Sometimes things in life just happen.  For Air Force veteran, Douglas Berry that was writing children's books.  Nobody would expect that the author of a children's book about a little rabbit named Jasper would have once strapped munitions onto aircraft.  As a father Douglas enjoyed reading to his children when they were younger.  At one point his son brought a stray rabbit into the house and named him Jasper.  Many years later that would be the inspiration for Jasper and his amazing adventures.  You don't want to miss this discussion on how some things "just happen".

Battle Buddy Podcast Guest Links:

https://jasper-n-friends.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglas-berry-10128630/

Battle Buddy Podcast Links:

https://linktr.ee/battlebuddypodcast 

Transcript from Episode 52 with Douglas Berry:

Keith McKeever 0:04

Welcome to the battle buddy podcast with Keith McKeever. Welcome back to another episode of the battle buddy podcast. I have another Air Force veteran. With me today. I've got Douglas Berry, who is a children's author, got a couple of books out about a little rabbit named Jasper. And so this is not your typical episode with us. But don't worry, it's not all about children's books. But Doug, welcome. Welcome to the podcast.

Douglas Berry 0:31

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Keith McKeever 0:32

Yeah. Well, before we get started, want you to share a little bit about your story, what you do in the Air Force. You know, what was the magic thing that made you jump into the Air Force and all that stuff?

Douglas Berry 0:43

Well, yeah, I didn't make a lot of good decisions when I was 20 years old, but that was the best one I could have made. didn't really see. I knew I wanted to get a pension when I was older, didn't see a lot of factories at that point in time. They're getting away from pensions, that sort of thing. So I'm like, Well, I'm gonna get in the Air Force. Noble career went in is a arbit. system specialist loaded a Tenzin F sixteens. Didn't move around as much as most was stationed at Davis Martin was my first duty station down in Tucson, Arizona and loved it down there. Then off to coons on South Korea for a year there. Didn't really cheer for that too much. But you know, some things you like some things you don't it just

Keith McKeever 1:36

doesn't matter how long you spend it, you're gonna have some places you like some places you don't

Douglas Berry 1:40

for sure. And then from there, I went to Shaw Air Force Base, and I stayed there for 15 years. One of the many acronyms for Shaw is stay here a while and that's what I did for 15 years we stayed there which worked out well because he raised the family had two kids and we contend to homestead a little bit more weren't jumping around a bunch was more student life for them.

Keith McKeever 2:05

There's pros and cons to everything, right? Yes, sir. I'm gonna back up because I don't talk to that many people. I've met a few people over the years that were a Davis martham Did you ever get to go out as soon as some point you probably did but go out into the Boneyard. What What was that, like?

Douglas Berry 2:20

I used to have to, we lived off of that gate in a in an apartment complex. At one point in time, we only had one car and my wife worked. So I let her use the car and I bicycle to work. So at one point in my career, I was bicycling through the boneyard, basically every day to get the work

Keith McKeever 2:39

to be really, really cool.

Douglas Berry 2:41

That was yeah, it was just literally just acres and acres or miles and miles of stuff mothballed. Some of it, I was told could be ready to go and you know, 30 day notice kind of thing. So

Keith McKeever 2:56

that's what I've always heard and probably geeking out on the Air Force stuff here for a second. But you know, I'm a history buff. I've always been a history buff. So I would feel like a kid in a candy store to be able to go in there. That's what's nice, is I'm like now that I really wanted to ever get stationed there. But it would have been cool to be like TDY and have an opportunity to drive through. Sir. You know, one of the things that would be like kind of a cool bucket list thing to do, just to see different planes. And, you know, pick pictures show you one thing, but I can only imagine the sheer size of that place.

Douglas Berry 3:30

Lots of B 50 twos, I seem to remember that I didn't actually have to drive through the boneyard, but it was in a fence off to the left as I was going through the gate going.

Keith McKeever 3:42

Just awesome to to see all that. So I did not know that. That is really cool stuff. So you once you you retire. And somewhere along the lines, you wrote a children's book. Okay, how did that come about?

Douglas Berry 3:59

I get a lot of stuff from my fellow 462. Sometimes my fellow weapons troops because they're like, how did you go from loading bombs and blowing stuff up to writing a children's book? That's that transition makes no sense at all?

