In today's video, I cover Precept Two from Making Your Own Luck: From a Skid Row Bar to Rebuilding IU Athletics, which is: Our greatest disappointments can create our greatest opportunities if we don’t let them deter us.
Click the image below to view this week's three-minute video:
Take care.
-- Fred
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In the book, I include ten "precepts" on how you can make your own luck by recognizing and seizing opportunities. Each week for the next ten weeks, I'm going to share the outline of one of these precepts with you.
In this week's two-and-a-half-minute video, I touch on Precept One: Opportunities often come at inconvenient times. Don’t let that prevent you from seizing them. Find a way. Take care, --Fred A major goal of mine for rolling out the book is to involve to the greatest extent possible local, independent bookstores. You may notice that I have listed multiple such bookstores from which you can preorder the book to help support those bookstores. Please let me know if you have a favorite local, independent bookstore you’d like me to ask to be added to the preorder list, carry the book, and/or otherwise get involved.
I’m having a ball getting to know these bookstores. Tiffany Phillips, the owner of the wonderful Wild Geese Bookshop in Franklin, has been a godsend. She has already agreed to host a book launch (COVID precautions willing) at her shop on Thursday, November 4, 2021. Tiffany is a real pro who expertly and generously opened my eyes to some of the things I should be thinking about with regard to book launches. I also really enjoyed meeting and corresponding with Elysia Smith, the owner of the very fun Irvington Vinyl and Books. I bought two terrific books from Elysia herself for my grandchildren and shamelessly asked her to carry my book, which she has agreed to do. On a recent trip to Bloomington, I dropped in the Book Corner. It is an iconic, independent, local bookstore that has been family-owned by the Spannuths since 1964! I have been enjoying visiting there since I was a student at IU. After buying a summer-read novel for my wife Barbara and The Essential New York Times Book of Cocktails to replace my Old Mr. Boston Bartender’s Guide (which I ruined in a tragic booze-spilling accident), the very engaging clerk agreed to carry my book. Indy Reads is not only a tremendous program with a vision of 100% literacy for all, it traditionally has operated an outstanding bookstore in Indianapolis’s Fountain Square neighborhood. While the store is currently closed for remodeling, its marking director, Sam Ferrante, is working with us in a variety of ways, including allowing the book to be preordered through the virtual Indy Reads Bookstore. Please support these and the many other, local, independent bookstores all around Indiana. I hope that Making Your Own Luck becomes one of the most local/independent bookstore-friendly books to be published in a very long time. Take care. -- Fred Thank you for making the effort to visit my website.
I am amazed I even have a website, let alone a book that will be published three months from today. It has been a labor of love inspired primarily by my mother and daughter, as I describe in the book. I started working on it early in 2020 shortly after I announced my planned retirement as IU Athletic Director. I wrote it long-hand on legal pad after legal pad, to be transcribed along the way by my code-breaking assistant Terri Beatty. I researched and wrote, off and on at night and on weekends, until I stepped down as Athletic Director on June 30, at which time I picked up the pace through that summer and fall. I turned in the final manuscript to IU Press on November 2, 2020, a year to the day before its publication date. I’ve been surprised by all that goes into actually publishing a book even after the manuscript is completely done. Editing. Copy editing. Fact checking. Reviewing page proofs. Indexing. Printing. I’m thrilled that we’re closing in on actually having the final book in print so that readers can consider, and hopefully enjoy, my story. I’m also looking forward to the process of rolling the book out to you and the rest of the reading public through things like this website, book signings, talks, readings, and the like. Along the way, I’ll be sharing these “Notes From Fred” which you can read on this website and/or have emailed to you by signing on to our email list. I’ll do my best not to wear you out, and I hope you enjoy following along on this journey. |