Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Good afternoon, everyone. This is your host, Rashad woods of the Tron podcast, the Randomness of Nothing. Today we have a very special guest today. He's a ghost writing, best selling author, kind of a Swiss army knife, and a master of all things when it comes to technology, AI and really get a chance to be interesting to pick his brain for a few. Mr. Richard Lowe. Thank you.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: How you doing?
[00:00:25] Speaker A: Good, good. Really appreciate your time, sir.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: So go ahead and tell us a little bit about, you know, particularly when it comes to ghostwriting. I have a couple different questions. I'm really fascinated by how you got into the career of authorship after you transitioned from technology, being the director over at Trader Joe's for 20 years.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Well, I was in tech for 33 years. Trader Joe's was 20 years of that.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: Right.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: I started out as a just a coder, assembly language coder. We're very low level in the machine on computers that were the size of a room with less power than one chip on your smartphone. Right.
And worked my way up to be VP of one company and then moved to another company, was VP of that company and then went to Trader Joe's Director of Computer Operations and was in charge of everything, you know, cybersecurity, disaster recovery.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Right.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Basically anything anybody else didn't want to do. Lots and lots of things. I had a whole staff. And then one day I was looking around thinking, I don't want to work for anybody anymore. So I left my job, moved to Florida, as far away from California as I could get, and then started my, my ghostwriting career. And it got off to a good start and I've never looked back. So I've been doing it now for 11 years. In that time, I've written well over a hundred books. 60 of them for me, 52 as ghostwritten. And it's been quite a journey.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it's been fascinating. So one, a couple questions I had for you is how did you. Did you have a background in computer science before you got into computers? Because, you know, obviously they're very prevalent now. But to have that skill, skill set was such a unique unicorn to be in technology. Did you do any computer science or programming at an early age?
[00:02:00] Speaker B: No, I was a geology major.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: I remember back then they didn't have personal computers. All we had was calculators that were awful. They used something called reverse polish notation. You'd have to type three characters for every character. It was awful. It was horrible. So there was no interest at all in computers. But I took a computer science class Because I only had. I was late.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: Right.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: And there's only one thing that could fit into the slot. Oh, wow. Whatever.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: And my teacher started a company, and he asked me to come on board, and I was his first employee.
[00:02:34] Speaker A: That's dope. That's really cool. What college was that?
[00:02:37] Speaker B: San Bernardino Valley College in the beautiful city of San Bernardino, California.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: Oh, wonderful. Wonderful.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: That was sarcasm.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: Couldn't tell. You know, I couldn't tell. I'll take it. My apologies for not catching the inside joke on that.
I do have a quick question. So as you transition to ghost writing, I thought it's fascinating because that's really where you found your voice, and that's what this show is all about when it comes to people who found that niche for that specialty that they're great at. How did you end up first getting into writing?
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Well, when I was 17 years old, way back machine, I wanted to know my grandfather better, so I started talking to him. Then I realized there was a book there. So I wrote my very first book.
And it was about his adventures in the Yangtze River Patrol before World War II. And then he was on the Philippines, got captured on Corriga tour, was in Bataan death march.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: And spent four years in a Japanese POW camp. And I realized I was talking to a hero.
[00:03:37] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: And nobody knew, you know, and. And I found his story, and it was. It touched me, and I got to know my grandfather. And that book has since been lost. It was never published. But, you know, it's fun to write, right? And. But then I had to make a living, and I'll move out from home, get married, the whole thing.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: Right?
[00:03:55] Speaker B: So I went into tech and made a career and made some money. But a few years ago, I was like, okay, I'm done with all that.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: I could just go off on my own.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: And then. And then. So. So you really didn't have, like, a coach then, like, that taught you how to write? Like, do you recommend? Like, obviously you do that for people. Did anybody guide you along the way when it came to learning how to write?
[00:04:18] Speaker B: Nope. I did it all on my own. Took a few classes, but I've been writing technical stuff through that whole time for business, for the job I was in.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: And articles for some magazines and stuff like that.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: So I was. I was picking up the chops of writing, but, yeah, that first few books were a struggle.
[00:04:37] Speaker A: You know, it's funny because I think, you know, the common misconception is, is that you. You talk a lot. You think a lot. So it must be easy to write it. Right? I'm sure. You know, I don't. I don't want to assume, but people, you know, it's not nearly as easy as people make it out to be when it comes to actually formulating thoughts, characters development, transitional sentences, you know. Do you have any particular writing process that you follow?
