You're in for a great treat as Steve talks with author, editor, and resonance marketing entrepreneur Sandie Sedgbeer (who edited Steve's first book, Remember) about the turnover in the publishing industry that has led to the massively improved opinion of self-publishing and the many opportunities that now exist for authors.
Additionally, they talk about the rise of AI and concerns about content from other sources appearing in books, art, videos, and other content. Plus, they cover the use of procured AI images, videos, and voices of celebrities and children to scam people, create illicit content, disseminate political misinformation, and more.
Sandie and Steve also talk about Sandie's legacy project, The No BS Spiritual Book Club, where Sandie interviews leaders in the field of spirituality, how the club came to be, how it has grown in popularity, and how it is expanding into small physical local spiritual book clubs in communities around the world.
And if you're interested in Social Media, you'll want to tune in for a discussion about how Social Media has changed and not always for the better...
Listen/Watch @ ESPAVOtv® on Spotify, Apple, Substack, Amazon, iHeart Radio & many other podcast outlets!
www.sedgbeer.com
#SteveRother #TheBackStory #SandieSedgbeer #TheNoBSSpiritualBookClub #Writing #Publishing #AI #SocialMedia
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Music. Everybody welcome to the back
(00:32):
story today I've got I'm very excited to bring you a very good
friend of mine, close friend of mine who is here at the very
beginning of of our work. It was actually light worker
back then years and years ago when we first started and of
course has evolved into a spavo.org.
In the meantime, Sandy has been with us from the beginning.
(00:52):
She's actually a board member ofthe Espavo Corporation, has been
with us quite some time. I'm very proud to bring her on
board today. She does.
She actually edited my first book, remember, and helped with
almost everything that we put out in some way.
She's just been a real jewel, and I'm thrilled to bring her in
(01:13):
today that we're going to talk about quite a few things.
I want to talk about the evolution of publishing.
I want to talk about a lot of things.
So from sedgebeer.com, this is Sandy Sedgebeer.
Welcome, Sandy. Hi, good to see you.
Good to see you Hun. Thanks for being with us here
today. So tell me we, we've, like I
said, you and I've been talking,we talk about a lot of the crazy
(01:36):
stuff that's been happening and so fast.
It's unbelievable how how quick all this stuff has elevated and
so forth. One of the first things I want
to talk about here today is AI. Tell me about your opinion of
how AI is going to affect your business and the things that are
going on with that. Well, yeah, I'm, you know, the
(02:01):
imagination of human nature justcompletely astounds me.
AI, well, it's got its uses for certain, but it is the scariest
thing that I've ever seen. You know, I've got a number of
writer clients who are telling me that, you know, they, they,
they used AI to maybe start their books or something.
(02:24):
And when, when they show me, youknow, what AI has done, I have
to say that is fantastic. And you mustn't use it, you
know, because I think, well, I know that Amazon is supposed to
be putting in some kind of, I don't know how they do it, but
(02:45):
something that actually spots AI.
And they say. That all AI written books.
Wow. That that now, whether it's true
or not, whether that's just a rumour, but this is what I
heard. I think that they're also
looking at doing it with book covers as well, because a lot of
people are creating their own book covers too with AI.
But it is frightening. I mean, I remember seeing a
(03:08):
manuscript recently from a friend of mine who actually used
it very wisely. What she did was she was writing
about, you know, what she does and a little bit about her life,
and she didn't know how to describe herself.
So she decided that she was going to put some stuff in
ChatGPT or whatever it's called,and see what it came up with.
(03:32):
And it came up with a fabulous description of her.
And I said, now that's an OK use, you know, for AI.
But to actually use it, I mean, you think about all the words
that have gone into that. Yes, all the words that have
been collated. Your words are there.
That's it. Your books are there.
And I said, I know mine are. I had a shock the other day
(03:54):
because I follow, I follow a particular newsletter.
I won't give too many details away.
And they were talking about something that I thought that
sounds interesting. I'm going to, you know, press
the button and say yes to that. And what I actually saw was a
piece of writing that I had done20 years ago for a client.
(04:22):
And you know, and I know that, you know, when you're writing
direct marketing packages, they get sold and other people.
You. You know your your prose, but
there it was, right? You know, in my face the same
works. And I thought, where does this
end? You know, where does it end?
I don't know. I.
(04:42):
I saw Tom Hanks had he came on social media the other day and
he said if you see me making anypolitical campaigns, don't
believe it. It was all done by AIII won't do
it. Plain and simple.
It's been, it's been really interesting to see what's taking
place. And of course we're seeing
people whose voices are stolen. They're emulating their voice.
(05:04):
They've actually hired people todo voice overs and then they
steal their voice. We've seen all sorts of things
happen like this. I've used AI for a couple
things. I use it sometimes I, I'd use it
to improve my text. But what happens is it improves
it so much it doesn't doesn't use words I would normally use.
(05:24):
So, but, and the reality is it'sgot a lot of good uses.
Somebody sent me something that was just unbelievable.
They basically sent me a question about metaphysics and
about they, I forgot exactly thewords.
They weren't, but they were asking questions of things that
(05:45):
the group has said and the grouphas answered.
And they came up with this long,long e-mail with all this stuff.
It sounded just like the group. It was unbelievable.
And I know that that they take it right off the website.
These are the large language models that we keep hearing
about that they keep getting larger and larger because
(06:07):
they're gathering more data fromall these different places.
Absolutely unbelievable stuff. So it is scary.
Using it to scam people out of money.
You know, how they're getting kids and they're duplicating
their voices and they're, you know, having these calls
generated that sound like it's your child or your grandchild
(06:29):
talking and please send me money.
I mean, that is just, you know, we truly are in the Wild West
now. It is no rules anymore.
There's no integrity. It's every man for himself.
It is absolutely crazy. Well, and on top of that, we, we
have AI exploding right now, butthat's only the beginning.
Right behind it. We have quantum computing and of
(06:51):
course, robotics. They're all coming in at the
same time. They're all going to hit the
market and change our world very, very quickly.
Quantum computing used to take, I mean, it was only six months
ago, maybe a year ago that we were talking in the light
masters all about quantum computing, telling him about it.
I was showing pictures of the quantum computers that Google
(07:12):
has and Microsoft and different places throughout the world.
There was about 7 quantum computers and they take up a
whole room. It was like the original
computer that took up a a whole room of space.
They've already got it down to asmall, fairly small size now.
It's still not anywhere near being ready to be put out into
(07:35):
publication or into normal use throughout the world, but it's
getting close and it's only a matter of time.
Here's the bit that interests me.
I absolutely believe that we arein a different energy right now.
You know, we are several levels up in energy and we know that
(07:55):
there are so many people waking up.
There's so many people who are becoming very energetically
sensitive. I've always maintained that, you
know, between me and you, between you and your audience,
there is a threat of energy. And it is authentic, and they
can feel you. They may not know that they're
feeling you, but they know when you're being authentic.
(08:18):
If you were putting out words orvoices that didn't have your
energy signature in them, I bet there's an awful lot of people
who would feel that. I, I think so, especially the
impasse that we work with. I've always, I've always told,
you know, for years I told Barbara, she said, well, just
just tell him this. And I said, I can't just tell
him that. I, I said, you, you understand
(08:39):
that we're working in front of aroom full of psychics.
You know, you can't, you can't do that.
Our, our groups are all incredible empaths that pick up
things and energies and they won't confront you with it.
They'll just turn off. They'll just go a different
direction. So absolutely.
I wonder how that is going to affect, you know, the, you know,
(09:00):
the race for AI, because I thinkthat energetically sensitive
people have a lot more power, you know, and it's a counter,
you know, it's a counter energy that they'd be putting out.
So I'm really curious to see what happens with that.
It's, it's interesting, you know.
