The Publishing Performance Show

Walt Hampton – The 6 Paths to Finishing Your Book (Even When You’re Busy)

• Teddy Smith • Episode 146

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Walt Hampton is the Acquisitions Editor and Director of Marketing at Summit Press Publishing, where he reviews incoming manuscripts and helps authors do more than simply publish—he helps them get the book out into the world in a big way. Walt works with entrepreneurs and high-performing professionals to turn their books into keynotes, programs, coaching and consulting offers, and long-term marketing assets—because, as he puts it, it’s not about the book, it’s what you do with the book. In this conversation, Walt breaks down practical strategies for busy writers, including time blocking, reducing interruptions, reverse-engineering your writing sessions, and his six paths to finishing your book (from one-page-a-day all the way to ghostwriting).


In this episode:

  • Walt’s dual role: acquisitions (reviewing manuscripts) + marketing (helping authors leverage the book)
  • What makes Summit Press different: publishing + continued support long after launch
  • Real examples of book leverage: building keynotes and high-ticket programs around the book
  • Why publishing success requires long-term momentum (it’s a marathon, not a sprint)
  • Time mastery for busy professionals: clarity of “why” + small consistent steps
  • Time blocking: scheduling writing like client work (starting with just 1 hour/week)
  • Reverse-engineering the process: define thesis/TOC/conclusion so each session has a purpose
  • “Write the closing argument first”: drafting the conclusion early to create a destination
  • Common time-wasters: phone proximity, alerts, and constant interruption
  • Interruption science + attentional residue: why refocusing takes longer than you think
  • Simple boundary systems: turning everything off + enrolling assistants/teams to protect focus time
  • The “sticky note on the glass door” tactic for open-office interruptions
  • Where AI helps (and where it hurts): great for brainstorming/themes + proofreading, bad for “soulless” manuscripts
  • Final takeaway: begin imperfectly—editing comes later, but you can’t edit a blank page


Resources mentioned:

  • Summit Press Publishers: https://summitpresspublishers.com/
  • Brick by Brick
  • Journeys on the Edge: Living a Life That Matters 
  • The Power Principles of Time Mastery: Do Less, Make More, Have Fun



Connect with Walt Hampton / Summit Press:


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Teddy Smith (00:01.324)
Hi everyone and welcome to the Publishing Informant Show. Today I'm really delighted to be joined by Walt Hampton, who is the Acquisitions Editor and the Director of Marketing for Summit Press Publishing. So thank you very much for joining me, Walt.

Walt Hampton (00:12.241)
So happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Teddy Smith (00:14.958)
so we were joking before you came on, you've got a long job title. Explain to me what that job title means and what you do.

Walt Hampton (00:20.189)
It is, you forgot to mention that I'm a legend in my own mind too, Teddy. So as acquisitions editor at Summit Press Publishers, I've got the great privilege and gift of reviewing manuscripts that people send us when they would like to explore publishing with us. So I, every week I'm looking at dozens of different manuscripts that come in from people who have books that are either

in their minds still or actually have some files created. And so that's a really fun part of my job. And the other part is that the other end of the process of writing and publishing a book, a book is only valuable in the world if you get it out in the world in a big way. And one of my joys is helping authors create

the means by which they make that happen. Whether it be taking their book and creating a product or a program, developing a keynote, using it to build a coaching or consulting business, all the different ways that authors can actually leverage the book. One of the things we say at Summit Press is that it's

really not about the book, it's what you do with the book that actually brings you the income and allows you to make the impact that you want in the world.

Teddy Smith (01:55.086)
So what is it about Summit Press that is different to other publishers?

Walt Hampton (02:01.233)
Well, I would say, and our team actually met about this yesterday, what's different about us is that we're not just about publishing great books, great looking books, substantive books, but actually continuing to support our authors through the process for as long as they want to get the book out into the world. so...

You know, for example, recently with a wonderful book by an experiential educator, we worked on creating a keynote address that she was able to get paid $10,000 an event for. One of our authors in the financial services world wanted to take the book and create a product or program for his audience.

when we launched the book, he had a quarter million dollar launch date, not because of the book by itself, but by virtue of having a program. It was a $5,000 program and he sold 100 units of that program even before we published the book. But then, you what happens, Teddy, and you know this being in the industry is that

Teddy Smith (03:16.044)
Wow.