[00:05:04] Speaker B: Well, when I ghostwrite, the first thing I do is I try and find out more about the client, the author. Then I want to find out about the audience. So we spend a lot of time talking to try and get under that. So I want to make a book that people are actually going to want to read and they're going to want to buy. And if you don't do that, you're going to have a book that's going to sit on your coffee table and maybe sell five copies, and that's what you want to do. That's fine. But if you want to sell a lot of copies, you need to know who your market is.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: Right.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: So we start with basically a marketing pass, and who is. Who's going to buy it, why are they going to buy it, what are they going to get from it?
[00:05:34] Speaker A: Right.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: And then we go through the book and we want to find out for each chapter, and then finally at the end, what emotion the reader wants to feel. You want the reader to feel at the end of that chapter or the book.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: Right.
[00:05:46] Speaker B: So you want the reader to be angry. Like maybe a political book, you're trying to get elected, you might want to be angry. A comedy book, you might want to be happy.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: Right.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: Children's book, you want to be uplifted. You know, there's. There's an emotion at the end, and that's far more critical than the information. The information is important also, but it's more important that you put them on this emotional ride through the book. There's ups, there's downs. You've seen a movie, you know, there's ups, there's downs. Like on the edge of your seat. Well, you do the same thing in a book.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: Right.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: And the emotion is what keeps people in the book, not anything else.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: Right. So essentially you need. It's. It's almost, you know, people try to get these large, grandiose ideas, but it's. Are you conveying an emotion to get somebody to stay captivated, involved and emotionally involved with the topic that's being spoken, written on?
[00:06:31] Speaker B: Excuse me. Right. And there's a. There's a kind of a rule in writing that almost that most writers don't follow because it's hard. It's really hard. It's called show versus tell.
So get a little technical here. But telling is like he's angry.
Well, that's kind of boring. It's not, you know, it doesn't really convey the emotion very well. But instead you show the emotion by showing his features and maybe somebody else mention it. Sweating, you know, eyes popped out, fingers clenched, you know, so you show it. You never tell the reader he's angry. The reader picks it up. And then there's another thing called subtext where you have this conversation going on, but the conversation actually has some undertones. It's really hard to do for. Especially for beginner writers.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: The subtext is what I mean, you watch Dune, there's subtext all over the place. The movie, good movies and good writing has a lot of subtext and a lot of show.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:27] Speaker B: The problem with show is it takes a lot of room to write.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: So you got to use it judiciously. It's not all show. Sometimes you just want to get from here to there. Say, okay, he walked that far, you know.
[00:07:37] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: But then you want to, if you want, if you got to take your time. Well, he, you know, he meandered up this path and he tripped and he looked up all the flowers for sure.
So. And that's important in a nonfiction book too. You want to show them the information, not tell them the information so much. So you don't have a big table. You might have a big table, but instead you might walk them through some examples, some quotes, some real life case studies, and then they get the idea much better.
[00:08:06] Speaker A: Well, it's funny you say that because that was going to be my next question. You know, the entertainment versus gathering knowledge. Because I think somebody, and I'm not making a broad statement here, but I'm like, okay, if I'm, if I'm reading a particular book for my enjoyment and it's engrossing to me on an entertainment level or an emotional level, I have a different set of feelings or expectations. I would versus if I was reading a technical book where maybe because it's a process driven situation, I'm not, I could understand that. It may not need to convey as many emotions to me, but you made a great point that people are visual and that they need to see certain things taking place. Now, you've written a lot of computer and AI books. Can you give us some examples?
[00:08:45] Speaker B: Well, in a computer book or an AI book, they're written by people who are experts in the field. Usually C level who wanted to convey their message to other leaders.
[00:08:54] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:55] Speaker B: So they didn't get into the bits and bytes and how AI works. Instead they're getting into more of the business. Like AI will have this return on investment.
You need to go here, you need to do this. This is a gotcha. Worry about that. Find out your market, blah, blah, blah. So it's more about the leadership aspects of AI and how your company can prosper with it or not, versus getting into the technical. How does blockchain work or how does the metaverse work?
I don't tend to write technical manuals. That's a whole different thing. And that is where you just basically tell people. That's one of the big differences in a technical manual. You're just saying it.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: Right. And putting it. Yeah, verbatim, Exactly. Line by line.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: That's why they're so boring.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like, it's like a, like how to change a tire. But they're not going to give you, you know, the, the ups and downs of doing it. It's just going to be like, you need to proceed to next step, unscrew.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: This bolt, you know, put it here.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: So when, when. And this is going to sound. And when people think of ghost writing, they think that the person who created the idea may have not been original, so to speak. So, you know, it's kind of whether you hear it in music or whether you hear it in a movie script. Oh, they had a ghostwriter. What's the concept, what's, what's the perception of having a ghostwriter of somebody who has an idea? And is that, is that accurate of what I, what I was at, what I'm looking at?
