Integrating AI & Critical Thinking Into Business Success with Dr. Bo Bennett, PhD

🎙️ Welcome to another enlightening episode of Pathways with Amber Stitt! 

🧠 In this episode, Amber sits down with Dr. Bo Bennett, a serial entrepreneur, author, PhD in social psychology, and expert in critical thinking and cognitive biases. 

💸 Bo shares the fascinating journey that led him from founding and selling a successful web hosting company for $20 million at just 29 years-old, to cultivating his passion for philosophy, psychology, and digital innovation (with a dash of humility about missing the social media boat).

🛤️ Explore Bo’s journey from a childhood steeped in entrepreneurial spirit and motivational gurus to pursuing a PhD in social psychology, and why he became passionate about critical thinking, logical fallacies, and cognitive biases.

📖 Learn how Dr. Bo is making waves in the publishing world with innovative AI-powered platforms like BookBud.AI and AuthorVoices.AI, helping anyone become an author in record time—and stirring up the old debate about ethics and technology.

🔬 Hear practical tips on separating “rah-rah” motivation from the science of achievement, hacking your own social media and search engine feeds for better information, and why critical thinking matters more than ever in our information-saturated age.

💻 If you've ever wondered about the real story behind online businesses, how AI can empower writers (and narrators!), or simply want to get sharper at thinking through the noise, this episode is for you.

📽️ To watch this episode: https://youtu.be/j4XgsAD9tCo

🔗  Want to connect with Dr. Bo Bennett?

Learn more: https://ArchieBoy.com (businesses & platforms)

Dr. Bo’s personal work: https://BoBennett.com

Check out BookBud: https://www.bookbud.ai

Clone your voice: https://www.authorvoices.ai

#pathwayswithamberstitt #criticalthinking #bookbudai #authorvoicesai #amberstitt #bobennett 

📻 Thank you for tuning in to Pathways!

🔗 Connect with Amber on Social Media:

• AMBER’S INSTAGRAM
• AMBER’S LINKEDIN
• AMBER’S FACEBOOK

📲 Be sure to visit Amber's website:

www.AmberStitt.com

And remember, let's take action today!!!

Transcript

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:00:00]:
A great example was, yes, I was in the right place at the right time back in 1994. No question there. I missed the boat on social media. And the reason I did is because that's when I just didn't really care about business. And honestly, I thought it was kind of stupid. And I still kind of do. Like, why do I have to tell everybody everything I'm doing every minute of the day? Why do I have to read about what everybody else is? I don't care about this, and I don't care about your political opinion, or your opinion on this. So I never really got into that.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:00:30]:
I didn't see it.

Amber Stitt [00:00:31]:
I don't think there's regrets.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:00:32]:
Yeah, but it's there. I mean, obviously it's there, and it was absolutely huge. But that boat I missed because besides just not seeing it, I think the window of opportunity wasn't open for me. I wasn't looking. I was perfectly content doing what I was doing at the time. And that just kind of passed me by. But when AI came around, I said, "No, I'm not missing this one again."

Amber Stitt [00:00:54]:
Hello and welcome to Pathways. I am your host, Amber Stitt, and today we welcome Dr. Bo Bennett to the show today. Welcome, Bo.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:01:02]:
Thank you. Good to be here, Amber.

Amber Stitt [00:01:04]:
Before we dive into the background on Bo, I think, well, maybe it's a rumor. I'm not sure. The rumor might be that potentially you're a little funny, potentially a little humorous. And is that a fact, or fallacy? Let's kick off with that. What do you think? How do you answer that?

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:01:19]:
It's a fact, according to me. A fallacy to everybody who knows me. No, my comedy sense is in my writing. So if you're expecting me to be a standup comedian and be hilarious on the interview, I'm probably not. You're going to be disappointed.

Amber Stitt [00:01:32]:
Yeah, I'm not off the cuff. My brain holds too much here. I can't articulate. Sometimes the conversations are easier for me.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:01:38]:
Right.

Amber Stitt [00:01:39]:
You channel that into your writing. I wanted to lead with that because I know that you focus a lot of your business life has been part of the critical thinking and a focus there on just how people maybe how their brains work and how we foresee a perception of how the reality is in front of us. I want to talk about that a bit, talking about you, but I've also heard that there was a younger person that sold his business for $20 million. So can we talk about that previous life and how in the world, what were you doing at the time to get to that point and was it always part of like this background that you have? Was it part of the critical thinking? And did that help you narrow down this business choice, or how did this happen for you?

