Visual Leadership with Todd Cherches and Richard Reiman46 min read

Bryan Hyde
Welcome to the Janine Bolon show, where we share tips from around the globe as we guide practical people with their finances using money tips, increase their incomes through side businesses, and maintain their sanity by staying in their creative zone.

Janine Bolon
Hello, welcome to the Janine Bolon show. And today I have with me Todd Cherches who is the author of Visual Leadership, and is the co founder of a Big Blue Gumball. He’s the innovative New York City based Leadership Development and Executive Coaching Firm. He’s also a member of Marshall Goldsmith, MG 100 coaches, and the founding partner of the Global Institute for Thought Leadership. I just wanted to let you know we are in good hands today as we discuss his book, Visual Leadership, Leveraging the Power of Visual Thinking in Leadership and in Life. And what’s amazing about this book is that it is rich, it is dense, and it is worth the price for that hardcover copy. I want to encourage you to get the hardcover copy because there is so much in this book. It’s a classic you’ll be referring to over and over again. Now we are only going to be discussing one chapter in Todd’s book today it is the Pizza Slice Approach to Difficult Conversations. Thank you so much for being with us today. Todd.

Todd Cherches
Thank you, Jenny. You said it was dense and rich, you didn’t say it was colorful and fun. So I just want to make sure that people knew about that as well. One of the comments my my favorite comments about the book was that someone said, I’ve never read a business book that made me smile and laugh so much. So that was one of my favorite compliments about the book because it is meant to be entertaining, as well as educational.

Janine Bolon
And it is all of that it is fun. And one of the reasons I like to say the words it’s rich, it’s dense, is because there are so many books that you can get on Amazon today that solve a single problem, right? I mean, a lot of quality people are writing these wonderful 100 page books that strip out all of the detritus and a lot of the fluff that you have in a lot of business books. And yet with Todd’s, I was pleasantly surprised. The storytelling isn’t extreme, it is appropriate. And it does make you laugh. And it’s fun to look at because he printed this book in color. And so ladies and gentlemen, when you print in color, let me tell you, you pay out through the nose as an author to have something eye color and you do everywhere. There’s these beautiful colored images and diagrams. So yes, very rich, very texturally fun. So anyway,

Todd Cherches
I put my money where my mouth was when it came to the color printing. And there was a I’m glad I did.

Janine Bolon
I’m glad you did too. I love seeing it. So for starters, though, let’s talk about you know, when it comes to coaching clients, a lot of times you may have to have a pretty difficult conversation that you’re going to get ready to launch into with them, and they may not want to hear much about it. So what I’d love to hear from you is you have these seven P’s that you go through. And for those of you who have Todd’s book, it’s on page 102, and 103, I highly recommend you read this. You have preparation, person, points, purpose, plan, practice and perspective. So if you don’t mind, let’s go ahead and get started on you describing for us the different aspects of the seven P’s.

Todd Cherches
Sure, but before I do just one other P is the pizza slice. So coming from New York pizza is one of our core values, as you know, so people can tell just from my accent that I grew up in, and still live in New York City. So the pizza slice approach, if you picture a pizza, slice this triangle, the pepperonis and the each pepperoni is a person in your organization. So put yourself as the center pepperoni, that’s you. And then above you would be your manager or any senior leaders, or if you’re the senior person in your own company, that’s you. And then who’s around you, right, who are the who your peers, who your ex, your external colleagues, or vendors, and then anyone who reports to you. So that’s the idea behind the pizza slice is most organizational charts are like these huge structures. But I want to simplify picture, a slice of pizza with you at the center, and then we’ll take it from there. So in terms of the seven P’s, that’s the approach that we take to prepare for a difficult conversation, we all stress out about conversations, whether it’s with a spouse, or a child or a vendor or colleague. But if we’re prepared, and if we do these seven P’s, it takes a lot of the stress and worry out of the conversation. So the first P as you mentioned, is preparation. We have to do our homework, we have to think about do we have our information correct? Do we have the data? Do we have the story? So often we jumped to conclusions without having the full story we go about based on hearsay or rumor or sometimes something will happen once and we magnify it as if it has happened 1000 times right. We need to keep things in perspective and proportion by focus on the information at hand. Right? So that’s where we have to do our homework. That’s Number one is preparation. Number two is person who is the person, the individual you’re going to have this conversation with? What is their mindset? What was their involvement? What was their? Is their style? What is their status? What is their relationship to you? What is your prior history? How receptive are they going to be? Are they gonna be like, No, I disagree, or they’re gonna be like, Yeah, you’re right. I need we need to fix this. Right? So we need to anticipate what is the reaction or response gonna be? So that’s number two. The third P is what are the key points you want to make what are your key messages, right? So often we want to talk about 100 things, people can’t grasp 100 things? And how are we supposed to prepare the talk about 100 things? Right? So what are the key points in one order? Do you want to make those points? Right? So this about again, part of the preparation is preparing in general doing your homework, thinking about the person? And then what are your messages? What are the key points you want to make? And then what order? So stopping right there for a second, any thoughts or comments before I jump into the next piece?

