Juggling Entrepreneur Podcast
Get ready to dive into a treasure trove of inspiring interviews with parentpreneurs! Join us as we chat with parents who are juggling business ventures and family life. They’ll share their highs, lows, and golden nuggets of wisdom to help you thrive on your own entrepreneurial adventure. Tune in for some serious motivation and practical tips from those who truly get it!
Juggling Entrepreneur Podcast
Crafting Success One Story at a Time
J.D. Barker shares his extraordinary journey from a corporate job to becoming a multi-talented bestselling author and entrepreneur. His insights on risk-taking, creativity, and perseverance offer valuable lessons for aspiring writers and entrepreneurs alike.
• Emphasizing the importance of recognizing and seizing opportunities
• Discussing the challenges of transitioning from corporate life to publishing
• Highlighting the necessity of a strategic support system in entrepreneurship
• Exploring the art of co-authoring and the significance of collaboration
• Offering practical advice for entrepreneurial parents balancing family and business responsibilities
• Sharing strategies for entrepreneurial parents to integrate their journey with their parenting role
• Encouraging consistent writing habits for young authors
• Urging listeners to take the leap toward their dreams without delay
Hi everyone, Welcome to the Juggling Entrepreneur podcast, where you get motivated by amazing entrepreneurs. And today, joining us is JD Barker, a New York Times and international bestselling author known for his gripping work, such as the Fourth Monkey, Draco and the Sixth Wicked Child. His novels, blending with suspense, horror and supernatural, have earned praise from multiple literally icons. Today, we will explore his incredible journey from the writer to entrepreneur, uncovering how he turned his passion for storytelling into a thriving business. Jerry Barker, welcome to our show.
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks for having me, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:So I gave a little bit intro about you. Do you want to add anything more to our juggling entrepreneurs, parents and entrepreneurs who are listening to this episode?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been an entrepreneur basically my entire life, so I'm not sure where you even want to start. I'm on my third career, I'm a millionaire for the third time over, and I'm one of those people. I'm pretty sure if I lost everything tomorrow, if you handed me a banana and said I had to make a living from that banana, I would find some way to turn that into a million dollars too. So kind of a kind of a rainmaker when it comes to business.
Speaker 1:Amazing, I amazing. I think that's a very well um high pitch start, I would say.
Speaker 2:And what actually helped you to build that confidence, um, that you were saying right, I have built the skills and talent to to transform anything that I have in my hand into a business right I, I honestly think it it must have started when I was very young, I'm guessing my parents probably beat it into my head or something, but I just, I don't take no for an answer and I'm just one of those people. I just, I don't give up. If somebody puts a wall in front of me, I find some way to get around that wall, or I build it into my business plan and the wall becomes part of my plan and I and I, I always continue moving forward.
Speaker 2:Um, when I was in college I worked in the music business, um, and one of my very first jobs I worked for a BMG distribution, uh, which is a division of RCA, and I was essentially a glorified babysitter. I would have to pick up recording artists at the airport and get them to the radio stations, get them to their concert, get them to their hotel, and you know, I was basically just a little above minimum wage, you know which. It was a fun job, but like I wasn't earning a whole lot of money doing it. But then I realized I've got some very famous people in the car with me for days at a time. So I started interviewing those celebrities and then selling those interviews to newspapers and magazines, which turned into a very lucrative career. So I always kind of, you know, look for that bright spot, find some way to improve my situation.
Speaker 1:I think that's an amazing start about your entrepreneurship journey, where you're talking about. Most of the people who are in those kind of scenarios will either be depressed or will try to find a way but stuck. But your creative way of finding the solutions during the tough times is very unique and I think that is the ability that will help build any entrepreneurship journey, do you agree?
Speaker 2:yeah, absolutely. I. I think you know any situation can be improved, but you need to be the one to improve it. You can't really wait for somebody else to do it for you. You'll be standing around for a very long time if you take that stance on it.
