IAM484- Professional Life Story Writer Helps Families Pass Down Generational Memories

Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today as Amy Woods Butler of the The Story Scribe. Amy, it's awesome have you on show.

Amy Woods Butler 0:37

Hi, Gresh. Thank you for having me.

Gresham Harkless 0:39

No problem. Super excited to have you on and what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Amy so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Amy is a professional life story writer who helps individuals and families preserve their memories and stories and heirloom and quality books. With her memoir writing services, The Story Scribe, she works with a team of editors, writers and transcriptionists and book designers to produce custom books that help families pass down their memories from one generation to the next. Since 2018, she has hosted and produced the life story coach, a podcast for aspiring and established professionals in the field of personal history. Amy, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

Amy Woods Butler 1:12

I am.

Gresham Harkless 1:13

Awesome. Let's do it. First question I had and I know this is probably your favourite question as well, too. I want to hear a little bit more about your story. When did you get started with your business?

Amy Woods Butler 1:21

Oh my gosh, yeah, that should be my favourite question. But I spend my whole days asking other people about their stories that I'm very rusty about telling me. I knew this was coming. So I just very briefly, I used to do other kinds of writings, mostly for newspapers. A lot of book reviews and entertainment reviews, and then some profiles and some interviews. Then by happy coincidence, I needed to do something more full time because that that was just to keep me from going insane when my kids were little. Then circumstances in my life changed, I needed to make a full time living. At the same time I heard about this industry called personal history or life story. In my case, it's life story writing, there are people who do what I do on video and audio only. I happen to create books for people. I heard about that right when I needed to support myself and my kids. That's how it all started and I got very lucky because I had just moved to Kansas City where I live now and a few days, I joined a directory, I joined an association which has since closed, but they had a directory of people who do what I do, or what I was at that point just starting to do. Several days after I joined the directory crash, this is a true story of it was less than a week after I joined that directory that had my contact information on it. The Kansas City Star newspaper ran an article about this thing called personal history and how you can have a book written about your life for your family and friends. That's how I got literally that is how I got my first book job. It was very happy coincidence.

Gresham Harkless 2:47

Yeah, we were just talking about the bad parts of technology and timing but it's great. Timing does work out in many cases. Well, perfect. I heard you say it a couple of times, I wanted to ask you a little bit more about personal history. Could you tell us exactly what that is and what that looks like for people that don't know?

Amy Woods Butler 3:03

Definitely because nobody knows. I mean, oh, my gosh, nobody. That's the biggest stumbling block for doing not stumbling block, it's the biggest challenge for doing this business. Because you go when you say to somebody, I'm a personal historian then they'll start talking about Napoleon or something like, that's my favourite piece of history and I'm like, no, no different kind of history altogether. So what it is, is basically one of our life stages, one of as we get older people feel the need to reminisce. Now happily, we live in a time period, that technology has made it possible, much easier for us to record those stories and make publish them in some way or another. What I do is people hire me to sit down and talk with either themselves, or sometimes it's the adult children that hire me. So I'm sitting down with somebody who is retired age or older, my oldest person was 99, that I did. But my youngest was also somebody in their 40s. Generally, it's somebody who's at least retired age. I sit down and do a series of interviews, which are really kind of like what you and I are doing right now just a casual conversation. Then I take those recordings, I have them transcribed, and I use that material then to write a book for them in their voice. I tell the storyteller, the book is going to be the book you would have written had you been a writer. Then it is just them telling not just but it is them telling the story of their life. A lot of times people focus very heavily on their younger years, their growing up years, because as you can imagine if you grew up in the 20s, or the 30s, or the 40s, your life then looks very different from the life that your children and grandchildren and beyond are growing in that world the world that they're growing up in. Then we produce a book beautifully illustrated with their photos, although it's a long form narrative. It's really the words that are carrying the story, but then we use photos and other memorabilia to design the book and then they can order as many books as they want and they can give them to their their family and friends and hopefully the books will then be around for multiple generations.

Gresham Harkless 4:58

Yeah, that's pretty awesome. I remember I think I was in about sixth grade or so we had an assignment where we had to read our own autobiography. I thought that was pretty cool to kind of ask my parents about certain things and go through that kind of process. But I think the beautiful thing is, I know you might feel the exact same way, I feel like we all have stories. A lot of times, those stories don't necessarily see the light of day because we don't have a way to communicate that. That's why I think it's phenomenal what you do, because a lot of times, we have those things, we want to say those things we want to leave, but we don't necessarily have a way in which to do it.