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:02:19]:
Sure, a lot of questions there and I'll try to remember them all. First, yes, the 29 year-old self version of me did sell a business for $20 million. And that was my web hosting company. And I did that back in 2001. And that was when, if anybody was around back then. And I mean that's when the Internet, it was probably like 2000, was at its peak. 2001 is when it was the big burst, the bubble burst. And that's when like Pets.com and all those like crazy businesses that were funded by the venture capital firms, like everyone was just throwing money at them.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:02:55]:
They realized, "Oh, that's probably not a good idea because they're not making money." It was the whole idea of making money and not like actually making money. That was the first big blunder that the investment markets actually made. But I was fortunate enough to actually have a deal going and being able to get out like right before the bust. So it worked out pretty well for me, but not perfectly well because that $20 million I only ended up getting, well, only, you know, poor me, I only ended up getting about $12 million of it because $8 million, actually the vast majority of it was all in stock in their company, this company who bought us. And they ended up going bankrupt within like six months, or something. So I was able to get enough out but not all of it out. So that's what happened back then and I was in the right place at the right time.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:03:41]:
I started this in 1994 when I was just out of college and I had a lot of computer experience and I just had to learn programming to actually create websites and learn to work with servers because there weren't many people doing it back then. In 1994, very few people heard of the World Wide Web. So I was just in the right place at the right time and it worked out very well. And what's interesting too, there was a lot of struggle along the way. It wasn't like, "Hey, I'm making all this money," from day one. I mean, it was so many times I'm like, "Oh geez, this whole thing is going to fall apart," like a lot of problems. But it just, in the end it turned out well. That was a big lesson for me too, not to get too invested in the day-by-day stuff because there's always going to be days when things don't go well.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:04:24]:
And it's just the big picture. I knew I was doing the right thing. I knew it was a great concept, a great business. And at the end of the day, it was. Now, a second part of your question was about the critical thinking. Yes, that's what I do now. It's pretty much all about critical thinking. I have a PhD in social psychology, but my interests and passions has started with philosophy and logical fallacies like critical thinking and argumentation, and then moved into cognitive biases.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:04:53]:
So there's a lot going on, a lot of interactivity between these different disciplines. But that didn't start until probably like my mid to late 30s. Prior to that, I was raised with gurus like Tony Robbins, Mark McKay, Denis Waitley, you know, Zig Ziglar, all those guys with the motivation and the success tapes. I used to love that stuff. I'm not going to say that that was the reason for my success. In fact, I think it's a correlation thing, not a causal thing, meaning that I was the type of person...I grew up in a household where my whole family were entrepreneurs and that's all they ever talked about.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:05:34]:
They only ran their own business. So, running your own business was encouraged by my parents. I had a lot of help from my father and my mother with advice. And so that's what really got me interested in the tapes. And I say that because it's really kind of a contrast to critical thinking. I still like this stuff, like the motivational. I think it's entertaining. It gets a lot of people going, gets them hyped up and gets 'em excited.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:05:56]:
But it's kind of like a, you know, I've never snorted cocaine, full disclosure. But I'm assuming that's what it's like. You know, you take a snort of cocaine, I watch the movies and they go crazy and it's the best. And then you get like a quick, like you're down after that. And that's kind of what the motivational material is. It's like a snort of cocaine. What's more important was the science behind that. To me, okay, all this stuff that I'm hearing about success, about leadership, about management, about finance, about achievement.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:06:26]:
How can I separate the "rah-rah" stuff? There's a lot of metaphysical stuff in there. Just believe it and it'll come to you and is separate that from the actual science of it. And I knew there was science to it. So that's what really kind of pushed me in the direction of going back to school after I got my degree in marketing and going back to school 10, 15 years later for my PhD in psychology.

Amber Stitt [00:06:49]:
I was curious, when did that happen. Thank you.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:06:53]:
Yeah, it was a while after and only then was I really into critical thinking and focused on that because I saw the power of what it can do in relationships, in business, critical thinking in politics and religion, like in everything. Like critical thinking is such an important part of how we live, or at least it should be, in my opinion.

