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Faith Ventures is about telling stories of Christians doing business for the glory of God. The virtue of market-driven work that serves other people is part of God’s design, and thus we should care about the principles of individual liberty that make that possible.
This podcast inspires listeners to realize how their faith in Jesus affects everything around us, including our work in the marketplace.
Norman:
[0:00] This is the Faith Ventures Podcast, a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute, telling stories of Christians doing business for the glory of God. If you appreciate this program, support the non-profit work of LCI by donating at LibertarianChristians.com/donate, and if you'd like to share your story, contact us at podcast@LibertarianChristians.com.
Norman:
[0:24] Welcome back to the Faith Ventures Podcast. I'm Dr. Norman Horn, where we are talking about inspiring stories of Christians doing business for the glory of God. And today I am very pleased to welcome Ms. Amanda Johnson to the show. Amanda is the CEO and Oracle of what she calls Saved by Story, which you can find at savedbystory.house. And they have such an interesting business that is kind of coaching writers along in telling their story in new and exciting ways, and there's a redemptive aspect to this that she is going to get into. I'm excited to have her on the show to tell us about her approach to helping people write better and tell great stories. So this is kind of all coming together in one fell swoop here as well. We're telling stories here. So let's tell all of our stories together. Amanda, welcome to the show. So glad you're here.
Amanda:
[1:15] Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk about all things story with you.
Norman:
[1:18] Oh, man, I'm excited because this is this is something that we really care about at LCI, because we have a story. You know, every kind of exposition of ideas is a form of story. And so what I want to kind of start off with then is tell us, like, how would you describe, what you do for fellow writers in the process of building a book or whatever, for that matter? How do you go about telling people like, OK, you come work with me. This is what's going to happen.
Amanda:
[1:51] Yeah. Well, the thing is, with the creative process, you never really know what's going to happen. So I have individuals show up with sometimes a lot of resistance and sometimes very big dreams. So let's start with the big dreams. People show up and they say, I know that if I write a book, it will give me a way to establish credibility and authority because the next chapter of my career is sort of taking, you know, two or three decades of work in another place, consolidating it and giving it away to people. As a thought leader or as a speaker or as a coach or any number of things, a consultant going back to work inside the system that was hard for them to work in and they still somehow managed to succeed there. And so that's one group of people and they usually come in really, really excited. What they don't know is that.
Amanda:
[2:45] Oftentimes, they don't know that their mission and what they're up to is tied to their story. You know, lot of helping professionals, coaches, people who've been working inside of the systems on the front lines of humanity, helping people who are suffering and need all kinds of support. A lot of them don't realize that they're in it because they were that kid at one point or they were that young woman at one point. And haven't quite connected the dots. And so when we sit down and we say, what's the most powerful way to get to your reader and to your audience and let them know that it's not that you have all of the answers, it's that you've been where they are and that you have overcome similar things. And when they start to connect those dots, then the resistance comes, which is the other people who are sort of already there. You know, they have they know that they've wanted to write for a really long time, but they're not sure what.
Amanda:
[3:46] So they're excited and also like really stepping into the unknown. And and oftentimes they're the folks that are sort of being nudged by friends or family or colleagues and to to write their story because they've been through something really profound. And yet there's something in there that's like, oh, I don't know if I put pen to paper with this. You know, I put it into print forever. You know, you've written a book. Like when it gets to the point of being something that will be in print forever, no take backsies, you allow a different level of care that you give to the writing and the words and the phrases. And so that's what we do. We really love helping people figure out what is it that you have to give? How do we tell it? You know, how do we communicate it the most powerfully? How is your story connected to that? And then how is this going to help you do what you feel like you're here to do on a planet?
Norman:
[4:43] So it's a bit of draw out the story and people like when they have this feeling that there is something they want to say, but they don't know quite what they're doing. And that happens. But then also there's the writing coaching side of it. Like, OK, how do we connect with the audience and the most important and best way possible? And then but then there's even more like, right, there's there's getting it to market. There's getting it. You know, you're almost acting like in a sense as an agency as well. And like, there's a bunch of things that are going on there. And so it's almost soup to nuts.
