This week on Mind Body Success, we explore the topics of mindset and mindfulness with the CEO of Authors Who Lead, Azul Terronez. We talk about releasing our expectations and turning inwards to gain the necessary confidence to take the leap in starting a personal project. Azul also shares his own journey from educator to best-selling author and book coach, and how his shift in mindset has helped him achieve his lifelong goals.
If you want to learn how to incorporate mindfulness and personal development into your everyday life, this week’s episode will divulge some of Azul Teronez’s best kept secrets on living a more productive and well-balanced lifestyle.
Azul Terronez is a former educator, best-selling author, book coach, and CEO of the six-figure company Authors Who Lead. He has coached Wall Street CEOs, health and wellness gurus, and Emmy award-winning producers to help build their confidence, improve their productivity, and increase their visibility within a company.
Join us on this week’s episode as we learn more about Azul’s personal journey from teaching in the classroom to finding the courage by taking the leap in writing his first book. He even shares some of his personally favourite authors who have shifted his mindset and have helped him along his journey.
We talk through the best tips, tools, and strategies to overcome challenges and live a life of prosperity and abundance. Buckle-in for an exciting episode on how you can gain the inner confidence and mindset you need to help you reach your lifelong goals!
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your favorite podcast platform.
- Building the necessary self-confidence to help you achieve your goals.
Connect with Azul on his website Authors Who Lead or join the Authors Who Lead Summit to learn more.
Spotify
Alison Swerdloff: [00:00:00] Welcome to Mind Body Success with your hosts Alison Swerdloff and Dr. Liesa Harte. Listen along as we take you on a life-changing journey into creating success by incorporating mindfulness, self-care, mindset, and personal development. Open your mind, let your adventurous side out, and allow us to motivate you to remove the hustle and overwhelm while shifting your current reality to the life of your dreams. Through conversations with high achievers, you will learn tips, tools, and strategies to overcome challenges and live a life of prosperity and abundance. Let the adventure begin!
Welcome to Mind Body Success. Liesa and I are happy you've joined us today for this conversation with Azul Terronez, a former educator, best-selling author, book coach, and CEO of the six figure company Authors Who Lead. In his capacity as the CEO of the company, Azul has enabled Wall Street CEOs and health and wellness gurus sell tens of thousands of books.
He's the host of the podcast Authors Who Lead and serves as a creativity coach with CEO's and Emmy award-winning producers to build their confidence, improve productivity, increase their visibility within their companies. Following two decades in education, where he served as a teacher, principal and founding faculty member of High Tech High Graduate School of Education—I will personally want to hear more about that—he has been a keynote speaker and hosted a TEDx talk entitled “What makes a good teacher?”. Azul, thank you so much for joining us today.
Azul Terronez: [00:01:48] Thank you so much Alison for having me and you as well.
Dr. Liesa Harte: [00:01:52] So, I loved your TEDx talk.
Azul Terronez: [00:01:56] Thank you.
Dr. Liesa Harte: [00:01:57] I have six children and this is my, you know, so very inspiring.
And then I realized when I was preparing that that is a former chapter. And then now you're a creativity coach and have this successful business. So, I was wondering what caused you to shift from being a classroom teacher? And, I realize now that you were principal and school founder also, but it seemed like you really loved the classroom—to now being a creativity coach.
Azul Terronez: [00:02:28] Yeah. Well, that's a great question. I think along the way, because I went into teaching in-between things, you know, it's sort of the thing where I couldn't find a job and I was working in television at the time and television jobs come and go, you try to get a job. And I had some background directing children's theater, and I saw a job meeting someone that could speak Spanish, at least mildly, and to be able to work with kids. I didn't ever have a degree in education nor any teaching credential, but they were desperate and they hired me. And, uh, I stayed there for a year and then realized that I had to go back to school and I was like, I'm not sure I'm ready to go back to school again. I had just finished graduate school in a totally different field, so I wasn't necessarily planning to stay, but the kids just kept me there. Man, they taught me more than any of those degrees ever did and so that was really the reason I stayed. Education has its, I have my own, you know, discrepancies with the way it's done, but what I did learn and pushing back on the things that I thought needed to change as the kids were the ones that had all the answers.
