Legally Blonde meets Miss Congeniality in Talk Back Barbie

So I had talked back to the technician.

He made me go call my sergeant, and ever since then, they called me Talk Back Barbie.

SPEAKER_00: So many people think that my story is inspiring.

How I became blind at just 17 years of age.

They always want to know how I've done it and how I've kept smiling all along the way.

Well, I've just chosen to focus my attention on seeing the positive side.

And here on the podcast, that's what I want to do for you.

Because no matter what you may be going through in life, I hope to inspire you to focus on the positive.

And you know what?

I hope that I can also be a source of inspiration for you to just keep on smiling.

Did you ever see the movie Miscongeniality or Legally Blonde?

Well, both of those were comedies.

And when combined together, I feel like they equal the ultimate movie, or in the case of today's episode, the ultimate story that has been made into a book called Talk Back Barbie, The Secret Service Edition.

I'm joined with the author of this book, Lauren Fernandez, on today's episode.

Hey, my name is Kevin Lowe, and I am the host here on The Lowdown with Kevin Lowe.

And you are tuning in to episode number 56.

As with any good comedy, there's always generally some type of underlying theme or message that is presented in the movie.

Now, when it's done just right, you don't really notice it and really pick up on it till the end.

And well, that's exactly the case with today's episode when I'm sitting down chatting with Lauren Fernandez, the author of Talk Back Barbie, the Secret Service edition.

Because at first glance, this is an absolutely hysterical story about Lauren's own experience joining the Secret Service.

And well, she quickly became known as Talk Back Barbie.

We'll get into all the details where that came from further into the episode.

But there's also a bigger theme to this book, a bigger theme to Lauren's story.

And that is for her trying to encourage people to never give up on life, to never give up on your dreams.

And to realize that as life goes on, your dreams may very well change.

And that's perfectly fine.

But you just gotta keep going.

And you know, you gotta remember Lauren's motto because I think it's something important for us all to remember in all aspects of our life.

And that is if you trip and fall, be sure to laugh first, and then get up, brush yourself off, and keep moving forward.

Hey, before we get into my interview with Lauren Fernandez, I want to say something.

If you've been around for an episode or two, if you're loving what I'm doing with the podcast, I would love your support.

At the bottom of every episode's show notes, there's a link where you can support the podcast by buying me a cup of coffee.

Now, you're not actually buying me uh pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks, although if you wanted to, that would be pretty awesome.

It's just a fun way of supporting a show.

And it's through my account with Buy MeACoffee.

And it's just a way to help me with the production costs associated with producing this podcast.

And well, it's just uh gonna help uh, I guess provide me with a little caffeine to keep me going and then keep these episodes coming to you.

So, anyways, if interested in becoming a supporter of the podcast, like I said, you can find the links for that in the show notes below.

All right, let's get on to my interview with Lauren Fernandez, the author of Talk Back Barbie Secret Service Edition.

SPEAKER_01: I published a book this past January, so January of this year, 2021, and it's called Talk Back Barbie The Secret Service Edition.

And I never thought I was ever gonna write a book that was never on my bucket list at all.

However, I just discovered after my dad telling me for the past five years that I had a lot of incredible stories to share with others, and he encouraged me to write it.

And so about a year and a half ago, I started writing and didn't stop.

SPEAKER_00: Well, that's awesome.

Well, I think that's very cool.

Very cool.

So now I kind of feel like the book is probably going to be a big guide for our conversation today because correct me if I'm wrong, it's basically kind of us recounting kind of your life story going into the Secret Service, correct?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.

So it is, I did beef it up a little bit.

So you don't know it's true and you don't know it's false, but it is based on my true life story working for the Secret Service.

And with a nickname like Talkback Barbie in the Secret Service, you can only imagine what kind of crazy, funny stories you have as a female working in an all-male-dominated environment.

So it's just a lot of laughter, making fun of myself, sharing my stories, and just letting other people learn about the Secret Service, but the not so serious side of the Secret Service as well.

SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, that's awesome.

Well, so I guess I'd love to just start out first by asking so how did you even come to join the Secret Service in the first place?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so my dream when I was 10 years old was to become an FBI agent.

That's what I wanted to do with my life, and that was the career I was set to accomplish.

