Systems for Writing a Book | Stories With Traction Podcast

SHOW NOTES:

SERIES: This podcast episode is part of a book-writing series with Amy Lynch on the Stories With Traction Podcast.

1st Episode

2nd EPISODE SUMMARY: In this episode, Amy Lynch and Matt Zaun discuss systems and creativity in book writing.

AMY LYNCH BIO: Amy is the founder and a writer at Fernling Creative, a premium writing agency that generates exceptional content in your voice because words sell everything.

For more info, check out Amy HERE.

MATT ZAUN BIO: Matt is an award-winning speaker and storyteller who empowers organizations to attract more clients through the art of strategic storytelling. Matt’s past engagements have catalyzed radical sales increases for over 300 organizations that range from financial institutions to the health and wellness industry.

Matt shares his expertise in persuasion with executives, sales professionals, and entrepreneurs, who he coaches on the art of influence and how to leverage this for profits and impact.

For more info, check out Matt Zaun HERE.

 

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors

 

Matt Zaun

I'm so excited for this episode. This is part two with Amy Lynch.

Many of you listened to the episode we recently did with Amy regarding book writing. For those of you who are not familiar with Amy, Amy is the founder and a writer at Fernland Creative, which is a premium writing agency that generates exceptional content in your voice because words sell.

With this awesome conversation about how Amy was able to write all the different books that she has, which is really fascinating to me because as many people listening know, it is an uphill battle to write a book.

It's like climbing a mountain and many people's lives. There's tons of people want to do it, but they I don't even know where to start so I'm really excited to dive into more of the systematic approach Amy has and go from there.

Amy, welcome back to the show.

 

Amy Lynch

Thanks for having me back. That's brave of you to invite a nerd back who likes to talk about nerdy stuff, but I had a great time last time and happy to be back.

 

Matt Zaun

So I found the last episode we did incredibly insightful. One of the things that you mentioned that I want to expand on.

I want to dive into more of your systematic approach. And concepts was one of things you said was you create a core concept that everything in the book is tied to and you brought up the image of a bike tire.

So everyone can visualize that bike tire with the spokes and how if there's a bunch of spokes that are off or bent, it can be very dangerous with someone biking, right?

They can get in a serious accident. So we want all of those spokes to basically go to one common theme.

And I thought that was really intriguing. So let's break down systems for people. So. people listening and a lot of people listening that they want to get a book into the world.

That is incredibly overwhelming to them. So how would they even figure out how to get a core theme? would be some of the things that they can do a couple steps to try to hone in on one specific core theme?

 

Amy Lynch

Right, well that is the very, that's the first conversation we have when a new client and I sit down and we always start out in person Mac because I just love to hear the person's voice and it takes me a couple hours to really hear the way the person speaks their speech patterns which as a ghostwriter that's really important to me that I can mimic.

I'm a bit of a chameleon so I can really get their voice and then sound like them as we write together.

So we do that in person and we sit down and honestly the very first thing we talk about is why the heck are we here.

Or what is on your mind that you are trying to accomplish? And a lot of times, don't know. People will say, I've been 40 years in this industry, it's meant so much to me.

I feel like I've learned so much. I just want to capture some of it for my team, for my company, for my kids, for the business community.

But the objectives are vague. So one of the very first things we do is we talk about objectives. And I ask questions like, how do you want your book to serve readers?

What are you hoping that the person reading it will feel and experience and gain for them? And then we just project one or two years in the future.

I say, I ask the question, what will have happened that made all this effort worthwhile, if you look back in two years, what would be the thing that happened that really made this effort worth the trouble?

And the answers are very different. You know, some people say a New York Times bestseller. Some people say literally I've heard this if my three children read this book.

So they will go all that effort for three readers. If these three children of mine who are adults read this book, mission accomplished, it's all that I'm hoping for.

I asked for a single event, like if we had a book release, a book launch, or if a young person out of college reads this, and it helps them to choose a healthy path for their future.

had a person say that to me one time who's in the 70s saying, you know, the He's observing that college grads that he was interviewing were confused as to why they were joining the business community.

He said if I could just clarify that for them, how to keep the right priorities in place, it would all be worth it.

So just objectives. What do you hope will happen with this? Before we actually talk about the core message of the book, that's first, and then the second, we spend a long time identifying an avatar reader.

Who are we really? Because who do we really want to read this book? lot of times people start on a writing project and they're just for the world.

They're writing to put it out there. But there is no book that is for every person, man, woman, child, girl, old, young, there's no book like that.

