Get Aligned To Your Book Deal with Aiko Bethea
A traditional book deal can help you make a bigger impact — but only if you are willing to do the inner work, build the life that comes with visibility, and accept support from people who know the publishing industry.
In this episode of Kind of a Big Book Deal, host Meghan Stevenson speaks with Aiko Bethea, executive coach, founder of RARE Coaching & Consulting, and author of Anchored, Aligned, Accountable: How to Transcend the Bullshit to Live a Transformational Life at Home and Work. Their conversation explores Aiko’s values-based leadership framework, her journey to a Penguin Random House book deal, and what aspiring authors can learn from the publishing process.
Aiko’s central message is that you cannot create meaningful change at work, at home, or through a book without understanding the values that guide you.
Her framework is Anchored, Aligned, Accountable:
Anchored means getting clear on your core values.
Aligned means making sure your actions reflect those values.
Accountable means taking responsibility for your impact, even when it was not your intention.
For Aiko, “bullshit” includes the barriers and stories that keep people disconnected, exhausted, reactive, or unable to live as their aspirational selves. It can come from family expectations, community narratives, perfectionism, ego, unexamined beliefs, and the stories people carry about who they are supposed to be.
When those beliefs go unnamed, they can operate beneath the surface and shape decisions automatically. You can end up on what Aiko calls a hamster wheel: reacting instead of choosing, repeating familiar patterns, and living a life that does not reflect what you truly want.
The first step out is to identify the values that are genuinely yours.
Many values exercises ask people to name five or more values. Aiko takes a more focused approach: identify your top two true values and define the behaviors behind them.
The words themselves are less important than what they mean in practice.
For example, Aiko discovered that one of her core values is loyalty. For her, loyalty means telling the truth, inviting others to tell the truth, and creating relationships where honesty is possible.
Your values can help you ask:
Is this relationship aligned with who I want to be?
Is this job, opportunity, or decision in breach of my values?
What behavior do I need from the people around me?
What am I willing to be held accountable for?
Why am I choosing something that feels out of alignment?
Values are not just a personal “true north.” They can become a way to measure your accountability, make intentional decisions, understand your discomfort, and avoid a life of regret.
Accountability does not have to mean blame, shame, humiliation, or tearing someone down.
Aiko believes people often avoid accountability because they want to be liked, fear being seen as the villain, and do not want to risk disconnection. It can feel easier to absorb harm, avoid conflict, or stay quiet than to “rock the boat.”
But accountability can be rooted in curiosity and care.
Instead of starting with accusation, Aiko describes asking questions such as: “When I heard you say this, I heard it in this way. I want to know more about it.” That approach makes room for context. It does not excuse harmful impact, but it allows both people to understand what happened and why.
Aiko describes curiosity as care because it requires humility. You must suspend your assumptions, recognize that you may not know the full story, listen carefully, and allow another person to share their perspective.
This kind of accountability takes time, emotional labor, and mental capacity. But it can create more connection than avoiding difficult conversations altogether.
Aiko’s framework can help entrepreneurs and experts clarify why they want to write a book — not just what they hope to gain from it.
Before pursuing a traditional book deal, ask yourself:
Why is writing this book important to me?
Who do I want to be while writing it?
What values should shape the stories, language, and ideas I include?
What impact do I want the book to have?
Where am I acting out of alignment because of fear, avoidance, or old beliefs?
Aiko used her values of loyalty and justice throughout the publishing process. They informed the collaborators she chose, the language she wanted to keep in the book, the relationships she built with her publisher and editor, and her commitment to writing a book that felt honest to her lived experience.
She also had to confront her own reasons for considering self-publishing. As an introvert, she recognized the appeal of staying under the radar and avoiding public reactions to her ideas. But she ultimately held herself accountable for whether that choice was aligned with her larger goals, experience, and beliefs.
For many aspiring authors, the obstacle is not a lack of ideas. It is the internal work required to be visible, develop thought leadership, build an audience, and accept the vulnerability that comes with putting your work into the world.
Aiko began working with Meghan Stevenson’s team on her proposal in December 2021, received a book deal in 2022, and saw her book scheduled for publication in 2026. The long process required endurance.
Running a business, raising two teenage sons, continuing to work with clients, drafting a manuscript, revising it, and navigating traditional publishing created a need for structure and support.
Aiko compares a long publishing process to an endurance sport. A collaborator can act like a pacer or metronome: helping an author keep moving, return to the work, refine the manuscript, and know when something is good enough rather than endlessly revising.
She also emphasizes the value of working with people who have relevant subject-matter expertise. Authors do not need to have a complete manuscript before seeking help. In fact, Aiko says working with experienced publishing professionals helped her avoid time-consuming detours, understand the proposal process, and preserve her time and ease while she continued running her business.
Questions answered in this episode
How do you identify your true core values?
Why should you choose only two values?
How can values help you create boundaries?
How can values help you make better decisions?
Why do people get stuck on the hamster wheel?
What does accountability look like with generosity?
Why is curiosity an act of care?
Why do people struggle to admit when they have made a mistake?
What is channel-one, channel-two, and channel-three listening?
How can listening for connection improve relationships?
What are accountable spaces?
How can identity and power affect leadership?
How can authors use values while writing and publishing a book?
Should aspiring authors choose traditional publishing or self-publishing?
Do you need a completed manuscript to get a traditional book deal?
Why should aspiring authors work with publishing experts?
How can collaborators help authors through a long publishing process?
This week’s guest is Aiko Bethea. Aiko is a nationally recognized thought leader, educator, and facilitator who advances transformational and accountable leadership through executive coaching, practice-based learning, and systems-level change. She is the founder of RARE Coaching & Consulting, where she supports leaders and teams at Fortune 100 companies and global nonprofit organizations. Her work is grounded in a powerful leadership framework that helps individuals anchor in values, align intentions and actions, and lead with accountability—tools she uses to help leaders build cultures of trust, clarity, and impact.
Aiko has served in executive roles with the City of Atlanta, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. She also led the Daring Way™ and Dare to Lead™ facilitator communities at the Brené Brown Education and Research Group, where she designed the global belonging strategy for a network of more than 1,500 facilitators.
A sought-after speaker and trusted advisor, Aiko has been recognized by Forbes as one of the top seven anti-racism educators for companies and named by CultureAmp as a leading voice in inclusive and equitable leadership. Her writing has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and The New York Times bestselling anthology You Are Your Best Thing, edited by Tarana Burke and Brené Brown.
She holds a law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a bachelor’s degree from Smith College. Her upcoming book, Anchored, Aligned, Accountable: How to Transcend the Bullsh*t to Live a Transformational Life at Home and at Work, will be published by Penguin Random House in April 2026.
Find Aiko on social
linkedin.com/company/rare-coaching-consulting
Find Rare Coaching at www.rarecoaching.net, and the RARE resources page at www.rarecoaching.net/media-resources/. Preorder Aiko’s book at https://rep.club/products/anchored-aligned-accountable.
