Janet Attwood: This is Janet Attwood calling from Bombay, India. Good morning to
everyone who's in Bombay, India with me. Good early, early afternoon to anyone
else who's listening from other parts of the world, and good evening to all of
you in the United States.
I'm so excited to introduce a wonderful person, a great author.
Speaking to him, preparing for this call, was probably one of my favorite
moments of the year. I'm so honored to be speaking with Richard Paul Evans
today.When Richard wrote the number one best-seller, The
Christmas Box, he never intended on becoming an internationally known
author. Officially, he was an advertising executive, an award-winning clay
animator for the American and Japanese markets, a candidate for State
Legislature and most importantly, husband and father.
His quiet story of parental love and the true meaning of Christmas made
history when it became simultaneously the number one hardcover and paperback
book in the nation. Since then, more than eight million copies of The Christmas Box have been printed.
During the Spring of 1997, Richard’s Christmas Box Foundation started the idea for The Christmas Box House, a
shelter for abused and neglected children. As an acclaimed speaker, Richard has
shared the podium with such notable personalities as President George W. Bush,
President George and Barbara Bush, former British Prime Minister John Majors,
Ron Howard, Elizabeth Dole, Deepak Chopra, Steve Allen, Bob Hope and more.
He's been featured on The Today
Show and Entertainment Tonight, as
well as in Time, Newsweek, People, The
New York Times, Washington Post, Good
Housekeeping, USA Today, TV
Guide, Reader’s Digest, and Family
Circle and now on the cover of Healthy
Wealthy nWise. Richard lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, with his wife, Keri,
and their five children.
His latest book is called Five
Lessons a Millionaire Taught Me. Please welcome Richard Paul Evans.
Richard Evans: Thank you Janet.
Janet Attwood: Richard,
in this series, we're particularly interested in examining how following
one's passions, the things you love the most, contribute to a person's
success. Will you tell everyone how the things you loved the most led to your
writing The Christmas Box
Richard Evans: When I first wrote The
Christmas Box, I felt this tremendous love for my children and it was
something that was brand new in a way.
I didn't necessarily want to have children, and when I made that
decision, I didn't know how it would affect my life. It opened up so many
doors and changed my life in so many ways, that when I wrote The
Christmas Box, I wanted to somehow capture that. I wanted to share with
people the joy that comes from the service of raising children.
Janet Attwood: I
was reading something saying that you had written it as an expression of love
for your two daughters?
Richard Evans: Exactly. That's exactly what it was.
It wasn't a book that was to be published or to spread around the world. I
wanted to capture that feeling, so that someday, when they held their own child
in their arms, that they could then think of and understand how I felt about
them, as a father. Initially, my whole idea was to make two copies of the book.Chris Attwood: So
you never had an idea that you would publish this book?
Richard Evans: No. Outside of making a little
copy to put under the Christmas tree, that was it.
Janet Attwood: So
what happened?
Richard Evans: When I finished the book I was so
moved by the experience I wanted to share it with people, so I gave a copy to my
wife, Keri, and she was so moved by it. I started to share it with family and
friends and decided rather than doing two copies, I was going to do twenty
copies. We were going to do them as Christmas presents, so that's what we
started doing.
I went out, made twenty copies and handed them out as Christmas presents,
and that's where it all started
Janet Attwood: Now
I heard that from those twenty copies being spread around, bookstores started
calling you. Is that true?
Richard Evans: Exactly. I was receiving phone calls
almost every single day from people reading the book. It was about six weeks
after I gave those books out as Christmas presents, that I received a phone call
from a local book store.
The clerk just said, "Hello, Mr. Evans. Did you write a Christmas
story?"
I said, "Yes."
She said, "Oh, good. Where can we order it?"
"You can't order it. The book's never been published."
She said, "Well, I've had ten orders for that book this week."
Janet Attwood: Oh
my gosh! That is a miracle. That's what I call support of nature. When
you're so aligned with what you're supposed to be doing, that nature just
takes over and opens all the doors…
Richard Evans: Exactly. I've always
maintained that this book had its own life and its own mission, and I felt more
dragged along with it.I would give
the book enough to do what it needed to do to get to the next level, and then it
would take off.
