Bigfork resident releases first children’s book

Bigfork resident John Pogachar realized how easy small ideas can turn big after the success of his first project, “Love on Every Billboard.” When his grandson was born, he decided to channel that same positivity and love into his new children’s book, “Mom and Dad, 10 Things I Want You To Know by the Time I’m One Week Old!”

Pogachar’s “Love on Every Billboard” campaign started small, born out of a need to make positive connections during an age of political vitriol leading up to the 2016 presidential election. The message was simple: just the word “love,” written in all capital white letters placed against a red background. Pogachar decided to buy ad space on a billboard in Spokane, where he was living at the time.

“The whole thing with Trump and Hillary came about, with the election, and you would look at Facebook and just say, ‘Gosh, where is all the love in the world?’ And I just really screamed that out in my house, ‘Where’s all the love in the world?’ Little did I know that I had to start with myself and find it in myself,” Pogachar said.

Around this time he became interested in the work of former comedian turned motivational speaker Kyle Cease. Pogachar said this was part of a “spiritual transformation” he went through after he retired that focused on healing and meditation. He participated in a coaching program with Cease and spent many days camping and meditating in Kings Canyon, California. It was during this time that he got the idea for the billboard, but he was hesitant to share it with too many people.

“I held on to that idea for about a month and a half … it felt too big for me,” Pogachar said. “But then I started seeing the word ‘love’ all over the place — it was on people’s shirts; I saw it in display windows … I was visiting a friend in Victoria, British Columbia, and she had taken us out onto this wharf. On the way back, after looking at the ocean, I see this red rock sitting there and say 'I wonder what that is?’... I went over to it and the word ‘love’ was written on it. I put it back and looked up in the air and said, ‘OK! I’ll do it, I’ll do it,” Pogachar said.

With the help of a friend who was a graphic designer, Pogachar soon put up his first “love” billboard. He shared the news with Cease and other participants in his coaching program. Cease offered to buy another billboard space, and another and another — before he knew it, Pogachar had not only the support of his friends, but some financial backing as well.

“It was a huge lesson for me to learn about receiving things, you know when people start to try to give you things, allow that to happen, because I think the world is always trying to give us things,” Pogachar said.

Word about the billboards spread and soon they started popping up all over the country — specifically in places that could use a little extra love. Pogachar said they paid for two billboards in Marshalltown, Iowa, after it was ravaged by a tornado in 2018. Soon after, they paid for billboards in Pittsburgh, after a gunman killed 11 people at a Synagogue there that same year. Since its inception, there have been 722 billboards across the United States, not including those that have run in five other countries, like Russia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

“We lease them for about a month, so they don’t stay up that long. But, it’s always amazing when I get a phone call from somebody and they say, ‘I just love what you did, I had to pull off to the side of the road and cry,’ or ‘I was on my way to a surgery and when I saw the billboard I knew God had me, the universe had me. I’m going to be safe,’” Pogachar said.

Pogachar said this experience led him to the realization that his ideas are worth pursuing. When he found out he was going to become a grandfather, he had his next idea. It was at his daughter’s baby shower that he watched them open a present from a friend: a book written by a member in their family from a grandfather to his grandchild. Pogachar immediately told his family, “I could do that.”

“That night I went to bed with a pen and paper beside my nightstand, and I said ‘If I come up with an idea, just jump out of bed and write it down, because that inspiration will be with you for a moment and be gone when you wake up … sure enough, I sprung up at 1 a.m. and wrote down as much as I could and got everything down I could think of at that time. Then I went back to sleep, woke up the next morning and went and wrote the rest of the book at Starbucks,” Pogachar said.

Pogachar’s writing process took no time, but getting illustrations would prove more difficult. After not having any fruitful efforts with a couple of different artists, Pogachar ended up illustrating much of the book himself, with help from Chloe Helms.

“The longest part of the process was waiting for somebody else to do something, so if you have an idea and you want to do it, get started,” Pogachar said.

He said “10 Things I Want You To Know,” is inspired in part by what he believes adults can learn from their children.

“Mom and Dad, are you meditating? Because I’ve been meditating for nine months and I came out perfect,” Pogachar said, paraphrasing from his book. “ ...I have so much to teach you and so much you can teach me, can you be open to listening to a little kid? … Can you show me your hobbies and allow me to choose my own?”

The importance of nature is another lesson he wished to impart on his readers, particularly being a good steward of the land.

“It talks about nature: Are we going to have trees when I grow up? Will we have the windows open so I can breathe fresh air?”

The baby talks about eating healthy. He says ‘God made all sorts of vegetables in all different shapes and colors so we wouldn’t be bored, so are we eating healthy?” Pogachar said.

But maybe one of the most important lessons from his book is the message to trust yourself, and let that trust guide you through all sorts of facets of life. A message Pogachar knows from experience. Now with one book under his belt he is ready to put out another.

“There’s a second book that’s already been written and my publisher has it. This is going to be a series, so the next one will be ‘Mom and Dad, 10 Things I Want You To Know About Nature By The Time I’m One Week Old,’ It will talk about ‘how mountains are there to teach us how to climb’ and ‘how birds have a song in their hearts just like we do, we all have this song in our heart that we want to sing out’… it’s going to be a fun book,” Pogachar said.

Find “Mom and Dad, 10 Things I Want You To Know by the Time I’m One Week Old!” at Harvest Foods and Mountain Vibes Gallery in Bigfork. It is also available online through Amazon.