Most people assume it means I follow you around with a notebook, nod a lot and then disappear for months to write the book. While that does sometimes happen if it makes sense to interview you in person, it's rare these days. I do like to meet up for a coffee when it's convenient but Zoom or whatever usually suffices. What actually happens is that we kick off by working through a series of structured conversations, usually recorded, where I ask the kind of questions that don't tend to come up in ordinary life. Not just what happened, but why it happened, what the alternatives were, what you thought at the time and whether you still think the same thing now. You'd be surprised how often those last two have different answers. From there I start to shape the material. Not in the sense of tidying up history, but in giving the whole thing a structure that a reader can and will actually want to follow. A life doesn't arrive pre-organised. It arrives in fragments, contradictions and overlapping versions of the same events. The job is to make sense of that without ironing out what made it real. You'll see drafts as we go where you can correct things, add things, push back on things and occasionally revisit something you haven't looked at squarely in years. That's not a problem, thats the more intereting part and usually where the gold lies. The aim isn't something polished for the sake of it. It's something that holds together, that engages whoever reads it and that still makes sense in twenty years when you might not be around to provide the footnotes. It's part listening, part structuring with some editorial judgement for good measure. And a fair amount of patience on both sides, if I'm honest.

If it’s done properly, it can be one of the few things that genuinely differentiates you. Most people in business communicate in a piecemeal manner. An interview here, a panel there, a few LinkedIn posts for good measure. All useful, but partial. They show moments, not the underlying judgement that shaped them. A book allows you to set out how you actually think, how you made decisions, and what you learned when things didn’t go to plan. That has real value. It gives you a level of credibility that doesn’t come from a press release or a well-turned post. It shows depth and charater. For founders and executives who are already established, that matters just as much as visibility, if not more. It also creates something that stands outside the current cycle. Most communication now is immediate and disposable. A serious piece of work cuts through that simply because so few people take the time to do it. There’s also a practical angle. A well-constructed book can support speaking, advisory work, board positions or future ventures. It gives people a way to understand you quickly, without relying on second-hand versions. And one thing that’s becoming more obvious by the year: it’s very difficult to fake. You can’t generate a credible, experience-based account of a career through AI or outsourced content. It either holds up or it doesn’t. That’s why it works. Not because it looks good, but because it’s hard to produce properly, and people recognise that.

It can. And it will produce something that might look like a book and walk like a book, but it won’t be a good book. What it can’t do is know what actually mattered. It can’t sit across from you and feel the hesitation in your voice, or notice that the throwaway anecdote you tell at the end of an hour is really the moment everything changed. It doesn’t know when you’re protecting yourself. It can’t call bullshit, or gently ask you to go back and stay with the uncomfortable bit for another ten minutes. Most AI-built memoirs read ultra smoothly but feel hollow. Machined prose that sounds like a story about you assembled from the outside, rather than something only you could have told from the inside. They're competent in the way that a lot of books self published on Kindle are competent, which is to say, readable once and forgettable immediately. Then there’s the harder part: what to leave out. That’s where most life stories are won or lost. Deciding what doesn’t belong in the book isn’t a prompting exercise, it’s judgement and editing, sitting with you, understanding the shape of your life, and being willing to say, “that’s interesting, but it’s not the book.” If you just want something readable, AI will get you 70 per cent of the way there (I know - I asked it). If you want a book that will still make sense, and still feel like you ten years from now, that’s a different job. That’s my job.

Most of the stories you encounter about people who've built or led things have already been tidied up. They work well on a stage or in a profile piece, nice clean progression from from problem to solution, a couple of near-misses thrown in for texture, a lesson at the end that makes the whole thing feel inevitable. They're not dishonest exactly, but they're not the full account either. The full account is more useful, and for a fairly simple reason: it shows how you actually think. When someone can explain, without too much performance, what decisions were made under real pressure, what nearly went wrong and why certain calls were taken when they were, it tells people something that a profile or a speech doesn't. It shows judgement rather than just outcomes. That tends to matter quite a lot to the people whose opinion you actually care about. There's also the internal version of this. Organisations lose their own history faster than anyone expects. The people who were there at the beginning move on, the founding logic gets diluted, and what made the place distinctive gets replaced by something blander and easier to explain. A properly written account gives people something solid to refer back to, not a set of values on a wall with nice emojis, but a record of actual decisions and behaviours. That turns out to be surprisingly useful when half the room wasn't there when it mattered. And then there's the personal version, which nobody talks about much but most people feel. You spent years making decisions that affected other people's lives, livelihoods and futures - including your own. At some point it's reasonable to want that properly documented, not because you need the validation, but because it actually happened and deserves more than a glossed over LinkedIn summary and whatever your family half-remembers. The problem is most of this gets lost. Stories get shortened, details fall away, and what you end up with is the version that travels best at dinner parties. Which is fine for dinner parties and not much use for anything else.