Speaker 2:You know, I just I always wanted to be a writer, so I think everything that I did kind of revolved into that one way or another. You know, like I was a glorified babysitter, I turned that into a writing job while I was working for newspapers and magazines. You know, I basically learned that virtually everybody in that industry had a novel in a desk drawer somewhere that they'd been working on forever. You know it's 600,000 words long. They've been working on it for 10 years. It's almost done.
Speaker 2:I kind of presented myself to those people too. I became the go-to guy for helping them get those manuscripts finished, because I saw that as an opportunity. I was very good with grammar and punctuation and just general copy editing, so I would help those people fine tune their manuscripts and get them to the point where they could be published. I just I've always looked for you know what is the next step, what is the next thing I can do to improve. I still do it today. I mean, I sell a ton of books you know, new York Times bestseller. I've got movies in the works, I've got TV shows in the works, but I'm always looking for like, what is that next thing? How can I take this to the next level?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that is not. Many people have that kind of equality, unique quality, that fighting spirit that it's all starts by from us. Right, and how we can improve rather than blaming the situations around us. Let's talk about your first book. What inspired you to write your first book and how it actually evolved you writing multiple books and being the New York bestselling author.
Speaker 2:Well, I had mentioned I was writing, you know, working with people in newspapers and magazines. I did all of that stuff on the side. I had essentially been told my entire life writing is a fun hobby, but it's not something you can make a living at, you know. You have to go out and get a real job. So I finished college, I ended up with degrees in business, another one in finance, I got halfway through a psychology degree and I then I was in the corporate world and I was working, ultimately as a chief compliance officer for a brokerage firm, which is what I would do during the daytime. But then I would go home and I would work on books, and I did this for about two decades. I just I loved writing, so I would help other people get their novels published, basically working as a ghostwriter. But over that time I had six different books that hit the New York Times list and they all had other people's names on the cover even though I had written them, which gets old after a while. So ultimately my wife pulled me aside when that sixth one hit and she said listen, I know you want to become a full-time author, let's find a way to make that happen.
Speaker 2:But we had gotten trapped. I mean, I had been in that corporate job for a long time two decades. We had a big house, we had cars, we had a boat, our lifestyle was expensive and it wasn't just something we could walk away from, not without that salary. So we came up with this crazy plan we sold everything that we owned, we bought a duplex in Pittsburgh and rented out one side of the duplex to some tenants and we lived in the other side and basically got our monthly expenses down to next to nothing.
Speaker 2:And I was able to quit that day job. And you know, I remember the day we sat down at the kitchen table, we looked at the bank statement and my wife said okay, we've got enough savings for you to go for about 18 months to write that book. You know, go and you know that really put my feet to the fire. So I hammered out my first book and ultimately ended up indie publishing it. But I got lucky and sold a lot of copies which put me on the radar of the traditional publishers. They picked up my second book for a seven-figure deal with a movie and a TV show attached. And once I got on that roller coaster I wasn't about to let go, I stayed on.
Speaker 1:It's very important that you have shared your journey because most of the people have this idea about entrepreneurship, thinking like it's you start with an idea and boom, you reach the success and nobody actually covers the hurdles, the pain especially when you have a family and that hardship of taking a high risk decisions and sitting as a family to make that decision happen. And it's very heart touching that you are open to share the tough choices that you have taken to transform your role from a confined, comfortable life into something that you're really passionate about, something that is really worth that risk-taking and also the hurdles you have been through, like downsizing the house. It's not a small deal, right, you're taking compromises with your lifestyle, but also you have your goal towards where you want to go and how you want to become as a best selling author. How was your experience when you went through that tough choices and your first book hit a lot of copies in sales?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, doing that entire thing was very scary, you know, because you walk in like I would never get fired from that job. My boss loved me. I did the job very well. I didn't like the job but I knew I wasn't going to go anywhere. It was, you know. It had to be my choice to do it and that was a very frightening thing, and to have your income basically go to zero is very scary.
Speaker 2:I got really lucky with that first book. Stephen King read it early on. He let me use some of his characters in it and that was essentially the catalyst behind it. Publishers Weekly had written a story about how I had gotten Stephen King's permission for that book as an unknown author. And when that story hit, you know, libraries saw that story and bookstores saw that story and then they picked up the title and that's essentially what lit that particular fuse.