Every book is targeting an audience. Or it will be meaningful for that audience. So we spend a long time talking in general about who is this for?

So a recent book, we started out with for everybody, for the world. then we got down to it's for professional women who are going, who are high level achievers between age 25 and 45, in essence, childbearing age, which really made a difference to this particular book.

So we get down to that. And then from there, we talk about the one sentence explanation of the book.

And if bite tires not accessible to someone listening, everybody understands the GPS and their car on their phone. Every time you go to an unknown place, you put in a very specific address.

Nobody leaves their driveway without, if you don't know, if you're going to your church, you know how to get there.

If you're going to someplace in Nashville, and you're from Pennsylvania, you must put your GPS in there, or you don't know which way to turn outside your driveway, outside of your neighborhood, when you're getting under the highway, it determines every step along the way.

So that GPS address is, in essence, the one sentence explanation that your ideal reader would use to recommend their book to their friends, or to explain your book to their friends.

you can and work and work until that one sentence explanation is crystal clear, and then we put it at the center of a mind map, and the whole book, like the spokes of attire, that's the hub, and all the everything comes, extends out of that one sentence explanation.

 

Matt Zaun

So one of the things that I thought of while you were sharing this is really diving deep into the why.

So you and I both have a mutual friend, Alyssa De Natal, and Alyssa has been my fitness coach for coming up on three years now.

I originally reached out to her, I said, listen, I really want to lose some weight, which she's heard a million times before.

And she was the one that said to me relentlessly, why? She actually me why five times to get to my original why.

So why do you want to lose weight? And then I said, well, I want to have more energy. But why do you want to have more energy?

Well, because I want to perform at the highest caliber for my clients. Why do you want to perform at the highest caliber for your clients?

Because I want to make more money. Why do you want to make more money? Because I want to take care of my kids better than I was taking care of.

Because now there's more resources, there's more different things that can happen based on that. Well, why do you want to do that?

So she kept going layers deep with a why to go from I want to lose 20 pounds to I legitimately want to have awesome health so that I could be there for

my kids and I can get them experiences and monetary things that I didn't have when I was a child.

So we're really diving deeper, deeper into the why. Do you feel that you do that in these sessions? Do you feel often someone will just throw out?

I want to do X, Y, and Z. And then through the conversation that you have, you recognize, well, it's really not that they want to do X, Y, Z.

 

Amy Lynch

Here's the root of why they want to do that in the first place. Is that the intention of what you're doing with this exercise?

Yeah, 100%. You have to start there. I just go right back to that GPS example. You can't go somewhere where you don't know where you're going.

And the Y is the address in your GPS, the Y plus the target audience. It's who you're going towards and why you're going in and what should hit the cutting floor like I talked about.

Last time because you can't write, you know, even a person who's 20 years old can't write 20 years into a book, we make choices.

And the way we make those choices, which is like the way we turn left or right at the end of your neighborhood, is by knowing why are you writing this, and to whom are you writing this, and then thirdly, what is the message that you're sending, the essential message, which is the hub of a wheel with the spokes or the final address in your GPS.

Without those things, Matt, we will flounder and we will fail because we don't know where we're going.

 

Matt Zaun 

So I love the example of a GPS, so let's continue to use it. you and I are both in the greater Philadelphia area for everyone listening.

And if you and I jumped in a car together and we said, we want to drive to Los Angeles, we punch an address in the LA area in our GPS.

Who and I both know what's punching in the GPS at that moment isn't going to happen exactly like that.

We might drive a few states and there'll be a bridge that's out. So we need to reroute and go a different way.

We're going to drive somewhere in the Midwest and there's going to potentially be some flooding somewhere. So now we need to go another way.

Then we're going to so all these different things. There's going to be traffic jams. It's going to reroute and say, do you want to get there quicker because there's a major accident ahead.

So the reason why I'm saying all this is do you ever find yourself really getting to the why of the entire intention of why someone wants to write a book?

And then you start this process and you get three months in and then the why changes or the goals change or you need to reroute to like, essentially, you're still going to get there, right?

still going to get to Los Angeles one way or another, but it's not going to be exactly like the GPS laid out.

In the beginning, does that happen often or is that very rare? And if so, how do you. How do you reroute to make sure you're still getting to the destination?

 

Amy Lynch

So, there's one common pitfall, which is an example you're using, a bridge that's out. So, there's one common bridge that's out in writing a book.

If you go through the process where you have the objectives, nail down, you have the audience nail down, and you have the main message, the one sentence explanation, nail down.

You rarely, I've never had an experience where I didn't get where we were going. That's never happened. This is the bridge that's out.