Walt Hampton (03:22.429)
Oftentimes there's a big splash when a book is released, keeping the momentum going. I remember when I released my first book, Journeys on the Edge, Living a Life that Matters, way, back in the day. Became a two-time winner of the North American Book Awards, an Amazon bestseller. My publisher back in the day said, well,

on the day of publication said, well, Walt, congratulations, you're halfway there. And I was like, what do you mean? My book is out in the world. And she was, I'm an ultra distance athlete. I run crazy distances like 50 and a hundred miles. And she was a marathoner. And I got what she was saying. What she was saying is publishing a book is not a sprint. It really is a marathon. And keeping the message out in the world can

Continuing to use the book to bring clients to you is part of the joy that we have as a publishing house and I think The thing that separates us in the market one of the things I think that separates us in the marketplace

Teddy Smith (04:32.301)
Yeah, sometimes I think writing the book is the easiest part of publishing because you've got full control over what you're doing. And it's like, everything's down to whether you're actually doing the job you need to do. Whereas the other stuff is a lot more tactical and there's a lot more issues to it.

Walt Hampton (04:45.03)
Yes.

Walt Hampton (04:48.613)
Yes, yeah, there are a lot of moving parts to it. you know, what we have found is that for many of our authors, the book when used correctly becomes the single most powerful lead magnet for their business. We published a book this past year in a very niche arena of the sex addiction arena. And that's a very tricky

business to do traditional Google pay-per-click or Facebook advertising, but the book backed by the marketing systems and processes that we've developed with the author has just exponentially allowed this author to reach a lot of people and help a lot of people with a very tricky problem.

Teddy Smith (05:39.096)
Yeah, definitely. So you don't just help people with the publishing of the book. A lot of it is around the marketing and the follow-up business you can build around it and essentially helping people to create that entire sort of network of business around them.

Walt Hampton (05:54.129)
Yes, exactly.

Teddy Smith (05:57.944)
Yeah. So one thing, one of your oldest, sorry, I'll say it big. One of your previous books, it one of things I wanted to talk about today was the powers and the principles of time, the power principles of time mastery, sorry. And I know a lot of the people that you work with are, you know, successful business people, or they are successful in other ways. And generally when people are successful, that time commitment stuff, that's the hardest part to get people because, know, they're

busy working on their actual business. And so I think one of the things I want to talk about was if when you are trying to set time aside to write a book, what is the key thing that you need to do in order to make sure you've got time to write that book?

Walt Hampton (06:43.613)
So coming back to my example of ultra-marathoning or I do a lot of high altitude mountain climbing, I couldn't tell our listeners today how to run a 50-mile race other than to say that it's one step at a time or how to climb a 7,000-meter peak. It's done one step at a time. Anything big is done one step at a time.

Teddy Smith (07:02.926)
You

Walt Hampton (07:13.987)
Number one, getting really clear about what you want to create in the world for a book and why it matters, our why. As you know, Teddy, is the rocket fuel that helps us bust through the resistance and overcome the hurdles. And if our why is sufficient and we are clear about the destination, then honoring that call, honoring that mission by carving out time.

Many times our authors will say, we just don't have time to write a book. Well, time blocking is a key principle in time management and productivity. There's lots of research around it about why it works, how it works. And we work best in 60 to 90 minute blocks of time. We block time generally for client work, for consulting work. We block time for

medical appointments, we tend not to block time for things like exercise and well-being. We tend not to block time for relationship stuff. And we tend not to block time for that thing that we would really like to get to, that book that we'd like to write someday. But when we block at least small amounts of time regularly,

The compounding effect is huge. And so, you know, if someone said to me, well, where should I start? I would say start by blocking out an hour a week to write. Just start there. Start there. Maybe it will becomes, you know, an hour three times a week. A lot of writers and creatives, they think that they need to have massive amounts of space, you know, and ideally

know, it would be great to be a Faulkner or Hemingway and move to Venice and get a beret and sit on the Grand Canal and write every day at Harry's Bar. But the truth is that in the modern day world, we don't have the luxury of that. But we can push a book forward brick by brick as the title of the new book that we just released today, you know.

Walt Hampton (09:39.613)
How is a cathedral built? Stone by stone. So one step at a time, but the key is to schedule it and to honor it as a commitment to yourself and this amazing work that you're going to get out into the world.

Teddy Smith (09:42.478)
Yeah.

Teddy Smith (09:52.152)
When you're doing that time blocking, do you have a structure that you give to that time? So say for example, you say, this week I'm going to write for two hours in two one hour blocks. How do you say in that first hour, I'm going to do X, Y, Z?