And I set out to, I watched all of the FBI shows, I researched and talked to FBI agents, I just dabbled into anything federal law enforcement.

I talked to local cops, everything, just to figure out what my pathway was and what I should do to become an FBI agent.

Well, I was too young and inexperienced to go straight out of college.

I went to Virginia Tech and graduated with my political science degree.

And I was too young and inexperienced to go straight into the FBI.

I needed at least a minimum of three years' work experience at the time.

So this was about 15 years ago.

And so I went and applied for the NSA, the National Security Agency, and the Secret Service.

And I ended up getting into the Secret Service and started working for them at the White House with in 2005 to 2006 with President George Bush.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

Well, that's too cool.

Now, I guess I'm sitting here thinking myself, you didn't have enough experience to go straight into, you know, the FBI and such, but I would almost think that being part of the Secret Service would have just as high of a requirement, you know, working, working to kind of guarding the president.

That's kind of funny to me.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, definitely.

So the position as a Secret Service uniformed division officer, there's no doubt it was an extremely important position.

And I am more than proud to say that I was a Secret Service officer and that I worked at the White House.

But my goal was, because that was my dream, my goal was to work with the Secret Service for three to five years to get that experience and then transfer into the FBI.

But once I was in the Secret Service, it was, I realized that the shift work and the moon dame tasks and the moving around and the traveling all the time and no holidays with my family.

I realized that that really affected me.

And I was newly married at the time in the Secret Service as well.

I actually went on my honeymoon while I was working at the Secret Service, and I was nervous because I had a chance that my honeymoon and my time off was gonna be canceled.

If they had were short staffed, they could cancel your vacations, your holidays, they could cancel anything.

And I was terrified that they were gonna cancel my honeymoon while I was in the Secret Service.

So yeah, it was just, it was, it was a great experience, but it was very difficult for me to work in that environment and know that I eventually wanted to have a family and do that kind of.

I just knew that that lifestyle was gonna be a little bit more difficult to if I was gonna be a good mom.

So I was kind of weighing all of that while I was working for the Secret Service.

And that's why my dreams and my career path kind of changed because I wanted something a little bit more consistent with consistent hours and you know, not so much traveling and all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah.

No, that that makes total sense.

Now, now I am curious, did you have family in law enforcement growing up?

Like I was wondering where where that comes from.

Because I think I think especially, I mean, it's just like that stereotype we we think of like, you know, a woman in particular, it is what I think makes this even more interesting, is this like immediate desire to want to be in, you know, one of these roles.

SPEAKER_01: You would think I was aspiring to be like my dad, but my I have actually a lot of CPAs in my family, accountants.

So and I wanted the complete opposite of that.

And the law enforcement lifestyle for me was exciting and was the complete opposite of kind of an accounting lifestyle, but I wanted the excitement of law enforcement.

Uh in my mind, it was the chasing the bad guys and going after, you know, solving these exciting crimes and puzzles and putting together all this information.

That to me was what excited me.

And I think when I went into law enforcement, obviously the Secret Service has a completely different side.

You're protecting the White House and you're protecting the president of the United States and his family.

And I knew all this going in, but it's not as exciting as it sounds.

Training was super exciting, but it the job in and itself was not as exciting as it sounded because honestly, you're bored unless something bad is happening.

And you don't want something bad to be happening because that means they're trying to break into the White House or they're going after the president of the United States, and that's not good.

So it's this conflicted mentality working for the Secretary.

You want something exciting to happen, but then that means your life and everybody else's life around you is at risk.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

So I'm sitting here thinking, so so basically it's like watching NASCAR.

It's only exciting when a wreck happens.

SPEAKER_01: Exactly.

You are, oh my gosh, that is the perfect example of what it's like to work at the Secret Service.

Whereas local law enforcement does have a lot more action, and you can move up to detective and you can solve more crimes, and there's a lot more action in local law enforcement.

But the reason I went federal was because there was a lot more prestige in being a federal officer as well.

There was, it's higher pay, there's more prestige.

So there's there's a tug of war of what you want, right?

And I've actually thought about going into local law enforcement.

I'm getting too old now.

But when I got out of the Secret Service, I thought about what it would be like to join one of the local law enforcement ranks and just try to do that instead.

And that way I'm in my area.