[00:10:22] Speaker B: It's accurate for lower level ghostwriters.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: For higher level ghostwriters, people in my, you know, premium premier ghostwriters, people around where I'm at.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:32] Speaker B: To me, what we do, what I do is I interview my client and I get into his heart and soul.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:39] Speaker B: And what I want to do is convey that in the book. I want to convey their heart, I want to convey what they really think. I want to convey their experiences, their knowledge, their, their why they're doing it. I mean, really, what makes them tick in that book? Depending on the book.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: And not so much. And that's the difference. Because of that, it is them in the book. I'm writing the book as if I were them. I'm almost method acting in a way out their stuff so it becomes their book.
There's a lot of books out there that you Might read. And that's true, especially when you get the celebrity ghostwriters who are very high end and get paid a lot. Their books are written from the point of view of the celebrity and they do a pretty good job usually of conveying the celebrity's life and times and stuff like that. I've done two celebrity books so far, both rock stars, and they're interesting.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: Wonderful, wonderful. You know, and it just becomes, you know, and this is again, me. And this is me looking from the outside in, which is why I find this so fascinating. Does it get into an issue of credit? You know, obviously your clients or your clients. I'm not going to ask any specific examples, but just in general, when it comes to like the industry of ghostwriting and then somebody's doing a book and then somebody from the back end who is a professional who does this for a living. Does credit ever become a problem when it comes to ghostwriting?
[00:12:05] Speaker B: Well, you may need to have a good contract agreement, statement of work, whatever you want to call it.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: And that will outline that.
Typically when you start getting into celebrity ghostwriters, they're usually journalists and they usually putting their name on the COVID so they get credit. Means you'll make extra sales because they know who that journalist is.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: Got it.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: People who haven't been a journalist haven't won Pulitzer Prizes. Their name probably won't be on the COVID I don't want my name on the COVID necessarily. I mean, I'd like it if it gives me something that I can promote, of course. But I'm getting paid.
[00:12:35] Speaker A: It's not the end.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: All right, so that's not my goal. None of my 52 clients for books have ever put my name on the COVID Sometimes they put it in the acknowledgments for sure, but that's fine with me. It is what they want. And my goal is to. It's like you hire a contractor to build a house, you probably don't stamp his name on the house.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: Unless he's Frank Lloyd Wright, you know, he's still alive. He's famous, famous architect. You'd probably stamp his name on the house.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: Right.
It's kind of like you're like the stunt double. Right? Like, you know, and I say that very respectfully because I enjoy action movies and stunt performers, you know, do a lot of great things and you see wonderful motion pictures. But it's also some things that, you know, the actor can't slash, won't do. And it's better suited to have a double. But you still see a great finalized product as, as a consumer or as a, as a customer. So.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: Right, you pretty, pretty much hit it on the head.
Yeah, I do. Basically my role is to do the writing and to translate their image, their thoughts, their whatever, their emotions into written form.
And sometimes that involves a lot of brainstorming. So I also take on the hat of coaching and brainstorming as we're going through this. Sometimes they may not have an idea that will really sell or resonate with the public, so I have to help them, guide them to something that will. So part of my role too, obviously.
[00:14:03] Speaker A: You'Re, you're heavily into technology, even though you've transitioned to your writing career, but you still, you know, when it comes to artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, things of, you know, current technology and modern things that are being utilized on a day by day basis now, as opposed to in a small vacuum or at a certain location. What's your take on the new, on the new artificial intelligence and cybersecurity trends that have been taking place.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: We lost sound.
[00:14:31] Speaker A: I'm sorry, I was just asking about the modern use of artificial intelligence and modern cybersecurity that has been taking place. What's your take?
[00:14:40] Speaker B: You mean as far as writing or just in general?
[00:14:42] Speaker A: Just in general writing as well, too.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: Well, artificial intelligence is obviously moving forward very quickly and it's still in its infancy. It's actually in something that's quite well known in the technical area, which is called the hype cycle. So basically this new idea comes out, it catches on, everybody jumps on the band, especially investors jump on the bandwagon and you can see this cycle goes way up in value and all this kind of stuff. And then it, of course it doesn't live to the hype. So it goes kaboom, right? Falls to the ground almost to zero, and then it comes back up to where it's supposed to be and then it's, then it's back to a normal and people are more sane with it. So AI is kind of near the peak of that hype cycle. Don't know how close to the peak it is, but it will crash.
