Stephen Riggio - CEO of Barnes & Noble | The Art of Storytelling

Steven Riggio spent nearly three decades shaping the success story of Barnes and Noble. He played pivotal roles in merchandising, operations, and strategy before becoming CEO in 2002. Known for his intellect and reserve leadership style, Riggio was instrumental in launching the company's digital footprint, Barnes and Noble.com, in a bid to compete with Amazon. Very early on in my life I was a reader and when I decided to make a career of it it seemed like a very natural extension. When I retired doing something audacious was kind of in the cards. Beginning of this project was born in a tragic event. 2008 we lost our daughter Melissa. After that I was searching for a way to move ahead. I came up with the idea one day of why not study tie-in language. So I declare I'm gonna do it and that was the audacious thing. It took three years and we're here now with the two volumes being published. His efforts extended beyond books with contributions to the National Book Foundation and advocacy for inclusivity through organizations like the National Down Syndrome Society. Riggio's journey is a testament to steady leadership and innovation in the face of evolving industries. Books serve an informational purpose if you want to learn something. Don't worry about regrets. Just live for the day. If you follow your moral compass you can all work out. Welcome to success story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. HubSpot not only supports the show but they support entrepreneurs. That's why it's such a huge fan of HubSpot and I'm very grateful for HubSpot for supporting the show because they help entrepreneurs and as a fellow entrepreneur I know it takes a lot to grow your business. A lot of audience attracting, a lot of sales, a lot of marketing, a lot of lead scoring, a lot of channel management, a lot of content, a lot of long days, late nights, a lot of weekends, a lot of wishing there wasn't easier way but there is with breeze. This is HubSpot's new collection of AI tools. It's easier than ever for marketers, for entrepreneurs to attract audiences to increase leads to score customers and to close deals fast which means pretty soon your company will have a lot to celebrate. Visit HubSpot.com slash marketers to learn more. To see it, I'm excited to do this. Thank you for coming on. This is going to be a lot of fun. I wanted to start here. So Barnes & Noble's mission was to make bookstores less intimidating for working class New Yorkers. But what you're doing right now is you're taking historical Italian literature and you're making it accessible to English readers. So I see a little bit of a through line but do you see a common thread in your work now compared to what you used to do? Well it's interesting because after close to 40 years of selling other people's books, I'm finally selling one of my own and I'm looking at a different side of the coin so to speak. It's been very gratifying to do it. I felt that my career as a bookseller was one of tremendous accomplishment. We always considered Barnes & Noble to be a purpose-driven company and bringing books to places that had previously been, let's call them, books for deserts in some way, was a very, very important thing for us. We used to say, we do important work as booksellers and when I would interview people that would come to work for the company, they would say, well, you know, I'm thinking of this company or another company and I would say, well, would you rather sell books or office supplies? And that usually got them. Because it's attractive, it's a great place to work, being surrounded by books, it's dealing with writers and authors and working in a bookstore is an education in itself. And we love the idea of hiring people that would learn on the job. You know, just the practice of touching a book and putting it on the shelf and looking at the other books that are on the shelf introduces you to a world that you may have not known before. Because booksellers carry so many different topics. You know, you may be given the task of putting some books away in a section. You never thought of reading about Italian history or about the Civil War or reading Virginia Woolf or something and you touch the book and you say, wow, you know, it's in your hand, it becomes real. And that's what's great about working in a bookstore. And of course, you talk to the customers and the employees and writers who come into visit. Yeah, I think that it's all about like I look at what the work that you've done in your life and it's all about making things accessible. That's really what it's all been about. And even the way that you my goodness, like even the way that you just framed the feeling of being in a bookstore, like it actually like it makes me want to go to like a bookstore right now. Like it's it's it's it is a different experience and it's a different it's a different way of consuming knowledge. I mean, talk to me about let's talk about even your life and your journey. Because I think that's very important. Obviously, people know the brand Barnes and Noble and we don't have to do like a full history on on everything. We can go into it as much or as little as you'd like, but maybe tee up even some inflection point in your life that pushed you down the path that brought you into the book world. Because what brought you into the book world, I'm assuming was what led you to eventually come to this portion of your life or this season of your life or you're translating putting your own book out into the world. So there's there's a