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Speech Transcript

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L. Scott Ferguson: Time to Shine today. Podcast First seat squad. It’s Scott Ferguson. I have a 2.0 interview with my good friend Aaron Bethune. From We Write Stories full transparency. I am kind of collaborating with him regarding getting, helping people get their stories out there to the world to help them write them, to help them share their experiences, to help others level up.

And we covered everything from the new AI phenomenon and story writing. To using their coaching aspect and how they use it to really help you kind of jar loose what’s in your brain to put it on, , pen to paper. So, I’m so blessed to bring this to you. Aaron’s such a great guy. I pick his brain quite often on things that I might get caught on.

It doesn’t even have to do with stories or whatnot. So, I know that you’re going to love this. If you have any aspiring authors out there, please share this with them. Or if you are, would just reach out to me and let me make a warm introduction to Aaron and WeWriteStories. And if you liked it, please smash the [00:01:00] like button and subscribe button.

My sponsors and affiliates absolutely love that. So without further ado, here is my 2. 0 interview with my good friend, Aaron Bethune from WeWriteStories. Let’s level up.

Time to Shine today Podcast Sparsity Squad. This is Scott Ferguson and I am super stoked ’cause I have a 2.0 interview with my good friend from north of the border Aaron Bethune. He has a company called We Write Stories and I am just full disclosure, I’m involved affiliate for it, gonna promoting the heck out of it.

With regards to helping you get your story out to the world is like a. I guess you could call it a la carte or a buffet or however you want to say it like of things to offer for really for you to get your story out there because a lot of places that I’m approached with, whether I’m at convention or other places, and they’re trying to pound.

Oh, we’ll write your story. We’ll do this. We’ll do that in person. And they don’t break it down like my guy Aaron does, , Aaron is an adventure, He’s from climbing the andes and making records to speaking around the [00:02:00] world and working with legit celebrities musicians entrepreneurs charities Government and corporations Aaron is always excited to see life through a new lens and help others uncover a new perspective He’s a guy that levels up on the daily.

So me and him are we rock our squads together and Aaron Thank you so much for coming on Please again introduce yourself to the Time to Shine Today podcast for our subscribers. First, what superpower do you have? That really no one knows about until now.

Aaron Bethune: I think it’s a superpower perhaps that I’ve learned for myself Which is i’ve learned that I have a lot of patience and I have also learned that I Am able to listen and that by listening It gives me such valuable insight that that cold quote around, you don’t learn something from hearing yourself speak has really, , amplified in a big way because it’s amazing what happens when you listen to others.

And what information comes from [00:03:00] that? Absolutely.

L. Scott Ferguson: What I have to add to your repertoire of superpowers is like. Curiosity, bro, because I’ll tell you what, it’s like we had a conversation, I guess, maybe one or two weeks ago, and you were like, really more interested. It’d be so hard to meet you at a networking event because you’re more interested in my story than telling yours, right?

So if we’re like, that’s the thing in a networking event, brother, it’s like my biggest goal is for me to walk away from somebody and then go, what the hell does he do? , because it’s like, I’ll get their card. I, I, I use the Ford Technique, family, occupation, recreation dreams. Once, , once I know everything and I, I go out to my car, write a thank you note to ’em and ask for a one-on-one and drop it in the mail.

Right, right. And I was like, dude, Aaron’s the same way. So if we were to meet, we’d just be asking each other questions and listening for shit, man. So that, that, that’s awesome, man. So tell me what’s been going on with you brother.

Aaron Bethune: Well it’s before I go there, I have to say, I, I, I think curiosity is so [00:04:00] key to every learning experience in life.

And for me, my, my background started in the entertainment industry. And a big part of it was driven by curiosity because as a musician, myself, I wanted to figure out how do you make a living for music? And as I discovered the different aspects of what it takes to have a career in music. , I would get curious about well, there must be more to it.

There must be more to it So I ended up working in every aspect of the music industry Because of that curiosity and then I got curious from there. Well, okay music obviously is not contained to one industry It’s all over the world it affects everybody and how does it affect people and that sort of took me outside of the music space?

And working with all kinds of people and organizations, but the curiosity thing , I just I actually talk about that a lot with my kids and saying how important it is to be curious and to tap into that curiosity because you learn so much and you get an opportunity to both learn about other people’s as you’re saying those networking events.

But you’re also able to I guess I could [00:05:00] segue into, to, to what I’ve been doing in, in, in my case, when it comes to working with authors with books, it’s amazing to find out about other people’s lives and coming at it from this place of curiosity, because I think what we end up finding is, is that we think we’re, , , Living in a world where we’re interacting with other people, which we are, but it’s, I think it’s rather surprising how contained our own experiences are to ourselves and, , and like when you get into social media, you see just a very thin slice of people’s life and reality and compare your entire life and reality to that person’s one little moment, , I think it’s an indication of how far off the mark we are of really connecting on a human level with where people are actually at in their lives and that interaction.

And so, , when you get a chance to hear people’s stories, it’s really intriguing to see how many overlapping challenges we all have and [00:06:00] how we are going through this experience of life. And we may be at different chapters of our lives, but ultimately. , that we’re in this place together.

And I think that, , both from a curiosity standpoint, from listening but also just sharing it’s, it’s amazing. And so, , yeah, I’m full heartedly on board with your concept of curiosity and how impactful that

L. Scott Ferguson: is. Do you think that the, the curiosity really that you have launched. We write stories because you want it like, okay, my, my podcast, I started literally December 19th of 19 and I did it super selfishly.

I wanted to beat people like you. Other coaches, entertainers, whatever, to pick their brain, because I’m super curious, to level up my game. Right? But, coming from a place of like, getting in on platforms, I got ranked in the top 2%, blah, blah, blah. But it all stemmed from curiosity. So, you think that curiosity really pushed you into WeWriteSource?