Janine Bolon
Thanks so much because see, one of the things I absolutely love about Todd is he’s not only an academic professor, so he’s used to just like, Okay, I have 45 minutes to get all this information into your heads, everybody start taking notes, here we go launch, and he just goes off. And it’s great. And that’s what I love, because it’s very rich in its information. So one of the things that a lot of us do is with Zoom, and that sort of thing is we don’t feel we need to prepare, sometimes sometimes we’re so used to zoom being kind of informal, or people can’t see what I’m doing, that they don’t make the necessary, appropriate preparations for what they’re wanting to ask people. So when it comes to difficult conversations, what are some questions or recommendations any of your students have had about, how do I figure out what points I’m trying to make without coming off as more aggressive than I want to? Do you have some suggestions?

Todd Cherches
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that we need to do in any conversation is put ourselves in the shoes of the other person use empathy, compassion, Elvis Costello, one of my favorite songs of his is called What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding, right? So if you think about peace, love and understanding, in this conversation, how can I keep the peace? Right? How am I going to have a conversation that’s civil, and even if the person is defensive, or whatever, we want this to be a peaceful conversation, we want to do with love, love and caring, right? If you’re a manager, if you’re giving someone feedback, or you’re dealing with a customer, or whoever, if we deal with caring and empathy, and compassion, it’s going to be a better conversation. And understanding is about seeing things from the other person’s point of view. On the cover of my book is a rainbow colored eye, and one of my principles is to flip the eye look at things from the other person’s lens, right? And say, if I was receiving this message, how would I feel? What would I be thinking? How would I be responding? If you do that, you’re gonna have a much better conversation.

Janine Bolon
And I thank you for bringing that up. Because in this day and age, it’s really you have so much thrown at you from other people’s perspective, that sometimes we get defensive before we ever get on a zoom call, because of all the messages we’re having slammed into our own head. So taking that moment to go, Okay, I want to have this very difficult conversation. Let me try to see it from somebody else’s eyes. Peace, love and understanding. I love that one. Thank you for reminding us of that. So go ahead and lead us then on to the next several points we started. Point four was purpose.

Todd Cherches
Right? So once you prepare thought about the person and identified your key points, remember, you still haven’t had the conversation yet? This is all in the preparation phase. Then it’s like what’s your purpose? What is your intent? Stephen Covey in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People said begin with the end in mind, right? So if you start with that, what is your purpose? What do you want the outcome of this conversation to be? Are you just trying to lash out? Or do you have some kind of objective that you’re trying to achieve? Is there a problem you’re trying to fix? So if we don’t start with that, then we don’t know where we’re where we’re gonna end up or even why we’re having this conversation.

Janine Bolon
So just wanted to mention since you brought up Stephen Covey, that’s the only reason I’m speaking right now, love his stuff, love what he’s done. But just for the listeners out there, I wanted to let you guys know that his son, Sean Covey, has The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens. Now as a professor myself and being an academic institutions, what have you, for people under the age of 99, you may want to read that book, because it is a wonderful guide on how to help you move through your life if you’re dealing with emotional trauma from a previous experience. So as much as I love Steven, I know he’s the one that created it. But his book is kind of a yawn. And since it’s a yawn, because he had to write it when he did right back in the 90s when he brought it out, but because we are talking about visual leadership, you want to take a look at Sean Covey’s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens because it flows perfectly with the mindset that Todd is giving us today with this conversation. So thanks you for letting me but in on yours. Let’s go to Step five, plan.