there's a path between all of it. So what was that inflection point that brought you into the book world in your life outside of we know your brother and purchased Barnes and Noble, but there was other things that put you down this path. Well, let's start with the fact that my brother when did found the company and he was in the business for the late 60s and he bought Barnes and Noble, which at that time was a bankrupt company in 1971. But when he entered the book business, he was the first person to actually put books in my hand. And I remember one of the first books he gave me. I think I was 10 years old at the time. It was a brave new world by Alda Suxley. Now talk about expanding the mind of a 10-year-old, you know, having a book like that. And then he gave me a Kurt Vonnegut to read and Franz Kafka. So very early on in my life, I was a reader and a heavy reader. And when I decided to make a career of it, it seemed like a very natural extension. And it was a business about serving people. You know, retail is about service. And I was very attracted to that idea. Now the bookstores that you know that exist today, the Barnes and Noble stores, didn't come out of thin air. We spent the better part of the 70s and 80s testing different type of format stores in different locations. And it wasn't until the early to mid 90s where we came up with this idea, and they called them book superstores, of a large store, with a lot of comfortable space, with a cafe, a way to be the third place, if you will, homework, the bookstore, where you would spend leisure time. The idea of bookstore is being quite resilient in the face of so many other forms of media being available for people. And although I retired 10 years ago, Barnes and Noble has almost as many stores now as it did then, and the company is doing quite well. So that's good news for readers and writers to know that bookstories have such widely available. And you have other formats now. Now, my book is available in paperback, in digital ebook, and in audio book. So it's great to see the book business thriving. When you look at all these technological evolutions of media, so now we have podcasts, and we have YouTube, and we have just as many video games and TV stations as we had, 10X or 100X more. Why do you think reading and books have such staying power, especially in the era of new media when people can listen to a podcast, even from the author? I guess I'm biased, because for me, there's nothing like getting lost in a good book. And of course, books serve an informational purpose if you want to learn something. We always considered bookstores to be places of aspiration for learning, for people to come and explore things that they want to get interested in. I'll never forget one of the first large stores we opened up outside of New York City. It was in Minnesota, a suburb of Minnesota. It was one of the first large format stores that we had opened. We weren't sure if it was going to be successful. And I remember vividly the opening night. The doors opened, the places packed, and I see a guy who, okay, you might look at him and say, well, he's not a reader, but he had an awful of books. One was on the Civil War, one was on Buddhism, he had a cookbook, and I think he had a novel by Faulkner. And I looked at him and I say, this is why books stores are important. We do important work. This is going to work because I saw the acceptance of it. So bookstores serve a need, of course, for information, for people to learn. They also serve books as entertainment, you know, getting lost in a big novel like Sicilian Avengers. There's nothing like it. You know, there's nothing like it. You could watch a movie, they come and go. I'm a big fan of movies, but there's nothing that could replace the experience of getting lost in a book. And I think that's why the business has been so resilient. And you have thousands of years of books to go to, right? I mean, you could read Greek and Roman classics, which you're still as captivating as they ever were. And you could read contemporary novels. I try to be as up to date on reading as I can, but there are more books that I would like to read than I have time left. You know, it's everyone has their own, say, bucket list. And I often just pick up a classic and say, I've never read this before. Gosh, why haven't I read, you know, Tolstoy is more in peace and it's right there for you. You know, I like about books stores and physical books is in the age of social media and call it new media for lack of a better term. Algorithms always have agendas and algorithms feed you content that it thinks you like. But when you walk into a bookstore, there is no agenda. You just let your curiosity guide you. And I think that it opens up your mind a lot more because you like kind of that gentleman you're talking about on that opening night. He's picking up books that if you was sitting in front of a computer, he would never go into those subjects and care about those topics more more likely than not, right? And I think that's a beautiful thing. Like if you even look at the type of work that you put out. So the the work that you actually put out after years of selling books is you translated Sicilian Avengers from Italian to English. This is the work that you've put out into the world. I mean, there's there's there's so much nuance to you bringing out a piece of work and putting it on a shelf and somebody going exploring and finding it. Like Candle, if you didn't do this, nobody would ever know this story. A very few people in the US would ever know this story, ever, right? They're