Walt Hampton (10:07.537)
Yeah, well, again, it's reverse engineering. And for example, this morning, we're working on a book in a very interesting niche industry around a just really tragic medical issue called locked-in syndrome. It's precipitated by stroke in the brainstem.

And we were reverse engineering some of the questions that our authors team will answer to the fan asked to the families that they're going to interview or that will interview. So if I were, you before you and I got together today, my last hour was on my calendar, develop interview questions. That's what I did. I developed the interview questions.

It could be if I'm first starting out, what do I want the overall thesis of the book to be? I'm going to spend this hour on that. Or it could be if I'm moving forward, would be a draft TOC, table of contents for this book? Or it might be what is the conclusion of the book going to be? And not so parenthetically, that's a pretty early

Teddy Smith (11:28.524)
Hmm.

Walt Hampton (11:33.379)
step in writing a book. I was, I don't think you and I talked about this, but I was a trial lawyer for a managing partner of a trial firm for many, many years. And my trial advocacy teacher said, always write your closing argument first. And what that gives to an author is then they have a destination they're writing to. They have a pre-formed arc that they're writing to.

Teddy Smith (11:49.219)
Hmm.

Walt Hampton (12:02.085)
So the hour might be, or the two hours might be work on the conclusion of my book. So just breaking down the components of a book. And then later, course, reviewing the draft or proofreading or whatever those are. But your question is an important one because what happens if you just have work on book, you show up in that hour of time, you go, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Yeah.

Teddy Smith (12:06.871)
Hmm.

Teddy Smith (12:25.933)
Yeah.

Exactly. Well, I think so. mean, you kind of touched on it before you mentioned it's understanding what your why is. And if you are writing backwards, I mean, the conclusion is essentially giving away your, why you're writing that book in the first place. So by sometimes by writing backwards, I think you're right. You can, you can sort of outline why you're doing it in the first place and then set your time like that. Does that make sense?

Walt Hampton (12:31.325)
Does that help, that answer?

Walt Hampton (12:56.571)
Yes, absolutely. And it's interesting because as you're talking, I'm just thinking that's the way we help people build keynotes too. We actually develop the grand exhortation, that grand call to action, that thing the speaker wants their audience to remember. What often happens when you rehearse a keynote is you rehearse it from the beginning to the end. And of course, what happens is the beginning is great, but the end is weak.

Teddy Smith (13:03.694)
Mm.

Walt Hampton (13:24.497)
when you rehearse it from the end back to the beginning, the thing that people remember is that grand close. similarly with a book, the people who are reading the book, they're gonna walk away with, what am I gonna do now? That's the invitation, particularly for prescriptive non-fiction books. What can I do now to actualize all these lessons in the world? And that's what we want for our readers.

Teddy Smith (13:24.643)
Hmm.

Teddy Smith (13:49.647)
Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it. It's like, what do want the takeaways to be? And then write it backwards in there. I mean, you mentioned just now you're writing or you've just finished writing brick by brick. What did your daily or weekly writing schedule look like for that? And how did you structure that time?

Walt Hampton (14:08.262)
Well, I'm gonna answer from my books because that book was just released by an authored by our publisher, Sheibani. Yeah, no, not at all. I watched her do it. And so it's not dissimilar from the way that I work, which is again, getting clear on the organizational structure. Not back in the day at the university or college, high school.

Teddy Smith (14:15.424)
sorry.

Teddy Smith (14:20.149)
Hahaha

Walt Hampton (14:36.145)
when you'd write a paper back in the day, you'd create the Roman numeral outline. Here's what it's going to look like. And getting an idea as to the structure. So getting that first idea and that conclusion down. So for me, what I would do after that is I would schedule an hour or two hours to work on chapter one. And that would be what I might do the second week too. And just

It's the consistency that matters most, Eddie. It's the consistency that matters most.

Teddy Smith (15:08.599)
Yeah.

Do you see any particular common time-wasting habits that writers, entrepreneurs make when they're writing books that you've published?

Walt Hampton (15:19.697)
Yes, spending too much time with their phones next to them. So there is, you know, again, and I talk about this in the Power Principles of Time Mastery, there's an incredibly interesting science called Interruption Science. It is the study of what happens when we move off task and the...

Teddy Smith (15:26.592)
Okay.

Teddy Smith (15:39.757)
Hmm.