If you put out a book that was generated by by AII bet people
(09:24):
would feel that that is not your.
Vital I I would think so. I would certainly hope so.
I think they would get interested in the beginning
because it would have my flavourobviously with, with AI taking
my work basically and taking my words, it would have a little
bit of my flavour. But once they started, my guess
is after people got maybe a chapter into it, they put the
(09:47):
book down because it wouldn't becohesive in some ways.
And the other side of it, too, is that it's making us become
more discerning. That's exactly it.
That's exactly it. If we know that everything we
can see when we turn on the television, when we look at
YouTube, anything else, all of this can be faked.
If we're aware of that, we take everything with a grain of salt,
(10:10):
which is really what we should be doing in the 1st place.
So yeah, stepping into this higher vibration is also
bringing new technologies. A group equates it to the times
we had in Atlantis. They said we actually we went a
different way in Atlantis. Instead of electronic
technologies, we went into biology and we started making
(10:30):
clones and we started making basically people that were not,
we didn't think they were human,so we treated them differently
and everything else. We're coming up on that too.
That's is going to be a fascinating journey going
forward to see if there is consciousness that actually
evolves out of the technology that we're working with.
(10:53):
It's it's going to be really fascinating to see what takes
place with this. OK, well, tell me, let's let's
go back for a minute and talk about talk about publishing in
general, because you're an expert in this area.
You've been doing this for quitesome time, my dear, and you're
really good at it. Should I tell you what's really
interesting? You know, when I was first
published back in the 80s and 90s, you know, by big publishing
(11:17):
houses and you had the old traditional, you know, you got
your advance and they put a publicity team and they sent you
out on the road and you did yourbook tour, you know, and all of
that happened. And none of that happens these
days unless you're a top, top seller, you know.
But what's interesting, And anyone who self published that
(11:40):
was really frowned upon. It was vanity publishing.
That's what it was. I was.
I was at a self-publishing conference last year and I was
hearing that a lot of well knownwriters who were at a writing
conference in Vegas that year were actually saying that
mainstream publishing is now being called vanity publishing.
(12:03):
Wow, it's reversed. Thing.
The only thing people get out ofit is the name of the publishing
company. Wow, that's amazing.
Completely. Flipped around.
Well, I used to be, I used to work in the book distribution
business before I started channeling, and it was very
interesting. We used to have, you know, you
had all the small publishers, but you had all the offshoots.
(12:25):
You had Simon and Schuster, you had Random House, you had Harper
Row. Now they've started to really go
a different way, but the whole idea was if you wanted to
publish a book, you had to submit the book.
You pretty much had to have a anagent if you were going to do
that. They wouldn't actually talk to
you if you didn't have an agent.So you had to go through the
whole routine and everything that you did.
(12:45):
When you, when you help me publish the first book.
Remember back in 2000, that was really one of the first times
that self-publishing was coming out, and it was still really
risky. I still had to publish 3000.
I had to print 3000 books to make it worth my while.
That's changed too. Now you can print five books.
(13:09):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
So the costs have gone down, everything has gone down.
But you know, what you're seeinginstead is so many people
self-publishing that the market is very, very crowded.
Yes. So, you know, when people come
to me, you know, the first thingI say to them is, OK, writing
(13:29):
the book is one thing. Getting the book edited is
another thing. But the real, the real issue
lies in how are you going to promote that book?
How are you going to get the attention of the people that you
want to read it? You know, that's the thing.
That's exactly right. That's exactly right.
And small publishers all over the world have changed when,
(13:49):
when I remember and, and the four books, I think after that,
they were published in 18 languages.
So I had publishers all over theworld and then I didn't publish
for many years. And then when I came back with
his last book, which was published 3 years ago, the
reality is most of those publishers were out of business.
(14:12):
It was fascinating to see what had taken place.
They just, they'd stop, they'd stop publishing anything.
Some of them tried to change genres and change the way that
they worked And but for the mostpart, people just stop doing it
all together. One of my biggest publishers, a
publisher I had in Dutch, they stopped publishing metaphysical
books and they were a metaphysical publisher.
(14:34):
That's how they gained their energy.
So you know which. Is interesting because
metaphysical books are really taking off.
I mean the mind, body spirit industry is now worth over 3
trillion. However, I think that's it.
They didn't have competition before.
Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, it's huge,
(14:56):
the, the market for spiritual books is massive.
But there's a catch 22 going on,you know, because you've got the
mainstream publishers who don't want to take risks, don't want
to take chances on authors that don't have a following or have
never published before or don't have a name, etcetera.
They only want the sure deal. I have a client who has a young
(15:18):
spiritual teacher and he has 3/4of a million followers.
Wow. So I said to him, why would you
want to go to a mainstream publisher?
You've got your audience right there.
You can make money with that book.
You can, you know, get all your costs covered and more.
And he said, well, I'd like to know just to see.
(15:38):
So I said, OK, let's put it to an agent, which we did.
The agent got a couple of well known publishers interested, and
I sat in on a meeting with one of those publishers.
And it was a publisher that specializes and has a big name
in spiritual books. And the commissioning editor,
the whole time, she hadn't read the book.
(15:59):
She hadn't read the proposal. She knew nothing about the book.
The whole hour was spent on the figures.
So you've got three quarters, 7 million people.
Yeah. Well, you know, where are those
people? Where have you got them?
Is it Instagram? Is it Facebook?
That's great. All they wanted to know were
those numbers. And at the end of it, I said, do
(16:20):
you really wanna go with that publisher?
They don't care about your book.They just care.
They just want the number. They.
Yeah, exactly. They wanna see your followers.
Exactly. So he's self-publishing?
Oh, good, good, good, good. Awesome.
Yeah. It's it's it's absolutely
incredible the things that have changed and it's turned
completely around. Like you said, if you really
want to get picked up by a publisher, you have to self
(16:41):
publish first. And you have to self publish
with success. You have to be a success out
there in order to be published by a normal publisher, which and
the money that you get for publishing it's in, I mean, I'm
sure there's people that make a lot of money out of, I'm sure
there's a James Patterson's. There's the people that come up
with stuff on a regular basis that make a ton of money from
(17:02):
this stuff. Then most people will make a
very small portion if they have someone else published the book.
I was so surprised to find out that in these 18 languages that
I was published in, 17 English was one of them.
So 17 other publishers that theyoffered me very small amounts.
(17:23):
I mean, some of them offered me 4% and I I turned those down.
But still, I think the highest Iwas paid was 12% for all of that
stuff. And the interesting part is in
the other languages you have to have a translator.
The translator makes as much money as the author does.
It was, it was really an awakening for me to see what was
(17:45):
going on with the stuff. Amazing trend in Britain that
I've been watching and that is the publishing houses are going
to well known actors, well knowncomedians, well known television
stars and suddenly these people who I'm sure some of them can
write, but not all of them by any means.
And they certainly don't have the time.
(18:06):
But suddenly there's these novels appearing with this
person's name on it and you really don't know who wrote that
book. That's great.
You know, what they're doing, again, is they're chasing the
surefire deal. They're not willing to take a
risk. They want that person's name on
the book. They're prepared to pay them
good money, you know, to lend their name to the book and
(18:28):
promote the book. And I think that's sad because
there are so many great writers out there who are completely
undiscovered. No, that's.
True. I've seen manuscripts from
people and I've thought, my God,that is a brilliant book.
Why is nobody picking it up? That's true.
I've I've seen that happen. I've seen that happen with a lot
of a lot of our students have people that follow our work.
(18:51):
Many of them are writers and, and authors and, and
personalities on channels and, and, and do other things as well
on Internet that are absolutely amazing.
And some of them just can't, can't get it off.
They can't. They can't get their stuff taken
up or picked up in some way. So you're absolutely right.