Keith McKeever 4:13

Well, there's no one set path in life, right? Yeah. And

Douglas Berry 4:17

sometimes, God just kind of throws you where he wants you and you do what he wants you to do. So it all started. Kids growing up, read a lot to him because I enjoyed reading books still. And I always thought it's like, you know, these don't. These aren't that, that this isn't like John Grisham or anything. These are just children's books. I think, surely I should be able to write a children's book. I wonder how that would go over if I could write a children's book. But I could never come up with the story that I didn't feel hadn't been overdone or done before. So I just sat on the idea that I could probably write one at some point in time and when my son was about eight years old, he's 24 ish. Now just gotten out of the Army National Guard boot camp and stuff. So he's an MP now. When he was about eight, I think it was storming that night, he happened to catch a baby rabbit outside and he brought it in the house and we let it spend the night with us. And then we released it the next day. And after we released it, I looked at my wife, I'm like, what was the rabbits perspective? It's like, Hey, here's that. Here's that moment. This is the story that I've been waiting on. As somebody else said, I had to wait for Jasper to come visit me before had the story from the book. Because my son actually named it Jasper in the day that we had it. So that's, that's how that all came about. Now, Jasper, the rabbit that he caught was just a brown wild rabbit. He still wanted a pet rabbit. So we bought him a what's called a Dutch rabbit. And the image of our rabbit whose name was deer because he tried to dig his way out of the cardboard box and brought him home in is the image that is now Jasper in the book. Yeah. That's a neat little way to hold on to that. And so the first book was, was done. That night, I spent the people house I didn't know anything about publishing books, or, or writing a children's book. I just had the story. And the publisher came to me and said, Okay, we need to get stuff ready for the illustrator. What do you want me to do? I don't know what I wanted to do. He's an illustrator. Right, you know, just read the book and figure it out, you know, tend to think as far as I can certainly Gee, I

Keith McKeever 6:35

all I did was write it right. I mean, the inspiration has literally happened. Just weird coincidences, which I think is probably the most interesting thing about this story is because so many people have an idea. And then I think we all probably have those every now and then you're like, Oh, no business idea, or just random thought, like, oh, you could do this, you could do that. And then you you know, you never do anything with 99% of it. You had one of those thoughts of like, oh, well, I could write a children's book, like I can do this XYZ and then sometime later down the road, like, here comes, you know, a rabbit your son brings in and names a jasper and boom, there's, there's the the connection point, if you will have put two and two together making it happen. So that's, that's pretty cool stuff. Yeah, it's a perfect story of taking action, you know, and having that moment to propel you to do something with it, rather than just leaving it some nugget of information or an idea in your head.

Douglas Berry 7:33

Yeah, I've clearly got a history of doing that. As I was talking with CJ on the other podcast, I don't know if he got canceled, listen to that. But yeah, that's I grew up fearing failure, this kind of ties in to some stuff, that ring true for some folks. And so I grew up fearing failure, I didn't want to try anything, because I didn't want to fail at it. What I like to redefine failure is a learning experience, because you'll fail. In the military, you're the one thing they teach is like make a decision, just not make a decision, you got to make a decision, and then you just gotta live with it, you just got pushed through it until you get to the end result that you're looking for. So

Keith McKeever 8:17

absolutely. And at the end, you can go back and you can reflect and say what went right, what went wrong? Right? Honestly, I've tried to help us a few people, I think that's a skill that I kind of picked up really well. In my life, one of those military skills was is to, to look at a situation from different angles to be able to reflect on what just happened, I do that with this podcast, every single guest, I will look back and be like, Okay, what went right, what went wrong? Hopefully the answer is more. So everything went right. But every now and it's like, I'll get an idea of like, Oh, all right. For a while, you know, I had an ending scene. That was a video of me rambling for three minutes. And then it was like, Okay, now it's time to redo it, you know, you just kind of continually improve. You can't do that if you don't go back and reflect.

