Guest Post: Sonny and Sandy Swinhart on Collaborative Partnerships

I (Sonny) had been living in Japan for somewhere around twenty years. I returned to the States periodically for business, travel and family visits. These visits were not as frequent as they should have been.

While I love my life in Japan, the downside has been losing touch with those who are important to me back home, in particular, members of my family. And I'm not the best about keeping in touch. 

When our father passed away one year ago, my sister and I decided that we should stay better connected. Living across the ocean from each other, we haven't made much opportunity to keep in touch more.

I knew we could say 'Yeah, let's talk more', as we have in the past, but little would come of it. We'd have a phone call or Zoom or two and then regular life would return. Finding and making the time for regular chit-chat just wasn't going to happen.

So, we decided to create a project for us to work together as a partnership. Something like a business project, where the primary goal was not monetary profits, but rather an excuse to regularly meet to communicate and work on something together. A project would require us to meet (virtually), collaborate on goals and create an obligation for each other to connect regularly.

After a few extended sessions of brainstorming a variety of ideas, we landed on something we both found exciting. The project: Write and publish a children's book.

Sandy has a delightfully creative mind and is a tenacious go-getter. With my background in education and operations management, I knew we would be able to build something special together.

Fast forward to the present and we've published a number of books together and have many more coming on the way. We can't wait to share. Our venture has evolved into a self-publishing company called Mulberry Avenue, named after the street we grew up on as children.

As we build the company and reach for success, I'm happy to say that in many ways, the most important ways, we've already achieved it. We connect regularly now, understand each other much more and are having a great time throughout. It's really quite cool.

So, I'd like to invite you to follow along and join us in our journey. Stop by our website,  social sites: @HelloMulberryAvenue on FaceBook & Instagram. We'll be dropping news & progress on the books and other tid-bits as they come up. We'd love to have you join and keep in touch. 

Our latest release is the BetterYou Zoo series with 7 books that connect important life skills with real animal images and colorful backgrounds. We welcome you to connect with us and enjoy a positive uplifting message.