Janet Attwood: This
leads me to my next question because many of our readers are aspiring authors
themselves. Would you share some of the secrets which allowed your book to
become a number one New York Times best seller?
Richard Evans: Absolutely. The first thing to
remember that's most important about the book is that it was the
book. I remember two election cycles ago when someone said, "It's
the economy, stupid." And it's like, "It's the book, stupid." The book
was special. Even though I've become a more savvy marketer, I have not been
able to duplicate the success of The Christmas Box since. None of my books, even though they've all
been New York Times best sellers, none
have sold at that level.
When I started, the first thing I realized was that because I was
passionate about it, I actually had an advantage in being self-published. When
you work with a larger publisher, it's a business. They're good at what they
do, but they're going to put out more than 100 different books.
So they throw a book out there. If it doesn't work right off, then
they'll probably drop it. As a
self-published book, I cared a lot about it. I was willing to go to bat for the
book. This was after I saw that the book was indeed, powerful. I had the belief
of destiny with the book. I had a belief that if people just read it, then they
would change, and that's what I found.
I remember the first time I met Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen. I
was at my very first book show. Chicken
Soup for the Soul was just taking off, and I know Jack still talks about
this in his seminars today. He remembers the first time he saw me, I'm
standing next to a mountain of books.
My idea was, 'I'm going to go there, give away 5,000 copies of my
book, because I believe that if 5,000 people read my book, that they would take
it out and spread it, and it would become a number one best seller.' The first
thing was to get the book into people's hands and let them read it.
I started to practice what I call "guerrilla marketing." I know
there's now a book about that, but I was calling it that before the book.
It's like, "Okay, if I can't win the big war against the big publishers,
how can I win?" Well, I can
be, if not a big fish, at least a medium-sized fish in a small pond. I can win
in the little markets.I would go to little cities that no one cared about, and I would get on
the radio. They were looking for something to talk about, I could tell them
about my book, and I began to learn what people were connecting with in the
book. I learned why they liked the book and what affected them and why they
wanted to share it. As I learned those things, I got to the point where I would go on these
radio interviews and my distributor could actually track me around the country
because every time I would go on a radio interview, they would get four or five
calls from book stores in that city, looking for the book.I learned how to talk about my book. I don't know if you've studied the life of
Ronald Reagan at all, but in the early days, he signed a contract with, I
believe it was General Motors.He hated to speak, and he wasn't very good at it. People would walk out
on him. What happened was because he did so much of it, he decided, "I'm
going to get good at this," he started to work very hard at getting good at
it, and he became to be known, throughout history, as "the great
communicator."My first interviews for The
Christmas Box weren't very good. They weren't interviews on radio, they
were talking to people at book signings. People would come up and say, "What
is this?" At first, if I'd tell people, they'd walk away. They weren't
that interested. Then one day, I came across something that made them say, "Oh, that
sounds interesting. I'll buy the book." I was learning, and so I would find
another thing. What I learned near the end, that more than half the time, if
someone talked to me, they would buy the book. So I learned what sold the book.
I learned how to speak about it, and I was able to talk from a level of passion.If I didn't care about the book, it never would have happened, but they
saw that passion coming through me, and they wanted to share that, so they would
buy the book. Then what would happen next is, after they would buy the book,
they would read it, they'd come back and buy more, because they wanted to
share the message.So the growth of the book was exponential, but it really was a sense of
guerrilla marketing. I started in little cities, I got it out wherever I could,
and what was interesting was that the book was a best seller in grass roots
America before it hit the New York Times.
In fact, it was growing so quickly, that all of a sudden; this book without a
publisher shows up at number two. From
nowhere to number two in the New York
Times, it stunned everyone. At that point, my whole world exploded. I was
getting calls and movie offers and everyone from Spielberg's company to the
top publishing houses in the world.