Because, dude, some ballers out there, dude. You know [00:07:00] what I’m saying? Like, you partied with them, hung out with them, , but you’re like, okay, I’m going to help people write books. Right. So

Aaron Bethune: yeah, so it was, it was a bit of a curiosity, curiosity. Actually, it’s going to sound funny, but the curiosity was, was my own of going, Hmm, this is curious.

Every person I’ve ever worked with, I end up in this sort of position of almost as a coach, because if, if, , if you’re here in life and you want to be here. It’s not just an external piece that has to change. It’s the internal piece that has to change with it. And so no matter what role I was playing, I found myself in this position of helping people, , develop themselves and that sort of personal development space.

And it happened to be within music and later on it got into other industries. as well. But what was interesting was that if we didn’t work on someone’s personal development, there was no clear path to success. Because if you don’t have the ability to constantly be improving yourself, the goals that you set, you never reach them.

And talent just gets you to the start line. And [00:08:00] so, , in that sort of recognizing of what was. It’s true, right? And as I recognize that that’s what was happening, I felt like, okay, this is something that’s naturally happening. I, I love working with people and helping people to achieve their goals.

So I thought, well, maybe I should focus that. , as the main thing that I want to do because I, , I’ve got into these, , the music space took me into film as well. And then ultimately I started ended up, , working with government agencies. I created the role of music culture ambassador for the state of Mississippi.

I ended up doing, , things all over the world with. Sports organizations and things like that. But ultimately, it always came back to if I go to the music culture ambassador role, for example, it started with a conversation with my client. What do you want to do? What will be success? How do we achieve success?

And it started with my client saying they wanted to be the spokesperson for the state of Mississippi, which they actually already were. They just didn’t recognize they were. And so we position that with the governor. [00:09:00] It’s , that’s how it ended up becoming a reality. And so , no matter what the project, it always involved that personal piece.

So I thought, okay, I’m going to launch a coaching company and I’m going to launch it with a very sort of specific goal in mind and most likely continue to work with the types of people I’ve been working with, but now in a full on kind of coaching position. And so I started doing my research and I realized that coaching is, is, is going to be in very, very similarly.

What yoga was at one point in time, yoga was not cool. And, , people were, I mean, my grandmother was a yoga teacher. My mother, my answer is kind of embarrassing. And now people wear yoga pants just to tell the world that they do yoga. And I thought, , here we are in a, in a time. In which people are starting to value experience over ownership.

And it made sense to me that for someone who is paying for their Netflix subscription, that at some point in time, they would see the value in paying for a [00:10:00] guide to the best experience of their life, which would be a coach. And so I sort of went down that path and I started thinking to myself, okay, well, I’m not sure what the coaching industry’s product really is beyond getting a retainer and hoping to hit certain goals.

But there wasn’t, , necessarily a product and this overlapped with a time when people started just, , out of the blue saying, Hey, Aaron, you’ve written some books, , how did this happen? How’d he do it? And I started to just have those kinds of conversations. And then , I. I suddenly realized from a personal experience that the process of writing a book is very transformational.

There’s, there’s, there’s a real requirement to focus your thoughts, to be able to take all of your information, knowledge, life experience, and put it into a concise format that transmits that to somebody else. And this Experience was very recent for me in a book that I’d been writing. That was sort of a personal [00:11:00] book.

And I thought to myself, well, there doesn’t seem to be a clear product to me in the coaching world. And the process of writing a book is transformational. And, , if you can transform with it. , the chances of being able to help transform your audience are pretty strong. And so I basically took time away from, from the music industry and I decided, you know, I’m, it was started the idea emerged for me in 2017 and we launched the company in 2021, which is during, of course, the, the pandemic.

And. I realized that, , as much as I’ll tell people this, we, , what makes us exactly the same as every other company out there is, is we will write a book for you and put it out there and distribute and do all the rest that you would expect what makes us unique as the process. And so what I decided to do was just.

, to find the process that would enhance the transformational aspect to it. That sort of coaching piece, while still putting out a product that would [00:12:00] look like any other book that sits on a shelf that reads like any other book. And, , ideally, , it becomes a best selling book. But at the end of the day, that the process would be what would make the experience unique.

And so we set about creating the process and going through proof of concepts. And. What we ended up with was a process that doesn’t, it’s not ghostwriting, we actually have a team of people that worked with the authors. And out of this process, we get to a finished manuscript. And so what’s really great about it is, is we’re able to get people involved in this process in areas that they are experts in, which doesn’t require being a writer.

You need writers. but you don’t need writers at every step of the way. And so, , we, we ran 16 books as proof of concept, which, , I think a few people have told me here, and that was a little overkill. And I would say

L. Scott Ferguson: maybe, but there’s a method to your madness. So absolutely bro.

Aaron Bethune: Well, and , the thing about it is, is it’s like, [00:13:00] okay.

At some point you’re going to find avatars you’re going to find sort of overlaps with people I’ll tell you one thing like for example at first I thought okay, this is a pretty touchy feely process because We require that people get pretty vulnerable, , a big, a big conversation that we have is nothing goes to print until you say it’s okay to go to print.

And for us to have really transparent, vulnerable, open conversations, we have to make it known that your story is safe with us. And so to get to that place, it’s not, what does someone want to hear? What does someone, , need to hear? How should I say it? , you don’t get into that space. You simply share your story.

And, , in order to do that, you have to have this sort of safe space. And I thought, well, this is a touchy feely sort of experience. And, and, and some of the first people through the door, so to speak, were alpha male kind of guys. And I was like, I don’t know, are they going to sort of think, Oh, this is too touchy feely for me.