Douglas Berry 9:09

Right, right. Right. So sort of the course of my, my career of like I was telling her I got involved with a racing team did some of that for a while, that was fun. And that. And that was all brought on. That's when I started to learn about the failure thing about there is no failure. You just gotta push through it until you make it. My buddy was a Master Sergeant sat next to me and he was getting his private pilot's license at the time. And I always thought it'd be cool to fly. Not so much anymore, but I really wanted to get involved in NASCAR. So I see him doing his dream, his goal in life sitting next to me and there I am just sitting there doing absolutely nothing to try to get to do anything cool, or, you know, achieve any dream that I might have. So I just started writing, because that was back a while so I was like writing and emailing letters and stuff to different range teams up in Charlotte and finally one pick me up. And we did it for a while. It was a volunteer sometimes got paid sometimes rich woodland ration is really good guy. never ran a full schedule for anything. But you know what, it was just a lot of fun. And I wrote it for as long as I could. And my crowning moment was the first race I ever went to go see as a kid was at Dover, Delaware. The only NASCAR race I worked as a mechanic was for St. Barrett at Dover, Delaware. So it just went full circle. And we were done.

Keith McKeever 10:36

I've never been to a race. But that would be a really interesting thing to not only see but you know, to be a part of, yeah, it really are that machine. Well, machine.

Douglas Berry 10:46

Yeah. The first race I worked with Rich was an Arca race up in Charlotte. And it was right. It was right after the the cup guys did their All Star race. The stands were just packed. There were people everywhere. And that was the first race I've ever worked with and on sitting on pit road wall, looking up at all these people and they're just roaring and screaming and everything because it all started racist then I'm like, That's the how do you like me now moment kind of thing. You know, it's like, Hey, I made it. Look at me. Wow,

Keith McKeever 11:17

totally different perspective that 99.9% of people would never get, you know, everybody else could sit in the stands. Not everybody could sit on the on the wall. That'd be crazy, too, is like coming into pit and

Douglas Berry 11:31

I was on the pit crew a couple of times. And that's that's an interesting time right there. It's scary. I had no idea how heavy the tires weren't. I was the front tire carrying I came off the wall because I've seen him do it on TV. You know, I know the procedure and everything. So I tried to follow that procedure, why I have nowhere near the upper body strength at some of those guys. And that tire went down and it bounced off the bounced off the pit road, came back up hit me in the chest. And I'm staggering across the front of the car. I probably looked absolutely foolish. But I mean things. I didn't lose the tire. And I got it.

Keith McKeever 12:08

Wow, yeah, that's I don't watch a whole lot of racing. But I've always been mesmerized by the teamwork, the precision that they have to do, because literally every second counts, which I think ties in so well. You know, those be the veterans like we all know that. A team has to train together, eat, sleep and breathe together to you know, to be really truly effective.

Douglas Berry 12:34

Being a weapon cylinder we travel in threes is the big joke because we have our crew chief or two men in our three men. And we train just crazy training for as you can imagine working with munitions. And wouldn't be Yeah, it was literally I mean, I wouldn't have to see what my three man was doing. But I knew what he was doing. And I knew how long it's gonna take him. So I knew exactly where he would be at all the time. And I mean, we were all that way. And it's just when you get that kind of cohesiveness, that kind of teamwork. It's really wild.

Keith McKeever 13:09

Yeah, that would be I will tell you the security forces, we didn't have that kind of teamwork. We're just trying to stay out of trouble. And stay off people's radar. And stay away from the aircraft because, you know, the security forces career field had a tendency to bump into aircraft sometimes. They should send this to driving school before they really put you on a flight line and see and put a bunch of 1819 year olds in a in a souped up car, or pickup truck and say, drive this around drive this $40,000 truck or a $50,000 truck. Just don't hit the you know, million dollar aircraft out there. It's like no big deal. Just don't hate it. Like. And yeah, I know, I know, when I was in, it seemed like every year there was a picture popping up floating around, like don't be this guy. Let's see. What's where you're going?

Douglas Berry 14:09

Or anything, somebody is bound to run into one of those

Keith McKeever 14:11

every single year, but sometimes a couple times a year. Anytime I happen, obviously, you know, it makes a big deal floats around the units. Like don't be like I said, Don't be that guy. But it happens. So the children's book, I'm kind of curious how it would seem like pretty easy. But how difficult was that to actually write that? You know, to think about like from a child a child reading it kind of perspective.

