At Light-Minded Arts, I’m sharing my creative journey, going from hammer to Hollywood—and I want you too to find your way into following your dreams.

To help with that, I interviewed John DeDakis, a veteran journalist, novelist, writing coach, and motivational speaker whose career spans over four decades, including time as a White House correspondent and senior editor at CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. But his real passion? Helping aspiring writers become published authors and using storytelling as a tool for healing.

1. From Breaking News to Breaking Ground in Fiction

John didn’t set out to be a novelist. His writing journey began while working at CNN, where the grind of editing pushed him to seek a creative outlet. “It paid well, but I needed something more,” he said. That “something” became fiction—eventually leading to a six-book mystery series featuring Lark Chadwick, a young journalist navigating trauma, truth, and transformation.

His journalism background shaped his fiction writing in powerful ways. “In journalism, every word has to count,” John explained. “That’s true whether it’s a 30-second reader or an 80,000-word novel.”

2. Interviewing Hitchcock and the Power of Listening

One of John’s most memorable experiences was a 40-minute one-on-one interview with Alfred Hitchcock. “He was gracious, approachable, and thoughtful,” John recalled. “I asked him about life after death, and he riffed for two minutes about how all thought is energy. It was surreal.”

John’s ability to go deep in interviews—whether with icons or everyday people—is rooted in his belief that listening is a superpower. “When you’re listening, you’re learning,” he said. “Guys could really benefit from listening to the women in their lives.”

3. Writing the Other and Stretching Your Voice

John’s protagonist, Lark Chadwick, is a 20-something woman—a bold choice for a male author. But he embraced the challenge. “Emotions aren’t gender-specific,” he said. “I was surrounded by young women at CNN who shared their stories. They became my beta readers.”

This approach echoes a broader philosophy: write what you know, but don’t be afraid to stretch. “Every experience fuels your creative well,” John said. “Even the jobs you hate can introduce you to unforgettable characters.”

4. Publishing Realities and the Rise of AI

John’s path to publication wasn’t easy. His first novel took 10 years, 14 major revisions, and 39 agent queries. “Take good notes,” he joked. “It’ll save you nine years.”

He’s traditionally published, but even with that credential, marketing falls squarely on the author. “It’s not selling—it’s telling,” he said. “You’re just letting people know your book exists.”

As for AI-generated books? John’s take is clear: “Without editorial oversight, it’s flabby and riddled with problems. Who wants to read that?”

5. Advice for Aspiring Writers

John’s advice for young creatives is refreshingly grounded: “Get a day job. Do what you love, but support yourself. Every experience is grist for your fiction.”

He’s now expanding his work into grief recovery, helping people use writing to process loss—whether it’s a loved one, a job, or even a sense of identity. “Grief is universal,” he said. “Writing can be a way through.”

Whether you’re a contractor-turned-creative or a student with a story to tell, John’s journey reminds us that writing isn’t just about words—it’s about listening, living, and learning. And sometimes, the plot twists in life are the best material of all.

6. Contacting John DeDakis

John is very interested in helping people through the journey of processing their grief. He’s keenly passionate about it, and if you have a group that could benefit from his help, he loves being part of speaking events to help. Learn more about how he can help you from his website at: https://johndedakis.com/

You can also catch the whole interview on my YouTube channel at: https://youtu.be/DjjhfTiUYSQ

 or on my podcast, which you can find on my website here, or where-ever you get your podcasts.

Before you click away from this, listen up, whether you’re a believer or not, God actually plays a huge role in your career as an artist and business owner. Don’t believe me? Well, read on.

Ok, so this might sound a little bizarre. Why would I bring God into the discussion about how I’ve gone from nothing to being a financially independent artist?

I get the skepticism: After all isn’t the love of money the root of all evil? So why would He help me make more of it? Or doesn’t religion stifle creative freedom? How about this one, wouldn’t He rather have people read His scriptures than rot their brains on my fiction?

All valid arguments, but lets dive a little deeper, and see why bringing God into the equation can make all the difference in your artistic career.

1. Why Would God Care About My Business As An Artist?

Ok, first off, if you didn’t already catch on to this, I believe in the christian God. My opinions are not meant to be evangelical, nor are they meant to reflect specifically on the position of my church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). They are merely the convictions that I’ve developed over the years, and I feel strongly about them.

As those beliefs relate to my artistic and financial endeavors, let me preface this by stating that I believe God considers me to be one of his children. As such, I believe that He wants the best for me. Granted the best for me may not always feel like it in the moment, as his aim is grander and more eternally reaching than my narrow views. So while He’s trying to help me grow and return to live with Him some day, I also believe that He wants me to be happy while I’m here on this Earth.

But its not just my happiness He wants to help me with. Plenty of people find that their lives are anything but. Here’s where He really comes to play. When you’re running a business, you need to develop certain leadership traits that make you a better businessman. Among those things are Salesmanship, relating to people, confidence, public speaking, vision, integrity, resilience, endurance, humility. All of these traits are things we learn as we become more like Christ.

In my life, I spent two years of my life as a full time missionary in the Philippines. I wasn’t technically a salesman, but many of the same principles of being a good missionary still carried over from my proselyting such as: building relationships of trust, help them feel the spirit, help them to act. In sales we do something similar, we build a relationship of trust, we help them feel the need for our products, and then we invite them to act by purchasing our goods.