But what was [00:14:00] interesting through doing all these different books was that it was actually some of these alpha male guys that were really. Requiring this process because it was something that they weren’t bringing to their own lives. It’s that typical kind. How you doing? Great, right? There’s no further comment.

Yeah, life’s great. It’s like therapy

L. Scott Ferguson: in a sense

Aaron Bethune: Absolutely. And so, , we had these different Types of people show up and what we were really happy about was is that our process As much as each book is unique the process works with everyone And there’s, there’s some very key components to it. One thing is that we use nonjudgmental empathetic listening.

And so. Every author to date has said things like, I feel hurt for the first time. You know, it’s, it’s been better than a lifetime of therapy. , people have gained clarity in hearing their story and there’s, there is some science to it. Like, so for example, when we have an experience in our life, we hold that experience and , our, our [00:15:00] memory is finite and so we don’t keep all the details, but we do hang onto the feelings and the pieces that stand out.

Right. And so what happens is, is we take that. feelings and emotions of that experience with us into the future. And quite often we’re carrying that same experience that we had, let’s say, when we’re seven years old with us today, , 47 years old. And what happens when we actually externalize these stories of which sometimes these stories never have been externalized, they’d be carried with us, but they haven’t been externalized.

So when we externalize them, now we actually start to become the listener of our own words. And you’re sharing this story and you’re actually taking what’s being held on to in your mind and you’re actually externalizing it so you don’t have to hang on to it in the same way anymore. So you’re actually getting space in your mind instead of that sort of memory that’s getting filled up with this stuff.

You’re actually able to let go of some of it. And so what happens is that now you’ve externalized the story. [00:16:00] Now you’ve had an audience who truly listened. There’s been no interruptions. It’s not like if you go to a dinner party and you were. You had some experience with a friend and the two of you at that dinner party and you start saying, Oh, it was this and it was that.

And then they say, no, it wasn’t. It wasn’t quite like that. , they give pushback because their experience of the same thing was slightly different in our case, we listen, we don’t push back. We want to hear what you felt and what went on in your point of view and your experience. And as we do that, the author themselves starts to hear their story.

Now, if I go back to that idea of a story of when they were seven and now they’re 47, It’s actually the 47 year old who’s listening to that story of them when they were seven. It forces them into this position of recognizing, wait a second, that’s kind of crazy, or, , how could I be thinking about it like this still, when so much of me has changed, yet I’ve been carrying that same feeling and emotion for so long.

And then what we’re able to do is, we, so, so [00:17:00] we, we hear these stories, But we’re actually able to even identify how people talk about these stories. So right down to the type of words that people use, and words are powerful, , they’re icons for much greater meanings. And so, , when we hear how people talk about these stories, we actually are able to hear the story.

But then when we turn around and help people to, , turn these books into things like speaking engagements, we’re able to Shift how they perceive the stories now by also working with how they talk about them. And as you do this, it’s amazing how your perspective on these experiences shift and change.

And so, , without fail, every one of our authors have, , had this experience of being heard for the first time, heavyweights lifted, , they’ll say things like, , well, I say a lifetime of therapy, which is a slippery slope in some ways, because that’s not what we’re not therapists.

But, , they have these experiences and what’s really amazing is they get focus [00:18:00] on the things that have served them and the things that have not served them. So in the end, people actually ended up making more money. They have more clarity on how they want to align their actions with their intentions.

I was talking to a, a, an author not so long ago who felt they were in a funk. And because we had gone through their entire sort of life story, well, what was really interesting was to see that. , they, they, they were saying, I can’t understand how I, I grew up in the ghetto and then fast forward, I’m having lunches with billionaires, , at the end of last year, how did that happen?

And as we’ve gone through their story, one of the ways that happened was that in, in a curiosity, of course, a big piece of that was that in every step. of their story when they leveled up. It was because they would, , whether you call it punch above their weight class, if it was, , doing something that was bigger than themselves, the fact was, is they had to stretch in order to, , get to that next place.[00:19:00]

And so, , between curiosity and pushing themselves beyond their existing limits, setting the bar higher and going for it. They were finding themselves in really intriguing, , situations. And so when they, , got to this place where they felt like they were in a funk, it didn’t take much to realize that it was because instead of reaching for the next thing and going above and beyond themselves, and maybe finding a greater meaning, a greater purpose than just a business deal, they were in this position where, , money wasn’t really the issue, but at the same time, they weren’t finding fulfillment.

And as soon as they recognized that what they were currently doing was. , leaning on what they already had and what they already knew, and , they were actually not going for something greater than themselves or where they were at. So it was like, , the following week we speak and they’re like, Hey, this is what’s gone on in the last seven days.

And it was life changing because they’d acknowledged it. Like, yeah, I recognize that I’ve been, , letting myself [00:20:00] basically just. Not relax because I think everyone needs to relax your

L. Scott Ferguson: process allows them to stretch their comfort zone Inch by inch right like it’s not like boom. You’re out of it, right?

It’s like you have them stretch it and in the in And i’m just kind of like reading you back my feelings here that during that time They’re giving themselves the grace and space and also becomes almost therapeutic for them to 47 year old , on the, on the view back down, right? Absolutely.

Aaron Bethune: And I think that the, the thing is, is that, , this is just my own personal experiences and it’s definitely emphasized in, in at least Western culture, that being busy is good.

, sleep is for when you’re dead, , there’s this sort of attitude that go, go, go, go, go, go, go is a good thing. And I personally have my greatest ideas when I’m, , whether it’s on a holiday I spend time meditating , for me, those moments away are opportunities to reflect and I think that , in some ways, [00:21:00] whether you, , go on some sort of a retreat, or whether you take a vacation, or whether you, , go become a yoga instruct in India after a month, whatever you do to find that sort of moment to pause and reflect, it’s incredible how impactful that is.