not going to find this on YouTube is not going to serve Sicilian Avengers, which is a beautiful story in a in a in a in the algorithm on your feed. It'll never happen. So you miss out on all of these works. And of course, there's fiction. There's nonfiction. But the thing is I I'm a big fan. Whether or not it's fiction or nonfiction, if you just open up your mind and expand it and read, I find that it feeds your creativity. I find that it feeds your worldview so that it's more holistic and not as myopic. I think there's just a net positive to expanding yourself to different types of information and formats that are not the YouTube video talking about solving the exact problem that you're dealing with right now in your life. Yes, you have to go watch that too. But I think that there's a lot more that can make up a person. I think that because we don't read as much and we don't open ourselves up to as many new ideas and concepts, whether or not it's just like leisure or it's more serious, I think that we have this tunnel vision when it comes to information. And I think it actually creates a lot of anxiety and stress in our lives. And I think that this is where books leisure, expanding your thought is a beautiful thing and people should do more of it. But I mean, you saw this firsthand. You probably have opinions about how people consume content now versus how they did 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Well, you used the word serendipity before and I remember writing the brief for our new concept book superstar, if you will. And I used the word serendipity. I wanted the store design to be almost organized in a way, but also a type of environment where you could get lost. And you might bump into something that you had no plan to when you walked into the store. So serendipity is really at the heart of a good book store. And of course, the great thing about America and about the stores that we opened is the Barnes and Noble stores do look alike and they share certain design characteristics, but they're all different. And a successful bookstore is the one that is very, very tailored to the community it serves. So our managers had tremendous discretion in terms of what books were on the shelf, you know, what books were displayed. You know, when they would order the books that they thought their customers were interested in. And that's what made the difference. You know, you can go to a bookstore, two Barnes and Noble's just a few miles apart. And they would have different selections. Of course, that the core of someone comes in and wants to buy a classic or something. Of course, all those books are there, but it's a very local business. Talk to me about, you know, your journey as a CEO and then as you as you exited sort of figuring out like the next chapter of your life because you mentioned that this work and what you're working on now with Celine Avengers Avengers, excuse me, it all ties into it all ties into you your family sort of your career journey. I looked at much of what we did in growing Barnes and Noble to be audacious, to do things that people doubted that wouldn't work, especially the idea of not just large format stores, but large format stores in mid-sized communities, mid-sized towns. Our most successful stores were often in places that had never had a bookstore before, because people came to it. It was a book selling desert. So when I retired, doing something audacious was kind of in the cards. Now, the beginning of this project was born in a tragic event. In 2008, we lost our daughter Melissa, who was 20 years old at the time, to leukemia. She had a brave year-long struggle and unfortunately it took her life. After that, I was searching for a way, my wife Laura and I, to move ahead with our lives, to chart a new path, if you will, too. I came up with the idea one day of why not study something together and how about the Italian language. I had studied her earlier in life, but never kept pace with it. My grandparents were Sicilian, which I can get to. So we began taking lessons together. It was fantastic. It was wonderful thing to do something like that with your wife. A few years into the lessons our teacher gave us this Italian novel, which was a thousand pages. It was kind of strange looking. It was really thick, two thick volumes. We started reading it and fell in love with the story. It's a great historical novel. It's full of adventure, swashbuckling scenes. It immediately captivated me because when I was a kid, I used to read Alexander Dumas, the three musketeers, the Count of Monte Cristo is one of my favorite books. So it really grabbed us and midway through. I decided, well, let me get an English copy of this. I wanted to see if our translating was good. I wanted to compare it and I discovered the book had never been translated before into English. So I declare I'm going to do it. And that was the audacious thing. It took three years. It's a thousand pages, so that's in itself was one of the primary challenges. But it was gratifying. It was a learning experience. It was full of new twists and turns in the language. Learning how to translate it, not word for word, which it translated does not do, but to get to the meaning of the words and the phrases and the sentences and to ultimately make it enjoyable for the English reader. It took three years and we're here now with the two volumes being published. What makes it's fascinating when you even even the project that you took on, it's fascinating, but it's also, I don't know if depressing is the right word. What I mean is it's sad to think how