Amanda:
[5:18] They say inspiration, impact, every plot twist, you know, we're really because, you know, some folks come in and they've already built a lot of things and they have a team and they just need someone to run alongside them and make sure that the content that they're creating is great. And then they're going to take it with their team and turn it into that they know how to do. And then there are the other folks who arrive and they don't even know that they're going to end up needing a business to do the transaction of selling books, right? They're just here to write and to complete a goal that's been on their list for many years or achieve a childhood dream. And they don't realize what comes after. So a lot of the coaching that we do is through, you know, figuring out how to communicate the message in a way that's going to stick, whether they become a speaker or a coach later, even if they don't think that that's in the in the works for them they often find out that it is and then we help them with the branding piece and setting up the visual brand and then through, launch and even marketing we have some folks who are making the transition from being you know even the founders you know they've they've run organizations but it's a completely different psychological game when you say okay it's not about this thing that I'm building It's about putting myself out there and my story and getting to those stages. And there's just this identity thing that we get to walk alongside people as they embody it and step into those spaces.
Norman:
[6:43] Really cool. Yeah. And I'm sure there's a lot of, there's also a lot of cheerleading involved too. As all coaching kind of is on some level, it's bringing people to the point of bringing out their best selves in some sense. So how exactly did you kind of come to both found and run this particular business? So you might give us a sense of like, how did Amanda Johnson become this person she is today and running this business and doing these things? I'm kind of curious as to Like there has to be some pretty interesting points along the way that kind of led you to, ah, here's the moment. This is how I can lever my skills in the best way for these for my for the people that I serve.
Amanda:
[7:25] Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of a strange business, right? Most people don't go to school to do this strange set of things that I do in a day or a week or a month. So it started with my love of writing. Writing was a huge outlet for me growing up and I needed it. didn't know about that research until much later, what it was doing for me to write my ideas and my feelings and my stories on paper. It was helping me. And I thought I'd be a journalist. So I went to Biola University to be a journalist. And somehow I heard about the classic books program there, which is now called Tori Honor College, I believe. And I think they were in their second or third year. It's kind of a new program. And I talked to the director and he invited me in and he said, I think you're supposed to be here. And man, oh, man, I think every week I walk past his office and thought about knocking that door down and begging him to let me out of the program.
Amanda:
[8:25] I was like, wow, I no one taught me how to think critically. This is more reading in a week than I think maybe I did in my entire educational career up until that. I mean, so intimidated and scary, you know, because the whole crux of the program with classic books, of course, is what do you believe in a lie? You know, just because I was raised in the system isn't a good enough answer. You have to write a paper every semester that is going to be marked up and fix until it's good.
Amanda:
[9:00] So I became a really good technical writer there. Got all the fluff kicked out of my creative writing. became a good critical thinker and also fell in love with the power of story because I could see how story shapes identity. It shapes culture. It shapes civilization. And so I thought I'd go back and be a history teacher. Got into that system about the same time that I had a little toddler at home. And there's a strange thing that happens in education. I hear it's still a trend where they throw the new teacher without all the experience into a room with all the kids that all the people with experience don't want to deal with anymore. In my case, that was, you know, drug dealers and kids, you know, young women who are pregnant and hadn't told anyone and all the things. I fell in love with those kids. I was exhausted at the end of the day, and I did not know how to be a decent mom and do that. So I thought I'd come back. And I had the opportunity to become a writing instructor, an online writing instructor, and work while the little guy was sleeping or playing or a daycare. Loved that. Figured out how to do this virtually.
Amanda:
[10:05] And then I had the opportunity to look at someone's manuscript for the first time. And, you know, I'd been helping all of my friends and peers through the process of writing all of their essays and papers up until that point, because it was my skill set. They all knew it. But when I saw the power of a book, my question to her was, how does it feel to know that you have written something that the person who opens the first page is not the person who ends the book? Like this is by the last page, they're a different person. And she said, it feels great. When are you going to write yours? I was like, oh, no. 27 sort of feel like I can't figure out my life because I've had all these starts and stops in careers and she said you know, I think you have value today to give. You don't need a master's. You don't need a PhD. You don't need, you have something to give today. And so that sort of started my own personal journey through the process of this idea of what would I contribute? You know, even in a moment that was really hard for me, where's the value? Why am I here?