I'm in, you know, Georgia right now.

And that way I'm in my area that I live, and you're not traveling very much, and you're working locally and being able to solve all these fun crimes and do all the fun things that I wanted to do originally.

But then I thought, oh, I was trying to be a mom, and I just didn't think that the lifestyle was gonna work out for me.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, definitely, definitely.

I can I can see where that's a uh definitely a pull in different directions.

So so now once you got out of the secret service, where did life take you from there?

SPEAKER_01: So I think my biggest mistake was that I left the Secret Service too quickly.

And because I went and got a job at a law firm, just because it was the first job that they hired me, I was ready to get out of the secret service.

I was ready to have consistent hours.

I was just so ready to do that that I think I jumped a little too soon.

And that put me in a little predicament, which is the story's in the book.

The chap that chapter is called Kiss My Ass and Company.

And it's a hilarious chapter about my time working for a law firm for literally only four months.

And I worked for them, but I ended up finding out a whole different side of discrimination, and that was with women.

And how I came into this law firm working with a team of mostly all women.

And I discovered that they were telling me to my face I was doing this wonderful job and that I was a great contribution to their team, but behind the scenes, they were correcting things that I didn't know were wrong.

And at my three-month evaluation, they basically gave me a choice to be fired or leave.

And I had no idea.

So behind my back, this whole time for three, four months, they were basically not telling me the truth and not telling me what I needed to do to be better at my job and to correct my mistakes.

And so I got a whole different side of discrimination than I did when I was working in the Secret Service, where that was a male-dominated environment, and I'm a very girly girl on the surface, but underneath I'm extremely tough and I'm very thick skinned and I'm very tomboy.

But on the surface, you wouldn't think that about me.

And so I got discriminated against by a technician in the Secret Service, and then here on this other flip side, I got discriminated against with women.

So it's just been a huge learning experience, and it's made me who I am today, and I love it, and I would never take back any of the situations I went through.

And then I went into, after that, I went into government consulting.

So I worked with, I used my top secret SCI clearance that I had earned with the Secret Service, and I went into government consulting.

So I worked with CIA, FBI, National Counterterrorism Center up in Virginia.

I worked with just a lot, Department of State, a lot of the government organizations because I had a really high clearance.

So I was able to utilize that, and that was special to me.

And that gave me a great experience as well on the whole other side of things and not being in federal law enforcement.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

So that's that's pretty wild.

And and and so exactly though, like in that position, you said it was some type of consulting position for that?

SPEAKER_01: It's called government consulting, is what the which is a very broad term, which means it's kind of all inclusive and they have different jobs for every everybody.

Government consulting for me, it was I usually worked in secret rooms and environments where I was dabbling in unclassified information, secret information, top secret information.

So we I was just doing computer work based on that.

And a lot of the stuff I did was unclassified, so that's okay, that was okay.

But basically, it means that you are consultant with the government.

So I'm not a government employee.

I work for and I work with the government.

And they contract me out to the government.

That's why you're a government contractor.

And you work at these government locations and you work with government employees, and that's what I was doing.

So I did a lot of computer stuff, a lot of unclassified, but a lot of secret, top secret information was passing through my hands as well.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's pretty awesome.

Now, how long did you work in that that career?

SPEAKER_01: I think that was about five years, and then I had my son, and we my husband and I wanted to move back down to Georgia where my family is.

My whole entire family's down here in Georgia, and so I wanted to move back close to uh everyone and raise my son down here and set up up in Virginia.

And what ended up happening was I had actually applied to another firm, another government consulting firm, and resigned from my other firm.

And they, the new firm, I lost my position with them because they lost the government consulting position that they hired me for.

So because Virginia is an at-will state, they were able to let me go and they didn't have to do anything about it.

So I was on, I went on unemployment because I had resigned from my other company and accepted this new position, and they lost that position I was hired for.

SPEAKER_00: Gotta love it, huh?

SPEAKER_01: So it was actually a perfect storm because that's what helped me move to Georgia easier.

SPEAKER_00: There you go.

No, that's awesome.

Get back down here to the south, you know.

So that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I so I as much as it was sad at the time and I was devastated, I really look at it now in hindsight, and I look and I say, how much of a blessing that actually was.

And how I would never have been able to make such a dramatic move and lose such a good salary.

