Carol Fishman Cohen: Welcome to 3 2, 1 iRelaunch, the podcast where we discuss return-to-work strategies, advice, and success stories. I'm Carol Fishman Cohen, CEO and co-founder of iRelaunch and your host. Let me go right into introducing Zibby Owens and I feel so privileged that we get to speak with Zibby, because I have, I follow her on Insta, and if any of you are on Instagram, follow her as Zibby Owens on Insta and maybe Zibby you'll tell us if there're any other places to follow you in a minute.

But Zibby is everywhere. And I just saw her, she was in LA last week. She was like doing a big presentation this morning, just like nonstop. So she, I'll just say quickly, you have her bio, but essentially Zibby has come on the scene with a vengeance and like completely disrupted the publicity, the publishing, not publicity, completely disrupted the publishing industry brand new model on that. She's an acclaimed author. She has an amazing podcast, which is an award-winning podcast, it's Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. And then that sort of blossomed into the Moms Don't Have Time for, I call it an empire, Zibby can talk to us about how she views it.

And then she has a memoir coming out called Bookends. She has a brand new children's book called Princess Charming that just got released. And Zibby made this post. And it had the bright blue square that had 11 years, and she said, this is how long I stayed home with my kids and wrote this really compelling post.

And we're gonna talk about it in a little bit, but when we saw this, it was like, we have to talk to Zibby. And if there was any way that we would be able to talk to her today, it would be amazing. So we're so excited about that. So Zibby, welcome and, we're so excited that you're here with us and, maybe you could just start us out by giving us a little bit of background, starting maybe with how you said it took you 20 years, it was gonna take you 20 years, or it did take you 20 years to publish your novel and what that means in terms of your general career trajectory.

Zibby Owens: Sure. Well, Carol, thank you so much for inviting me to this conference. I was so touched to be invited and to be here today. And I have a bit of imposter syndrome I have to say because so recently I was not in the shoes that I'm wearing today. Actually, I'm wearing very uncomfortable shoes today.

But anyway, my career has taken a lot of twists and turns over the years. The uniting thread, I would say is that I've always wanted to be a writer, since I was a little girl. In fact, I wrote this tiny little book when I was eight years old that my grandparents published as a miniature book, and when I saw my name on the spine, oh wait, it's right here, this is it, my first little book. So when I saw my name on the spine here, I was like, oh, I wanna be an author. That's so great. And then I had my first, my first article, my first personal essay published in Seventeen Magazine, which I wrote when I was 14.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Wow.

Zibby Owens: And one thing I've been doing, which comes back to the post, what I've been doing literally my entire life is writing very openly about how I feel. Not in any sort of exploitative way or gross or whatever, but just writing and observing how I feel and communicating it in a way that allows me to connect to other people who are feeling and thinking the same things. I am delighted that this is now a trend, and that people are appreciating it. But it is something I've had a lot of practice in over the years, and it's part of what enabled me to write this memoir, which as Carol referenced has taken me quite a while. When I was in business school, and again, twists and turns, I've had a career in marketing and doing entrepreneurial things and helping launch companies and I've been really interested in the intersection of brands and brand relationships, branding and personality and psychology and all of that.

So I did a bunch of work in that sphere, which I could go into, but it's whatever. But along the way, I was writing and then I went to business school, and I lost my best friend, who had been my college roommate and best friend in the world on 9/11. And it changed my entire life. And then as I was bouncing back, not really, as I was dealing with the grief of that, I lost four more people who were very close to me in the course of a year when I was 25.

So by the time I turned 26, I was a mess. And by the time I graduated at almost 27, I decided to take a year off and write a book. Now I'm 45, so this is not exactly that same book because so much has happened in my life since then. But I did write a memoir then, and parts of that are not the actual thing, but the same story is included in Bookends and that book at the time, I ended up trying to sell as fiction, which did not sell. Because at the time, the feedback I got, I mean it was probably just a terrible book, but that it was too close to 9/11 to be reading about fiction, fictional depictions of 9/11. This is in 2004, 2003.

