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Doing Well by Doing Good with Soulcraft
128 Plays4 years ago
Max talks with Aaron Straight of Soulcraft Allstars, a production company that has proven you can be the change you believe in.
Aaron and his team have done work with Amazon, Addidas, Gates Foundation, Seattle Foundation, Seattle Pacific University and more. With Soulcraft Allstars, Aaron has turned a a passion for making the world a better place into a great, globe-trotting gig for he and his team.
Listen as Aaron and Max discuss:
- How Aaron turned his passion for social justice into paying creative work
- Aaron's goal of producing "values based storytelling"
- Aaron talking specifically about his ongoing work in Haiti, and he flipped the script on his client work to truly give something back to the community there
- Why Aaron looks to be forgiving to himself in his work
- How has the Soulcraft Allstars team come together
- How people interested in bringing a social justice angle to their video work can thrive
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Transcript
Introduction of Max Keiser and Aaron Straight
00:00:03
Speaker
We are back with Crossing the Axis, the biz side of video production, film production, whatever you want to call it, and this is Max Keiser. I am a 15-year veteran of the commercial and corporate industry as well as now
00:00:20
Speaker
I'm making software for video production. You can find it at video pipeline.io.
Mission of Soulcraft All-Stars
00:00:26
Speaker
But none of that is nearly as important as my guest that I have today. My guest is my old friend, Aaron Straight of Soulcraft All-Stars. Aaron, welcome to the show.
00:00:37
Speaker
Hey, thanks so much, Max. I really appreciate it. This is awesome. So glad that you're doing this. Well, thank you for thanks for doing it. I know it's always hard to drag people out of our work, but it is also, as we were just saying, one of our favorite things just to kind of talk shop with folks in the industry. And it's just so much fun. But Soulcraft is special. In my mind, it stands out because they literally do well by doing well.
00:01:05
Speaker
And I know that's kind of a hackneyed phrase at this point, but they honestly live it. They do just tons of fantastic work. And a lot of that work is work with the nonprofit sector, which if any of you have worked with will know it is just a great part of the business to work with some of the best clients out there and some of the best work that makes you feel
00:01:29
Speaker
Really good. So up from there, I'm really going to turn it over to Aaron. And Aaron, if you could just tell us a little bit about who you work with, where Soulcraft is right now, and then we'll back up and talk about.
Inspiration Behind Soulcraft
00:01:42
Speaker
Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, well, Soulcraft All-Stars is we're really a storytelling agency for people on the planet. And we were kind of born out of my passion for
00:01:52
Speaker
social justice, coming out of a music industry into film and my love of adventure and travel and really a lifelong dream to get paid to be creative and do what I call live for a living. And it's just been this kind of magical journey that has been a rocky road, but one that has built us from the earliest days of recognizing that
00:02:20
Speaker
What really drew me to storytelling was being able to create some sort of positive change and to be able to impact lives directly and impact the way things went down on our planet. And I was never drawn to Hollywood. I was never drawn to that
Storytelling and Social Change
00:02:38
Speaker
side. I was always deeply fascinated with the people who were doing the real work and and then also finding those stories that could help us do better.
00:02:49
Speaker
And so not just working with nonprofits, which has been a great thing, you know, we've worked with lots of nonprofits and foundations from, you know, groups like Heifer International and a global storytelling project on the sources of hunger and poverty to, you know, working closely with the Gates Foundation throughout Africa and Central America, working with, you know, in Haiti on a seven year humanitarian and conservation project that's been absolutely
00:03:19
Speaker
quite an incredible journey and very, very challenging and also really rewarding in ways that we did not expect.
00:03:31
Speaker
But we also work with a lot of really social enterprises as we described them. And I really believe in that. I believe in the B Corps mission. We've worked with them and their original storytelling. And we've worked with all these organizations that are for-profit companies that believe that they can use the power of business to do the right thing and contribute to their communities, contribute to society, and make the world a better place while making a living and making a profit.
