Teal Salloum, author of the new book Patterns: Stories and Notes on Remarkable People, grew up sitting on the couch, listening to his grandmother’s stories about the people she had met throughout her career in entertainment and television.
Years later, those stories have helped shape his recently published book, a collection of 17 short chapters examining the lives of people across music, sports, business and entertainment — including Monroe native Benson Boone, whose rise from a small-town musician to an internationally recognized pop star has made him a recognizable name far beyond Snohomish County.
Salloum, 24, is completing his final year at the University of Mississippi School of Law after earning an accounting degree from the university in 2024. He began working on Patterns about a year ago, initially intending to document his grandmother’s career before realizing the stories might offer lessons to a wider audience.
“There really was no intention of me writing a book when this project first began,” Salloum told the Lynnwood Times. “It was more just me writing stories about my grandmother and her career.”
His grandmother, Barbara Ann Thomas Salloum, worked in entertainment and television, including recording at the legendary Sun Records studio during the era of Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. She later worked at WLOX, an ABC affiliate in southern Mississippi, and interviewed celebrities such as Dolly Parton and Tom Hanks during trips to California.
Growing up in Gulfport, Mississippi, Salloum said he often heard his grandmother recount those experiences. Her stories introduced him to people whose careers spanned different industries and generations, sparking his interest in what made their lives worth studying.
“I’m somebody that likes to learn from the lives of others,” Salloum said.
Although his grandmother died a few years ago at the ripe age of 89, Salloum said preserving her experiences played a role in the book’s development. Her influence, however, became the starting point for a broader project examining the qualities that can contribute to success.
Rather than writing conventional biographies, Salloum built Patterns around the characteristics he believes help explain how people navigate their careers and lives.
Each chapter pairs a person with a particular trait, such as initiative, resourcefulness, adaptability or authenticity. The book brings together people his grandmother encountered through her work, individuals Salloum has met himself and others whose lives he found compelling from a distance.
The goal, he said, was not to suggest that one characteristic alone explains a person’s success, but to reflect on the decisions, behaviors and qualities that stand out when examining their lives.
The book’s website describes the project as an exploration of the recurring qualities behind remarkable lives, emphasizing that accomplishments tell only part of a person’s story.
“There’s people that are in business, but also people in sports and people that have thrived in music and entertainment,” Salloum said. “There’s people that my grandmother met and worked with through her career. There’s people that I’ve been able to encounter and meet in my own life. And then there’s people that I’ve never personally met, but that I just thought something about the way they moved through the world was really cool and worth noting.”
The 17 chapters are organized into five sections that follow people through different stages of their careers, from early signs of promise to their professional peaks and the legacies they leave behind.
For Salloum, the connections across those different lives are what give the book its name.
The stories may involve different professions, backgrounds and generations, but he said the traits that help people succeed can appear repeatedly across those boundaries.
One of those patterns, Salloum believes, is authenticity — a quality he explores through Boone, who grew up in Monroe before building a career that has taken him onto the international music stage.
Benson Boone is featured alongside country singer Hudson Westbrook in a chapter examining how authenticity can contribute to an artist’s rise. Salloum said the two musicians struck him as performers who present themselves genuinely, rather than attempting to manufacture a public image.
“I think his [Boone’s] authenticity has played a significant role in building such a loyal fan base. From the way he carries himself onstage to the time he spends connecting with fans after shows, he seems to have stayed true to himself even as his career has grown,” said Salloum.
Although Salloum has never met Boone personally, he said the singer’s behavior toward fans has helped shape his impression of him.
“I talk about how, at least from observing, he just strikes you as somebody that what you see is what you get,” Salloum said. “He’s, from what I’ve seen, that type of guy that stays late after concerts to be with his fans.”
For Salloum, those moments offer a glimpse into the qualities that may help sustain an artist’s connection with an audience as their career grows.
The chapter is not intended as a definitive explanation of Boone’s success, Salloum said, but rather his own reflection on the singer’s public persona and the characteristics he believes are worth examining.
That approach reflects a broader philosophy behind Patterns: looking beyond accomplishments to consider the traits and decisions that might help explain them.
Salloum had a specific audience in mind when he began shaping the book: young adults entering college and the workforce who want to learn from others but may struggle to find time for reading.
He also wanted to avoid the length and structure of traditional nonfiction books.
“I wanted each chapter to be no longer than about five pages and it to be a very quick read where you could pick it up, read for a couple minutes and finish a chapter and walk away with something cool worth thinking about,” Salloum said.
He describes the format as “doom-scrolling, but in print,” a comparison that reflects his decision to use short chapters, concise paragraphs and ample white space.
The intention is to make the book easy to pick up and put down without losing the substance of the stories.
The book’s 17 chapters feature people from a range of fields, including music, sports, business and entertainment. Among those named in the book’s promotional materials are Boone, Dolly Parton, Tucker Wetmore, Jaxson Dart, Nick Bare and Warren Buffett.
Rather than requiring readers to work through a lengthy narrative, Salloum designed the collection so readers can finish a chapter in a few minutes and leave with an idea to consider.
“Something that I’m really proud of about this book is that really there’s something in it for everybody,” he said.
The project took shape over less than a year, growing from a personal interest into a self-published book. Salloum worked with an editor based in Nashville, Tennessee, to refine the manuscript before releasing it through Patterns Press.
He chose self-publishing in part because he wanted to preserve the book’s short format rather than expand it to meet what he understood traditional publishers would expect.
Salloum said he handled most of the publication process himself, making the book available through Amazon and IngramSpark, a distribution platform used by bookstores.
Balancing the project with his final year of law school proved manageable, he said, because writing never felt like another obligation.
“It’s never really felt like work,” Salloum said. “It’s just been something fun to do.”
He graduated from the University of Mississippi with an accounting degree in 2024 and is now preparing to finish law school. With an accounting background, he is considering a career in tax law or corporate transactional work.
Whether writing will become a regular part of his professional life remains an open question.
For now, Salloum said he is concentrating on his first book, promoting it online and enjoying the conversations it has brought him.
The project also represents a way to preserve something of his grandmother’s legacy. The stories he heard growing up are now part of a collection intended to help others recognize the lessons that can be found in people’s lives.
Asked why readers should give the book a chance, Salloum returned to its central premise: that meaningful lessons can emerge from people whose experiences differ dramatically from our own.
The book is for anyone interested in understanding how people build careers, develop their abilities and leave something behind, he said.
Patterns: Stories and Notes on Remarkable People is available to purchase on Amazon.
Author: Kienan Briscoe