Douglas Berry 14:35

Well, I took it just a little bit different. I'm looking at it from a rabbits perspective. So the rabbit is just about as innocent as a child and you know if you think about it amongst his other little woodland friends outside, so I'm writing it through his eyes. And along with those images, I didn't know what to do for the illustrator. I probably looked silly. I was taking my phone I'm like well, wait a minute. I I live in a house, I know what I'll do, I'll just take pictures of my house and I'll send them to the illustrator and they can use it. So it's out of my backyard taking pictures that are like red at eye level and stuff for can send off to us, you'd have an idea of what I wanted to write. But yeah, just kind of the innocence of a child the innocence of a rabbit experiencing something they've never experienced before you just kind of put yourself in that mindset. And so far, it's working through the first two books, I had no idea the first book was going to take off so much I kind of did it. It's kind of like a family story kind of thing, you know, has done like my grandkids, and it ended up selling about 600 copies. And people started saying, Oh, we're, you know, what are you? What are you gonna do next? What's what's the next adventure for Jasper and I'm like, I was gonna be one and done. You know, I didn't have any. I'm gonna do another one. And, but people kept asking, so I went ahead, and I wrote the second one, paying a little bit more attention, I kind of did everything right by accident on the first one. But the second one, I could pay a little bit more attention. Since I've been through the process once and make the pictures line up maybe a little bit better, I did a pretty good job with the first one. I always say I'd rather be lucky than good any day. But it could have been a little bit more attention to the second one. And so that so even if a child can't necessarily read just yet, they can follow the story alone pretty easily just by by the images.

Keith McKeever 16:22

Oh, definitely got because I've seen both books. And now I can I can see where the photographs from a children's perspective, I can see that now. Because I was thinking, you know, I wouldn't have a clue how to write a children's book, you know, to put your mind in that in that thought. I mean, I just finished my bachelor's degree, right. So everything I've been writing for the last couple years has either been for business or, you know, college level stuff. So it's like, how would I start to write a book for children? You know, children's books, of course, vary to from very little text to, you know, that graduation step to, you know, chapter books, where, you know, half the pages is text, but it is really cool book, I will say, my kids are little little too old for that genre, but they would have loved that, as little kids, they really would have adventure. Yeah, I

Douglas Berry 17:19

tried to hit that sweet spot, like you're talking about, they're only about 20 pages long, I tried to hit that sweet spot. So it's like a good bedtime story, you know, sitting there, you know, reading this chapter book for a bedtime story or anything you read. And just a nice little cute, fun story. It's only about 20 pages long. So we tried to hit that middle ground.

Keith McKeever 17:37

So it's, it's that perfect book for like little little kids, to the kids that are starting to learn how to read because there's not a ton of text to it. First words that they kind of learn. And my children are? Well, if I can get them to read more consistently, they'd be into chapter books all the time. They just wanna play video games all the time. They do. Yeah, it is. But you mentioned illustrator. So tell us about the process on that. And what the how that went for you find it in Illustrator? Sure.

Douglas Berry 18:09

That was I got hooked up with a great publishing. And well, at least I think they're a great publishing company for publishing, I'll certainly give them a shout out here. It's kind of a not a traditional publisher, not quite a vanity publisher, they're kind of got this little self middle ground area that they work in. They supplied me with about 10 illustrators that I could choose from. And some of them were had more detail in their drawing, some of them had less detail under drawing into that sort of thing. Some of them were a little bit more than I think they call animate, you know, than just

Keith McKeever 18:41

regular stuff. Yeah, makes sense. So

Douglas Berry 18:45

I picked the one that had the less detail because I knew I was going to the younger kids. And it's like I don't want them to get all wrapped around the axle and seeing all this detail and all these pictures and you know, all this fluff and stuff. It's like I want to look more like a Saturday morning cartoon, you know, comic book kind of kind of feel and kind of look to it. So it's a little bit easier for them to visualize. And seeing that the above the noise, if you will, a bunch of distracting details. And I think we hit a sweet spot on that as well there on the first book, I remember saying can I get just a little bit more detail on this page a little bit more detail on that page. And they would do it for me. But it was definitely a cool, cool experience in there. And they were real good about making changes that were been a problem takes about eight months to actually get one done. And published surprise

Keith McKeever 19:36

me. That'd be pretty crazy to to see that put together to see your words and the images and pull that whole story together.