The hype is always going to be as smart as human beings, blah, blah, blah, take over the world. No, it's not. And as soon as people figure that out, investment's going to pull out and go into something else.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: Right?
[00:15:41] Speaker B: And that doesn't mean AI is going away. That just means that it's going to come down to a more sane, normal and then something else will take over.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:51] Speaker B: Same Cybersecurity.
Well, right now, there's several wars going on, and we do have wars going on with Iran and Russia and a few other countries. North. North Korea. And they are actively attacking the United States companies and government and infrastructure.
[00:16:08] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: And that is producing an area where AI could really help. Because it can help. I mean, the amount of data that's generated by.
To protect you is incredible. And AI could help filter all that and say, oh, yeah, there's an attack here, but these others you can ignore.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: And you know. You know, it's funny you say that. I'll Never forget, about 10 years ago, I got an email saying, like, your Netflix may have been compromised by a password. And it's one of those emails I just flippantly ignored. Right. And this was. This is kind of spooky. You know, I had a fire stick, Amazon fire stick at the time, and the menu on my TV kept moving when I was clicking stuff. And it was randomly clicking separate apps. And just a week before that, it was telling me, hey, you may want to change your passcode. These are the countries that could have hacked it. And one of them was, you know, Russia or, you know, you know, of the countries that you mentioned. And as soon as I changed my password, that stopped. And I'm like, are you kidding me right now? I'm like, wow, that. That it was controlling my tv.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: It was.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: It was out of body experience.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Hackers can get into your computer TV and computer TV, smart TVs are computers.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: Right.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: Or your phone or anything else and do that kind of thing.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: It blew my mind. So also, say in on the line of ghost writing. And obviously we talked about our artificial intelligence, and you could probably see what I'm segueing to. What is artificial intelligence done to your profession?
[00:17:31] Speaker B: What Artificial intelligence used correctly in writing and any creative venue is you use it as a digital assistant. So you use it to help you automate and do those things that a human being doesn't need to do. Spell checking, for example. Or as a research assistant, help me find out about this. Or as one thing I do is I'll put in, say, a chapter of it. And I say, is there any redundancies in here? And it'll tell me, oh, you're redundant here and here and here. Okay, good. And I'll go fix those. I don't write with it.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Right.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: Because AI is incredibly boring when it's in. Because it has no emotions. It's not a person.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:18:05] Speaker B: So it's writing is very, very boring. I can tell an AI generated thing within seconds. Oh, that's written by AI Story. Right away I've done. I've seen it so much, it's easy to spot and it's boring. And one of the things that's a term that's in robotics is called the uncanny valley.
An uncanny valley means you look at, in this case, robots, and it looks human, but there's something. Your mind is going, this doesn't look quite right. And it could be as simple as there's no hair on it or the hairs are wrong or something. Well, it applies to other things, too. For example, in movies, when you watch a movie, especially Marvel movies now, the CGI can throw you off and you don't know what it is. Something about this movie is wrong. Like Rings of Power has a famous example where the boat's going through and it's not going up and down. It's on the ocean, but the background is stable.
Your mind probably won't pick that up consciously. No, unconsciously is going, that's wrong.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: And that appears in writing, too. You're reading this thing and you're going, this doesn't read quite right. Uncanny valley.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: Got it.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: So I haven't really heard that term applied to writing very much. But the basic concept is something's off about it and your mind figures it out, but it doesn't consciously seep up until you sit down and really look. And then you look at the movie and you see that, oh, the shadows are pointing wrong.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: Right, right, right.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Well, you know, I mean, like that.
[00:19:40] Speaker A: You know, I've watched Foundation on Apple tv, and if you can't tell that CGI that there's really not a place of, you know, infinite sand and massive buildings where, you know, ships are coming down in, you know, or Dune, you know, circa Dune. But it's those subtle things, like you said, like a boat. Right. Because it's so subtle there, obviously, there must be on waters. Like, they're really on a set that's about, you know, 30ft, 40ft wide with a green screen in the background.
[00:20:06] Speaker B: Right. It's all green screen now.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: Right.
[00:20:08] Speaker B: And, yeah, uncanny valley is a big thing, and it's really, really hard. People don't understand that it's there. They don't think about it. The producers, the set builders and things, they don't. They probably didn't even think, oh, this boat's on water. It should be moving up and down. You know, the water moves.
