Updated May 2026 to reflect current data. Original recording: May 2026.

Richard Lowe (The Writing King) joins Beth Anne Campbell on The Thirsty Professional for a long career pivot conversation. The arc: undergraduate geology degree to twenty years as Director of Computer Operations at Trader Joe’s to a full-time premium ghostwriting practice in Florida. Topics: the CEO conflict that ended the corporate chapter, the photography work that bridged the transition across 8 years documenting belly dancers and Renaissance faires, the approach behind premium ghostwriting, and the Fortune 50 executive whose ghostwritten book helped him raise $30 million in venture capital. For anyone considering a second-act career pivot, the conversation is unusually concrete about what the transition costs and what it pays.

The Thirsty Professional is hosted by Beth Anne Campbell, a former corporate executive who left to write and host. She’s the author of the award-winning Where the Hell is My Bacon. The show focuses on careers, purpose, and passion, with guests sharing the real story behind their pivots, with a drink in hand.

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Interview

Beth Anne Campbell: My little, I always have to give a little toast to my husband. Hello, everybody. Welcome to The Thirsty Professional. This is where we grab a bevy, we ditch the BS, and we get real about careers, purpose, and passion. I’m your host, Beth Anne Campbell. I’m a former corporate queen who traded in her crown for a pen and a microphone. I’m also author of the award-winning Where the Hell is My Bacon, which is available for all of you corporate rebels on Amazon or barnesandnoble.com.

Happy Mother’s Day this weekend in the United States to all the moms out there. If you are out there watching live, please let us know you’re here in the comments, where you’re from, and most importantly, what are you drinking. If you’re watching the replay, please give us a hashtag replay. And of course, make sure to let us know if you have any questions or feedback so we can address it during the live stream.

All right, today, my very, very, very special guest on The Thirsty Professional, who is also color coordinated with me today, is the Writing King, Richard Lowe Jr. Richard is a best-selling ghostwriter who helps professionals turn their expertise into powerful books that build credibility, attract opportunities, and leave a lasting legacy, which is the power of books. He’s authored 113+ books under his own name and ghostwritten 54+ books for clients, along with 465+ articles. He’s a trusted authority in business, technology, and leadership writing.

In his former life, he spent 33 years in corporate, in tech, so I’m sure we can share some horror stories, including director of computer operations at Trader Joe’s and a VP at two tech firms. Wow. Richard blends his rich corporate insight with storytelling mastery. His notable works include Focus on LinkedIn, which is an Amazon bestseller, Cyber Heist, and Digitize or Die. And believe me, there are some very creative and diverse other titles in that mix. He’s also a photographer who documented the belly dance and Renaissance faire communities for years, and a fiction author. We’re going to talk about that.

Please help me welcome Richard Lowe Jr. Richard, welcome to The Thirsty Professional. Cheers.

Richard: Thanks for that awesome introduction. I have my own beverage.

Beth Anne: Awesome. What are you drinking today? Water.

Richard: Just water.

Beth Anne: I love it when my guests are drinking water because it’s so healthy.

Richard: Yes.

Beth Anne: I usually have a water, but I do not today.

Richard: I am a no caffeine, no soda person.

Beth Anne: I love that. I love that. Yeah. I’m a coffee person and I get the expensive coffee too. So I’m not even like a.

Richard: Of course.

Beth Anne: Yeah. And then I and then I get the expensive. You know, I open my coffee. So this today, my bag of coffee beans, because I fresh, I do freshly grind. But I mean, you’re a Trader Joe’s veteran, so you should understand the importance of snobby coffee and stuff like that.

Richard: Of course, of course.

Beth Anne: But I opened my coffee today that I get from a place near Roanoke, Virginia. It’s called Red Rooster Coffee. It’s just amazing. You know, they source it from small, small farms around the world. And today it was from Kenya and it smelled so freaking amazing. And then what do I do? I put hot cocoa and sweetener and all kinds of crap in it to cover up the flavor. So it’s kind of sacrilegious, I think a little bit.

Richard: Okay.

Beth Anne: So anyway, so water, great, awesome. Let’s see, you are in, I wanted to ask you, so you’re in Clearwater, Florida, which is near Tampa on the west side.

Richard: Where I’m at.

Beth Anne: Awesome. If I’m going to Clearwater, what’s the, where would you say you have to go eat at this place? What’s a good place to go?

Richard: There’s a, it’s called the, I forget, it’s in Safety Harbor. It’s just next door to Clearwater. And they have a spa there, a big hotel. It’s an old, old, old hotel and there’s a spa in it and it has a restaurant that’s really, really, it’s expensive, but it’s really, really good.

Beth Anne: Okay.

Richard: And then there’s a place right across the street from it that is a fish place and that is awesome.

Beth Anne: Nice. I’ll bet you get really good fish when you’re near the ocean, right? Versus us inlanders.

Richard: Yes.

Beth Anne: And I’m not even far. I mean, I’m 3 hours from the, not even 3 hours, so.

Richard: The disadvantage of living in Clearwater was last year in October. I got a direct hit from the hurricane, Milton, I think it was. Cat, almost a cat 5 within a squeak, you know, couple miles an hour would have been a cat 5, right literally on top of me.

Beth Anne: I was going to ask you about that because, but I feel it’s a little cliche to ask every person who lives in or near Florida about hurricanes, but hurricanes and alligators are the two reasons that are, that are, I mean, other things too, but hurricane, in fact, I was watching a video the other day of an alligator that was two of them, one of them, and I don’t know if it was in Florida. I’m just, you know, maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but it could happen if it, you know, if it’s an alligator. And they were actually trying to climb on top of somebody’s front door and get in.

Richard: Alligators are vicious. In fact, after the hurricane, there were two alligators on my porch and a bobcat in the tree.

Beth Anne: Oh, fun. Well, you know, everybody, Florida.

Richard: And I wasn’t about to rescue the bobcat. I said, you got up there, you can get down.

Beth Anne: Well, there must be something amazing. I’ve never been, and I’ve heard people say it’s a great place to live. So there must be so much great about it that you just don’t worry about having an irrational fear of alligators or.

Richard: It’s a nice place to live. I like it.

Beth Anne: Yeah. Awesome. All right. So Richard, I want to jump in because there’s so many things. First of all, I love talking to writers because I just love hearing about journeys and methodologies and stuff. And you and I have already talked and I just, I’ve just so many things that I just love it. So I want to, but I want to start with just real, real quickly, you came from a very long and rich corporate background. So can you talk a little bit about, so you were in tech, were you in like disaster recovery and security kind of stuff?

