How did a man who spent 50 years as a personal injury lawyer end up becoming a successful children’s book author?
This is the story of Joe Brown. I heard about Joe from his daughter, Bobbi, the world renowned cosmetics guru. When I told Bobbi about the “10 Bricks” project, the first words out of her mouth were, “Oh my God. This is great. You HAVE to speak to my dad.” This is his story.
Hal: On a scale of 1 to 10, how surprised were you about where your career ended up?
Joe: Oh, big fat old 10. This was beyond my dream… We all want to be an author. I never found an adult that didn’t want to be an author, so when I became one totally by accident…it just blew me away… I was 70 years old. What I’m publishing now are these 32 page children’s books in rhyme with a lot of pictures…It takes me six weeks from the inception of a story to completion. It takes six weeks getting up every morning to see where the story is going because I can’t wait to get back to writing it. It’s an exciting thing to do.
BRICK 1: A RHYME IN TIME
Hal: Looking back, can you identify that first brick?
Joe: I guess it goes back to my childhood. It was the most loving atmosphere…. But those days were impactive upon me in making me what I consider a good human being. I was taught well. My parents taught me well. My brother the same. My sister the same… My brother and sister and I used to write funny, rhyming poems to each other making fun of each other, whatever it was. That went on in our family for years… I guess I was a natural born rhymer and I come from a rhyming family.
BRICK 2: LAW SCHOOL
Hal: Going back to when you were a young man, did you have any idea growing up what you wanted to do with your life?
Joe: Not really. Not really. I went to college at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and came here to DePaul Law School in Chicago. Can I brag a little here and there?
Hal: Yeah, you can brag as much as you want to.
Joe: I was a…full-fledged lawyer at 21 years old.
Hal: And you would say you chose law because…?
Joe: It seemed like a nice, respectable thing to do. The respectable part was important to me because…I had parents that were banging on my head since I was a baby…My parents would be very proud of me, “My son the lawyer.” So it was a good thing as far as that was concerned.
BRICK 3: AN IMPERFECT CAREER
Hal: But, as far as being a lawyer went, things didn’t work out exactly the way you hoped. You told me that the law felt, “as if it was below me.” Can you talk about that?
Joe: Yeah, yeah. See, I got involved early on in trial law — injury, and injury lawyers. Injury lawyers take a percentage of the award, which is a nicer way than charging somebody hourly. But it wasn’t that respected, not even by me because actually, it was too easy. People get hurt in accidents, they come to the lawyer and you’re going to always settle it or you don’t take the case in the first place; so it was a lucrative thing. It showed me how to appreciate money too. I didn’t need a lot. I just needed enough to do whatever I wanted.
Hal: So it was something that was lucrative but emotionally not …
Joe: Fulfilling.
Hal: And how long were you a lawyer?
Joe: 50 years.
BRICK 4: BEDTIME STORIES
Hal: Talk to us about raising your family and telling your kids bedtime stories.
Joe: All right. Many years ago, many years ago when my kids were five, and six, and eight, I would tell them stories about a character that I created called Marceau who was a New York taxi cab driver who has a good job, supports his family, but he gets bored every day doing the same thing. So he has a very vivid imagination and he makes up great stories, great adventures that he has a superpower. His superpower is that he can speak to or interact with animals of all kinds. He’s well known in the animal kingdom as a guy you could depend on.
So I would tell my kids these stories…and they were wide eyed and smiling when I was doing it. But I wasn’t making it up on the spot. I had planned the story going into the bedroom, so I had an idea of what was going to go on and how the excitement was going to hit. And by the way, they were all in rhyme… And my kids would be listening to them… They liked Marceau. They liked the story, they liked the rhyming, the whole thing, and one day they said to me, “Hey Dad, tell us the one you told last week.” I’m like, “I can’t remember the one I told last week.” So we actually sat together and wrote them down … maybe six of them, and used them for a while, read them to each other for a while, and then we put them in a box — a white box I remember — and we all went on with our lives. Box goes up to the attic and I’m a lawyer for 50 years.