Amy Woods Butler 5:24

Exactly, you're exactly right. And a lot of times, I will sit down with somebody, and they will depending on the age group, so the kind of greatest generation, the people who are old enough to have fought in World War Two, especially for those people they they wanted to get on with their life, the war came to an end, they wanted to get on with their life. Very often, they'll not have told any of their stories and then they'll tell me then I'm brought in later and they'll say I never said any of these stories, or their family will say, we never heard any of these stories, until it was a high schooler or grade school or their grandchildren's. That was right, that was an assignment. Tll of a sudden, the family's hearing stories they've never heard about, and they realise we need to capture these somehow we need to we need to record these because otherwise they're lost. Then the younger the baby boomers, so the people who are maybe not quite as old as the greatest generation, they are not as reticent about telling their stories. But the nice thing about them is they already know, wait, I want to save these stories, where older folks might feel a little bit shy about say, who am I to say that I have stories worth saving than the baby boomers they grew up in a time period where they, they're more self reflective often, and they see the value already of saving their stories. It's just great all around.

Gresham Harkless 6:36

Yeah, it's so interesting. You probably see a lot of like, the the different ways that generations, generally speaking, of course, kind of approach that that aspect, and it's probably super exciting to kind of see, because now, the younger generations with Instagram and everything, everybody's telling their stories, it's like it's a lot less likely to be shot, I guess you could say.

Amy Woods Butler 6:53

Exactly right, we all have so much more of an opportunity to have the spotlight on us. But then I do not that we probably wouldn't get into this, but I do worry about such truncated messages. And you're not gonna be able to build stories, so much out of tweets, or Instagram photos and things. It kind of worries me, because I hope that people are still keeping journals and still writing letters, because otherwise in a few generations that's not going to mean much to to people, you're not going to have as complete of a story as what we can have now with the types of documents that people save, Although I have to say most of the people that I work with, don't have very many documents saved. So it really is that sitting down and telling their story and having the time to reflect on the story and view things that, maybe reminisce about things that they haven't thought of in years? To get that out and have that recorded. Yeah, absolutely. As as an English major, who loves reading and things growing up.

Gresham Harkless 7:48

Yes, I completely understand what you're saying because I definitely see the exact same thing, everything just so quick, you don't necessarily get that depth and that the descriptions of the painting of the visions that you have when you're reading books, so I definitely completely agree with you on that. I know you touched on it a little bit, I want to drill down a little bit deeper just to see if you had anything additional with you know how clients work with you. I know you touched on a little bit, and then also what you think is kind of like your secret sauce or what sets you apart, it makes you unique.

Amy Woods Butler 8:13

Okay, well, as far as how clients work with me, the most important I guess two really important things. One, they have to feel very, very at ease. And the other side of that is that the way that I can help them feel at ease, is being a really good listener, being an active listener. nowing when to ask questions, and when to give them the moments of silence, because silence is not something that we're used to giving people in conversation. But very often when somebody's reminiscing, they fall silent, not because they don't know what to say but because they need to process some things, or they need to call up some things to remember they need to figure out a way to express something that possibly they've never expressed before in words. So it's a really, it's there has to be a lot of trust between me and the storytellers. That's why I will do some interviews over Skype, but it's so much better in person, especially with the with the age of the people that I'm working with. Technology can kind of get in the way a little bit. You really have to have a good, solid personal connection because honestly, Gresh people at some point, I think probably every single book project that I've done at some point, somebody says to me, I've never told anybody this, and then they proceed to tell me something, and probably half the time they don't want it in the book. But you establish this kind of relationship built on trust where they are telling you about their life. It's just a natural thing that, maybe it's something that they've never revisited since your decades before. Maybe it's something that was hard or a challenge for them and so they they just feel the need to talk about it. Whether they're going to pass it on in their book or not.

Gresham Harkless 9:58

Right. Yeah. Especially when you have that kind of self reflective time period you want to get a lot of that information out whether or not it actually ends up in the tangible book or not. But it's good to just kind of probably just from, I guess it's just a way of life or path of life just to kind of get that information.

Amy Woods Butler 10:14

Right. Yeah, just it feels good psychologically, and I am not a therapist. For the most part, these are people talking about good things, bad things and everything in between. I tell people, you don't want a Hallmark card of a book, you don't want just the good things because it's not very interesting. Then if you're leaving this, if this is a gift to future generations to your kids and your grandkids and beyond, they're going to want to read about how you dealt with challenges in your life. But sometimes it can start to it, it very often does have a therapeutic effect, for the person telling their stories. I tell them, usually, even if they say I don't want this in the book, sometimes I'll write it up and I'll say, because they're always the final editor. So I'll say, we can strike this, but here's how it would look, maybe this is something that you want to share, or you want to share part of it, or we can write it with more grace and love. It's usually people protecting somebody else or thinking that if they tell a story, that they are somehow overstepping the bounds of their own story, they're talking about something that's difficult for somebody else. Those are the things that you have to really bring a lot of, of care and grace to.