From Geology Major to Tech VP

Richard: Well, when I started, computers were the size of a room and they had 128K bytes of memory. And so you have more power in your digital watch, the cheap ones, the ones that don’t have any smartphone, than that computer had. It was running 128 users, fast. There were no AI, there was no super great languages. I started as an assembly language programmer. But my major was geology.

Beth Anne: Oh, no kidding.

Richard: I was going to be a geologist. And then I took a computer class, the basic language, which was an early language back then. And there was only one spot left. I was late doing my schedule and there was only one spot left and that was a computer class called the basic language. So I don’t even know what this is, whatever. I could sleep through it, right? Went there, was fascinated. The teacher started getting, became the person who did the computer lab. In fact, I broke into the computer and as I’m breaking in, I’m like, yeah, I got in. Man, I look up and there’s a teacher right behind me.

Beth Anne: Oh, geez.

Richard: Saying, congratulations, you just volunteered to be the security person.

Beth Anne: Awesome.

Richard: So that went very well. And then after that, one of my teachers started a company. And he hired me. And within a year, I was the VP of that company.

Beth Anne: Oh, what? So you were like, in your 20s, early 20s, and you were VP of a company already?

Richard: 22. I was the vice president of consulting.

Beth Anne: The days of tech, you know, I got into tech back, so I was going to college in the late 90s. And that’s why I went into it. I had no computer experience. Now, of course, this is, you know, computers weren’t huge quite then yet. But I had taken a temporary job at a utility firm where my dad worked in IT. And so I was kind of like an admin to admins. I mean, I literally sat at a desk and took faxes off of a fax machine three times a day and delivered them and answered the phone a couple of times. But I loved the energy of the technology department. I felt it was, you know, if you work in tech, it tends to be, I think, relative to the greater world, more diverse, and people are just very science-minded. And it was the bubble of like, they were hiring anybody. Like if you had knew how to turn a computer on, you could probably have gotten hired at that point. And that’s where I was like, what am I going to do? I was 10 years out of where I know when I should have been going to college. And I just thought, why not do tech? And so I did. The weird things that we, weird reasons that we get into tech.

Richard: It worked. I made a living and it was fun. And then after that company, I went to do another one. And I was the director, excuse me, the VP of consulting there. And at the same time, I decided I was going to work two jobs, not a very bright decision. So I got an apartment up in Camarillo, California. My first job was in Long Beach. That’s about 100 miles apart. So living in Camarillo, California, the job that I was doing for them was in Las Vegas. So every weekend I would drive up to Camarillo to my apartment, well, I’d be at my apartment, then fly to Las Vegas, spend 2 days in Vegas, and then come back and do my job during the week here in Las Vegas, Long Beach. So I got very sleep deprived.

Beth Anne: Typical of consultants, and I’ve worked with so many consultants and for a long time, I think it’s probably changed a little bit, maybe not, but it was, that was the classic, the consultant flies in on Monday and flies out usually Thursday. And yes, I have photos of some of our big consultants, like Deloitte consultants sleeping in meetings because they were so sleep deprived. So you worked at some point for Trader Joe’s?

Richard: Yep, but let me finish with the kicker.

Beth Anne: Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Richard: I worked those two jobs at the same time and then my tax came up and I realized I’m actually making less money working two jobs than I was making one, working one because this was before Reaganomics and before he lowered the tax, changed the tax code because there were like 7 brackets. There aren’t now. And obviously I quit one of the jobs, the one in Camarillo. And that was an interesting lesson. You need to actually look at things before you do.

Beth Anne: Sure. Yeah. Well, if you’re working, you’re working extra hard to put yourself into a higher tax bracket. That’s awesome.

Twenty Years at Trader Joe’s and the Christmas Dessert Table

Richard: And then I, then yeah, then I went to work for Trader Joe’s. I was hired directly as a computer of, excuse me, the operation computer operations director.

Beth Anne: Did you get a discount at Trader Joe’s for being an employee?

Richard: We got 10%.

Beth Anne: Ten percent. Oh, cool. Did they bring in like Trader Joe’s stuff for you sometimes? And did you get some good snacks or whatever, organic something?

Richard: Well, there’s a big kitchen in Trader Joe’s, or there was when I was there. Don’t know what it is now. And all of the vendors bring their stuff and then they cook with it. Everything in Trader Joe’s is tested, taste tested by the staff to make sure that it tastes good. Yeah. And the ingredients and stuff are all made in concert with the vendors and stuff. So it’s not, it is private label, but it’s not just, taking the whole bananas and making Trader Joe’s bananas. It’s tested.

Beth Anne: Yeah.

Richard: It’s, everybody likes it. So, and every year, one of the vendors would bring in, at Christmas, would bring in the Christmas desserts. So we would have like a huge table, like 50 feet long, filled with dessert after dessert after dessert after dessert after dessert. We all got fat that day. I mean, these were fancy desserts. These were not the, things you’d buy in a box.

Beth Anne: That’s my dream job. Did you ever, did you ever taste something that was provided for whatever reason and you just thought, no?

Richard: Oh, I’m a picky eater. Most of the stuff I wouldn’t even eat, but that’s just me. I’m sure it was great for the people who like it. So.

Beth Anne: Whenever I have somebody who has a, has a rich corporate experience, I always like to ask, what do you miss? Do you miss anything about it? And number two is, who’s the toughest boss in your corporate career? Because there’s so many of them. I just.

Richard: In my whole corporate career, I would say I worked with managers more than leaders. This was way before people were talking about servant leadership and all that kind of stuff. So the idea was you come to work, you do your job. If we call you, do your, you know, you’re not supposed to be on call, stuff like that, at all of them. That’s changed lately. I think most people have put up with it. Maybe.

Beth Anne: Has it really?

Richard: At least on LinkedIn, they say it has.

Beth Anne: Well, I think people are calling it out more. And hopefully I’ve been a part of that, having written a couple books and probably even you yourself. But I will say your story is very familiar because so many people I talk to who are still in corporate or were in corporate say the same thing, that they have had really tough bosses. And I will say I am happy to be the anomaly that I’m 23 years, except for the last six months at my last job, I had amazing bosses. Dave Clark, I’m talking to you, Mike Goggin. Oh, shit, I’m brain farting. I’m sorry, John. I can’t even think of your last name right now, but you know who you are. I want to say the company you work for, but I’m not going to. I don’t know why. Do you ever have like a weird brain fart? Like, I can’t remember.

