From an idea to on the shelves and on the web, “What’s Your Red Rubber Ball?! discover your inspiration and chase it for a lifetime” is my latest book effort that I’ve been pursuing for over two years. Today, July 22, my second book will be released. Each time I think about my printed and bound words being easily accessible to the public, I get an oh-so-familiar visceral response. It’s a feeling of being scared and exhilarated that settles right in the deep recesses of my stomach and makes me uncontrollably lurch forward and double over. I used to get that feeling before stepping into the starting blocks at a track meet (see Track Town USA post). All sorts of madness and questions were running through my head as the release date drew closer – is it any good; did I deliver the message I wanted; will it be inspiring; will the reader “get it”; will I sell enough books to please my publisher (ESPN Books/Disney Publishing); will more than friends and family purchase it – this is a BIG worry considering that my book will be competing against more than 150,000 titles published this year.

online book description: In a boldly designed, highly energetic book, Kevin Carroll leads readers through a series of exercises designed to help them discover their Red Rubber Ball—a dream to chase for a lifetime. With a cardboard box to be decorated, punch-out inspiration cards, a removable dream statement, and gatefold pages that can be written on, this engaging new book offers tweens and teens a fun, accessible way to think about their hopes and dreams.


So, how did I get to this point?! Well, here’s my tale of how a series of fortunate events unfolded to create this opportunity to publish another book with the Worldwide Leader In Sports. This moment is equally filled with a anxiety, exuberance, and satisfaction:

• Fortunate Event #1 – an Invitation – to perform on stage at the first Great Read in the Park in NYC in October, 2005.

• Fortunate Event #2 – a Great BIG Read – while doing my book reading at the Great Read, I produced was an oversized version of the first book that ESPN Books has recently published by me, Rules of the Red Rubber Ball. The book captured not only the imagination of the audience, it peaked the curiosity of my publisher at ESPN Books, Sandy DeShong.

• Fortunate Event #3 – a publisher’s epiphany From her seat in the audience at the Great Read,Sandy watches the reaction of the crowd to the oversized book and my story. After the event, Sandy nonchalantly says to me that maybe I should consider creating a young adult version of my first book.

• Fortunate Event #4 – Ticonderoga No. 2 – The “Aha moment” came after six months of receiving countless e-mails from teachers from all education levels asking if I had any sort of workbook or any kind of teaching tool that could be used in the classroom to accompany my first book, Rules, as a class assignment. With the e-mail requests and Sandy’s continuous “hints,” I realized the idea of crafting a workbook for young adult/teen readers. We decided that the age range for the book would be ages 9-19, and with that in mind, I began the process of creating book number two. I gave some thought about how I might approach creating a workbook that wouldn’t feel like just another school project, homework or senior thesis. I did some unscientific research and went to local bookstores to see what kinds of workbooks would be a BIG mistake to try to recreate. To be honest, a lot of my HS class work was only about getting a grade to stay eligible for sports. I was a good student, but if the teacher wasn’t engaging or the subject wasn’t inspiring, I was generally disinterested. George Bernard Shaw was right, “Youth is wasted on the young.”

I was determined to write and design an assignment book that the readers would want to spend extra time doing because it felt like a meaningful use of their time – it would be inspiring, like a scene from the film Dead Poets Society! I set out to create a book that would inspire, be meaningful, have unexpected surprises, and contain a bit of creative bedlam.

• Fortunate Event #6 – DREAMs in a BOX – The idea or inspiration for the book came from Gordon Mackenzie, former Hallmark creative paradox and author of Orbiting the Giant Hairball. Gordon lead an innovation meeting at Nike in 1999, and one of the activities was an exercise using a small cardboard box to tell a story. We were to use the box to tell our “personal story” and what we hoped our “business legacy” would be. As we set out to accomplish the assignment, I quickly noticed that the room filled with an unmistakable and palpable energy as each person poured over their box and crafted their story. When we finished, we shared the stories at our table. I was inspired by the exercise so much so that I created a variation of the box exercise (with Gordon’s permission and blessing). I continue challenging business people to articulate their personal stories of success and to think about what kind of difference they intended to make as a business leader. I added some other components to the exercise: a greater array of arts and crafts materials, a bit more information about the value and importance of storytelling in all human cultures and in business culture, and I modified my original cardboard box and created a small traveling case (like a steamer trunk) that I use as my prop to tell my story and share my dreams and personal vision. I called it my Box of Magic. It contains significant artifacts from my life that serve as reminders of my journey, challenges faced and overcome, and dreams I want to achieve. After several years of sharing the exercise in the business world, it found its way into college settings, and then I introduced it to high school and middle school students shortly after.

WYRRB?! is the first time that the exercise has gone from just my personal knowledge of the exercise to openly sharing the process with others. It wasn’t as easy of a process as I thought it would be to take my verbal expertise of the exercise and put it into a discernable, easy-to-follow workbook that is inspiring and enlightening.

• Fortunate Event #7 – a little M.O.E. helps – I was truly fortunate to have an editor that was challenging at times, supportive all of the time, demanding when I really wanted to settle for what I turned in as finished, and complimentary in just the right times and amount to keep me invested and energized. The many edits, reworks, rewrites, ‘a little more of your voice’ here, and ‘think about your reader more’ there, was critical to the final published work. Kelsey Skea of Disney Books definitely gets my vote as Most Outstanding Editor for the 2008 Literary season.

• Fortunate Event #8 – wanted: creative catalyst – I made a very unusual decision early in the process of doing this project (and I will continue this practice with all of my book projects). I used my book advance money to pay for the design of the book! I was told that my decision to directly invest monies back into my book was basically unheard of. It afforded me the ability to lead the design direction of my book and insure the look and feel of the book was complementary with the text. Working at Nike taught me one simple truth about design and brand leadership – you have to be willing to deliver all things at a level that others won’t even attempt. Willoughby Design Group out of Kansas City Mo., took my nonsensical notions and irreverent ideas and turned them into magical design solutions. Our partnership has been absolutely catalytic!

• Fortunate Event #9 – if you build IT – WYRRB?! will have a unique social marketing media platform supporting it via a group called SplashCast Media out of Portland, Ore., (aka latte’land). SplashCast will power the website for the book, www.wyrrb.com, with a phenomenal technology that will allow the readers of WYRRB?! to tell their stories and view other readers’ stories via photo, video or audio uploads. My diabolical Dr. Evil plan is to galvanize this next generation of leaders and get them to clearly recognize that there are other likeminded souls around the globe that want to make a difference in their personal and professional lives. To some of you that last passage wreaks of that “new agey” scent, but I’ve spent enough time with young people from all across the globe to know one very real thing: today’s teens and 20-somethings, which is a group I like to call “the World is Flat” generation (from the book by Thomas L. Friedman), intend to make a significant impact and positive change on the human condition. They have already demonstrated that if they are given a technological platform to raise their collective voices, they can be a formidable force (please see facebook.com, myspace.com, ning.com or twitter.com for proof.)

I’m an author (too?!) – I hope this series of very fortunate events will put my latest book project in a position to be a success. I know my editor and publisher are counting on it! If you’re at all curious, feel free to follow my literary adventure. I plan on providing regular updates and insights on my ESPN.com blog and on the book’s wyrrb.com site about WYRRB?! book tour events, marketing meetings and plans, latest sales stats, amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com rankings. Who knows, maybe my story will inspire someone to unearth some nearly forgotten composition books with fading, scribbled notes that’s the start of a novel or open a saved document from years ago that’s filled with unfinished passages of a story?!

Maybe this post is YOUR fortunate event #1?!