We get going and we realize that one of the topics that we thought was a chapter because it's very tightly related to the main concept becomes too large.

So, you know, an example recently, I was writing a book with Kevin Nolan who runs the largest residence. potential painting company in, I think, the country, but certainly in Philadelphia.

And we had the whole book laid out, and we were just cruising through it. Then we got to the chapter on succession, because Kevin is currently passing his company on to the next generation, and we realized that that was a world, not a chapter.

And it was tightly related to our GPS concept, so it had to stay in. But it became enormous, because it's a 10-year process, according to Kevin.

So when we got into that, we realized this is too large for a chapter, because, you know, a book, you generally keep the chapters in the ballpark with the same length.

And then we hit one that was a universe. And so that is the bridge that's out sometimes, because my clients are all high-level professionals.

have a ton of expertise in their field. and then sometimes they don't realize it, but a piece of their expertise is actually a whole world.

That's what happened with this book with Kevin. We realized that the succession is a full-length book. So what we did was we acknowledged that to the reader.

If you are in a position where you're within 10 years as a reader of passing your company on, selling it or passing it to another generation of owners, then you need to read my follow-up book on succession.

But here are the key concepts to be considering. then we just broke it down for everybody who is not within 10 years of retiring.

These are the things to consider. Everyone who is within 10 years of retiring, here is the main things that you have to keep on your radar, but in the end, grab this second book.

So we just acknowledge that. So that would be a really common bridge out on the way to Los Angeles.

 

Matt Zaun 

Thanks for sharing that. So let's say you sit down with someone, you get to their why, their main why, you lay out all the chapters, you have a really good understanding of where to go, so what to punch in the GPS.

So now I would be intrigued, as I'm sure many people listening would, how on earth do you personally do that?

You have written tons and tons of books, that is fascinating to people. This is such an uphill climb for people.

Where do you start? What would be a process or a systematic approach that you go to? Once you have the nuts and bolts of the ideas, how are you now actually writing the book for someone?

 

Amy Lynch

So you know, go writing and book coaching, it's a continuum that. So there are people who would be on the hard ghost writing end of the continuum who just say,

Hey Amy, this is an idea that I have. I think it's a gap in the literature and I would really like a book on this topic and they'll give me a three-word topic and say thanks.

Let's do a 50,000 word book on that call me when it's done. Like that's the hard left of ghost writing and then what is more common?

I do have clients like that. I actually love doing that. I love doing the research and that's a fun project.

But what is most common is that people are experts in their field and want to write where their expertise lies and need a hand along the way.

So that would be farther to the right of book co-authoring, co-writing, ghost writing, yes, in that I take their content and make it expert quality writing.

But the content is their own. That's common and I love doing that. So that's something along more. about a coach slash, slash ghost writer.

So the process is we meet together to map it all out. go through the steps I've already explained. Objectives, audience, sentence explanation.

And then once we have that, then we're ready to lay out a table of contents. So, you know, when I sit down in this first meeting, which has never been less than two hours, we usually can walk out in two and a half.

And that's with a table of contents. So, once we have the main concept, then I ask, well, let's just throw out there at random up to 10 topics that are very tightly related to this one sentence explanation that you are an expert on, that you could talk about at an expert level.

And so they'll just chuck out, you know, four, five, six, eight. 10 of the most ideas related to that central idea that they really have significant experience and expertise on those areas.

So then we just look at the, I write them down and then put them into some kind of a shape that we can talk about back and forth.

And then then I say, if you could only cover one, which one is it? And then they point to it.

And I put that on, you know, chapter one. If you could only cover two of these and then you died.

And that's a little more of it in dark, but we put it that way in smiling terms. And then they point to the second one.

If they could only write two before they died, those two. there's six total topics there, we go down there until we have them in order of importance on that person's heart.

And then we throw out where it's like, are these cause and effect? do we, is this order reasonable? Like, is any of these cause?

And the other's effect is chronology effect or do we have to talk about a startup before we talk about succession?

Well, yes, we can't have succession be chapter one and startup be chapter six. That's illogical. So I have a bunch of questions like that that we examine the six chapters that we're intending to write and make sure that they are in the proper order with all things considered.

And then from there, we just go back to number one and we do another GPS. put in a, you know how you can add a stop on your GPS if you need to get gas or dunking donuts.

So we add a stop, which is writing out a one sentence explanation just like the book has, but for that chapter.