Richard: It never happens to me. No, my one manager, I have to make an exception. I have one leader. It was my very first leader. His name was Steve Davis. And he was pretty good, actually. He was young. He was in his 20s also. It was a new company, the first one. He went on to become an executive VP at Disney. So he managed the entertainment unit at Disney. And pretty good guy. And we work well together. Him I really, really liked. And he was, I would say, he’s probably too young to call a leader. He was a good manager at the time. We weren’t really focused on leadership. These companies were rather small. We focused on management.

Beth Anne: And that’s fine. You know what, you can be a good manager and I think that’s different than being a good leader, but we need good managers too. So.

Richard: Yeah, it’s and the companies might have had good leadership in areas, but typically the IT department is considered the somehow the spoiled child of the company. Typically IT is looked down on. People don’t want to talk to IT. We bring it on ourselves. When I was in IT, because IT people tend to be arrogant. Oh, AI, it’s the next best thing. Whatever you’re doing, stupid. You know, that would be tough.

Beth Anne: Did you reboot it first? Come on.

Richard: Did you reboot it? What did you do to the computer? You know, we actually fired somebody for doing that once, 2 users just because the VP overheard him telling the employee that she was stupid and she didn’t. He was gone. Same day, literally escorted out of the building.

Beth Anne: There’s always that kind of, in my world, and I saw this really, I think for 23, the full 23 years, there was always this, there was this engineer business side element, and then there was the true technical element. And there was always a little, with a lot of people, not everybody, so don’t come at me, co-workers, because I love y’all, most of you. But there was always sometimes a little bit of superiority. I think less so probably in the last 10 years, but certainly my first, no, it’s gotten worse.

Richard: It’s gotten worse.

Beth Anne: So the engineers there was always a little bit of like, well, I’m an engineer. So, and it was, and I know, how things work. And then the tech people would be like, but I’m telling you that this is what’s going to happen. And there was always, it was always just a little bit of a tech engineering competition.

The CEO Who Threw Me Out of the Room

Richard: I learned my lesson the hard way. So I’d spent several months working with a team, putting together a proposal for a huge plan. It was multi-million dollar. And we were going to present it to the CEO. So my boss and his boss told me, they already filled in the CEO, that we were doing this. And we hired for free. They were doing it basically assuming they were going to get the business if it was approved. And all expectations were it was going to be approved.

Some companies put in like 1000 hours of free time to help us with this is a big project at the time. There was really no internet, so we had to put in all the cabling, telephone lines, T3s, and all that kind of stuff.

Walk into the CEO’s office, you know, all ready to go and stuff, nervous as heck because nobody wants to talk to the CEO, you know, because he’s the CEO. And I start presenting the case. And first thing that the CEO does is says, you can leave the room, Richard. I said, what do you mean I can leave the room? I didn’t say that, of course, but I was like, what? He said, you’re not speaking my language. You can go.

Beth Anne: What does that even mean?

Richard: I wasn’t speaking business speak. I was speaking tech speak. And that’s what I learned. So I left the room and he had a frank conversation with my boss and his boss. They came out shaken, with some lessons learned that affected how the department approached things for years after.

And I’m glad, I think he kicked me out because first of all, I wasn’t speaking his language, but second of all, I wasn’t responsible for these people being in the room and presenting this. So, and I heard all that just by the look of their faces and I heard what happened secondhand.

Beth Anne: We’ve all had one of those horrible projects. Well, hey, I want to jump into our comments real quick here because we’ve got some people checking in. We’ve got Gabrielle E showing in, just giving us a clap. Nice to see you.

Richard: Hi, Gabrielle.

Beth Anne: Do you know Gabrielle?

Richard: I don’t think I do not. I do not.

Beth Anne: Awesome. Well, we do now. Stella Scott is here with her water. One daily caffeine, yes, soda, no. You know what? I try. I do, believe me. If somebody ever can ever figure out a way for me to quit caffeine easily, another show. And then Eileen Pizzi’s here. She has her coffee. She’s in New Jersey and she prefers water over soda. You know, I think water is better for you, but there is something about, and I know some people will relate to this, there’s something about when you’re really thirsty, having a good, especially if you drink soda, having your favorite soda. Because I know for me, sometimes water is just…

Richard: Well, I do carbonated water sometimes.

Beth Anne: Oh, that’s even worse, Richard.

Richard: No.

Beth Anne: Sugar, no sweetener, no, nothing.

Richard: That’s like licorice. No, that’s like black licorice. I just, sorry, we’ve already talked about black licorice on this show, so I don’t want to get people started.

Beth Anne: It used to be my favorite back when I could eat candy.

Richard: We’ve got Riley Pritchard here. Hi, Beth and Richard. I have a large coffee. By the way, John Young is the name. I could not think of John Young’s last name, so I’m sorry. Mike Goggin’s here. He probably would have reminded me if I had not figured this out. But Mike Goggin, one of the great bosses that I just mentioned, who I’m so happy and proud to have worked with. So nice to see you, Mike. Always a pleasure out in Arizona, where it’s probably getting pretty warm this time of year.

Beth Anne: Okay, Mike also, corporate tech career in, I was going to ask you because you majored in, or you were talking about geology, and I was going to ask you if you had ever dabbled in GIS in your corporate career.

Richard: GIS.

Beth Anne: Geospatial Information Systems.

Richard: No, we didn’t actually have that back when I was.

Beth Anne: Yeah, no worries. Okay.

Richard: I’m older, so you know.

Leaving California for Florida

Beth Anne: Well, Stella says, you’re confirming why my gut told me don’t go into corporate, even though I think it’s a lot worse in the US compared to Sweden. I’m going to say Stella, and this is just me talking, and everybody hit this with a grain of salt too. Well, actually, probably even more so because I’ve ranted. I had a podcast ranting about corporate. I’ve ranted many times about corporate. I still do. I’ve written a couple of ranty books, but it wasn’t all bad. It was actually, there was a lot of really good stuff about corporate, and there are…

Richard: You asked me about the bad stuff. There was a lot of good stuff too.

Beth Anne: Yeah.

Richard: I mean, I was there for, I was in corporate for 33 years. There was one of the lessons that I learned from being in corporate for 33 years after I left was don’t be afraid. I was afraid of leaving because I got this information from various people that you can’t make it on your own. It’s harder to be a freelancer. You’re going to fail. What about money? And then when I finally left, one of the reasons I left is I realized I had enough money to survive for several years.

Beth Anne: Yeah.

Richard: So let’s just go do it. You can always go back, which turned out to be false because, you know, ageism. But.

Beth Anne: Ageism.

Richard: Exists. It’s pretty bad.

Beth Anne: Yeah. Oh yeah, I know lots of, yeah, I mean, I know we want to go down the road because I’ve got so much that I want to talk to you about. But 100%. Okay, so I’m going to jump ahead. So you retired early. Can I ask you what was it that prompted you to decide this is time, it’s time for me not to be in corporate tech anymore.