And so this process really, I mean, is. Our why is to help people pause and reflect and uncover who they are. Our how is to use frameworks, including books, to help people to pause and reflect and uncover who they are. And our what becomes books, but it’s also events and masterminds and, , other things like that.

And, , it’s, It’s a when you pause and reflect that I think you gain the most clarity around, , who you are, what you want to do, what your life purpose is, how to align with that. And it’s amazing how many people, I mean, I’ve, I’ve met a lot of unhappy, successful people and , it’s not supposed to be that right.

It’s supposed to be that, , I make all this money and I’ll be so happy and I’ll do this and I’ll be so happy. I met a lot of [00:22:00] really unhappy, successful people. And, , I think that if you don’t pause and reflect, then, , that’s when you can crash and burn. And so in many ways, this is a process to pause and reflect, except you get a book out of it.

And so, and there’s a lot of leveraging. You can become

L. Scott Ferguson: a better person to yourself, which you could feed over into your family and friends because they see that I can see the therapy that’s actually working without, and like you said, it’s a slippery slope there, but. I like that. So let’s dig in a little bit into the, the, the process, the process, my dude, and Scott, me and AB were kind of just joking off, , Mike is, , he’s from north of the border and they say process and we say process and just kind of funny anyways, like, let’s get into that process, man, like, like what, what would have to happen if, , if it was people out there wondering, Hey man, I got a story inside me.

I know she never knew how it went. What’s the process with rewrite

Aaron Bethune: stories? Yeah, so our process is a little different than how I think a lot of people approach [00:23:00] writing a book. There’s a lot of different approaches, and of course, , there’s a lot of information out there for anyone that’s never written a book that wants to write a book.

But a common one is to, , to come up with an outline and to work from the outline to create the book. In our case, we say show up. And we’re going to figure out what the book’s about through going through this process. So our very first step, we do have an onboarding form, which is, , it’s fairly lengthy because we are going to write a book together and we want to make sure we’re on the same page before we start.

But ultimately what we do is we have this, this intake aspect. And then the next thing we do is we set up what we call the overview and outline sessions. And that is for us to get a very high level view of your life. And so and we do just that. We don’t let you get into the details. And when you do this high level overview, you naturally underscore your peaks and valleys of life.

And so we go through this first step. And that enables us to have a better understanding. So between the onboarding form, our, , conversations [00:24:00] prior to starting, then this sort of first couple sessions in which we’re getting this overview and outline out of this, , high level 30, 000 foot view then essentially we do create an outline and we start to have an understanding of the type of book and what we’re trying to , accomplish with telling your story.

Then essentially what we’re doing is we’re, we’re zooming into those stories and we’re getting, , the information and the details and the background and the experience. And then we zoom in further and we’re getting the insights and how those insights are still informing decisions today. And so it’s, it’s a process in which we do have an outline, but it’s conversational.

So when we’re having these conversations, , we we did we were challenged with , someone said can you do a book for x And we thought okay, we’re taking on this challenge and we were actually able believe it or not to create a book With six hours of audio from our author And that on one level it is it is.

Wow. It is amazing. I think on one level and that was a 200 [00:25:00] plus page book which is a great book

L. Scott Ferguson: and I know you guys interviewing him or just brains brain dumping or

Aaron Bethune: So it’s, it was an interviewing process that being said the six hours, I would say, , it was amazing on the one hand, but, but essentially that’s not our end goal.

Our goal isn’t to see how quickly we can do it. We know how quickly we can do it. And for certain clients and certain products, we can do things that quickly. But ultimately what we want to do is we want to get to the point where we’re, we’re, we’re certain that your story has been told. And the experience of telling your story is, is like anything else.

I mean, you don’t, , get on the call the first time and you’re just like at ease and feeling like an actual storyteller. We, , we have to. To get there, right? And so we have these conversations on a weekly basis in which we’re getting these insights. And we actually have what we call a story explorer and a story analyst.

That’s part of the conversation with the author themselves. And we actually take all of [00:26:00] our conversations and we have, , transcripts that come from it. We color code things. We get into even analyzing word choices. And we essentially gather all of this information, and when we’ve reached our sort of ending point of the phase that we refer to a story exploration at that point in time, we take all of that content and we begin structuring it so that we’re able to start turning that into the book, and then from there, it goes into what we call story magic, where we have a storyteller Put all of those pieces together.

So the book now becomes a page turner. So the experience that the author has in that story exploration phase is where they get a lot of that sort of transformative benefit. We’re able to pair people with coaches after that, if, if that’s, , something that makes sense, which I, I definitely advocate, but it’s not , for everyone that being said we have people that want to write their own books.

And so we’ll go through that story exploration phase with them. [00:27:00] And then we’ll turn around and we’ll give them all the assets that we create, which includes things like chapter summaries, book summary, the outline, a sample chapter that’s been approved by the author, and they can take that information and start writing their books.

So they never deal with the blank page. So it’s, it’s kind of this combination of. , sharing your story, telling your story, gaining insights into your experiences that you can reapply into your life to better align your actions with your intentions, coupled with us basically writing your book for you, or, , working with you to write your book yourself.

There’s, , definitely people for both of those, , ways to go. I mean, some people really do want to write their own book and I. I think it’s an amazing experience to go through but our, our sort of, I guess you could say our flagship product is we write it for you where you don’t put pen to paper.

And it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s very, very insightful because you start to see these patterns with authors and, , this overlap of human [00:28:00] experience. And, , I think, again, that the process of being able to tell your story in a way that is able to be organized for you, it’s, I, I, I have a hard time not going into music metaphors.

