Welcome back to The Great Unfamous -- we’ve been on hiatus for the last year, but we’re back in 2025, and we fire it back up with a guest I’ve tried to land for almost three years.

Mark Williams taught me lessons about the breathtaking beauty of Durango, Colorado, how to fly fish and how you take on David-and-Goliath battles and win.

Mark's a world-renowned fly fishing expert, author of more than 20 books, a sports writer, an award-winning alternative school teacher, a cancer survivor, a public speaker, an entrepreneur and more.

But his best skill is his ability to storytell -- with a razor sharp wit and silver-tongue Texas drawl, he gets away with a lot because he's a cross between Odysseus and The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Meet the man with a knack for tricking people into believing in themselves and learn how he acquired this talent on this episode of The Great Unfamous.

MARK WILLIAMS BIO

Mark D. Williams is an educator, consultant, speaker and author. Williams has fished all over the world and is the author of the popular fishing/travel book, So Many Fish, So

Little Time: 1001 of the World’s Greatest Backcountry Honeyholes, Trout Rivers, Blue Ribbon Waters, Bass Lakes, and Saltwater Hot Spots from Harper Collins. Williams has written 22 books and most recently, co-wrote two books with wife Amy Becker Williams:

Weather Disasters (Skyhorse Pub.) and 50 Top Things to Do in the Enchanted Circle Northern New Mexico (West Winds Press.) Williams writes about travel, sports, outdoors, backpacking, camping, weather, gig businesses and more.

Williams recently completed his first crime-mystery novel, The Hollow Men, first of the Guy Harwin series (Longmire meets True Detective/Seven.) He is currently finishing the second novel in the series, Purgatory. He has two other novels ready for review: The Bedside Diaries, and The Bomba Shack. He has two western novels in a series but only discovered this past year that nobody is buying westerns anymore.

Williams has written hundreds of articles for numerous national magazines and newspapers including Dallas Morning News, SPORT Magazine, ESPN, ESPNoutdoors.com, Texas Sporting Journal, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Baseball Digest, Texas Rangers' Program, Beckett, Cowboys and Indians, Southwest Fly Fishing, Texas Sportsman, Texas Outdoors, Texas Fish and Game, Backpacker, Men’s Health, Men’s Journal, Flyfishing and Flytying Journal, Bass Pro Shop, Orvis News, Rocky Mountain Game and Fish and more. He is the author of two apps: Freshwater Flyfishing Tips from the Pros, and Sports Most Memorable Sound Bites (both Sutro Media.)

Williams has written: Freshwater Flyfishing Tips from the Pros, Fireside / Simon & Schuster; Trout Fishing Sourcebook, Menasha Ridge Press; The Backpacking Angler, Menasha Ridge Press; Flyfishing Southwestern Colorado, Wayfinder Press; Knots for Flyfishers, Menasha Ridge Press, Colorado Fly Fishing: Where to Eat, Sleep and Fish (Johnson Books) and The Bedside Diaries (Kindle) and with Stonefly Press, Learning to Fly Fish for Trout, and 49 Trout Streams Southern Colorado, University of New Mexico Press, to name a few. Owns several businesses including antiques, and online bookstores.

Williams was an award-winning teacher at North Heights Alternative School in Amarillo, Texas. Williams taught Social Studies and Multimedia, grades 9-12. Williams began teaching at age 40 after a career as a sportswriter and business owner. In 2013, Williams was runner-up finalist for the Brock International Prize in Education. His students produced award-winning documentaries, PSAs, books, articles, magazines, songs and albums, commercials, student-run bookstores, coffee-shops, other businesses and more. In 2013, he successfully guided the 1st high school in America to create a professional app for iTunes and Android.

Amazon book and bio page:

LinkedIn

Represented by David H Smith, Inkwell Mgt, NYC

MDW Amazon Page

If you like underdogs and cheesecake -- you’re in for a treat. Greg Franklin's story is a cross between "Rudy" and Will Smith’s "The Pursuit of Happyness".

Featured in the book “Don’t Keep Your Day Job” by Cathy Heller, Greg described an annoying voice in his head that just wouldn’t go away. It pestered, persisted, and repeated the same thing over and over: “You’re gonna make cheesecakes?”

So Greg Franklin did just that …

These Are Greg's Lessons:

4:07 -- Overcoming No

5:38 -- The Voice He Couldn't Ignore

18:17 -- 3 Years to Perfect the Recipe

21:51 -- Fired on National Cheesecake Day

25:31 -- Life of the Cheesecake Ninja

27:30 -- Myth of "I'm not good at"

30:28 -- 5 Things I Learned

31:00 -- Cathy Heller's book, podcast

36:56 -- The Amazing Saul Blinkoff

37:42 -- My Wife's Patience

39:14 -- Finding Positivity

40:30 -- How, When To Take The Risk

42:30 -- Finding The Cheesecake Ninja

How to Find Greg Franklin:

TheCheesecakeNinja.com ⁠⁠⁠

@thecheesecakeninja

facebook.com/thecheesecakeninja

More on The Great Unfamous: # Origins of The Great Unfamous: ⁠⁠⁠bit.ly/greatunfamous ⁠⁠⁠ #YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠bit.ly/gr8Unfamous⁠⁠⁠ #Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠facebook.com/gr8unfamous⁠⁠⁠ # All podcast platforms: ⁠⁠⁠linktr.ee/thegreatunfamous⁠⁠⁠ #IG: @gr8unfamous #Twitter: @gr8unfamous

For the record, when it comes to spirits and the paranormal, I wouldn’t call myself a believer or non-believer, but ever since a strange encounter in The Gettysburg Hotel in 1999, I’d call myself curious … Enough that my wife and I now take ghosts tours in most of the cities we visit -- which is how I met Brian Bloxsom. Brian was by far the best. His captivating tour was a window into the history, haunts and people of Asheville, North Carolina. And when I learned about his career as a 6th grade teacher and football coach at Rugby Middle School, plus his recovery from a motorcycle accident that required 17 surgeries -- I knew this was a person with lessons to share.

These Are Brian's Lessons:

5:44 -- 5 Lost Hours

11:23" -- What the hell is he doing in my house?"

16:19 -- Seeking acknowledgement

22:00 -- Opening Doors, Knocking Pipes, Cigar Smoke

27:06 -- A Gettysburg Ghost Story

33:18 -- Non-normal passions

38:03 -- Lessons in regret

42:52 -- Greatest influence

49:08 -- Don't leave it untried

More on The Great Unfamous: # Origins of The Great Unfamous: ⁠⁠bit.ly/greatunfamous ⁠⁠ #YouTube: ⁠⁠bit.ly/gr8Unfamous⁠⁠ #Facebook: ⁠⁠facebook.com/gr8unfamous⁠⁠ # All podcast platforms: ⁠⁠linktr.ee/thegreatunfamous⁠⁠ #IG: @gr8unfamous #Twitter: @gr8unfamous