Richard: I’d been through a lot, both personal life and business life, and I realized it was time to change 100%, just change everything, pivot. So I moved to Florida. I lived in California for my whole life. I was born there. And I said, okay, I’m going to move to Florida because California has become bonkers. Love the scenery, love a lot of the people, hate the government.

Beth Anne: Well, and it’s also the cost of living in California.

Richard: Cost of living, taxes, the whole thing. We don’t have, we don’t have income tax here in Florida. There’s no state income tax. So I said, okay, I’m going to move to Florida. Florida’s a little bit more, in my opinion, sane. Although it has its insanities as well, like alligators in the back. And I’m going to basically make a whole new life and a whole new career. And what have I wanted to do my whole life since I was 17? And that’s another story we might want to talk about. I’ve just, I’ve wanted to be a writer and I wanted to learn about people and help people with my writing abilities. So I’m going to do that now.

And after stumbling around a bit and a few, few positions. I finally started my own company and immediately got some big clients. And then after that, it’s been basically, just continuing doing very well, making more money. I’m making more money than I was making at Trader Joe’s, which was a lot.

Beth Anne: Yeah. So you were, this is your, a company where you’re writing books for people?

Richard: The Writing King is intended. It’s a, I used to do blogs and things like that. I don’t do them anymore. I just do books. There’s a big difference in clients between people who want blogs and people who want books.

Beth Anne: Well, especially nowadays, and we’ll talk about that in a minute, the whole impact of AI. Do you remember either for yourself or for someone else, the first book that you wrote?

Writing a Book for a War-Hero Grandfather

Richard: Yes.

Beth Anne: Because you’ve written a lot. You could, I could say people say, well, of course you remember your first book, but you know, Richard has written a lot of books. So.

Richard: My first book I wrote was when I was 17 years old, and it’s a special book. I was 17 and it was Christmas and I was down with my family and I was very introverted. And I looked over at my grandfather and he was very introverted and people avoided him. I asked, why are we avoiding grandfather? Because he’s weird. He’s curmudgeony. Nobody wants to talk to him. He’s going to snap at you, blah, blah, blah.

So being a 17 year old, I basically said, F you. And went over there and talked to my grandfather. The man was a World War II vet. He was a hero. He was in the Yangtze River Patrol, a cook on a ship, a boat called the, I think it was called the Penyang on the Yangtze River. So I think it was later sunk by the Japanese, but he wasn’t there. He was transferred to Corregidor. He was captured on Corregidor by the Japanese. It was in the Bataan Death March, like 10,000 Americans and Filipinos were marched across this 100 mile peninsula. Half of them died. And then he was in the Japanese POW camp for four years. And I got to talk to him about it. I was like, what? He can be as curmudgeony as he wants. He can be whatever he wants to be. He’s earned the right. And I’m happy to have got that story. I wrote him a little book. It’s since been lost. And learned, well, yeah, and learned all about him. And I was glad I did that. He was, it was, I respected him a lot. And before that, I didn’t, because everybody said he’s not a good guy. He was a great guy.

Beth Anne: Yeah. Oh, that’s so sweet. Do you, so when you got to the world of actually publishing books for the masses, do you remember when you got your very first printed book in your hand and what was your experience like?

Doris and Gators in the Soup

Richard: There are several moments of that. Let me talk to you about a customer who got her very first copy of the book. Her name was Doris. And Doris came to me saying, I want to write a book. I said, okay, fine. Let’s meet at the Panera Bread. Oh, you’re local. Okay. So we went and met at Panera Bread. Her whole family came, eight people. And they were a very interesting family and I liked them right away. But my first thought was, they’re not going to be able to afford me. I was wrong. I forgot that retirees have money. And she said, yeah, I’ll pay your price. I want you to do the book. I want you to take these

And she had boxes and boxes and boxes of handwritten notes that she’d taken every morning when she woke up of her dreams. Handwritten. So she wanted me to go through all of those boxes, which I told her sister that she could do the transcription and she did some, but it was fine. So we got the gist of it and write a novel based on that.

Beth Anne: Wow. Like a fiction.

Richard: It’s a young adult book.

Beth Anne: Oh, wow.

Richard: And it’s called Gators in the Soup. It’s on Amazon. And it’s about two magical gators who wander around this magical land having magical adventures and have magical battles and bad magical demons, all kinds of stuff. Wonderful book. And when she got it in her hands, she told me, this feels almost as good as when I held my firstborn in my hands for the first time.

Beth Anne: Yeah, that’s that is a true writer at heart, even if she, even if you did the writing for her. Yeah, everybody who I ask who’s an author has a similar story. And for me, it was the same. I would visualize as I was writing my first book, I would visualize imagining myself in my house and the doorbell rings because sometimes the post or the US or the UPS dings the doorbell. So I’m in my house, the package arrives, I go out, there’s a box, I open the box and the emotion floods. And it was exactly like that in real life when I got my first box. In fact, I filmed it and it was, and it was horrible. I hadn’t done hardly any videos at that time. And so it was a horrible, my voice is shaking, but it was just a true emotional moment when you finally, when you work on something with your heart and soul so much, it’s either it’s your story or your writing or both in some cases. And then you get this physical representation, even if it’s the worst book in the world. It’s just like nothing else.

Richard: Yeah, I’m working on a new novel for me, not for client, called Peacekeeper that I’ve been working on for like 35 years.

Beth Anne: Wow.

Richard: And I’m in the third draft. It’s almost done. I got a little more polishing to do. I just got the cover back from a professional cover artist and it’s like, you got it. He didn’t read a book. I just sent him a description. I was like, wow, I need you to add, there’s two women on the cover. I need to add a jewel on her forehead and tattoos on her arms and you’ve got it 100%. Wow. With a big space battle going on in the background. It’s really cool.

Beth Anne: Can I ask you a little bit of about your methodology? So you, do you have others design your covers or do you, have you designed any of your covers?

Richard: I am not an artist.

Beth Anne: Yeah, that’s fair.

Richard: My dad was an artist. That’s what he made a living at. But I am not. And I am recognizing that and I use resources, all other people to do that. This was a very, very good professional.

Ghostwriting Approach and Why Cheap Costs More

Beth Anne: That’s awesome. So do you, when you ghost write for somebody, and there’s no right or wrong answer of people out there, but when you go straight for people, are you also doing? Are you helping them with editing? Is there a third-party editor or is it, here’s your draft, you do with it what you will? Is your name on it? I mean, I’m just, I’m so curious about the ghostwriting method.