So, for example, when a band or an artist comes to the studio with a song to the producer, quite often that song may, , whether it’s full band or someone’s playing on an acoustic instrument. That’s the version of the song when it got to the studio before the producer and blah, blah, blah. When you, , create that song in the studio and you’ve got that, , finished, produced piece, that’s what the band or the artist takes on the road to perform because that’s the version of it.

Right. And they’ve learned something in that experience, undoubtedly, which turns into the absolute best version of that song they want to then perform to the world. Right. And this is very much like that. It’s, it’s your song, it’s your story, but going through this process is enabling us to help you tell your story in the best possible way.[00:29:00]

You’ve done a lot of work in this by being able to share, and that’s going to change you. And then what we want to do is make sure that that experience gets put into a book. So we can change more people than just the author, but also the audience that it goes to. And it is similar in that way. Yeah, it’s,

L. Scott Ferguson: it’s very similar.

There’s a lot of parallels to that. So the, the perfect. Writer for you. Is it any genre in here? Are you more like self help or Business parables or what’s what’s the story there?

Aaron Bethune: So I would I would I mean if you’re looking for a label, I would call it non fiction creative non fiction so that would get into the space of a number of the things you just said.

Heroes,

L. Scott Ferguson: journeys, yeah.

Aaron Bethune: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, for example we do have different types of books that we do, which we sort of identify with the author as being the, , the right fit. We have expert books and transformational books, brand books, family [00:30:00] legacy books. There’s, , a lot of people out there that want to share the stories of their parents and grandparents.

That being said, the, , the ideal, instead of talking about the ideal author, Essentially what, what you get out of this is a book that, , tells your story and stories are the best way to share information anyway. That’s what we do. And then we always have insights as part of the books.

So we were able to, like from a design standpoint, we want people to get content that matters from anywhere they essentially open the page. And so whether you’re getting, , short insights and summaries of chapters, if you’re reading the , we want that information to be valuable to the audience.

, if, if you’re a marketing guru and we’re writing a book that taps on your experience as a marketing guru and you want to help other people become marketing gurus. , you’re going to achieve that, but we’re not just going to say, do this, this, and this. Right, add the story aspect to it, right?

Exactly, and it’s, [00:31:00] and you need that context of story to understand how that person became who they were, are, sorry. And by understanding how they became who they are, you get a much better understanding of how you yourself might want to, to, to follow in their footsteps. Like, it’s not about doing what someone else does, it’s about being who they are.

And I don’t mean you give up who you are to become somebody else, but if you want to replicate the success of somebody else, you can’t replicate the things they did. You have to replicate the place they came from. And. That is, is shared through story though. , when you are looking at, I mean, music again is a good example.

Like if, if everyone wore a meat dress, it doesn’t mean they’d have the success of, , well we all know who wore a meat dress. But , the point, lady Gaga, , the fact is, is it’s not doing what another successful person [00:32:00] did in order to be successful. I mean.

L. Scott Ferguson: Creativity. She had that in so that you can apply that into your life in your own way.

Right.

Aaron Bethune: Absolutely. Like, where was she coming from? Who was she being in order to be able to, , take that sort of risk, , put herself out there. I mean, if you look at singers, I mean, the greatest singers that we can all think of have a unique voice. So you’re not going to be unique if you imitate that singer’s voice or try and sound more like, or be more like, or look more like, but I think if.

If you align with who they are as where they’re coming from, then you have a much greater, , chance at success in any field. And so that’s a big part of sharing stories is it’s not a, here’s a book on how to become a chess master. , there’s still an aspect of how does that person enable their, their brains to foresee moves in the

L. Scott Ferguson: future and stuff.

Yeah, exactly. [00:33:00] Eric, what do you think the, the lot of people are bringing up this AI stuff, right? Like, what do you think about, are you aligning with it or are you totally against it? Or I just have to ask you because you are in the business with it.

Aaron Bethune: , that’s a, that’s, I love that question. That’s very present for, I think, a lot of.

Humanity right now. So when chat GPT came around, obviously AI has been in things for a long time, but chat GPT, I think really made waves in the general public. And when, when that showed up, of course, if you’re in the business of writing, you could be concerned. Now, for me, I see it as being very similar to music.

, music is about in my, this is my opinion and any listener out there will have theirs. I think with music, one of the most important things for great music is to have the human eras, the emotion, the raw elements that make for the human experience to [00:34:00] resonate amongst us. So for example, when you hear Someone’s voice cracked slightly you could call that an imperfection But it’s the it’s the imperfection of it that makes for it to be perfectly aligned with Helping you feel something so when we go into the studio and we start to remove all of the imperfections Something starts to sound off.

So if you take autotune, for example, which tries to perfect the the tuning of your voice in my, , sort of producer mind. My feeling is we need to find an element within the music that’s going to still tap into the imperfection of the human experience. So when we look at things like AI, like chat GPT, first of all, It’s reviewing the past it’s looking up until I think 2021 and , it’s doing very much like you could do in the studio with magic.

It’s not able to recreate intuition or creativity, but it’s able to recreate what the [00:35:00] product of intuition and creativity was. And in that sense, it’s. Creating almost too much perfection in the writing, even if you ask it to write in all sorts of styles and you feed it all the information you can, cannot be the imperfect human that we are.

And our word choices are how we, , create emotion and feeling in others. And they’re not perfect. And sometimes it’s the absolute, , grammatically incorrect thing to say or do, but the reality is it’s the most. Effective way to communicate a feeling and emotion. So on the one hand, the idea that AI is going to write your books for you.

, sure, you could, you can feed it information to a point and you can achieve that goal. Something’s going to feel off. Something’s not going to make your flavor on it. Yeah. Like, like I tell myself, are we in five years time going to be telling our friends along the lines of man, I just finished my fifth AI book.