It has to have a goal of that chapter that everything in that chapter is tied directly to, which of course is tied to the ultimate one sentence explanation.

the GPS address that we're going to. So, like adding a stop, you choose the dunking donuts that's on the way to your destination and not the one that's in the opposite direction.

So, it's like that. So, we get a one sentence core message for that chapter and we do the same thing again.

What are the subheadings within that chapter we really want to talk about? And we come up with four. We check that they're in the right order.

And then we have a GPS for chapter one. And then I have them get out their voice recorder and go through the subheadings and they can't talk about anything but subheading A.

And they ramble on subheading A and they stop and say, okay, I'm moving on to subheading B, which is this and they talk about that.

And they voice record it or they just type it in, you know, rapid speed, careless of grammar. And then they give me that.

And then I take it from there.

 

Matt Zaun 

The thing that's the most intriguing to me is The example you gave where someone gives you very little information.

They give you a couple words and they say, write me a book. in eight months, I look forward to seeing it.

I think that's bewildered to lot of people because that is quite the ask. And you also mentioned Nolan painting.

So let's use the painting example, right? We're a society of preparation. So from a painting perspective, people wouldn't dream of not having proper preparation in their house prior to painting, right?

People put drop cloths down, tape windows. So we are a society of preparation. We're also a society of warm up, right?

So if we're only listening that does any kind of athletic activity, whether it's weightlifting or jogging or what have you, we like to warm our muscles up.

So what fascinates me is someone, and I appreciate you sharing with us the organizational approach when there's a hybrid of you working with your client tag teaming, but it is interesting to me to take just a couple pieces of information and then.

also make this really engaging book out of it. So is there anything that you personally do to warm up your brain to prepare it to write and get into different concepts and maybe have this surge of creativity, if you will, so you could start the writing process?

If so, what would be something that you do to warm up your brain to get to that point where you can start writing?

 

Amy Lynch

So I would say there's two things that I do regularly. know, last time we talked about just pallet cleansing.

So if I spent the morning working on a medical book with a doctor I'm partnering with, who's writing an awesome book towards women, young women, then in the afternoon I were going to work on if I was going to work on Kevin Nolan's book, which is an operating system for businesses, particularly businesses contracting businesses.

That's just such a radically different. So I might do a pallet plans. I might have a lunch and sit and watch half an episode of a Korean drama that I'm into at that moment.

Right now I'm doing these four minute Korean reading lessons, four minutes is so short. So I might sit down and do four four minute lessons and just really clear that medical book out of my brain.

And then a really something that's so helpful to me, Matt. And I would think it would be helpful to everybody listening since I know that your listeners are high level achievers is walking.

Walking is the key to just setting my mind free and seeing the big picture. You don't want to drop into the weeds and into the nitty gritty of a book project or someone's story.

You know, you can get so confused and muddled by the the details and the weeds that walking outside completely sets my brain free.

I think it would happen to everyone. everybody and just lets me see the bigger picture just lets my brain expand so I do a 30 minute walk but if I don't have time for that I just step out onto my deck which is you know into woods and just think about the project and let my brain think like what are we doing here who cares about this what is the point what are we going for what is the feel of this and just ask the big questions and let my brain think about the big ideas of this project which is capturing you know if I was working on Kevin's book 44 years of trials ups and downs running a contracting business what worked what didn't how can other people avoid the trouble on the trial that Kevin talks about in his book is so difficult how can people be free from there and be positioned in strength right from the

the get go. so I just, you know, not take any pens or computers or paper, just let my brain absorb the big picture.

What are we doing here and why are we doing it? So that would be a really common thing, especially if I'm transitioning from one project to another or one author to another, because I'm getting out of one headspace and jumping into another person's headspace.

So walking outside or being outside with no writing utensils is super key. And then a second thing that that I like to do, which I will sometimes do walking as well, and this is where I think people are really different.

know some people say I think with a pen, I know some people that think with pictures, you've seen people draw, there was like pictures on sometimes they'll put them on YouTube, where all of their ideas turn into a graphic image.

So, they think that way, I think in mental shelving, mental shelves, so I like to do the same exercise with no pen and paper and just put into buckets the things that we're trying to accomplish in a book project.

So I'll think about how does this author really going to connect? If young women age 25 to 45 is our target audience, we want to connect with that group.

What are those people thinking? What are they worried about? What are they living through that this author can connect with them?

So they have a bucket like that called connection. And then another bucket called engagement, what would really be interesting that would make them keep reading?

Because when you read a book and write a book, the goal of every page is that the people turn the page and keep reading.

Everything. Paragraph the goal is that they continue to read the next one and that takes engagement They must be getting value, but also interest out of their reading experience where they they like They like what they're reading.