Richard: Well, basically I pick up the book from the idea, usually. I don’t generally work off their notes and sometimes they come with manuscripts and sometimes they come with reams of notes and boxes of paper. I do it from interviews. And I might skim those materials to see if there’s anything good in them. But usually that’s far more work than just doing an interview. And I get far better results from just talking to them. So then we go through the interview process. That takes a while because I’m looking for their heart. I’m looking for their soul. I’m looking for, I do give it back, by the way, once I use it.

Beth Anne: Thank goodness.

Richard: And I’m looking to put that, to get that so that I can write the book from their point of view or whatever point of view they want, and with their passion in it. So it’s not just going to be a book that you got off AI or something stupid like that, or that you got from a ghostwriter who doesn’t care. He or she just wants the money. You’re going to get a book that shows your passion. From there, we write the book a little bit where I write a bit, send it to you for revisions, comes back to me, I revise it and keep doing that through the whole thing. So by the end of the book, we got a pretty good draft that you’re happy with. So we don’t have to generally go through that whole revision process in nauseam, hopefully.

Beth Anne: Yeah, I mean, it’s very personal for everybody. And I will just say, there’s no shame in this day and age. I know many people who go through and do all of their own editing. I always think it’s good to have third party. And when you’re ghostwriting, you certainly have, you know, feedback. But I also know that it’s not cheap to, if somebody is just out there and they have a dream of, I have a friend who published a first in a series of fiction novels. And did it all himself? And is the book formatted and grammatically perfect? No, but…

Richard: Well, I always tell my authors, the author’s them, the writer’s me. I authors tell my authors to, we’re going to send it to an editor first, professional editor. I’ve got some on tap, they’re really good. Then it’s going to come back from the editor, and then we’re going to get the cover and the ISBN and all the other stuff and then self-publish it. I help with as many of those as I can. So I, as part of the contract, I manage the process so I can get you the editor and get you stuff.

Now, if they’re going to go traditional publishing and four of my authors have, one just finished, then that’s going with the big publishing houses, then you don’t do the editing and stuff. You just send the draft and they’ll fix it all up. And you go through an agent. Hybrid publishing, you skip the agent and you just give them money and they publish it for you. So they generally run very expensive if it’s a good one.

One way you can tell that you’re not going to get the product you want is the price. If the price is low, just like if you bought, if you did the low bid on building your dream house, you probably don’t want to do that. It’s your dream house and your book’s doing your dream. You probably want to go with the mid-level bid, maybe the low, low, high bid, whatever, because you’re going to get a better product behind it. You’re going to get somebody who stands behind the work. Don’t go with the low bid. Why would you do that? Yeah. And that’s an important thing.

Price is a consideration. And people who have good prices, meaning reasonable prices, have confidence. And that’s how you can tell if you can find a ghostwriter or any other professional. I could say it’s a contractor who’s going to bid your house. If they’re bidding low, they don’t have confidence because they don’t think they can get the higher prices. You don’t want them. I mean, unless you’re unless you’re building, you know, track homes or something.

Beth Anne: Yeah, and I will and I will just say from my personal experience, so I used a hybrid for my first book. I ended up republishing it, self-publishing it. Which was easy because I had rights to all the stuff they were very great about. And it was a great hand-holding experience, but they were great about letting me get out of my contract. But I will just say, for anybody who’s out there, if you’re thinking, well, I can’t write a book because I can’t afford an editor, please don’t let that stop you from writing your book. It is important to get professional help with your book. But I also know, and from personal experience, having just lost a year and a half ago a job where I was in a position where I could pay good money for editing and stuff, and now I’m not. I just want people to, don’t not write your book because you were worried about money. At least write it, at least get it out there. And.

Richard: Then. On that same line, don’t not go to a ghostwriter. Because I don’t think it’s too expensive. I will work with payment plans. I will help you get the book. We’ll come up with options for you. There’s also book coaching. I also do book coaching where you write the book and I help you write the book. That’s a very affordable option. So don’t let the money stop you, especially if it’s your dream book or if you want it to be good. If it’s your brand, you certainly don’t want to let money stop. If you’re a company, you can afford this.

Beth Anne: Yeah, just do it.

Richard: It’s a business expense.

Beth Anne: Stop complaining and just do it.

Richard: It’s a business expense. Yeah, it’s going to be expensive. It’s not going to be cheap because you’re buying quality. But do you want quality or do you want cheap? It’s your brand or it’s your dream book or whatever. It’s going to be one of those two things and you wouldn’t be coming to a ghostwriter to talk to them if it wasn’t one of those two things. It’s your passion.

Beth Anne: Yeah. Do you? So if somebody comes to you and they have an idea, and I know it’s going to vary based on many, many factors, but somebody comes with you, they have an idea, do you, how long does it take you typically to go from start to finish, from I’m, we’re having an initial conversation to delivery of your fully drafted and perhaps edited partially at least, or whatever product, for a maybe 150 page book.

Richard: A 150 page book is about 30,000 words, maybe 40,000 words. Those can take anywhere from three months to six months to write.

Beth Anne: It’s not long at all.

Richard: Maybe as long as seven. It’s usually the revision pass that winds up taking more time.

Beth Anne: Oh, God bless you, because for me, it’s the opposite. It’ll take me a year to write a book, a draft, because getting words on paper is my hardest part. And then once I get into editing and cleaning up and making things good, that’s just like that.

Richard: Well, the revision is before the editor, but after me. And I do the revision. I help with the revision. I allow one pass in my contracts. So we revise it once. The idea is you read through the whole thing, you tell me all your comments, I revise it, I fix it, give it back to you. And then any more revisions go through the editor. at that point. So it makes things nice and clean. I learned a long time ago, you don’t want to get into the, can you revise this, can you revise this, can you revise this, can you revise this? You get into revision hell is what I call it. just, you go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and it just doesn’t work very well. Both people start to hate each other at the end of that. Just do one pass.

Beth Anne: Yeah, that’s that’s not long at all. I just want to jump into the comments here, and we’ve got some folks weighing in here on all of this stuff. So Riley Pritchard says, exactly, Richard, even though I’ve always dreamed of and have a passion for the creative realm, writing, illustrating, inventing, but went into healthcare, loved it, but no fire passion like I still do for creative writing. Yeah, writing is quite a passion. I’ve been afraid to leave for the reasons you mention. I will just say we both have left corporate. I fairly recently, and I was afraid the decision was made for me. And Riley, my opinion is, prepare for it. As Richard said, he was, he had the means to survive for a few years without anything. I prepared as well. I had less time, but I prepared and had been preparing. So I would say if you love it and you just don’t love what you’re doing, consider it. I’m, you know, I’m just saying I’m so much happier now that I’m doing. Yeah, go ahead.