Amanda:
[11:09] What did God put me here for? And at 27, I did not have a good answer. And so it sort of began my own journey. And along the way, I got to help people edit their books and see how writing was helping them to discover and unfold their own purpose. And, you know, start helping people from the beginning and built a retreat model. You know, you were talking about that cheering on that happens. It's a really, really beautiful when it's a whole community of people who are on the journey together, you know, because it is such a vulnerable journey of telling the stories and wondering how it's going to be received. And so lifelong friendships start in this community and end up being, you know, good for growing the mission beyond.
Norman:
[11:54] So that's really, I mean, that's really fascinating to like, kind of hear the way in which this, you know, evolves from going from teaching to coaching in this particular way. And the, like, just the convergence of skill sets, the bringing forward and then being challenged internally from one of your friends, right? So you go from there, you begin this process of like, okay, now I'm taking these skill sets that I have been maybe giving away a little bit. And now you begin to actually formulate a business around it. You've said now you even have communities that you build in order to kind of spur people along. But what were some of the kind of intermediate steps there? How did you go from, all right, I'm going to help this person in a business, like as a function of my now, this is my job. And then you get now you're a functional agency for like building communities and doing these wild things. Where does some of those things kind of build up from?
Amanda:
[12:57] One baby step, an identity crisis at a time.
Norman:
[13:01] Okay, one identity crisis at a time wasn't what I expected, but I get it. All right.
Amanda:
[13:06] So the woman who said, what value do you have to give today? Started me on my own personal journey. And what ended up happening was I realized that my own mission was around messaging. I had been very carefully messaging my son because I was aware through a lot of the work with the classic books program and psychology and education classes that a lot of the messages that I had received as a kid by really well-meaning adults were, had debilitated me. It was the reason why I felt like I couldn't perform when I got to the classic books program. And so I set out to develop and cultivate the most amazing self-image I could imagine in this kid. And it was working. By the time he was three years old, I had told everyone in his life, the one thing that you will not say without consequence is, you are bad to my son. Because my performance had been tied to my worth very early. And so that was the one thing. One day, he broke a mirror in my grandmother's, bathroom and she said the words. And I turned off the sink and I don't know what I was about to do. But that mommy tiger was headed down the hallway. I got to the end of the hallway and I saw him with his hands on his hips looking up at her at three. He said, I'm not bad. I made a bad choice and I'm sorry.
Amanda:
[14:27] And I thought, okay, this is working. But in the background, I was still, muted and even almost physically crippled by my own emotional stuff that would pop up as I was parenting, right? Because here this kid is experiencing life the way I wish I could at 23, 24, 25. So by 27, when she challenges me with that, I'm thinking, this is it. Like I'm going to, now I was also hanging out with a bunch of entrepreneurs who, this was 2007. Did you remember the big thing that happened in 2007?
Norman:
[15:03] The housing crisis.
Amanda:
[15:04] The housing crisis. But in the personal development community, the secret came out. Oh, the law of attraction. And so a bunch of my clients, my editing clients and these sorts of folks that we are talking to were all about that. And so I said, well, you know, everything I'm doing with my kid is sort of in alignment with this, right? Like the right mindset, the right affirmations, the right, this is what I'm doing. So maybe if I was working with someone in that world, they would understand that this is something that you could do with kids from the beginning instead of like as an intervention when we're in our teens or teens or thirties. So I ended up having the opportunity to work with one of the teachers from The Secret for a few years. And I got to watch her tell stories and change the experience of people in rooms. And I got to learn how to facilitate in those spaces. And so that was really the first crisis for me where I thought, how am I going to, how am I going to help people do this? Because this feels like my mission, you know, help people not just tell their stories, but work through the stories that have crippled them and they don't know. And so...