Amber Stitt [00:07:17]:
Okay, can you define critical thinking and then pull that into what you define as humanism?

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:07:23]:
Sure. So critical thinking is probably best defined as the ability to carefully and systematically process information as opposed to what we normally do on a day-to-day basis is we just take it in. We don't think very hard about it. We don't put a lot of cognitive resources to the information that we take in. So that's like the lack of critical thinking. That's like somebody tells us something and we say, "Okay," if we like the person, we say, "Okay, sure, I believe you." If we don't like the person, we say, "I don't believe you." Or similarly, if we like the source, let's say it's our favorite news station and they say some things,

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:08:03]:
we believe it because we like the source and it's very easy. And it doesn't take a lot of cognitive energy just to accept information. And same thing with rejecting information. If we turn on a channel that we don't like, a news source we don't like and they say things, we're just like, "Oh, that's a bunch of crap, that's a bunch of fake news nonsense." Because it's easy for us to do that. And we don't like to expend energy, we like to conserve energy. That's the way we're structured as human beings, as biological beings. So there's that fight between getting the right information and activating your critical thinking versus your natural, seemingly natural cycle to just not want to do that and kind of be lazy.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:08:47]:
So critical thinking takes work. It takes knowledge to learn about the cognitive biases, logical fallacies, and then putting it all together and then activating what's called like your System 2 Thinking, your higher level thinking when you're presented with information that is important and you really should activate that critical thinking. Whereas, like in many situations in life, we don't need to do that. We don't have to critically think about everything. Like when I go to the supermarket, I don't sit there and say, "Okay, let me figure this out: Should I have Captain Crunch, or should I have Lucky Charms?" And I don't draw a spreadsheet out or, you know, it doesn't matter, it's just, it's not important. You go with what you feel like and that's great for a lot of decisions in life, but not all your decisions.

Amber Stitt [00:09:35]:
Going back a little bit to the TV analogy, you think it's then important for all of us to slow down, take a moment to not just have that knee jerk reaction, all of us need to pause and say, "Why might I be thinking this way?" And almost build a little, not consequences, but a system to some of these more important decisions. Would that be a great way to implement just like slowing it down, having a little more patience and thinking things through versus just the way we scroll and just accept what we hear from our favorite people?

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:10:06]:
Yeah, in theory that's a great idea to slow down because that will give you time to process things. The one challenge there is that the media doesn't give us time to slow down. If you turn on a news channel, I mean, it's just like you're bombarded with information and you just don't have time to process it all. So you just accept it for the most part. Or conversely, you might just reject it all, depending on again, the source. So that could always be a little bit challenging, but you're onto something. Whereas if you could control the information coming in, like say with Twitter, or some kind of scrolling type of mechanism, Facebook, or whatever, you may be able to come across something. And what I do actually is when I am scrolling on Facebook, I see something, I'm like, "I don't know about that."

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:10:55]:
And I screen capture it. So I take a photo of it. So I keep on scrolling, but then I go back. Usually in the night, or in the morning, I'll go to those screen captures and then I'll do a little research on it. Sometimes that word makes me cringe because when people say "research", they usually just mean Google. And when they Google, the algorithms give them the information that they're looking for and they don't know the difference, how to tell the difference between good information and bad. And they say, "Well, I did my research."

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:11:23]:
That's troubling. It could be a lot of trouble, as well.

Amber Stitt [00:11:27]:
And it's easier, but again, it doesn't make it right. And so that's really. Where is that definition, the logical fallacies? It seems logical, but it might not be true. Or do I have that backwards?

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:11:38]:
No, a logical fallacy is pretty much that's it. When you hear a logical fallacy, most of the time it sounds really good. It sounds like it makes perfect sense, but then it's not for actual good logical reasons. One example might be the strawman, which is when your opponent brought up an argument, and then it's an argument that's very difficult for you to respond to, so you just pretend they said something else, like a ridiculous version of the argument, and you argue against that version. So if you're doing this quickly back and forth, people won't even know what happened. They don't see that because they're not looking for it. They're not familiar with the straw man logical fallacy. So then when that happens, they just think he's just responding to the argument, when in fact that the other person's not responding to the argument.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:12:30]:
They're responding to a completely different argument that the other person didn't even make.

