People write books for different reasons. For some, it's personal fulfillment or checking off a bucket list item. For others, it’s to market their brand or business. If you want a way to become more established in your niche or be able to raise your prices, then this episode is for you! You might not have ever thought about becoming an author, but Krissy Chin brings on Amelia Forczak, a New York Times bestselling ghostwriter, to share WHY you just might want to consider it. You will also get to hear what it’s been like for Krissy to start writing a book of my own. 

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Marketing Your Brand Through Books With Amelia Forczak

Everything You Want To Know About Writing A Book

If you want a way to become more established in your niche or a way to be able to raise your prices then this episode is for you. You might not have ever thought about becoming an author but I have a New York Times Best-Selling ghostwriter here to share with us why you just might want to consider it. We also get to talk a little bit about what it's been like in my experience starting to write my very own book.

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Let's welcome Amelia Forczak. She's a New York Times Bestselling ghostwriter and the Founder of Pithy Wordsmithery, a Chicago-based firm that specializes in helping people write and market their books. Amelia works with leaders to help them build and monetize their thought leadership and grow their businesses. Over the past many years, she's ghostwritten over ten books and edited many others. Amelia, I'm super excited that you're here to talk to you again. You were in the STAND OUT Summit. We've already gotten to chat about this topic but we have a different angle. I've personally worked with you on book writing.

I'm excited to dive into that a little bit. A little bit of mine and Amelia's background on how we know each other, fun fact is we went to high school together. It wasn't like calling each other to hang out. It was just my group of friends and your group of friends intermingled so we'd see each other at parties, sports stuff or whatever. I won't say how many years because that will date us. Years and years later, you reached out to me on Instagram and you saw what I was doing and creating, doing digital courses and such. You're like, “I'm interested in expanding my business into digital products to serve more people.” That’s how we reconnected and started working together.

It was awesome to reconnect. It's funny because we hadn't talked in years and we're both interested in what the other person is doing from a business standpoint. It's like, “Tell me all these things,” then, “You tell me all of these things.” It's turned into a fun little thing.

I love it. You've done private coaching with me. I've done private coaching with you. You have been a student in my Build a Blissful Business course. I'd been a student of one of your courses that we'll talk about. You've been to my summit. I probably already said that a million times. It's just fun to now connect again on the show as another way for people to get to know what you're doing, know about all of these things and get a ton of value if you want to or you're thinking about writing a book or maybe been like a thought that's popped into your head.

For years doing my business, I've had a million book ideas. I'm like, “I want to write a book.” One day, not having no idea what to do and I've probably had 5 or 6 different book ideas. What we've settled on now is not any of the ones that came up with before, which is funny to see the process. The reality is we all evolve in our businesses as we go along. At the point, you're ready to write a book, most likely what you originally thought about it was probably not the topic. Do you find that with your clients?

It's true. The majority of the time I work with people, when we talk through the goals that they have for their book, their niche, strategy, what they might want to write about and I help them with their outline, it's different from what they originally had in mind. It's not because I'm steering them in any particular direction but I want to help them think about this book is going to be in their life for the next 5 or 10 years. What does that look like? How would that fit into their thought leadership, expertise or revenue streams for their business? That makes them think about it a little bit differently than what they originally had in mind and we usually go in a different direction.

That's definitely what happened to me. We'll talk more about that. Before we dive in, in case someone didn't see you on the STAND OUT Summit and they don't know you, can you share a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are? In high school. I don't remember you being like, “I'm going to be New York Times bestselling ghostwriter.”

It's funny because I always wanted to write books. I just didn't understand what that would look like. I went to school for Journalism and knew that I loved writing but all of the newspapers were shutting down around that time consolidating. It was not a good time to go into that. I went into marketing. Much of marketing is writing content. The opportunity to write a book fell in my lap. I was working for a consulting firm and the CEO got approached by a literary agent. She was like, “Would you like to write a book? This publishing house is looking for an HR expert.” He said he wanted to do it but he didn't have time. I was like, “I'll write it.” I was excited because I'd always wanted to write a book. I ended up writing it. It became a New York Times bestseller.