much wisdom and knowledge is just not available just because whether we don't know it exists, it's been written in a different language, we don't research it, we don't like there's like the beautiful story that you sort of stumbled upon. Nobody would have ever known that exists. And I'm so curious how much wisdom out there is lost because we don't have people like you that are finding all these works all over the world and translate it because I'm a firm believer that I'm a firm believer that most wisdom is not new, nothing's that new. Everything's been discovered and figured out in some way or another. It's just a matter of tapping into those resources and you did that to a degree. You know, when you think about taking on this project, you've seen so many books over here. You're probably more than many, many people who have ever been alive have seen just because of the work that you've done. What makes an incredible book or an incredible story? Like what made this one stand out to you in particular? I've always been attracted to big books, big novels, 500 pages, 600 pages, 700 pages, something that you could get lost in. And as my wife, Laura, says, this book has something for everyone. It's a historical novel. It's an adventure novel. There's scenes of swash buckling sword fights in the book. There's a love story. And at the heart of it, there's a story of justice. The book is about a secret sect called the Beatty Powell, which was the name of the Italian novel. I don't think that could work in English. That comes to the defense of the commoners who are preyed upon by the aristocracy, by the landowners, by the barons, and often by the church. Because at that time, Sicily was still a feudal society. And the inquisition was in full force. And people were accused of heresy. They were jailed and tortured and executed. So, it's about justice in the sense of, you know, where do people turn to when they've been unjustly accused of something, when they've been persecuted, when they have nowhere to go? And this secret sect, which is somewhat based in history and somewhat based in myth, steps in. And that's the main plot of the book. And they come to the defense of one of the main characters. And if you think about, if you think about like that, that sort of scene you just described, is that, because I've heard terms of like heroes journey and all these other like story arcs, is this something that is almost like what's the literary mechanism that makes this compelling? Because I think this is like a theme that you see in a lot of very popular books. Well, it's a story of Revenge in Betrayal. Underneath all of this, there are friendships and rivalries. It's a multi-layered story. Why I think it's attractive, because the characters are in the book, most of them affectionate, but some are not. So it's rooted in real history. Oh, you can pull pieces from, from my history. There's a succession plot at the heart of the story, which for people who have seen HBO's succession, maybe that may grab them. And there's a love story. There's a love story. But there's all these, yeah, the laws are going to say there's all these elements. Yeah, there's a love story because there's, I don't want to reveal too much, but there's two women in the book that are competing for the love of the same man. And there's another rival in there. So that's that's why I think it's appeal. Now, the sect that's at the heart of the book have been considered to be four runners of the Sicilian mafia. Now, American readers and Americans have been fascinated with the mafia for so long, and not just because of the Godfather movies and book, but there's some element of that. It is a fact that some 20th century Mafiosi people that were in the Sicilian mafia claim that they are descendants from this secret society. I think there's more myth to that than truth. In reality, I would look at this secret sect and was book as more of a Robin Hood type game than as Malm. And whether you root for them or not, I can't weigh in on that. They certainly come across and you know, this book in Sicily is very, very well known. Even though it's a hundred years old, never before been published in America and English is very, very well known in Sicily. I just returned there in fact from there. And this sect, they were considered as heroes because they came to the defense of the week. You know, you look today in people's mistrust of institutions, whether it be the courts, the media, or the government, you know, has never been at a low all time. It's been at an old time low. And you know, here you have the appeal, the appeal of the outlaw, who's going to come and rescue you from being unjustly persecuted. And that's where the attraction, that's the heartbeat of the story will justice be done here. And you have to read the book to find out. When you think about, I mean, you've gone on this journey now, obviously three years is a significant amount of time. Behind sites 2020, when you think about the options of creating a book, whether or not it was translating or writing from scratch, can you just give some advice for even authors in the audience? The benefits and the negatives to one or the other, because you've gone on this journey now, but you've also been exposed to so many writers. I mean, you have insights on writing something that has never been done before as well. So talk to me about both ways to take a book to market, the best way to put it. Well, my wife and my daughters always encourage me to encouraging me to write a book. Translating a book is quite different. You're not working with a