Richard: Start a side gig.

Beth Anne: Yeah.

Richard: Start another job, basically another job, but it’s your own. And do some blogs or whatever, art or whatever your passion is as a side gig in addition to your general job. Do it on Fiverr, do it on, I hate reasonably, do it on a different platform and you’ll You’ll make some, you’ll learn whether or not you can make it before you leave.

Beth Anne: And you’ll be so much better prepared too. And I say the same thing about things like networking. People out there in the corporate world thinking, and probably you don’t think this now, but maybe some of you still do think I’m good, I’m solid. I thought the same thing. I thought I’m going to work for another 10 years for this company. And that didn’t happen. So prepare. I did side gigs. I was writing, I wrote my two books that I have published now before I left corporate. So I was writing on the side. I had podcasts on the side. I was networking on the side. I was starting to pull people into my network who were more in my dream area. So, and you learn so much from them and then they can help you later and give you advice and just be a support network. So I think your advice, Richard, is spot on. Just do it on the side.

Richard: Let me make an offer here. Anybody here who’s listening who wants to chat about this stuff, get on my website. There’s a place where you can schedule an appointment, schedule 30 minutes. We’ll have a chat. And I’ll be happy to give you some advice or something, you know, not without a sales pitch. Well, there’ll be a little sales pitch, but you know.

Beth Anne: Always we expected. Well, thank you.

Richard: That’s very nice. Just feel free and I’ll be happy to go forward.

Beth Anne: Well, there you go, Riley. Riley also says, thanks, Beth, for this interview and discussion. Enjoying listening to you both. Great gems. Thank you for that feedback. I so appreciate it. Stella says, I always get curious about the houses and planets when someone has an innate urge like that writing and what, how that was triggered when the pivot occurred. It’s an entry. So Stella’s an astrologer, so she’s kind of speaking from an astrology. But I will say, I mean, Richard, you talked about in your youth, you wrote a book for your grandfather when you were in your teens. Same here. I’ve always written, but never really thought about, oh, a book until I was probably in my 30s. And then it took a while. It took another 15, 20 years to get it, get something published. So.

It is a passion. Eileen says ghostwriting has to be, and Eileen, by the way, is a copy editor and proofreader. So ghostwriting has to be difficult. You have to write in a way that reflects the author. It has to sound like the author and definitely beats the robotic results you would get from AI. There’s a place and a time for AI. And for me, it’s not writing from someone’s voice, but there are things that people do write with AI that are probably fine.

Riley says, thanks for that info, Beth. Yes, sometimes having that, you have to have, sometimes have extra dollars, sometimes I don’t. Yep, well, that’s the prepare part, right? And if you’re going to write a book, that’s just another thing to prepare for. Riley says, thanks to both for your insights and talking directly here on preparation side gig being recently what I’ve been debating. So great feedback. Yeah, that’s awesome. If it’s your passion, it won’t seem like work.

Richard: And one thing you can remember is if you’re going to write a book for your business, let’s say you’re starting a new business. That’s a business expense. And you can deduct it from your income tax. And also, you can go out and get a business loan and have a book as part of that. You’d have to come up with a business plan for that. Part of your business plan should be writing a book. Put that in your dollars and go out and get that business loan that you would get to start your business. So make it part of your plans.

Beth Anne: Yeah, there’s so much, I mean, there’s so much in the world of entrepreneurship that people just don’t think about. Richard, I cannot, we are getting close to 45 minutes in and we have not talked about belly dancing. So I cannot not because I’ve promoted this. So tell me this story, because I know you and I, when we talked on another call, you told me the story of how you got into, what kind of prompted you to start getting into photography. And so let’s talk a little bit about that journey of yours.

Photography, Belly Dancers, and Renaissance Faires

Richard: Okay. My wife passed away 21 years ago and I didn’t like grief. I just tasted it and I did not like it. She’s sick for a long time. So I was feeling grief for a long time. So I decided, okay, I don’t like grief. What can I do? And also I’m shy. I want to fix that. So I picked up the camera, started photographing national parks and things, photographed all the national parks in the American Southwest, all the state parks, then the Renaissance fairs.

So I went to Renaissance fair. The Renaissance people, they’re like a family, like a circus family. And they made me, they’re friends. Did some steampunk shows, nice hat, did some Gothic shows, stuff like that. One of the Renaissance fairs, I sat down, telephoto lens in the back row, center seat, photographing the dancers. I put them all on the internet. And one of the dancers approaches me. Hers, she’s become the dearest, one of my dearest friends, Marjani is her name.

And, but I was a person who was not exposed to a lot of tattoos and piercings and things that was always looked down upon by my family. And I just wasn’t exposed to it. I didn’t know either way. But what I did it in my head was, this is wrong and it’s scary. So she’s walking up to me. She’s, to me, she scared the devil. She laughs when I tell her the story. She scared the devil out of me. She’s walking towards me. She sits down next to me. She puts her arm around me. I’m like, oh my God.

She says, we love you, Richard. We love your photos. We want you to sit in the front row center. We don’t like the photographers who sit in the back row because it’s kind of, you know, a little weird. And we want you to be in the front row center. And in fact, I’m inviting you to be part of our tribe. That’s what they call the belly dance groups. And I want to invite to introduce you to all the other belly dancers in Southern California, which she did.

And before you knew it, I was photographing every belly dance show in Southern California, like 4 a week. Wow. In the evenings going to these shows dog tired. And then, and the weekends flying to Renaissance fairs all over the place. I was doing both or WWE wrestling matches or, The circus, I got the VIP package at the circus a few times. You’re in the center ring, by the way. You’re actually in the ring when you buy the VIP package.

Beth Anne: Oh, wow.

Richard: It’s really cool. All this kind of stuff. And I wound up photographing 1,200 belly dance shows, did about 3, 400 portfolio shoots, and did about 300 Renaissance faire shoots, all in eight years. And every birthday of mine, all the dancers, I rented a room and all like a hall and all of the dancers came like 100, 150 and they all danced for me. They put on a show because I didn’t charge them for any of this. And so they all had this wonderful belly dance show where they’re all dancing for me with their husbands. They’re all going, whatever. I’ve seen these before. You know, they’ve seen all these performances a million times. They’re just coming because free food, I always brought in a caterer who was one of the dancers who was had the ethnic food, Turkish food and stuff. So it was a great time. Got some really good shots of some of the big names, belly dance superstars, models, supermodel, a couple supermodels.