I realized that's what I wanted to do. I knew I always wanted to do it and then I did it. I was like, “This is the thing.” I wrote another book through that company and then I started my own business on the side. I've been writing about a book a year, maybe a little bit more for the past few years. It’s all non-fiction. Most of its leadership books, books that teach people how to do something. I worked with a lot of entrepreneurs, executives, people who do public speaking or coaching and they have a platform and they have thought leadership. The book is another medium to share that. It's become the new standard for being an expert in your field is having a book. It's been a great way for me to meet a lot of interesting people, learn new things and always keep it fresh.

You went to school for Journalism and you always wanted to write a book. It's something that you had thought about but didn't know what to do. You used these skills that you were building along the way and when an opportunity came, you were like, “I'm in.” Did you think twice about it where you're like, “I don't know,” or were you just like, “I'm in.”

I was like, “Yes, I'll write that book,” and then it was like, “I have to write that book.” We had a deadline and an advance. They make you sign a contract, which is smart that they do this. It's like, “If you don't finish writing the book, you have to give the money back.” That's a big problem. If I don't finish this, I will for sure lose my job. I need to finish this book on time. That got me into the mode of producing content and realizing you just get it done. You block time in your schedule and get it done. It's like this thing that's not abstract anymore where I was like, “Someday I want to write a book.” It's like, “You schedule it and then you write it.”

It's your accountability piece for sure if you're going the publishing route. They've given you an advance and give you a deadline. If you don't make it, you have to give the money back because that is your accountability. That's what I've struggled with. Why I thought about writing a book for years, it never did because there wasn't that accountability to be like, “By this date and so work on writing.” I focused on other things so I can see how that can be your accountability kicking the butt.

A fun fact, Barack Obama, one of his publishing deals back in the day had to give the money back because he did not finish the book. It happens to the best of us. We get busy.

You started your own business as most of the people reading took on a new venture. You didn't go to business school. You're just having to figure things out as you’re going.

I’m winging it. I started as a solopreneur trying to look a little bit bigger than I was like putting on my website like, “We do this.” It's like, “Kidding, it's just me.” Years later we do have a we, there are ten of us. Getting to this point has been an interesting journey. Scaling your business is hard and nobody taught me how to do any of these things. It has been mostly trial and error but it's been exciting. I love being an entrepreneur.

Someone who's getting started, what's one piece of advice from entrepreneur to entrepreneur that you can give to that person?

There are so many things. It's a journey, I guess having patience. I always want everything now. I want it all to be done now and perfect. That's not how it works. It’s being patient with yourself and realizing that as you do things, you're going to learn how to do them better and get more efficient. Your business will be completely different years from now than what it looks like now.

From talking and working with you, I know that is 100% the case for you and me. You mentioned working more efficiently like you'll get more efficient. Is there a system, a process or something that you've done for your business from day one until now that has just been a game-changer for you?

We made a lot of improvements over the past couple of years because I went from doing everything myself to having other people do it for me. I was in the mindset for a while where it was like, “I'll save money if I do it myself instead of paying someone else to do it.” It got to be that way too. I had a baby and I scaled down my business. When I was scaling back up, it was a mess. At that point, I realized I need to teach other people how to do these things. Instead of having all the information just in my head, I needed to get it on paper, have a system for it. Teach someone else how to do it so that it can run without me. It was things that like when I first started weren't that hard like invoicing or paying people. I invoice a client every month. That's not that bad but when I'm invoicing twenty clients and ten different people have worked in some combination on all of these projects. It took me years to be like, “We need to bill clients at the same time every month.” That's so obvious but we didn't use to do that. There are a lot of improvements that I made.

Would you say taking that initial step to hire someone made that 180 factor for you?

Yeah. I had hired people to work on client projects long before this. I had a website developer, a graphic designer and I had a proofreader because we do marketing services for authors also in addition to helping with writing books. I had people on client projects but I never invested in having people work for Pithy, my company. All of our internal stuff was what was messy. All the client stuff was looking great but then for my things I was like, “I should invest in my own business. I should get an accountant. I should get someone to help me schedule calls with leads.” Putting that investment in has been like a game-changer.

I love that because that's literally what my book is helping people do.

Your book is everything that I need.

