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Audio Journal: 3 Lessons from My First Ghostwriting Project · The Daily Writer

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of days ago I went out to my mailbox and I was excited to see a package from Amazon sitting there.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's not anything unusual.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: We get packages from Amazon several times a week, it seems like, between me and my wife and my son.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: We get stuff constantly.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: But this was something different because inside this package was a paperback copy of my first client book.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Over the summer I started writing my first uh client book.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is a ghostwriting project, obviously.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's launching in just a couple of weeks.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I ordered a print copy of the book just as a test to make sure the cover looked okay, everything was was looking good in the interior, and all that stuff.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's good just to do a final quality check of a print book before you go live on Amazon.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because you just never know, with Amazon KDP, which is Kindle Digital Publishing, sometimes things can go a little bit awry.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of steps in the process, so you just want to do a final check.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, everything looked great, um, particularly the cover of the book.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to do a little aside here.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: The cover for this book, and unfortunately I can't tell you what the book is because it's a ghostwriting project, but the cover was designed by a good friend of mine named Christy Griffith.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: She is a graphic designer and is enormously talented.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I think the cover she designed for this book rivals what you see from traditional publishers, the world's biggest publisher.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: She's really, really good.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: You can find out more about her graphic design work at uh her website, which is go thumbprint.com.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Her company is called Thumbprint Creative, so make sure and check out go thumbprint.com.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if you'd like a connection to Christy, let me know and I'll be happy to make that.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Let me get back to the main story here.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: So this client book is launching in uh just a couple of weeks, so I wanted to take a few minutes here on this audio journal, and I wanted to share three lessons that I learned from this first ghostwriting project.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: So let's dive in here.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Number one is that you need to believe in yourself.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to believe in yourself.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: There are so many writers and so many people doing creative work that just don't believe in themselves.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: They don't think they can achieve more or accomplish more.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got to tell you, I was a little bit nervous whenever I signed up for this project because I wasn't exactly sure how the process was going to work.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now I had in mind how I wanted it to work, and I think I had a very good system in place, and I communicated that to the client.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: But in my own heart, I thought, okay, I've got the system in place, but I don't know how this is going to turn out.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: However, there was one key thing that took me through this whole process, even though it was my first time, and that is the fact that I really truly believed in myself.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: I know for a fact that my main gift is writing.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's the main thing that I have to offer to the world.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm also a teacher and a musician and other stuff.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: But the main marketable skill that I have is writing and creating content.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I knew that I could do it.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: I just didn't know how it was going to get done exactly.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I had I did have faith in myself that I could do it.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to challenge you with this idea.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Do you believe in yourself?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Do you believe that you can get it done?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got to tell you, after doing freelance writing work the last few years, and now uh right now I'm in the middle of my second book, Ghostwriting Project, I have to tell you that this is not, this game is not about talent.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's really not.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's really about doing what you say you're gonna do, it's being it's about being reliable, it's about problem solving.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: I I think a lot of that is about problem solving, honestly.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can figure out almost anything that you want to figure out.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: But the question is, do you believe in yourself and your ability to do that?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: You can find answers to anything that you want.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: You can solve any kind of problem that you want, but do you believe in yourself?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of the first takeaway from this is you've got to believe in yourself that you can do it and that you can achieve something greater.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now here's lesson number two, and this one is really practical for all the writers out there, and that is you can write faster than you think.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And let me tell you how this worked in practicality whenever I was kind of in the guts of writing the first draft of this book.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: So the way it worked in practicality is that I would get on a Zoom call about once a week with the client, and I had a list of questions prepared that I would go through related to the topic and related to what the book was about, and I would just ask these questions to prompt stories and information and whatever else you wanted to share about that topic in those chapters.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Then I would take those conversations that I had recorded on Zoom calls, and I would run those through an app that's called Descript.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's a really great transcription app called Descript, and I would get a that would spit out a transcript, which by the way, it's very, very accurate.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: That would spit out a transcript, and I would use that as a very, very rough basis for the chapters.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now I also added a ton of other content there.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um the content I got from the Zoom calls probably makes up uh I would say 40% of the book, maybe more like 35%, maybe even 30% of the book.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: The rest of it's just stuff that I created for it.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um but what I discovered when I was especially drafting the first few chapters of this book, and each chapter was about 3,500 words long, that was my goal.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: I discovered that you can actually sit down and draft out 3,500 words in just a few hours.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you can make it pretty clean copy if you want to.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the first time that I had, you know, over those periods of a couple months, that was the first time I had ever written that much content that fast.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so thankful for getting into ghostwriting because one of the main things that I have learned through this process is that you're capable of writing much greater quantities than you probably think you can do.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you can do that a bunch of different ways.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: You can use focus techniques, you can use uh you can use dictation, which I sometimes use, and I'm I'm increasingly using dictation more and more to get content down quickly.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: But that's a really important lesson for all of us is whatever you think you're capable of as far as how much writing you can actually do, you can do way more than you probably think you can.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um you can blow 500 words a day out of the water if you want to.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: You can write a thousand words a day.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: You can write a couple thousand words a day, you know, in sprints if you're really, really motivated.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: So know that you can you can write more than you think you probably can.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: It is possible.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, lesson number three is just a really, really simple principle related to doing client work, and that is find good people to work with.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: I really cannot overemphasize this enough.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: I am so grateful and so thankful that uh these first couple of ghostwriting clients have been amazing to work with.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And for for me, the definition of a great client is someone that I that is not only easy to work with, but someone that takes me to a higher level.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, whenever we're we're working for other people, we kind of have this idea that, well, we're doing work for them and we're getting paid in return, and it's kind of like an even trade.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think it's really that way at all.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever you're doing business with someone, each of you should come away with something more valuable than you're giving.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And in my case, of course I was paid for this project, but I also received a lot of other things in return.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: For example, uh this client is in business and she's a highly intelligent woman, very, very successful.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I learned a lot about business from her.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it was really, from start to finish, it has been a complete um a complete joy, and it has really been a pleasure working with her because she was so easy to work with and so supportive and so positive.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I would encourage you if if you are doing freelance writing work or work for hire where you're creating content, is do your best to make sure you're working with good quality people, not people who are negative or who are nitpicky or who ever talk down to you or insult you in some way.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: I have worked with clients like that before, and it's it's kind of humiliating.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's very demoralizing.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, I had to drop one client a year or two ago because their relationship just was not productive.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I really seek out clients who lift me up to a higher level and people who I can lift up to a higher level too, because it's not just uh like a tit for tat exchange where I do this for you and you pay me.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Both of both parties should receive higher value from this experience than from where they began.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, those are three lessons from Ghostwriting My First Client Book.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, these are valuable to you.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think that's it.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking at my notes.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's all I got for this episode.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: I will see you later.