Who I Work With
You are not short on ideas. You are short on a Tuesday afternoon where nobody needs anything from you. That is the actual problem, and it is the one I solve.
Everyone I work with has already done the hard part. You built the company. You ran the clinic. You survived the thing. You developed the method that your clients quote back to you. The book is the last mile, and it is the only part of your career nobody trained you for.
Crystal Adair-Benning. 4x NYT bestselling ghostwriter & book coach. 30 yrs in books, 200+ authors, 12+ countries.
The 3 sentences I hear most.
I have been meaning to write this for years. I do not know where to start. I have 40,000 words and no idea if any of them are good.
All 3 are the same sentence. All 3 have the same fix, which is a structure, a deadline and somebody who has done this 200+ times sitting on the other side of the table.
See if we fit
The 6 people who end up on my calendar.
Founders
Your company has a story. You have 40 minutes.
Your investors know the numbers. Nobody knows how you got here, which is the half that sells the keynote, the round and the next senior hire.
Business booksExperts
You have a method. It lives in a deck.
200 slides, 14 versions, and one client who keeps asking whether there is a book. There is. It takes months, and it outsells the deck for the rest of your career.
Business booksSpeakers
The book is the reason they book you.
Speakers with books get better stages and better fees. Peter Merrett landed a bestseller list and then landed 2024 Australia Speaker of the Year. That order is not a coincidence.
SpeakingMemoir
You have lived something worth writing down.
60 years of material, one story, your voice. I have written lives that were funny, brutal, and both inside the same chapter.
Memoir ghostwritingCoaches
Your clients adore you. 12 at a time.
A book is the version of you that works while you sleep, in countries you have never visited, for people who will never make it to your calendar.
Book coachingOne-book authors
This is the only book you will ever write.
Then it had better be the right one. I will tell you before you spend a year on the wrong one, which is the least popular and most valuable thing I do.
Apply“There is no one I would trust more to guide the process from outline to publication than Crystal.”
Christopher Ali
Who I am not the right person for.
I would rather lose the call than lose a year of your life, so here is the honest list.
- You want a finished book in 3 weeks. Publishing is fast now. It is not that fast.
- You want somebody to agree with you. You are paying for 30 yrs of knowing what sells, and I intend to use all of it.
- You want a book to sell a business you have not built yet. Write the book after the thing works, not instead of it.
- You want to be talked into it. At the end of the day, of course I want you to write your book. I want you to want it more than I do.
Sometimes the answer is a room, not a rewrite.
If your problem is that life keeps interrupting, no amount of coaching fixes that from a distance. Createcation™ retreats exist for exactly this. Accommodation, meals, training, and long uninterrupted stretches where the only thing anyone expects from you is pages.
See the retreatsYour next fave read.
Questions I get asked.
Do I need to be a good writer to work with you?
No. You need to be a good talker, a good thinker, or a good rememberer. I have written books for people who told me flat out that they had not written anything longer than an email since university.
Do you only work with business people?
No. Roughly half of my work is memoir and legacy. The other half is business, method and thought-leader books. The through line is that somebody has something worth keeping.
What if my story is too small?
It is not. Small is specific, and specific is what readers actually connect with. The books that fail are the vague ones, not the small ones.
I am not in Canada. Does that matter?
Not at all. Authors in 12+ countries have worked with me over video calls. The only thing that matters is finding 2 overlapping hours a week.
Can I start with coaching and switch to ghostwriting?
Yes, and people do. Some start coaching, discover they love writing and finish it themselves. Others discover they hate it and hand it over. Both are fine outcomes.
How do I know which one I am?
Book a free 30-minute call. I will tell you within 10 minutes, and I have no incentive to sell you the expensive option if the cheap one gets you the same book.
Not sure which one is yours?
Book a free 30-minute call. I will tell you which path fits your book, your calendar and your goals. If none of them do, I will tell you that too.