In my church, I’ve volunteered my time in leadership positions, and in general service positions. I’ve been humbled when I’ve taught, I’ve been empowered when I’ve taught.

Consistent attendance has instilled a culture of learning, growing, caring, and working with teams. The best part is, this training you receive to live your best life possible carries over into all aspects of your life, including your career.

When you’re at your best, you’re more likely to succeed in all you do. Can you see the correlation between your career aspirations and being a disciple of God?

Well, what about the art?

2. How Does He Help Me Be A Better Artist?

Assuming you already believe in God, or that you know enough of Christian beliefs to answer this, I pose this question: Who created everything?

Bam!

If we are the children of God, and he is the ultimate creator, are we not entitled to inherit some of His creativity?

Its already in us. By being more Christlike, we also become more creative, unlocking our true potential. Not only that, but as our will aligns with His will, we start to unlock some of his grace to create things that inspire people to good.

There is a lot of art out there that is brain rot. Some of it is even called “Brain Rot.” I can only imagine that God would want us filling our minds with something a little less degrading.

But what if we’re fiction writers?

Yeah, I get it, there’s plenty of people publishing inspirational content out there, but I’m doing fiction. And lets be honest, my fiction isn’t preachy. If there’s a message to bring anyone to a higher power, I think I missed that myself. But here’s where I feel that my efforts are still valued:

My values put me in a position where the fiction I create is more wholesome than the majority of the fiction out there. My goal, and I’ve stated this over and over on my website, is to write fiction that the whole family can enjoy.

If mom or dad reads one of my books, and their pre-teen picks it up, I don’t want the God-fearing parents to be embarrassed by why their kids just discovered about their reading habits. I want to make entertainment that brings clean reads into peoples homes.

In that, I feel that my goals towards art and entertainment aren’t at odds with God’s will for me in my life.

3. Where Is God In Your Life?

As an artist, we all draw inspiration from somewhere. I’ve seen art that lifts me up, I’ve seen art that takes me to dark places. I’ve seen art that makes me question everything. Sometimes I just like art that makes me laugh.

Whether that art is put into us by some higher power or not, is not what I’m trying to place before you right now. What I’m trying to say, is that when you make the effort to align your life with God’s will, you’re more likely to tap into His enabling power to help you along the way.

Life is hard enough without God in our lives. Why shut Him out when He might make all the difference in helping us get through all the hard times that will inevitably come our way.

Plus what’s the worst that can happen? Say you choose to follow Him and he turns out to not be real, so you ended up living a better, more charitable life and will be remembered by future generations as being a really good person. Or you choose not to follow Him, and he turns out to be real, then you’re stuck, eternally kicking yourself for your folly.

On Storytelling, Marginalization, and the Power of Fiction

What happens when a self-published teen author grows into a visionary editor championing marginalized voices? You get Ceylan Gunduz—pronounced “Jay-lon Goon-dooz,” with a duck face if you want to nail the Turkish accent.

In this episode, we dive deep into her journey from glue-stick books to Editor in Chief at One Brilliant Arc, a story studio startup that is helping authors, especially marginalized voices amplify their authentic voices.

Why Storytelling Matters

As always, Light-Minded Arts is about helping creatives shift from struggling artists to working creatives. Ceylan’s story is a masterclass in that transformation. She started young—memorizing books before she could read them, sketching her own stories, and eventually self-publishing a novella that “grabbed her by the throat” and demanded to be written.

But her path wasn’t linear. Like many of us, she faced burnout, societal pressure to conform, and the tension between marketability and authenticity. That tension, she says, is where story structure becomes a gift—not a cage.

“Story structure is just the proven pattern of beats that resonate with people. When you bring your emotional truth to that framework, you get something both marketable and deeply authentic.”

Marginalized Stories and the Lie of Polish

Ceylan’s mission is clear: help creatives tell stories that don’t fit the commercial mold. She argues that mainstream storytelling often demands a “polished lie”—a version of reality that’s digestible, sanitized, and stripped of nuance.

“Performance polish is a mask. It’s a lie. And marginalized voices are often forced to shrink themselves into someone else’s version of the story.”

Whether it’s a Navajo elder sharing oral history or a Japanese-American woman recounting internment camp trauma, Ceylan believes the raw, unfiltered truth is what connects us. And fiction, she says, often holds that truth better than reality.

Fiction vs. Nonfiction: Which Tells the Truth?

Ceylan leans toward fiction—not because it’s escapist, but because it’s soul-deep.

“The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons. But children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed ” —G.K. Chesterton 

Still, she works with nonfiction writers too, helping them apply story structure to real-life narratives. Her editing process is collaborative, intuitive, and deeply human. She’s not just polishing grammar—she’s co-creating emotional resonance.

Act II: Where She Is Now

If Ceylan’s life were a three-act structure, she’s in Act II. The call to action has happened. She resisted it at first, but now she’s in the thick of the journey—facing tests, challenges, and the slow grind of building something meaningful.

She’s not writing her own stories right now. Instead, she’s helping others find theirs. And while she hasn’t had another story “grab her by the throat” lately, she’s open to the possibility.

“If a story ever comes knocking again, I’ll answer that call.”

AI and the Soul of Storytelling

We couldn’t end the episode without tackling the elephant in the creative room: AI. Ceylan’s take? Balanced and brutally honest.

AI can generate content. Fast. But it lacks soul. It commodifies creativity, and while it’s a powerful tool, it’s not a substitute for human truth.