Amber Stitt [00:12:34]:
Yeah, I suppose in relationships that's where some of the problems could stem. It started with one thing, but then it completely rolled into something else and then we're not forgiving each other for it. Could be a big problem, I suppose. You're listening to Pathways with Amber Stitt. For more episodes like this, plus so much more, check out the podcast page at: www.AmberStitt.com Let's take action together! Now, let's get back to our episode. Back before 2001, you talked a bit about being an entrepreneur. Fast forward to today. Lots of websites, lots of courses, being an author, podcaster, lots of things that you've had going on.

Amber Stitt [00:13:13]:
I find it pretty interesting how much tech was there back in the day, way before people were really paying attention to it. And sounds like you were writing some of the code outside of MySpace and feeling really cool about a copy/paste code just to put your favorite song in there. That was my version. Now you come into doing a lot with AI, but you mentioned something about Google and the way that people are gathering information. So I'm really curious how you sort out the right AI from the OpenAI given sometimes. Maybe Google's given us the wrong sources. Do you want to pick up that big one and share a little bit about how you feel?

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:13:47]:
Yeah, so this is a tough question, and this is an interesting question, too. It's like where does AI start and where does standard programming end, or begin, or whatever? So like one of the first AIs is Siri. Siri's been around for a long time. And Alexa, that's been around for a while. And technically that is AI. It's not very smart AI, but it is. It's hard to draw, delineate from again AI and just standard "if/then" computer coding. But for the most part, let's just say that Google and, or whatever other search engine somebody may choose to use uses a combination of both. And it actually doesn't even matter for this conversation.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:14:26]:
The point is, when you type things into the Internet like, "Who was the best president ever?" The search engine knows a lot about you and knows your preferences and what you want to read. And you have to remember the motivations. And this isn't some like deep conspiracy. I mean this is well known. The motivation is to make money, like Google, that's what it's there for, to make money. In order to make money, they want you to click on things and click on ads and so forth. They serve you up the information that you're most likely to click on versus information that you're going to skip.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:14:58]:
That's what they want you to see first. So that causes a big problem and I think at least a version of that is in the court system now. Like, maybe they should stop doing that because this is causing major political rifts in our country because everybody's just in their little echo chamber. We're all like little lab rats. It's not really our fault. It's the way that the search engines are feeding us information. It's the way that Facebook and Twitter and everything is feeding us information. But having said that, it's not a death sentence.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:15:34]:
It's not like an educational death sentence for anybody. If you want the right information, it's out there. And you could basically retrain your search engine and the algorithms to respond to a more intellectual version of you, if you want to call it that, by, let's say you're looking for scientific information. Well, start clicking on scientific links. Start clicking on papers like scientific papers. Go to scholar.google.com.

Amber Stitt [00:16:01]:
Yeah, I am smarter. I will do research. Good stuff.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:16:08]:
And the more like intelligent your clicks are and the information that you seek, then that's the information that's going to be fed back to you. So when you're looking for scientific information, you want scientific papers, peer reviewed papers, and there's some like controversy there, but it's not a lot in terms of like, "Well, maybe that's not a really good paper," and yeah, that's the case, but it's a lot better than what you're going to be fed through a lot of like YouTube channels, or something. Yeah, and then there's like for legal information that gets a little bit tougher because there's the law and then there's opinions on the law. And lawyers, as you know, lawyers differ from scientists because lawyers are arguing for their client. They start with the conclusion and then they work backwards, essentially. Whereas scientists start with the facts and the information and bring them to the conclusion, no matter where the conclusion leads. That's what science is about. But law is a little bit different.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:17:06]:
Where you have the lawyers, their job is to defend their clients and put up the best argument possible. So that always gets a little tricky. But when it comes to law, I'm not a legal professor, so I just kind of like to leave those things to the courts and don't get too involved in that. Then there's just factual information, like, "Did this person really say that? Did this really happen?" And of course, you could check many of the different fact check sites, but then you have people saying, "Oh, those are all run by the deep state," or whatever. And I guess if you believe that, you're so far down deep a conspiracy hole that you have a lot of work to do to begin with. But even ignoring that, even ignoring the fact check sites, and because there's always an element of truth to everything, the fact check sites aren't 100% all the time.