Straightforward, though perhaps not in the way you'd expect. We start with a conversation. No commitment, no pitch, just enough time to get a sense of each other. I want to understand what you're trying to do and what a finished version might actually look like. You want to decide whether I'm the right person to do it. Both of those things matter and neither takes long to establish. If it makes sense to proceed, we map out the shape of the project together. Scope, likely length, how deep we need to go and how we'll work around your time and other life commitments. After that we set up some structure, but never in a way that feels like admin. We start with interviews. Usually a series of sessions over a few weeks, and these are where the real work begins. They're not rigid question-and-answer exercises, more conversations where I keep things moving, come back to anything that doesn't quite hold up and push where it matters. You'd be surprised how often the most important parts of a life sit just beyond the first answer. People edit themselves without realising it, and part of my job is to notice when that's happening. Everything is recorded and transcribed. From there I start drafting, and you'll see sections as they develop rather than waiting until the end to discover I've gone in entirely the wrong direction. We refine as we go. That's where most of the real shape emerges, the through-lines, the themes, the moments that turn out to matter more than anyone expected. Depending on the project there may also be supporting material to review. Old emails, documents, sometimes other perspectives where they're relevant and available. Not always necessary, but occasionally it's the difference between a good account and a definitive one. In a nutshell, the whole thing is iterative and it does take time. Most projects run between three and nine months. But it's controlled and you won't ever be left wondering where things are or what happens next. I find that people who've spent their careers running things tend to find that reassuring.

Longer than people first assume, shorter than they fear once it’s underway. Most projects sit somewhere between three and nine months. That depends on scope, availability and how detailed you want the final account to be. The early stages tend to move quite quickly. Conversations, material gathering, the first sections taking shape. Then it slows a little as the structure settles and the work deepens. That’s normal. You don’t want to rush that part. There are also practical realities. People have businesses to run, travel, other commitments. We work around that, but it does affect pace. What matters is momentum. Once it starts, it needs to keep moving. Leave it too long between stages and you lose continuity, both in memory and in the thread of the narrative. It’s not something to squeeze into spare time and hope for the best. It needs a bit of space to be done properly.

They are structured, but not rigid. Most of the work is built through a series of one-to-one conversations. These can be in person or over video, depending on what is practical. In person is often better if we’re covering a lot of ground early on, but it’s not essential. What matters more is that the conversation has space and continuity. In terms of frequency, it usually works best to keep some momentum. That might mean one or two sessions a week at the start, then spacing out a little once the core material is on the table. Leave too much time between sessions and you spend half the next one remembering where you got to. Each session tends to run somewhere between 60 and 90 minutes. Long enough to get into something properly, not so long that it turns into a slog. Occasionally we’ll go longer if we’re in the middle of something important, but there’s no need to force it. They are recorded, with your agreement, so you don’t have to remember what was said or worry about getting things “right” in the moment. The point is to talk it through, not to perform it. I’ll guide the conversation. There’s a loose structure behind it, but I won’t run through a list of questions like an interview panel. We follow the thread where it needs to go, double back when something doesn’t quite hold, and stay with things that matter. You’ll find that some of the more useful material comes out slightly sideways rather than head-on. Some sessions will feel straightforward. Others less so. That’s part of it. We’re not trying to produce a neat version of events in real time, we’re trying to get to something accurate. It’s a process that builds. Each conversation adds a layer. By the time we’re a few sessions in, the shape of things usually starts to emerge, and it becomes much easier to see what matters and what doesn’t.

Most projects run somewhere between three and nine months. That depends on availability, scope and how quickly we can move through the material. A private record is usually more contained. A public memoir takes longer because it has to stand up to a general readership. The main thing is maintaining momentum. Leave it too long between sessions and the energy drops off. Keep it moving and it builds properly.

That’s entirely up to you. Some clients want full authorship. Others prefer discretion. Both are standard in this type of work. If it’s a private record, it will usually remain exactly that. If it’s a public memoir, we’ll decide early on how you want to be presented. In most cases though, your name is on the cover as the author. Thre are times when a co-auther gets mentioned but I usually leave that to the publishers, they know the market best.

Yes. Most of the work can be done remotely without any loss of quality. Where it makes sense, I’ll travel for in-person sessions, particularly at the start of a project. The important thing is continuity, not geography.

Completely. For many clients, discretion is not a preference, it’s a requirement. That’s understood from the outset. Nothing is shared, referenced or reused without your explicit agreement.

Because I understand both sides of this. I’ve spent years inside businesses, making decisions where outcomes mattered, not just writing about them afterwards. That changes how I approach a story. I’m not here to smooth things into something sentimental or safe. I’m interested in proportion, context and consequence - reality if you like - and in turning that into a story people will actually want to read. If that’s what you’re after, we’ll get on.