blank page. I think I have, even though I've did in the book selling business so long, doing this has given me such appreciation for what a writer does with a blank page, with a blank page. I was working from something that was already written and make no doubt these are my words, but I did have to work from, let's call it a brief, and I had to take each word, each sentence, each paragraph and shape them into something that I thought would be appealing and enjoyable for the English reader. But I do have a newfound, let's say, appreciation for the work that writers do. I have lots of friends that are writers, and just think about some writers, many writers that are publishing books every year. They come out with one a year. James Patterson comes out with more than one a year. So I have tremendous admiration and respect for that kind of its creativity and its discipline. You have to think about the discipline that it comes sitting down with a blank page and creating something that other people would be fascinated by, and that will become fans of yours year after year after year, read every book that you publish. I think John Grisham, who I'm a very big fan of, he just came out with actually a nonfiction book, but he tends to weave stories anew every time he comes out with a new book, and their each has similar to but very different from each other, because he's kind of perfected his approach to that kind of novel. And he's a great writer, he's a fabulous writer, yeah. I just want to take a quick break and thank the HubSpot podcast network for supporting success story for the past two years. Now, the HubSpot podcast network has other incredible podcasts like my first million now. If you aren't entrepreneur or you are ready to turn your entrepreneurial dreams into millions, you have to listen to my first million. It's a show that is revolutionizing business podcasting. It's hosted by Sam Parr, Sean Perry. This is a HubSpot podcast network original. It brings you unfiltered conversations with self-made millionaires who actually tell you how they did it. 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So maybe speak about that for a second, but then I'm also curious about not only the business behind it and all the things you probably had to figure out and discover how to do this properly and successfully, but also then how do you tailor that brief to make sure that it will be received well in the US. Because like you said, you can't just translate a word for word. So yeah, let's talk about the business of how to do this. Because I have no idea how to even start. If I was going to look at a book in another language, do you need to get rights for it? Do you have to pay royalties to somebody? Like what's the business of translating a book and selling it? Well, this particular book is in the public domain. It was published in installments. They call them serial novels, kind of like what Charles Dickens did in the 19th century. And it was published in installments over 239 episodes over a couple of years, a two year period. So it's in the public domain. So I didn't have to acquire the rights, you know, to the book. When I thought about translating it, I said, okay, what is this going to take? I said to myself, so I said, let me try this. Let me do the first page. Let me translate the first page. Look at it. I gave it to my Italian teacher. And I asked how does this look? And she immediately made a lot of corrections to it. But encouraged me to keep on. So I proceeded to do that. I wrote it out longhand. I have a wall of dictionaries behind me. And I had some assistance, quite a lot of assistance with one of the teachers at the school that we attend. We take lessons. So you start out with quickly realizing that any word for word translation is not going to work because the language is so different. The syntax is different. The pronouns are different. So I very quickly had to get used to making it readable for the English reader. And I would say the book went through two or three substantial first drafts in a drafts. Then when I had found our publisher, my publisher, we had an editor look at the English translation from an English point of view. And that helped the great deal. She did a great job because I think most writers will tell you good editors can really help you because it's another voice looking at it with fresh eyes. So I'd say anybody looking to publish their own book or who's working with a publisher, you have to embrace the idea of criticism and getting help. Not just for grammatical reasons, but for clarity reasons, alternative ways of saying things. And so that itself was a learning experience. How do you get a publisher to believe in the concept when I mean, so the concept I guess is already proven to a degree because it's a very successful book just in another language, another part of the world. But I would assume that the publisher would still wonder, okay, this is going to be technically your first time author. So how do we know this is going to be successful? How do we know if we put some time and energy and even money into it that it's going to be well received by the US in 2024? Well, I was very fortunate to find someone at the publisher that was a champion for the book. So they believed in it. You never know what's going to happen. I don't any creative pursuit, whether you're writing a book, you're putting out music or film, you never know until it's in the hands of the audience. In this case, the readers. So my publisher was totally supportive of this. And they asked me at the beginning, what are you looking for