“There’s a difference between art and content. Artists are now seen as content creators, but our stories are not a commodity.”

She urges creatives to use AI responsibly—learn the tools, stay relevant, but don’t lose the human heartbeat of storytelling.

🎤 Final Thoughts

This episode was a reminder that storytelling isn’t just a craft—it’s a calling. Whether you’re in Act I, resisting the call, or deep in Act II, facing the grind, your story matters. And if you’re lucky enough to find your people—those who resonate with your truth—you’ve already won.

Stay light-minded. Stay creative. And remember: dragons can be beaten.

To learn more about the services that Ceylan and One Brilliant Arc can offer you as a storyteller, visit their website at: https://www.obaconnect.com/

Hey all, I’m kicking off a new segment of my channel here. Up till now, I’ve just been showing little skits and giving my best advice for people leaving the safety of traditional jobs, and giving one in the artistic field of writing and film-making a try. FYI, I’ll still keep putting out these sorts of videos, I have a lot to discuss on that end.

But as our friend LeVar Burton used to always say on the Reading Rainbow, “You don’t have to take my word for it.”

That’s right, I’m going to start bringing guests onto the show to share their experiences on their artistic journey as well. And who better to be our headliner, than my own wife, the one who gets to deal, first hand, with all the emotional trauma I’m inflicting because of my career change.

The Spouse’s Point Of View

Just by way of introduction, my wife, Colette Lindstrom, is a voice over artist and musician, though she spends most of her time (by choice) raising our kids and managing the house. (Check out her Voiceover work here, to see if you want to hire her for your next project: https://youtu.be/vVjdzOzcDHg )

When I proposed my goals of leaving the construction world and retooling my whole career to writing and film-making, she was very supportive. But underlying that support is fear.

It took years for me to become a proficient contractor. There’s skills you develop, there’s relationships you build, and there’s the ability to make money, once you have it all figured out. 

I’d been doing construction since before I could drive myself to a job site. Back in the day, my dad hired me onto a framing crew at the age of 13. That’s 30 years for me in the business, and now I’m telling her that I want a change.

If it took that long to get settled into that career, how long would it take in a field I knew practically nothing about? But I got lucky and married a woman who has faith in me, and doesn’t want to squash my dreams.

Part of having her willing to go along with me, is the fact that during our married life, I’ve built a relationship of trust with her. She knows the planning and study I put into everything I do, and she understands my ambitions will drive me unrelentingly towards the end goals. 

One of the reasons it took me ten years to get to this point, was because I was determined not to hurt her financially. I made the decision that I would keep our family firmly grounded before making such a risky change. She saw that preparation, and trusted me that it would work out.

This trust though, is fragile. If you’re married, you need to be mindful of how your actions will affect your loved ones.

Part of my plan, is to build a film studio. I’ve got lots of articles to share on that in the future. But in doing so, I wanted to acquire land, investments, and buildings to make it all come together. Sometimes, this meant taking out loans.

In the construction world, I’m used to taking out multi-million dollar loans. It’s a necessary part of my business as a contractor/developer. But my wife doesn’t generally know about all that. She doesn’t really want to know about it either.

But as soon as I asked her to sign a mortgage on our house so that we could purchase and start developing a parcel of land for my studio, she got nervous. I could almost see her face turn green. We had paid off our house some years back, and moved into a new house, mortgage free, and now I was asking her to leverage it all for the studio.

She signed. We went under contract for the land, and we will be picking it up in the new year.  But none of this would be possible if she didn’t trust me, because financing and real estate investing is not her forte.

So what am I saying? Well, every relationship is different. Me and my wife are blessed to get along very well. We know and embrace both our strengths and weaknesses, and we lean on each other. 

Nothing I’m doing in my new artistic career would be remotely possible without my wife, her support, and her encouragement. If you’re making the switch, or want to, like I’ve done, the first and most important thing you can do, is to make sure that your house is in order, and that your family still comes first.

If you’d like to learn more about Colette’s voice over, she doesn’t do audiobooks, but she does commercials, info blurbs, and singing. Check out the links below to learn more about her and if you want to hire her, you can message her via our contacts page here on LightMinded Arts.

Links:

Also, check out our interview together. Its available on our LightMinded Arts Podcast, or on our YouTube channel and: https://youtu.be/tSz8PNugwn0

Don’t forget to check out Colette’s voiceover reel. Find it here, and if you like it, reach out to us on our contact form and we’ll help get her voice in your next commercial or narration. (fyi, she doesn’t do audiobooks at this time): https://youtu.be/vVjdzOzcDHg

When it comes to filmmaking, there is so much gear out there, and its easy to get caught up in the latest and greatest. But there’s another side to gear for creatives, that is important to take into consideration, and that’s the ability to travel with it, and setup and take down when you’re a one person show.

I’ll admit, that I too get caught up in my gear. Whenever I have a big project, I’ll often use that as an excuse to invest in some more gear to help me make that a better production. But if I was to take all of that on a shoot, it would fill up my truck and take hours to pack and unpack. So I needed a very portable setup. Here it is, and best part is, I can carry it all on my back.

1. For The Single Person Film Shoot

If you haven’t seen any of my videos, you should check out my YouTube Channel at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCosUlYjbzVQ4_Zv9xFNVOqQ there you’ll find a bunch of my videos, and in those videos near the beginning, I like to add in a short skit. Most of these are done all by myself, or with the help from my wife.