It wouldn't, it would have been a lot harder for me to do that.

And so, because of the situation, it just made it so much easier to move down here.

And to be honest, I think it was an amazing thing that happened to me.

And I would, again, another thing in my life that I would never change if I, even if I could.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I love it.

Absolutely.

That's awesome.

So so now I'm curious.

So, so obviously skipping ahead, you know, quite a few years or whatnot, to the point when when you finally decided, okay, you you're listening to to people talking about that you need to turn your stories into a book.

And so you sit down to finally, finally write this book.

And and right off the bat, what I want to ask you is where did the title for this come from?

Talk back Barbie.

SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.

I love the title of the book because it is all me.

And what I mean by that is that was my literal nickname in the Secret Service.

That is what they called me.

That is what my team called me.

That is what I was known as.

I have not even started work at the White House.

I had I was finishing up my federal, you go through six months of federal law enforcement training, and I was finishing that up.

And I go to the White House before the day right before I start work the following day.

And I go up to the gate and I asked, hey, I asked the girl at the gate, I said so, hey, I'm class 177.

Where am I gonna go for roll call tomorrow?

I just want to know the protocol, you know, I just want to know what's going on.

And she looks at me, she goes, Well, what's your name?

I told her, Officer Lesby, Oscar Sir Lauren Lesby.

And she looks at me and belts out laughing and goes, Oh my God, I know exactly who you are.

She goes, You're talkback Barbie.

And that is what they knew me as before I had even graduated training to start work at the White House.

They all knew me as Talkback Barbie.

So it only made sense that the name of the book was Talk Back Barbie because that was my nickname and everybody knew me as Talkback Barbie.

SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness, that's hysterical.

So now, so how did you get that nickname?

SPEAKER_01: So this there's a story in the book where I am outside, we're doing a tactical scenario.

I'm trying to clear the area.

And as I peep around this brick wall, my long sleeve kind of slides up my arm a little bit, and the technician sees my watch glisten off my wrist in the air.

And he comes over to me and he goes, Officer Lesby, what is that on your wrist?

And I go, Oh, you mean my watch?

And he goes, Yes.

You know you're not allowed to wear any jewelry in my presence ever.

And I, and he's in my face.

I mean, right now he's probably an inch from my face.

His face is bright red.

He's ball headed, he is bright red.

He is, you can tell he is he is about to lose his cool with me.

He is spitting because he's talking so gruffly, and his voice is elevating.

He's starting to start screaming at me.

And I looked at him and I said, We're not in the mat room.

I go, we're only not allowed to wear jewelry in the mat room to him.

I said, Aren't we acting out a real life scenario?

So are you telling me we can't wear jewelry at the White House then?

Oh man.

I so I had talked back to the technician.

He is screaming and shouting and spitting in my face.

He kicked me out of the training lesson that day.

He made me go call my sergeant.

And the rest of my class was training about half a mile away, and they stopped and they walked down to where we were, and they go, What was all that screaming about?

What is going on?

And they found out that I had talked back to the technician.

And ever since then, they called me Talk Back Barbie because I couldn't keep my mouth shut.

And they go, Why couldn't you just not have asked a question and just said, Yes, sir, I won't ever wear jewelry again?

But I always had to question everything because I'm just a free thinker.

I'm a person who thinks for myself, and I don't like to just be told what to do.

I have to think, hey, is that logical for me?

Does that make sense for me?

Is this something that is gonna be, you know, am I okay with that?

And and because I was in a military environment, you're supposed to say, yes, sir, no, sir.

And that's it.

You don't really get to think for yourself, and you don't get to really speak up.

And if you do, you get in trouble like what I did, and I got in trouble.

And so that's how I got the nickname Talkback Barbie, is because I couldn't keep my mouth shut.

SPEAKER_00: That's so funny.

So now, so you're gonna have to school me a little bit.

So you keep using the term technician.

Yes.

What what exactly is that?

SPEAKER_01: I do.

I always forget I need to explain that because obviously I went through training, so I know what a technician is, but nobody else does.

I'll explain.

So a technician in the Secret Service, they are trainers in Beltsville, Maryland, at the training center that that the Secret Service where they train us.

So we go to Fletsi, which is the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center down in Glenn.

