm not going to get a better job, I do get another job and I have to take a cut back and pay, and I know there's people in that situation and I understand that. You just can't quit and do what I did, but find something you enjoy. It could be woodworking, it could be anything, it could be anything. But even if you do that, find somebody to share it with. That would be my message.
Speaker 2:Like you're doing with your podcasts.
Speaker 2:No, it's a great story and it is what I'm doing. You're absolutely right with that. I have my quote unquote nine to five job, as well as a consultant for the government. But having a passion outside of that is very important. A creative outlet, if you will, but just something you enjoy doing you can do consistently and on a regular basis. It used to be sports for me. I've outgrown that a little bit with my age. I still love college football, but all the other sports subsided. For me, that's a great story and a great message. Let people know the name of your books, where they can find you and where you can find your books.
Speaker 1:So people listening to this could get a free e-copy of my last book, which is called Adorable, and it's a story about a. The queen has a baby. The prince isn't happy. He gets very jealous and runs away. That, so it's a story about sibling jealousy. And again, this happened in my real life with my grandkids. If you go to my website, Papa tell me a bookcom, and it's Papa P-A-P-A tell me a bookcom. You'll see all my books. You can order them through there or wherever books are sold. And then there's a menu. That's a menu item that says podcast. Click on that. Also, it says free book and coloring pages. Enter in the password, podcast and you get a free book.
Speaker 2:Awesome, I didn't even know we were giving that away today.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a surprise, yeah yeah. So that's yeah, check out the site. If you order off the site, there's a place where you can put a comment or two and I'll sign the book, write a message to your grandkid or something along those lines, whatever you want, and then I'll ship them out.
Speaker 2:And if you go, but yeah, all my books are available through there, awesome.
Speaker 2:So I will have your link in the subtext of the podcast and also make sure you go there, get that free ebook, get that free coloring book and take advantage of that, because kids need creative outlets and this is just another great option that they could have available to use as well. All right, ron, I want to thank you for joining me on my podcast today and telling your story. It's an inspirational story in the sense that life isn't over just because you've finished your quote unquote career. There's still other things available to do, and you found a craft that you can do very well and I think that's inspirational and other people should look into that and consider that on their journey as well. And for me, I would like you to go to brandonheldcom and click on subscribe to podcast.
Speaker 2:I am looking for as many subscribers as I can get to my podcast and I do put out a couple episodes a month where only subscribers can hear the podcast. So if you enjoy the podcast, grab yourself a couple extra ones just by supporting the show and follow me on Instagram at BH underscore life. Underscore is underscore crazy, and I'm also on YouTube. Brandon held at life is crazy, and for Ron and myself, this has been life is crazy, and I'll talk to you next time.