The problem with being a new content creator, is that your channel may not be monetized yet. So how can you afford to pay for help? You can’t. So you make due with as little as possible, and hope that eventually you can afford to hire crew.

Most of my skits were filmed almost entirely with this simple setup (keep in mind, I’m not an affiliate for any of this, so I’m just giving my honest opinion on these things):

A Kemimoto hunting duffle bag. Cost was: $90 on Amazon.

• This thing is amazing. It has duffle styled straps to hand carry it, but also has backpack straps to hike with. In addition to that, it has several pocket for organizing stuff, and my favorite thing, the bottom unzips, and where it would normally hold guns, now becomes a perfect spot to hold tripods, umbrellas, and light stands.

1. Inside my bag

FHI, most of these prices were as of early 2025.

I have a Panasonic HC-VX981K camera $800 from B&H (most everything else I got was from B&H, so I’ll just mention this the one time.)

• Not my favorite camera ever, but its lightweight, has great autofocus, and some manual functions. Honestly it does the job, and I use it a lot.

DJI Osmo Gimbal. It also came with a Hohem mic-01 $268.

• I haven’t had a chance to use the gimbal much, but I’ve really liked the Hohem mics. Their sound is a lot better than my Tentacle lav, and so I use this quite a lot, and especially if I’m using my android phone to do video, I can plug it right into that and get great audio.

Sennheiser AVX-ME2 mic $800.

• This is really handy, as I can plug it into my Panasonic camcorder hot shoe, though you still need to plug the jack into the mic receiver on the camcorder. I don’t care as much for the audio on this as I do for the Hohem, but its still good, and might sound better with your voice than mine. It’s very sensitive, and often I like to use it as a hidden microphone in nearby plants or other things, not just on my person.

Smallrig RC100B lights at $200 each.

• These are great. They’re small, lightweight, bicolored, and using my goldmount adapters ($80 each) I’m able to keep all my batteries here and in my nicer filming gear the same format. I’ve got these mounted to some umbrella foots which were about $25 each, and that allows me to quickly set them up and attach one of 3 of my umbrellas that fit in the gun case portion of the bag. As you may know, those umbrella lights are pretty cheap, but very effective. I’ve got a white translucent umbrella, a silver reflector umbrella, and a deeper white reflector umbrella. In total, those 3 cost about $65, and they take up hardly any room.

Also in the gun case portion of the bag, I’ve got three 7 ft Westcot light stands at $55 each.

• I like these, because they don’t weigh much and they fold up really tight. For the lights I’m putting on them, they are perfect.

My kit would not be complete without my dummy head. $35ish from Amazon.

• When that first showed up at my house, my family was pretty weirded out by it. I think it would be fun to put it in someone’s bed for them to wake up next to, but I haven’t gotten around to that prank yet. But I use this head on a tripod that I got from AliExpress $20 for almost every skit I shoot. In fact, I sometimes wonder how I ever got by without it.
• I use it for shaping light where I’m going to stand. I use it when I’m pulling manual focus, and I need a stand in. I use it also if I want to do a quick color grade clip. Of all the high tech gear I own, that has quickly become one of the most useful tools I own.

2. How much did it all cost?

Don’t worry about going back through with a calculator. I’ve already summed it up for you. I spent about $2512 before tax. Shipping was mostly free. Then again, there are a few things I forgot to add into this. Like the misc grip gear, maybe $100. SD cards, another say $50. My gold mount batteries, would have cost a pretty penny too, but I have a bunch of those lying around from my normal film gear, but if I were to buy them, that would probably add another $81 per battery, so about $240 for an equivalent setup. I had a 5 in 1 reflector and a GoPro 360 camera that I threw in there too. I don’t recommend the GoPro. If I could justify the cost, I’d probably trade it in for an Insta360. But you don’t really need that, and I rarely use it. Oh, and don’t forget to buy an extra battery for your camera. That comes in handy too. I don’t remember how much that cost me. Lets just say $100 to round it all out.

That would bring the final price of my kit to about $3000.

So while there might be some cost savings still available, I can tell you that I’ve spent more than that on a single piece of equipment that gets used far less than this entire kit.

And while I won’t be wowing anybody with my fancy gear, I can get quite a bit done with this simple setup, and if I wanted, I could even go back country, by myself, which I have done in a skit for an upcoming video, and still have everything I needed.

If you want to see how this all fits together, check out my YouTube Video, where I show this kit in all it’s glory: https://youtu.be/fL_vqdK-kPM

Book 1 in the GearLock Series

Do you like the hard-boiled mysteries of Raymond Chandler? Do you like the whimsy of Terry Pratchett? How about the swords and swagger of Xena? Well, this has a little bit of all of that. It even has an emerging element of steampunk.

Hey all my friends and fans, I’m so excited to share with you the release of my first book of a brand-new series: The GearLock Series.

This is so much fun, I’ve been waiting to let you all know about it for some time now. And best part is, if you want to help spread the word and leave reviews, you might be able to get a copy before its released (details to follow).

Big Trouble In Spur Central

In the gritty human city of Spur Central, trouble is brewing. It always is.

The entire Cosmos is about to ratchet its Great Gears and pit all sentient animals against each other in a long-awaited war to see who gets to ascend to the next realm. None of that matters to Dick hu’Mar, a private investigator that’s too good for his own good. When he and his sour-faced partner, an ugly stinking cat, get hired by two dames in dire need of a mystery solved, they find themselves plunged into the politics and danger of this pre-steampunk world, where highly leathered brawn beats against brains every day.

