Episode 036 - Who You Gonna Call?...A Ghostwriter!

Have you ever had a passion for writing? Did you ever want to write a book, a novel, a fable, a fairy tale, a story, or even maybe you're just writing your copy for your business? If that's you, you need to listen to this episode. Our guest is a British-born writer who has published many books, and on today's episode, he's going to talk about his latest book as well as his journey as a ghostwriter. Welcome to this episode of the Content Amplification Podcast. Jody's here, I'm here, and our guest Matthew Turner is with us today. Matthew, thank you so much for being a guest on today's show. It's a pleasure.

It's all mine. I'm really excited to be joining you both today and sharing some stories.

Now you, uh, you're not local to us. Let our listeners know where you are right now and what it's like right there.

I am in very sunny Yorkshire in the north of England, fairly small town called Halifax. We seem to have skipped spring this year. A week ago it was very cold. It felt like January. And now all of a sudden the sun is shining. We've, we've reached sort of 20 degrees last few days. So spring has just not happened this year. We've just gone from winter, which went on forever, and now summer, which I'm hoping is also going to go on forever. Hopefully. That's right.

Well, I mean, if you take out spring and fall, they have to kind of extend those other two seasons. So I think you're on the right path.

Fingers crossed. I'm hoping we have summer now till like September, October. I don't think it will happen that way, but I'm hoping. No.

So Matthew, tell our listeners who you are. I'm going to kind of lead in with, you know, you're an author, but you take it from there. Tell our listeners, you know, what makes Matthew so unique.

Sure thing. So as you say, I'm an author. I'm just in the process of publishing my 5th book, Beyond the Pale, which is a fable. So it combines both fiction and nonfiction. And in the past, I've published 3 novels and then 1 full standalone nonfiction book. So I've been doing this, releasing books now for around about 8 to 9 years, which is quite crazy to think the time has flown. And in that period, written a lot for myself, short stories as well, articles and blog posts like you wouldn't believe. And I found a bit of a sort of niche over the years, which has led me to ghostwriting for clients too. So everything I do is surrounded by writing. So some of the time it's writing for myself, my own projects, some of the time for other entrepreneurs and business owners, be it their book, articles, guides, email sequences. Everything I do is focused around narrative and nurturing and trying to sort of build trust and rapport. So when I work with clients, that's usually what I'm focused on, whether it's an article, a book, or something in between.

So I guess going back a little bit, how did you get into that career path and writing books and ghostwriting?

Sure. So I started to get into writing in my early 20s after a pretty rough breakup, and I turned to journaling as like a form of therapy. Straight away, as soon as I started therapy, my mind just started to kind of take what I was writing down into, into a story. And it came up with my, my first idea for a book, Beyond Parallel, which was my first novel. And I worked on Beyond Parallel for probably 6 or 7 years. I would write it, leave it, come back to it, leave it. And eventually, towards— I was about 27, 28 I'd been working in the real world for a few years, realized being an employee wasn't quite for me. So I decided to finally finish my book, start to plan to leave my job so I could work on my own. So while I was doing all this writing on the side, I was at university and studying and getting my first jobs in the world of marketing. So I was writing fiction as passion, and I was studying marketing and business. Because that's what I figured would be my career path. So I left my job around about 27 to focus on my writing and to also become a marketing consultant of some kind. I didn't really know. Looking back, I probably should have stayed in my job longer to figure that out. But yeah, I took the leap, and over the years, I just would try my hat on various different sort of niches and industries and trying different things. And more and more, I just realized writing was for me. I was writing for myself, and I realized I could provide a bit of a skill set for my clients too. So eventually, writing became my everything, and I just always loved to write for myself. My brain would always just kind of come up with these stories. It's how I've sort of better understood the world myself. So as I've dove into my own personal growth over the years, it's just always kind of come up with these stories and characters and journeys to kind of better make sense of what I was learning personally. And it's allowed me to share outward as well.

Excellent. And for those who are listening who don't understand the concept of what ghostwriting is, it's not writing to the paranormal. It's writing for other people. So can you explain to us kind of the different process of when you're writing your books, you're writing for yourself, like you mentioned, but when you're going into ghostwriting, you're actually writing for other people as they would basically portray that writing as theirs, correct?