Co, Georgia, and then we go to Beltsville, Maryland for specific Secret Service training.

And a technician is somebody who works up there.

They're not really a sergeant or a captain, but they're a technician, meaning they have a specific area of training where they're gonna train you.

So this technician was kind of the outdoor training.

He did our mat room, self-defense techniques, stuff like that.

Then you have your firearms technicians.

So a technician is somebody who's kind of specialized in an area who is training you during your training.

And so that was a technician.

So I, of course, don't use any real names in the book.

They're all made up.

There's mean girl, mean technician, they're all just funny, goofy little names.

Because obviously I can't use the real names for real, you know, for reasons.

For reasons uh people could get in trouble.

No.

SPEAKER_00: Of course.

SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, so that's a technician.

So he was training us, and he he's the one who had it out for me.

The reason his nickname is Mean Technician is he's the one the minute I walked into Secret Service training, he had it out for me.

He looked at me with my pink Vera Bradley bags, and I hadn't even said a word yet.

And he was like, That girl right there is not gonna graduate.

She is not cut out to be a Secret Service uniform division officer, and she is not gonna make it through training.

And he made sure he, well, he tried to make sure that I didn't make it through training, but I proved him wrong.

SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.

So now this Secret Service training, is it almost like boot camp?

SPEAKER_01: Exactly, but on steroids a little bit.

It is intense physical and mental training.

It's a lot of obviously defense techniques.

You would wear a padded suit where you would be punching other people, you would be fighting, you'd be taking away guns.

You, you know, somebody would be the assailant and you would be the officer, and you'd have to learn how to take a gun out of somebody's hand.

You would, I mean, you would learn handcuffing techniques, runs at 5 a.m.

in the morning, push-ups, pull-ups, bench pressing your own body weight, probably leaving tons of stuff down.

Oh, firearms training.

There's tons of firearms training.

You're shooting for so many hours that your fingers are blistered, bruised, cut.

Because I mean, sometimes if you're, if the um gun after it shoots, sometimes it'll clip your that, you know, that skin between your thumb and your pointer finger?

Sometimes it'll clip that.

And so you have these cuts and bruises all over your hands from just loading and reloading your magazine over and over.

And it's just, it's very, very intense.

And you have to run a mile and a half in a certain amount of time.

It is just a constant physical and mental battle to keep pushing yourself and to keep going, even though you're exhausted and tired and it's hot outside.

And there's a story in the book where we're doing a 5 a.m.

run and the guys lay down to do crunches in the middle of the run because that's what we're told to do, and they lay in firing piles.

And yes.

So, and they had to keep running.

It's not like they could stop and do anything about that.

So you it is totally like a boot camp.

Think G.I.

Jane, movies like that.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's insane.

Now I'm wondering, so were you super physically active, super fit before you ever even went into this?

SPEAKER_01: I've always been an athlete and I've always been just always in the gym and incredibly cognizant of taking care of myself.

I've always been like that.

And so for me, I knew what I was getting into because I my dream was to become an FBI agent.

So I did sports year-round since I was probably eight years old.

And my dad wanted boys, so he raised my sister and I like boys.

So we were in sports all the time, and it had to be real sports.

So to him, we couldn't be cheerleaders or anything like that.

Not saying cheerleaders are it's not a real sport, but in my family, you couldn't be cheering on the sidelines.

You had to be being cheered for.

And so we were, my sister and I were very physically active, constantly.

I was a runner, so I did track and cross country.

Those were my big sports, tennis, those, and swimming.

Those were my big sports that I did all the time, year-round.

And yeah, so I was already physically fit, but then going through training, you get even stronger.

I think I was the strongest I've ever been in my life during training because of what they put you through and what they make you do.

And that was pretty amazing.

That was an amazing feeling.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.

I I can only imagine.

So now, so I I have to ask at the end of training, you graduate.

Did the uh technician, did he ever, ever break that facade that he had and congratulate you, or did he just stay a jerk all the way to the end?

SPEAKER_01: Well, that is funny you asked that because he actually did on graduation day.

I was walking back to my seat after receiving my badge and gun up on the stage and my certificate saying that I had completed and graduated.

And as I walked back to my seat, he kind of gently touched my arm and I kind of jumped because I didn't know who it was or who what was going on.