So I put it aside, I did end up ghost writing another book, and then I had kids, I had twins, a very complicated pregnancy with a lot of bedrest, which came in handy when I was ghostwriting the book, which was due on my due date. It was called Your Perfect Fit, and I ghost wrote it for a fashion designer and a personal trainer. And then I took a lot of time off, and this comes to the 11 years piece of my history. So I didn't know if I was gonna want, I'm, first of all, let me just say I was in a really privileged position to even have the choice not to go back to work. And not everybody had that choice. And I'm very fortunate that I was able to stay home and be with the kids when I decided that is what I wanted to do.

So I feel very grateful for the ability to do that. But I just, my anxiety, I think, at leaving the kids was so overpowering that I stayed home, nonstop. I couldn't, I didn't wanna leave them. I had like panic attacks. Even the thought of going across the Brooklyn Bridge and being that far away from them, which I write about in my book.

I just couldn't leave. And I just decided okay, if this is what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go all in on the kid stuff. I'm not gonna miss a thing. And you could have found me in the streets, like running between my son's soccer and my daughter's acting. And I'm like, I could do 20 minutes of this and 20 minutes this and this. And I just was, I just drove myself absolutely crazy. So that was like phase one. I can stop at any time. Do you want me to stop?

Carol Fishman Cohen: I'm relating so closely because, I also took an 11 year career break and it was for childcare reasons, so I'm all in with you on this . But yeah, keep going.

Zibby Owens: So basically I stayed home. I was always writing, but I didn't publish as much. I, because I had also started writing for magazines while I was writing the book. And while I was at home, occasionally I wrote a handful of pieces and published them. I wrote a lot. But for myself, I even wrote some pieces with a pseudonym. I wrote a whole self-published book and only gave it to two of my girlfriends.

So I was still writing a lot, but not publicly. And, I did have the opportunity fall into my lap to help with this daily deal site for moms, Groupon for moms called Gaggle of Chicks at some point. And I wrote an anonymous Gaggle Mama blog for them. But aside from that, I was basically at home.

I was on a bunch of boards. I was staying involved, but, and I was always overwhelmed. I was just not overwhelmed in a bad way. I like being busy. I really like being really busy. That is my happy place for who knows what reason, but it was just not fulfilling me at all. It was not what I wanted to be doing.

I can do a lot of different things, like so many of us, right? I can join a board and throw a great party and manage events or raise money for this or I can do all that. And I felt good helping out the organizations that I felt really passionately about. And I still sit on several boards that I feel very strongly about, but, it was just wasn't enough.

Like I wasn't bringing my whole self to the table, which is what I told myself I would do after Stacy died. I said if I'm gonna be killed at my desk the way I believe she had been, 'cause she worked in one of the towers where the first plane hit, then I better be doing a hundred percent me at my desk.

Like I had to bring everything I had to what I was doing. And, then of course it was paired with not wanting to be physically apart from my kids, who by the way, are on the other side of this door, so maybe I haven't really conquered that, but that's okay. And then, after I was home, after my twins were about eight and a half or something like that.

Anyway, eight and a half, nine, I got divorced and I had two other kids as well after that. And, when I got divorced, I suddenly had a chance to look around and take stock of my life up to that point. I was in, I was almost 40 years and I was like, okay, what am I supposed to do with this time on the weekends?

It was so quiet and it was so sad. And I don't know if other people out there have experienced this very unique type of pain where you don't have custody of the things that mean the most to you, it's very out, out of body experience almost. And I found it very difficult emotionally.

So I started getting back into my real passions in life, reading and writing. And again, I had read all the way through. I always read, I'm a huge reader. I've always been a huge reader. I ended up falling in love again and when I had my mother and two of my girlfriends threw me a shower and it was a book shower, so everybody brought me a book, which was like the best idea ever if you're throwing anybody a shower, if they love books obviously.

So fast forward I had all this time, I start writing again. I start publishing again. One of the articles I wrote called A Mother's Right to Sanity went viral, a little mini viral, and really encouraged me to keep doing it.

Most my articles focused on trying to give moms a break and trying to advocate for moms, not in a political way, but more of an emotional way. This is insane. How could we possibly be doing this many emails and still be expected to be all in and not miss a moment on the floor? It's like the biggest puzzle, right?