One of my favorites was I was the photographer that was hired for the, let’s see if I can get the name right, the world’s first mermaid photographer, mermaid event, whatever, beauty event, excuse me. So it was the first one, first and only, in Silverton, Las Vegas.

Beth Anne: So this is underwater, right? This mermaids are obviously.

Richard: Huge pool.

Beth Anne: Yeah.

Richard: Mermaids, they’re two supermodels. They’re all dressed in mermaid suits. I got some really.

Beth Anne: Clearly, we all know that mermaids are water creatures, so there must be water for these mermaids.

Richard: They actually, a lot of them actually believe they are mermaids. Don’t.

Beth Anne: Shatter it for me, Richard. I believe that they’re mermaids too.

Richard: It was a lot of fun. Went on 4 belly dance cruises as a photographer, which is a fun story.

Beth Anne: That there is even a thing called a belly dancing cruise.

Richard: So I wanted to go, but it turns out when you’re single, you have to pay for two spots anyway. You can’t just buy a single, you’re going to buy 2. So I said, okay, fine. Who can I take with me? So I asked one of the dancers. She said, what do you want? And I said, let’s just go, let’s just go together. We’ll be friends. So we were friends. Stayed in the same room. Went there. She was fine. We were fine. We had a good time. Did photograph to everybody. Didn’t even get off the ship at Ensenada. You know, who cares? I’m with dancers. Then the next year we went and the year after that, she had to get permission from her boyfriend.

The next year she married the boyfriend and she told me she couldn’t go because she was married now and it wouldn’t be proper. So then she couldn’t find somebody. So she went to her husband and she was complaining. Her husband, go over Richard. He’s cool. So we went on a fourth time. Her name is Jannah. She’s one of my awesome friends. She’s incredible. And she’s gone to every party, everything I ever did. She’s always been supportive. I mean, these ladies.

Beth Anne: Are you still photographing? The shows.

Richard: I haven’t photographed since I moved to Florida. There really just isn’t that kind of scene around here, at least nothing I’ve broken into. But that was fun.

Beth Anne: Opportunities, Florida. Just saying, Renaissance festivals are fun.

Richard: Well, there’s a few of those around here, but it’s hot and humid in Florida.

Beth Anne: That’s true.

Richard: California is hot and dry difference. The most fun, one of the more fun times was at Las Vegas, excuse me, Arizona Renaissance Center in Tempe. Meet some of the dancers, Laura, a bunch of the others. They’re a troupe out there, which is a valley dance group. They’re dancing and they see that I’m always there. So I said, I’ll do a photo shoot for you, free, you know, so we do a photo shoot. And they said, we want to be hanging from the trees. I said, okay, it’s fine with me. So these dancers are literally hanging upside down in this tree in different positions. Dress falling down, they have stuff underneath. Dress falling down over their heads, looking, and it wasn’t nearly as glamorous as in their mind, but it was fun. There were bugs in the tree.

Beth Anne: Oh.

Richard: Not a lot, nothing.

Beth Anne: But how fun, but what a fun, you know, and I love that you just, you know, you go out there and you just have fun and it doesn’t matter. This is like what I, mean, you’re, if I, if you go to Amazon even, and, or, probably your website has them too, but if you just look at all of the books for Richard Lowe Jr. It’s amazing the diversity. So you turned your belly dancing photos, some of them, into multiple coloring books.

Richard: Four belly dance coloring books. It was very popular with my belly dance friends, obviously, because I took real photos and had them traced to put in the books. I’m not an artist. One of my goals, it’s a low urgency goal, is to take those four books and use AI to make them, the tracings a little bit bolder and better. Same tracings, but just, they came out a little light. But that was fun. The Belly Dancers loved it. I’d already moved to Florida by then. The other coloring books I did didn’t do well, but those did, because I had an audience. That’s important for your book, by the way. If you’re going to ghost write a book, the first thing we do is figure out who your audience is. And with the belly dancer books, I already knew who my audience was. So that was fine. The other coloring books, I didn’t have an audience, so they didn’t sell well. Go figure.

Beth Anne: Well, but you know, you live and you learn. And that’s why I say, you know, people just get out there and do it. What was I going to ask you? You, oh, oh gosh, what was it? Oh, I was going to address our audience out there. God, I’m having a brain fart today. I must have eaten like some processed food yesterday or something.

Richard: It’s my great handsomeness that’s.

Beth Anne: Caused me to stumble. Actually, I’m just because we so mesh with our design colors here today.

Richard: That’s true, that’s true.

Beth Anne: I’m losing track here. Now, so for our audience, we are going to be wrapping up pretty soon. So if you have any final questions or comments, please throw them into the comments right now because there is a little bit of a delay. I want to make sure we get to them before we jump off here.

The Fortune 50 Client Who Raised $30 Million in Venture Capital

Beth Anne: I did want to ask you, oh, yeah, so you’ve written so many books for yourself and for others. Do you have a favorite?

Richard: Do I have a favorite?

Beth Anne: Either that you wrote or the topic or whatever.

Richard: My most successful was a ghostwritten book I wrote for a client, foreign client, and he wanted to get the attention of the CEO. That was his goal. So write this book, CEO will see it. It’s a big company, it’s Fortune 50. He was a VP. And I wrote it. The CEO wound up writing the foreword. So mission accomplished. He got a promotion and a raise. Good stuff. Other things happened, went out in libraries and all kinds of other things. And then he used the book as part of his prospectus for venture cap, and he got $30 million in venture cap.

Beth Anne: What?

Richard: From my book, which I didn’t get paid anywhere near that much for.

Beth Anne: Wow, yeah. Should have had like a contractual clause of, by the way, if this book generates.

Richard: By the way, to answer your earlier question, my name has never been on the cover.

Beth Anne: No, okay. So when you ghostwrite, you are not, is it, are you referenced in within? Is there somewhere in within that it has your name in it?

Richard: Sometimes. About a dozen books that they have an acknowledgement saying thank you to Richard for, usually book coaching or something like that. They don’t want to say I’m their ghostwriter and I understand. I don’t care. I’m getting paid. I’m happy. And I got a good project.

But my favorite book was probably my first book, because my first non-ghostwritten book, the first one I wrote, was called Safe Computing is Like Safe Sex. If you don’t practice, it doesn’t help or something like that. And it had a whole like 6 people buy a copy. I mean, it didn’t sell. I didn’t know the audience. I didn’t know there were like 50,000 cybersecurity books out there. But I put my heart into it. It’s got pictures. It’s got everything. You know, it’s a really good book. I like it a lot. People who read it do like it. It’s got some good reviews. But it’s not a favorite because of sales. It’s a favorite because it was a good book. I like cybersecurity.