Promoting the book and being able to follow through, being
(19:14):
able to do that and do that work, absolutely amazing, but
critical. But there are some people I know
and I've spoken to them who havewritten fantasy novels, who sell
their books very well on TikTok.Oh, good.
And they, you know, they say that they, they do a couple of
appearances on TikTok every week. 1 might be about their
(19:37):
book. The other one will be about
something else of interest to fantasy readers, you know, and
they sell their books through TikTok.
Interesting. Well, we've, we've had that
happen too. We've had, I had a, a young lady
in Holland, actually, she came to one of our seminars and she
got some really wonderful ideas from the transition team seminar
(19:58):
and she wrote a children's book about basically the whole thing.
But it wasn't a metaphysical book.
It had a lot of metaphysical aspects, but it was basically a
fiction book And it took off. And today she's just, she's I,
she's written several books now.She's just amazing lady that has
taken some of this stuff and written into a different, like I
(20:19):
said, a different genre, a different heading to be able to
carry the same message in a different way.
It's been been really amazing towatch.
And you work for you. You work for you.
Actually edit books for people professionally.
I do. I know you, I.
Ghostwrite. I edit, I coach, I do all of it.
Yeah, and you, you've done. Tell me about ghostwriting.
(20:40):
Do you do ghostwriting? Yes, yes, occasionally I, I'm
very careful because I won't take on more than two of those a
year because they are quite labour intensive and
interesting. You know, when you're
ghostwriting, you've really got a, you've really got a in a
sense, merge with your client. Yeah, you do.
You've got to be presenting their voice.
(21:02):
Yeah, it can be fun. It can be very hard work.
And it's, you know, it's probably the most expensive.
If you want a ghostwriter, that's going to cost you the
most money. Sure.
That's that's incredible. And the last time you did a a
big project for somebody, you ended up being involved with a
movie, isn't that right? Yes, I did started off as a book
(21:25):
and then she decided she also wanted to make a movie of it.
So I got involved with writing the script for the movie and
some of the production and that's that's in the final post
production phase now and and I'mstill writing the book of the
movie. Incredible.
(21:48):
Absolutely right. So amazing stuff that's taking
place. Absolutely amazing.
So you, you basically you're, you basically are available and
you're at sedgebeer.com. Right, that's the website,
right? That's the I tell people what I
do and they can look at some of the books I've worked on.
Yours are there, and it's also the home of the No BS Spiritual
(22:12):
book. And tell me about that.
Tell me about the the No BS Spiritual Book Club.
And tell me about your other radio show.
You've got some things going on here.
The No BS Spiritual Book Club ismy legacy project.
This is what I call my World Service project.
And this was dangled in front ofme by, I don't know who, but it
(22:34):
came as a complete download, as if somebody was unrolling a, you
know, a projection screen. I've heard that happen, yes.
Look at this and it came about because I was getting pitched so
many books on angels or books onthis or books on that, that I,
you know, I've done so many interviews on those subjects and
(22:57):
there's nothing much else that was to be said.
I felt, and there are a lot of people jumping on the mind body
spirit bandwagon because it's lucrative industry now who, you
know, we're very earnest and they're excited and they're
writing books. But my goodness, I've read them
all. I've interviewed them all.
And it just felt like there wereso many great books that are
(23:20):
already there. And some of these new age
publishing houses have very healthy, you know, promotional
budgets. And if people waking up are
being pointed in the direction of these books, then they're not
getting the information that's really going to move them
forward on their spiritual journey.
And this began to really bother me.
(23:42):
And I was having a quiet rant tomyself one night and then bomb,
you know, someone intervened. There was this picture.
No BS spiritual book club. You know this is a great oh.
You got the name too. That's marvelous.
No, I didn't have the name at the time.
I didn't have the name. I just had everything else but
(24:03):
the name. You know, this is what this is
the way to do it. And it wasn't even, you know,
what you think of as a normal book club where people get
together to read books. It was nothing like that.
But I looked at it for about a year and I thought, you know,
I've pioneered stuff before. And you end up losing your
shirt, you know, you get so excited.
(24:23):
Planet Light. Worker Magazine.
You know all about it. I know about it.
Yeah, yeah. So I didn't really want to take
on something that I didn't thinkI could follow through with.
I knew it was going to be time, money, energy.
But the after watching it for a year, just looking at it out of
the corner of my eye, it, you know, it just became obvious to
(24:45):
me. This was mine to do.
I was very well placed with my history, with books and
everything that I've done with books over the years.
So I decided to do it. So I started it.
And basically what we do is I talk to people like you,
authors, speakers, teachers, people that I've interviewed,
(25:07):
and I asked them to give me the 10 books that influence them the
most on their life journey. Because if people are following
you, they're gonna want to read the books that you read.
But got you where you are. Well.
It's it's the same thing here. If I come out with a new book,
everybody wants to go back and read my first book.
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
(25:29):
So we've now got something like four years later, we've got 2250
and growing every week. 10 best lists from all kinds of people,
well known people, not so well known people, spiritual
teachers, authors, new thought leaders, sharing the stories,
(25:51):
you know, sharing the books thatinfluence them, that change
their life, help them on their spiritual path.
And I also do a weekly interviewwhere we talk about the intimate
stories behind their, you know, their selection and what was
going on in their life at the time.
And what I've learned with thoseinterviews are the they're the
(26:12):
best I've ever done. Number one, I don't have to do
anything. There's no work involved.
All I have to do is talk to themabout their list.
But the people that you know, are talking about those books,
they're not pitching anything. They're not trying to sell a
book. They're speaking from the heart
about their journey and the books that impacted them.
(26:34):
And the love of that comes through.
And so these interviews are justso beautiful because they're so
authentic and people really get to know the person themselves,
you know, which you don't often get in most interviews.
You know, there's always a mask on there somewhere.
So that's the no BS spiritual book club.
(26:56):
It's now. I've now had another download.
Oh good, we've got a new one coming.
We've got, well, it's the same same project, but it's an
expansion. It's to take this out into the
world as book clubs that people can start in their own
community. And we help them with the kinds
(27:20):
of books for the people that arepart of their book club.
We recommend the books we are going to be putting on events
with some of the, you know, the authors of those books so people
can find their tribe. People are just waking up, you
know, who may be afraid to speakto their family or their
colleagues or their friends about their new interest in
(27:42):
spirituality can actually have aplace where they can go and find
like minded people. They can read these books, get
together, discuss them and and as they grow, they're helping
each other grow and it's throughthrough the books that they get
to read. And we share with them all the
right books that they, you know,they could want to be reading
(28:04):
for the stage that they're at tomake it easier for them.
You know, we're sorting the wheat from the chest so that
they don't have to they. Don't have to go through all the
stuff. Books that you know.
I was actually asked to speak atone of those groups.
They were. They read my books.
They found out I was local in the same city, and they asked me
(28:26):
to come speak and I got to go speak, sign books and
everything. It was a small group of people.
It's probably less than 2030 people at the most.
And yet it was really powerful because they all knew each
other. They were they they had created
a community which was really beautiful, based in, you know,
based in light work. It was amazing.
Yeah, that's a great idea. That's what's needed.
(28:47):
You know, people are looking forcommunity.
They're looking for their tribe.They're looking for the
direction of, well, what sort ofbook should I be reading next?
You know what's going to help me?
You allow people to come together and meet up, whether
it's online or in their local village or church hall or
wherever it may be. You've got communities growing
all over the world. And I've got people now who are
(29:10):
looking at this and saying to me, we want to help you with
this because this is nice project that dovetails with, you
know, other projects that are going on, nonprofit projects
that are helping people. Absolutely.
So if anyone watching this wantsto start a book club in there,
(29:31):
you know, tell them to get in touch with me.
Good. We're doing some beta testing
groups, you know, for the peoplethat may be interested in
funding this, we're doing some beta testing groups.