00:04:00
Speaker
And that's also been extraordinary. So I can tell you people that he's not making this shit up. Cause like when I first met Aaron, you know, I think it was about 10 or no, it was probably 12, 13 years ago. And he was, you know, he was, I think he was looking for a job at our current company and he was talking about making videos for fair trade coffee or something. And I was just like, what the hell are you talking about? This is long before anyone was talking about fair trade.
00:04:27
Speaker
And I was like, what are you talking about? Fair trade coffee, man. And he was always, you were always so, this was always part of what you did. And even when you wound up going to work at Trifilm, you kind of convinced them, hey, they were kind of just doing regular corporate and commercial. And if I recall right, you kind of got them started going down this road and you were like, hey, I think we can make this work. And they're like, well, show me the, you know, show me how it passes out.
00:04:56
Speaker
Totally. And you did. I mean, you turned it into a majorly financially successful part of that company, didn't you?
Impact of Trifilm Experience
00:05:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that was quite a journey in itself. And I think that the world hadn't quite woken up to the idea that you could tell stories about real change and with both nonprofits, foundations, and social enterprises, and that be a viable business. And so Mark Dickinson over at Trifoam believed in that mission.
00:05:28
Speaker
We set a course and we had a lot of wins. We did a lot of great work, ultimately ended up doing a lot of work with the Gates Foundation and with Bill's Think Tank and a lot of, and like I said, Heifer International, a bunch of organizations like that.
00:05:44
Speaker
And, you know, it really it really was eye opening for a lot of people that this was a journey that you could go on. And and ultimately, that's really always been my passion. And it was part of what led me to to ultimately start Soulcraft All Stars is really that I wanted a storytelling agency that was completely committed to that and that that also we weren't just film that we were thinking about storytelling through all the different tools available to us.
Soulcraft's Storytelling Model
00:06:13
Speaker
Because I really believe that there's so much that can be done to engage people creatively in the world we live in. And video and film are very powerful tools.
00:06:25
Speaker
some of my favorite work is tremendous photography or excellent writing or great podcasts or even what we call storytelling websites or great design branding. And we've helped our clients in kind of what we described as like a 360 degree storytelling model, be able to do that and engage their intended audience in a way that reaches them on all these different levels. And it's so fun.
00:06:54
Speaker
Yeah, let's talk about some of the specifics. Let's talk about the we've got three that come to mind, the Haiti project, the Louisiana project and the Alaska project. And if we could just talk just briefly about each one and how they sort of embody this this values based storytelling and what the inputs been and what the outputs been and what the results have been from
Haiti Conservation Project
00:07:20
Speaker
it.
00:07:20
Speaker
Yeah, totally. And I think, you know, as you well know, Max, like every project is so unique. And this is part of the fun of it. And also the part of like the hair pulling experience is that you feel like I've been in this industry for, you know, 1520 years or whatever. Don't we know everything at this point, and you never do, you always have to learn more, and you always are going to be hit with a new challenge. And so
00:07:47
Speaker
Each one of those projects and some of the other projects I'll reference, they bring their own unique challenges. So the work we've been doing in Haiti, it started out with a project that we did with World Vision and Microsoft and another group called NetHope right after the earthquakes. But being there, we were being driven around in SUVs with arm guards and people are literally on the street chasing down water trucks with plastic bags trying to get water. And I was just like,
00:08:14
Speaker
This is so incredibly heartbreaking. And I feel like an asshole sitting here in this vehicle with armed guards, like why are they protecting me? This is stupid. This is not how I want to participate. It had nothing to do with those organizations. They were just trying to keep us safe. But I swore that I'd never return
00:08:35
Speaker
unless we were actually part of the effort with people alongside them and doing something that had some sort of long-term impact and address some of the root causes of what was going on. And we didn't have the money to be able to, and the support to be able to completely transform Haiti, like no one's been able to do that. But we picked a small community that partners of ours, Environmental Protection in the Caribbean had been working in
00:09:06
Speaker
Where an endangered bird had been found and the scientists found this endangered bird that it's thought to be extinct, they found it up in this tiny forest up on a mountain. As it turned out, one of the last remaining forests in Haiti, as you know, Haiti is down
Local Soccer Programs for Engagement
00:09:20
Speaker
to maybe only 2% of its forested population remaining.