Douglas Berry 19:48

It's fun to watch. It is quite a learning experience. And it was really cool to watch it how it all comes together and how they they've got very specific orders that they do everything and I don't know that I still understand why they do it. I mean was ordered, but it works. So

Keith McKeever 20:03

process, right? Yeah. So what? What do you think has been the most difficult aspect of being an author as or something that's been harder than you think?

Douglas Berry 20:16

Yes, because I fell backward into this kind of to begin with, I had no clue what marketing and promotion was all about. I mean, I worked with marketing, a little bit of RAM Clutches, I worked a little bit with the marketing guys. So I'm not a pleated, eat, I guess for lack of a better term. I know a little bit about what to do, but not as far as books are concerned. So I really have to back up, regroup and start learning a lot about trying to promote marketing books. I've gotten my feet under me a little bit. But there's always room for improvement. I've got them everywhere online amazon.com. You know, walmart.com even has them pretty much anywhere online. And my goal, this next year or two, hopefully this year, is to get them physically stocked in stores. I mean, that's what every author wants, right? I mean, they all want their stores their books in the store. So we're trying to grow on Instagram On Facebook. Jeff, President Facebook page, Instagram page,

Keith McKeever 21:13

the website, scroll down at the bottom, it'll be in the show links as well for anybody listening to it.

Douglas Berry 21:18

Yeah, he's got his own web page. www dot Jaspar dash N dash friends.com. We've got a Zazzle page which is where you can get all your your little cups or saucers or clocks, blankets, pillows with Jasper and his buddies arm. And just, you know, you just keep hitting and I like to say I don't know what I don't know what I should know, to do this. So I just tried to outwork everybody. I just thought just keep digging, keep posting, just keep at it, keep podcasted. book signings, I haven't had many I just did my first one the other day didn't. Didn't. It wasn't I didn't go over. It went over. Okay. The store I was in only had six customers all day. And I sold four books. So

Keith McKeever 22:09

you know, a ratio wise, you did pretty good.

Douglas Berry 22:13

So percentage wise, it was awesome. But just not many people showed up. I'm hitting those now. Next weekend, I was asked and it's the first time I got asked I mean actually contacted me, which blew me away and said, Hey, we're having a walk for autism next weekend. Do you mind coming down and setting up a little table with your books, you know, just to display your books and talk to people about which course I will be right there. So that'd be kind of cool.

Keith McKeever 22:40

Yeah, Sunday, and I would imagine there's a lot of like the book companies, right, like the big ones. Well, you know, Amazon or the actual physical bookstores like Barnes and Noble. I can't imagine how many books they have. Plus how many books they get pitched on a daily basis. It's got to be insane. So cutting through that fog, if you will, is gotta be an interesting process.

Douglas Berry 23:05

It's not easier everybody would do it. There is a little caveat the Barnes and Noble though, I found this out through just asking questions, because it's what I do. Like just you know, if I don't know, anything, I just get on all these Facebook. Pages for writers and stuff is a bunch of questions. They have a local author section, if you take your book physically in the store, he talked to the store manager, he'll look over it. It's not a sure thing. But he'll look over it. If he likes it, he'll put it in the store. And he's got that authority that he can put local authors in his in his Barnes and Noble. So I actually had our local Barnes and Noble I had the first book. I haven't got the second book in there yet, but I've got the first book in there. That's awesome. So that's pretty cool. You know about that. But

Keith McKeever 23:49

you know, there's something helpful for all the authors that might be listening to it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because there's a I would imagine you could pretty much find a Barnes and Noble and just about every state, you know, I know that pretty much nationwide, I don't know, anymore. But I'll admit myself, I haven't been physically in a bookstore for quite a while. Sometimes it's easy just to get them online or audiobooks. You know, obviously, there's a word for children's books, but yeah, for adult books, audiobooks are a great way to go. Especially if you're driving around but yeah, that's a really helpful piece of information. Yeah, never know who might. Might need that. So one other thing I wanted to ask because I know you've had struggles with trying to figure all this stuff out, how do you stay motivated, you know, and find ways to keep pushing on and do the second book and third book and who knows whatever else is out in the future. When you know, when you keep running into brick walls, left and right.