They're getting their benefiting. They're getting value. They're connecting personally This person gets me. They know what I'm going through and this book is helping me I have to see what comes next So just thinking about connection and engagement as a bucket and what what am I going to put into that bucket and then Organizing the expertise what would really be helpful to this audience based on this main idea So I my brain works that way.

We're with mental buckets sitting on mental shelves And that stays with me You know other experts that I work with say that that would not work for them They have to write it out into lists and categories, which is good or

brought into pictures, and that's good. But if I'm outside, I can organize it mentally. And then I'm ready to move on to the next stage, which is layering the process.

 

Matt Zaun

So there's a lot to unpack with what you said. So first, if you were intrigued by the pallet cleanse idea, highly recommend you go listen to the first episode.

I mean, I did absolutely fascinating, very insightful regarding pallet cleanse. So just to try to do it justice, Amy had mentioned that she utilizes foreign language for that pallet cleanse.

So she is proficient in Korean, so she'll watch a Korean drama, and that resets her brain as it pertains to her writing English words.

I found that fascinating. You also mentioned Amy to comment regarding classical music, can help as a pallet cleanse as well.

So since that episode that we did, the first one, I have been thinking about ways from a pallet cleanse perspective.

So I'm, I'm still in the early stages of trying to figure out what works for me. But, you know, imagine me behind my desk, working for a few hours.

I need to almost reset my brain for the next project. So one of the things that I've been doing, and I don't know how, how good this is or not, but I'm just, I'm starting as I go into another room and I might just do a push up or two just to get my, my, my body moving.

And then maybe I'll listen to some music and then I'll go back and I'll start the next project. That's been a little bit of a reset for me.

So I'm still working on that. So again, highly recommend everyone go listen to the first episode. I will include a link in the show notes.

You can just click and go from there. I do want to talk about the walking piece because I think this is incredibly important.

So there are people listening to this episode that are probably either verbally shouting at you, Amy, in their mind, they're shouting, I don't have time for that, Amy.

You do. strategy. Because one of the story strategy pieces when it came to Winston Churchill was, how do I get the United States involved to help us all the time to store a strategy on the messages, the stories that he needed to share with the United States at that point to get them into the war.

So I just want people to recognize if you were a CEO, you run a massive organization, you have a million things going on, you're working 12 plus hour days, how on earth, Amy, am I going to set us that time to go for a walk.

Some of the greatest leaders in history that had way too much going on under intensive pressure, a pressure cooker, if you will, realized the creativity that can be spurred from walking.

So with that said, I want to dive into what this looks like. I want to talk about about you specifically because obviously it would be different for other people, just like the palate cleanse idea.

I'm making it my own thing based on on what you do. Obviously, I don't know Korean. So that's not the way I'm doing it.

I'm doing something else.

 

Amy Lynch

So people are going to take these ideas and they're going to do what they're going to do based on their preferences and what they want.

But I want you to take us through walking. So here's what I mean.

 

Matt Zaun 

I'm trying to visualize what the walk would be. So do you, maybe you're doing this on purpose. Maybe this is more subconscious.

So you might have to think a little bit more about this. But are you looking at the trees while you're walking?

Are you walking slowly? Are you speed walking? Are you is there a certain distance? Is it a few blocks around your house?

take us through a typical walk that you would do to paint the picture for us on what walking looks like for you.

 

Amy Lynch

Right. for the busy people that you're talking about, I'm about to make the thing worse because I actually do two walks a day.

So if you ever read atomic habits now, you probably have, you know, he talks a lot about habit stacking.

one of the, so I believe in that stacking habits for busy people is the way to make a change in life where you actually will carry it through.

So every day, say I'm from home, of the commute, which will be different probably from some of the people that are listening, So first thing I do every day is I drink a cup of coffee and I read the newspaper.

So I do that every day just to know what's happening in the world and to let my brain start to come like the lights to come up.

I'm not, I don't wake up really alert and alive. So the the New York Times helps me to come up to date a few things in there, I link out.

So I just let my brain come, the brain, brightness on my brain, like on your phone. Let the brightness come up to where I'm functioning.

And then I'm a Bible reader. I really, you know, probably all the readers have, whether you view the Bible as true or as world literature, it's both and.

So I love to read the Bible. And so I do that every day, which I think is kind of interesting, you know, talking about your Churchill and Lincoln examples, because, you know, one of the things I come across, I try to read the Bible A to Z once a year.