With little time: love, life, and money, (most especially money) are on the hook, and hu’Mar must solve the case, if he can, and avoid getting killed in the process.

Is This Book For You?

As you know, I strive to provide clean fiction to all my readers. For that purpose, any explicit material is mild, but don’t let that fool you into thinking this book is weak sauce. Dick hu’Mar is one tough detective, and the cast of characters in this series are about as raw and rotten as they come.

In this book, I make no excuses for showing my characters at their worst. After all, a good hard-boiled novel needs a little bit of grit. And grit we get, with a world where nearly every animal is sentient, and willing to war over a common prize, a prize that has dire implications for those who attain it, and those who miss out.

If you’re ready for a truly unique tale, full of mystery, mayhem, and fantasy, give this book a try. It is the first in what I expect will be a 6-book series, where I’ll try to release the next installment every year. Don’t miss out on this!

Release Date

This book is expected to be released March 2, 2026. There are plans to have it available in print, ebook, and audiobook. You can pre-order Now at Amazon.com by following the link:

Or at Barns and Noble:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hard-boiled-cabbage-brent-lindstrom/1148353176

Or any other book seller you prefer.

If you are a book reviewer with over 100 subscribers, you may qualify to receive a free copy before the official release. If you think you qualify, fill out my contact page, and let me know how you’d be able to promote the book.

(an old fashion radio-drama styled story, with the help of AI)

Have you ever listened to the old-time radio dramas? I went on a kick one year where I listened to a whole bunch of them. They were pretty fun in a retro sort of way. Everything had to be done without visual aids, so that a radio audience could understand the story. This led to a little extra dialog that conveyed the story, something you might avoid in a movie, but I decided to try writing and producing one myself. And since I’ve been pushing the limits of AI, to see if it can help creatives or just replace them, I used several AI tools to see how far they could take me.

Who Is This For?

This was written for kids and families. The 38-minute story follows several kids as they discover a portal to Dimension X inside one of the lockers at school. It’s full of teasing and fun. Perfect if you’re on a drive and need something to distract your kids with for a little while. Some adults might enjoy it too, but it was mostly made for early teens and pre-teens.

How I Used AI To Make This?

This was actually one of my simpler projects. I spent about an hour writing it for a couple of weeks, then did two edits, one on my own, then one using Sudowrite to see if it could offer any helpful suggestions. Sudowrite is an AI writing tool, one that I’ve been experimenting with a little. I don’t use AI to write any of my stories. I’ve tried to see what kind of stories it can write, and they are all terrible. Instead, I use AI to help edit and suggest fixes. Even then, it’s not something I can just feed it, and expect it to hand back a polished draft.

The role of AI when I’m editing, is more to help me come up with ideas on how to improve a draft, either by adding more description in areas, or finding areas that I can elaborate on. Usually what happens when I do an AI edit, is that it reproduces my work, with slight changes, always shortening and destroying my work too much to make sense with the overall story. So I have to go through its version, and cherry pick the items that strengthen it. It’s very laborious, but it is helpful. If you’re a writer though, I wouldn’t worry about AI taking your love of writing away just yet. It’s not really anything close to reliable in crafting a quality story yet, especially in longer form content.

As I made this, I used one other AI tool. Since this project had a $0 budget, I couldn’t hire actors to voice all the characters. However, I do have a subscription to Elevenlabs. This was instrumental in helping me bring the story to life. But AI voices, like AI writing tools, are still not there yet.

I first tried text-to-speech. The problem with that, was that it couldn’t get the inflections and acting right. And true, you could spend a lot of time encoding pauses, and whispers and things into it, but then you end up spending so much more time on it. So rather than waste my scarce hours on that I recorded every line of dialog myself, acting out all the parts.

I’d go through the script and do a file with all of one character’s voices on that, then go through the script and do all the next characters dialog. Then I took that over to Elevenlab’s voice changing tab. This provided a much more reliable sounding script, that matched fairly close to my acting job, but in all the different voices. That however was not void of its own issues either. There were some areas that I had to re-record and send through the AI generator again to get right.

I think that stems from it converting my voice, into text, then using a different voice to follow that text, but with the rhythm cues from my recording. This was mostly effective, but it did change some of the words in the process, and it muted some of the reactions. Also, not all voices on Elevenlabs are created equal. You’ll notice when you listen to this show, that the jocks’ voices came out a lot dirtier than some of the other characters, and some of the characters sound more boxy or muted than others. You have to really work on finding the best quality of voices to get the best quality of voice changes.

It was all a fun exercise to learn more of what AI can and can’t do. To be honest, getting real actors is still the best way to approach a project where quality counts. But without AI, I wouldn’t have been able to do something like this without help.

Do I Like AI?

For the last several months, as I’ve been experimenting with AI, I’ve come to see where AI really is, versus where the hype is. Not long ago, I was terrified that AI was going to come for my new career and kill it before I even got it started. But AI isn’t really there yet.

It has its uses, but it has major limitations still. There is a lot of AI hype in the market right now. I’ve got dozens of subscriptions to all the latest AI tools, just to put them through the ringer, and since I’m not paid to promote any of them, I’m happy to say that most of them are not worth the trouble.