Speaker 2:But until that moment I had no idea that any of it was going to work out. You know, even once the money started coming in, you know, once I started selling books, I was always very skeptical that it would continue. And my wife and I we take everything that comes in from the book side and we put it into real estate. We buy rental properties, we buy, we flipped houses and basically created passive income completely separate from the writing income, which we still do today. It was a safety blanket. It allowed us to continue. So if the book stops selling tomorrow, we still have the real estate income to fall back on. Now we have other investments. Working in finance, I learned how important diversification is when it comes to money, so we've been very careful about that.
Speaker 2:But I run into people all the time, particularly when I do a talk as an author, and they'll tell me I have a book in me that I want to write, I'd love to be able to write a book someday, or I'd love to be able to paint someday, or I'd love to be able to write music someday or do do whatever, um? And my response to them is I was 43 when I pulled the trigger on this. I don't know where you are age wise, but these years go by very quickly and at some point you're going to be sitting on a porch, you know, rocking in a chair, and you don't want to. You know wonder what if, like, you want to. You know you want to try all these things, but you, you have to take that, that very first step, which can be frightening.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the very important reality check and the point that you have just mentioned is I'm I'm following my passion, I'm I'm you know I'm a really good book author and I have plans to do, but I don't know when it will stop. So I'm going to take some smart financial decisions to take care of my family and myself. Right, and it's not many people think about when they try to go through that entrepreneurship journey, right. So they they think about okay, it's all in, I will be success for sure, and it will continue. Um, what would your suggestion would be for those kind of entrepreneurs where they're thinking like you know what, I'm all in, it's going to be success, and I don't have any backup plan in terms of financial management and so on to take care of my family and things.
Speaker 2:I'm a firm believer in like you need to be in that position. I think if your only option is to succeed, you're going to find a way to succeed. If you have a plan B, you know all of a sudden that plan B is hanging off in the corner and you know at some point it may become attractive. It's better to just have a plan A, no other focus. Put all of your energy into accomplishing plan A.
Speaker 1:And if you have that kind of energy devoted to it, you're going to get it done. Yeah, let's say um, that is very passionate sentence and that's very important for the people to keep moving forward. Let's talk about your journey from the book author to entrepreneur and your art of juggling, as we call in our juggling entrepreneur podcast, where now you're a book author, you're also writing for the movies. You have other juggling aspects like real estate and other things. How did you find energy and motivation to handle all those?
Speaker 2:I have a bit of a superpower. I was diagnosed with a form of autism called Asperger's when I was in my 20s and, for better or worse, one of the things that it gives me is this crazy organizational skills. Everything in my life is very regimented, it's very organized. You know, even when I, when I quit that financial job, they ended up having to hire three different people to replace me, I didn't realize what kind of workload I was actually taking on.
Speaker 2:So, even though it feels, you know, to most people that I'm doing a lot of different things, you know to me it's, you know, just another day, I, I, I feel like I have to be busy. Like I, I, I'm not good at downtime. If I had to fix anything at this point, something new, you know, like I had mentioned, like it doesn't matter what level of success I hit, there's always a brass ring that's just a little bit higher. You know that I that I want to reach for Um, and honestly, I think if I ever got to the point where I feel like I've accomplished everything that I'm able to accomplish, you know, like that might be the day I retire, you know. So I think I'm always looking for something to up the game and improve on it a little bit and you, you have been experimenting in all different new fields.
Speaker 1:You're exploring all different new fields, the fields that you're not aware of, like there is always first time for the real estate, there's always first time for writing, for the movies and so on. So it takes a lot of motivation and passion to proceed through that journey. I would say your suggestion for young authors, like preteens and teens, as we can see in the market, you know, when they are in preteens and teens they have this interest to write a book and so on what would your suggestion would be for those age groups?
