AJV (00:02):
Have you ever thought about writing a kid’s book? If you have, then I would encourage you to stick around for the next five minutes. Writing a kid’s book is one of the things that I’ve always had a passion to do. I have not yet done it, but my husband had this spiritual download from the Lord about two years ago. And while we were putting our kids to bed one night, he literally in the middle of putting my two toddlers at that time, two and four down, he said, babe, I have to go. And he just leaves the room disappears. I finished putting my kids down and about 45 minutes later I’m like, where is he? And he emerges out of all places out of the bathroom, right? I guess where it’s for all great things happen for him. And he said, babe, I just wrote a kid’s book.
AJV (00:42):
And I was like, I’m sorry, you just wrote a kid’s book sitting in the bathroom. What are you talking about? And he goes, I want you to read this. And he hands me his phone and I hold up his phone and I start reading this thing that he just wrote. And lo and behold, he was right. And about 30 minutes, he had written an entire kid’s book. Now, the point is not that he did this in 30 minutes, ’cause he didn’t this actually was oh, the, this was the end result of 14 years of talking about his first book, take The Stairs, which is a business book for adults and post children, right? We read a lot of books and they suck. These kid books are not awesome. So if you’ve got great kids book recommendations, tag me, AJ Vaden on Instagram, I’d love to know.
AJV (01:33):
But I have not found a ton of them that are amazing. And while reading to our kids one night, he had this download of the message that he wanted to share with our kids from Take the Stairs. And so he wrote a book called Be the Buffalo, which is one of the signature stories in his first book, take The Stairs. That came out in 2010. And it’s about sometimes difficult choices, although they’re harder in the short term lead to better, you know, results in the long term. And it’s about charging the storm, right? It’s charging into conflict, not running away from it. It’s heading difficult. Things head on, not shying away because the more that you avoid it, the longer you spend time in the storm. But if you be the buffalo, you can charge the storm and get through those things quicker.
AJV (02:22):
And that story, that analogy is a really great thing that we talk about a lot. And what he was doing in the bathroom was figuring out how to, how do you take 250 pages of business words for adults and put them into about a 200 word poem for our kids? And I read this book and I was like, this, this is amazing. This is the best thing I’ve ever read. I’m pretty sure I was like ugly crying. ’cause I was like, this is so beautiful. This is exactly what I wanna share with my kids. And I said, you have to turn this into a kid’s book. Fast forward 18 months later it was still sitting on his phone. Why?
AJV (02:59):
Because we didn’t know how to do it. We knew we wanted to do it. We didn’t know how to do it. And I think this is the important thing. It’s like the reason that I felt so convicted that Rory had to get this book out into the world is as adults, we read a ton of books about how to be better leaders, better communicators, better humans, how to prioritize our time, how to have positive self-talk, self-control, discipline, obedience. How do we find our self-worth? How do we talk to each other? The importance of our words selling, marketing, recruiting, the list goes on and on and on. I read no kids’ book to talk about that, right? And I’m thinking to myself, why did I have to be in my twenties, thirties, and now forties to learn these things? Why are there books like this for kids?
AJV (03:50):
For my 5-year-old, 7-year-old, my 10-year-old niece and nephew, my 15-year-old nephew, right? My 19-year-old niece. Like, why did we have to wait to discover these lessons? To learn these lessons? And answer is because no one had written them . And so I think that there is an amazing abundance of incredibly powerful books for adults. And we need to as authors, as content creators. It doesn’t have to be a book. Perhaps you just have a set of curriculum or a methodology. Maybe it’s a course, maybe right now it’s just a keynote. Maybe it’s a series of blog articles. But you have content that is powerful, but you’re directing it to adults. What if, what if you could take that content and actually equip and inspire the next generation? What if, if you look back for me, I’m just gonna say this, 35 years. What if 35 years ago I had a bookshelf full of books reminding me of my worth and that my value was not in what I did, but it was in who I was.
AJV (05:03):
What if I had a bookshelf that taught me how to have confidence as a leader with also empathy and reflection? But with confidence and, and power? What if I learned how to project, manage and not over commit? What if I learned the value of time at a very early age? And that money is not the end goal? What if I had learned all of these things as a child? What, how would my life been different? And how would have my ability to love and impact others been expedited at a much earlier age? Why did I have to wait to learn those things? And it’s because people who are writing the books aren’t writing them for kids. And so this is a call to arms. This is a challenge to the people
AJV (05:56):
Who have years and years, decades of experience of learning the trials errors and learning the lessons who are decidedly already putting those things into practice in content for adults. Do me a favor. Would you consider also putting those things into words for kids? Would you also consider about what it would’ve been like for you to have learned those things in your youth? And could you just for a moment, think about how could you do that now? How could you take the content that you’ve already created and use it to equip the next generation of leaders and humans, of employees, of moms, of dads, of just humanity to be better so they don’t have to wait like we did? So if you would be interested in learning about this, I would encourage you to check out our good friend Evie Jones. And she was the person that was referred to us that we found who was able to take our business book, take the Stairs, and turn it into a kid’s book, to take the lessons that were learned in the first, you know, 15 years of our career, but also our life.
AJV (07:12):
And put those in a book that would appeal and delight children to help them learn lessons that need to be learned to help establish mantras that you as a parent or an aunt or a friend can to rally behind to help these kids be behind pages of books, not screens, to learn lessons, not watch entertaining videos. Instead of getting into trouble. , they are getting into curiosity and learning how to be better. So would you check it out? So go to evie jones.com/brand builder, right? And there’s, she’s not the only one. It’s just the one that we’ve used. So it’s who I can personally recommend. But this is a truly a just, it’s a request for all of us who have something valuable to share, to not leave out the kids . That’s my request. So think about it and reach out if you have any questions. Evie jones.com/brain builder, here’s to the next generation.