It's like impossible, all these messages, right? And. Yeah, and I also wanted to take the pressure off and I wrote articles like, Hey Moms, Let's Lose Weight Later. You know what I mean? Like you don't also have to now look like. So as I was getting more and more articles together. One night, so I fell in love again, I got engaged, I got married. And one night, this is I think before we were married, but anyway, my husband now Kyle said, you should really take all those articles and make them into a book for moms. And I said, mom's don't have time to read books!

And then I thought, oh, that's so funny. That'll be the title of my book, . So I actually had the good fortune of getting, having an agent get in touch around that time, and I pitched her this book and she said, no, publishers will not find that funny at all. But do you have any other books in you? And I said, I want to write a book called 40 Love About Falling in Love Again at 40.

And she said, well try it. At the same time, another friend of mine who was an author said, I don't think that's the right book project that you should do next. I really think you should start a podcast. And I was like, what is a podcast? And I wasn't on social media and I was totally out of the loop..

And I went home and I sat on this couch that you see right behind me with my husband and I was like, I can't find any podcast buttons. Like I don't even know how to listen to a podcast. And I ended up doing a bunch of research and saying, okay, I'll start the podcast. I'll use the name of that book Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books. I guess I'll, at first I was gonna read a bunch of essays for people who didn't have time to read, and then I realized I couldn't legally do that. So I thought, okay, I'll go right to the source, I'll just interview the authors of the articles or authors of the books. And then I also thought I could read my own articles and get more exposure for them as well.

And that is how I started the podcast. That was in April of 2018, and I have had the most crazy journey since then. It started off relatively slowly where I wasn't hardly getting any listeners, despite the fact that I started with great guests like Andre Agassi and all these awesome people who I just begged friends to connect me with and all of that.

And, it has now grown to be this, like I'm really earning like a lot of revenue each month from advertising, which is crazy. And, it's got like 4 million downloads this year alone and it's doing really well. And I've met, I've interviewed probably over 1200, I think it was 1,150 authors so far. I've made so many friends, so many connections, I've learned so much, I've read so much, and along the way I've started all these other things, but Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books in my mind is the hub of everything else that I do.

And I still love it and I'm passionate about it. I have an episode seven days a week, 365 days a year, and even when I try to slow down , I can't. So that is what happened. And I ended up launching all these brand extensions, including an entire publishing company, which takes a lot more work than I thought.

And all these other, all these other avenues. And, now I get asked to speak at conferences like this. It's just so nuts to me, when it all has very much happened so quickly. And the end of the story, which is like the happy ending for me in particular, is that I finally wrote a new version and sold this book Bookends, which includes like all these really important parts of my life.

And I go through all the books that have meant a lot to me along the way as well. So this is coming out July 1st. So for me it's yeah, this is like my, this was my original goal and yet I've accomplished so much more than my original goal. This is still exciting. But like the other, it's just amazing because now I've been able to really affect the publishing industry that I'm in and evaluate and have this unique viewpoint.

It's just cra, it's just amazing. I am so grateful every single day and that's what happened, but it's not what I thought was gonna happen.

Carol Fishman Cohen: It's an incredible story. And the origins of it, where that originated in grief really, and then how things have evolved since then and where you are in terms of are you living your fullest, best life, that's really you right now. It feels like you are. And and there's just so much there that, that's wrapped up in that. I've, I do follow you on social media. One of the things I wanna ask you about is how did you figure out social media and get so good and, do you have a crew that follows you around all day and takes your picture and posts stuff and like, how does that work?

So maybe I'll just ask you that right now about that, okay.

Zibby Owens: Sure. No, I do not have a crew. I have an adorable husband though, who is very good with his iPhone. So he takes a lot of my pictures at different events and things like that. When I got started, I didn't know what I was doing with social media and I didn't have any advisors.

I read, I always like research, so I read a lot, what best practices, blah, blah, blah. I try to learn as much as I can. In 2019, I was nominated for a Webby Award, maybe 2018, anyway, it doesn't matter. And I really wanted to win the People's Voice part of it, 'cause I thought that would be so career changing for me if I could just win this Webby award because that is like the industry standard for digital things.