So, one of my students, we were doing a book fair. When I got into publishing about 2007/2008, my goal was to help every young person that was in my classroom; every eighth grader would graduate as a published author. So, I started publishing students and I had a fair one day of all their books. So it was a book fair, but it was of their published works and people were coming to see their books.
And one of the students came to me and said, Mr. Tarnas, where's your book? I want to put it out. And for a second, I thought, you know, I could just lie here and say I was too busy. I focused all about you. And the truth was, I was just scared, and I told them, I said, look, I'm just really afraid to put myself out there.
And he said, you don't need to be afraid. And he shrugged his shoulders and walked off. And that's when I realized that I had been telling kids, you can do anything you want, anything you put your mind to, but I wasn't accepting it for myself. So, I started after that to write books, I no longer just talked about it and worried about it, spending 24 years thinking about writing a book, I finally wrote it in 30 days because of that sort of bigger 'why', and that changed my life.
And that's where I met Pat Flynn and The Smart Passive Income Podcast, who was also like, wow, you wrote a book in 30 days? We need to talk because I want to know how you did that, and so my life shifted from that moment. It was really an internal shift that came from a kid.
Alison Swerdloff: [00:04:51] I want to learn how you did that.
Azul Terronez: [00:04:56] You know, I'm glad this is about mindset because honestly it was a mindset. It wasn't that I didn't have the knowledge. You know, I was very skilled in helping people publish books; I knew what it would take, I knew how to run things on Amazon, that wasn't my issue. My issue was believing that my voice was worthy, that it would be any good, could I really get it done? I started before, but never finished. Would anybody read this? Mm-hmm, which is what was in my head. And that's why, I tell you, kids do the most amazing things by just calling you out in a really beautiful way, which is you don't need to be afraid. And the shift was for me, why am I doing this? My 'why' was I really want to figure out how these wonderful people make a living online and travel the world and work from their laptop. I'm in education, locked in a cage, it felt like. I had no idea how people were doing this. So my shift was, I was determined, and I only spent an hour a day.
I wasn't spending, you know, 10 hours a day writing a book. I've built a system that realized I had to undo all the training that I had in my mind from schools about what a book is and what it isn't and that's what really helped me.
Alison Swerdloff: [00:06:01] So when did you publish your first book?
Azul Terronez: [00:06:03] Uh, it was 2014, um, in the fall 2014 was the first book that I published as, under my name, that I wasn't a ghost writer. I've written other books, which is great when they're all, they become number one and have 605-star reviews.
But if you're not the one with your name on it, it's easy to just hide behind that. I still struggle with it, to be honest, I have to remind myself how important it is to shine.
Alison Swerdloff: [00:06:26] What led you to starting your podcast?
Azul Terronez: [00:06:29] You know, it was a little bit selfish in some regards. I wanted to have conversations with authors because I've only had conversations with teachers and educators and I spoke and train teachers all over the world, from Barcelona to Shanghai to Canada to Chile.
So, I've had an incredible education life, but I didn't really know too many people out of education. So, I wanted to start interviewing authors and ask them, how did you get here? Did you really write this book? Is your, your name's on it, did you write it or are you just the author? I wanted to know. I wanted people to hear that it wasn't as hard as they thought, or it was every bit as hard as they thought.
And my goal, ultimately, was starting. I wanted to be able to interview Gay Hendricks of the book The Big Leap because I really admired him. And, I thought, I'm going to stick at this until I interview him, at least, you know? And, after the first time, I thought I quit. I was so tired of doing it already 10 episodes in.
And I was like, there's no way, but I had one author on my show who was a coauthor with him, and I asked, could you ask if he'd be on my show? And she said, yes. So, I, you know, that was, that happened a few months ago. That was amazing. So that was, I've gotten to interview such amazing authors, but like being able to interview him was a goal.