So I'm looking for people who want to start one.
Marvelous, marvelous. That sounds exciting.
That's not really sounds exciting.
OK, last. Well, name it, not the last
(29:53):
piece, but I wanted to hit another big subject that that is
really you and I have been talking about it and it's with
your permission, I'd like to bring up social media.
Social media has been a huge part of connecting us all, and
yet there's more and more problems showing up with social
(30:13):
media. I'll tell you what the group has
basically said about social media.
It's been great because you can communicate with everybody, tell
everybody what you're doing, what's going on.
But the collection of data and being used against us, which is
really how social media makes anytime you go online and
(30:34):
something is for free, you're the, you're the, you're
basically the product they're taking your data for and using
it in some way to try and sell you something, convince you of
something or do something in some way.
And social media has been great.But we had a problem and the
problem was very simple. It took off so fast that there
(30:55):
was no regulation, no ideas. And of course, they had the
money behind them. So they were able to lobby
Congress and lobby the lobby thedifferent places throughout the
world in different ways to stop it.
But now you can actually have a website and you can invite other
people to post on your website. And you're not responsible for
(31:16):
what is on your website, which is exactly what social media is.
And because of it, it is starting to bubble up in so many
different areas that we have real problems on this planet
with social media. Personally, we've stepped out of
X all together. We've exed out X.
(31:36):
We just don't want to be there for a lot of reasons.
He's anyway. Yeah, this is a reflection,
isn't it, of what's going on anyway?
It is, you know, in every other arena.
I mean, you're getting the polarization, you are getting
the ones that want to be integrity and have, you know,
sense of values and you've got the complete opposite, you know,
(32:00):
So this is another one of those things that's dividing us.
And so you've got the black hatsand the white hats.
And on top of that, they, they're completely lost.
I'm absolutely convinced that Facebook and several others have
been extremely hacked. And they don't, they don't have
(32:20):
control over it. I know personally, we had, we,
we used to run a lot of ads on Facebook.
So we had a very active ads account until it was hacked and
all the sudden we were getting charges for thousands of
dollars. And every time we'd bring it to
their attention, they would reverse it.
But then it would happen again, it would happen again, it would
happen again. And now our Facebook is actually
(32:42):
been shut down because they say we violated rules with our
Instagram account, but they havethe wrong Instagram account.
They're not actually talking about our Instagram account.
So we have, and they say we've sent notices to your Instagram
account. That's how you how you're going
to dispute this if you want to dispute it, but it's not our
Instagram account. We have no way of doing it.
(33:04):
So it's been amazing. And then TikTok is kicking us
off for we're trying to find outwhy, of course.
And they just refers to this long, long list of rules and
stuff that they have on one of their pages, which goes on and
on forever, which nothing applies to us.
So we're, we're finding it really interesting.
(33:24):
But I do believe that we're at apoint where it's going to crash.
We're going to see, we're going to see a lot of things starting
to take place that are, that arebeing taken over in different
way. Tell tell me what your opinion
of this stuff is. I think that there is very
likely a concerted effort afoot #1 if you're not spending any
(33:47):
money with them, they don't wantyou anymore.
That's right, they really don't.And they've got the algorithms
that, you know, they're only going to work if you are
constantly on Facebook, constantly on your page,
constantly spending money with them #2.
I think that they really do wantto get rid of a certain faction.
Anyone who is, you know, sellingwhat you're selling, what I'm
(34:12):
selling, which is truth and honesty and information and
empowerment. They don't want that.
That's correct, you know, So, sothey're getting rid of people
like that, especially if you're still, by their standards,
pretty small. It's very easy.
I get emails telling me that my videos from my interviews are
not, they're going to come down off Facebook because they've got
(34:33):
30 second sets of someone's music.
They think it's their music. When I follow the link, it's not
even my interviews. There's someone else's
interviews on the same network and it says that you can, you
know, you can argue this point, go here, go there, but then you
can't press any of the buttons to.
Well, that's, that's why we that's why we don't do much on
(34:56):
YouTube. YouTube, I use a lot of music,
much of it is my own original music.
And we get tagged all the time for people saying it's theirs.
And then the stuff that I do usethat isn't mine, I purchased and
I have license for and we still get it.
What happens is many musicians today go and sell their music to
(35:18):
some of these people that sell it to me and then they double
dip. They claim that the music is
theirs and as soon as I tell them who I bought it from, they
released the claims. But it's a lot of hassle.
Well, that's the other thing. Unbelievable.
To make it. It's not worth your while any
longer. It's not worth your while and
and YouTube says we'll just go to YouTube and use our music
(35:39):
that we give, but their music isjunk and it's really awkward to
find what you're looking for. It's very difficult.
They don't have a good system atall for that.
So it's. Part of a what I think of a
silence in voices. The silence in voices, You know,
we don't have freedom of speech anymore.
We can't say what we think. We're policed, you know,
(36:01):
completely. And everybody is sticking to
that. Oh dear, how dare you say that
word? You know, if you're not toeing a
particular line bomb, you're offof social media.
And I think this policing is happening in every area of our
lives. And it's happening on our
Youtubes, it's happening on our Facebook pages, It's happening
(36:22):
everywhere. It is, it absolutely is.
And it's interesting because most people don't have a clue
that it's happening to them, especially if it's on Facebook
or it's on Facebook or if it's on YouTube and they get a
copyright claim. They make it almost impossible
to find out what to do or where to go.
They'll give you links, but thenyou have to go to the three
(36:45):
little dots and find find something under the separate
menu that they don't tell you about.
It's absolutely unbelievable. Some of the stuff that we we
have to deal with to do. That the same thing's happening
with many of these large corporations, so that no one has
customer service teams anymore. You can talk to a bot, but that
(37:05):
only goes so far. They can't answer every
question. You cannot get anybody to listen
to you. The only place I've ever found
right And one of them, I hate tosay it because I can't stand the
company, and that's Amazon. Amazon, they give us a phone
number. You can give, you can write to
Jeff and it finds its way to somebody who comes back to you.
(37:28):
You can write to Apple. You can write to.
That's correct. And I've actually had phone
calls within 15 minutes, you know?
I have called Amazon and gotten an Amazon representative in this
country. You can actually tell they're
coming. You know, you ask them where
they're coming from. They're coming from Virginia.
They're coming from wherever it is and I was very surprised that
(37:51):
they're still doing that, but very thrilled because they saw a
problem. And you get nowhere.
Yeah, no, Facebook is. With a lot of other companies.
I am convinced that Facebook hasvery few employees.
They're all robots that for the most part, it's just they're
all, it's all algorithms that they use of pretty much
everything now. And there's all these places
(38:11):
that are popping up for my business that will sell me one
of those chat boxes they call it, which is an automated check
box, which simply says if you have a question, we're going to
send you to the FAQ where you'regoing to have to read all this
stuff to be, you know, thanks. That's not why I that's not why
I clicked on the chat box. But yeah, and it's basically
(38:32):
coming down to the money. It's coming down to the money
versus the people. That's really what is happening
and. And and and that's it, isn't it?
I mean, everything nowadays is all about money.
It is. In a way that it's never been
before. No, we used to.
We have rules against monopolies.
We don't have those rules anymore.
We have in our constitution thatthe there's a separation of
(38:55):
church and state. Guess what?
That's gone. That's completely gone.
We're we're the money has taken over a lot of this stuff and it,
it might get worse here coming up with these elections.
We'll just have to wait and see.I think it will.
Yeah, that's sad. Anyway, this has been fun.
This has been fun. What else would you like to
cover before we go here? I don't know, I'll probably
(39:20):
think of something. As soon as we as soon as we stop
Sandy Sedge beer. Thank you for your time,
sweetheart. You've, you've done you.