So I just have, I just get a plan that's online and follow it. And one of the things I'm interested in is that Jesus Christ is followed around by crowds in the thousands.

And I'm always amazed when I get to all those points that say, so he withdrew to the mountain to pray and I think of all people who are literally being pursued by thousands of interested listeners has time to pull aside.

in nature and just be quiet for a little while. That's really interesting to me. Another person that's interesting on that front is Jonathan Edwards, which is arguably one of the best minds to ever come out of the United States of America.

He walked, I think it might be five or eight miles every single day and he did, he pulled away to organize his thoughts too.

So that's a quick aside. So what I do is, I will do that until eight o'clock and then eight o'clock, rain, snow, walk out the door and I walk from eight to eight thirty right in my neighborhood and thankfully I have an absolutely beautiful park like neighborhood.

So it's really a lot of great oxygen in the air and really beautiful to walk around there. I believe in three by fives, Matt.

So I buy them by the thousands and then I just keep a list of things that I want to think about on three by five.

So I always have a three by five in my pocket, have one right now, and I just, I will have that and it'll just have like a word on it.

So if I'm thinking about Matt Zahn's book, then I'll have that on there. Matt Zahn's book, if I'm thinking through a problem one of my children is having, I'll have their name and their problem on there.

If I'm thinking about, you know, the doctor's book that I'm talking about, I'll just have that on there. So I will pull out my three by five and just see what's on my mind.

What's, what's, what needs sorting as the British would say. And so I will look over the items that need sorting.

And I will just walk and think about them and just, you know, kind of set my mind free. So I choose to only, our neighborhood has lots of call to stacks and side streets, but there is like one loop.

And to just not have to make any decisions, I always just walk the loop. So I don't have to think about anything else except the things that are on my mind.

So that's how I do it. have topics that I want to think about and I walk the same routes, but I don't have to make any decisions as I'm walking and I can really set my mind free to just consider big picture things that are on my three by five.

 

Matt Zaun 

So in practicality, here's how I think this could be incredibly insightful for people listening. So a lot of people listening have staff meetings.

They need to go talk to their team or maybe the entire company and clearly they would want to be inspiring, not dull, not boring.

No one wants to be boring. They want to be vibrant. They want to be inspiring. They want to be influential.

They want to be persuasive. I do think a practical step to do that is for someone to go for a walk and just think about what their team might be thinking.

What are some of the fears that their team members have? Continue to walk. Think about all the fears and maybe you're just thinking of three to five different things that are afraid of A, B and C.

see. And then there's different subcategories regarding that fear. So maybe one of the topic points is they're afraid of the changing economy.

Okay, well, there's like 30 subcategories regarding the changing economy that you could think about. I do think that's a way to think in a creative manner.

And I say that because one of the dangers that I see with a lot of C-suite executives when it comes to staff meetings is they're very focused on agenda items.

Just check the box. I have this agenda and they just go check line by line by line through these different points.

But it's not engaging. It's not vibrant. It doesn't grab the audience and pull them in and inspire them to take the actions that they want them to take.

So I can really see how walking would be part of someone's process where let's say that they have a staff meeting on Friday.

Well, maybe they'd want to go for a walk on Wednesday afternoon. Collect their thoughts. think about the creative aspects of that staff meeting.

Another thing that you mentioned, the three by five, I don't want people to miss this, the power in three by five, because very few people actually utilize them, I think from a really good organizational perspective.

Now, Amy, sure you do this differently. This is just something that I've learned over the years that it's been incredibly helpful to me.

A couple of years ago is really struggling with building out a new training. So I really wanted to get another training out into the world.

And I had all these ideas. And you had mentioned on the last episode, I believe you, I forget exactly what you called it, but you mentioned soup.

I think you said you, you turned soup into systems or something like that, where there's all these different ideas and someone has, what's that?

Sort the soup.

 

Amy Lynch

Sort the soup. That's it.

 

Matt Zaun 

Okay. Sort the soup. I knew there was some type of alliteration there with acids, right? So sort the soup.

So I was really struggling and it was I was writing and I had all these pieces of paper with stuff scratched on them I had Google Docs where I had different Power graphs and I was trying to collect my thoughts the best I possibly could So what I did one day is I threw my hands up in the air and I said I Need to focus on Organization almost like what you said the mental shelving like building out shelves if you will but what I did was I took A pack of three by five index cards, and I went to a hotel room Now not everyone needs to do this I did this because I had three little kids and as I'm sure you can imagine if I did this in my house My little kids would be running all over it.