So, that was really the main reason. Now, I do love to serve people and help them, but at the beginning, I was motivated from within.
Alison Swerdloff: [00:07:54] Now, how do you incorporate mindset and mindfulness in your work with your clients? How do you help them shift their mindset and work with mindfulness?
Azul Terronez: [00:08:06] Ya, so that's a great question. So, what I've noticed and part of it was, I was part of the problem, is that we in schools don't teach people to be writers and we definitely don't teach them to be authors or have author mindsets. We teach them to be editors. And what I mean by that is we know we're going to get a grade; we know there's a certain criteria, rubric, thing you have to follow to get the grade, and we edit to the grade. I'm an A student so I will do what it takes to get an A. I'm a B student, what I need to get is a B. So, we type, we edit, we write, we edit it, we delete, we edit, our minds constantly editing towards, will this be good enough for the teacher?
And so, we have an editor's brain, so we've been trained to be editors. So that part of your brain is that left side of your brain is really useful to correct and make corrections to pieces of work. It's really poor for creativity. So, what I do for my mindful thinking is I don't let my students or my clients think about writing as words.
I make them draw their book first. I say, I want you to draw your book. And a lot of them are resistant. You could imagine doctors, lawyers, dentists, really struggling with this. They're like, I can't draw. I'm like, good. You think you can't draw? So, we're gonna work with that. So, draw me what, you know, use a picture of symbols colors, or show me your book idea.
And that is really valuable because it allows them to detach them from having to be right. Um, and that's one of the mindful practices, if you can stop attaching to this 'it's gotta be good' or 'it's gotta be right', and then you actually start to find your way through your story, your truth. If not, what creeps in is what people know as imposter syndrome or writer's block—which isn't a thing, writer's block is a made-up thing.
Uh, we don't get plumber's block or carpenter's block or hairstylist block, right? We don't. We get writer's block because it's so much easier to say that there's something I can't do, and really, it's a mindfulness practice that needs to shift. So drawing your book helps you start to talk about a book and see it's real. Words are just the things you put there because you can't be there with the person—reading their book, you know, reading your story, you know, talking to them. And I tell people, people want to be with you. Your words are just part of that. So, once they can detach from their words, they can actually start telling their story. And I don't let them write for a long time, like six weeks into our programs, because I want them to figure out their message.
Why are they the unique messenger? I don't want them to focus on the words. That's because their editor brain constantly wants to try to make something right before it's even an idea. And the best books are not the books that are even read or memorized. The best books are the ones that people talk about.
Hey, hey, Alison, you look like you're very cheerful and you're upbeat these days. What's going on? You're like, gosh, I've been reading this book, Happiness and Cheerful, Mindfulness, whatever the book is. You're like, I think that's great. I should get that book, right? That's how books have a life, but too many authors are worried about the words and the words are just slightly the best you can do, because if I had a chance to sit and have lunch with Oprah and talk to her about her life and how she got here, I'd much rather do that than read her book about her life.
And that's the truth for every human being. We'd much rather be in-person learning about who they are. And so, that mindfulness shift helps authors release all this expectation that it's supposed to be something big. And once they do that, they actually can start showing up on the page.
Alison Swerdloff: [00:11:28] Interesting, that's my thought process on writing the books that I've been talking about writing for a year.
Azul Terronez: [00:11:37] Ya, because if you believe your book is already in you, then you won't worry about, I have to create a book. You're not creating anything. It is in you, mainly in you, who you are a human. Again, where I learned this was from children.
So, as you know, when you get along in years and you start to teach other people, they call you a master teacher, which is just sort of silly. You really don't know anything more than when you started, but I would go do demonstration lessons in classrooms, and I would go in to teach writing and authorship to kindergarten classes and I'd hand out the paper. You remember that paper that has that brownish paper? And I'd hand out colors and I said, okay, everyone, we're going to write a book! And those kids would get so excited, we're going to tell stories and I'd say, you ready? Set, go. And they would just start going. And the teacher was like, oh, we don't have, they don't have writing skills yet, just some of them know the alphabet. I go, don't worry. And they were writing and scribbling, drawing. And then I'd say, time's up and I'd go over to Jose. Jose, show me your, let's go over your story. And it'd be scribbles, I mean, not even pretending like it's writing, but really not much. I said, Jose, what's this about?