Anyway, it would just be a really big deal and I like had a shot I thought even though I probably didn't. So at that point I hired a social media consulting firm to say how can you, how can I get out to all these people in the next 10 days to launch this campaign? And as I did that, they basically gave me some really good tips and trained me on how to use social media, some of which I've ignored and some of which I've adopted. And, yeah, they gave me best practices. I know I should do things like more hashtags. I know I should do all these other things, but I just basically do what I want. And I was also warned against posting more than once a day, but I post three times a day and so I've kinda adapted.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Yeah, I think it's great. Okay, so you learned that gradually.

Zibby Owens: I learned it gradually, but I did get a crash course from this one woman in LA.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Wow. Really interesting. All right, I'm learning from you every day, and I think posting several times a day and hashtags, or no hashtags, whatever you're, you certainly caught our eye and I just watched the way that you, you present, I guess on social media and it's really authentic and it's really compelling and, especially just case in point, that 11 years post, you know it, you used some language in there that really called out to us when you said, and I'm gonna quote this, you said "that pent up intellectual energy when you're on career break can be saved and used later." And I thought that is such a good way of capturing how we feel when we are on the career break and we're doing all these things, but we have a certain part of ourselves on the back burner, and it is pent up over time. So I'm just wondering, did that language just come spilling out or is that something like a theme that you've been thinking about for a while?

Zibby Owens: I think about all of this a lot because this is my life and I've been reflect, very reflective of how of just how crazy it is. That morning though, I don't even know this happens with almost everything I write, is that it brews and brews until I have to stop whatever else I'm doing and just write it right then. And this, I got home from school drop off and I didn't even have much time before a podcast at nine and I was like, I have to write this right now.

And I stood like in front of the stove and my husband was trying to talk to me, I was like, I'm writing something. I don't know what it is, but it's really important and I have to finish it. I'm happy to read it if you want, if that, if it's not that long.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Yeah, sure.

Zibby Owens: Would you like me to do that or?

Carol Fishman Cohen: Yes, please.

Zibby Owens: And it's so funny too because I read it to like some of my old girlfriends who I just wanted a girls trip with who have known me forever and they were crying. It's just, I, it's just, it's been a long road. But yeah. Okay, So I wrote:

Eleven years. This is how long I stayed home with my kids. For anyone else who like me thought they'd completely missed the boat on a career after years and years out of the workplace, I'm living proof that all that pent up intellectual energy can be saved and used later if need be. It's not too late. Ever. I only started regularly writing again in 2017 after my divorce.

I only started my podcast in 2018. It has taken me almost 20 years to sell my memoir, but now it's finally coming out in July, after I'd cried over so many rejections that I thought it just wasn't going to happen for me. I had this almost inexplicable compulsion to get my story on the shelves. So yes, it can happen to you.

I did it one podcast at a time, letting things unfold organically as my husband taught.me. So when I spin around in excitement about going to a book signing for my children's book, that is why, because I've been through so much, which you can read about in Bookends, because even though I've believed myself to be a writer since age eight, the universe didn't acknowledge it until now, because I thought my life was going one way fast and it wasn't. Whiplash.

Like Princess Charming, I never gave up, perhaps even when I probably should have. My constant posting about all of it isn't to brag, it's to say, holy crap, can you believe it? I was just at Little Maestros rattling a tambourine and look! So if you follow me here, know this, I exalt at every day I get to spend on earth with my four, also unlikely kids, with my new career in books, which feels like play every day, and just to live and breathe in a world in which another day is not a foregone conclusion.

I am so grateful. And so I shout it from the social rooftops. I am not bragging. I am marveling. It wasn't over. It was just beginning. Anyway.

Carol Fishman Cohen: It's so powerful. Thank you. It calls out to so many of us. We have at iRelaunch, we have over a hundred thousand people in our community who have taken career breaks from one to over 20 years for all different reasons.

It's not all, not all, all caregiving or childcare. But just what you're writing, it calls out to us, and I think, really made an impact on those of us who saw it. And now more people will see it because we're, I know that we're gonna amplify it even more. So thank you for writing that and thinking it, and taking that moment to stand right there in the kitchen and just get it out on paper. Because it impacted a lot of people.

Zibby Owens: Well, you know, another reason why I posted it then, was because I had just started my book tour for Princess Charming. And I thought, and there have been a whole, a lot new followers who might not have known, and I thought, gosh, are people finding me obnoxious that I'm like so excited about this children's book?