Todd Cherches
Sure, I love any book recommendations? Right? We this this time is so short, and yet there’s some so much to me so little time. So every recommendation is an important and valuable one. So, so step five is plan, right? You’ve thought about the person and the preparation and the points and your purpose now when, and where and how are you going to have this conversation? Right? Do you. Here’s a perfect example. One time I was packed, I was in my office packed, leaving the catch a plane to go on vacation. And I said goodbye, my boss saying I’ll see you next week. He said, Oh, I need to talk to you about something a project for you to work on when you get back. I’m blowing, my head was checked out my bags were packed? Was that the right time to have that conversation? Or to give me feedback on something? Definitely not. So you want to think about when and where, and how are you going to have this conversation because you want to set the conversation up for success. And if you don’t plan for the when and the where and the how it’s most likely not going to be successful. Step six. Again, before having this conversation is practice, whether it’s on paper in your head in front of a mirror in front of your dog, whatever it is roleplay this conversation in your head, envision how it’s going to be received, envision the words, you wouldn’t get up on stage and do a TED talk without doing preparation, right? So why would you get up and have a really important, perhaps difficult conversation with someone without practicing it. So you can practice with a spouse, you know, again, you need to keep things confidential. But if you practice, you can envision this is the way the visual thinking factors. And you can actually picture the conversation in your mind’s eye and envision how it’s going to go. Lastly, number seven is perspective. One thing I say is, think about how this conversation is going to go from the other person’s point of view, are they going to expect it? Is this going to come out of left field? On a scale of 1 to 10? Do you think this person is going to react to it like a 10? This was a great conversation glad you brought this up? Or is this gonna be like a 1 or 0 like, right? This is a nightmare, right? So you want to think about that, as the saying goes, prepare for the best expect, you know, prepare for the worst, but expect the best. So if you’ve done all the other steps, you have increased your likelihood of having a successful conversation. Cervantes, who wrote a Man of LaMancha, actually, Don Quixote said to be prepared is half the victory. So if you prepare, you’re halfway to a successful conversation. So I’m gonna stop right there. Those are the seven P’s. And again, if you do these things, you’re most likely to to improve your odds of having a very successful and productive conversation.

Janine Bolon
You know, me, I love to take things to extreme because that’s where we can see where a system breaks, okay. And because I was in automation, and systemology, and that sort of thing it’s like, I always test something until it breaks to say, okay, that’s going to be the first problem. So let’s move forward with making that a little bit stronger and then we’ll worry about the rest of the machine. So one of the things that I love about this is, if you don’t mind share with us examples of case a scale of 1 and a scale of 10 type of conversations, kind of walk us through it. So most people are like, okay, so I need to stop working with this particular person, and I need to fire them, if they’re a business person, or there are times in your life some people will say, Well, I don’t want a business. I don’t have to say goodbye to anybody. And I’m like, Yes, you do. There are times where you know, you have somebody that you’ve hired to take care of your house or something like that, you need to fire that person, and you need to let them know why you don’t want to just go see them every time they call you or what have you. So there is that’s the one you know, some people said, no, what about divorce? I’m like, that’s a little extreme. Let’s, let’s go a different type of ones. And then a conversation 10 How do you handle preparing for that aspect? So if you wouldn’t mind walking us through your extremes?