Well, this is a story about a young aunt who on the way home from school got in trouble. He got lost. Oh, my goodness. And so his mom, who's an elephant, also went looking for him and she got lost. She got stuck in a tree and Jose would go on and tell this beautiful story. And he would fall along on his pictures, falling the doodles, he had it perfectly visioned out and then he would have a beautiful ending.
And I said, that's quite a wonderful story. Stories live in you. Words are just the thing you use so that you can pass them on. So, I try to tell people, stop trying to write with words, words aren't the thing, you are the thing. Your imagination, your creativity, your unique view of the world is the thing.
And once you start to understand that you stop having all this anxiety because you can't be wrong, how can creativity be wrong? So even if we're writing a very serious book, a very technical book or a memoir, it still has that same principle of it's within you—that the book comes not from your head alone. Not just words, you know, grammatically correct words, that's just what we're trained and that's unfortunately why most people who graduate with a degree in English and/or creative writing don't ever publish a book because they're trained in a way that makes it difficult to believe that they are the ones meant to share their story.
Alison Swerdloff: [00:14:01] Very interesting. You've sparked something in Liesa, I can see it in her face.
Dr. Liesa Harte: [00:14:13] My first question that came to me when I found out that you are a creativity coach, I'd never heard of a creativity coach. So I was going to ask you, can you really coach creativity, but obviously you can, you've already described it so beautifully, oh my gosh. I mean, I could almost cry. It's like this is so wonderful.
Everyone needs to hear you, so glad you're here.
Azul Terronez: [00:14:35] I was asked by the co-founder of the Stanford Design School, which was designed, built for engineers to have a more empathetic look at design, the human element. He said, Azul would you be interested in the project teaching creativity? I said, possibly, tell me more. He says, we want to see if we can teach AI (artificial intelligence) to be creative.
Well, we're not going to destroy the earth, are we? What are we talking about here? He's like, no, we're just curious about this notion we've, anything mathematical or logical, we've been able to have computers learn. Creativity, we're wondering is that something that innately human or is it teachable? I said, I'm wondering that the biggest problem with, when I go into organizations that are wondering about innovation or creativity and I look around, I said, oh, you don't have a creativity problem. You have a curiosity problem because creativity comes from curiosity. And I don't see any evidence of questions or curiosities anywhere in here and that's your problem. So, where's the opportunity to be curious? And so, my wonder about artificial intelligence is can you teach artificial intelligence to be curious? Because curiosity doesn't have a reason to exist. It just, it's a notion that just lives in you, right. So, I don't know about that, but what I've learned is that I'm not training people to be creative.
I'm retraining them to connect to the part of their body and their brain that is creative without them. You don't teach kids to be creative; schools basically undermine creativity and teach them to be compliant, which is different. Sir Ken Robinson talks a lot about schools being the result of killing creativity.
I would agree, and it's intentional, it's not a mistake. It's not that we don't know we're doing it in education, we want them to stand up when the bell goes off, we want them to sit down, get their pencil out, we want them to have the behaviors of workers. We don't want them to pause, stop, reflect, question.
Alison Swerdloff: [00:16:25] Right?
Azul Terronez: [00:16:26] And that's where creativity comes from.
Alison Swerdloff: [00:16:28] You know, it's interesting you say that because my daughter is an elementary school teacher, and she has always said she does not want to work with kids above third grade. Part of it, you know, they start getting personalities. And the other part is, she is young at heart.
And her mindset is always the creative aspect of things and once you get above third grade, creativity goes out the window.