00:09:25
Speaker
And when they found the bird, it was a huge deal because they thought this bird was extinct. But they looked down the mountain and there are poor Haitians farming their way up the mountain through kind of a slash and burn technique who are literally starving. And it's hard to balance that and say, well, we found this bird on the brink of extinction, yet look at all this suffering right next door. And how can, you can't ask these folks to be conservationists
00:09:54
Speaker
And conservation mostly is for rich people in the sense that we can ask people to fence off an area and protect it and not use it because we're so wealthy, we have access to water and food and all the things that we need. But this community, they literally needed this land to survive. And so we started working on this project where we got deeply involved in some of the concepts and the strategic approach on how we would improve the lives of the people
00:10:22
Speaker
alongside protecting the bird. And so we created this symbiotic relationship between the conservation efforts and the humanitarian efforts. And what was good, what had to be good for the people had to be good for the bird and what was good for the bird had to be good for the people. And that ended up turning into this situation where we're supporting the local team from Bucan Chat, their soccer team. Like this was a huge realization for us was that
00:10:50
Speaker
that soccer was this amazing outlet for them and way for the youth to feel like they were engaged and for the community to feel like we understood their values and what they were interested in.
00:11:00
Speaker
And so we brought energy and resources to their team and we ended up filming their team and helping them get uniforms and shoes and balls and help them fund a proper field. And we built a tournament where they played against other teams and other communities that also had this endangered bird. And so we helped bring them to this community through this tournament
00:11:25
Speaker
This annual Bucan Chat tournament, which became the Diablo Teen Festival, which was the nickname for the bird, which is also called the Little Devil. The long story, it's a great story. But, you know, all these things. So I'll just quickly get to this part, Max.
00:11:42
Speaker
When we've been traveling with people like the Gates Foundation and Heifer International, so often we go to places, you know, we're in rural, yeah, you know, so you're in these rural places where you're filming with people who are literally living in poverty, you know, in hard to imagine in 2020 or 2021. And we're telling a story that will ultimately help their region or help
00:12:08
Speaker
people better understand how to invest in crops that will help them or different energy infrastructure, things like that. But those individuals never see the movie and never get direct results, never get direct benefits from what we're working on. So we come in, we create this thing, we capture it, we leave, it helps the greater vision, but not those individuals. And we did not want to do that. So we built a scenario, we filmed with these
00:12:36
Speaker
patients who we helped become field biologists and help them get work doing the doing the jobs of protecting the species and building up the biodiversity in their region and building up food resources and water resources for their community and we filmed them because they were really
00:12:56
Speaker
They were the heroes. They're the ones that were taking on all this work and transforming their community. We returned with those movies. We showed it in the communities where some people had never even seen a movie before in a town that has no electricity, no running water, and to see the look on these folks' face, to see themselves doing this work, saving this bird, and saving themselves. And at that point, we were able to let go. We are no longer
00:13:25
Speaker
you know, on the ground, involved with people, all the Haitians run the program now entirely. And that was a huge win for us, you know? What I just love from this, and what's so interesting to me, is your willingness or the way that you go into it, from what I can see, and this is always as I've known you, you just, you don't seem to have a real, the end game isn't necessarily always there.
00:13:53
Speaker
it seems like you're really open to whatever twists and turns it might take naturally as you sort of follow it through. That's a really interesting way to approach the work that we do, you know.
00:14:10
Speaker
You don't, to me, you're very open-ended. I know you've come back from some of these travels, and by the way, he's traveling all the time, or he used to be, maybe not as much anymore, but you constantly aren't on a plane, you're constantly going somewhere. And there was always a new project that had spurned out of the current project, or a twist to the project, or the project took a turn and you really didn't put
00:14:33
Speaker
very severe bookends
Flexible Project Approaches
00:14:35
Speaker
on a lot of things, whether it was a personal project or what have you. But I've just always been amazed by your just openness to adapting to whatever is just in what it seems to be, to you feels right. Is that a good way of putting it? Is that kind of what you look for as your litmus? I mean, it just seems like that's what you roll off of is like, it just feels like this is kind of the right way to go.