Amber Stitt [00:17:52]:
Sure.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:17:53]:
I mean, nobody is. So it's like you pick something that's wrong and then you kind of amplify that and say, "See, this is all nonsense." But that's not the way it works. You have to think probabilistically and statistically, not just taking a sample of one and drawing your conclusion on that. So there's just like a lot of little tricks when you're researching. The way somebody will make a claim, like if somebody says this person did that, if they're extremely clear, then it's like, "Oh, that claim actually is a pretty powerful claim." And then, because usually you could look it up and you could quickly either debunk it, or you could see that it's actually true. But most people don't do that.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:18:32]:
A lot of things that you hear are implied claims, and you have to look out for that. Like, "Did Taylor Swift date the whole football team in one night? I think the American people have a right to know." And obviously it's just a question. But there's absolutely no factual basis behind it whatsoever. But when people hear questions like that, they're like, "Oh, did she? Gotta click here!" They assume that she did. They assume that there's some truth to that. When so much of the time there's nothing.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:19:06]:
So you have to watch out for those kind of implied claims where people are legally sheltering themselves from making like a ridiculous claim, or something that could get them in trouble, but they're still convincing people. So look out for that because that gets dangerous.

Amber Stitt [00:19:20]:
I mean, it's almost like being younger it would be the tabloids at the supermarket. Like, you can't believe that stuff. That stuff's just wild. Well, this is what everybody, grandma, mom, all the kids. This is what we're looking at. Yeah, every day. You know, when it comes to those social feeds.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:19:37]:
When I grew up, we had the Weekly World News, which was the version of, I guess the kind of like the Onion, but the Onion, everybody knows it's a joke. But the Weekly World News people really did believe it, including my mom, which was sad. You know, she would show me, "Look, aliens are running the White House, Bo. Look it's right here!

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:19:56]:
You can see."

Amber Stitt [00:19:56]:
You're like, well, when you got older, you're like, "No, but it is true." No, no. Very fascinating. And I love how your mind thinks. I love how you've always been innovating along the way. And I know I mentioned this to you earlier, but utilizing resources and your strengths, I would say as a business owner, over 10 years now, for myself, there would be these things people would say, like, "Stay in your lane." And there's certain things when it comes to having a niche and branding. But I feel that you've been able to

Amber Stitt [00:20:23]:
evolve, innovate, and build other businesses as they've kind of made sense. There's been an evolution. And so let's talk about some of your businesses that you do have today. And then more specifically, we can keep talking about AI and how that can roll-in and really help people and be done correctly and ethically in their business.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:20:44]:
Sure. So as I mentioned, the first major business I did was web hosting. That got me into programming. And program is the key there because with the programming I developed an extremely useful skill, being able to program on the Internet. I mean, there are a lot of different programs, but I used Perl, which was one of the main languages of the Internet back then. The programming, that's what I used to create so many different things. So that kind of led me to being able to create software, like web based software, which I did in the web hosting. I built a web interface for web hosting clients

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:21:19]:
when something like that didn't really exist then. I built an entire affiliate program two years before Amazon started theirs and that was one of the big reasons for the success of the company that we had. But then after I sold, I ended up a couple of years later, I bought into a local data center in the Boston area that was going out of business. They were having financial trouble, so I bought in. I helped them turn that around and then get out and sold that. And then I was just kind of like fooling around with a lot of different ideas. And honestly I went through probably a 10 year year period where I wasn't extremely motivated businesswise. I was motivated to do a lot of different things, but not businesswise because I had enough money to keep me busy for a while and I really wanted to learn more about psychology. So that's when I did the whole schooling thing.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:22:08]:
And I spent several years on debate boards and that kind of sparked the critical thinking, the logical fallacies. I mean I spent a ridiculous amount of time on these different boards arguing different issues. And that's what really kind of kicked me off. Like I would read people's arguments and I knew it was just completely wrong, but it looked really good. And that's when I'm, "What's going on here?" That's what led me to study logical fallacies and learn more about them and then cognitive biases and how that works with our thinking. So after probably a 10 year period of the whole education thing, I really jumped back into business and started a publishing company, online publishing company. Because it was extremely difficult to publish my first book back in 2004 and there was just like a lot of work to it, it was extremely technical, nobody knew what to do.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:22:59]:
So that was the whole idea of the company I started was to help authors publish their books online through online publishing. And that evolved as online publishing involved with print on demand and everything else we did. And eventually where it is now, there's a big AI component. I run a company called BookBud.AI that does...essentially authors come to us with an idea they type in. It's a self-serve platform. You type in your idea and it writes the entire book for you. And it publishes it.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:23:28]:
It does like everything the covers, the whole system. Walks you through the whole process. But it's not like all AI, just AI generates the book and then you have the other elements. But the point is within like a few hours you could have everything done and you could be a published author. Which is mind-blowing considering I've been in this business for 13 years now and nothing like this has ever been the case. And now especially with AI voices, cloned voices. I used to narrate all my own books. I've written about a dozen books myself and narrated them all. And some of those books were like over 20 hours.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:24:02]:
And my voice like, "ugh", but now with AI, I cloned my own voice which sounds exactly like me. I can't tell the difference. My wife can't tell the difference. I just upload the content and within like an hour I could have an entire book completely narrated with my voice. It's just amazing technology and it's exciting to wake up every day and work in this area.