Speaker 2:as a famous book author, Well, I think the one piece of advice I tend to give everybody is you have to write every single day. And a lot of people will tell me I don't, I just don't have time, I'm too busy. My family, I have this, I have that. But the truth is, if you're really passionate about it, you can find the time. I was working 60 to 80 hours a week when I was in the corporate world and I would sneak off you know whether it was at lunchtime I would, you know, write a few words. If I was standing in line at the grocery store I would knock out a little bit more. But I had a daily goal of two to 300 words that I would get done every day and that equates to roughly about a page, which means that I would have a novel done within a year. You know. So, I think you know, if you set little goals like that, you know, like, if you look at a book as a whole, it can be very daunting. You know it's a big project. But if you think of it in those small little pieces I'm going to do 200 words a day. That's not quite that bad. That's only, you know, paragraph, couple paragraphs. So I often tell people to do that.
Speaker 2:And writing is very much like exercising. It's a muscle Like if you do it every day, you get better at it, you get stronger, it gets easier If you do it sporadically. You know, if you only write on Saturdays for you know two hours and then you know, a couple weeks go by you jump back into it again, you're just. You know, if you're going to the gym, like the results that you would see are basically what you end up seeing on the writing side. Like you have to be at it every single day, I think, to be successful at it.
Speaker 2:And the truth is I mean for most of us like I know a lot of authors that have done well. You know it's a calling, like it's something we were like almost driven to do. You know, like I can't go a day without writing. If I don't write for the day, I can hear like a little voice in the back of my head nagging me about it. It's something I've always done, you know, just to calm myself, as a hobby. It's always been my fun place to go. Like I think you have to be that passionate about it to succeed.
Speaker 1:A common thing between the famous unique book authors like you and also entrepreneur, which you are already are, is thinking differently, thinking outside the box. What would your suggestion would be for the audience around? Thinking differently, outside the box? How did you start your journey and how it ended up, and what your suggestion would be to the audience?
Speaker 2:I mean, I've never been afraid to go against the grain. So I indie published my first book, but it sold a lot of copies, like I mentioned, and then I ended up signing a traditional deal. After that I was with a company called HMH, which is now part of HarperCollins, and I published a couple of books traditionally through them, and what I quickly realized is that even though they hand you a nice big advance check, the economics on the back end aren't quite as pieces. You also have to give up a lot of control and I liked having control. I like creating my covers, I like knowing when books were going to go on sale, I like controlling the story, every aspect of it. I wanted to maintain control. So I reviewed that entire business model at some point and decided to make a change and I called my agent and I said OK, moving forward, I'm going to retain English rights for myself, I'm going to indie publish those and you can continue selling in all the foreign territories. I'm in about 150 different countries, so you know there was still quite a bit to do there. But that allowed me to basically work as an indie publisher on the English side and I did that for a number of novels and that worked out really well.
Speaker 2:But but I I noticed another problem and that's that's kind of the way my brain works. You know, I look at my current business situation. You know, like, what's working, what's not working, okay, this isn't working, how can I fix it? Um, so in this particular case, you know, the books were, you know, coming out. They were, you know, everything seemed to be firing Okay, but, like as an indie author, there's a lot of actually get a book.
Speaker 2:It's very difficult to get into places like Target or Walmart or Costco, the big box stores, grocery stores. So that became a problem. It became a problem I had to solve. So ultimately, I reached out to some friends of mine that worked for Simon Schuster, which is one of the big publishing companies, and I ended up creating my own imprint with Simon Schuster. So I basically have my own publishing house through Simon Schuster, which means they currently handle my print sales and distribution, which solved that problem. Now my books are in those places I couldn't get to before. So I'm always just evaluating my current situation, trying to figure out what I can do to make it better, improve on it and take it to the next level.
Speaker 1:I think it's kind of like multidimensional approach of problem solving, where you are improving yourself as a person, you're improving your talents and skills, but also you're improving the process, where you see there is a problem and trying to solve the outside process function of it, which is not as frequent that we see in entrepreneurs. So, um it's, it's a multi-facet entrepreneur I would say you are I I think a lot of people.