00:15:00
Speaker
Well, I actually really appreciate you saying that. It's challenging, as you know, to be a creative, someone who actually feels things really deeply and then also run a business because they can seem at odds. They do, but you somehow
00:15:17
Speaker
But you somehow make it work. And that's what I think is important. But yet I don't know that always that's, but I think that's true in anyone in our business is we all, I used to have a, well, you know, Bob Ridgley, an audio guy that I worked with for years. And I would just say, you know, how's business? And he'd say,
00:15:36
Speaker
I don't know. Somehow it just keeps on showing up. I'm not sure why. It's done it for 20 years. The guy's been older than us and he's been in the business for much longer time. He's just like it just keeps showing up. I never really know three months out if it's going to keep doing that. Maybe that's just the way our business is but I love the way that you adapt it to
00:15:56
Speaker
also more than just the business, but, you know, you've also adapted it to like, you're very right that in the nonprofit shooting world, there's like this structure. And we did a lot with Gates at my old company, Hencrank Films. And we did a lot with other organizations and they're great, but they have these very specific needs that they're hiring you to, you know, to come back with the prize, the film shows and helps raise money or whatever it is.
00:16:22
Speaker
And I just love the way you've adapted that to your own purposes. And then the story with Haiti is I don't I don't know that I ever really heard it in that way and that it's just so phenomenal and something that is is so terrifically necessary and such a terrific way to say to folks,
00:16:40
Speaker
We began this process of being filmmakers and such with a pretty open mind. You gotta keep that mind open and you've just done such a wonderful job of doing that and following where it goes. But unfortunately we don't always get the clarity that might make our lives a little easier in some respects, right?
00:16:59
Speaker
Yeah, no, totally. And to be, you know, very transparent about that project. I mean, it has been, I've lost a lot of sleep over it and often wondered if we're doing the right thing. And fortunately, I have great partners. And, you know, we've keep just given the power back to the Haitians that we're working with, because they are incredibly talented, hardworking and folks who really care deeply and just usually lack resources. And so in the end, you know, we've been able to
00:17:28
Speaker
play a role in improving people's lives incrementally and protecting this bird. And so at the end of the day, I say, well, not only did we do that little bit, but we also learned a ton about ourselves and built these relationships that are so deep for me. And I think that's a big, big part of it is that we think about the story that we tell, but the other part that's hugely important to us is
00:17:55
Speaker
the story behind the story and that those relationships are often so much bigger than every, every other part of it. I mean, you know, the Haitian biologists that we work with their Anderson gene, I mean, we are in regular communication, you know, just about what his family's going through. They live in Laskai, Laskai where the latest earthquake hit and then the tropical storm and you know, so on and so on. And so our, our lives are deeply intertwined and I'm so thankful for that.
00:18:25
Speaker
But I mean, you know, you then you transition to other projects we're working on where it's like, you know, bring that bring that
Success Stories in Fundraising
00:18:33
Speaker
same. Like, I feel like some of our best projects have been ones were exactly like you described, where we thought we were doing one thing and it ended up being something else. And, you know, we started out telling some stories for, you know, everybody knows about Give Big, the annual fundraising event. And we started telling some stories. And I'm a huge passionate soccer fan and the Sounders are my team.
00:18:55
Speaker
And we got a chance to work with them and just tell some initial stories for them around that project. Well, it turned into an opportunity to tell some really deep, meaningful stories in like 60 seconds for audiences, uh, big audiences and raised over a hundred million dollars over five years. You know, it happened because you just, you kind of followed the thread, you know, you just kind of kept on digging down.
00:19:22
Speaker
And it's just another example of one thing leading to another. So many people, the big question on every Facebook board is, how do I get more work? How do I get going? And you just exemplify the answer. You just keep following the thread.
00:19:39
Speaker
you keep on pursuing it and everything you're saying is just so exemplary of that like with the sounders and you know it starts as one thing and then it kind of leads to another and it's just that it's a belief right? It's a belief. It is a belief and it's so much about you know
00:19:58
Speaker
I think it is. I think it is a lot of faith, a lot of relationships, a lot of things that are hard to put your finger on. And I think if we were trying to talk about this in business school environment, you know, this is no way to run a business.