BRICK 5: THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH
Hal: You had a 50 year career in law. But then you told me about your seven year attention span.
Joe: Right. I would stop practicing law, and then I would come back to it, and then stop being a lawyer, and then come back…. I went on these different business things for the enjoyment of doing it.
I started a travel club with a friend who was in the travel business. We would charter airplanes to take big groups of people to places. In those days you had to be some kind of organization to charter an airplane, so we formed an organization called Sporting Clubs International, and we would take planes all over the world. … It was quite a business. Then I went back to practice law, and found out in that … there was such a thing as casino gambling going on the these places that we were traveling to and that they were very happy to pay me to bring them customers… “Bring me your Americans and we will reward you,” whatever the hell it was.
Hal: And after you did the gambling tours, did you go back to law?
Joe: Yes. Yes, and then I would be a lawyer for seven years or whatever. And the next thing I did was to take a company public that was started on my kitchen table, not by me, but by others who came to me with the idea, and it had to do with signing up all of the car dealers in whatever area doing their inventory for them so we will know every car in Chicago, or in the suburbs, or whatever — how much they want for it, all that kind of stuff, and we became very valuable and we went public. Certified Collateral Corporation was the name, and then it became what’s known as CCC and still is there today.
After that, I went into business in Hawaii renting beautiful homes to the rich and famous — very expensive beachfront homes, so I got to hang in those things for a while. That was a nice seven or eight years, and we built multi-million dollar homes in Hawaii until the real estate market collapsed in the late ‘80s.
Hal: You were a lawyer but then you got involved in all of these other interesting kinds of businesses.
Joe: Yes, I was an adventurer in that regard.
Kathleen: Would you think of yourself as an entrepreneur?
Joe: Oh, I would have to, yes because those are all my ideas so they come to fruition and yeah. That’s me.
Hal: What would you say was the key brick in all of this? The key learning experience.
Joe: After the crash in the late ’80s it was horrible times. I didn’t have any money. Everything was gone and I owed a lot of money. It was not good times, so that was a bad financial portion of my life…But you don’t stop. You just got to go do something else, so I just went back and was a lawyer. Do what you know, and that’s how I came back.
BRICK 6: RESTARTING THE ENGINE
Joe: On my 70th birthday, my daughter, Bobbi is taking me out to dinner — this is in Telluride, Colorado — and she said, “Oh, Dad, on the way to dinner I have to stop in the bookstore.” I said, “Oh, good. I like bookstores. I’ll go in there with you.” I walk in this bookstore and she has found those stories — the ones that I used to tell the kids — in that box in the attic, and she had them made into a book, a printed hardcover book. And now I go into the bookstore and there’s an actual book that says, The Flights of Marceau by Joe Brown and a poster of it. I said, “Wow. Wow.” I couldn’t believe it. It was the greatest gift I’d ever gotten in my life and I carried it forth from there because it became the overwhelming part of my life, the main part of my life. Now, so that’s the story of how that began.
Hal: That is an incredible story.
Joe: But to be an author is just such an incredible thing.
Hal: In many of your books, you thank your daughter, Bobbi, for restarting your motor.
Joe: It totally turned me around from any thought that I had of even keeping my law practice or fighting, struggling to do it but not enjoying it… So that was the path that I went on… It was an explosion. It was, I know what I’m going to do now. I know how I’m going to spend the rest of my days. and since then I have been 100% just writing, and that’s where my mind is constantly.
Hal: How many books have you written to date?
Joe: They’ve published nine of my books.
Kathleen: It’s interesting how everything in your life has woven together and how much you’re emphasizing that doing what you enjoy is the most important tenet in your advice here.
Joe: If you can do it, do it. … You’ve got to have the guts to go do something different…When I add it all up together, it’s been one hell of a good life.
Kathleen: It sounds like it. I’m really glad that you’re sharing your story with us.
Joe: I’m glad I get to tell somebody about it. I thought it would go down with me.
“10 Bricks” is a series of interviews with people who have had interesting careers and lives, bucking the conventional wisdom of following a single, linear career path.
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Design and illustration by Martine Lindstrøm.