Speaker 2:When they're running a business or working for somebody else, it's so much easier to focus on the stuff that's working. You know and, like you're going to be, you're probably totally aware of the problem areas and the things that need to be fixed. But when you approach your day first thing in the morning, you look at the 10 things you have to do. Eight of them are things that you know are going to work out properly, work out the way they're supposed to. Two things might not. You're going to put those two off to the side and try to take care of them last, if at all, and it just gets pushed off and off.
Speaker 2:And I've always kind of approached that from the opposite mindset. If I have something that's not working, you know it nags at me. It's something you know, it's a problem that needs to be solved and I think that's the autistic person in me. You know I can put a puzzle in front of me. I have to solve that puzzle before I can move on to something else. So you know I'm constantly focusing on those couple little negative things and try go away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what a great and unique quality it is to improve not only our career path but also the process around changing the process in the industry. That is worth improving. Right, let's talk a little bit about the mastering, the success with co-authoring your experience with that and what would your suggestion would be if somebody would like to co-author a book, what challenges or what teamwork skills that it need to have and what's your personal experience from it?
Speaker 2:Sure. So before I started publishing novels on my own, I had mentioned I was a book doctor and a growth writer, so that was a very collaborative experience. I was always working with other people, so I enjoy that and to me it's very much like having multiple cooks in a kitchen. You want one person making bacon and the other person making eggs. So whenever I talk to a co-author it's very important to figure out where our strengths are, where our weaknesses are and then kind of divide and conquer that particular project.
Speaker 2:Early on I'd written a prequel to Dracula for Bram Stoker's family. So I've worked very closely with Dacre Stoker, who's Bram's great-grandnephew was Bram's great-grandnephew, and we learned very fast that. You know I was good at getting the words down on the page, creating a tense situation and, you know, basically writing the story. Where he excelled is, you know he was a history professor. He knew everything about Bram Stoker but he couldn't write a word of fiction to save his life. So we figured that out very early on. So you know, while working on the book, to give you an example, if I needed to know what Bram Stoker's bedroom looked like, he could tell me. He could, you know, name the furniture. He could tell me where in the room it was, and I was able to take that information and apply it to the book and just make it seem that much more authentic.
Speaker 2:Since then I've written a bunch of books with James Patterson. You know, who's well known for, for being a coauthor working with other other authors. Um, and it's just, it's really hit home. You know a lot of these, these things that I've worked on. You know divide and conquer, figure out what. You know each, each part, figure out who's good at what and, and you know, focus on on those things.
Speaker 2:Um, at the moment I've got books that I'm working on, solo titles, but you know I'm bringing in other people. The one behind me is called Heavier of the Stones. It just released about three weeks ago. I wrote it with a woman named Christine Daigle who's a neuropsychologist. You know that's her day job. You know she's not a full-time author. What that allowed is, you know she basically brought that mindset, that skill set, into the writing process. So I could pretend to be a neuropsychologist in a book if I wanted to. I can do a bunch of Google searches and research and you know I'd probably come across as you know, something believable. But having somebody with that real mindset behind me, somebody who can actually answer those questions, it adds a legitimacy to the book that I couldn't do on my own, to the book that I couldn't do on my own. So at the moment I'm currently seeking out people in a lot of different professions, you know. Basically just to you know, to add to the books, you know, to make them more well-rounded.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's a great point. It talks about divide and conquer. It talks about the value of teamwork, right, bringing it to life, especially around the co-authoring, and releasing the book together. Um, we will wrap up this podcast with three things, um, which we usually do for, uh, every episode. Um, we will start with the first thing your suggestion for parents who want to be entrepreneurs. What would your suggestion would be to especially the parents who want to be entrepreneurs but they're kind of hesitant because they are juggling their day job, they need to take care of their kids, and so on. What your suggestion would be? Where to start? What are the qualities they have to build?
Speaker 2:I think you have to devote a certain number of hours to it a day. It's you know it's very tricky to pull the trigger on it. I don't know that I would have been able to do what I did if I had like. Right now I've got a seven-year-old daughter, but she hadn't been born at the time when my wife and I made this decision. It was a very risky thing that we did.