Todd Cherches
Yeah I guess if 1 is the worst and 10 is the best. Yeah, you want the best possible outcome. And again, if you do these steps, you’re increasing your likelihood. However, the other person may not be receptive, they may not be responsive, they may think that they did a great job and you think that they didn’t or you may say, You know what, I need to let this person go. And you know, one of the things we say in the management leadership field is if when you give someone a performance review, or give them feedback, if it’s the first time they’re hearing it, then you really haven’t done a great job of communicating along the way because you haven’t been giving people incremental incremental feedback along the way should never be a total shock to someone. Just like a student, if they get an F at the end of the course and they like thought they were gonna get an A whose fault is that as the professor the fact that you gave them no feedback or guidance or, or indicators along the way? So a conversation that’s a 1 is a what is one where it backfires on you? It gets explosive, it gets defensive, it gets you know, very heated, not that’s gonna come to blows although I’ve seen things like that happen, but it’s really when you attack the person as opposed to the problem. And there’s that saying that separate the person from the problem. It’s not you’re a bad person. It’s what you did didn’t work out or could have gone better or it was a complete nightmare or disaster. But you want to think about in proportion and perspective, how did that situation go? On another hand, you know, this conversation that’s a 10 is one where the person acknowledges said, Yes, I, they accept responsibility, they acknowledged that things didn’t go so well. And say, let’s, let’s, how can I fix it? Let’s have this make this a dialogue, right? A lot of times, think about, is this gonna be a monologue or dialogue? Is it gonna be all you talking and the other person just sitting there with their arms crossed and then stormed out of the room? Or is it hey, let’s talk this out. Let’s have a decent, civil, candid conversation. And one of the other models in my book that often comes up and it’s controversial, is the feedback sandwich approach where you start with a positive, then give a constructive, and then end on a positive note, I just want to preface this by saying that feedback sandwich model is so powerful and effective when used in the right time and place and situations situation, and person. It is not a one size fits all model. And it doesn’t, it’s not flattery, and then slamming the person. It’s like, Janine, I love that blue shirt you’re wearing today, and those blue headsets, I love how it matches, by the way, you’re the worst podcaster I’ve ever seen in my entire life, and I regret being on the show. And but good luck with everything, and I’ll see you in the future. Right? That is not what the feedback sandwich is supposed to be. Right? Right. Supposed to be Janine, you did all these things. So well. One thing that might be done even better is if you did this, this and this. But I know you could do that and I have full confidence in you because I’ve seen you’ve done similar things in the past. You’d be you’re great time, you’d be even more amazing next time. How would that feedback feel? Be like, Oh, great, I did all these things well, so one of the Dale Carnegie principles, I was a Dale Carnegie trainer earlier my career and I love speaking of classic books, How to Win Friends and Influence People, very dated, written in 1936 but its principles are as timely and timeless as ever. He said make the fault seem easy to correct, right, acknowledge the positive, start with start with what is good. Unless someone is really a disaster, you can always find something positive even it was just their effort they tried, right? It could have completely bombed and failed, but they tried their best, right. So if we acknowledge that I know you tried your best, this didn’t work out, let’s talk about how we can fix it going forward, let’s see how we can maintain you want to maintain the relationship, basically. You don’t want to destroy it and say things that can never be taken back. And the bottom bond of the feedback sandwich is ending on a positive note. Because anytime we get negative feedback, it makes us feel bad about ourselves. So you want to build up the person’s morale by saying, Hey, I know you could do this. So it’s like, Hey, I appreciate these things. Here’s an area of improvement. And if you could do this, you’ll be even better in the future. So that’s the way I’ve sandwiching your feedback. So that’s a technique you could use to deliver a message when you’re having one of these difficult conversations. Now you actually have to have the conversation. So one of the things that people don’t think about is how am I going to open right opens and closes is so important, whether it’s a poem, a song, a movie, a novel, we need to focus on opens and closes. So what’s the very first thing you can say if you start out with like this conversation with your editor? If you started out with some small talk, Hey, how’s the family? How’s this? How’s your weekend? Oh, by the way, you’re about you, I’m firing you. It would be like that would not be either appropriate, or well, well done. Right? So so so you want to think about how am I going to initiate, hey, we need to talk or, so whatever the opening sentence is, we want to really be clear about our intent and what the impact is going to be. Because that’s that’s where things start, right. So then you have to think about what am I going to say and not say, you may have so much to say you may have 100 complaints. But if you’ve already made the decision to let this person go, you don’t have to give them a list of 100 things that they did wrong, you may just say this isn’t working out. Or and this is why they’re breaking up a relationship or but you have to go through the whole litany of why I’m ending this relationship of here’s the 1000 things you did wrong over the last five years we’ve been together. But it’s just saying, you know, we need to have a serious conversation. Also have examples, right? What examples you’re going to use are anecdotes or stories. So if you just say things, factually, that’s fine. But again, it’s from your perspective. So you may want to give someone an example of you know, this isn’t working out. Here’s an example. I asked you to do this, you didn’t do this. Now one of my mantras, and I’ve mentioned this in my book a couple of times is that people are not mind reader’s right. If you say you should have done done this, or you should have known anytime people use the word should or just why don’t you just do this? If it was that easy, I would have done it right? Or if I thought of it. So what Be careful when we’re using words like sure they’re just because we’re making assumptions that the person can read our mind, and knew exactly what we wanted and needed. Sometimes it’s our fault, right? There’s that contributory negligence that goes into someone making mistakes. But if you have specific examples, that really brings it to life and if the person say yes. So then the key is do they acknowledge it and say, Yes, that was my fault. I did that wrong, or whatever? Or is it like you’re the one who’s wrong? You didn’t tell him? You didn’t explain it properly. So how are they going to respond and react? Then you’re gonna have to close at some point, right? Otherwise, you could talk for 12 hours. So you got to think about how am I going to wrap up and close this conversation, but you want Start against beginning with the end in mind, what do you want the other person to think, feel, know and do at the end of the conversation, right? You want them to think in a different way and look at things from your perspective. You don’t want them to feel bad necessarily, but you want them to feel accountable or feel that they get what you’re talking about, what do you want them to know, maybe they didn’t realize before, everything that you just said, but ultimately, what you want them to do, if you’re getting rid of someone, you’ve already made that decision, what you want them to do is to resign or to say I get it, I’m fine with it. I respect your opinion, their decision, and you want to leave things that you never want to burn bridges either on either end right with if you’re separating, so you want to leave things on a positive note as possible. Otherwise, you wouldn’t recommend this person, right? If she stormed out there was volatile or whatever. So you want to think clearly about how do you want this to end. Just as if, have you ever watched a movie that was great and then the ending was just awful, and the credits roll and you’re like, wait, well, I just spent three hours on what, right? So same thing with the conversation, you don’t ever want the conversation to end with what just happened here, right? You want to visualize in your mind’s eye how you’d like it to go. Now, it doesn’t always go that way. But at least you can make adjustments along the way to hopefully get it to the resolution that you’re striving for.