This is my accountability. I'm going to have to write the book because now we're talking about it to the public. I'm going to have to finish up the rest of the book. Before we dive into book stuff, just curious as I love when I have students that are on the show, when I hear about their journey, I love to have you share a little bit about either your experience with the Build a Blissful Business course. A lot of people that have done that course are in either the beginning stages of their business or they haven't thought about their brand and marketing their brand. You knew that. You are marketing for other people. You had a website and all of this stuff. When you came in and took the course, you were an established entrepreneur. I remember you saying that it was helpful. Are there little pieces that you want to share about what stood out to you and what helped you?

I thought the course was awesome. I have a background in marketing and I'd been in business for many years when I had taken the course. A lot of this stuff you know but you don't take the time to do it for yourself. We'd help other clients with, “How do they want their brand to make other people feel? What are the keywords like how you want to be perceived or the vibe for your branding or whatever?” I was happy with the branding I put together many years ago and I knew that it was time for a change but I was trying to figure out how to evolve it. The course helped me realize that I needed to just make it be what I want.

I was trying to have it make sense or it was like, “This is what it was before.” Maybe I should have it evolve along these same lines or whatever. It made me think more about like, “No, it should connect more to my personality and what I like.” The course inspired me to do more of a total revamp on our branding. Our logo is a little bit more elevated and sophisticated than it was before. The color palette is richer. The brand looks a little bit more upscale. I feel like that's more of what we're going for. The branding I feel matches my personality a lot better. It inspired me to do that work. I think that was super helpful.

Another thing that I loved about it was at first I was like, “I don't need to do the homework. I'll take the course. I'll just do the homework in my head,” and then I was like, “I should do follow the instructions and do the homework.” I put all the answers down and I realized it was extremely helpful later when I was hiring someone for social media. They were like, “What's your brand about?” I'm like, “I've already done this work. That means I don't have to do it again. I'll forward them these things.” When I was trying to explain to people, “This is what I want my website to look like or my branding,” I sent those documents to my freelancers. It was so easy.

The new standard for being an expert in your field is having a book.

I love the things that helped you because that was exactly the purpose. It's called Build a Blissful Business, something that you love. I love that it inspired you to make it something that felt aligned with you. Don't get scared of homework.

I was like, “I don’t need this Krissy. Thanks for the suggestion on the homework but I'm going to skip it.”

You're like, “I'm a successful entrepreneur. I don't read homework,” but thinking of it more of like it's your accountability to create these pieces of data or PDFs and whatnot that you can share with the people that you end up hiring. Creating that mood board and the brand book with your colors and your font. I'm forcing you to get it done so that you have it for your brand but I love that you were like, “Perfect, I can just send this to someone who's helping revamp my website and be like, ‘Here you go.’” I remember when someone was helping me with one of those pieces for the summit where he was like, “Send me all of your brand book.” I was like, “What?” He was like, “The colors and the fonts.” I was like, “Now, I got to go spend hours putting this together.” You have those pieces or a copywriter, “Tell me about your brand and your ideal client.” It's like, “Here you go.” I already put it down on paper so long ago, I'm going to hand it over. I love that you leveraged it in that capacity. It was exactly how it was intended.

I'm still using it randomly. For Instagram, we should have a branded template for certain types of things. We do an interview with someone or one of our clients who has a best-selling book or we want to promote something and we want it to be branded, we should have a template. I'm like, “Let's go back to the brand guide. Here are the colors.” It's still useful for things even when we're like, “That was useful.” We're still using it for new things.

My intention with people here reading this is that I can help you be intentional doing one action so you can use it over and over again or it can set you up to make life a whole lot easier down the road when you get to that next step in your business, in your journey or as you evolve. That's an amazing testimonial and I promise I didn't pay Amelia to say any of that. We should give them $50 off or something with a promo code. We'll come up with a promo code for Amelia. Let's dive into the real topic, the writing a book topic. This is why I wanted to bring you on and talk about my experience and my journey with you. I know that there are a lot of people out there that are even thinking at some point like I want to write a book but they're doing other things. I've learned from you that becoming an author is one way to help you increase your prices. Do you want to share a little bit about that? How does becoming an author automatically mean I get to charge more?