Amanda:
[16:22] I'm going to help people from the beginning. I can't get people to write. High-performing people, people who've written master's theses and dissertations, and they will not write. So I invite them to retreat. I said, I always say I kidnap them with consent into a retreat model.
Amanda:
[16:40] That was the, you know, like, leave your life for a minute. Break frame. Let's talk about this. And that's when the tears started to show up. And so I was standing in a room and that was that was the moment where everything converged for me. And I saw the tears and I went, oh, oh, the educator designed the experience. The mom created the setting. This looks and feels like my living room where I'm doing this with my kid as a, you know, as a classroom with story. And then the tears have just been through this facilitation process. I know exactly what to do here. And it was like I stood by the door and I heard God say, this is actually what you're here to do. But you can leave. You're standing by the door. And I thought, oh, there's a bunch of people crying in the middle of this room. I'm not leaving. I guess I'm here, but it was walking people back to who they were before the story began. So the community model began then. The people started to get their writing done and the writing was this unbelievable avenue for healing. I watched them mend parts of their story, mend parts of their relationships, and parts of their businesses.
Amanda:
[17:44] And, and their own purpose, you know, people saying I'm never going back to ministry. And by the time they're done with the writing, guess what they're doing? They're back in ministry and they're more whole doing it. And, and then the manuscripts got done. What did we do with those? Well, I had a team of people. So I pulled them around and we started helping them with self-publishing and then hybrid publishing became a thing. I don't even know. I should know what that date is, but it was like the wild west arrived. We are all kinds of horrible, horrible things about the hybrid publishing industry.
Amanda:
[18:16] People having their content stolen, you know, all the things. It was just, it was terrible. But I had some folks who were saying, you know, I really want an imprint because the profession that I'm in, like that would be a real boon for me, credibility wise. And so I'd say fine go get it you know I'll help you vet it and then I'll stay in the background and just support you through the process, and so that's when I really saw the racket that was happening no attention to branding no attention some of them didn't I swear some of them didn't even read like the subtitles of the books that they were working on because the subtitles had the imagery with a cover and like these sorts of things were just crazy to me. So after a few years of helping people through this process and sort of saving a bunch of projects and then walking out of my office, and screaming in the middle of the kitchen because I was so frustrated that people were just getting abused and mistreated through the process.
Amanda:
[19:17] Of putting their life's work out into the world. You know, it's like, what does that experience do to someone's feeling about their product in the end? If it's such a horrible thing to go through, right? Like, why aren't you still in your book? I barely survived my book being produced.
Norman:
[19:35] Getting produced.
Amanda:
[19:37] I mean, it was a terrible story. So my son eventually, when he was about 19, said, you know, I think that maybe we should just create our own experience. So that's when we opened Saved by Story for the hybrid publishing side. And I just folded all of my writing and transformational work into that.
Norman:
[19:54] That's yeah, that's really cool. And I think, you know, a lot of folks may not have a sense of, you know, the publishing world. I mean, I'm still learning about a bunch of that because of what we're trying to do, even at LCI with publishing books and whatnot. And I've, you know, I've been involved in multiple book projects now with like different with different publishers. And it's weird. It's a weird world. And so I commend commend what you guys are doing as like trying to offer an alternative that is better serving to, you know, to the people that you're trying to serve. So that's really cool. So, you know, we've alluded to a number of different things here with regards to how our faith has played into this. And so I'm hoping perhaps you can kind of, you know, maybe pierce the veil or unpeel the onion, whatever metaphor you'd like to use. As a writer, I'm sure you can pick one that's better than that. but how has your, uh, you kind of sense of.
Norman:
[20:57] Uh, you know, discovering what God wants you to do and how to serve through the marketplace here, how has that kind of brought to bear and affected what your, your offerings have been, how you have, uh, chosen to build this business and ultimately even perhaps select the kind of people or the projects that you work on with folks. I mean, you kind of get into that and see, like, how does that, you know, kind of come to bear?