00:20:14
Speaker
It's so true. It's like, I try to talk to my friends that are in regular business and I'm like, well, uh, my business doesn't make any sense. So I'm just going to tell you that right now. Well, how do you, how do you work with it? You know, this is a show about the business behind the business.
00:20:29
Speaker
So how do you, you've got a team, you've got a great team of folks that you work with. Now tell me a little bit about how you follow the thread when you've got sort of, you've got this group of folks that, you know, you're kind of their leader and obviously, you know,
Agile Creative Team
00:20:46
Speaker
how does that work? How does it shape your team? And tell me about your team. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm super thankful for this team. And I think that, you know, part of it was
00:20:56
Speaker
coming out of the business over, you know, having been in the business for 10 plus years and then transitioning to run Soulcraft. Right, because you were sort of a solo Lobo, you were a bit of a running gunner, weren't you?
00:21:10
Speaker
I was pre, you know, way back in the day I ran, I was a running gun like solo guy just scrapping for opportunities and like all of us and then ended up doing like almost 10 years at Trifilm as their senior creative director and that was a great run and then left to start Soulcraft and really just had a vision for what I wanted to create and one of the things was
00:21:34
Speaker
I was frustrated a little bit just with the ability to use all the artists that I admired and respected. And sometimes those are young folks who are just hungry and ready to go, and it's so fun to engage with them. And other times, these are senior creatives that I've worked with around the world in insane projects from back when I was
00:22:01
Speaker
managing African musicians around the world. And we were in Africa or at Carnegie Hall for, you know, residencies or things like that. And, and your folks that aren't quite quite frankly, are too expensive for me. And they're my dearest friends. And so I came up with this business model. And this is where this name came from. Soulcraft is really my reminder that this is literally
00:22:25
Speaker
my work is my soul craft. And I need to be reminded of that. This is what I love doing. I love telling stories, right? When you're turning down that big bang job, you got to totally, totally. But this is what I love to do is what brings me life is what makes me able to, you know, look my kids in the eye every night and be like, I'm doing the work that I believe in.
00:22:47
Speaker
But the All-Stars are really the team that makes it happen. And these are incredible badasses. These are writers, DPs, photographers, editors, animators, producers, designers, they're artists that I surround myself with and they're all All-Stars. And some of them are employees, some of them are contractors, a part of this larger web of people that some were working together 40, 50 hours a week
00:23:14
Speaker
and others were working on two projects a year. And that gives me the freedom to be able to call on people based on where the project goes. And so like this project that we're talking about in Alaska, we were hired by Sea Alaska, which is a group of three native Alaskan tribes that were arbitrarily put together by the United States government.
00:23:43
Speaker
And they were really having a challenging time telling a unified story.
00:23:48
Speaker
the circumstances are not great for them to be able to try to do that. And so it's hard enough to tell your own story, but to try to do that when you have three tribes that need to be represented equally and with one voice, and they really needed to tell a story back to their own people, because they had reclaimed so much of what was important to them, and vital to them about their land and their language and empowering their own people. And so
00:24:15
Speaker
We stepped into that originally just to start making some movies and ultimately realized that they needed a web presence. They needed a distribution model. They needed a storytelling annual report that could be visually driven. They needed, you know, all these other tools, great photography, all these other things that help them. Yeah. Yeah. And so we rose up to that challenge and spent a year and a half working with them to
00:24:42
Speaker
help them meet that goal. And we were able to bring in people that I love to work with, designers and writers and editors and animators and all these folks that are near and dear to my heart that were able to contribute to that project. And then move on to the next one where we were working with the United Arab Emirates on this project called 39 Peacemakers about the role of art to mitigate extremist violence.
00:25:10
Speaker
And this brought in a different range of folks that uniquely talented all stars. And I just love that. I love being able to like often feel like
00:25:25
Speaker
the dumbest guy in the room and be able to try to connect what our client's communication challenges are to the really amazing talents of our artists to execute that and to create something that powerfully moves them in the direction of what they need to achieve.