here? What are your expectations? And I said, look, I've worked on this for three years. I just want to get it out there. I want to see it in the hands of people. And if it succeeds and if it develops an audience, whatever size that may be, I'll be happy. Of course, I want to sell as many copies as I can, but I'm very happy to be here and having done it. And we'll let the readers decide, you know, people would often ask me over the years, what makes a book sell, Mr. Grigio? Could you tell me what makes a book sell? My answer would always be, well, if I knew that, I would be like one of the most powerful people in the world to give you a recipe for that. The truth is is that you don't know. So many factors come into play. I think the principal one, and this is true, especially for fiction, would be word of mouth. People telling each other, recommending the book to each other. And these days, social media has played, is playing a big part in that. People have online book clubs, book videos, there's book talk, on TikTok. So it's a new world in that sense. And I think that's only good for writers and readers, because before all you would be able to do is put an advertising, put an ad in a newspaper. And, you know, that wasn't often, that wasn't anything you could measure. So word of mouth is really what it's about, I think. And book reviews, you know, those type of things. Book reviews, if you have a good book, you're going to get book reviews. I think that you have to have the good product. That's the goal, right? If you have a good product, then a lot of the marketing does take care of itself. But if you think about all the other things that go into the book. So to assume that the book is incredible, the authors put out this incredible piece of work, how even, even getting it into a Barnes and Noble, for example, is there a strategy to do that? I mean, I think you probably have like a, like a fast pass end, because you kind of run it at some point. But for the average author, even getting it into a Barnes and Noble is a huge accomplishment. So what would be a, a bit of advice or recommendation for somebody that wants to get their book into Barnes and Noble? You know, I wish I could, I could give you the answer to that. Today, as you know, self-publishing is, is has exploded. Now, most bookstores in America, or maybe two or three thousand square feet in size, they can only hold so many books. There are probably a million books in print. So in order for you to get your book into a store, means that store has to take something off the shelf in order to make room for yours. So it's, it's not as easy as it sounds. Well, I wrote this book. It should be in the front of every Barnes and Noble nationwide. It doesn't work like that. You know, bookstores, the good bookstores respond to their customers. So if I do a good job promoting this book, going out there talking about it, people hear about it, they will go into the bookstores and ask for the book. And that will put the book there. So I would say in today's marketplace, the author has to rely on their own initiative to get the word out about books. Some people have more talent at that than others. They have more followers, they have more social media presence, they have more media savvy. In my case, I hired my own publicist because of my years of experience in the book business. You know, I saw how effective that could or could not be depending on how it was executed. Even years ago, before social media, when writers would ask me, give me one piece of advice, I would say hire your own publicist, independent of the publisher as an adjunct to write on the co-tails of whatever the publisher would do. And I think that holds true today. And if you look at even like what your publisher publicist is focusing on right now for the author who's up incoming, they don't have a track record. Kind of like yourself, you are a new author. I mean, he's saying, I keep saying like the up incoming author, but this is your sort of first foray into writing. Is the strategy outside of just having a great product getting word of mouth? I see a lot of people come on podcasts. Is that kind of the strategy right now? Is that the medium that people respond to the best for new authors for new ideas? I think so. I'm hearing that podcasts are being becoming very important to a book promotion. Instagram podcasts, YouTube, these are probably more important and more effective in promoting books than anything that I remember from my prior life, you know, no doubt, no doubt. When you look back at sort of your life and your career and, you know, your season as CEO and then your season as a writer, how important was this project to your development post CEO? Well, translating the book, we began visiting Sicily and it was the first time, even though my paternal grandparents were born in Sicily, they never much talked about my grandfather died before it was born, but we didn't have much in the way of family archives or even oral history. So I was the first family member, believe it or not, to go back there. My grandparents had seven children, none of them ever went back. So going to Sicily while translating this book, reading the book and translating it was a kind of watershed moment for me in becoming aware of my past and my ancestry. I discovered that my grandfather, which I had never known was an orphan. The main character in Sicilian Avengers is an orphan. So there was some destiny there for me to connect to and I traced my family back ultimately over 400 years. So it was a rewarding thing to get connected to my Sicilian roots. And