It was amazing. , yeah. I can’t believe like that, that latest AI [00:36:00] single like that’s so good Like i’m not saying it’s not gonna happen. Maybe it will but i have a hard time thinking it now The other part of it is , we have competition in the world, which is really healthy and great.

And i’d say they’re not really competition because they’ve been doing it for longer than us. Sure that being said Their why is ultimately to try and help everyone on the planet tell their story Share it with the world and I would say the fastest way to do that is using ai in our case Our whole thing is this, , human experience, the opportunity to pause and reflect so that we’re able to, , share that one to one human thing, right?

And AI is not going to do that. Now, what I will say is what I’m very fascinated with is how AI is able to help with organization and things like that. I will say, for example. There are studies out there that show that AI were 85, was 85 percent more accurate than judges when it came to who could be able to post bail.

And [00:37:00] that was because they had no feedback of the human, , face, right? They weren’t able to, oh, this person looks sorry. I think they’re not going to do anything bad while they’re out on bail. The AI didn’t look at that. They just looked at the data. And the A. I. For that reason was was more accurate than the judges.

So one of the things that A. I. Is really good at is is able to, ? Look at things like transcripts and provide information from what it perceives that I don’t think any human would necessarily hit on in the same way as AI can. So from our standpoint, I’m very interested in how AI can help , reduce some of the elements of busy work, but, and by doing that enable for the human work to be more valuable, more focused, more in line with what people love, more creativity and the human unleash more creativity.

Like, I think like if we were simply having a conversation around AI, of which I’ve definitely had lots of these conversations, My thing to anyone would be, and I have a friend who’s a data scientist, and they did this little diagram where they said, , here’s [00:38:00] an amateur’s ex knowledge in a certain field, and here’s an experts.

And of course the experts is larger than the amateurs for people that don’t see my fingers when the amateur adds ai. So it surpasses the expert’s knowledge. Sure. When the expert adds ai. Bark seeds, the amateur’s knowledge. The point is though, is if you’re going to go out there and use AI and say, I want you to write a blog post about the 10 top things to wear to Mars next summer, then, or, or the best SEO tips and tricks for 2024.

You don’t have to have any understanding of Mars fashion or of SEO. It will do that for you. Sure. But the most effective way in order to be able to use the tools that exist is you need to know the outcome you want, and you need to understand the input you’re providing. So if you have the understanding of the input, the knowledge, the experience, the expertise, and , you’ve created what’s going to go in it yourself, and exactly what you want to get [00:39:00] out the other end, then that tool can become useful.

But to just show up and say, there’s a tool, I’m going to ask it this, and it’s going to do this great job. Think again,

L. Scott Ferguson: that that’s awesome. Best freaking explanation of how to use the AI for organization. Absolutely. Yeah, I, I was taking notes like crazy while you’re saying that because I mean, it’s like the AI takes away a lot of the person, like if you were to tell like Bob Dylan to take the nasal out of his singing, right.

, you actually gave me time to think about something and I don’t want to sound like we’re everything to everyone, but one of, , following up on the AI comment, I think the thing is, is that you still have to have the raw content in the first place. And so in our case, , one of the things that we also do, which came from this, these books, , the process of creating these books was we recognize that we’re able to use the same process to create any Size content or length of content, whether it’s a book or whether it’s an [00:40:00] article, and so, for example, people that want to be thought leaders, , we’re able to use our exact same process to create articles for third party platforms that help people position themselves as what I call thoughtful, thoughtful leaders, but the point of the matter is, is that.

Aaron Bethune: , when, when you create content that’s valuable in the first place, then you can do all sorts of things, but, , giving it to your marketing team to tell them, here’s, , content for a year to go out and put out there. The fact is, is that, , these tools are amazing. There, , there’s a lot of, , things they need to work on to improve them.

However, , at the end of the day, it’s the content that goes in and what you want to get out. That makes those tools most useful. So anyways, I had a moment there to, no, that’s

L. Scott Ferguson: fantastic, man. It’s cause I mean, AI is. Awesome for me, , I mean, because if I get stuck on something, I can get creative, my creativity plug it in and it’ll plug me back like a, like kind of a non [00:41:00] creative thing.

So it helps me because I’m just I’m a Pisces dude. I’m a dreamer, right? So it helps me, , stay leveled with that, , and, and AI goes so far back. I mean, I’m old enough to remember when the teacher would say everybody put their calculators away. We’re having a math test. Calculator is nothing more than AI.

It was, you plug something in, it spit out an answer. And then of course it went to desktop computers, laptops, and, , everything else, but the, this whole new Terminator style, , if you follow the Terminator movies, right. Skynet or whatever, it’s like, it’s, it does get a little bit crazy, but let’s move into kind of like an abbreviated kind of lightning round here, I got some questions for you.

You can be quick with them.

Aaron Bethune: But I feel compelled to tell you one last thing about AI because it goes back to the very beginning of this conversation around curiosity. What I’m hugely curious about, and I’m finding this to be something I’m just really, , it’s, it’s in my own time and as a team to Is looking at conversations and in a completely different light, which is [00:42:00] reverse engineering the conversation because go back to that idea of what you want at the other end and what you input, you actually have to start at what you want to then be able to come back to the input.

And it’s a really fascinating thing to look at conversations. And I guess, , I made a comment about, , someone who’s a chess player. I mean, it’s kind of like chess. , you have to understand what moves it’s going to take to accomplish your outcome. And, , I think the organization

L. Scott Ferguson: that you brought

Aaron Bethune: up before.

Absolutely. And I think that the idea of thinking around conversations in new ways, it’s, yes, it is a form of manipulation for sure. But it’s it, I think it provides insight also into how you have conversations with people and questions, right? Because you have to be able to ask the right question to provide the right output or provoke the thought that goes into the answer.