00:25:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's again, it sounds just like favorite parts. Yeah, just kind of you're still keeping that idea of just following the thread of of of where the work goes and bringing on the right people to match that. But it sounds like you keep it pretty light, you know, not not a lot of overhead and so forth.
00:26:03
Speaker
Yeah, no, definitely. I feel like that was the thing that I witnessed when I watched a lot of the agency model was the waterfront property and the lots and lots of employees and a lot of people waiting around for the work. And what ended up happening a lot of times in talking to my friends who ran those agencies was that
00:26:24
Speaker
they were pretty unhappy because they they had to take a lot of work that they did not enjoy doing, but paid well. Right. And and it was just really because they felt an intense burden to feed and employ the people that they had on their staff.
Avoiding Traditional Agency Pitfalls
00:26:40
Speaker
And really, the creative work was in the side the side rooms, you know, and and in the often smaller projects or projects that wouldn't pay the bills of the waterfront property. And I just said,
00:26:53
Speaker
I don't need that. I don't want that. I want, I want to be nimble and I want to be able to say no to work that I don't want to do. And cause I know where that takes me. I am too, I'm too kind of sensitive to be able to take on that work and survive it and still love what I do. So I do my best to avoid it. And we're pretty good at that. And we've been fortunate that people do seek us out and
00:27:22
Speaker
We're in demand and we're doing as much work as we, as we, you know, we want to be doing right now. So I think a lot of people, I think a lot of people had began down the path that you started down to, but they, they do get, they lose the, they get, they get off track and, and what,
00:27:41
Speaker
the risk of, you know, I know everyone hates that and probably should hate to give any advice ever. But what would you what would you say? You know, you said I have soul crack, I named it soul crack, just to remind myself, what what sort of advice would you have for folks that either feel like they might have strayed from the path? And they, you know, that they dream of getting back to it, or that they're just beginning. And they're like, I want this to be about more than making Adidas commercials. Right.
00:28:10
Speaker
which we've done and made it the commercial. And I think to that point, I think that, man, you know, you got to go, you got to, you got to give yourself a little bit of, um,
00:28:29
Speaker
What's the word I'm looking for? I mean, you've got to be forgiving to yourself. I mean, you got to chase your dreams and know that not everything is ever going to be perfect. And that's true of every single one of our projects. And cumulatively, they balance out into this body of work that we're really proud of. And ultimately, more importantly, clients that we really care deeply about and have wonderful relationships with.
00:28:55
Speaker
But I also think that there's something really important about picking your direction and sticking to it. So, you know, sometimes I talk to, you know, people who are like, they want to do, they want to do documentary work or they want to do, you know, brand storytelling or whatever, but they're, they're doing wedding videography and wedding videography, like great industry, you know, but if it's not where you want to be,
00:29:22
Speaker
then you got to get out of that. And you have to go actually work in the craft that you want to be in, even if that means starting over or taking a pay cut or whatever, because you're not going to get where you want to go if you're not in the right industry. And so for us, we just try to put ourselves in the lane that
00:29:42
Speaker
is where we want to be. And then that leads us in the direction of the things that we want to do. And does that always work out? No, it doesn't. And we've had to say no to things. And we've sometimes said new guests to things that we've later regretted. And it's a learning process. Yeah. But I love the word forgiving rather than compromise, quite honestly. Because that was the word that was kind of bubbling up in my eyes. Well, you've got to make compromises along the way. You do this project to do that project and so forth.
00:30:10
Speaker
I think that the idea of thinking of it as forgiving rather than compromise, it's forgiving of the whole situation that we are all in, that we still live in an economy that requires certain things and so forth. You also have a great opportunity to learn from each and every project.
00:30:37
Speaker
100% what the outcome is, you still can say, oh wow, we really learned how to shoot something like with a drone and a cool way for this, even though maybe it's super commercial, but now we can apply it to all these other things. And that's what's kind of one of the greatest parts of our business is that like you said early on in the conversation, you're always learning stuff and the field is always changing really fast.
00:31:03
Speaker
And, and there's always new gear new ways of of telling stories and everything and and and that in just staying on top of the end being part of it because soulcraft is very much really I think of you as as is honestly ahead of your time.