But there are some that do make life easier from a budget producer’s standpoint. I’ll do an entire article on all my pros and cons of AI later, and what I’d actually recommend, but for now, I hope you enjoy this radio drama. It’s been fun to make, and I’m releasing it right in time for Halloween. 

Don’t you hate it when someone does you wrong? Who wouldn’t hate that? Should you blame them for the mistreatment. Sure, why not, if that’s a fair assessment.

But wait, the title of this is called, “Don’t Blame Other” so what gives?

Ok, ok. Blame is a probably the wrong word. Sometimes, other people are truly at fault for wrong doing. You can’t always turn a blind eye to that. But lets look at this from the perspective of accountability. Not theirs, but yours.

No, no, they did…

Please, if you’re going to be successful in life, you can’t let other people’s decisions run your life. Let me explain.

1. How We Allow Others To Hold Us Back

You have dreams, you have goals. Depending on who you ask, they might be realistic or far-fetched. It doesn’t matter. What matters is our actual decisions. When we fail to act on our goals, the only person we have to blame is ourselves. So who do we blame? Usually, someone else.

Why do we do that?

Sure, maybe it was someone else who cheated us out of the money we needed. Maybe it was someone else who asked us to help them out with a different project and put off doing our own. Maybe it was someone else whose opinion really matters to you, and they thought your ideas were frivolous.

There’s a lot of reasons we might find blame in others when it comes to accomplishing our dreams. If we can’t find anyone personal, then we tend to go impersonal. We blame YouTube for not showing our videos to very many people. We blame publishers for not even reading the book we submit to them. We blame the government for our poor health because they allowed GMO foods into our grocery stores.

Lets not forget God. Often we blame him for anything and everything that goes wrong in our lives, especially when we can’t find anyone else to blame. Why did I get this disease? Why did he take my loved ones. Why are his followers such hypocrites.

Have you noticed the single person in here who we don’t blame? That’s right. Its ourselves. We’re always happy to take all the credit for any good accomplishment in our lives, but we hate accepting blame for ourselves.

But legitimate things do affect our success in life. I’m not arguing that. When my pool business failed and I lost $500,000, as much as my house was worth at the time, I tried for weeks to find someone or something else to blame. Was it my partners, was it my employees, was it the market, my customers? I could write a list of all the things that went wrong, and happily assign blame. What hurt most, was seeing how other pool companies were starting up at the same time and succeeding.

That pain came from knowing that some other entrepreneur was successful, and I was not. In the end, I had to place the accountability squarely on my own shoulders. Once I did that, I was able to re-contextualize all the things that went wrong. I turned those failures into learning experiences, so that next time around, I would know where my blind spots were. As a business owner, the buck starts and stops with you. Sure you need to assemble a good team around you, if you can, but if you’re risking your hard earned money, or that of someone else, you are responsible. So accept that responsibility, and get to work!

2. How To Break Your Cycle Of Blame

Is it too hot outside to work? Do your feet hurt too much to work? The easy answer will always be yes.

I’ve been blessed that one of my superpowers is to always take the hardest way possible. Maybe you’re saying that doesn’t sound like a superpower, more like a weakness. Sometimes I might agree with you. But here’s the thing, I don’t always like working in less than ideal conditions, but I always love looking back on my accomplishments, seeing the hard that I pushed through, and feeling proud of it.

It’s like hiking a mountain. I went on a hike once, worst hike of my life. I was with two other guys, one who was an athlete, one who never got off his butt and away from his computer screen for more time than it took to go to the bathroom.

So we start hiking this mountain, one of the tallest ones around us. It was to be a half day hike. I’m pretty good at hiking. I’ve done enough of it, am conditioned for it, and I was looking forward to it. Our pale friend who just saw the sun for the first time that year, was not so conditioned.

While me and my athletic friend had planned accordingly and brought enough water for ourselves, probably a liter or two each, the other guy had instead brought a backpack with a 12-pack of Gatorade. That in itself wasn’t terribly odd. What was odd, was that within the first hour of the hike, before me and the other guy had even touched our own waters, and before we were even a quarter of the way up the mountain, he had drank all his Gatorade.

It wasn’t long after that, when he started showing major signs of fatigue and heat exhaustion. Not wanting to turn back, he insisted on continuing. Knowing that I could probably handle the hike with less water, I gave him most of mine, saving just enough to wet my throat for the remainder of the hike up, where I would refill my water on a snow-cap.

I underestimated the length and difficulty of the hike. The last quarter of the hike became more of one where we had to crawl on all fours, just to make the final ascent safely. By the time I got to the top, he had drank all my water, was about to have heat stroke, and I was now entering heat exhaustion also.

Luckily, we found the snow-cap at the top and replenished our water, but if you’ve ever been heat exhausted, you might know that it doesn’t go away once you’ve cooled down. We rested for a good hour up there, and the one friend was ready to give up and die up there. I was feeling pretty miserable too, but we talked him into going down, and would you believe it, going down, because of our conditions, was harder than going up.

There were times that I, in no good shape myself, had to help the other guy down, as he was pretty well shutting down. By the time we got back to the car, I was about to start dry heaving, and he was nearly comatose.

Here’s the thing though, I’m glad I did that hike. I’m glad that I was in a position to help that other friend make it down the mountain. I’m glad I made it to the peak. Could I have blamed him for not being in shape? Or for not turning around? Or for taking all my water?