Chris Attwood: Richard,
one of the things that I'm hearing, listening to you, is that you were so
passionate about the book that you went out and started doing things even though
you didn't necessarily know what to do or what to say in the beginning.Richard Evans: I knew nothing. I knew nothing about
the industry. In fact, I think any time you're following your passion;
you're going to be tested. Not to
confuse things with your Passion Test,
Janet, but there are things that test how much we really care about something.I was at the Mountains and Plains Book Show in Colorado. I didn't have
a lot of money, and I took all the money I had and put it towards marketing. I
went to this book show and I'm there, handing out copies of my book, and
meeting book store owners. What we found, at the show, was that no one was
coming through the main area where the booths were. Here I had spent a sizeable portion of my very meager budget to be at the
show and I was frustrated, so finally I went up and asked someone who was
walking through, "Where is everyone? There are thousands of people here. How
come there's no one in the hall?"
He said, "Well, because they're out with the authors," and I walked
out, and sure enough, what had happened – the publishers would bring in some of
the top authors in America and they would give away free books, so these book
store owners would stand in line and walk through these lines, get all these
books for free, autographed.
Then they'd go and get back in line and wait for the next slug of
authors to come through. So I'm sitting out there watching this happen and
watching my dreams vanish, because I'm a nobody. No one cares that I'm at
the show. No one knows who I am, and here are famous authors.
So I'm sitting there watching. All of a sudden, I had this thought. I
looked up at the table and there was an empty seat. I thought, 'What is
stopping me, besides security and the people at the show, from just walking up
there and sitting up there with the authors?"
I looked at it, and I'm shy. I thought, there is no way. I turned around and started to walk away. I had stacked my books with me,
because I thought maybe I could go hand them in the line, and I started to walk
away and it just hit me. 'How much do you care about this book?' That was
just one of those gut honest moments when it's like, 'Well, I care a lot.'
Then, 'If you don't do it, who will?' I bit my tongue, and I turned
around and I'm doing it. I can't believe I'm doing this, and I walked up
around the back. I came through the curtain and I sat down between two best
selling authors, and I sat down at this table, absolutely terrified.
The worst thing that could happen then… one of the organizers, of
course, immediately spotted me. The woman walks over to me, and right when she
gets to me, I looked up and I said, "Sorry I'm late." The woman was
stunned.
She looked at me for a moment, blinked, and she said, "May I get you
some water?"
I said, "Sure." I sat there and I finished out this whole long line
of people coming through, sitting next to best selling authors, signing my
books, and I accomplished what I needed to accomplish. The next year, I came back as the number one best selling author in the
country. I was the featured author at the entire show. People were in line to see me.
Janet Attwood: Was the woman who gave you the water…
Richard Evans: She was there. She's been there
every year. I walked up and said, "Do you remember me, per chance?"And she smiled and said, "Yes, I do. Good for you."I said, "Thank you for not throwing me out."She said, "Honestly, I was going to. That's my job. I was walking
over to you to tell you to leave, and when you looked up and I saw the
earnestness in your eyes, I thought, 'What is it going to hurt? Now here is
someone chasing his dream, as crazy as he may be. It's not going to hurt
anyone to let him sit here and give away his book.'"
So she got me water instead of throwing me out, and look how it came back
to bless both of us. That, to me, was one of those gut check moments when I
asked, did I really have passion? When people say, "You're so lucky,"
it's like, no, you have no idea. I was willing to fight for this book. I was
willing to do uncomfortable things. I was wiling to take chances. I was willing
to risk everything for this book. When you have that kind of passion, fate just favors the bold. All of a
sudden, things will just start. You will struggle and you'll fight, but you
will win. Janet Attwood: This
was your passion, and I hear that you said that you were shy and put yourself
out there. Were there any other obstacles that you experienced along the way and
how did you overcome them?
Richard Evans: Well, this is important to
understand, and if you remember nothing else from our discussion here, remember
this. We do not succeed in spite of our obstacles and challenges. We succeed
precisely because of them.I want to repeat that.
"We do not succeed in spite of our obstacles and challenges. We succeed precisely
because of them."