Janine Bolon
And thank you so much for that, I really appreciate it. Because I did not want to burn bridges with my editor, I’d liked this person. And she helped me with so many of my books. So you know, I’ve written now I’m up to book number 11. I’ve gone through three different publishers, I have gone through four different editors. And when I found this particular editor was very ecstatic. But it’s obvious that some like, what did they say, some people are in our life for a reason, a season or they’re in it for life. And I knew ah, this was a seasonal relationship. I of course, would love to have an editor that stuck with me for life. Because it gets real short. But that’s not always the case. So thank you for helping us kind of wrap that up and close. Are there any additional thoughts you want to talk about as far as how to go about moving into a difficult conversation or kind of wrapping this up for this section?

Todd Cherches
Well, one of the things to think about is, think about different conversations, difficult conversations that you’ve been in where you are on the receiving end, right? Visualize those picture those from your past. And that way, you can do a better job of delivering a conversation by learning from the experience of others, and from what it’s like to be on that end of things. So often, we don’t put ourselves in the shoes of the other person. We don’t talk talk to someone else, also, if you’re gonna have a difficult conversation, talk to someone that you know, and you trust and confidentiality and say I need to have this difficult conversation. Can I talk this out with you? Can I roleplay this with you? Do you have a step process that you know of like these seven P’s that will help me to formulate my thoughts? And how am I going to have this conversation so all these things will help. Anytime we have a difficult situation we always feel it’s very common, especially if you’re a solopreneur to feel isolated and alone. There’s always someone out there who’s gone through something similar who can be a sounding board, a mentor,or just help guide you through this. So I think that’s an important thing too, for those of us who run their own businesses is to talk to other people like Janine and say, Janine, what would, have you ever faced this before? What would you recommend? Someone that you trust and whose opinion you value? And that will help to set you up for success as well.

Janine Bolon
So Todd, if somebody wants to learn more about you or buy your book, where should they go?

Todd Cherches
Sure. Well, firstly, my website is www.toddcherches.com. So there you can find my TED talk and you can find other information about me and what I do. Secondly, feel free to link in with me, just say you saw me on Janine show or heard me on Janine show. Link in with me, I’m happy to continue the conversation, or my book, Visual Leadership is available anywhere books are sold, including Amazon and your local. Hopefully, you’ll your local neighborhood bookstore, and if they don’t have it, feel free to request it. We’ll see if we can get into more bookstores.

Janine Bolon
Thank you so much for being with us today. I really appreciate you’re giving time and giving us a wonderful system to handle those difficult conversations.

Todd Cherches
Thank you, Janine. Always great talking to you.

Janine Bolon
So that was Visual Leadership, Leveraging the Power of Visual Thinking in Leadership and in Life. Todd Cherches and you want to spell his last name as C H E R C H E S so that you don’t be like me Janine was typing on churches with a U doesn’t work. It’s an E you want C H E R C H E S, go to his website, I recommend you go to his website and order his book from there because what’s wonderful is you get an opportunity to have a download of the 52 books that Todd recommends that you read. And as an avid scholar myself, I always love it when people let me into their heads through the books that they read. So stay tuned with us. You know, the Janine Bolon show always operates on Sunday at noon. We love being able to see you and be sure to tune in next week when we have yet more guests and more information to help you live the high quality life that you want for yourself. We’ll see you soon

Janine Bolon
Thank you for joining us here on the Janine Bolon show. And it is this season of Thanksgiving and we are getting ready to launch into all kinds of things with Black Friday, coming around and enjoying family and friends, hopefully or avoiding family and friends depending on what you are doing. But one of the things I know is so much fun during this time of year is being able to give back. We have a lot to be grateful for if you’re listening to this show, you are surviving a world pandemic. Congratulations, you are a survivor, I want you to pat yourself on the back. And also, I’d like you to get to know a very dear friend of mine by the name of Richard Rieman and how he is the organizer. He founded a nonprofit in 2019 called Imagination Video Books. And you know, I’m an author of 12 books. I’m very excited anytime I see somebody doing something different, unique and amazing when it comes to helping literacy in our world. And what Richard has done is he is filling the gap that exists for over 350,000 visually and hearing impaired young children in the US who cannot fully experience those beautifully illustrated books that children’s books are so well known for. Imagination Video Books, has a channel on the Described and Captioned Media Program, which provides free access to Teacher Tools and accessible educational videos and TV shows for families and educators with at least one student who has a disability. Thank you so much for being on the show with us today Richard.

Richard Rieman
Janine, it’s great to be here with you.

Janine Bolon
It’s always so much fun because I remember when I first met you, it was always so much fun to hand a microphone to you because you would drop your voice by two octaves and go Hello. And we love that, we love that.

Richard Rieman
And I’m known because I’m an audiobook narrator and producer, as the audio book wizard, you know from right from Harry Potter. What Harry? So good to see you Harry. You know I gave your parents their wands? Yes. So that’s the audio book wizard in me.