Sure, but what good would that have done. I saw a lot of beautiful country and wildlife, had fun with friends, and I survived with a cool story to tell. I felt so miserable and sick, and maybe I even entertained blaming him for a while, but I was the one who chose to give him my water. I was the one who, even though I felt miserable, was still able to get him back off the mountain. I pushed through the pain and did something good.

Through it all, I became more experienced, gained a little more wisdom, and became a little more resilient to hardship.

That’s the trick, push through the hard times. Difficult things refine us. They keep us from being overwhelmed. They let us know that our limits really are more than perhaps we give ourselves credit for.

And if we do have legitimate limitations to our abilities, we can always use that creative brain of ours to find a work-a-round to accomplish our goals. The adage: Where there’s a will, there’s a way, has endured through the generations because it is true.

Don’t blame anyone but yourself, and reach a little further. Let your ambition take accountability for itself, and you can do wonders.

As I kick off the important lessons I’ve learned over the last 10 years of getting ready for my major career change, I knew that I’d be doing you a disservice if I jumped straight into the financials and skipped the character building skills you’ll need to be successful.

Warren Buffett, when asked what you should invest in first, made a point that you should invest in your education. Making money, and making businesses that are successful, takes more than just marketing know-how.  They take leaders, people who have character.

So what does a person of character look like? And how can I be that person?

1. Changing Your Personality Is Impossible

Lets face it, there is nobody else just like you. And just as you are unique, there is no reason that you should try to be someone else’s uniqueness. If you try, you’ll fail. You don’t need to be somebody else. You can build character by being the best you that you have ever been.

This is called being genuine.

So how does one move on from there, and become more than they currently are? It comes from doing the hard work of self-evaluation, and self-improvement. Trust me, this is monumentally difficult. But it is in doing difficult things, that we find the most growth.

Back when I started my 10 year prep plan to becoming a writer/independent filmmaker, I read a few books by John C. Maxwell. I strongly encourage you to pick up some of his book. In them, he emphasizes creating a growth plan.

This isn’t just something where you say I’m going to be better this year than I was last year, no, this is an actual goal-based plan that you can measure track, and evaluate. I was so inspired by this at the time, that I became a religious growth plan fanatic.

On my computer at work, every day, my screen would first boot up with my growth plan. I’d see an inspirational quote that applied to me at that time. I would read it, and try to live it. Often it was a verse or set of verses from the scriptures.

Then there was my spreadsheet, because I’m big into spreadsheets. In that spreadsheet, I had yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily goals. I updated this thing every month, and worked on the habits and attributes that I most wanted to solidify in my life.

Every year, I evaluated my progress, added new qualities that I wanted to have in my life, and made new goals and plans on how to achieve those things. There were multiple categories too. Some were spiritually based, some were character based, and some were family based. Few of them were financially based. My goal with this was to become the best person I could be.

I never wanted to be just like anyone else, because I loved who I was. Keep in mind, that I was an introvert, never popular, and often unsure of myself. You don’t have to be the most charismatic person in the world to love who you are. I’m still introverted. I’m still not a popular person. But I can talk to people. I’ve learned to be a salesman. I’ve learned to be articulate when the time comes for it. But for many of the qualities that I don’t have, I had to work hard at them, and I had to push myself beyond my comfort zone to achieve any level of proficiency in them.

I’m still the same me I was before, I’m just a better me for all that effort.

2. What Characteristics Should You Focus On?

Just as in my growth plan, I suggest you break this down into categories. Keep in mind that even though I place some of these in one of the categories, working on them doesn’t just benefit that category, most of these cross into all categories. The categories are more to help you brainstorm ideas that you might not normally consider applicable to your overall goals, yet if you think about it, they impact every aspect of your life considerably.

1. Business

Salesmanship, marketing, integrity, work ethic, service, organization, customer relations, employee relations, problem solving, etc.

2. Spiritual

Sympathy, meekness, desire for righteousness, mercy, purity, peacemaker, long-suffering, charity, virtue, honesty, sincerity, love, faith, etc.

3. Morals

Accountability, courage, boldness, compassion, discipline, adaptability, creativity, appreciation, assertiveness, authenticity, collaboration, confidence, kindness, wisdom, ambition, etc.

You can make other categories up if it helps you come up with character traits that you find admirable and would want to incorporate into your life. This is just an example.

3. Why Go Through All That Effort?

Life is about growth. We want a growing family, a growing business, a growing economy. Humans are programmed to feel better about themselves when they have a growth mindset.

When we grow our personal strengths and character, we find more joy in every day living. Our family and friend relationships a more fulfilling, and we discover that success is more attainable in business and in life, if for no other reason than we have a positive outlook on where we are now, and where we are going.

One of the most depressing things in the world, is stagnation, and backtracking. These things can be addictive and harmful, but all too easy, whereas character growth is hard but rewarding in so many ways. Everything worth doing, generally is hard.

After just coming out of foot surgery, one of the 1^st things that I’m required to do is start stretching and strength training. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes I’m tired and don’t want to do it. But as I stick to my physical therapy, my foot gets increasingly better, I become more mobile, and I’m able to do more than I did the week before.

If you can learn to adopt a growth mindset, even establish a growth plan to keep you on track, and constantly work on adopting and improving all those desirable characteristics that define a good person, you’ll find that the world opens up to you.