Azul Terronez: [00:16:58] Yeah, well think about it. So, we're all expected to be able to read by third grade and at least have the beginnings of writing, basic writing. And after that, if you don't cling onto it, you're sort of out of luck.
That was my problem. I'm pretty severely dyslexic. I don't, I couldn't read at third grade, I flunked freshman English at UCLA. I had to take it again, even though I have a master's degree from UCLA. Ironically, I became an English teacher and a book coach and a creativity coach, but it wasn't because I was good at reading.
What I was really good at is everyone else was focusing on the words and I was focusing on what's really happening underneath the surface? What's the subconscious thing that people are thinking here. What's my observation? Why would this be happening? And I'd get, they'd stop me say, okay, did you read that paragraph? What'd you get from it?
And I would say something totally right, but it wouldn't be because of the words. I was trying to process this other thing. So, it's just a, it was an intuition built up out of necessity because I couldn't catch up and read the words. I'd go read the book three times just to be able to process what they were doing, but it became a superpower because it's the thing that helped so many kids because I couldn't teach them to the way everyone else was teaching them.
I taught them to be authors at a young age. So, when my students walked out as 13-year-olds to maybe have their first job, I said, don't worry about experience. Just write your name on the application and staple it to your book and say, see attached. And that's all, you'll be fine. You'll get whatever job you want.
And, so I help them just be more successful, that was more valuable outside of school than it was in, being a published author at 13. And I feel like, yeah, so it was just a switch in the way I was thinking in creativity, you know, it has to be reignited in people. So many people, so many adults that I coach, when they're working on something, whether they'll be YouTubers, I help with YouTubers, which is interesting because I'm not a YouTuber, to be more creative.
And part of it is an undoing the blocks that sit in their head to keep them from being the person they're trying to be. So, I say, I'm not teaching you how to do anything. I'm teaching you how to be. That's a different thing.
Alison Swerdloff: [00:19:07] Hmm, so you are basically teaching them how to be the best forms of themselves, without changing their thought, without changing them.
Azul Terronez: [00:19:15] Right, without judging them too soon. I'm okay to be critical about your work, but don't do it before you create it, do it after. It's okay to go, hmm, I could have done that differently. I will next time. But don't do that while you're creating the thing because you'll never finish or you'll never feel proud or you'll never get the thing that's so important out of you that it's actually not just good, not just great. But, like, the only thing that, you're the only one that could be creating this, there's no other way, there's nobody else like you on earth. So don't create the thing that everyone else can create, create the thing that you stand for and that's uniquely you. And the reason I say that is, you know, in the world outside, we're all basically selling sunshine, right? What I mean by that is, authors are focusing on content. Oh, if I get really good content then I'll be worthy. If it's good, unique, different, and... my friend Jadah Sellner who is a co-founder of Simple Green Smoothies says, how so? There's no unique messages in the world. There's just unique messengers.
And I would agree. You're not creating anything new. So, stop trying to tell people your sunshine's better than the sunshine down the street. You know, what's important is that you think about you. So, when I was a kid, I got a science kit. You know, you got a telescope, microscope, and a magnifying glass. And I love the magnifying glass because quickly figured out besides seeing things up close, that I could burn my friend's leg. That was really cool.
Just the right angle, right. And you could start a leaf on fire, or unfortunately I burned a few ants I owned so karma for, but what I learned from that was that ordinary sunshine, which just warms your hand, if it goes through a lens, can ignite. So, most of my authors come here wanting me to talk about their sunshine, their thing they're creating and I want to focus on them. I said, you're the lens. You're the only thing that's going to ignite this, not the content because if you write the book on 101 ways to, you know, use butter, someone will just come around and write the 102 ways. You're never going to beat someone on content, but if you're unique and show your shine through you, there's no one else that can be you. And it will be so magnificent because your uniqueness is the gift. So is this a lot of reframing and mindset work with authors to give them confidence to do the thing that they're meant to do.
Alison Swerdloff: [00:21:33] Very interesting.
Do you work with clients just one-on-one, or do you do groups?