You've really helped spread a lot of light on this planet, not
just with us, but with all thesepeople that you've touched.
You've made things available in very plain, simple language to
understand. You help us all reach a higher
(39:42):
level. Thank you for your work.
Thank you for that, Steven. I think, you know, as long as we
all remember that we can make a difference.
You know, we, we do have to combat this by being ourselves
and, you know, holding on to integrity and truth.
We absolutely do. And with that, I'll say goodbye
for now. Thanks for being with us here in
(40:03):
the and the Back Story podcast. We appreciate it.
A spabo to everyone, thank you for taking your power.
Music. Everybody welcome to the back
(00:32):
story today I've got I'm very excited to bring you a very good
friend of mine, close friend of mine who is here at the very
beginning of of our work. It was actually light worker
back then years and years ago when we first started and of
course has evolved into a spavo.org.
In the meantime, Sandy has been with us from the beginning.
(00:52):
She's actually a board member ofthe Espavo Corporation, has been
with us quite some time. I'm very proud to bring her on
board today. She does.
She actually edited my first book, remember, and helped with
almost everything that we put out in some way.
She's just been a real jewel, and I'm thrilled to bring her in
(01:13):
today that we're going to talk about quite a few things.
I want to talk about the evolution of publishing.
I want to talk about a lot of things.
So from sedgebeer.com, this is Sandy Sedgebeer.
Welcome, Sandy. Hi, good to see you.
Good to see you Hun. Thanks for being with us here
today. So tell me we, we've, like I
said, you and I've been talking,we talk about a lot of the crazy
(01:36):
stuff that's been happening and so fast.
It's unbelievable how how quick all this stuff has elevated and
so forth. One of the first things I want
to talk about here today is AI. Tell me about your opinion of
how AI is going to affect your business and the things that are
going on with that. Well, yeah, I'm, you know, the
(02:01):
imagination of human nature justcompletely astounds me.
AI, well, it's got its uses for certain, but it is the scariest
thing that I've ever seen. You know, I've got a number of
writer clients who are telling me that, you know, they, they,
they used AI to maybe start their books or something.
(02:24):
And when, when they show me, youknow, what AI has done, I have
to say that is fantastic. And you mustn't use it, you
know, because I think, well, I know that Amazon is supposed to
be putting in some kind of, I don't know how they do it, but
(02:45):
something that actually spots AI.
And they say. That all AI written books.
Wow. That that now, whether it's true
or not, whether that's just a rumour, but this is what I
heard. I think that they're also
looking at doing it with book covers as well, because a lot of
people are creating their own book covers too with AI.
But it is frightening. I mean, I remember seeing a
(03:08):
manuscript recently from a friend of mine who actually used
it very wisely. What she did was she was writing
about, you know, what she does and a little bit about her life,
and she didn't know how to describe herself.
So she decided that she was going to put some stuff in
ChatGPT or whatever it's called,and see what it came up with.
(03:32):
And it came up with a fabulous description of her.
And I said, now that's an OK use, you know, for AI.
But to actually use it, I mean, you think about all the words
that have gone into that. Yes, all the words that have
been collated. Your words are there.
That's it. Your books are there.
And I said, I know mine are. I had a shock the other day
(03:54):
because I follow, I follow a particular newsletter.
I won't give too many details away.
And they were talking about something that I thought that
sounds interesting. I'm going to, you know, press
the button and say yes to that. And what I actually saw was a
piece of writing that I had done20 years ago for a client.
(04:22):
And you know, and I know that, you know, when you're writing
direct marketing packages, they get sold and other people.
You. You know your your prose, but
there it was, right? You know, in my face the same
works. And I thought, where does this
end? You know, where does it end?
I don't know. I.
(04:42):
I saw Tom Hanks had he came on social media the other day and
he said if you see me making anypolitical campaigns, don't
believe it. It was all done by AIII won't do
it. Plain and simple.
It's been, it's been really interesting to see what's taking
place. And of course we're seeing
people whose voices are stolen. They're emulating their voice.
(05:04):
They've actually hired people todo voice overs and then they
steal their voice. We've seen all sorts of things
happen like this. I've used AI for a couple
things. I use it sometimes I, I'd use it
to improve my text. But what happens is it improves
it so much it doesn't doesn't use words I would normally use.
(05:24):
So, but, and the reality is it'sgot a lot of good uses.
Somebody sent me something that was just unbelievable.
They basically sent me a question about metaphysics and
about they, I forgot exactly thewords.
They weren't, but they were asking questions of things that
(05:45):
the group has said and the grouphas answered.
And they came up with this long,long e-mail with all this stuff.
It sounded just like the group. It was unbelievable.
And I know that that they take it right off the website.
These are the large language models that we keep hearing
about that they keep getting larger and larger because
(06:07):
they're gathering more data fromall these different places.
Absolutely unbelievable stuff. So it is scary.
Using it to scam people out of money.
You know, how they're getting kids and they're duplicating
their voices and they're, you know, having these calls
generated that sound like it's your child or your grandchild
(06:29):
talking and please send me money.
I mean, that is just, you know, we truly are in the Wild West
now. It is no rules anymore.
There's no integrity. It's every man for himself.
It is absolutely crazy. Well, and on top of that, we, we
have AI exploding right now, butthat's only the beginning.
Right behind it. We have quantum computing and of
(06:51):
course, robotics. They're all coming in at the
same time. They're all going to hit the
market and change our world very, very quickly.
Quantum computing used to take, I mean, it was only six months
ago, maybe a year ago that we were talking in the light
masters all about quantum computing, telling him about it.
I was showing pictures of the quantum computers that Google
(07:12):
has and Microsoft and different places throughout the world.
There was about 7 quantum computers and they take up a
whole room. It was like the original
computer that took up a a whole room of space.
They've already got it down to asmall, fairly small size now.
It's still not anywhere near being ready to be put out into
(07:35):
publication or into normal use throughout the world, but it's
getting close and it's only a matter of time.
Here's the bit that interests me.
I absolutely believe that we arein a different energy right now.
You know, we are several levels up in energy and we know that
(07:55):
there are so many people waking up.
There's so many people who are becoming very energetically
sensitive. I've always maintained that, you
know, between me and you, between you and your audience,
there is a threat of energy. And it is authentic, and they
can feel you. They may not know that they're
feeling you, but they know when you're being authentic.
(08:18):
If you were putting out words orvoices that didn't have your
energy signature in them, I bet there's an awful lot of people
who would feel that. I, I think so, especially the
impasse that we work with. I've always, I've always told,
you know, for years I told Barbara, she said, well, just
just tell him this. And I said, I can't just tell
him that. I, I said, you, you understand
(08:39):
that we're working in front of aroom full of psychics.
You know, you can't, you can't do that.
Our, our groups are all incredible empaths that pick up
things and energies and they won't confront you with it.
They'll just turn off. They'll just go a different
direction. So absolutely.
I wonder how that is going to affect, you know, the, you know,
(09:00):
the race for AI, because I thinkthat energetically sensitive
people have a lot more power, you know, and it's a counter,
you know, it's a counter energy that they'd be putting out.
So I'm really curious to see what happens with that.
It's, it's interesting, you know.
If you put out a book that was generated by by AII bet people
(09:24):
would feel that that is not your.
Vital I I would think so. I would certainly hope so.
I think they would get interested in the beginning
because it would have my flavourobviously with, with AI taking
my work basically and taking my words, it would have a little
bit of my flavour. But once they started, my guess
is after people got maybe a chapter into it, they put the
(09:47):
book down because it wouldn't becohesive in some ways.
And the other side of it, too, is that it's making us become
more discerning. That's exactly it.
That's exactly it. If we know that everything we
can see when we turn on the television, when we look at
YouTube, anything else, all of this can be faked.