Pessimism, depression, and anxiety lose their control over you. Grace, defined as enabling power, starts to take real hold in your life.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane for a minute. What was your childhood like?

Assuming you came from a good family and life was mostly non-chaotic, you probably had a pretty good childhood. Of course that is assuming a lot. We didn’t all grow up with the ideal circumstances. And if that is you, do you have kids now that are growing up with more stable foundations? Or do you know of someone with kids that are doing good?

Here’s the thing, kids are amazing. They embody everything innocent, curious, and fun that life has to offer. They are sponges, always trusting and eager to learn. They are the epitome of a positive thinking human.

Is it any wonder that Jesus Christ urged all his followers to be more childlike?

At some point in our lives, the wonder and amazement of living starts to take a turn towards the cynical and sometimes pessimistic thinking that we often see around us. But this doesn’t happen to all of us. Some of us still maintain that positive outlook on life. These people are truly lucky. Lets talk about why.

1. Why Is Being Optimistic, Positively The Best Mentality To Own?

There’s a lot that can get us down. Sometimes its the unforeseen consequences of our actions, regardless of how well intentioned they started out. Sometimes life is just hard, for no fair reason at all. There are a lot of people who can tell you a lot of reasons why their life is so difficult, but you don’t want to listen to that, because your challenges are just as, if not infinitely worse off.

The more we dwell on the guilt, the hardness, the unfairness of everything, the more it leads us into depression and anxiety. Then there are those annoying people, who are always chipper. They have it all going for them. Trouble seems to bounce off them, like they were some Marvel comic hero.

How is it that they got so lucky? Here’s the truth, they have just as much crap happening in their life as you do. For whatever reason they have somehow managed to adopt an attitude of gratitude, an outlook of optimism, a patter of positivity.

This mentality allows them to see the good in every situation. Negative consequences for their actions turn into meaningful learning experiences. Illness and tragedy help them see the value in their relationships all the more. There is one other thing that they get, that negative thinking can never grant, and that is a higher degree of success in all their activities.

Rather than feeling overwhelmed by tasks that seem insurmountable, they dive in and get the work done. Employers trust, hire, and promote them over negative thinking people, because even if they are just as good if not worse than others, they don’t complain and they lift the mood of the company culture. Their attitude puts them in a position to learn and grow more quickly.

Positive thinking also helps you out in your family. People want to be around others who lift them up and make them happy. You cannot do this if you are always focused on the negative.

2. What About Being Realistic?

There is a real place for being realistic, even for the perpetually optimistic. Sometimes, too much optimism can lead to overconfidence and error. Tempering positive thinking with a degree of realism should always be considered, however, it can be all too easy to allow realism to morph into pessimism.

Was realistic thinking a factor in Amazon’s founder—Jeff Bezos career? He thought outside the box and created a hugely disruptive company. How about the Wright Brothers? The examples are too numerous to expound upon.

Did they still face a huge amount of risk in their endeavors? Of course, but risk isn’t always bad. Stupid risk is bad. Climbing a cliff without any safety gear, I would argue that is stupid risk, even if it is highly optimistic of the free climber to do.

I was blessed with an optimistic outlook on life. I think my faith in God had a lot to do with it. Not ever fully growing up helped a little too. Being a positive thinker is what attracted my wife to me. Being a positive thinker is what allowed me to rebound after I lost $500,000 in a failed business launch.

I’ve got two foot surgeries this year that are crippling me for 4-6 months each, with about 2 years of physical therapy to look forward to after that before I can be truly recovered, and where everyone else is offering their sympathies, I’m looking forward to it. I’ve prepared my life for the disruptions, so that even when I’m stuck in bed for months at a time, I’ll have work to keep busy with, and no reason to feel frustrated, confined or sorry for myself.

This positive thinking has been a huge superpower in my life, but what if you struggle with this?

3. How To Overcome Negative Thinking

This is so hard to do. We all know and want to be better, but our feelings are so ingrained in our subconscious, that it’s next to impossible to reach in there and flip it like a switch.

So can it even be done? Absolutely. There are multiple methods. I would suggest that one of the strongest sources of healing from this type of thinking can be achieved through faith in a power that is higher than us. Yes I’m talking about God.

Faith in a God that has a plan for us, can proffer a powerful change in how we think and feel.

Also, creating an actual goal based growth plan can help. I’ve done this, and it can really change your life. Rather than listing out your problems, because you’re already very familiar with those, list out the good qualities you already have, the blessings you’ve already received. These are the things, especially as we compare ourselves with others, that we tend to forget about.

Then once you see all the good in your life, create goals around the good you still want to add to your life. Make the goals small enough that you can achieve them, but big enough that you have to stretch for them.

Create pre-programmed responses for when common disappointments happen. Craft these responses in a way that you think should make you feel better, even if in the beginning it doesn’t work.

Talk to yourself as if you were already there. The lies you tell yourself will eventually become the truth you tell yourself. It may sound funny, but your subconscious can be convinced by your conscious persuasions, though some might take longer than others to convince.

In the end, it truly is a blessing to have a positive outlook on life. But if you feel that you’ve lost that, for any reason at all, find a way to gain it back. Lost loved ones want you to be happy, your employer wants you to be happy, your employees want you to be happy, and your living friends and family want you to be happy.

You can do it, I believe in you!

Don’t forget to check out my YouTube Channel. I have a fun skit about being positive:

https://youtu.be/0TS9WEe9-1o