[00:20:27] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: Of course, what you see on the screen is the background should be moving up and Down a little bit. Right.
[00:20:33] Speaker A: Right.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: It's not right. Well, that's not how water works.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: So I'm curious, do you ever have to turn people down either because of subject matter, interest or anything other. Any other reason as well too, when it comes to top ghost writing opportunities?
[00:20:48] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
I turned down revenge memoirs, generally where that's where, say, the wife wants to get revenge on the husband that she divorced.
So those have legal reasons why I won't do them for sure, obviously. And they're not fun to write.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: Of course not.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: I had one client, potential client come to me. He offered me a lot of money. It was very early in my career to write a book that he wanted to expose.
He was a confidential informant for one of the agents is probably FBI embedded deep into the mafia, and he wanted to expose everybody on every side with real names. I was like. He said, I'll give you like a hundred thousand dollars to write this. I'm so. Yeah. I'm not going to be able to spin that from inside of a grave.
[00:21:33] Speaker A: Right.
[00:21:35] Speaker B: Well, I'll protect you. Like you're coming to me giving. You want me to help you expose all these people.
[00:21:41] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:21:42] Speaker B: And you expect me to believe that you're going to keep my name secret? Wow.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: Wow. You know. You know that it's crazy. So basically he almost asked you to do like a Goodfellows kind of a situation. Right.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: So I said, no, thank you. Well, 100, 150. No, thank you. Go find somebody else.
I think he would have gone higher, but I wasn't going to touch it.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: You know, and that's, that's, that was a smart move on your end. You'd rather just stay to, you know, your safety. Can't. You can't be. You can't put a price on that.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: Well, I was hungry back then, and I definitely would have liked that project, but.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: No, no. And there's the occasional person who's just. Well, like a Karen, you know.
[00:22:18] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:18] Speaker B: Who. Who's just somebody who's not easy to deal with. One thing I stress to all my clients is we need, both of us need to be the adults in the room.
[00:22:26] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: And if you've got. If I say something dumb or you don't like what I'm writing or whatever's wrong, tell me. I'm an adult.
[00:22:35] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:35] Speaker B: You know.
[00:22:36] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: If the. Right. If there's some, you know, I expect you to come back and basically mark up the writing, and I want you to do it. And if you need to mark it all up so that there's blood dripping from it. Basically do that.
I heard a story of one person who came to me. He wanted me. He wanted. He wound up. I did wind up hiring him. Excuse me. He hired me, he came to me and he dropped the old ghostwriter because he handed the ghostwriter.
He handed the ghostwriter all of the changes and the ghostwriter actually broke down crying.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: You know, it was his masterpiece or something.
[00:23:11] Speaker A: It's like, oh my goodness.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: Not credit. And the reality is he's not criticizing the ghostwriter, he's criticizing the work.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: What he wanted.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: Right. So oh my goodness. So he like.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: The ghostwriter lost the business and oh, geez.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: Well, you know, wow.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: And I got the business, so I was happy. So I'm not going to break down crying because you Mark, you put a red marks on my work.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: It's right.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: That's part of the process.
[00:23:40] Speaker A: Do you have a challenge of getting personal information out of people? Because I'm sure there's some very deeply embedded, you know, either traumatic or personal items, relationship, family, et cetera. You know, what type of care is involved with situations like that when somebody wants to tell their full story, you know, either inspirationally or circa biography kind of a deal.
[00:24:01] Speaker B: Never had anybody who has any problem telling me stuff yet.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: We have a non disclosure agreement and I treat it very seriously because obviously it's my business and they just usually. The problem is they talk too much.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: Of course, of course.
[00:24:13] Speaker B: And I have to limit the meetings to an hour. Okay, we're getting close to the hour, but I'm not done. You know, another meeting later. But. So I try and guide the person in to talk about what we need to talk about. People like to talk like these are things they've never told people before sometimes.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: Got it.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: And how does, how does.
[00:24:31] Speaker A: I'm sorry, I apologize.
[00:24:32] Speaker B: Go ahead. Sorry. That's fine.
[00:24:34] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, because I've seen some books like Kevin Trudeau got legal action taken against him because he promoted certain items that weren't true and he kept doing it. So what, what's the legality of books when it comes to what you can do, what you can't do, like, you know, whether it's proven medicine. I'm just. That area seems a little unclear to me.