I had a discussion with the woman who edited The
Christmas Box. She said, "I have watched you over the last three years,
and it's amazing, because everything you did seemed to hit an obstacle and
failed."She said, "I don't know how this happened. It's like your book was
built on failure."
I said, "It was. I was turned down by every publisher I took it to. I
was turned down by the distributors. When I got into the national market, I was
turned down by all the TV people." It's like everything went wrong over and
over and over.
It's what had to happen, because when it's finally gotten to that
level where it could take off, the story wasn't, "What is The
Christmas Box about?" The press did not care about that.
What the Today Show, and what Time
magazine, Newsweek, the New York Times, and the Wall
Street Journal were talking about was this guy who was rejected from every
publisher he went to. He had no publisher, he had no experience, and he beat the
publishing world. That's what became the media story. That's what fueled it into the hyper selling levels it hit. The failures and obstacles I went through were precisely what I needed. They gave me the ability to succeed. I hit obstacles every day. I felt like every time I did something, it failed. It seemed like it was a constant humiliation. When it hit the level of success, I just thought, 'This is amazing. What an amazing lesson about
life.'Janet Attwood: I
am so thankful to you for sharing this story. What I got from it was number one,
you had to have the love. You had to have the passion so you could completely go
to bat and full-tilt boogie, believe in the destiny of it, and have the belief
in the people that they'd read it. You went out and bought the 5,000 books and handed them out, and then I
heard you say that from doing all the radio shows in all these little cities,
you started to hear what they needed and what they wanted to know. This is just so great!
Tell me about Christmas Box Houses International. How did the houses came about and what your plans are for them?
Richard Evans: The Christmas Box House is
probably what I would call my latest passion. It's a thing that keeps me up at
night thinking about it, and the size of it, to me, is daunting. After The
Christmas Box took off, my wife Keri and I were concerned about how the
money might affect our family; that having a lot of money might negatively
affect our children, which would be horrible irony, since the book was written
for our children.
So we decided that we would teach our children how to use the money to
make a better world. We decided, not knowing anything about child advocacy, that
we would find out what abused children needed most, how we could help them. We
just started asking questions. We ended up at the University of Utah Graduate
School of Social Work.We asked the Dean, "What's the most important thing we can do for
these kids?" We focused everything on the one question, "What is the most
important thing we can do to help these abused children?" His answer was, "I don't know.""Well, if you don't know, who knows?"He said, "Well, let's invite everyone who knows anything about it and
let's hold a conference."We got together in the conference and we learned three things. First of
all, these people didn't like each other and they were competing for the same
funds, so they saw each other as competition. Second, they didn't communicate
with each other because of that. And
third, they all agreed on what needed to happen. That's where the concept of The Christmas Box House was born.We created this facility, it's very large. The first facility was $2.7
million. We learned a lot from it. We made every mistake possible. It grew from
there. We got smarter with all of our mistakes. By the time we built our last
facility, we built it for less than half the cost. It's just as effective, and we have housed more than 15,000 abused
children since we opened. We are now moving into other countries and we are now
getting calls from all around the world from people to help them establish
Christmas Box Houses in their area. My greatest passion right now, tied in with this concept, is that I have
this dream of creating an army of child advocates, an army 50,000 strong. I
believe we can create an army with 50,000 people who care about children and
want to stop abuse and want to help these children in need.So we did a test and started what we called The Christmas Box Club, and
the first one we did in Salt Lake City and it grew too fast that we had to
abandon the project, because it was growing so fast, we weren't ready for it.
That was two years ago. We studied it, we plotted better and we just started them again, and
again, they're growing very quickly. We are about to open our third club and
eventually we expect to have hundreds of clubs around America with tens of
thousands of members who are going to help these children in their community.
Janet Attwood: You know, in The Passion Test, I say we
don't have to know how our passions are going to get fulfilled, we just have
to get absolutely clear on what they are and be totally committed to their
fulfillment. I hear that that's absolutely where you've been. I think you
believe that, is that true?
Richard Evans: I'm very clear on
what I want. I want an army of 50,000 people, and I have had a vision of it
already. I know that the day will come that I will come out on stage and look
out over this huge auditorium and see child advocates from around the world and
we are going to be one and we're going to change the world.