There's a reason why people want to write books. Some of it's for personal fulfillment, bucket list item, accomplishment, that's a huge part of it. Another part of it is it makes sense for your brand. It's a big marketing piece for your brand and business, which means it's going to help you bring in new clients. It can help you charge more. You can get taken more seriously. You seem credible. I've talked with a lot of my clients on how writing a book changed their life and I've heard all kinds of things. People have higher revenue. They're getting connected with bigger clients. They're getting more introductions. It does give you a boost in revenue and credibility. Speaking is another big thing. I know we're not speaking a lot with COVID-19, there's not a lot of events going on. Public speaking pays well. A lot of public speakers have books. That can be the difference-maker and even getting a speaking gig or charging a lot more for it.

Anyone can write a book, it doesn't mean you're going to write a good one but so many people don't. The people that do it show someone else, “They're investing in themselves in their business. They've taken the time. They're dedicated.” It almost gives other people this perception of you that you want them to have. That you're doing things and you're going places. If you haven't gotten there, you're going to be going there. Adding that to your list of all your things to do, it makes sense as to why someone might want to hire you for a speaking gig. If someone's looking at two different people for this speaking event. You guys do the same thing. One of them is an author and one of them isn't, they're probably going to go with the person that's an author because it seems like they're maybe more established, have more experience or whatever. That might not be the truth at all.

They like the image of that for events because it makes people look a little bit more successful. If they've got a book, they can also market it in the event. You can do a book signing at the back of the room. It just adds a little bit more to the event. That’s helpful.

If you weren't thinking of writing a book, you should be thinking about it.

It's becoming more and more the standard and it's honestly doable. People get intimidated by it and it is a lot of work but it's not something you have to do in one day. I almost think about it like you're thinking, “I should get my degree.” You're like, “That's so much work. I can't do it.” You can do it. You won't do it in one day or one week but you should get your degree. You’ll work at it and then you'll get it done. It's going to be like that for a book too.

Being able to add that to your repertoire, it's like a podcast, that's going to add something. Having a book, that's going to add something. We'll go back to how typically when you start working with someone, the topic that the book ends up not being what they originally came to you with and I'm living proof of that. I don't even remember what the idea was that I came to you with. I think it was like, “I want to inspire people to go for it and do this business thing. Inspire them. Tell them how they can make it work.”

When we sat down in the first session, even going through the course and watching your videos, it was like, “Let's think big picture.” I do this with my private clients and students like, “Big picture, where do you want to be in 5 years, 10 years?” It’s so valuable what you said to me was, “We want this book to stand the test of time. We want it to be a good marketing piece for you in that 5 or 10 years when you're known for whatever you want to be known for.” That completely shifted what we decided to do the book on.

That’s a big thing is like understanding your niche. When I work with authors and they're trying to think of what to write about or maybe they have an idea or a couple of ideas, they don't always think about how the topic aligns with their personal brand or what they want their brand to be. Maybe the brand isn't there quite yet. Maybe you're still working on it. You're still building your business. However, you want to be known in a few years, what does that look like? Ideally, your book topic is going to align with whatever that thing is. That's also super important because you want to be able to sell copies of the book and you can also give them away for free but you want to be able to get that book into people's hands. If the book is about something that has nothing to do with your personal brand or how you're known, that disconnect makes it hard to market it.

I'm so glad that I got help with it. The last thing I ever want to do is do a bunch of work on something and then realize it was a waste of time because I did it wrong or I did it in a way that isn't going to be as effective as it could be. That's why I'm always a huge proponent of buying the course to teach me how or hiring the coach to show me the way. If someone's done it before me and knows what they're doing, I want to fast-track my way to that. I couldn't imagine writing a book on my own without any guidance and then coming up with something that's amazing.

I would say most people can't do that. That's usually not a good idea for writing a book. Getting help is huge. Otherwise, you can spend so much time writing and writing and maybe you won't end up using most of the content in the book. Even if the writing is good, maybe it doesn't end up aligning that well with your topic. You're writing it and it’s not something that your target market's interested in or maybe that's not your expertise. It's easy to get that information from a quick Google search. There's no real reason for you to provide in a book.

The thing that I was going to say before just popped in my head. I knew it was going to happen is publisher versus self-publishing. Also, being able to get guidance from you on that. That's a big reason why people didn't publish books before. Back in the day, they had to get a publisher. I don't know the process, you know better than me but they would have to pitch themselves to a publishing house.