00:31:19
Speaker
in the way that you saw this social justice stuff. Again, I mean, this was 15 years ago you were talking about this stuff. And I feel like now it's so, oh, it's just de rigueur. But you've been there forever. You've owned that space. And I think the world's starting to come around to your viewpoint. So like it or not.
00:31:45
Speaker
I know, right? Well, I appreciate you saying that that's kind of you. And I do think that being forgiving to yourself is really important, you know, in the same way you, you know, that's the only way that you learn. And, you know, when you fall down, or you make a mistake, or you pick the wrong
Founding Soulcraft: A Personal Journey
00:32:02
Speaker
client or say yes to the wrong thing out of you're like i'm desperate I need to I mean those are all understandable places to be in and and it's. But you can always recorrect if you know what your true north is and I think that's that's the important thing is recognizing that and understanding your values, I think one of the most important things that I did max when I when I started soul craft is.
00:32:25
Speaker
And fortunately, my wife was so incredibly supportive. I quit my job, started a company, and I told her, I really need some time to transition my mindset from being an employee to being a business owner. And I took two weeks in a tent by myself where I swam in the ocean and I hiked and I wrote. And I just tried to really get to the bottom of like, why? Why am I doing this? What is it that I'm really trying to achieve? What would success look like?
00:32:55
Speaker
who do I want to work with? Who do I want to work for? You know, and all the answer all those questions. And that was the most important thing probably ever, I've ever done. And it is, I have that book. It's kind of my Bible. I don't read it often, but I know it's there.
00:33:14
Speaker
And it's really helped me stay the course. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it just helped me get clear about what was important to me, and what I really wanted out of this experience. Because it can get really easy for it to boil down to money. And that's just, for me, that's never been enough. And that's not
00:33:35
Speaker
That doesn't work for me. There's not that much money in our business anyway. So no, there's not. It's good. If, uh, the sooner that you adhere yourself to other things and it's the better cause, uh, yeah, well, that's, I think, I think one thing I would just tell you is I think one of the biggest takeaways, like I know that you, you're far more of like a gear head than me. And, and part of the part of my, I wrestled with that and I got to this place with that, where I realized that like,
00:34:05
Speaker
you know, the equipment's always going to change. It's always going to improve. And that's not what I'm passionate about. What I'm passionate about are telling the stories that make a difference, that solve a problem, that bring people together, that make us think differently, that, you know, those kinds of things excite me and I want to be a part of that. And
00:34:28
Speaker
I don't really care whether that's a red or a, you know, C 500 Mark two or, you know, which drone it is. I don't care. Like those are on your iPhone 13 because, man, it's freaking amazing. It is. And that's part of the point. I think I got to the bottom of it was like I realized that storytelling was really the core for me. And that that was I recognize that that was that's actually
The Role of Storytelling in Humanity
00:34:53
Speaker
One of the oldest things that human beings have ever done, you know, since the beginning of time, stories are what unite human beings to cooperate or transform. And they're critical to our advancement as a species. And that's what I'm interested in being a part of, like making videos. I take it there, leave it. But but actually being a part of telling stories that matter to us as a species in some way, shape or form that move us forward.
00:35:18
Speaker
That's really exciting to me, and I can get behind that. And so when the technology changes or everybody's got an incredible HD camera in their pocket, that's no longer a problem. That's a bonus. That's a benefit. And so it was a nice shift in thinking. That's a great that is a great place to to leave our listeners on with that in mind, because no true words have been spoken and and and yeah, just the core storytelling.
00:35:49
Speaker
Yeah. And it's, it's, it's really, it's fun as hell when you actually get to that place where you get to work with somebody and it's a mutually beneficial relationship where if you tell it story correctly, it helps move them forward, helps unite people, helps create something better for people on the planet. And yeah, that's what I'm chasing. That's what we're chasing at Soulcraft All-Stars. Yeah. Well, Aaron straight Soulcraft All-Stars, Max Keiser, so much. I really appreciate you coming by and, um,
00:36:18
Speaker
And we hope that you'll all come back for another listen next week. So adieu, and we will see you next time. Thanks again, Aaron. Thank you, Max.