[00:24:55] Speaker B: Well, just think of it without. Take the book out of the picture. So if you were, if you were say, writing a book about some vitamins that cure cancer, you better be able to prove it because the FDA is going to come down on top. Come down.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:25:08] Speaker B: Ftc Is going to come down hard on you.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: If you're slandering somebody, then that. That could be a civil lawsuit. Just. So if you take the book out of it and put it into the real world, the same thing could happen to the author.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:25:21] Speaker B: It typically. I've never heard of a case where it comes back. Well, I've heard of one case where it comes back to the ghostwriter, and that was the celebrity ghostwriter. Oh, wow. Who basically made stuff up. And obviously the client. The client didn't read the book.
You think that would happen, like if he. If the ghostwriter's able to get away with. That means the client didn't read the book.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: Correct. They were just. Yeah, they were more with the book.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: With your name is. You need to. You just need to use your common sense as a ghostwriter.
What is and isn't something you could say? And I use the real life example. Would I in real life believe or think that this vitamin can cure cancer? No.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: I'm not an idiot. I mean, if you believe that, all power to you, but.
[00:26:04] Speaker A: Right. No, we're on the same page. I just was curious, what's the limits of, you know, true versus, you know, because I was. When he got. When he got his legal action taken against him, I'm like, well, people do and say outrageous things and don't get penalized for it, but I understand when you're talking about a specific medicine or a specific cure for a specific item, you know, that's where it can get really dicey.
[00:26:24] Speaker B: They'll come to you and ask for proof.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:27] Speaker B: How can you say that? This, you know, and a vitamin, you could probably say it helps. We believe that it helps reduce the risks associated with cancer. Right. But you gotta be. There's. There's language you use to make sure that you're not. That you're covered.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: Instead of him when he was trying to make a quick buck.
[00:26:42] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, he. Yeah. I don't. I don't generally do those kind of books.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: I. I use my discretion and I'm not going to write a book about something that's a scam or that's. Understand, sketchy.
Just not me.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: Well, I saw, you know, a lot of the testimonials that people did for you and the services that you have to offer. Obviously, you don't need me to be located. But for people who would be listening, where can they find Richard Love?
[00:27:09] Speaker B: You can go to thewritingking.com that's t h e writingking.com or ghostwriting guru.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:27:16] Speaker B: Either one of those sites will bring you to. You'll find places to schedule a meeting all over those sites.
[00:27:22] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:27:22] Speaker B: And then schedule some time to talk.
Half an hour, an hour, whatever you need. And we'll talk. And you can do boot coaching or ghost writing. Book coaching, where you do the work yourself. I coach you through it.
[00:27:32] Speaker A: Right.
[00:27:33] Speaker B: If you want to write the book, but you need help. And ghostwriting is where I do the work.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: Right.
[00:27:38] Speaker B: And sometimes it's. It's. I do all the work, usually. And sometimes it's more collaborative. It depends on the client. So you can go to those two places. You can find me on LinkedIn. Richard Lowe, Jr. Connect with me.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: Let me ask you one final question. Has any movie studios or film studios, again, your clients are confidential. I'm not here to ask for. But has anybody ever, like, you know, from. From a entertainment avenue ever requested your services?
[00:28:05] Speaker B: No, not yet.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:28:06] Speaker B: Not yet. That's. That's not an area I've really pursued. I wouldn't mind.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:11] Speaker B: But not something that I've been interested in. I don't have the connections.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: And. But if somebody out there wants me to write a movie script, call me up.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: I'm just curious. Right. You know, because, you know, with all the technical prowess and the things that you do, I thought that that just piqued my curiosity.
[00:28:25] Speaker B: I would love to write. I would love to go into that area. My understanding is it's super competitive. I'm sure.
[00:28:31] Speaker A: I'm sure. I can only imagine. I can only imagine. But, you know, probably.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: Probably. I'd have to know somebody.
[00:28:38] Speaker A: I'm sure. And if you were actively pursuing it, and like I said, you're. It seems like your pond is, you know, for lack of better term, feeding you well. And so. But I could wish you continued success in whatever avenues you decide to dip your toe into. And this is what the Tron podcast is all about. Talking to fascinating people such as yourself with compelling stories, ideas, and past in life. And that's why I'm honored to have you carve out a little bit of your time for us.
[00:29:02] Speaker B: Well, thank you. It's been my pleasure. Great podcast.
[00:29:04] Speaker A: Appreciate you, Richard. You have a wonderful day. Okay?
[00:29:07] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:29:07] Speaker A: Thank you.