Amber Stitt [00:24:24]:
Now for the audience here, did you notice there was not a bunch of islands and tropical traveling, maybe behind the scenes, but on a 10 year hiatus, he went to learn. So it seems like you're in the right place at the right time, a lot of time. But maybe it's because you're putting in the work. Would you say that's probably true?

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:24:43]:
It's putting in the work and it's being open to opportunities. I think that's very important. A great example was, yes, I was in the right place at the right time back in 1994. No question there. I missed the boat on social media. And the reason I did is because that's when I just didn't really care about business. And honestly I thought it was kind of stupid. And I still kind of do.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:25:05]:
Like why do I have to tell everybody everything I'm doing every minute of the day? Why do I have to read about what everybody else is? I don't care about this and I don't care about your political opinion, or your opinion on this. So I never really got into that. I didn't see it.

Amber Stitt [00:25:19]:
I don't think there's regrets.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:25:21]:
But it's there. I mean obviously it's there and it was absolutely huge. But that boat I missed because besides just not seeing it, I think the window of opportunity wasn't open for me. I wasn't looking. I was perfectly content doing what I was doing at the time. And that just kind of passed me by. But when AI came around, I said, "No, I'm not missing this one again."

Amber Stitt [00:25:42]:
Yeah, a friend of mine the other day was talking about a book that we have, a co-author book and she said to do a voiceover, it can take a lot of time. And recently I said, "There's other ways." And I sent a couple links to her. And you're talking about how you can do that now, you know, audio and something everyone wants to read, or can learn different ways. So whether they want to see it, hear it, touch it, you know, you have all the opportunities now. So when people come to you and they say, "It's unethical to do AI books." What's your comment to them on that?

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:26:12]:
It's not. That's a moral judgment, like an ethical opinion. It's not something that either is, or it isn't. The question I would have is, "Well, why? Why is it unethical? Are you using AI to write a book and then putting your own name to it and claiming credit for it?" I could see the ethical dilemma there. I could see that being a slippery slope. "Are you using AI to assist you? Like, okay, give me some ideas, then you're writing the content? Are you using AI to write a book and then just using, like a pseudonym so you're not taking credit for the work?" I see no problem with that whatsoever. Where I get a lot of heat from the authors that I've been working with.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:26:59]:
I'm sorry, with the narrators I've been working with because we do audiobook narration. So I have a whole team of narrators that I give books to and they do the narration. And I still do this because people still want some human...like, AI isn't perfect for everything, but for the most part, they were pretty upset with me when I told them about AuthorVoices.AI, which is my narration company. It wasn't really an ethical issue. It was, "This is going to hurt me." They were coming in from that defensive aspect and not just my company.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:27:30]:
My company is a tiny little piece of the sliver, I mean, AI voices, there are major companies out there. Apple's getting involved in that, and they've been involved in it for a while. And Amazon's going to get involved in it. And there are just so many companies doing this. It's just the way the industry is going. And you could be the guy riding the horse and buggy, yelling at automobiles, saying, "Oh, they're never going to take off and they're horrible and everybody should protest them."