Douglas Berry 24:53

Yeah, I just, I just, you know, and I don't know if it's just the Yeah, look, I had Through the Air Force, and just failure is not an option kind of thing. A lot of this stuff just rolls off my back. I mean, it's just, I just keep going. I really feel like the good Lord put me on this path for a reason. So that helps me stay focused. Oh three has been written. It's not been published yet. I like to try to get sales up in the first the last book I published, I tried to make pay for this the next book coming up. So I'm not out a whole lot of my own pocket money. An idea? But yeah. It's I just don't find it hard to stay focused. It just, it's kind of overtaking my, I almost feel like this is more of my first job than my actual daily job is it's kind of taken over a little bit.

Keith McKeever 25:48

So the first book is Jasper people house. Yeah. What is that? What is the title of the second one?

Douglas Berry 25:58

Second one is a beach with Jasper and friends. And the third one, a little little nugget out about the third one.

Keith McKeever 26:06

That's why I set it up the second one.

Douglas Berry 26:10

I haven't come up with the title and the third one yet. But a little nugget out. Jasper and his friends are going to go visit their friend mouse on the farm. And they're going to feed the animals and plant some crops and have some fun. Oh, that's

Keith McKeever 26:23

interesting. Because I think it was the second book at the beach where he was there with his friends, a bunch of different characters could be direction to go, maybe in the future. I don't know, maybe I'll drop some drop some nuggets, maybe, you know, some adventures with all of his friends, because who doesn't like going places with friends? Right?

Douglas Berry 26:42

Right. What I like about these books, somebody described them, it's just a good story that just lets kids be kids, it's not really in depth about trying to teach them anything or, you know, change your direction one way or the other, or any of that kind of crazy stuff, you just read it, it's a bunch of animals that you wouldn't typically think would be friends. But they are. And they just go out and do some crazy stuff and just learn together, if nothing else.

Keith McKeever 27:10

Put it that way. That's an interesting, you know, maybe lessons that kids kids may not get, but you know that, that there are animals that you wouldn't see normally together, or think of being being friends. But that's life in general, too. You know, you can meet people with all kinds of diverse backgrounds, and you can still be friends and still enjoy life and be connected and have meaningful relationships. So there's a good possible lesson for children. So Well, Doug, I appreciate you coming on here and kind of highlight highlight what you do any, any last words about what you got going on, or any pieces of advice for other aspiring authors, whether it's children's books or not.

Douglas Berry 27:51

The only other piece of advice I got, I just learned, learned by just kind of came on. And I don't know if there's anything here or not, but I'm gonna share it anyway, just because I thought it was kind of interesting, allowed folks to wander, because I'm now looking to get my books in stores. And I went to the local Walmart to look at authors because I had some questions, I wanted to ask the other authors about getting my books in stores. So I got the author's names and the publishing companies off the back of the books for other kids books. And I did some research, I send me emails and ask them questions, but then it dawned on me, it's like, you know, if you're trying to get your book in a store, it might behoove you to go in there. And look what publishers that store already stocks. And you might want to hit those publishers first and see if they're accepting anything new as far as books are concerned. It might give you an in to that store to be stocked in that store. I'm not saying it will, but in my mind not it's not a bad start. It's a good place to start.

Keith McKeever 28:55

Oh, definitely be more likely that they would have an opportunity to get you in there versus a company that has no ties to that store.

Douglas Berry 29:03

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Yeah.

Keith McKeever 29:05

You know, I guess you could also look and see where those companies because obviously the purpose would be get your book in as many stores as possible nationwide, internationally, what not, but you know, to see which which companies are doing that in the most amount of companies out there. Another thing to look at so I'm sure there's a lot of tips and tricks to to get in that stuff you just got to find ask the question, right.

Douglas Berry 29:32

Yep, just got to the author's I contacted were really good about getting back to me and answered my question. So I highly recommend if you're going to do that, to go do that and get the author's information and try to contact them if you have any questions because they were they've really been helpful.

Keith McKeever 29:49

Awesome. You know, you've got other great resources too, because you mentioned CJ Ayers Lopez and her podcast the author's porch. You know, she definitely know is a lot about writing and publishing and everything about it. So she, she is a great resource her lives. Free shout out for her podcasts what she does, but if you are writing anything, she's, she's the person you definitely want to connect with.

Douglas Berry 30:18

She's got my book and two others one of hers and one of her friends are traveling books. They're going over the nation to different places and stuff. And folks are taking pictures with different national monuments and that sort of thing and put them on social media trying to get some some exposure for them. So that's pretty cool.