Amanda:
[21:24] Yeah, it's such a good question. know. When I left home and got to Biola, I did have a crisis of faith as I moved through the process of the Classic Books program.
Amanda:
[21:38] And it was more of a mental, emotional crisis of faith because I'd had enough experiences in my teens, you know, in different churches that we were in. I'd participated in miracles. I'd heard God's voice while I was, you know, in certain activities. So there was a certain level of experience that no argument.
Amanda:
[22:00] Could hold up to, you know, it's like I'm sort of open to you relabeling some of this, maybe perhaps, but the experience doesn't go away. Right. Back to the importance of story and how it keeps us grounded in identity while all of the other things are going on. The war of ideas happening around us. If we can help people to move into an experience that is harder to chip away at and create doubt around, so much better. So crisis of faith. And I was super disenchanted with church when I left the classic books program. I grew up in the evangelical space, non-denominational, and I just felt like everything that I had learned about the early church and the spiritual formation that was there, you know, the practices and the rituals and the feasts, like all these things that helped them to do what Paul said, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. I felt like that was absent in the spaces that I had been in. And so I decided I'm not going to participate. In the church thing. And I went a completely different route.
Amanda:
[23:13] And eventually I figured out that story was a powerful way, just like I had seen in the classic books program, to help people discover the great story, right? And this is kind of the story of my career because you mentioned that I call myself the Oracle here. And that's because as I'm working with other individuals, my position as a business owner, but especially as a coach, has never been to say.
Amanda:
[23:44] This is where I stand and this is what I believe. When it comes to faith or politics or any of the things that are so deeply connected to that, my goal has always been.
Amanda:
[23:55] What is it that you believe? And are you sure about that? Because look at what you wrote over here. And you say you have all this disbelief, but look at all these other things that happened in your story that you forgot about until you started writing it. And so what I've been able to witness across my career is creating the space where people have the opportunity to wrestle with the ideas and the stories and their beliefs, Christians in the same space as people who believe in, oh, I don't know, any number of things that I could say that would be, I mean, I don't want to talk about particular people, But there were there were people that I would think, wow, this is going to be fascinating, like, right, because I get to learn what it is holding this worldview together and see where it works and where there are fault lines and sort of help them to see the fault lines and eventually move toward a place of more belief. So what I found across my career is that the people who don't have faith when they walk in, because of the way that I'm facilitating an experience for them to really interact and reconnect, because I believe that's what story does, right? It helps us to reconnect with ourselves. It helps us to reconnect with other people if we know how to use it. And.
Amanda:
[25:19] It helps us reconnect with our creator because, like, I call him the co-author, right? He's writing this story and we get to be, we participate in it. And the more agency that we have and practice and realize that we're here to be partners in writing that story, the better. And so what I get to do is watch people see the places in their story where they've lost authorship. They've lost agency. They picked up a belief from a parent or a system or, you know, an addiction loop or a relationship happened. Right. And so they find these places where they have image of God in me and make a decision here that I'm going to choose a different script. I'm going to go I'm going to I'm going to write a different story for my children I'm going to give them a different opportunity, and so it's really fun to see the unbelievers move toward this this realization that there's a rescue mission afoot for them you can't look at the timeline of your story, and say it's all grief because it's not true there's a rescue mission and people see it When they can see the whole thing at one time. And then the believers, one of the things that I've seen.
Amanda:
[26:34] And I think it's sort of back to the beginning of my disenchantment with the church and soul formation. There are a lot of unbelievably amazing people of faith who have walked through some of the darkest times. They have faith that I hope that I have someday, right? And yet when they arrive in my space and they say, I can't write this story and I don't know why. And I say, do you think it might be because you haven't actually grieved before? That there's a part of you that's like, so, you know, like, you know, like, you know that God is there and God shows up. And yet this human part hasn't been given the opportunity and the time to wail because that was a terrible thing that you went through and your family went through. And so what they get to do is take all of their faith and their story back into those moments and.