Gresham Harkless 11:19

Yeah, that makes so much sense and like you said, when you build up that trust in that opportunity for somebody to be able to tell you that, you want to make sure that you are being careful about what they would want to talk about, but at the same time, it's just a good action, as you said, sometimes therapeutic, I would say is therapeutic the right so I imagined it the exact same way, when you're having somebody write your life at all, it probably is therapeutic as well. I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. I don't know if you've already touched on this, but this is what you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique.

Amy Woods Butler 11:43

Okay, my secret sauce is that, this is embarrassing. I am proud.

Gresham Harkless 11:49

You never told anybody this.

Amy Woods Butler 11:50

I'm gonna tell you that my secret sauce is that I am not built to be a business person and certainly not a business owner. I never think of that. But my secret sauce is that I got just darn lucky. I did honestly because it was just this sort of perfect storm and a good way. I'm not a type A person. I'm probably not a type B person. I don't know Q or something. I don't have probably what you typically need to start and grow a business. What I do have had this whole time for the nearly 10 years that I've been doing this has been locked. So the fact that this all sort of came to my awareness, right when I needed it and the fact that there's not very much competition, I mean, that's a horrible thing to admit, like I'm successful, because I don't have competition. But I'm also successful, because I'm very, very conscientious and I've grown my skills. I am not really a go getter. I recognise the value in building my business because I've had to, but the fact is that there is life story writing is not brand new, but it's also not very old. The fact that you didn't know what it was that I didn't know what it was until 10 years ago, when I started doing it. That illustrates that very many people have not even heard of it. So in other words, it's growing. There are things like ancestry.com, there are things like the genetic DNA testing, TV shows, like, Who do you think you are? There's a lot of interest in genealogy and there's a lot of interest in storytelling. Now people are starting to realise, wait, it's so much more interesting to hear the stories. So there is this growing need the need, outstrips the demand outstrips the number of buyers. Yeah, exactly. So there are not very many life story writers out there. It should not be my secret sauce.

Gresham Harkless 13:40

Yes and I think you're definitely being modest, because I think you still have to be able to put together a good product. I think that at the end of the day, you know, it sounds like and I don't want to put words in your mouth. But sounds like you're really good at what you do, you do. You were just able to make the right decision at the right time maybe not necessarily purposely doing it. But a lot of times we wonder how if we follow our passions or follow the things that we're good at if things will work out, and it kind of sounds like it has in your case?

Amy Woods Butler 14:04

Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 14:05

Awesome. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an apple book or habit that you have, what's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Amy Woods Butler 14:14

I'm very good at letting my mind wander and it's kind of a daydream, me being sort of in a dozy state, it's just refreshing to let your brain go where it wants to.

Gresham Harkless 14:24

I appreciate that. Now I want to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. That is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice or if you can happen to a time machine, what would you tell your younger business?

Amy Woods Butler 14:32

I think one of the most important things if you're a solopreneur, or if you are building a company with multiple employees, find a mentor.

Gresham Harkless 14:40

Absolutely. Now I want to ask you my absolute favourite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO and we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Amy, what does being a CEO means to you?

Amy Woods Butler 14:48

Being a CEO means working your ass off. I know that probably runs contrary to a lot of the sort of pop stuff that's out there the four hour a day, not that I'm disparaging anybody but I think there's a lot of there's this misinterpretation, yeah, mis education. Exactly. I think that's a disservice because really, if you are going to be running, you're gonna be piloting your own ship. It's just a lot of work. It's a lot of work.

Gresham Harkless 15:13

Thank you so much, you just absolutely made my day. I definitely appreciate you, appreciate your time even more. What I want to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and listeners know. Then of course, how best they can get in touch with you and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

Amy Woods Butler 15:27

Yeah, just keep doing it. If you find something that you'd like to do, keep doing it. Don't be afraid to change course, too, because then you're just gonna keep getting closer and closer to what you're meant to do. As far as how they can get a hold of me, I have my main website is The Story Scribe, so it's t h e story scribe .com. Then, like you mentioned, I also do a podcast for people who are interested in working as in the field of personal history or life story. That podcast is called The Life Story Coach. I have a website called the lifestorycoach.com. P eople reach out to me very often say, Hey, I'm thinking about doing this and I got a lot of great help at the beginning and I love passing it on.

Gresham Harkless 16:11

Awesome. Well, thank you so much again. I appreciate you for passing it on Amy. We will have the links and information in the show notes for both website in the podcast and everybody can follow up with you and subscribe. Thank you so much again and I hope you have a phenomenal rest today.

Extro 16:23

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