Azul Terronez: [00:21:38] Yeah, I do both. So, I got a lot of one-on-one clients at the moment and it's hard because I can't keep up. I can only have so much time in the day, but I do group programs. So, I built a process around this method that basically helps people utilize that skill to be creative. And we've called it the Diamond Method where you basically, just like a diamond has carrots and all the different parts, the four Cs to get clarity and all the things that... we have the same thing for our programs. Because the people get clarity, then they commit to it, they create, and they crystallize. That's how they make a message. So basically, my group program is following my method and then we have author success coaches that coach them through it. Mainly, it's the writers that come to CSR and group programs. I do coach creatives, one at a time: actors, comedians, screenwriters. It's interesting who comes to find me and how they find me. I don't always know. But what they're trying to do is find that breakthrough, that thing that they're trying to get through.
So those group programs are great because you follow a method, but you also have accountability, which is the other part. You can't just think about it. You have to do the thing.
Alison Swerdloff: [00:22:45] Right. You actually have to walk the walk and do the… and talk the talk.
Azul Terronez: [00:22:49] Yeah. Words have to show up on a page, right? Just because you have a good idea.
I do love the premise of the TED organization, ideas worth spreading, and that's basically an important thing to keep in mind. And when I've coached TEDx speakers, they'll come to me and will say, I really want a great idea, a big idea. And I say, well, I think that's a misunderstanding. There are no big ideas.
And they're like, wait, what do you mean? I said, well, I think what you're talking about is an idea worth spreading. And they're like, yeah, that's it. I said, well, think about this. You have to think about something you've noticed that other people have walked over and just walked by, like at an Easter egg hunt where they had eggs or some treasure hunt, everybody was looking, and they walked right by it.
But you stopped and found it somehow, you said, hey, did you guys notice this? And like, oh my gosh, I've never noticed that. That's interesting. That's a small idea, teeny idea that you notice that other people just didn't notice or pay attention to. So, big ideas are really just small ideas that more than one person talks about.
And the more people talk about it, the bigger it seems, but the truth is it's every great idea is a small idea.
Alison Swerdloff: [00:23:56] Very interesting. Now I have a question for you, how do you keep your mindset focused on your passion?
Azul Terronez: [00:24:04] You know, part of my practice is morning meditation because, to be honest, I live in my head just like everyone else if I'm not careful. So, my mindful practice starts with meditation. It starts with, you know, some of the work that I got when I met Gay Hendricks, focusing on the things that I'm trying to put into the world. And then also, having a creative part of my day. I don't try to force my creativity to be something specific, but it might be today.
I'm learning the ukulele, which is something I've tried. I'm trying to rewire my brain to be like a kid who can do things because they believe they can. So, at 50, picking up the ukulele and going, okay, this is going to be a journey. It's part of that creative practice. So having creative time every day, that has no, like, there's no purpose. Right, I'm not trying to do anything that's separate from writing. Writing to me is a doing activity for me cause it's part of my business. But I really try to just have that time of expression, Gay Hendrickson and his book Joy of Genius talks about it as how much time in the day are you wanting to live your life in that zone of genius, being the creator?
And if you're not doing it, then ask yourself why? And then ask yourself, how much will I give myself today to be a creator? So, I sit and played the ukulele or draw or read or be in my creative zone for half-hour and every day I add a little bit to it. My goal is to spend four hours a day being creative.
I'm not there yet because I haven't quite got my zone of genius kind of cranking, but it's getting more and more easy to make a living and then not worry about the rest, that four hours of creativity, that has nothing to do with my business is really what's fueling it because I find myself more able to do things I couldn't do when I was trying to do the work of a business.
Alison Swerdloff: [00:25:54] How long have you had your practice?
Azul Terronez: [00:25:55] 2015 is when we started. My husband and I both were working traditional jobs; he was in healthcare and worked in executive leadership and development. And I was in the teaching position, I was an instructional coach. When he decided to leave and went from making the six figures to driving Lyft for $12 an hour, and Uber.