If we're aware of that, we take everything with a grain of salt,
(10:10):
which is really what we should be doing in the 1st place.
So yeah, stepping into this higher vibration is also
bringing new technologies. A group equates it to the times
we had in Atlantis. They said we actually we went a
different way in Atlantis. Instead of electronic
technologies, we went into biology and we started making
(10:30):
clones and we started making basically people that were not,
we didn't think they were human,so we treated them differently
and everything else. We're coming up on that too.
That's is going to be a fascinating journey going
forward to see if there is consciousness that actually
evolves out of the technology that we're working with.
(10:53):
It's it's going to be really fascinating to see what takes
place with this. OK, well, tell me, let's let's
go back for a minute and talk about talk about publishing in
general, because you're an expert in this area.
You've been doing this for quitesome time, my dear, and you're
really good at it. Should I tell you what's really
interesting? You know, when I was first
published back in the 80s and 90s, you know, by big publishing
(11:17):
houses and you had the old traditional, you know, you got
your advance and they put a publicity team and they sent you
out on the road and you did yourbook tour, you know, and all of
that happened. And none of that happens these
days unless you're a top, top seller, you know.
But what's interesting, And anyone who self published that
(11:40):
was really frowned upon. It was vanity publishing.
That's what it was. I was.
I was at a self-publishing conference last year and I was
hearing that a lot of well knownwriters who were at a writing
conference in Vegas that year were actually saying that
mainstream publishing is now being called vanity publishing.
(12:03):
Wow, it's reversed. Thing.
The only thing people get out ofit is the name of the publishing
company. Wow, that's amazing.
Completely. Flipped around.
Well, I used to be, I used to work in the book distribution
business before I started channeling, and it was very
interesting. We used to have, you know, you
had all the small publishers, but you had all the offshoots.
(12:25):
You had Simon and Schuster, you had Random House, you had Harper
Row. Now they've started to really go
a different way, but the whole idea was if you wanted to
publish a book, you had to submit the book.
You pretty much had to have a anagent if you were going to do
that. They wouldn't actually talk to
you if you didn't have an agent.So you had to go through the
whole routine and everything that you did.
(12:45):
When you, when you help me publish the first book.
Remember back in 2000, that was really one of the first times
that self-publishing was coming out, and it was still really
risky. I still had to publish 3000.
I had to print 3000 books to make it worth my while.
That's changed too. Now you can print five books.
(13:09):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
So the costs have gone down, everything has gone down.
But you know, what you're seeinginstead is so many people
self-publishing that the market is very, very crowded.
Yes. So, you know, when people come
to me, you know, the first thingI say to them is, OK, writing
(13:29):
the book is one thing. Getting the book edited is
another thing. But the real, the real issue
lies in how are you going to promote that book?
How are you going to get the attention of the people that you
want to read it? You know, that's the thing.
That's exactly right. That's exactly right.
And small publishers all over the world have changed when,
(13:49):
when I remember and, and the four books, I think after that,
they were published in 18 languages.
So I had publishers all over theworld and then I didn't publish
for many years. And then when I came back with
his last book, which was published 3 years ago, the
reality is most of those publishers were out of business.
(14:12):
It was fascinating to see what had taken place.
They just, they'd stop, they'd stop publishing anything.
Some of them tried to change genres and change the way that
they worked And but for the mostpart, people just stop doing it
all together. One of my biggest publishers, a
publisher I had in Dutch, they stopped publishing metaphysical
books and they were a metaphysical publisher.
(14:34):
That's how they gained their energy.
So you know which. Is interesting because
metaphysical books are really taking off.
I mean the mind, body spirit industry is now worth over 3
trillion. However, I think that's it.
They didn't have competition before.
Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, it's huge,
(14:56):
the, the market for spiritual books is massive.
But there's a catch 22 going on,you know, because you've got the
mainstream publishers who don't want to take risks, don't want
to take chances on authors that don't have a following or have
never published before or don't have a name, etcetera.
They only want the sure deal. I have a client who has a young
(15:18):
spiritual teacher and he has 3/4of a million followers.
Wow. So I said to him, why would you
want to go to a mainstream publisher?
You've got your audience right there.
You can make money with that book.
You can, you know, get all your costs covered and more.
And he said, well, I'd like to know just to see.
(15:38):
So I said, OK, let's put it to an agent, which we did.
The agent got a couple of well known publishers interested, and
I sat in on a meeting with one of those publishers.
And it was a publisher that specializes and has a big name
in spiritual books. And the commissioning editor,
the whole time, she hadn't read the book.
(15:59):
She hadn't read the proposal. She knew nothing about the book.
The whole hour was spent on the figures.
So you've got three quarters, 7 million people.
Yeah. Well, you know, where are those
people? Where have you got them?
Is it Instagram? Is it Facebook?
That's great. All they wanted to know were
those numbers. And at the end of it, I said, do
(16:20):
you really wanna go with that publisher?
They don't care about your book.They just care.
They just want the number. They.
Yeah, exactly. They wanna see your followers.
Exactly. So he's self-publishing?
Oh, good, good, good, good. Awesome.
Yeah. It's it's it's absolutely
incredible the things that have changed and it's turned
completely around. Like you said, if you really
want to get picked up by a publisher, you have to self
(16:41):
publish first. And you have to self publish
with success. You have to be a success out
there in order to be published by a normal publisher, which and
the money that you get for publishing it's in, I mean, I'm
sure there's people that make a lot of money out of, I'm sure
there's a James Patterson's. There's the people that come up
with stuff on a regular basis that make a ton of money from
(17:02):
this stuff. Then most people will make a
very small portion if they have someone else published the book.
I was so surprised to find out that in these 18 languages that
I was published in, 17 English was one of them.
So 17 other publishers that theyoffered me very small amounts.
(17:23):
I mean, some of them offered me 4% and I I turned those down.
But still, I think the highest Iwas paid was 12% for all of that
stuff. And the interesting part is in
the other languages you have to have a translator.
The translator makes as much money as the author does.
It was, it was really an awakening for me to see what was
(17:45):
going on with the stuff. Amazing trend in Britain that
I've been watching and that is the publishing houses are going
to well known actors, well knowncomedians, well known television
stars and suddenly these people who I'm sure some of them can
write, but not all of them by any means.
And they certainly don't have the time.
(18:06):
But suddenly there's these novels appearing with this
person's name on it and you really don't know who wrote that
book. That's great.
You know, what they're doing, again, is they're chasing the
surefire deal. They're not willing to take a
risk. They want that person's name on
the book. They're prepared to pay them
good money, you know, to lend their name to the book and
(18:28):
promote the book. And I think that's sad because
there are so many great writers out there who are completely
undiscovered. No, that's.
True. I've seen manuscripts from
people and I've thought, my God,that is a brilliant book.
Why is nobody picking it up? That's true.
I've I've seen that happen. I've seen that happen with a lot
of a lot of our students have people that follow our work.
(18:51):
Many of them are writers and, and authors and, and
personalities on channels and, and, and do other things as well
on Internet that are absolutely amazing.
And some of them just can't, can't get it off.
They can't. They can't get their stuff taken
up or picked up in some way. So you're absolutely right.
Promoting the book and being able to follow through, being
(19:14):
able to do that and do that work, absolutely amazing, but
critical. But there are some people I know
and I've spoken to them who havewritten fantasy novels, who sell
their books very well on TikTok.Oh, good.
And they, you know, they say that they, they do a couple of
appearances on TikTok every week. 1 might be about their
(19:37):
book. The other one will be about
something else of interest to fantasy readers, you know, and
they sell their books through TikTok.
Interesting. Well, we've, we've had that
happen too. We've had, I had a, a young lady
in Holland, actually, she came to one of our seminars and she
got some really wonderful ideas from the transition team seminar
(19:58):
and she wrote a children's book about basically the whole thing.
