"The world is one big giant oyster, and there's so many different ways to make a dollar, and if you're motivated, it can be made out of just about anything."
— Kira Hartley Klinger

Kira Hartley Klinger was 40 years old, newly divorced, with a teenager at home, no college degree, and a patchwork of side hustles behind her: cleaning houses, writing resumes, running a paper route with her boys. What she did have was five years of experience selling on eBay, a willingness to buy what nobody else wanted, and an instinct for finding treasure in the boxes at the back of auction lots.

She fell into vintage fabric entirely by accident — buying it cheap because it was there, then discovering customers in Japan and Australia who kept coming back for more. She taught herself to date a piece of fabric by its width and fiber content. She opened an Etsy shop. She started writing little essays on her listing pages about the characters she met at auctions, and customers began writing back: you need to write the book.

So she did. Twice. And those books led to speaking at quilting guilds, podcast guesting, and a California TV producer who signed her because she believed in the story. At 55, Kira became debt-free for the first time in her adult life.

Raymond Aaron talks with her about the wiggly path — the one you can only see clearly by looking backward — and what it means to follow what the world is quietly offering you.

Learn more and connect:
Kira Hartley Klinger on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com (search "Fabric Wars" or Kira Hartley Klinger)
Fabric Wars on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com (search "Fabric Wars Kira Hartley Klinger")

Resources mentioned:
Fabric Wars by Kira Hartley Klinger — https://www.amazon.com (search title)
Fabric Wars and More by Kira Hartley Klinger — https://www.amazon.com (search title)
eBay — https://www.ebay.com
Etsy — https://www.etsy.com
Respark Your Life Podcast — https://www.resparkyourlife.com

Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT-Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author!

https://www.aaron.com

Storytelling

"I want to use today up. I mean, I want to honor them, the people who didn't receive the gift. I want to honor the day, and I want to honor myself by making the most of it."
— Ray Hartjen

Ray Hartjen was 55 when he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma — an incurable but treatable blood cancer. His first instinct was to attack it physically: train harder, eat cleaner, beat the transplant timeline. Ten days in, sitting exhausted at a restaurant with his family, he realized he had pushed one instrument all the way up and let the rest of the band go quiet. The physical was everything; the mental, emotional, and spiritual had been left behind.

What followed was a simple exercise: draw a line, mark your birth on the left, your death on the right, and place an honest tick mark where you actually are. For Ray, that moment cracked open a new way of seeing time, people, and purpose. In the seven years since, he has published six books, built a global community around multiple myeloma, and rebuilt his life around what matters most — family, friends, fun, fitness, education, and challenge.

He also makes a warm, practical case that you are a better storyteller than you believe — and that your story is worth telling.

Learn more and connect:

https://www.rayhartjen.com

rayhartjen@gmail.com

Ray Hartjen on all major social media platforms — search Ray Hartjen

Resources mentioned:

Me, Myself, and My Multiple Myeloma by Ray Hartjen — available at https://www.rayhartjen.com and wherever books are sold; writer proceeds benefit the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation

Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation: https://www.themmrf.org

Respark Your Life Podcast: https://www.resparkyourlife.com

Raymond Aaron: https://www.aaron.com

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Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT-Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author!

https://www.aaron.com

"We don't grow spiritually when everything's going good. When we're blind and we're wondering what the future is gonna — that's when we're in that pain, that emotional pain and anxiety. It's when we grow spiritually."

Rand Timmerman grew up in poverty, survived Vietnam, built a 40-year legal career, fought alcoholism into his 60s, and got sober through AA. At 72, four years into his sobriety, he set out to hike the Appalachian Trail — 2,200 miles, 600 mountains, half a million feet of elevation change — alongside his grieving younger brother. What happened on that trail changed his understanding of God, of suffering, and of what it actually means to be grateful.

He describes standing alone on a mountain above the Hudson River at daybreak, raptors circling, New York City just visible on the horizon, not a single sign of human life — and feeling, for the first time, that his higher power was as large as the universe itself. That expansion stayed with him. The following year, he went blind on Christmas Eve. He was alone in a home with alcohol in it for two months. He never once thought about a drink.

Raymond presses Rand on the question most listeners will be asking: why does it seem to take so much pain to get there? Rand's answer is honest and oddly comforting. The hard times are not in the way. They are the way.

Learn more and connect:

A Spiritual Passage by Rand Timmerman — available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com

Resources mentioned:

A Spiritual Passage by Rand Timmerman — memoir of the Appalachian Trail hike, grief, sobriety, and faith
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) 12-step program — https://www.aa.org
The Appalachian Trail Conservancy — https://www.appalachiantrail.org
Respark Your Life Podcast — https://www.resparkyourlife.com
Raymond Aaron — https://www.aaron.com

Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT-Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author!

https://www.aaron.com