Absolutely.

L. Scott Ferguson: No, it’s beautiful round you, you have to, because Yeah, a hundred percent. If you have, I, I just, I, what I took away from it is it’ll help with the organization [00:43:00] and be able to, like, I can plug in something and say, , do you feel that this is you, you are the best writer in the world. , , da, da, da, and is this written in the right, , context?

Is it written in the right order? Chronologically, stuff like that. And like almost a hundred percent of the time, it’s kind of right. , which I really enjoy that. But again, they don’t know my thoughts. They don’t know exactly what I’m feeling. The, the, the process that goes into what I did in 51 years of my life, but it will help with the organization.

So, yeah, absolutely. Good. One, I was gonna say,

Aaron Bethune: well, one thing that technology repeatedly does is as it advances, it just emphasizes the importance of human creativity and intuition and the things that. that machines cannot do. And I think that if there’s anything, , people get concerned around job loss and undoubtedly it will affect a lot of people’s jobs.

But at the same time, I think it’s an opportunity that indicates for us that what’s most important about ourselves is our human qualities. And. When we can [00:44:00] focus on those, it’s not giving anything up. It’s actually giving ourselves an opportunity to focus further on those things. So anyways, this is a topic that I’m really interested in.

That’s why. No,

L. Scott Ferguson: I feel you, man, because they brought it up to me. Like I spoke at the SCAD in Savannah, , the Savannah college of arts and whatever, and it was like, they thought about it. I’m like, listen, become unique with your, what you’re doing, because anybody can go on journey or whatever and put on wherever they want, but.

If you sign your name and it is yours, it’s like, that’s where we’re starting to bring back the dollies, the Michelangelo, like all that stuff, , that you can become unique. Granted, you get more known when you’re dead, but still you’re actually putting out content that is, that’s yours, unique, and it can, .

Blast through the, , time. So, yeah, we got to move on a little bit just because, , I want to keep everybody engaged. I just said, so I believe in the plus equals minus like version of life, right? Like one, I find something that I [00:45:00] want to emulate and just kind of work towards them. Equals, , it’s like you and I, we rap, we bounce stuff off each other.

And then minus is, , sending that elevator down and bringing people up to you, right? I live the plus equals minus life on a daily. So who is your plus man? Who’s the one person in your life that really you said, bam, that’s it. And you really want to maybe learn from them, pick their brain or who’s that person.

Aaron Bethune: , that’s a, that’s a, that’s a tough question to ask because my curiosity makes me want to know about a lot of people what was, but I’ll, I’ll, I’ll answer it this way. I was very recently, as in last week, I visited my childhood home. And when I lived in that home, I lived with my grandparents and my mother and it made me think of my grandfather and.

What he had had to live through in order for us to live in that home And I think that actually rekindled my respect and belief in what’s

L. Scott Ferguson: possible through my grandfather That’s awesome, dude. So if people Really knew [00:46:00] Aaron they would know what?

Aaron Bethune: Well, that’s interesting. I’ve, I’ve reconnected with a lot of people from my younger years and I have been told by many people, the level of patience that I have and generosity.

I I was given a Tibetan name last year in which translates to ocean of generosity. And I feel a little silly to say that it’s Jim Pugatsu. And I, , I shouldn’t be the one to say that, but I do resonate with that Idea of generosity because I think that if we’re able to serve Then other people’s happiness and and well being and accomplishing their goals will undoubtedly do our Will help us reach the same so

L. Scott Ferguson: love that man.

So what did you have a really firm belief? About when you were younger that’s really changed

Aaron Bethune: that’s changed.

L. Scott Ferguson: Convicted about bam, bam, bam. But now you [00:47:00] look back and you’re like, wait a minute.

Aaron Bethune: Yeah. I think that, I think an important one for me being a parent is there’s a moment in time where you recognize that well and truly the hand that you’re the helping hand you’re looking for is at the end of your own arm.

And when you realize that anything and everything you want to accomplish is possible. from your own, , inertia and abilities, that is a life changing thing. So that’s the shift away from, , whether it’s parents or people around you that you feel are your, whether it’s, , the people we count on or whatever.

I mean, that’s up to a point, right? But that moment in which you recognize that you yourself are an incredibly powerful being capable of anything. That is when things change. And, and, , that’s what came up.

L. Scott Ferguson: Dude, that’s freaking amazing. That’s probably the best answer I’ve ever had on that. That’s that’s fantastic.

So how about the last question on this, but what, because you’re an [00:48:00] entertainer and you’ve worked with them, what record one record is. The one that is like, that you remember that just influenced you the most? And I know it’s hard to answer because you probably have rankings and different genres of stuff.

But if you go back to that one, there was a record by ELO when I was a kid and it just stood there and I made my mom play it and play it and play it. Right. It was the one with the spaceship. It was double album. Like what, what was that record, man, that you remember? Maybe the record that has the most emotional attachment to your childhood.

How about that?

Aaron Bethune: Well, I’m going to answer it much like these last questions. So I, when I was about five years old, I would ask for Elvis records and I didn’t actually know that Elvis’s second name was Aaron until I was probably a teenager. So I don’t know what that says about me being a fan of Elvis or not, but that was, I was really into that sort of fifties and sixties music far before I got into other [00:49:00] things as a guitar player.

But fast forward to a few years ago, I ended up producing a record. with one of Elvis’s guys and with a bunch of and, and one of Chuck Berry’s guys and basically BB’s, BB King’s guys. And I did that in a pretty legendary location. And it was, so the record that I produced. has a direct attachment to my childhood because I got to not only work with some of my, , childhood icons, but I got to hear firsthand the stories of those icons from those people in a space that was legendary for the type of performances that happened at it.