And then I got a job in Shanghai and shifted, and then I left that and said, you know what, we're going to make a go at this. And we were empty nest at the time and thought, well. We packed up everything we owned into two suitcases and sold or donated everything else and spent several years traveling the world, living in our suitcase, in different parts of the world.
That was amazing, and that's how we started our business because we had so little, we didn't have cars, we didn't have a mortgage. We just, you know, let's live in Portugal this year, this month, let's go to Italy, let's travel, let's do whatever our heart desires. And that's when the business actually thrived when we were actually living our truest life.
So, yeah, that was about, that was 2015 and 2017 when we both left our jobs, we had no other income besides our jobs. So that was, besides our business, so that was a huge shift for us.
Alison Swerdloff: [00:27:10] That's great. Now, what did you do? You were mentioning about your learning, your education, you know, doing the ukulele or things like that, but when you're not focused on your work or helping others, what do you personally enjoy doing for fun? What are some of your hobbies?
Azul Terronez: [00:27:26] Yeah. You know what, I love doing yoga. I realized I was storing a lot of my, maybe angst or anxiety in my body—not trying to, but I think that's where it lives. I didn't realize that. So, I didn't start yoga until I was almost 40 and realized that I was able to do a lot of work that was internal by moving my body different.
I coached an author who was an Ayurvedic practitioner to write a book a few years ago, and I learned a lot about your whole body, how it's connected and how it can heal itself. And one of the ways that she talked about was yoga. So, that's something I love to do. I like to read and because of my podcasts, I, you know, I read every book that comes to my podcasts.
I read a lot of books. Ironically, because I'm dyslexic, I learned to speed read so I could read very fast. So, I might get through a book in an hour or two. It might take five, so that's fun. I like to read. And when the world was open, I like to participate in
Alison Swerdloff: [00:28:24] I like that terminology.
Azul Terronez: [00:28:25] Right, I don't know how else to say it and stay in the positive vibe.
I would participate in the story slams, which are things like The Moth, The Moth Organization, where you have to tell a story in five minutes or less. And so, yeah, it's really great. There's a podcast also they do. But you put your, you basically go to these live events and there are judges and there's a topic and you put your name on a piece of paper and throw it in the hat and they call your name.
You tell a story and then you get juried. You get judged, crazy pressure and exhilarating at the same time. So, I like storytelling, I miss that going to those things and putting my name in the hat, which means I have to constantly be working on stories in my head. And, lastly, travel. Travel is one of my passions, you know. When we left, we didn't have a home. For awhile, for several years, our kids would go, okay, where's Christmas this year? Where's the Thanksgiving this year? I was like, wow, we're going to be in Paris. We're going to be the south of France. We're going to be, you know, Asheville, North Carolina, wherever we decided that we'd be. So, travel is great.
And our kids also love travel. So that's something else that really fuels me and allows me to visit, meet people I've met on the road and stay with them, visit them. That's pretty amazing. I didn't really travel until I was later in life as well. So, having friends all over the world is pretty amazing.
Like, I could call up somebody, I want to be in South America, and I could probably find two or three people I could visit while I'm there. I think that's incredible.
Alison Swerdloff: [00:29:55] Very cool. Liesa, do you have any further questions?
Dr. Liesa Harte: [00:29:56] No, I'm just mesmerized. I'm so excited to know you now.
Azul Terronez: [00:30:00] Oh, Liesa, thank you so much. I wasn't sure what to expect when I saw that you asked, I'm always a fan of helping podcasters out because I know it's hard to get guests that you care about. Especially getting started, and I was very fortunate enough to have Pat Flynn as my first guest. And I really appreciated that he took that time to do that. And so whenever people ask me, I try to make time for it because it never hurts.
Alison Swerdloff: [00:30:23] Actually, I do have one further question: with everybody that, all the books you've read, what stands out as one of your favorites and why?