Keith McKeever 30:39

Well, speaking of photos and exposure, you have a cutout of Jasper, don't you did not see that on Facebook the other day.

Douglas Berry 30:44

I got him right here.

Keith McKeever 30:45

You got it right here. There you go. Let me get the so there you go. That's even bigger than I thought to.

Douglas Berry 30:52

There's nobody Yeah, yeah, it's

Keith McKeever 30:53

a pretty good size holy cow.

Douglas Berry 30:55

He's about he's about two and a half feet tall, I think, nice. Somebody, somewhere somewhere in between two and a half or three feet tall. I tried to make him a kid size. So the kids can come up and have their picture taken with him, but he's gonna be at the autism walk next Saturday as well. So

Keith McKeever 31:12

I bet that we'll really get a lot of interest from shit from kids. You know, right at their eye level. As they're scanning around, they're like, there's a rabbit most eyes. Mommy, Daddy, like, let's go over here. Check this out. I know, my kids would have been all over that. So that's really cool.

Douglas Berry 31:32

My granddaughter came over the other day and she saw them and right away she started dancing with them. So that was kind of cool. I wish I'd gotten a picture of that. That was a that was a neat one.

Keith McKeever 31:40

Yeah, you gotta go to stuffed animals. Next get a jasper stuffed animal looking. That's

Douglas Berry 31:45

that is pricey. Some books first. Yeah.

Keith McKeever 31:51

Gets a little kid fans. Right? And then they can hit a hit up mom and dad for Christmas time. Mom, Dad, I need a jasper. I need my jasper toys.

Douglas Berry 32:00

Yeah, that's, I think when I looked at it, and got it all figured out. It's like, Man, I have to sell these things for about $35. And it's like, well, the cabbage.

Keith McKeever 32:12

Yeah, we get to keep for down the road. Right? Yeah,

Douglas Berry 32:15

we're gonna keep looking. I'm trying to have stuff done in America, too. I don't. I don't, I'm not really interested in getting stuff done overseas. I mean, main reasons I just like America first, you know, kind of stuff, I just, you know, absolutely, we can do our own thing. And when you get when I worked for a couple of other companies, they would get not all their product, but pieces and parts from places overseas. And next thing, you know, you're waiting for three months for something to show up that sort of showed up a lot quicker, just because it's a slow boat from somewhere.

Keith McKeever 32:49

You know, or you have unforeseen things like a pandemic and what it did to ships to supply chains. And you know, for a lot of people. I know you're an intrapreneur tribe, like I am and saw a lot of supply chain issues people were talking about in their left,

Douglas Berry 33:04

I was told, at the end of completing my second book publishing, the publisher sent me a message and said, If you want to get copies, you better hurry up and get them because there's a possibility we're gonna have a supply shortage, you know, of paper, I guess, or ink, because their main tendency is where the distributor is. So

Keith McKeever 33:25

yeah, you got to think about those things to where they're where they're getting their supplies for their when they're making them. So. Yeah, a lot, a lot of things to think of. But anyway, Doug, I appreciate you coming by and sharing your story. I think it's such a neat and different story that I get to normally share on here, children's books, and you know, kind of pushing, pushing through some of those things and sharing your story about Davis moth. And that was really cool. I guess I'm gonna have to take a road trip down to a little ways from Illinois. But yeah, I appreciate you. Appreciate you being on here being a battle, buddy.

Douglas Berry 34:02

Thanks for having me on. I've had a blast. This is about my fifth podcast. Now. I'm actually finally starting to maybe feel a little comfortable talking about myself. It was

Keith McKeever 34:10

great. And then I'll say you know, real quick, it's still scrolling at the bottom. It'll be in the show notes. But it's Jasper and friends.com, Jasper dash and dash friends.com. So you can go check out your website, buy a book, buy on Amazon is enough. I'll have all the links in the show notes for everybody. But so not only go there, but go find Jasper like follow Facebook page, all that stuff. Don't forget to like and I can subscribe to my podcast as well share this, especially with anybody who's got little kids. I know we're not you know, we're not near Christmas, but birthdays. Don't forget about birthdays. Easter Easter Easter is right around the corner. So yeah, so let's go check it out. Yes, sir.