And that the making of that record will always be incredibly valuable for me personally, independently of whether people or other people out there find it to be a good record or not, the experience of it. I mean, , walking into this location with Bebe’s guys playing, the [00:50:00] thrill is gone. In this bill, I mean, it

L. Scott Ferguson: was a moment and Elvis.

I mean, come on. That’s

Aaron Bethune: that’s legendary, bro. What I’ll just I’ll tell for the for listeners out there, , for example, Elvis used to pull his pants down on stage and moon the entire band while performing. Who knew, right? The front, the audience didn’t see it. , he’d do that whole thing when they get back from tour and he’d say, Hey, you want to go get a peanut butter sandwich?

And they fly across the country. Elvis used to love having a jet pilot for his, his airline, his air when he flew, because he liked to have the the pilot. Roll the plane. And so they actually went on on the the Rolling Stones plane at one point, which had two fireplaces on it. And sure enough, , Elvis got them to roll the plane.

Oh, yeah, just these kind of little stories. And you’re like, and there’s far more of them, obviously, but absolutely. But that was pretty momentous

L. Scott Ferguson: for me that I love that and I’m blessed to be able to work with, , like UFC fighters, , mindset and some major league baseball players and just hearing some of the stuff that goes on, [00:51:00] right.

And the stories that are told, it’s just pioneership. And that’s, that’s awesome. So as we wind up here, man, how can we find your brother? Well, you can find me like us now, since I’m going to be Plugged into WeWriteStories. Absolutely.

Aaron Bethune: Well, you’re going to be able to find us at www. WeWriteStories. com. And I have a personal website, which is AaronBethune.

com. But for everything we’ve talked about today, www. WeWriteStories. com. And yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m always interested in hearing people’s stories. And so for me, even getting on the phone with people and just getting a chance to touch base, I gained from it. I think other people gained from it. And I would love to hear from, from anyone, whether it’s through email, which I’m happy to share my email directly as well.

L. Scott Ferguson: Yeah, I’ll put all that in the show notes, brother, a way to get a hold of you. And also, , you can get a hold of me as well for a warm introduction squad, , to, to air, but I need you to leave us with one last [00:52:00] knowledge nugget we can take with us internalize and take action on.

Aaron Bethune: Wow. Well, I think if we tie it to story, story is.

And I think that if there’s something that we can all do, it’s , I’ve mentioned this earlier, but it’s listen, , give someone else an opportunity to be heard. And the best way to do that is to not think about what you are going to say next, , not, , come back with something you’re going to say, and this can be applied to anything.

If someone’s saying something that you have an excuse to say, like. Forget all of that, but listen to what someone has to say in any context of whatever that may be, whether they’re sharing their story or they’ve got something on their mind they want to tell you, but just practice listening because one of the things that’s so incredible about listening is is that you actually take in that information, you absorb it.

And you understand something about life that you probably didn’t know quite so well until you heard [00:53:00] someone else’s version of it. So that’s what I’d recommend. And the last thing I would say is get eight hours of sleep a night, because it’s amazing how that helps us and our minds work better.

L. Scott Ferguson: I love it.

It’s squad. I just had a 2. 0 fun conversation. with my good buddy Aaron Bethune. And, , he’s a guy that really curiosity is his jam, right. And, , in actually listening, I mean, this guy listens with his neck. He doesn’t just listen with his ears, but he listens with all of his senses from his eyes to, , he’s watching you for posture.

He’s listened for voice differences. , he’s, Really interested in your story. I mean, we think we live in an interactive world, but we are kind of so contained within our stories that it has to be let out. I mean, get, it’s almost a form. And I say this loosely, a form of therapy to, to get out your overlapping challenges that we have, because you don’t know.

Who you can help. I mean, he really brought up that coaching is kind of like the new yoga, , people that know me, , I’m on [00:54:00] my mat, , a couple of mornings a week and I wear my native yoga shirt around, but, , coaching is really that that’s something that’s out there that can help you value the experience and your ownership that you have, , writing a book is Aaron reminds us.

It’s very transformational. , it’s a format that will transmit to the world and that we write stories is unique. It is, it enhances kind of the coaching piece that’s within there. So when it’s done, because he does this really through empathetic, nonjudgmental listening, no matter what your story is, him and his team are all of those, , again, he’s a great listener and he passes that down.

Through his team and big thing about we write stories as they start with the pause and reflect, , remembering and recovering who you are so you can get the best version out there because they will help you give yourself grace and space, even while you’re writing through the times that were challenging for you, times that you might [00:55:00] be embarrassed or whatnot.

But people need to hear that because they’re teachable moments. if you’re out there, you have, , nonfiction and you want to kind of get creative about it. Let me make that introduction to, to Aaron, , it’s, he’s going to make sure that the, the readers of your story. Yeah. , really tune into who you are as the person, right?

He, we had a fantastic conversation about, , AI or artificial intelligence about, , it’s almost too perfect. There is no intuition into intuition or creativity that’s put in there, but it can help you. With generating outlines, even pop ideas into your creativity. And my guy Jimba catch you ocean of generosity out there, , you reminded us that the hand you are looking for is at the end of your own arm.

That that that’s strong. I mean, you can’t help yourself, but my guy here stood on the shoulders of giants that have helped him get to where he is. [00:56:00] And again, listen, people love to be heard, , listen to understand and not to react or even to respond, but to really understand what that person is saying.

That’s what my good friend Aaron does, man. He’s always leveling up his health. He’s leveling up his health wealth and he’s earned his second varsity squad letter here at time to shine today. Thank you so much for coming on brother. Absolutely love your guys. I’m so glad that we’re collaborating. Thank you, man.

I appreciate

Aaron Bethune: it to no end. You better

L. Scott Ferguson: brother.

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