Absolutely. So a lot of times people, they'll hire a ghostwriter. Let's say they're an entrepreneur and they're wanting someone to ghostwrite their book. Usually there's two reasons for it. One, they have some experience in writing, they've written articles maybe, but they've just got to a point where they are busy. They just don't have the time to write a book. Maybe they've gone through the process before and they just are like, I just don't want to do it. So they'll hire a ghostwriter because it just makes more sense to hire someone to do it for them. They're too busy. The other side of it is they're not not a writer. They don't feel comfortable writing. They're more comfortable on video or audio, and they just struggle with writing, either their own writing, it's too bogged down, it's just not how their brain works. So they'll hire a ghostwriter to get what's in their head onto the page. And that is basically my job either way, is to speak to said entrepreneur, get stories, ask them questions, like explore their own background, their own journey, to kind of bring those stories out, but also to explore their methodology, their skill set, what they bring to the table that helps their readers. A lot of the times, a ghostwriter, you'll be working with someone who is developing more of a nonfiction book or a memoir. You will get novelists who get hired ghostwriters too, but it tends to be when you get to the mega So like your Pattersons of the world who seem to be releasing a book every 2 months, they'll hire ghostwriters because they've just got a system and they just churn out books. But most people who hire ghostwriters are entrepreneurs or executives. They write a nonfiction book, they've got a specific something to share with their readers, and my job is to go in, in there and get that methodology out of their heads bring it to life, bring a bit of flair to it and stories, and you're ultimately trying to write it as them. So it's quite tricky. I'm working more on a copywriting project at the moment with someone, and we're in that early stages where there's still quite a bit of back and forth. I'll come up with a little something as a piece of copy and they'll kind of rewrite it. And the whole process is for me to just basically try to figure out what words they use versus what words they don't. Their tone, their style, reading between the lines, trying to figure out why they say something a specific way versus why they don't say another. And it's quite tricky to just get into their head and then write as them. And it's a fine balance because you also just need to then get those stories out and write as you write, but always be trying to think about, okay, how would they say it? So eventually the project, if it goes well, there comes a bit of a singularity where your brain and their brain kind of meets in the middle somewhere and it creates an article or a guide or a book that is sort of two people combined into one. Right.

Yeah. And my grandfather is actually an author, and I have to ask you the one question that irritates him more than anything. He still, to this day, after years and years of pestering him, has not given me an answer. But Do you have a favorite novel that you've written?

Always the latest one. So my latest one is Beyond the Pale. I mean, that's the thing, you're always— there's two parts to the question here. I think you always choose your latest one because you're always learning. So I'm a better writer today than I was last year. So when I was writing my third or fourth book, at least I like to think that I'm a better writer today because I've written so much more since. So just through pure grinding it out and pure putting words on the page, you become a better writer. But then there's this side, not necessarily what's your favorite novel, but what was your favorite story? And one of my favorites, and probably I'll always go back to it, is my second novel, Tick to the Tock. It was just a very sort of deep journey that I went on through that. And I've certainly got a huge affiliation with the characters from that book. And some of the characters from that book actually makes it into this latest book, Beyond the Pale, because I did— I formed a bit of a sort of love to those characters. And even though I don't necessarily think it's my strongest novel, as a story, as a set of characters, as a premise. Yeah, I love it, and I think I always will. But yeah, the short answer is always the latest one.

Now, Beyond the Pale, you can get that at beyondbook.co. You've got it there. People can sign up, get a preorder of it. Let's talk about that book for a little bit. I was reading through some of the testimonials on the site. And one of the testimonials, Dory Clark mentions that through this book, you ask the readers to explore what matters most and how we measure our business and our lives. So, I understand that obviously, this is a fable. But this is in a sense somewhat of a business book that business owners could benefit from reading, correct? Take us on that journey of what this fable is all about.