But it wasn't a metaphysical book.
It had a lot of metaphysical aspects, but it was basically a
fiction book And it took off. And today she's just, she's I,
she's written several books now.She's just amazing lady that has
taken some of this stuff and written into a different, like I
(20:19):
said, a different genre, a different heading to be able to
carry the same message in a different way.
It's been been really amazing towatch.
And you work for you. You work for you.
Actually edit books for people professionally.
I do. I know you, I.
Ghostwrite. I edit, I coach, I do all of it.
Yeah, and you, you've done. Tell me about ghostwriting.
(20:40):
Do you do ghostwriting? Yes, yes, occasionally I, I'm
very careful because I won't take on more than two of those a
year because they are quite labour intensive and
interesting. You know, when you're
ghostwriting, you've really got a, you've really got a in a
sense, merge with your client. Yeah, you do.
You've got to be presenting their voice.
(21:02):
Yeah, it can be fun. It can be very hard work.
And it's, you know, it's probably the most expensive.
If you want a ghostwriter, that's going to cost you the
most money. Sure.
That's that's incredible. And the last time you did a a
big project for somebody, you ended up being involved with a
movie, isn't that right? Yes, I did started off as a book
(21:25):
and then she decided she also wanted to make a movie of it.
So I got involved with writing the script for the movie and
some of the production and that's that's in the final post
production phase now and and I'mstill writing the book of the
movie. Incredible.
(21:48):
Absolutely right. So amazing stuff that's taking
place. Absolutely amazing.
So you, you basically you're, you basically are available and
you're at sedgebeer.com. Right, that's the website,
right? That's the I tell people what I
do and they can look at some of the books I've worked on.
Yours are there, and it's also the home of the No BS Spiritual
(22:12):
book. And tell me about that.
Tell me about the the No BS Spiritual Book Club.
And tell me about your other radio show.
You've got some things going on here.
The No BS Spiritual Book Club ismy legacy project.
This is what I call my World Service project.
And this was dangled in front ofme by, I don't know who, but it
(22:34):
came as a complete download, as if somebody was unrolling a, you
know, a projection screen. I've heard that happen, yes.
Look at this and it came about because I was getting pitched so
many books on angels or books onthis or books on that, that I,
you know, I've done so many interviews on those subjects and
(22:57):
there's nothing much else that was to be said.
I felt, and there are a lot of people jumping on the mind body
spirit bandwagon because it's lucrative industry now who, you
know, we're very earnest and they're excited and they're
writing books. But my goodness, I've read them
all. I've interviewed them all.
And it just felt like there wereso many great books that are
(23:20):
already there. And some of these new age
publishing houses have very healthy, you know, promotional
budgets. And if people waking up are
being pointed in the direction of these books, then they're not
getting the information that's really going to move them
forward on their spiritual journey.
And this began to really bother me.
(23:42):
And I was having a quiet rant tomyself one night and then bomb,
you know, someone intervened. There was this picture.
No BS spiritual book club. You know this is a great oh.
You got the name too. That's marvelous.
No, I didn't have the name at the time.
I didn't have the name. I just had everything else but
(24:03):
the name. You know, this is what this is
the way to do it. And it wasn't even, you know,
what you think of as a normal book club where people get
together to read books. It was nothing like that.
But I looked at it for about a year and I thought, you know,
I've pioneered stuff before. And you end up losing your
shirt, you know, you get so excited.
(24:23):
Planet Light. Worker Magazine.
You know all about it. I know about it.
Yeah, yeah. So I didn't really want to take
on something that I didn't thinkI could follow through with.
I knew it was going to be time, money, energy.
But the after watching it for a year, just looking at it out of
the corner of my eye, it, you know, it just became obvious to
(24:45):
me. This was mine to do.
I was very well placed with my history, with books and
everything that I've done with books over the years.
So I decided to do it. So I started it.
And basically what we do is I talk to people like you,
authors, speakers, teachers, people that I've interviewed,
(25:07):
and I asked them to give me the 10 books that influence them the
most on their life journey. Because if people are following
you, they're gonna want to read the books that you read.
But got you where you are. Well.
It's it's the same thing here. If I come out with a new book,
everybody wants to go back and read my first book.
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
(25:29):
So we've now got something like four years later, we've got 2250
and growing every week. 10 best lists from all kinds of people,
well known people, not so well known people, spiritual
teachers, authors, new thought leaders, sharing the stories,
(25:51):
you know, sharing the books thatinfluence them, that change
their life, help them on their spiritual path.
And I also do a weekly interviewwhere we talk about the intimate
stories behind their, you know, their selection and what was
going on in their life at the time.
And what I've learned with thoseinterviews are the they're the
(26:12):
best I've ever done. Number one, I don't have to do
anything. There's no work involved.
All I have to do is talk to themabout their list.
But the people that you know, are talking about those books,
they're not pitching anything. They're not trying to sell a
book. They're speaking from the heart
about their journey and the books that impacted them.
(26:34):
And the love of that comes through.
And so these interviews are justso beautiful because they're so
authentic and people really get to know the person themselves,
you know, which you don't often get in most interviews.
You know, there's always a mask on there somewhere.
So that's the no BS spiritual book club.
(26:56):
It's now. I've now had another download.
Oh good, we've got a new one coming.
We've got, well, it's the same same project, but it's an
expansion. It's to take this out into the
world as book clubs that people can start in their own
community. And we help them with the kinds
(27:20):
of books for the people that arepart of their book club.
We recommend the books we are going to be putting on events
with some of the, you know, the authors of those books so people
can find their tribe. People are just waking up, you
know, who may be afraid to speakto their family or their
colleagues or their friends about their new interest in
(27:42):
spirituality can actually have aplace where they can go and find
like minded people. They can read these books, get
together, discuss them and and as they grow, they're helping
each other grow and it's throughthrough the books that they get
to read. And we share with them all the
right books that they, you know,they could want to be reading
(28:04):
for the stage that they're at tomake it easier for them.
You know, we're sorting the wheat from the chest so that
they don't have to they. Don't have to go through all the
stuff. Books that you know.
I was actually asked to speak atone of those groups.
They were. They read my books.
They found out I was local in the same city, and they asked me
(28:26):
to come speak and I got to go speak, sign books and
everything. It was a small group of people.
It's probably less than 2030 people at the most.
And yet it was really powerful because they all knew each
other. They were they they had created
a community which was really beautiful, based in, you know,
based in light work. It was amazing.
Yeah, that's a great idea. That's what's needed.
(28:47):
You know, people are looking forcommunity.
They're looking for their tribe.They're looking for the
direction of, well, what sort ofbook should I be reading next?
You know what's going to help me?
You allow people to come together and meet up, whether
it's online or in their local village or church hall or
wherever it may be. You've got communities growing
all over the world. And I've got people now who are
(29:10):
looking at this and saying to me, we want to help you with
this because this is nice project that dovetails with, you
know, other projects that are going on, nonprofit projects
that are helping people. Absolutely.
So if anyone watching this wantsto start a book club in there,
(29:31):
you know, tell them to get in touch with me.
Good. We're doing some beta testing
groups, you know, for the peoplethat may be interested in
funding this, we're doing some beta testing groups.
So I'm looking for people who want to start one.
Marvelous, marvelous. That sounds exciting.
That's not really sounds exciting.
OK, last. Well, name it, not the last
(29:53):
piece, but I wanted to hit another big subject that that is
really you and I have been talking about it and it's with
your permission, I'd like to bring up social media.
Social media has been a huge part of connecting us all, and
yet there's more and more problems showing up with social
(30:13):
media. I'll tell you what the group has
basically said about social media.
It's been great because you can communicate with everybody, tell
everybody what you're doing, what's going on.