Like why? Maybe they're wondering why I'm so excited, like it's just a children's book, or maybe they think I'm just like bragging about it, but I, so I wanted people to know, gosh, I am like so stunned that all of this stuff has happened. I am working incredibly hard.

It's not all luck. I work all I work just really, really, really hard. And I love what I do, but I'm doing it a lot and I've assembled a great team now who helps and that's wonderful. But I am on, I am constantly going. And so it's not like it just fell into my lap. Like I've worked hard for it, but you can work really hard and not have things work out.

So there's a lot of luck in there too. But anyway, I just wanted people to know, look, this is a hard won success and, I am just so over the moon excited about it, and I've been, it's been a long road and I just didn't think, I just didn't think I'd get there.

And, I went on this one vacation with my husband early on, very early on in our relationship. I think it was like the first one. And we went to a hotel on the beach that was bonfire and it was just the two of us. I think it was my first vacation without kids like in forever. And there was another family at the s'mores station. I mean, mean, no, it was me ‘cause like I wanted the s'mores, but that's okay. And there was a family there with her kids and the dad was being a jerk and the mom was so frazzled and tired looking and the kids were screaming.

And meanwhile, Kyle and I were all like canoodling and looking so happy. And this woman looks at me and she goes, oh, what I wouldn't give for just one second of that. And I was like, no, you don't understand. Like, I am you. I like, I just, this is a new relationship. If I can get here. So can you like, it was just like, so part of why I do everything is to encourage people, not to necessarily leave their marriages, but to find a path, which is really what was the most empowering thing to me, is just finding this path to being able to do the work that was so fulfilling for me.

So that is also part of what inspired it and just, also what I wrote. My friends from business school, my friends from college, when I was home or on my break or whatever, they didn't stop, right? Everybody else was on this upward trajectory and I just sat on the floor with the toys watching as they got promoted to this and this and this. And we're at age 45. I have friends who are like running whole things that they started out in their twenties and and for a while I just watched and was like, oh my gosh.

You know, even my brother who was younger than me was being so successful and I was just, I just felt like so useless. Not to say I was being useless. This is my own mental stuff, and not to make any judgment on other stay-at-home moms, but I just didn't think it was possible to come back. I thought I would always be 20 years behind or however many years behind, and, and it's not like that at all. It doesn't work in a linear way. Careers happen in all sorts of different fits and starts and I didn't know that before. I don't think I actually realized that it was even possible to come back after kids in such a big way doing something that I loved so much.

So, part of what I'm trying to do also is just encourage people and actually after my post, somebody who may be watching, 'cause she stopped me on the street and said, thank you for posting about iRelaunch, I'm gonna join the conference 'cause I'm trying to figure out what to do next.

I just wanna be an example for people because I am them. I am, this is, this is also recent.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Yes, you are the example and I have to make a comment about the idea of seeing like the alumni notes when you go to, for example, a competitive business school.

And like I remember feeling like I was sitting on the floor getting a load of laundry done when I was in all my career break. And one of my business school section mates was just named like the head of the Fidelity Magellan Fund. And I'm like, whoa, we represent the entire spectrum of what can happen when you graduate.

You could be me or you could be him, and then everyone in between. And I remember feeling like that. And it was, that was part of the whole evolution and how you figure out, okay, I'm ready, really ready now to get back to work. And then how in the world am I gonna do it? And what do I want to do?

But I remember being deep into that part of it, early on. So totally, totally relate to that. lemme just ask you a couple of businessy kind of questions because you're at the heart of this is a business, and you have disrupted the publishing industry. You have a totally new model and how you discover authors, I don't know what the arrangement is with them.

Can you talk a little bit about how did you think about, did you think I'm disrupting the publishing industry because it's just broken? Or did, where did it happen in a different kind of a way?

Zibby Owens: So my goal was not to start a publishing company. As I said, I had a smaller goal, which was just to write a book and then to start a podcast.

But after spending so many hours with authors, both on the podcast, in the events that I had started to host and the events that I was moderating at bookstores, and I was spending so much time with authors and it's impossible not to learn what's going on and what they're dissatisfied with and what the problems are.