So it wasn't gonna work So I literally went into a hotel room I had my stack of index cards and what I did was I thought about the main concepts I wanted this training to teach people so I had three main concepts and then what I did was I set a timer

I believe it was 15 minutes for each topic. It's been so long now. I believe it was 15 minutes.

But what I did was I wrote one word on each 3x5 card and I kept flipping the card as it pertained to the topic.

So everything, and you had talked about a bike, like the tires on a bike and the spokes. So I had one core theme within these three topics.

And then the spokes were all the different topics on all the different cards. And one of reasons why the hotel room was incredible for this was now I have tons and tons and tons of space where I have the bed, I have the desk, I have the floor.

So if you would have walked into the hotel room, you might have thought I was like a serial killer or something like it was just cards everywhere.

As far as you can see, there was nothing but cards all over the hotel room. So then what I did was I took the cards and I started to segment them and started to organize them.

So I thought in my mind, okay, from this train. I'm gonna get from point A to point B. Here's the start and then here's step two, step three, step four, step five.

The point of this is for months and months of agony, not knowing how to do this, within one night in a hotel room, I built out the entire training from an organizational perspective.

In a matter of weeks, I had all the content for it. It was wild, right? So I'm saying this from a practical perspective, I really do think people listening can do this.

Think about something that you need of a surge of ideas for. Think of something that you're communicating to people.

You're doing your best to inspire people, a staff meeting. How would you come up with a speech for that staff meeting?

Go for a walk, get a surge of ideas, figure out the pain point of your team and or your clients, dive into the topics of fear, get those topics, and then you can really use the three-by-five index cards to organize and destroy.

sure. And I think doing that, you'll be heading shoulders above everyone, everyone else when it comes to organization. So I don't know if you want to make any points regarding that mental shelving.

But is there anything else based on what I shared that someone can do, at least to position themselves for not only creative aspect, but also the organizational perspective, the systematic approach.

 

Amy Lynch

Mm hmm. Yeah, I'll make one more comment, Matt. So, you know, the walking, just to kind of sum it up for everybody listening because everyone's in a different field or industry.

The walking will answer the question, what matters and what doesn't. So the walking is just setting your mind free to see the big picture, whether you're writing a company newsletter, starting a blog, writing a book project, or, or going to give a speech, or like you're using the example of a company meeting, all of those things, what, what matters and what doesn't, setting your brain free to get the big picture.

And then And everything that doesn't matter, you just cut off the table. So then you're ready for that next level, which, you know, I'm calling mental shelving, you're calling three by five organization into buckets.

Whatever a person's system is, whether it's pictures, whether it's written words, whether it's mental buckets, that next layer is taking the stuff that you said, what matters on your walk, and then organizing that into buckets.

you know, what is your staff afraid of? That's a great example. What are they looking forward to? What are they hoping for?

What do they want to feel from you? So putting all those things into categories that have teeth to them.

And then the third layer, for me, is carrying out those mental buckets into a finished product, which is, you know, in my life, I call that layering or making passes.

 

Matt Zaun 

layering and making past it. So talk a little bit more about that.

 

Amy Lynch

What, what does that entail? So, you know, Matt, I'm a work ahead of schedule person, whether that's a good thing or a bad thing or drives my clients crazy.

Sometimes I feel like a straight up nag, but I like to work far in advance because that's the way that I find I get the best end product.

So I will call it making passes. I make passes over stuff. So let's say, you know, a client gives me a chapter that we had all laid out in our table of contents.

And the chapter is on how to handle insurance in your company. You know, everything that this person learned over 40 years on best practices and what really helps the company, what helps the staff and handling insurance, super boring topic.

But we organize a chapter on this topic because everybody has to deal with insurance. then we organize this. hub headings of that chapter, and the client spoke into a voice recorder that turned into dictation into text topics one, two, and four in that chapter.

And then they handed me that raw content. So it's chapter two, let's say how to handle insurance raw content in the most basic order.

So I look at it, and it's somewhat soupy at that point. So I'll just make passes over it once a day with the palate cleanser in between it and my next project.

And I'll sort the soup on day one and make sure that everything is in, if I have four subheadings in the chapter, everything's in the right bucket, bucket one, two, four, the stories, the illustrations, the facts, the content, the history, it's in, you know, subheading one, two, three, four is in the right place.

then I walk away, do a palate cleanser, go on to the next project. The next day I get out that.

Chapter two on insurance again. And I just go through and make sure that every sentence has like a punctuation.

It's grammatically correct so that I can read it and understand what's being communicated in every sentence and I walk away.

And the third day I'll come and make a third pass and I'll take every sentence and I'll look at it as a block.