For sure. It's a business fable. I mean, that's what I'm calling it. I like to think that non-business owners would still get something from it, but I've written it specifically for today's sort of fast-paced, always connected to their phone, always connected online, always connected to other people through social media entrepreneurs. Whether you own an online business or a brick and mortar or somewhere in between, we're just so connected and caught up in what I call the hustle. So it was written very much for them. And the best way for me to liken it is it's like The Alchemist. So anyone who's read The Alchemist, it's kind of a bit of a spiritual awakening. It's a novel, it's something you can just enjoy purely as a form of entertainment and escapism, which is basically what a novel offers in the same way as a movie. But there's certain non-fiction elements within The Alchemist. There's a genuine message in there and there's a purpose for reading that book. There's certain life lessons in there. And I suppose the promises to the reader is you're not going to only going to be escaping your world for a little while, and you're not only going to be entertained, but there's going to be a degree of enlightenment, there's going to be a degree of lessons learned, there's going to be a message brought through for you to expand upon in your life. And that's what Beyond the Pale is all about. Less a spiritual awakening, more of a sort of personal development awakening.

That's, uh, really funny that you mentioned The Alchemist because I actually just started that 2 days ago. I'm about halfway through. I've had many recommendations to read it, and as I was reading last night, I was thinking about how, um, the boy, the main character, talks about how he never saw, you know, a certain year of his life coming as he was working for the crystal merchant. And it was something that was incredibly relatable to me because even 2 years ago, I never imagined that I would be going into marketing. I had always thought I would be a police officer. So I think it's really interesting that you mention as you're reading it, you're also able to apply it to your life, especially as an entrepreneur.

Absolutely. It's one of the great things about a fable, because if you think about you're reading, let's say, Harry Potter, you might relate to certain aspects of a book and you might be able to relate to certain aspects of a character, but it's just a story. It's not being written necessarily for you to kind of relate to any one thing. It's designed to just help you escape a little bit and to entertain you. A fable usually is written in a certain way to kind of just make you think. And to make you relate to that character, that journey, that particular scene, that particular lesson. And it's obviously been used in religious scripts throughout the ages in the form of parables and fables, stories, but with a point to be brought across so that we find it easier to pass on. I mean, we have to remember that books are a relatively new thing for humans, but storytelling is as old as language. So we came up with stories to pass on knowledge from one generation to the next. So fables and parables are just a mechanism to teach, but it's not in a very bog-standard way, lecturer stood at the front just saying, these are the facts, these are the figures, this is what you should do. It's more, here's a little story and you take of it what you will. And everyone's going to take a little bit of a different spin on the, the boy from The Alchemist. They'll relate to him in different ways, but the, the purpose beyond it is start to questioning your role, start to questioning yourself, comparing yourself to them. So that's kind of the big thing for me when it comes to fable. It's a fantastic way to, to teach. It's a very non-intrusive way of teaching, and it's a fun way of learning. So through Beyond the Pale, less of a spiritual awakening— there's certainly aspects of that in there— but it's more of an awakening of you and your relationship with business, you and your relationship with the business world, you and your relationship with just today's fast-paced world, and getting you to question what your vision is, what your purpose is, what impact you're having, whether it's still true today compared to when you started in the first place. So unlike many how-to business books that I imagine a lot of people listening have read, many, many of where there's a promise of I'm going to give you an answer, you read this, I'm going to give you a 7-step framework, you'll have an answer at the end. Or a novel where it's like, I'm not going to give you any answer or questions, I'm just going to help you escape a little bit. Beyond the Pale is a fable where it's like, I'm not going to necessarily give you the answer, but I'm going to start making you think what the right questions are. And that allows you to then go figure out what the answer is in your own life, because everyone's version of the hustle is slightly different.

Absolutely. So your, your, your book Beyond the Pale: The Fable About Escaping the Hustle and Finding Yourself, it's in pre-release right now. You can pre-order it on Amazon. We'll put the link in the show notes, um, when we publish this episode. But I, I want to ask you also, if you weren't writing, is there something else that, that you could see yourself doing? If for some reason you woke up tomorrow and you could not write anymore, um, you weren't allowed to, What would you rather be doing?

