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This is Fred Ball for Zions Bank, speaking on business.
With a love for the outdoors, Dian Thomas learned to light not only campfires but also her own ingenuity. Later she would ignite similar fires of creativity within others as she demonstrated her unique approaches to outdoor cooking and crafts in front of thousands of people on national television. It all started in 1974, when she combined her outdoor upbringing with her imagination and wrote the outdoor cooking book, Roughing it Easy.
At the time, Dian worked for Brigham Young University and traveled the nation as a speaker for the university's Education Week. To promote her book, Dian tells me she set up book signings, interviews and TV appearances in the various cities she would be visiting for Education Week. Dian would do a book interview in the morning and a demonstration in the afternoon. Thirty cities later, Dian found herself on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Her appearance on the show practically made her a household name, as Roughing it Easy became a New York Times best seller.
As her fame spread Dian found herself hunched over campfires as a cast member on NBC's Today show and later ABC's Home Show. Dian showed viewers how to use shovels as frying pans, pitchforks to roast hotdogs and steel wool for starting fires.
A complete collection of Dian's outdoor anecdotes and creative crafts can be found in the eleven different books she has written. Recently, though, Dian made the switch from demonstrating how to make gourmet foil dinners, to show how small businesses, entrepreneurs and authors can gain free publicity for their products much the same way she accomplished. Dian's seminar, How to Get a Million Dollars Worth of Free Publicity, outlines essential public relations and marketing skills. Those interested in participating in the free seminar can log onto milliondollarpr.com for more information. Dian says it is just her way of sharing her campfire with others.
For Zions Bank, I'm Fred Ball. I'm speaking on business.