And I turn around and I see that it's the technician.

And he looks at me and he basically says, I never thought you'd ever graduate, but congratulations.

And so he gave me a backhanded compliment.

And believe me, that was more than I had ever heard from him positively in my whole entire life.

So for me, I was ecstatic.

Now, other people would be like, hey, well, he didn't really compliment you.

He didn't really say anything that was that nice and or that kind.

But to me, that meant everything.

Because for him to be so stoic and mean and cruel the whole time of training, it took him a lot for him to even be able to say what he did to me to quote unquote backhanded compliment me and give me a little mini congratulations.

To me, that meant that meant the world.

I don't even know if that beat out graduating from the Secret Service.

I they were so tied at that point.

I was ecstatic.

I was very, very happy about that.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that that's that's pretty awesome.

I'm I have to say, I mean, I'm so glad that that part of your story ended that way, even if it wasn't the most sweetest uh congratulations that there there could be.

You know, I think I think that that is cool.

So So I am curious, kind of I was happy about it, I have to say.

Yeah, I bet.

I bet.

Now, I am curious because your book that you've written, Talk Back Barbie, The Secret Service Edition, it's more of a obviously from from the way you've talked about a humor type novels.

But I'm curious where the humor came from, because what you've just told us so far does not sound humorous at all.

SPEAKER_01: So that it's funny you say that because my whole mindset was obviously the whole book is not humorous.

It's based on a lot of laughter in every chapter because of decisions and things that I go through and how I prove myself to the technician.

But what I did when I was writing this book is I learned that through laughter, it just makes everything better.

And it just makes you feel better and it makes you realize that we all make mistakes, we all are have successes, and we all have failures, and we all have these things that we learn and we grow from.

And I just, I just realized that writing the book, I discovered that through laughter and making fun of myself, whether people are laughing at me or with me in the book, I just personally discovered that it was the best medicine for me to truly understand and be able to grasp everything that I was learning as I was writing the book.

Because at the time it looked hurtful or it looked cruel or it looked mean.

But when I'm looking back, I'm actually laughing at myself and with myself.

And so I created this humorous book because I felt like it would make people feel more connected to me as a person and make me feel more down-to-earth.

Because I mean, let's be honest, being a woman in the Secret Service is a rarity in and of itself.

And to do this, I wanted people to, we would be on the same platform.

And I feel like with laughter and showing my mistakes and my failures and being able to laugh at myself would let other people get closer to me as a writer and an author and a person.

And I, that's what I really wanted.

And so I put a lot of laughter into the book and humor into the book because I just I didn't want it to be serious, like all the other Secret Service stuff that's out there.

All these books are about how serious the career is, and it is a very serious career.

But I wanted a whole different take on it.

I wanted something unique.

And I also love to laugh at myself and my mistakes.

And I learned from them and I grew from them.

And so there is a lot of laughter in the book because, for instance, I'll give you an example.

College was difficult for me because I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, an FBI agent, but I couldn't figure out what path I wanted to take regarding what degree I was gonna get.

And so I went through all these different majors because I couldn't figure out what was a right fit for me.

And in that chapter, I'm just I'm laughing at myself and my decisions and how I'm not cut out to pretty much do this and that, and biochemistry was not my cup of tea.

And so I just laugh at myself a lot, but I it so that other people can really relate to me as a person and an author.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I absolutely love it.

And I think that is super, super smart strategy, honestly, when going into the book.

And and yeah, I mean, and it makes it just because, like you said, there are so many books out there about Secret Service, FBI, that they're all those, you know, typical, you know, novels that we think of, the serious, you know, crime dramas, you know, where this is something totally different.

And I think the best thing that I read summing up this book, which is exactly what I picture the entire time you're talking, is legally blonde meets miscongeniality.

SPEAKER_01: That's right.

That is exactly what I'm going for in the book.

And my dream is to hopefully turn this into an Amazon series, Netflix series, film of some sort.

And my goal is to kind of put those two movies together to give script writers an idea of what I'm going for when I'm going for this film with regarding my book.

I just I love that laughter side of it.

And to be honest, I'm a I'm a rarity in the Secret Service.

Most people that I tell that I was in the Secret Service do not believe me.

They think I'm tricking them.

They, when they look at me again, they're judging a book by its cover, but they don't believe me.