Beth Anne: And if it’s your first, yeah.

Closing Conversation: Reading and Peacekeeper

Beth Anne: So I have one last question. So most authors and writers are also avid readers. What do you read? What is, what do you just for pleasure?

Richard: Lord of the Rings. I’ve read like 50 times, yeah. Some of the others, Dune. Yeah. And the movies are disappointing compared to the books, by the way.

Beth Anne: Yeah. Well, which is usually the case.

Richard: Yeah. The book, the movie, the Dune movies are great for Dune, but the books, wow. They cut some stuff out of the movies like.

Beth Anne: They always do. My all-time favorite book is The Stand by Stephen King. I love just- All the movie’s crappy. And all of them, there’s been like 3 series and they just, they’re all, you know, not just, you just don’t get the same, but.

Richard: Isaac Asimov, Ursula Guin. I think that’s how you pronounce her name.

Beth Anne: The Ursi trilogies.

Richard: Right. Just good stuff like that. Game of Thrones, I have not cracked Game of Thrones yet, but I have them behind me.

Beth Anne: Good luck with that. I’ve read them all, but Game of Thrones, I had to start reading the first book three times before I finally got to a point where I was like, oh, okay, this is, and then it was, yes, I’m sold.

Richard: That series is the Eternal Champion series by Michael Moorcock. It’s 40 novels written over his whole lifetime. That series is very expensive because it’s way out of print, signed, first editions.

Beth Anne: Have you read the Wheel of Time series?

Richard: I have not.

Beth Anne: Yeah. My husband and I are watching, or we just watched, the series is pretty good. I’ve not read the books, but I think I might want to now, but I’ve read this series, which I don’t know.

Richard: I’ve also not read or watched the movies of Harry Potter.

Beth Anne: What?

Richard: I know, I’m going to hell.

Beth Anne: I’ve read all the books, but I will say I don’t think I would read them. I know people that are just, oh my God, the books are amazing, and they are, but I like the movies better.

Richard: But I do want to go to the Universal Harry Potter stuff. I think that’d be fun.

Beth Anne: Yeah, that’s awesome. Back to the comments here, just real quick. So Riley says, just want to say how much I enjoyed your interview and how much you covered from corporate headaches and experiences with tech and writing and ghostwriting do’s and don’ts. Thank you, Riley. So much appreciate that. Eileen says, Lord of the Rings movie was greater, but the books were far better.

Richard: Well, note that they changed the book. The books are a drama and the movies is an adventure movie.

Beth Anne: Yeah.

Richard: So they had to change it because of drama, people were going, you know. So. It’s understandable. I just hate some of the plots they added.

Beth Anne: Well, this is what a lot of people, so you are not the only person who I know who is a big, big, big Lord of the Rings Jerry Gray talking to you. So I know some people who are just, and if you’re like a huge, this is probably why I didn’t enjoy the Stand, any of the Stand series, because I was such a big fan of the book, read it so, like you, I’ve just read it so many times and it’s like, you know, 1200 pages. and it just is never going to never going to cut it to the books. So, but that’s okay. What? The books are the, as my husband and I often say, the books are the books and the movies are the movies. So we just try to.

Richard: That’s the way we got to take it. That’s the way we got to take it.

Beth Anne: Yep. Awesome. Okay. So thank you so much, everybody. So Richard, before we wrap up, Is there anything that you want our listeners to know, anything that you have coming up? And of course, I will put all of your links and your info in the comments. But if you want to just let us know what is the best way to get in touch with you.

Richard: Go to thewritingking.com. That’s thewritingking.com.

Beth Anne: Let me pull. I think I have that up here, right here.

Richard: That’s where everything about me is. I’m writing a new book. And on there, you’ll be able to find my scheduled links. They’re all over the place on the site. I’m writing a new book called Peacekeeper. Should be out soon. Which is a story of an earth empire 800,000 years in the future that has no faster than light travel, but still has 20,000 colonies. So it’s kind of interesting.

Beth Anne: Okay.

Richard: That’s why the timeline’s so long. And it gets, it’s brutal. And the hero is a woman and the villain is a woman. And they’re both hardcore. I love it. And I have asked women for their opinions on how to write women. So, because I’m not a woman.

Beth Anne: We appreciate that. Yeah.

Richard: And so that’s coming out soon. I’ve been working on that one for 35 years.

Beth Anne: Wow.

Richard: And I finally decided to finish it. Does need another coat of paint, though. I have to go through it.

Beth Anne: That is a labor of love. 35 years.

Richard: Two of my clients just published their books. One of them traditional, and they are in love with what they did. They got really good covers. They got the one that was traditional. He’s selling gobs of copies. I mean, thousands and thousands. The other one’s learning how to market. Surprise, you have to market your books. And he’s having fun with that too. He’s pestered me with questions, which is fine.

Beth Anne: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Well, again, we’ll put all of this information in the comments. And if there’s anything else that you want to add in there, once it’s posted, please do so. Richard, thank you so much for being my guest on The Thirsty Professional. You were super fun to talk to. You’ve got such a rich and diverse background and set of skills. I didn’t even get to a lot of stuff that I wanted to talk, so we might have to pull you back.

Richard: Let’s do a part 2.

Beth Anne: Yeah, we got to do a part 2.

Richard: I’m free next week. No.

Beth Anne: Yeah, I’ll reach out offline with some open dates, but I just love that you’re out there. I always love talking to former corporate people who have a passion and even if they didn’t have a tough corporate experience, they just decided I’m going to go out there and live my best life and you’re doing that. So I love that. Thank you so much.

All right, next week, my very, very, very special guest will be Darren Gerheen. So Darren, another Founders Network person. Darren has spent his entire career over 30 years as a graphic designer. He started off doing manual design. So like you, Richard, he was back in the, you know, you probably did the punch cards. He was doing manual design by hand for machine diagrams. Now he’s a digital designer. He’s even using AI to help him with some of his work. He faced multiple redundancies, so we can relate to that, and then started his own design business in 2006. So we’re going to explore Darren’s journey to here, bring his almost 20-year entrepreneurial wisdom to all of you, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I hope you’ll join us for this fun conversation with Darren Gerheen. So look forward to that.

If you’re out there watching on LinkedIn, please connect if you’re not already with myself and my awesome guest. If you’re on YouTube, please like and subscribe. It’s so much appreciated. If you have any questions or feedback, please leave it in the comments or DM one of us. And congratulate yourself for getting real about your career, your purpose, and your passion. So now, Miss Hattie Arbuckle, my lovely hat, Richard Lowe, Jr., and I now bid you a fond farewell. Take it easy.

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