Azul Terronez: [00:30:33] You know, more recently, one of my favorite books, there's a couple, but one of the most recent I am biased towards Gay Hendricks was his book called Conscious Luck. It's a more recent book. The reason it stands out, the reason it stands out to me is that the idea that there is good fortune and poor fortune, good luck and bad luck, and you can choose which one you have and there's science behind it. And there's evidence that go-lucky people, if you ask them, they're just lucky. If you ask them, they tell you I'm lucky. And I changed my fortune completely because I'm incredibly lucky. And I think that changed everything about the way I see the world.
I've always known it, but it just helped reaffirm, like, oh no wonder, great things happen to me. You know, I was interviewing the creator of the game, board game Pictionary. Maybe you've heard of that? Incredible game. I met him, we got connected. He was on my podcast and he told his story how he was a 26-year-old waiter who basically had an idea for game, didn't know anything about business.
There was no internet at the time, took a risk and built this game, assembling them by hand at first. Became the most popular games of the world. We were chatting and then we got offline, and he asked me, hey, would you coach me? Would you spend some time with me? And I was thinking, who am I? And I was like, oh, I'm incredibly lucky.
That's it, I'm just lucky. That's why these things happen to me. So, I just, that, that book really struck me. And another book that's really struck me early on was this book called Bluefishing. It was about this idea of this bricklayer who, basically, is sort of like the guy that can make anything happen.
You want to get married at the Vatican? He could make it happen. If you want to parachute on the stage, play in a journey concert, he can make it happen. It's just an interesting premise. And I thought the way he does it is by delighting people more than you expect to be delighted. That people that he connects with, the celebrities, the hosts, these incredible people, and also the people that he serves. He has a really high niche, people with lots of money use of service. You can imagine, hey, I want front row tickets and I want to meet Mariah Carey at a music award—he makes it happen. But I thought it was fascinating because I just, that's a world I don't know anything about, but I thought it was fascinating. And I really loved, and I'm biased again because helping Pat Flynn “Will It Fly?” was really great because I learned about how to build a business while helping someone write a book. So that was like amazing to me. So, I got the benefit of being the first one who had all this content, the first one to read it, the first one to have the first copy, but it proved itself out because my life is the way it is because of that book. So, another incredible book for me.
Alison Swerdloff: [00:33:08] Great. Azul, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a wonderful conversation. I know Liesa and I have both learned a lot from you and we've thoroughly enjoyed it. Now, if the people listening to this interview want to get in touch with you or reach out to you or learn more about your business, how would they do that? What is your website or email address?
Azul Terronez: [00:33:28] Yeah, they go to authorswholead.com. That's where you have stuff about our programs, about my podcasts. It's great to listen to podcasts. That's something I think anybody who wants to be an author, you can hear first-time authors talk about what it was like, and also very seasoned authors, New York Times best-selling authors.
That's what I love about it, is it's a mix. That's a great place to go. And if they really want to hear more behind the scenes and they want to learn from these people, they could go to the authorswholeadsummit.com and it's a free summit where I interviewed 35+ authors—authors agents, book, marketers, anyone he could think of in the book industry.
And they can hear over 40 hours of teaching around what it is to write a book. So, it's sort of like all contained in one spot and they can do that for free authorswholeadsummit.com.
Alison Swerdloff: [00:34:18] That's excellent. Thank you again. I know I'm going to go to the, to your website and look at that. I've always been interested in that area of things.
So, it would be very interesting to listen to the summit.
Azul Terronez: [00:34:31] Awesome. Well, it's been lovely. Thank you so much for having me.
Alison Swerdloff: [00:34:34] We've enjoyed it as well. Thank you for joining us and have a wonderful afternoon. And thank you again.
Azul Terronez: [00:34:40] Thank you both.
Alison Swerdloff: [00:34:53] Thank you for listening to the mind, body success podcast and being part of our amazing community. We hope you've enjoyed this conversation and glean some tidbits that you can incorporate today to start changing your life. Our goal is to be your guides, and we look forward to continuing to provide amazing content.
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