It still works the same way for traditional publishing and you have to get accepted. Somebody has to believe in your idea. Not just in the quality of the idea but in the profitability of the idea. Publishing houses are for-profit businesses. They want to make money. They're going to represent authors and books that they think are going to sell a lot of copies and so much of that is tied to the author's platform like, “How many people they're connected to on social media or how many people they speak in front of a year?” Rather than the actual idea of the book, which is sad. It was leaving a lot of people out who had great ideas for books because they didn't have a huge following already.

Being efficient means not wasting time doing the same thing over and over.

Self-publishing has made it so that anybody can publish, which is great. Also publishing, they don't do as much to market books as they used to. It used to be you could rely on your publisher to get a little bit of help. It gets you into bookstores. That's how you're selling copies is in bookstores. Now, many people buy books on Amazon and online or maybe you sell them directly at your events that the same distribution channels don't matter as much. Publishers aren't doing as much to market the book. That support isn't there. Without those benefits, self-publishing is looking a lot better.

It's easier. You don't have to get a literary agent. You don't have to write a book proposal and nobody has to accept you. You're just responsible for the quality of your book. You have permission to publish crap if you self-publish. You do see some books out there that are looking a little bit rough. You don't want to be one of those books. You want to have a professional level editor, professional graphic designer on your cover. If you do it right, a self-published book can be as good or if not better than for a traditional publishing house.

That's the cool part of it. Anyone out there reading or me, it allows us to be in this game of becoming an author on our own. I know you out there reading, you want to strive to do it well. Don't put out that rough book but something that actually is going to help somebody and then in the process also be that perfect piece in addition to your brand and your business. The major thing that we've worked on together is coming up with the outline of the book. We worked on the topic. That was a complete shift with that and then the outline of the book. What was cool about this is I did Amelia’s course and came up with my outline based on the teachings that she did in her course. We met privately and work together privately as well. I also gave her all of the information and then she came up with the outline of how she would do it with a private client. When we compared them, they were so aligned. It was almost freaky.

It was awesome. I was so happy to see that because I'm like, “This is how I would do it.” I'm trying to teach people to think like how I would think to put it together. When I saw that you had done it the same way from watching all those videos, I was happy.

It’s such a crazy different type of validation that it works. You can have people go through any course and they can be like, “Yeah, it worked. I came up with an outline. I came up with something. It worked.” They have something. To be able to see that I came up with basically the same thing that you came up with and there are a million different ways that you can outline your book. We could have shifted chapters around so differently or put different topics from the brain dump in different categories.

They were not like 50 bullet points, at least probably. To wrangle them into almost the same order was weird.

I remember thinking, “I could do it this way. I could do it that way. I could put these together. I could put it in this order but I could do this.” I just remember what you had said in the videos. It guided me to be like, “No. This is the best thing to do,” and then you organize it the same way. I was like, “The stars have aligned. This is amazing.” We have done the outline and then, worked on the back cover. Now, it's game time. I got to put in the work to write the book. My first tip for someone out there reading who wants to write a book is to grab Amelia's course. Do you want to tell them the name of your course?

It's called Nail Your Outline. It's based off of the one-on-one coaching practice that I have. It's the DIY version of it. It worked to come up with a solid outline. You were saying too that you would not have come up with this outline if you had not done this course.

No. I have these ideas that come to me and I'm like, “I could turn this into a book.” It was because it was an idea that I liked. It felt good but I was like, “Why am I taking my advice? Strategy, intention for the business.” That was what you helped bring back into perspective for me. I was like, “I know that this is a feel-good topic that it'll make you feel good to write about it,” but long-term, is it the best option for your brand and your business? We don't want to waste time doing things.

It's funny because your idea was very rooted in personal development and how to be happy and successful. You know these things but I feel like other things that are way more valuable and fewer people know them. How do we hone in on those things that people can't get somewhere else?

Here's the reality, you can write more than one book. People do it all the time. At least have your first one be a lot more intentional. That's my advice. I don't know if you'd give the same advice. Have your first one be more intentional just in case you'd never write that second one.

That's a great point. I'm working with an author where his initial manuscript was over 100,000 words. That's a lot. I don't know how many pages that is because, in the book world, we go by word count. For Krissy’s book, what are we focusing on 25,000 words or something. It’s at over 100,000 words. I was talking to my editor and he was like, “I think it's every thought he's ever had is in the book.” I'm like, “I think you're right. It is.” We needed to tell him that all those thoughts are good but they can't all be in the book. We can move some of them to other places.