Speaker 2:I mean a lot of entrepreneurs that I know they start very early in life, you know, when they have no responsibilities not real ones, and that's obviously easier. But I think, if your parents, you know you have to sit down, you have to figure out how is this project, you know, this thing that you want to do, how is it going to impact the rest of the family? And hopefully come up with a way where it's not going to be a negative impact, because that can easily go south, it can create fights, it can create animosity, not only between you and your spouse but also with the children. So I think you have to. You know, depending on the age of your kids, you have to loop them into the conversation. You know, if they're old enough to understand what mommy and daddy are doing.
Speaker 2:I think they need to be part of that talk and that gives everybody in the family ownership on it, because you know, if your children are aware of what you're doing, if they feel like they're part of it, they're going to give you a little bit more leeway. When you need to, you know, hop on that Zoom call at 730 at night to discuss it with somebody you know. So I feel like you need to approach it as a group. You know the second it becomes me, me, me. I think that's where you start running into problems.
Speaker 1:Everybody's got to buy in yeah, your suggestion for the entrepreneurs who just started the journey but they want to go to that next stage, right from um being a startup trying to figure it out how my product is, or so on, and um accelerate terms of revenue or market. What are the skills that they need to improve their startup or their venture through their entrepreneurship journey?
Speaker 2:Well, I think you need to take stock on your current business. You know, sit down and you know, if you're into lists, make a list of what's working and what's not working and, like I had mentioned, focus on those things that aren't working, because a lot of times, you know, sit down and you know, if you're into lists, make a list of what's working and what's not working. Um, and, like I had mentioned, focus on those things that aren't working, because a lot of times, you know, if you focus on those, not only do you solve a problem that's you know exists in your business model, but you could take something that's you know currently a negative, come up with a completely different solution to deal with that problem and, all of a sudden, that can become a profit center, it could become become a profit leader in your business. You know, I think the things that aren't working tend to have the most. You know that you can get out of them. So, like I always focus on that, yeah, thanks a lot.
Speaker 1:And our last point to the kids around the world who want to be a book author, just like you yeah, Like, like I mentioned, I think you need to write every day.
Speaker 2:You know I grew up without a television in the house. You know, watching TV is going to keep you from writing books, you know. So I didn't have a TV. We were at the library. From a very early age I used to write stories and staple the pages together. I had a little library that I made in my bedroom. My sister would check out those stories. I would charge her late fees Like I'd been doing this for for a very long time. My daughter is is, you know, she's seven years old. She's in second grade. There they're teaching them how to write books in school, which I think is fantastic. They're teaching them how to create a beginning and a middle and an end in a story, which is something I know plenty of adults can't do, you know.
Speaker 2:So, I think, just understand that framework. You have to read a lot, I think, to become an author. I think the more you read, you know the framework of a story gets ingrained in your mind. You're going to understand how a story is supposed to be structured, and that's going to give you the tools that you need to kind of go forward and do your own.
Speaker 2:If you want to just try a simple exercise one of the things that I do with a lot of new authors, you know read the first half of a book and then put it down, and then sit down and write the second half. You know, without knowing where it's going to go, Because it gives you the characters, it gives you your plot, it gives you your environment, gives you all the beginning tools that you need. So just write the second half of that book and it's a great way to get started. Another thing I tend to tell people to do is, if you have trouble writing dialogue, go to a coffee shop, listen into the table next to you Don't let them know you're doing it and write down everything that you hear. Write it down on paper, Type it on your laptop, Because translating an actual conversation and seeing what it looks like on paper is an extremely important skill to have as an author. That's how you create believable characters. That's an easy way to practice.
Speaker 1:There you go, audience the wisdom nuggets by JD Parker. Again, thank you so much for being on our podcast and audience. Please check out and buy his new book Heavy Stones. Really looking forward to read the book JD Parker and it's me Hema signing off for this episode. Thank you again for your time.
Speaker 2:Thank you.