Amanda:
[27:32] Do a level of personal processing that when I talk to their family members after, they pull me aside at events and say, thanks for bringing her back to me. And I say, what do you mean? First of all, I didn't do that. Like, that was a person showing up doing all the work. But second of all, what do you mean? And all of them said something to the effect of, you know, she's been a superhero. She is a woman of faith. There's no one who, you know, I believe God listens to more. And yet there was this part of her missing since that thing happened. And none of us knew how to get it back. And now it's back. It was back as soon as she finished the manuscript. So there's sort of this strange convergence from, you know, the unbelievers to the believers. And when you put them into rooms together for storytelling, and we call it story saving because we're not therapists, but therapeutic things happen when people touch their stories. You know, beautiful things happen. All of the things that, you know, the ideas and the beliefs that you would think would really divide people become opportunities to learn and deepen our own faith and wrestle against and with those other ideas. So I think maybe I answered your question, but faith has played sort of a strange, role because it was never about faith.
Amanda:
[28:53] It was never about bring people to God, but it was the whole time.
Norman:
[29:00] Yeah, it's a strange sort of thing that happens when we seek to serve others through the marketplace at times. And that's kind of leads to sort of the next question I want to ask, because I think that one could observe what you're doing, perhaps from the outside, maybe even hear some of the things that you talk about.
Norman:
[29:24] And still perhaps misunderstand what is happening when you're doing these things together. Both believers and non-believers coming together. That's an interesting facet on its own from the perspective of this weird group interaction that has an interesting spiritual effect on both, segments there. But I guess where I'm kind of going with this is that, you know, a lot of times I think believers and folks in the church, we misapprehend what, what certain work is all about. Maybe we, maybe it's that we value certain things over others. you know, sometimes it's a classic problem of, you know, when you're a teenager, sometimes you get, especially when you, like you and I were growing up in like the, you know, the eighties and nineties kind of hearing the, the, the story that's told is like the best, the most important thing you can do with your life is, to be a minister be a, you know, be a worship pastor or something like that. And I think that, you know, as I have, as I have grown older, I think that that is a, that's a false narrative.
Norman:
[30:32] The story that we ought to be telling ourselves is something a bit different. And it has to do with the fact that all work when done in a God honoring way is, is co-working with God toward building creation in some, in some manner, and creation in the holistic sense of like the, the universe itself. and so what I, what I'm kind of leaning toward here is like, I'm, I'm probably heading in kind of two different directions, but I'm going to try to, I'm going to try to nail this back into one, uh, for a moment. And that's that, you know, how do you think that, you know, your fellow believers are kind of misapprehending even what you're attempting to do in this, focus on telling the untelling stories, building narratives and letting that, shape identity and i'll get let me put one other bit of color into that and that's it i think that there's a real sense in which sometimes we, and i'll be careful in using the word but we privilege certain forms of say, like of logical exposition versus narrative exposition um.
Norman:
[31:42] You know in the in the church and really throughout you know the way we tend to live and there's there's a point to that like as a as a physical scientist like i'm into that, yeah i get it but uh you know there's a jesus didn't explain things to us in the form of just you know logical propositions, but told stories and that was for a reason and it's for identity building so, okay i've i've gone off on that for long enough, to head it back into the kind of focus question how do you want your fellow believers to kind of recognize, the like why these this idea or these ideas around storytelling really work, and yeah i'm gonna i'm just leaving it at that let you go.
Amanda:
[32:36] You you uh you put me in the deep end That's.
Norman:
[32:38] Okay.
Amanda:
[32:40] It's the deep end of school.
Norman:
[32:41] Toss you in. You go.
Amanda:
[32:43] No, when you were sharing, I was thinking about the director of that classic books program. And I remember he talked about, he did an exposition of John 114. The Word Became Flesh and Dwelt Among Us. And, you know, I'm not going to subscribe all of what I'm about to share to him because it was connecting itself with my experience as a teen. But what I realized was.