What we're doing is we're editing the manuscript or taking out all the things that are great stories but maybe aren't needed in the book and we're putting them into a content library. We're building this long-running document of things that he can then use to create blog posts or he could do a LinkedIn post on it. He could put it in on eBlast. If you have a lot of content that you've written and maybe it doesn't quite work in the book or ideas that don't fit in the book, put them somewhere else. There are so many different ways to put out content.

That was something in the course I remembered when we're working on the brain dump and such. Most of the time you will have leftover content, leftover ideas. Everything that you put down should probably not be in the book. Putting everything was super helpful. It's hard to cut stuff. You're like, “It's a good idea.” You're like, “It's a good idea for like book number two.” Hold off on that. You mentioned this content library piece of it and I know I've heard you talk about it before. We've talked about it before being able to repurpose content that you've already done for your book. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

There are two different ways that you can use a content library. As I was saying, you can pull content out of your book and have a content library for other things or probably the more common way is you already have existing content in other places but maybe you don't have the book yet. You want to write a book. Maybe you like writing, you've written some different articles and you've written blog posts or you have done some workshops. You've got this content and you're trying to figure out how it all fits together and what you already have to see how much could fit in the book and how much you would still need to create.

I like to copy and paste everything into one document just so that you can see what you have. It can be a lot of content. I did this for myself many years ago and I have over 20,000 words. It's like half a book, a whole book depending on how long you want the book to be. It's a lot of content. You'll need to edit and move it around from there. That can be something that is encouraging if you want to write a book and you feel like you are overwhelmed or you're not working with that much to start with because you probably have more than you think you do.

What platform do you use to have this content library?

I use Word for everything. I know Word is not cool anymore. People use Google Docs or other things and Word is this old thing. It's great for Track Changes so that's what I use but you can use anything. It depends on the type of media you have, maybe you have podcast episodes or videos. If you at least have a place where you've got all the links to things or you're timestamping where you're talking about things, you can always get things transcribed to cheap transcription services. There are a bunch of them. I'd recommend doing that too.

That's partly why I got hooked on Searchie, which I know we've talked about that platform before. I can put my videos, like all of my episodes go in there. Whether it's a library that my students can search or I did that for the Build a Blissful Business course, you could search within any of the videos in that course. Also, for me as a creator and creating all these things for repurposing, I can have a library of all these videos and I can just search terms and phrases. The book was like, “I'm writing about funnels,” then I can go search funnels in all of my videos. It'll pull up in the video and where it is to be able to extract that. That was a great point that I made many years ago that I would not have remembered and great, I can put that in the book and elaborate.

That's a great efficiency tip in general. I know your book is focusing on efficiencies. That’s one of the main things is just becoming more efficient and not wasting time doing the same thing over and over. That's something I need to get better at because I write a lot of content, I've created these courses and there's a ton of content in the courses. I want to create a training video for the course. I'm starting to talk about something like, “I know I've talked about this probably 50 times but where is it?” It's in a bunch of places that I can't find.

You talked about in the beginning when you were like, “It was so much more helpful for me to invest in my business whether that's hiring people or programs to do things for me where can you be more efficient.” We've covered a lot. We've given some good tips. I hope you've been inspired if you have the idea of writing a book that you can do it. We believe in you. I vouch for Amelia in terms of giving you the tips and framework to get started. I do think that it's one of the most important pieces and from working with you in creating this course for people, it was like, “This is a huge misstep that people take in writing their book. They don't create a solid outline and that's the backbone of the book.” If you're going to get help on anything like any part of the book, I remember you saying like, “They need help on this part.”

I completely agree with that. Before you even know it, just because you can waste time writing something in the wrong direction. When if you got on the right path to be in with, it would save you hours and hours of your time. The outline is the most important thing and that will put you on a great path moving forward. Even if then it's something like you want to hire someone to help you write the book, at least then you know what the book looks like. It's way easier to get help at that point. Whereas working with a writer on the outline in general can be tricky. There is a lot of inner work that needs to happen with what you want to do with your business, where you want to go, which is maybe not exactly what a writer does unless you get someone who specializes in that. The outline is big and then you can get help from there.

You do have a freebie for those reading, 10 Simple Steps to Start Writing Your Book.