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:27:57]:
You could be that guy if you want, but you're not going to go very far and you're going to miss the opportunity. You really need to embrace this. You got to think, "Okay, how could I use AI to my advantage?" And for the narrators, I told them, I said, "Well, this is an opportunity for you to really focus on acting, focus on the books that require that precise type of human ingenuity and creativity and the nuances of the human voice that are very important to a fictional type of production, as opposed to a really dry nonfiction narration, which is perfect for AI because AI doesn't screw up, or rarely screws up. So it's just really good. So you just got to kind of rethink what you're doing and go ahead, narrators, clone your own voice and now offer that. Offer your cloned voice for 1/10 of the price. Now you're making money off a product rather than your service, and you're going to make a lot more money.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:28:55]:
So you just have to think about things a little bit differently instead of just whining and complaining about how, "Woe is me," and "AI is going to take over my job."

Amber Stitt [00:29:03]:
I had to go to the library when I was in school before Google to get the project done, write the paper, whatever. So anybody that's using Google for their research, I mean, you're getting assistance there, too. So that could be part of the argument. I mean, it's using resources and leaning-in and continuing to evolve. And that's where that idea with the narrators, you can have multiple projects going. Hello, passive income. If you have multiple things going constantly, you can leverage that. And that's the beauty of it.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:29:31]:
Yeah.

Amber Stitt [00:29:31]:
So to wrap up the episode, I want to close talking about some of the software program services you have. But let's tell the audience why it's pretty important for them to get their story out there and potentially have a book, or two behind their name.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:29:45]:
Well, if you're in business, I think it's like the most advanced calling card that you could possibly have, or business card having a book saying, "Look, I am an expert on the topic I profess to be, and here's why. Because I've written a book on it." And you could even do that with AI. You could have AI help you write the book. It doesn't matter. But that's something that's incredibly impressive. And so that's just one aspect of it if you're in business. But if you're not in business, I think everybody has a story that they want to get out, or they have information that's very important to them and they would love to kind of do their part to argue their case, or put out an idea there that they believe in that is important to them.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:30:28]:
And to give you a perfect example of this, prior to AI, I had a list of over 100 different book ideas and there's no way in multiple lifetimes I would be able to write all these. But they just keep coming to me. So I keep writing them down. But thanks to AI, I was able to knock 50 off my list in the last six months. 50 books. And I didn't put my name on them. It's not from my name, but I use pseudonyms. But they're my ideas.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:30:55]:
And AI takes my idea and it writes an entire book about it and expands on it. It does an amazing job. And you know, that's why I've been focusing on BookBud so much, because it does such a wonderful job. But there's just something that feels really good about being able to get all my ideas out there. And I got another 50 ideas on my list and I'll eventually get to those.

Amber Stitt [00:31:15]:
That's exciting. And I think that's the other thing, too. You can think it. You don't literally need the journal and a pen. And I'm left handed, so I'm like writing my...It can be here and you could be writing with your ideas and you're in brainstorming and all of that's important. It's a lot of fun.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:31:31]:
Yep.

Amber Stitt [00:31:32]:
Okay. So people can find you many ways. Obviously Google, Dr. Bo Bennett, but also we have BookBud.AI, anything else you want to share to wrap up this episode?

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:31:42]:
Yeah, two basic sites because I have so many different websites. One is for my businesses and that's ArchieBoy.com and that's where all my businesses are linked, including BookBud.ai, AuthorVoices.ai, BookMarketing.Pro. And the other one is BoBennett.com. that's my personal website where you're going to find the books that I have personally written. I don't put my AI books on there. They're just the ones that I've written.

Amber Stitt [00:32:02]:
I see. So there is multiple ways to then to organize the content. Some of it is for like you said, the pseudonym and then some is strictly that you're writing yourself.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:32:12]:
Right.

Amber Stitt [00:32:13]:
Very neat. Well, thanks so much. I was so excited to, like I said to you, I know some of my other community had already met you personally. So thanks for being on the show today. Really appreciate it.

Dr. Bo Bennett [00:32:23]:
It's good to meet you, Amber. Thanks.

Amber Stitt [00:32:24]:
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Pathways. For more information about the podcast, books, articles, the blog, and so much more, please visit my website at: www.AmberStitt.com And remember, let's take action today! Thank you for listening!