in the course of all this, we discovered distant relatives in Sicily, who we have become close to. They don't speak a word of English, which is good for my Italian. I have to go there and be on all the time. And my wife speaks Italian as well. So we enjoy our visits there. And we love Sicily now. What I hope, I don't know if we mentioned this before, but Italian Americans, the Italian American community, the Sicilian American community, has often been the victim of such stereotypical portrayals in the media, in books, in films, in TV series, you know, often tied to connections to criminals in mafia. And I think that's a tragedy. People talk about America as a nation of immigrants of New York City as a melting pot. Sicily is that amplified. For 2000 years, Sicily was invaded, conquered, settled by Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians, Arabs, Normans, Byzantines, and the Spanish. Interestingly, in each case, the Sicilian people seem to have absorbed those cultures rather than, of course, they were dominated by them. There's no question about that. And if you read the book, you can see the extent to which Sicily has been dominated by other cultures. And if you go forward in Sicilian history to the Spanish bourbons who were detested for their brutal repression of the Sicilian people, but when you walk the streets of Palermo, you could look at the result of civilizations in the monuments and the churches and the buildings. A Greek temple superseded by a Roman temple, by a Christian church, by an Arab mosque, by a Norman church, in the same building. There were periods of Sicilian history that were now looking at it with a distant lens, the most tolerant places on earth. You know, when the Normans conquered Sicily, they kept the Arabs who they conquered in their own administration. The king of Sicily spoke fluent Arabic. So, I view Sicily as such a warm, welcoming place, and I hope that people that read the book will close the last page and buy a plane ticket to Sicily, to explore it because, you know, you read the book, the streets, the churches, the monuments, the buildings, so many of them exist. You could visit them. In fact, the name of the secret sect in the book is called the Biyati Pauly, and you can go on Biyati Pauly walking tours in Sicily, in Palermo. So, it's almost like a guide to Sicily, to end to Palermo especially. I think that it's actually very unfortunate that Sicilians have been sort of portrayed a certain way in US media. So, this is nice. So, this is actually, you know, it's an unintended positive side effect of your journey. You know, it's interesting because this whole journey you went on came from a very dark time in your life, but not to diminish that, but the outcome of that is a very beautiful thing. So, I think that that's, I think that if any positive could come of that situation, that's very, very, very dark. I think this is probably the best outcome for you, for your family, for even like the culture that you're sort of bringing into the spotlight. I say in the back of the book and the acknowledgement section, my deepest wish is that this book never came to be, but that our daughter's presence in it is undeniable. So, it's something that was born out of a tragedy, but that yielded something that my wife and I hold very dear, and she was with me the whole way. It wasn't an easy thing to do. I think you can imagine that, it's a thousand pages, and I struggled with it mightily in many cases, but it's something that is part of us now, and it's part of my family in a way because I have lots of cousins, I sent them all copies, they all have a copy now, and some of them didn't know that I was up to this little mischief, and they're very happy and proud of it. I want you to give one piece of, actually, I have a question for you first, because, because tragedies like what happened to your daughter is sometimes I see them break up marriages and break up families. There's all these residual effects. So, you went on this journey together, you learned the language together, your wife was supporting you. Out of the very rocky years that you've gone through with your daughter and then dealing with that tragedy, what are some words of wisdom on maintaining strong relationships, maintaining a good marriage when in the best of times, but also in the worst of times, because I know that she had a major impact, your daughter and your wife, I know both of them had a major impact on your life. So, what are some words of wisdom for people listening that sort of you've realized? I was fortunate enough to be able to retire. So, my wife, Lauren, I had the time to, let me put it another way, I would say that to paraphrase Tolstoy, all happy families or alike, and all grieving families, grieving their own wet, we found a way forward by doing this together and translating the book, or reading the book together, taking lessons together, was a way for us to open a new door. I think that would be some piece of advice. You know, you spend, no, in the matter of how many years you spend married, you know, I had a career, my wife, Laura was a teacher, she taught three year olds, which I maintain is the most important job in the world. And we were fortunate enough to be able to open a new door that both of us could go through. A writer friend of mine wrote me a note saying, Steve, my gosh, she said, when men retire, they take up golf. You know, what did you do? This is next level. So, I guess my answer is, find a new door. Do something that both of you had never done before and do it together. And that worked for us. That