But the collection of data and being used against us, which is
really how social media makes anytime you go online and
(30:34):
something is for free, you're the, you're the, you're
basically the product they're taking your data for and using
it in some way to try and sell you something, convince you of
something or do something in some way.
And social media has been great.But we had a problem and the
problem was very simple. It took off so fast that there
(30:55):
was no regulation, no ideas. And of course, they had the
money behind them. So they were able to lobby
Congress and lobby the lobby thedifferent places throughout the
world in different ways to stop it.
But now you can actually have a website and you can invite other
people to post on your website. And you're not responsible for
(31:16):
what is on your website, which is exactly what social media is.
And because of it, it is starting to bubble up in so many
different areas that we have real problems on this planet
with social media. Personally, we've stepped out of
X all together. We've exed out X.
(31:36):
We just don't want to be there for a lot of reasons.
He's anyway. Yeah, this is a reflection,
isn't it, of what's going on anyway?
It is, you know, in every other arena.
I mean, you're getting the polarization, you are getting
the ones that want to be integrity and have, you know,
sense of values and you've got the complete opposite, you know,
(32:00):
So this is another one of those things that's dividing us.
And so you've got the black hatsand the white hats.
And on top of that, they, they're completely lost.
I'm absolutely convinced that Facebook and several others have
been extremely hacked. And they don't, they don't have
(32:20):
control over it. I know personally, we had, we,
we used to run a lot of ads on Facebook.
So we had a very active ads account until it was hacked and
all the sudden we were getting charges for thousands of
dollars. And every time we'd bring it to
their attention, they would reverse it.
But then it would happen again, it would happen again, it would
happen again. And now our Facebook is actually
(32:42):
been shut down because they say we violated rules with our
Instagram account, but they havethe wrong Instagram account.
They're not actually talking about our Instagram account.
So we have, and they say we've sent notices to your Instagram
account. That's how you how you're going
to dispute this if you want to dispute it, but it's not our
Instagram account. We have no way of doing it.
(33:04):
So it's been amazing. And then TikTok is kicking us
off for we're trying to find outwhy, of course.
And they just refers to this long, long list of rules and
stuff that they have on one of their pages, which goes on and
on forever, which nothing applies to us.
So we're, we're finding it really interesting.
(33:24):
But I do believe that we're at apoint where it's going to crash.
We're going to see, we're going to see a lot of things starting
to take place that are, that arebeing taken over in different
way. Tell tell me what your opinion
of this stuff is. I think that there is very
likely a concerted effort afoot #1 if you're not spending any
(33:47):
money with them, they don't wantyou anymore.
That's right, they really don't.And they've got the algorithms
that, you know, they're only going to work if you are
constantly on Facebook, constantly on your page,
constantly spending money with them #2.
I think that they really do wantto get rid of a certain faction.
Anyone who is, you know, sellingwhat you're selling, what I'm
(34:12):
selling, which is truth and honesty and information and
empowerment. They don't want that.
That's correct, you know, So, sothey're getting rid of people
like that, especially if you're still, by their standards,
pretty small. It's very easy.
I get emails telling me that my videos from my interviews are
not, they're going to come down off Facebook because they've got
(34:33):
30 second sets of someone's music.
They think it's their music. When I follow the link, it's not
even my interviews. There's someone else's
interviews on the same network and it says that you can, you
know, you can argue this point, go here, go there, but then you
can't press any of the buttons to.
Well, that's, that's why we that's why we don't do much on
(34:56):
YouTube. YouTube, I use a lot of music,
much of it is my own original music.
And we get tagged all the time for people saying it's theirs.
And then the stuff that I do usethat isn't mine, I purchased and
I have license for and we still get it.
What happens is many musicians today go and sell their music to
(35:18):
some of these people that sell it to me and then they double
dip. They claim that the music is
theirs and as soon as I tell them who I bought it from, they
released the claims. But it's a lot of hassle.
Well, that's the other thing. Unbelievable.
To make it. It's not worth your while any
longer. It's not worth your while and
and YouTube says we'll just go to YouTube and use our music
(35:39):
that we give, but their music isjunk and it's really awkward to
find what you're looking for. It's very difficult.
They don't have a good system atall for that.
So it's. Part of a what I think of a
silence in voices. The silence in voices, You know,
we don't have freedom of speech anymore.
We can't say what we think. We're policed, you know,
(36:01):
completely. And everybody is sticking to
that. Oh dear, how dare you say that
word? You know, if you're not toeing a
particular line bomb, you're offof social media.
And I think this policing is happening in every area of our
lives. And it's happening on our
Youtubes, it's happening on our Facebook pages, It's happening
(36:22):
everywhere. It is, it absolutely is.
And it's interesting because most people don't have a clue
that it's happening to them, especially if it's on Facebook
or it's on Facebook or if it's on YouTube and they get a
copyright claim. They make it almost impossible
to find out what to do or where to go.
They'll give you links, but thenyou have to go to the three
(36:45):
little dots and find find something under the separate
menu that they don't tell you about.
It's absolutely unbelievable. Some of the stuff that we we
have to deal with to do. That the same thing's happening
with many of these large corporations, so that no one has
customer service teams anymore. You can talk to a bot, but that
(37:05):
only goes so far. They can't answer every
question. You cannot get anybody to listen
to you. The only place I've ever found
right And one of them, I hate tosay it because I can't stand the
company, and that's Amazon. Amazon, they give us a phone
number. You can give, you can write to
Jeff and it finds its way to somebody who comes back to you.
(37:28):
You can write to Apple. You can write to.
That's correct. And I've actually had phone
calls within 15 minutes, you know?
I have called Amazon and gotten an Amazon representative in this
country. You can actually tell they're
coming. You know, you ask them where
they're coming from. They're coming from Virginia.
They're coming from wherever it is and I was very surprised that
(37:51):
they're still doing that, but very thrilled because they saw a
problem. And you get nowhere.
Yeah, no, Facebook is. With a lot of other companies.
I am convinced that Facebook hasvery few employees.
They're all robots that for the most part, it's just they're
all, it's all algorithms that they use of pretty much
everything now. And there's all these places
(38:11):
that are popping up for my business that will sell me one
of those chat boxes they call it, which is an automated check
box, which simply says if you have a question, we're going to
send you to the FAQ where you'regoing to have to read all this
stuff to be, you know, thanks. That's not why I that's not why
I clicked on the chat box. But yeah, and it's basically
(38:32):
coming down to the money. It's coming down to the money
versus the people. That's really what is happening
and. And and and that's it, isn't it?
I mean, everything nowadays is all about money.
It is. In a way that it's never been
before. No, we used to.
We have rules against monopolies.
We don't have those rules anymore.
We have in our constitution thatthe there's a separation of
(38:55):
church and state. Guess what?
That's gone. That's completely gone.
We're we're the money has taken over a lot of this stuff and it,
it might get worse here coming up with these elections.
We'll just have to wait and see.I think it will.
Yeah, that's sad. Anyway, this has been fun.
This has been fun. What else would you like to
cover before we go here? I don't know, I'll probably
(39:20):
think of something. As soon as we as soon as we stop
Sandy Sedge beer. Thank you for your time,
sweetheart. You've, you've done you.
You've really helped spread a lot of light on this planet, not
just with us, but with all thesepeople that you've touched.
You've made things available in very plain, simple language to
understand. You help us all reach a higher
(39:42):
level. Thank you for your work.
Thank you for that, Steven. I think, you know, as long as we
all remember that we can make a difference.
You know, we, we do have to combat this by being ourselves
and, you know, holding on to integrity and truth.
We absolutely do. And with that, I'll say goodbye
for now. Thanks for being with us here in
(40:03):
the and the Back Story podcast. We appreciate it.
A spabo to everyone, thank you for taking your power.
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