Is there anything? What a question. It's a very good question and it's very difficult to know a true answer. I suppose there's certain things which I can imagine myself doing and then there's the things which I would love to do, I guess. I think realistically, if, for instance, I woke up and I was unable to write tomorrow, Based on what I've learned over the years, I think I would still very much find myself in the sort of marketing world, not doing what I assumed I would be doing when I first ventured into studying for marketing. And that was 15+ years ago. I assumed I would be a marketing manager, for instance, in the sporting world, because that was my passion growing up, sport., and I assumed I would be like a marketing manager for a football team or a rugby team or something. I think now I would be more advising and coaching around sort of content marketing and how people can bring their stories alive through brand stories and particular sort of content designed for this modern world. So marketing, but more of a specific area within marketing. Content largely, right?

Excellent. So now before we wrap up, I do have one last question for you too. Um, so as we kind of talked about, most of our listeners are small business owners, and so, you know, it's not necessarily that they'll be out there writing novels to promote their business, but a lot of the smaller pieces of writing that they struggle with is either blogs or, you know, even things as little as as Instagram captions, right? Even those things can be a struggle for them. So what advice do you have to those people who are much less in love with writing than you are?

I am a big fan of thinking about how you can create a series. So sometimes when I'll work with someone on a ghostwriting point of view to create articles, and they've got a news website, for instance, I'll talk about creating a series of pillar pieces. And it could be 5 blog posts, 10, 15. It's obviously going to be different. But I think one of the best things we can do, because everyone gets caught up in the quantity, but it's not really about quantity, it's about quality. If you've got 10 or 15 really good pieces, a lot of blog pieces on your site, you can keep repurposing these. For many months through social media and repurposing into different videos and audios and graphics and infographics. Like, you've got enough content with a handful of blog posts to fill your social media feed for a long time. And then when you reach the end, you can just go back to the beginning because the chances of everyone who, uh, who's following you seeing every piece is slim. So my advice is always to think about what it is that you do. Like, think about who you serve, what they need from you, and how you can serve them. And just think about the topics around that. So for instance, just then I talked about being a coach or a consultant for, for brand stories. You know, I would be able to dive into them like, okay, who are my 2 or 3 avatars Who are the, you know, what kind of questions are they asking? What sort of keywords do I want to rank for? What are my sort of main topics? And just start to write a few articles around those and try create a bit of a rabbit hole on my website where one article links to the next, to the next, to the next. So they're all kind of speaking to one another and linking to one another. They're in the same ballpark, but each one is just coming at the— so maybe the same answer from a slightly different angle, answering a different question. And just focused on that, trying to create some pillar pieces for their site. Then you only have to write 6, 7, 10 short blog posts, which may only be 900 words, 1,000 words, 1,200 words, but each one is specific, actionable, has a purpose basically. Quality over quantity rather than getting bogged down to, I've got to write a new blog post every week or every month. That can get overwhelming and you just end up producing content with no purpose. Whereas if you sit down and say, right, these are my 10 pillar pieces, they cover everything I need to share initially with my audience. You can get those whipped out in a couple of weeks, scheduled out, and honestly, you can repurpose 10 blog posts for many months across social media, be it in visual form, audio form, video form, text form. So yeah, hopefully that provides a bit of an answer to your question.

That's definitely some solid advice. That's exactly in line with what we tell our audience to amplify their content, being able to repurpose it and get it out there. So, I mean, hearing it from you, I think that resonates even more to our listeners. Matthew, this has been a great conversation today. I mean, your book sounds amazing, so much so I've already placed my pre-order while you guys were having that previous answer. So, I look forward to that coming in the mail once it's released. And like I said, we'll put the link in the show notes as well to anyone who would like to check it out and get your hands on Beyond Hale, Matthew, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure. Yeah, thanks for having me on.

Hi, I'm Shaun Whynacht, the owner and creator of Blue Cow Marketing, as well as a Keap certified partner. If you're looking to automate many tasks in your business that have been eating up a lot of your time, and you wanna get a handle on your marketing and your whole business organization, then we need to have a conversation about Keap. Keap is a business automated software that allows you to automate a lot of the tasks that you do each and every day, as well as your quotes, your follow-up, your invoices, text messaging, email marketing, tasks, and a whole lot more. If you'd like to learn more and set up a free consult, we can see if Keap is a right fit for your business. Go to bluecowmarketing.ca/automate.