And they kind of laugh in my face a little bit, and then I show them my book and I show them my pictures on my website where I was in my uniform and I'm actually really working for the Secret Service.

And obviously they believe me then.

But it takes a lot for people to believe that someone like me, who looks like me, could do what I did.

And I think that's that's the biggest takeaway and a big anomaly of the book.

And the reason I did make it so humorous is because already I'm an oxymoron.

I look like a Barbie doll, and yet not physically, what I'm saying is I'm blue eyes, blonde hair, but I'm just, I don't look like your typical Secret Service officer.

And then you've got this other side of me where I'm tough and I have a very thick skinned and I'm kind of tomboy.

I love to walk barefoot, I'll play in the mud, I don't have a fear of a lot of things at all.

And so you've got this, I'm just a complete oxymoron.

And so I think that that's why the book is so funny and humorous, is because you can't believe when you meet me as a person that I did this stuff, but then at the same time, you're like, wow, but she did.

I couldn't believe she could do that.

And so it's just this conflict of interest kind of thing.

And that's why I wanted it to be on the more humorous side as well.

SPEAKER_00: Well, I love it.

Absolutely love it.

So now where can we find this book at?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so you can find the book on my website, talkbackbarbie.com.

And if you order the book, it's a paperback book through my website.

I personally sign every single copy that I mail out, but you can also get the paperback at BarnesandNoble.com and you can get the Kindle on Amazon.

And so that those are the places that you can order the book.

SPEAKER_00: Well, that's awesome.

Awesome, awesome.

Well, well, listen, besides for me wanting to end it by telling anyone who's listening to this, that if you can purchase your book and encourage you to turn this thing into a movie, a series, I want that to be the outcome of our interview today.

Is that someone somewhere will get with you and be like, yes, this needs to be a movie, a series, because I'm super excited and I feel like this little interview and stuff, it's just not enough.

I need some more of this.

SPEAKER_01: So I do too.

I just, I, I, I'm pushing that road.

I would love to go down that road and figure out who the best fit would be for that.

And that's why I'm doing all these podcasts, honestly.

Number one, it's not just to sell my book, it's to promote the message of what Talk Back Barbie is about.

And Talk Back Barbie is about going for your dreams and being okay that your dreams change.

My dream of being an FBI agent changed, but that's okay.

But it's about fighting hard for who you know you can be.

And I didn't let a name like Talk Back Barbie define me.

I define the name.

Most people would say Talk Back Barbie could be a derogatory nickname, if you if if some people would take it that way.

But I took it and I made it about strength and I made it about empowerment, and I made it about proving yourself that if you have a goal and you have a dream, regardless if these people are discouraging you and putting you down and they're not backing you by any means, that if you dig down deep and you light that fire inside yourself, you can do anything that you set your mind to.

And I know that your story, Kevin, you're the exact, you have the exact same story where you just have this fire inside of you and you've just, you've accomplished so much through your personal story about blindness.

And it's incredible.

And that's what Talk Back Barbie's about is just going for your dreams and not letting the people with these discouraging things.

I mean, people are mean out there.

Look at social media nowadays.

It's about not letting the negativity fuel you negatively.

Let it fuel you to prove yourself, to show that you are worthy of who you say you are.

SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.

I totally love it.

Oh my goodness.

You are so awesome.

You are so funny.

I'm so excited for this conversation to be released, this episode, and super excited for people to get to read your book.

And I just want, Lauren, I just want to tell you thank you for coming on my podcast today.

And I just I wish you nothing but success moving forward.

SPEAKER_01: You too, Kevin.

Thank you so much for having me.

This has been a blast.

I love chatting with you and speaking with you, and I hope that we stay in touch.

SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.

And you know, for for any of you listening today, I hope that today's conversation maybe had you laughing, kept you entertained, and uh, you know, because that's that's kind of the goal with today's episode.

And sometimes we don't need to focus on such serious stuff.

Have some fun in life, and what more fun can we have than when we start talking about a book named Talkback Barbie?

So you got that right.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed today's conversation and look forward to seeing you next week.

And that's the lowdown with Kevin Lowe.

I hope today's episode inspired you, motivated you, and excited you to get out and enjoy life, no matter what obstacles may be standing in the way.