Janine Bolon
Yes. And we love that. And that’s why we weren’t always hand Richard the microphone and go, Richard say something. It was always so much fun. But you created this nonprofit organization, and you said your mission is to reinforce children’s core values such as kindness, empowerment through the creative force of children’s book authors, illustrators, publishers, and narrators. So talk to us a little bit about, you know, what got you so inspired to drive in this direction?

Richard Rieman
Well, I always loved reading to my children and children’s picture books are just so wonderful at a time in their lives. They can learn about so many things and spark their imagination, thus the imagination video books. And when I became an audiobook narrator, I noticed a gap in the audiobook world. Blind Children and low vision children didn’t start with audit with books until they were chapter books in audio books. Because picture books don’t make great audio books without the pictures. Well, audio description has come along for film, movie for movies and TV shows, and theater where the images are described. And I thought why not combine these things so that all children can experience the pictures in picture books. And that’s why we we started out with targeting blind and low vision children. And I’ve actually expanded it to add videos with captions and simultaneous American Sign Language for Deaf and Low hearing children to learn ASL, help them learn ASL at a time that’s critical in their development. So, you know, it’s it’s a wonderful project I’m working with over 100, volunteer narrators, including 12 who are visually impaired themselves. Our audio book producer is totally blind. Chris Snyder, and and does a wonderful job. And you know, it just thrills me every day to be able to do this.

Janine Bolon
One of those things that when you see this niche that needs to be filled and then all of a sudden you have all these people saying, sign me up, sign me up, I’ll be glad to help you out with that. So, talk to us a little bit. When you first started you had your granddaughter with you. Wasn’t she one of your very first narrators? Yeah. It was very much a family kind of produced thing.

Richard Rieman
It’s actually my daughter…

Janine Bolon
Oh, your daughter? Sorry. No, this is Janine pulling the shoe leather out of her mouth again. Yes, yes, I eat crow a lot. Anyway, please continue. Your beautiful daughter

Richard Rieman
My beautiful young daughter, Erin is also an audiobook narrator I call her the real talent in the family. She narrates a lot of the children’s books because she can do young voices, she can do mothers and grandmothers and all sorts of things, and has narrated for Harper Collins, so she’s in the big leagues. And my son, Shawn has done some of the audio editing too. So yes, it’s kind of a family project.

Janine Bolon
And that’s where how I got introduced to you, you and I were at a conference together. And what was really wonderful as as soon as people found out that this was a nonprofit, it was amazing how people were like digging, digging deep to get you going. Because at the time there was something like you had only been able to do something like 8 or 10 books I can’t quite remember. And how many books have you guys been able to produce up to this point?

Richard Rieman
We are up to 75 books. And we’ve only been doing this for we started in January. So it’s, we have another 20 in production. So we’re close to meeting our goal of 100 books this year. And we’re making them available not just on the describing caption media program channel. We’re about to start up a podcast on Spotify. The Audio Book Wizard presents illustrated audio books. So we’ll make that free to everyone to be able to listen to these children’s books with audio description of the pictures.

Janine Bolon
And that’s something that I remember when people first started asking me, Janine, when you can put your books on tape or when you’re going to get your books as audio books and everything. And at the time that they were asking me this, which was around 2009, it was insanely expensive for somebody like myself, who was an independent published author, to go into a studio takes the time to do all that. Talk to us a little bit about how you keep costs down for your crew. And yet you have these amazing high quality books that come out of it.

Richard Rieman
Well, the fact that they’re very short helps they’re all under 15 minutes.

Janine Bolon
That’s right under 15 minutes, I forgot about that part. Yeah, it’s not like it’s a 80,000 word novel, or something.

Richard Rieman
So that, that helps a lot. And and also the fact that we have so many generous volunteers who are giving up their time that we end up only having to pay for the writing of the audio description by professional writers, some of the audio editing, and we do pay our blind and visually impaired narrators. So they can earn some money too. But we keep the cost down, we can produce a video book and audiobook version for $500. That’s it. And so we’ve been able to successfully do fundraising to cover the costs of these books.

Janine Bolon
And what I loved was I was at an event down in Colorado Springs a couple of weeks ago called The 100 Author’s event. And the person that put it on was so jazzed to have you there that we got to actually see some of the new stuff you were doing with the American Sign Language, folks where these video books were being made available for those children who were deaf. And so talk to us. How on earth did that ever transpire? I mean, did you kind of stumble into that and talk to us?

Richard Rieman
And really, you know, we started out just for blind and visually impaired children. We learned that low vision children like to see the pictures as much as they can while they’re being described. So we actually started to do videos for blind children. I know that sounds insane, but because so many of them have some vision. And we are describing the pictures what exactly they’re seeing that it really helps them. And then we said well, we should add captions, in case any of the children are deaf. And once we did that we heard from the deaf community, would you be able to add sign language translation because there’s so little content available for children ages three to eight, who are learning sign language, and children’s illustrated books are perfect. So that’s why we are now doing both for the Blind Children and Deaf children.