Janet Attwood: Even
though you have the passion, the love, the commitment, with all these obstacles,
even now on things you do, would you say that fear shows up? Even with all
you've gone through? Always. Yes, it can, it does, but
you have to realize that fear is the opposite of faith. Fear is something you
recognize for what it is, and it can be empowering, but you don't let it
linger. You can't have fear and faith at the same time in your mind, because
faith is simply a state of mind. Fear can help you recognize reality and that's a service and that's a
good thing. But then when you're ready to move, then you don't take counsel
from fear, you let it go. It's like, okay, I'm going to overcome that. I
believe I can do this.Janet Attwood: Right,
which brings me to that point of there are no mistakes, there are no failures. I
mean, those greatest lessons are the ones that build in us that invincibleness,
that inner strength. There's nothing lost only everything gained. Thank you
for that. Richard Evans: I was in a meeting once for
The Christmas Box House where everything had gone wrong. We were more than a
million and a half dollars in debt. I had totally tapped out any money I could
get. I mortgaged everything I owned, I mean, financially, it put me in jeopardy.
My dad, who was one of four of us working on this project, said to me,
"Rick, it's over. The ship's going down. It's time to jump ship."I said, "No, dad. If this ship goes down, I go down with the ship. I
believe in this and I go down with it." I walked out and it was confirmed to
me that I was not to give up, I did not have that choice to give up, and I went
out and had t-shirts made and came back, gave them to the staff. They said, "Failure is not an option." I said, "You wear that until
you believe it. Failure is not an option here." I look back now, and now we
have more than a million dollars a year come in, just come in. People die and
give us their entire wills and we have more money than it takes to run our
organization, which is an amazing thing.Now it's fun, but it's not as great as it was during those hard
times. That is when the real tests were passed. Janet Attwood: LetI
me ask you this next question, and this is our gift to you. At Healthy
Wealthy nWise, we believe strongly in the intention to really manifest these
outcomes. I think you mentioned it, and I want you to mention it just briefly,
your most important project. You mentioned your intention, but I want you to
mention it again so we can really, consciously all hold it for you.Richard Evans: What I want to do is build
an army of advocates for abused children. This army would have 50,000 people and
probably average about 50 people per club, so we're looking at about 1,000
clubs, and that we would communicate together, not only through Internet, but
through conferences. We're already planning a cruise we're going to go on together to talk
about child advocacy, training, and how we can make a difference in the world. I
think with 50,000 people, we could absolutely shake this world and affect the millions of children who are abused just in America alone.
Chris Attwood:
If some of our listeners and readers want to participate in that and become some
of those advocates, how do they go about doing that?Richard Evans: Contact me at my personal
email which is: author@richardpaulevans.comJanet Attwood: What's
the single most important idea you'd like to leave our listeners with that you
haven't discussed with all of us yet?
Richard Evans: I think we discussed all of
the things that were important. It comes back to me over and over, the idea of
adversity. It is the difficult experiences, and your listeners have difficult
experiences in their lives that give us a chance to shape and to grow.Whether you want to accomplish good or evil, to have a sense of destiny
is the starting point. I had a complete sense of destiny with The Christmas Box. If you have that sense of destiny, it will lead
you where you need to go. That is the underlying tone of everything we talked about. Without it, if
you don't believe there's a destiny or divinity to our lives, then it's
all a crap shoot anyway. Janet Attwood: I
am with you 100%, and I love that you left all of us with that thought. It's
what I believe to be true as well, that to the extent that you're in alignment
with what I call God's will for you, and I feel that you can't possibly have
a desire, a passion that's not totally in alignment with what God's will is
for you. Richard Evans: Absolutely.Janet Attwood: Richard,
I love you to pieces. What can I say? You just are "it." You hit a ten with
me on inspiration in every way. I know everyone can hear it in your voice.You are so congruent, you are so completely aligned. I can feel it in the
depth of my heart. I thank you for you being you, we wish you the greatest
success in every endeavor. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts a million
times over, Richard.