did work for us. And we still studied language together. And the good news, or maybe the bad news for me is that this book was a thousand pages, the sequel is 1700 pages. And we're now reading that. And Laura says to me, well, you're going to translate it because you have to read the whole thing and finish it before you start because you know, you have to know where the story goes. So I'll be busy for a few years. Maybe the answer to this question is going to be the same or similar, but the follow-up was not just how you build a great marriage. It sort of lasts a test of time, which I love this. It was how to find purpose after you retire. Would it be a similar answer or would you say something different? How to find purpose after you retire? It's interesting you use that word because when I used to, you know, high interview people for positions at Barnes & Noble, they would ask me to describe the company. And I would say, always, that we were a purpose-driven company. You know, our mission was very, very clear. And in my retirement, I think it was important for me to have purpose. Now we have two grandchildren. So that's another purpose to be a good good grandparents, but I think it was very important to find something that you were passionate about. Not everybody is fortunate enough in their career to do something that they're passionate about. And sometimes I think the best advice or the worst advice, career advice you can give someone is do something you're passionate about because if you're passionate about something but not good at it, you know, that you're not going to be able to make a living. But if you're fortunate enough to retire at any age, then I would say follow your passion. And I think that's what I'm doing. The Italian language is, like I said before, it's opened the door to me, not just to the language and not just to this book, but to other books written by Italians, both in English and in Italian. The great Italian novels, there are many and I would encourage people to seek those out. The two great ones that I know are the leopard by a lampadoosa and the betrothed by Manzone. These are works of epic, epic stories that stand up there with anything out of Dickens or Tolstoy, the great writers of the 19th or the 20th century. Well, my hope would be, my hope would be is that I want people to pick up your book and we're going to link it in the show notes so that people know where to get it. I'm sure Manzone and everywhere else you get books, but we'll link it in the show notes and somebody picks up the book and reads it and exposes themselves to, first of all, if you are not, if you are not somebody who reads books regularly, hopefully this will encourage you to go do that because I think that of course we can get lost in new media and YouTube and podcasts and I think that if you are not an avid reader and again, it can be an audio book, it can be a digital ebook, Kindle, whatever, it could be a physical hard copy. I mean, I love I love hard copies too, but I think the goal is especially with Sicilian Avengers as you go, you expose yourself to the story that has been around for a hundred years and you've never been exposed to before, but then use this as as the gateway to exploring other pieces of work and literature from outside the US and globally. And I think that's a beautiful thing about it. I think works in translation of becoming increasingly popular. I think American publishers are finding that there's a market for works in translation and I hope my book, my translation opens that door even more and instills in publishers a little impetus to seek out similar works. Because there's so much there's so much beautiful wisdom and thought and story that's already out there and I think that I wish more people would go discover it. If people want to connect with you or I know I'll put links in the show notes for the actual book, but if people want to connect with you, is there a website or social? I know you're not as active on social as some authors, so I'm sure that's going to be a I'm sure you're going to go down that rabbit hole too with your public sets. I have no doubt, but is there somewhere a certain social that you want to send people to in particular? If you go to SicilianAvengers.com, I have a website for the book. There's a contact email from me so people can reach out for me. I love to correspond with people and hear their views and exchange ideas about the book and questions. I like to ask one last question, but before I go, there was there anything that I should have asked that I wouldn't have known to ask that you thought would be a good piece of wisdom or advice for the audience? I think this is one of the best interviews I've ever done. You're fantastic. Thank you. No, you steered it in a way that enabled me to speak about things, you know, that have been germinating in my mind, so it's been great. I'll take the testimonial. That's final. So the last question I like to ask everybody, you've had incredible career and incredible life if you could look back and tell your 20-year-old self one thing what would it be? Oh gosh. You can only experience something for the first time once. So at every opportunity, try to be as deeply observant of things as you can be. And I think particularly with important life events, you never want to, you always want to hold the ear, the events of your life. I don't look back upon, I think everyone has regrets. I would say, don't worry about regrets. You know, you're going to have regrets. Just live for the day. And if you follow your moral compass, it'll all work out.