Janine Bolon
Well, I found most impressive was as you get wrapped up your presentation on that. We had two people who one I had known for four years and did not know that she was one of those children. And she was crying because she was like, Oh my gosh, I’ve always wanted something like this. And then somebody else stepped out and said, Oh, yeah, I have cochlear implants and as a child, I was always asking people to assign to me what was happening in the book. So I was just blown away at how many people totally resonated with what your company was doing and what the organization was doing for these children. Of course, you know, it was wonderful to see that people could actually sponsor a book, or people could sponsor an audio translation. So if you don’t mind, share with us a little bit about how people can sponsor your organization.

Richard Rieman
Yes, simply go to www.imaginationvideobooks.org. That’s our website. And you’ll see a donate button there on the homepage, and also on our donation page. And when you click on that donate button, it breaks down for $500 you can sponsor an entire book, which means, you know, this book has been made possible by a contribution from Janine Bolon. You know, that type of thing is in the audio and the text, they can sponsor an audio book version for $100 and or pay for captions, things like that. So www.imaginationvideobooks.org is the website where they can find out all the information about how to support us. And we’re also putting up a number of books that they can choose to sponsor. We’ll have that up in the next couple of weeks. So we can show people exactly the books that they would be sponsoring.

Janine Bolon
Well, we have about a minute left. And so what we’re going to do is play a little excerpt for you and then make sure you come back after the break because we want to be able to share more with you with Richard Rieman and imaginationvideobooks.org.

Janine Bolon
Hey, welcome back. I have with me today Richard Rieman who is the founder organizer of the nonprofit group imaginations video books. And before we bring Richard on, what I want you to do is this is the type of book that you have the ability to hear when you’re with the imagination video books group. What we have is a little clip from Alexander the Avoider.

Narrator 1
On the cover, in a room with a small tent pitched on a blue carpet. A boy lies inside on his tummy with headphones and a tablet, listening to music, colorful musical notes flying the air around him. The walls of his room are black and painted with white stars and planets. The title is Alexander the Avoider of sensory processing disorder story. I Nicole Philippon.

Narrator 2
Alexander was a little boy with a big spirit and an even bigger heart. He loved his mommy, daddy and sisters very much. And he made sure to tell them all the time.

Narrator 1
Alexander lays on his daddy’s back on a couch and hugs him around the neck.

Narrator 2
Alexander especially loved giving hugs and kisses, but not always receiving them. Sometimes he would get really anxious and push people away. Even his mommy and daddy.

Janine Bolon
Well, I know that that was pretty exciting. There’s been a lot of talk about how we have so much technology available to us. Talk to us a little bit, Richard about why we have books like this now. Talk to us about that history of it.

Richard Rieman
Well, in this clip, we just heard Alexander the Avoider. It’s a story about a little boy with a sensory processing disorder. So that’s why he has trouble accepting hugs from people. And he has, you know, a sensory processing difference. And we are targeting books about children with differences or animals with differences. We have one about a fox who has cochlear implants and is worried that you know she’ll be made fun of by the other foxes. So we try to do these relatable books, not just pure entertainment. I mean some of them like the brave little crab that we do are, are pure entertainment and very funny and entertaining. But some also have messages Ricky the Rock That Couldn’t Roll about a rock at one flat side, and how his friends, other rocks were trying to help him become a rock that can roll. I mean, just, it’s amazing how, you know, with these subtle messages, that differences are okay. Even invisible disabilities are okay. We’re trying to do video and audiobook versions of these kinds of heartwarming stories. So it’s more than just pure entertainment, although that’s fine. We actually have a lot of books that have some very nice messages.

Janine Bolon
And one of the things that I loved was when we first started talking, you and I back in 2019, you were known as the audio book wizard, talk to us a little bit about where the wizard thing came from.

Richard Rieman
Yes, the wizard thing. You know, basically, I have played a wizard character now in two video games, three books, three audio books. So, you know, plus some short children’s books. And it just, you know, I love Harry Potter and I, so the wizard voice just comes naturally to me. And I find out that kids really like hearing it too. So I, that’s what I’m using for, for my podcast. And it gives me an identity of, you know, the I talk about the magic of audiobooks. And you know, the wizard thing helps. And I, you know, that that’s really where it came from, I’m an actor, have been, you know, ever since high school and high school plays, and, and always a performer in front of a microphone. So it’s been a lot of fun to take what I have done in radio news in my life, and then audio book narration, and now lead into another way to use voices to entertain, through the audio book narration with description.