Amanda:
[33:09] That Jesus became flesh. He left the ideal and the perfect to come and hang out with people who were in the darkest days in one way, shape or form. Right. The prostitutes, the money changers, the tax, all these people, the outcasts. And so I remember him talking about this, you know, this ascending and descending thing to expect across our lifetime, that we would have the opportunity to ascend, mounts of transfiguration. We would have moments of realizing an ideal and having an aha that would change everything. But you can't sit on the mountain. That's not the point. The point is to bring what you have, right, hero's journey, back to the people who are hurting. And so for me, when I left the church establishment, as I saw it at the time.
Amanda:
[34:12] The declaration I made to myself and to my husband was, I'm going to figure out how to do the love made flesh thing. Because the truth doesn't land if love isn't present.
Amanda:
[34:28] It can be seeded. But when we receive truth, if we're not feeling that love and all the neuroscience that I've learned since, right, we need to feel safe. We need to feel loved. We need to feel respected. We need to feel like we belong. That's what our nervous system is craving. So if we don't have that presence, all the truth can come at us and we can't receive it, digest it, wrestle with it. It just sort of slips off and hopefully there's a seed left for whenever we get regulated and have the opportunity to do that. So my mission was I'm going to go be love and help people work toward the truth. And I think that I'm glad I didn't do that in reverse because there I don't want I don't think it's the way that Jesus did it. And two.
Amanda:
[35:20] I just don't think it works. You know, people people who are hurting, myself included, you know, is a very hard to receive the good news if we're not feeling it first. And that's what story does. story, you know, that's what I coach every author to do. I know you don't want to go back to that dark time and write from inside of it. I get it. I'm going to be here with you. And the thing is, is that which books have meant the most to you, those are the ones where you open it up and you see yourself. The author says, you know, look, this is the platform I have now. These are the opportunities I have now. But let me tell you where this started. It started in a moment just like the one that propelled you to find this book and open it up. And that's when people feel seen and known and they can experience some sort of love and regulation. That's when they can go on a transformational journey where they can begin to, again, wrestle with the ideas and wonder if the narratives that they've had so far, whether that came from, you know, the church or the personal development community or the cult that they grew up with. Who knows? But they at least finally get the opportunity to face it head on with someone who cares.
Norman:
[36:38] That's, uh yeah i mean i think that that kind of that kind of hits a lot of different uh a lot of different points that i was kind of hoping we'd we'd address on some level right okay there's so many so many interesting things there we could even unpack at greater length but i guess where you know where this comes down to in the end is that like, there is a um.
Norman:
[37:01] There's a grand sense that through this narrative process, we find out more about who we are and who God intends for us to be. Those are not the same thing either. Like we find out that we are not complete yet and that it is through understanding God's story. How it builds into our story, that it brings a greater measure of completeness. And so the fact that you're trying to help people do that in an active way, I think is pretty interesting and worth it. I mean, obviously the results speak for themselves.
Norman:
[37:42] You know, as we kind of begin drawing to a close here, I hope that perhaps maybe you can give us some examples of, you know, either books that are available, folks who you know and you would be like yeah you know if you if you're interested in this kind of story you want to you want to listen to this this gal or this guy tell their story or or expound upon something can you give us a couple of examples perhaps as is like hey take a look at this if you're interested in x y or z yeah.
Amanda:
[38:10] You mean people who've come from yeah from your.
Norman:
[38:13] From your communities and stuff yeah.
Amanda:
[38:15] Yeah there are a few of them that i think you would really enjoy so um i'm like looking back thank you uh, one of the fun things about helping people to um title books is that you go through this entire creative process maybe you've done this with your own books, where there's so many titles and so many subtitles that, wait what did we decide, and why yeah exactly so uh, there's a really cool book if to the point of this journey that people set it on in the creative process with us there's a book that we collaborated on 20 of my clients and team members, had the opportunity to share their story of going through our process that is called you can't make this story up, and story story has an asterisk in it for a reason you can't make this story up what if it's all happening for you i think this is the subtitle, so that's a good one, uh, to sort of understand this strange thing that we've been talking about for those people.
