“I’m not very good at writing”

Nearly every author has said something like that to me at some point while we work on their book.

It's never true.

It's like saying "I can't cook." What it actually means is "I haven't spent the hours it takes to get good at this specific skill" — which is completely reasonable, because you've spent those hours getting good at running a company, learning professional skills, or having the kind of experiences you want to put in a book.

All the authors I work with could write their own book. There are courses, templates, step-by-step guides. If anyone follows them, they will end up with a manuscript.

But it will cost them real time and bandwidth and it will be frustrating at times.

Plenty of people get most of the way through, decide the juice isn't worth the squeeze, and quit.

They tell themselves, "I can't write." But it's not that they can't do it. It's that the cost-benefit doesn't work out — for them, specifically, right now.

That's a different problem. And it's the one I solve, because while they've been learning how to be very good at what they do, I've put in the hours – nearly 40 years' worth – learning how to be very good at writing.

And specifically at writing books … which is another skill entirely.