Janine Bolon
And what I loved was when we were first, you were first starting to launch this whole program, you were telling us of basically, you’re filling a gap that has 350,000, visually and hearing impaired young children in the US, and that your group is helping serve that community with books that would otherwise be totally unattainable by them. So talk to us a little bit about how you do that.

Richard Rieman
Well, it’s been so nice to have the recognition from the American Council of the Blind. They gave us a special recognition award for early children’s literacy this year, because no one else is doing this. It’s it’s pretty unique. The National

Janine Bolon
Right there, you can’t see it, folks, I’ve got my pom poms out. Well done. Congratulations, we’re gonna put a pause, just because Hello, pat on the back. Good job. Okay. Please continue. I didn’t mean to interrupt.

Richard Rieman
And the National Association of the Deaf has given us a grant to pay for the sign language of all of our videos. So they support it, because as I mentioned, there are just so few books out there for children who are just beginning to read, where they can see the the pictures, they can see the captions, and they can see the sign language interpreter all at the same time. So it really gives them a clearer understanding of the books. And there are twice as many deaf and hearing impaired children, as there are blind and low vision children in the US. So it is an important audience with a critical need.

Janine Bolon
And one of the things that I wanted to let folks know is when you put your dollars into this organization, if you decide to donate to imaginationvideobooks.org. I know the founder, I know where he lives. So you’re I know that the money is going to good things. It’s not like this is a some sort of a situation you have to worry about that where the money goes. And when we were first talking in January, there were only a few handful of books that you were able to get produced now with the grants. And with all the support that you’ve received, how many books are you up to now?

Richard Rieman
Yeah, we’re up to see about 75 video books that have already been completed and other 20 are in the works. We’ll have 100 By the end of the year. So it’s just we’ve become a book publisher in effect.

Janine Bolon
And who knew that was really never a part of the game plan was it? Well, you have these amazing volunteers who are totally aware of the challenges that folks have when it comes to wanting to read stories, wanting to have stories, but the challenges of that, talk to us a little bit about how they have shown up in your world. I mean, did they just show up on your doorstep and say, hand me a mic. I’m here for you. Or I mean, you know, how do you get volunteers?

Richard Rieman
Well, you know, I know a lot of people in the audio book community, having been in it for, like 12 years now. And the moment I approached some of the narrators, you know, would you be interested in volunteering your voice for a children’s book? I mean, I got Johnny Heller, who was one of the voices of the 20th century he is done many children’s books. He did the Ricky the Rock That Couldn’t Roll one. We’ve had, you know, wonderful, top 10 in the country, and narrators volunteer their voices. And even some actors and actresses, Adrienne Barbeau has done a book for us. Of mod and what was it the swamp creature or something fame? So Adrienne Barbeau just loved what what we’re doing. And I’ve been able to get board members who are on from the American Council of the Blind. I have a board member who’s on the faculty at Gallaudet University, the School for the Deaf. I have a board member, Joel Snyder, who’s kind of the father of audio description. So some very important people have joined us in our mission and are spreading the word about it.

Janine Bolon
Well, you very casually mentioned to me before we went on the air, Oh, yes. And I’m thinking of doing a podcast. So talk to us about the podcast on Spotify, and where people can find you and when is that thing going to launch?

Richard Rieman
Well, it is launching next month in December. I don’t have the exact date yet. But it will be the Audio Book Wizard presents illustrated audio books. And we will play one 15 minute book each week. And and you know, bottom line is that this will make it available for all children, not just those with who are blind or low vision. Because you can listen to this in your car you can listen to it on you know your Alexa app you can listen to anywhere you can get a podcast, you’ll be able now to listen to it through the through the Spotify podcast we’re doing.

Janine Bolon
Well definitely let me know so I can put the link up on this interview. And that way it will be at www.theJanineBolonshow.com as well as on www.imaginationvideobooks.org. So if you don’t mind, share with us a little bit about what are the goals for 2022? You’ve come further than you thought you possibly could in 2021. So oh my gosh, what are the plans for 2022?

Richard Rieman
Well, we have a few goals. I mean, ultimately, we want every children’s illustrated book to be accessible. And for us to make that happen. We want the major book publishers, the Penguin Random houses and the Harper colleges in the Scholastic’s to make their audio books, their children’s books accessible in audio, and we are building a service arm to provide that service for them so they can create accessible audio books. Secondly, we’re going to move to a third language first language English second language sign, third language Spanish. We are going to start doing books in Spanish in 2022.

Janine Bolon
Well, all I can say is good luck. Keep rockin and I would love folks to be able to go and visit Richard Rieman’s organization www.imaginationvideobooks.org. And do that before the day is out so that you can see the quality work that is being done by my dear friend, as well as the many hundreds of volunteers that want to make these books accessible to others. Thank you so much for your work, Richard.

Richard Rieman
Thank you Janine.

Bryan Hyde
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