The 10 Simple Steps is great. It'll give you a lot of ideas for things that you can do. The outline is on there but there are other things also like thinking about your marketing or little steps that you can take. Maybe you're wanting to dip your toe in the water for writing a book but you're not ready to commit fully. There are things that you could be doing now to start thinking about your path moving forward and then also collecting content that you could ultimately use in your book. Maybe being more intentional about if you do need to write some blog posts or articles like, “How can you write them so that they will be able to be modified for your book in a year or a couple of years.” You're doing yourself a big favor if you can figure that stuff out now.

This has been awesome. I've loved chatting with you, talking about our experiences. I know it's going to be super valuable for you guys out there reading. Before we go, tell people how to find you. Are you up for a little game?

You didn't tell me about a game.

I didn't. It’s a surprise. It's a quick would you rather or rapid-fire. For everyone to get to know you a little bit more, I'm just going to read off two things and you, without even thinking, tell me what they are. If it's not either of those and you have a different answer you want to give, go ahead. There are no big rules here. Beer or wine?

Wine.

Pool or beach?

Beach.

If you were stranded on an island with one book, what would it be?

My favorite book is called Be Here Now. It was written in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s by a guy who's a professor, I think at Stanford and experimented with LSD and about his journey. I highly recommend it. It's the best book ever, Be Here Now.

Audiobooks or reading books?

I love audiobooks.

Me too. It's the only way that I “read” because just like doing stuff. Although it does feel really good to sit down with a blanket and hold a real book in your hand. Heels or flats?

Flats. I'm 5’10”.

Let's be honest. You're not trying to get any taller. I love it. A phone call or text message when communicating with people?

I'm a texter for sure but it is nice to call the people you care about and check in with them.

You don't care about me because we just text?

I talk to you all the time. You didn't add Zoom in there.

Movie or TV series?

TV series.

Cook yourself or order in?

We order in but not that much.

Do you prefer to have a meal that you prepared?

Yeah. I want healthy food. If I get an order in more healthy food then I would do it.

Vacation with friends or with family?

Friends. No offense, family.

Favorite thing to do to relax?

I don't know. If you're reading this, my dog is behind me. I was hoping she'd be quiet but if I need to relax like instant relaxation, I just pet her. It's helped my mental state.

Your therapy dog.

She's my emotional support beast.

Coffee or tea?

Coffee.

Last but not least, favorite season of the year?

Summer for sure.

Summer in Chicago is very fun.

That's the whole reason why people live here. We suffer through the entire winter and usually the cold spring just for a few months of summer.

That's the only reason why people live there. Amelia, thank you. The best way to connect with you? I know you're active on LinkedIn. Where can we find you?

You can look me up on LinkedIn Amelia Forczak. I'm also on Instagram @Pithy_Wordsmithery.

That's it. Thank you so much for being here. This was super helpful and I can't wait to see what others' experiences are with writing a book. If you were inspired to think about writing a book, send us a message on our socials. We would love to hear from you and what you're thinking about. You are just going to have to stay tuned for my book. This is my accountability kicking the pants, penciled in the calendar to do a little bit every day. Thank you, Amelia. This has been great. We'll chat again soon.

Thanks for having me.

Important Links:

• Pithy Wordsmithery
• STAND OUT Summit
• Build a Blissful Business - Use promo code PITHY at check out for $50 off
• So you want to write a book - Use promo code "KRISSY" at checkout for $25 off
• Nail Your Outline  - Use promo code "KRISSY" at checkout for $25 off 
• Searchie
• 10 Simple Steps to Start Writing Your Book
• Be Here Now
• Amelia Forczak - LinkedIn
• @Pithy_Wordsmithery - Instagram
• https://www.Facebook.com/pithywordsmithery
• https://www.TheKrissyChin.com/a/39471/XeakRCMA
• https://www.TheKrissyChin.com/searchie

About Amelia Forczak

Amelia Forczak is a New York Times Best-Selling Ghostwriter and the Founder of Pithy Wordsmithery, a Chicago-based firm that specializes in helping people write and market their books.

Amelia works with leaders to help them build and monetize their thought leadership and grow their businesses.

Over the past 10 years, she has ghostwritten 10 books and edited many others. She also has an online course called Nail Your Outline, and a mini-course called So You Want to Write a Book.