Norman:
[39:16] Great example. I think that's, that's a, yeah. Anyway, if you have another, go for it.
Amanda:
[39:20] Yeah. And then, one of the ones I, I mentioned her story earlier, Lisa Boone wrote Severed Sacredness, and she's this unbelievable woman of faith that when, when she launched our book, people were asking her, I want to know this God. That you know and I kind of giggled and she asked why and I said it's funny because when I met you I thought I want to know what you went through to make you the type of human who didn't.
Amanda:
[39:51] Crumble underneath this like what was the soul formation that took place before this tragedy because I think I might have buckled and so she tells the story of her daughter hitting a tree at, in a skiing accident and having hitting it so hard that the goggles went into her brain, and her recovery was many many years long, and she was the she was the client who arrived and said I've been trying to write this for 13 years and I have a thousand pages of content and care pages and journaling, but I don't know how to put them together. And as I read them, I realized that the woman of faith was talking and the community member was talking and the nurse advocate was talking, but the mom was non-existent in the story. When she had the opportunity to go back and grieve, but she lost as a mother. That book is one of those transformational journeys for anyone going through any sort of dark forest season in their lives. So I'd say those two are probably at the top of the list as far as, you know, based on what we've been talking about here today.
Norman:
[40:58] Awesome. Well, I appreciate you making those recommendations. I'm going to have to take a look myself at some of that. That's very interesting.
Norman:
[41:04] Well, okay. So again, we're, as we're kind of drawing to a close here, but where can people learn more about, you know, your business, what your objectives are, how you work with other people? If they want to learn more about what you're doing, where do you want them to go?
Amanda:
[41:22] Okay. So real quick, I can't say, also based on what we were talking about earlier, I would recommend people look at the book that I wrote with my son, which is Raised by Story.
Norman:
[41:34] Okay.
Amanda:
[41:34] And if people are like, what is she talking about? Classic books helping a young thing come to an awareness. The conclusion that he drew at the end of that book blew me away. And it proved that God exists in every story. And he's using them all to draw us closer to him. As far as where people can find us, savedbystory.house is the best place. Go over to especially, I mean, check out the bookstore because we have some great books there. And if you're interested in, you know, something inside is saying, you know, I have that story. I wonder if it's time to write or I'm not sure what to do. I have a manuscript and there's a there's a page called Quest Starters there and it's full of a bunch of resources that people can just use and dip a toe in and see if it feels like the right space for them to to jump into.
Norman:
[42:27] Cool. Well, I appreciate that. And do you have any other like, do you have some? Well, I'm sure we'll have some of your social links and whatnot in our show notes as well. But if you have any other places where you like to put out material and have people interact with it, please let us know now and we'll see about those up in the notes as well.
Amanda:
[42:47] You know, the only other place that I would say is to go to the story oracle.com and it's hyphenated the hyphen story hyphen oracle.com. People come to us for writing and publishing and the sweet benefit is the narrative resilience that they develop along the way, which is what we've been talking about today. And so the next phase for me is taking all of those narrative intelligence and narrative resilience tools that I've collected and used across time. I have so much content and my next season is about taking those into education and homeschooling and mental health so that, people can develop this in their, you know, living rooms, classrooms. Boardrooms, it'd be great.
Norman:
[43:38] Awesome. That's going to be exciting to see, for sure. I think there's even some other interviewees we've had here on Faith Ventures. I think there's some really interesting meshable points here. So maybe I'll show that with you later. Or maybe it'll be on the show notes. I'll have to make sure and ensure that those get in. But Amanda, thank you so much for being here. This has been really fun to learn more about you, to hear your story, and to learn more about the way in which you approach all of these aspects of helping people to bring out those narratives that make the most, mean the most to them, the world. So thank you for sharing all that with us. Really do appreciate it.
Amanda:
[44:16] Thank you for the conversation. I enjoyed it.
Norman:
[44:19] This has been wonderful. So for everyone who's been listening, thank you for joining us once again. has been the Faith Ventures Podcast and we hope to see you next time. Thank you so much. We'll see you.