And so if we're working in subheading number one, I'll just make sure that the story is in the right place and the introduction.

Everybody understands what this subheading is about. Then there's a story that illustrates it so people keep reading. They want everybody to keep on reading.

And then they get the facts that add value to their life, to their business, to their experience. And then we conclude it in a way that ties it all together.

So I just make sure that that every subheading is has a logical flow and I walk away. And the next day I come back and so I just make pass after pass until the day comes.

When I read chapter two on insurance and I can't even find one tweak, I can't make it any better, everything looks amazing, it's engaging, it's interesting, it has plenty of illustrations and story, the facts are at a lot of value.

I just make sure that it's, I'll say perfect, and everybody understands in a human way, it's perfect, I can't do any better.

And then I know that it's ready to move on down the assembly line to my team of editors after that.

 

Matt Zaun 

Wow. Thank you for showing that. You've given us a lot to think of. I'm so thankful that you are willing to do a series with us because there's so much more that we can pull out and we can dive deeper on.

So I'm looking forward to that episode the next one we're going to do. But I appreciate this one. I appreciate the time you gave us and there's three things that I want to highlight and I want people to focus on.

I did really. appreciate you mentioning the walking piece. One of the dangers with this is because we're all used to walking.

We know how to do it. I don't want people just to fly over the concept of something that they could be doing when it comes to a creative perspective.

I think of a story regarding Vince Lombardi, where after losing a game, he held up a football and said, gentlemen, this is a football.

Why would he be saying that to professional athletes, the top of their game? He's saying it because symbolically, it's we need to go back to the basics to win the next game.

The same instrument comes to walking, very basic principle. I would challenge everyone listening, figure out how to actually walk.

I know it sounds weird. I'll never forget a book my father had, which the book was how to read a book.

And it went into all the different concepts on how you actually read a book to get maximum benefit out of it.

I'll never forget that. So how do you actually walk? Are you going to about your phone off, put it on, do not have to serve.

Are you going to walk during your lunch break? Are you going to walk on Thursday afternoons? And the reason why you're going to do that is there's going to be the surge of ideas to get ready for different meetings and events you have to come.

How are you going to walk? Are you going to walk fast? you going to walk slow? What route are you going to take?

So I really challenge people to think about that more. I also appreciate you mentioning the mental shelving piece. So I would challenge everyone listening.

What are you doing from an organizational perspective? Are you setting up systems to be more organized with your thoughts?

I think that was an incredible second point. And then the third and final point is the layering and making passes concept.

This is fascinating to me because I visualize an assembly line. So a few months ago, I toured Motown in Detroit.

Very intriguing to me. So for everyone listening that might not know, the gentleman who created Motown used to be an assembly line worker and the Ford manufacturing plant.

And he recognized on this side of the conveyor belt, there's just metal. And then on the other end, there's a car, but there's all these processes that take place.

So he was very good when it came to writing songs. So he said, is there any way that we can create an assembly line to do this?

What he did was if you go to the California, but the old Motown in Detroit, it's a series of homes.

He bought up a bunch of homes. And this home was you're going to take a singer and you're going to teach the singer stage dynamics how to perform on stage.

This home was you're going to talk about the branding and get the branding behind him. This home was who basically he created an assembly line where a normal person that was really good at singing on the up they would be on this end.

And then at the end of the assembly line, they came out a star. And everyone listening knows Motown, Crank,

out tons of stars. there was an assembly line process. The reason why I say that is because I challenged people listening to come up with a process regarding this layering and making passes.

So what it looks like, what it might look like in people's world, is do you have an assembly line process for getting ready for a meeting?

Do you have an assembly line process for, you know, you doing one-on-ones with one of your key executives? Do you have a process where you say, okay, how do I go from point A to point B to make sure that I'm going to get this across?

Do you have an editing process yourself? So I challenge everyone listening to think about that more. So those are the three main concepts that I got from this episode.

I'm excited to do the next one, but if people want to get more information on you, Amy, they want to find out a little bit more about your services.

They want to reach out to you for a book. Where's the best place they can go to get that information?

 

Amy Lynch

I just would start on my website, friendlycreative.com and I I know, Matt, you put that in the show notes.

just go there and just start to fish around and see what, see what we do and see if there's anything on there that makes your life easier.

 

Matt Zaun 

Perfect. Yeah. So I absolutely include that include that in the show notes. People could just click and go. And Amy, thanks again.

I look forward to our next episode together.

 

Amy Lynch

You're welcome, Matt. Thanks for having me.