And I listen really closely to people and I, there were so many themes that were coming up over and over again. And then I had the experience of having my own anthology come out, which was a collection of essays written during the pandemic by authors from my podcast that I was launching one by one and then sort of accidentally had an anthology on my hands with contracts.

And I was like, oh, I'll just sell this. So I got to see what it was like as an editor of an anthology, which is not the same as, but I got a taste of what that whole thing was like on the author's side. So armed with all of that information, I was like, something has to change.

Something has to change here. It's almost impossible to get discovered as an author. Like I would go into a bookstore and there would be one copy on a high shelf in a section that I wouldn't even have put my book in if it were me. And, I'm like, how is, there's no way anyone's gonna walk into a bookstore and discover my book. No way.

So that led me thinking about the marketing of books and how people do discover books. And if you're not a bestselling author and you are a debut or if you have a publishing company that has distribution, but maybe not the most robust marketing platform. And by the way, all publishing houses have been in their consolidation, which is created, by the way, like even other problems, but, one of the universal gripes is the lack of support in publicity and marketing, and how many people bring on their own publicists. And it's not the fault of the people working there. I wanna make that very clear. I think they're wonderful people, many of whom I've become friends with who work at publishing houses and. it's no one's fault.

It's that the publishing houses are just so big that they can't pivot quickly. I compare it to this giant truck trying to make a sharp turn. It's impossible structurally. You can be the best driver, but if the truck is too big, you're just not gonna fit down that street.

I really realized that during the pandemic, when I was able like literally overnight to be like, I'm starting an Instagram live show. I'm highlighting four authors every day live for this whole pandemic. I'm starting a book club online. I'm starting this and I just kept starting. 'Cause my whole mission was like, aside from dealing with my four kids and then actually some tragic losses in our own family, I was like, I have to help the authors and I could. So from a business standpoint, and I launched this with my colleague, Lee Newman, but I've systematically gone through and tried to see what is the best way to do this part of the business?

What is the best way to do this part? What is the best way to do that part? What does it mean to, what does even reading mean? Like just going back to basics, does it count if it's a Instagram post? Is that reading? Does it have to be a book? I'm thinking about everything. So for the publishing company itself, I knew what kind of books I wanted to publish.

But mostly I wanted to give authors the kind of publishing house that I wanted myself, that I would've wanted knowing what I know from the inside out. And that's what I've done. So it's not one thing I'm doing, like actually Gretchen Rubin in this, what you mentioned this morning, when I was moderating a conversation with her, she was asking me and I was like, it's not one thing.

It's not like people are coming to this, authors wanna publish with us because we have a better marketing department, although I think we do, but it's the combination of things that I was able to build a new company from the ground up with authors at the center of everything that we do. And I think that is immensely appealing to authors, not to mention the community of authors that we're building.

So that's how that happened.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Wow. Okay. You always admire, the thought process and the depth and the knowledge of your client essentially, like the client of a publishing company. Of course, they're publishing books for the public to read, but the client is also the author.

And, and you, just the way that you thought about making this client-centric, very nimble kind of organization. That's what you have. So. Well, I think that's a really, great place to leave it, and Zibby, we really appreciate you spending this time with us. We're really excited about Bookends coming out July 1st, and Princess Charming book and the one that's coming up after it, so we're, I'll keep an eye out for that. Yeah. Thank you for showing us that and thank you so much for spending the time and we wanna, we're gonna keep watching you and keep in touch and we're just cheering for every success that you're having.

So congratulations and thank you.

Zibby Owens: Carol, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. This was so much fun. And thank you for inviting me.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Thanks for listening to 3,2,1 iRelaunch, the podcast where we discuss return to work strategies, advice, and success stories. I'm Carol Fishman Cohen, the CEO and co-founder of iRelaunch and your host.

I want to remind our listeners who are actively relaunching to make sure to register and upload your resume to our iRelaunch Job Board. Employers looking to hire relaunchers regularly peruse our Job Board for candidates for their career reentry jobs and programs. And be sure to visit iRelaunch.Com to access our many return to work tools and resources, and to sign up for our mailing list so you can receive our weekly return to work report featuring career reentry jobs and programs.

Thanks for joining us.