Walt Hampton (15:49.123)
The science is a little scary. The research is scary. What the research shows is that we are either interrupted or cause ourselves to be interrupted every three minutes of the day. Every three minutes of the day. And when we are interrupted, there is what's called an attentional residue. That is to say it takes us an amount of time

to come back to the thing that we were doing. And the attentional residue has been measured at the low end at 10 minutes or 11 minutes to get really fully refocused. And at the high end about 20 minutes. So if you are interrupted or cause yourself to be interrupted every three minutes of the day, and this is a silly calculation,

Teddy Smith (16:30.039)
Hmm.

Walt Hampton (16:47.527)
You've actually lost 33 hours of productivity every day. I mean, that's just, I mean, it's just throwing it into the ridiculousness. But my point is if in an hour you have your notifications and alerts open on your browser while you're in your Google Doc or your Word Doc, or you have your phone, even in your room, if you have your phone, the research has shown that it is distracting to even have, if I'm content developing,

I don't even have my phone in my space. I have all of my notifications and alerts off. And so it's distraction, Teddy, that is the killer.

Teddy Smith (17:19.384)
Yeah.

Teddy Smith (17:26.732)
I've read a really good book about that called Indistractable by, yeah, it's really good and really easy to read. And he's a really successful entrepreneur. I think he talks about something very similar. It's like, every time that you've got distraction, it takes you away from the traction that you're trying to move forward with. And that's a really good tip. So when you're writing, do you have like a way of completely, do you have a method of completely blocking everything out? you any tools you use, or is it just a case of just turn everything off and move away?

Walt Hampton (17:30.428)
that's a wonderful read.

Walt Hampton (17:56.081)
I mean, yeah, it's like old school. mean, go to a space that's yours to go to and turn everything off. It is wonderful. A little added tip is to enroll the people who support you. So I was working with a very successful lawyer in Dublin and she was the managing partner of a firm and we talked about, you know, how to write without being interrupted. And she said, well,

Teddy Smith (17:58.797)
Yeah.

Walt Hampton (18:25.597)
everything you're saying is not going to work for me because we have an open office plan and our offices, our partner's offices are all glass. I said, well, Lorna, that's why God made 3M sticky notes. You get with your assistant and you tell your assistant to hold your calls and you put a little 3M sticky note on your glass door that says writing come back in an hour. And two weeks later when I met with her again,

Teddy Smith (18:50.156)
Yep.

Walt Hampton (18:55.303)
She said, that's amazing, it worked. And so when we enroll our assistants or those we love who are in our space by saying, I'm gonna spend the next hour just writing on this book that I really wanna get out in the world. And I'd love if you would just help me protect that space. And I promise when I'm back with you, you've got my full attention. And many times, a lot of the time that really helps people.

Teddy Smith (18:57.559)
Hahaha

Walt Hampton (19:25.255)
But turning off the distractions, getting support from the outside and really just honoring that bubble makes you amazingly productive.

Teddy Smith (19:35.814)
Maybe that should be the name of your next book, the sticky note production technique, productivity technique. Now, one of the things you talk about a lot in your book is the six paths to finishing your book. So let's walk through first what those six paths are, and then we'll go through how they can get you to from beginning to end.

Walt Hampton (19:39.579)
No.

Walt Hampton (19:53.851)
Yes. number one is, and it relates to what we've always already been talking to, one page a day. Number two is one blog a week, unearthing what you already have.

Teddy Smith (20:05.495)
One page a day.

Walt Hampton (20:19.495)
Book coaching, book doctoring, and ghost writing. Those are the six.

Teddy Smith (20:27.254)
Right. Okay. So let's go through the first one. So one page a day. what does, so what does that look like in practice? Like is it a particular number of words or is it, do you have a limit on this?

Walt Hampton (20:37.873)
So.

me come back to the metaphor again of running. I run every day. I live in the Northeast of the United States where it's winter. And the last thing that I ever, ever want to do is go running, even though I'm a runner. The hardest step is to get out the door. That's the hardest step. Once I'm out the door, once I'm running, I feel like running more.

Teddy Smith (21:07.49)
Yeah, it's too late then.

Walt Hampton (21:08.123)
And the same is true with writing. A blank page is a really daunting thing for many people, particularly if it's like, my god, I've got to fill a lot of blank pages. But if you sit down with the goal of just writing a blank page, and that's all your goal is, and you write that.

Teddy Smith (21:30.744)
Mm-hmm.

Walt Hampton (21:38.321)
And you don't care how it gets written. We tell our authors, get a shitty first draft on the page. It's much easier to edit than it is to draft from scratch. So once you got something on the page, so the goal is just write a page. So it could be, I'm gonna write a page in this two hour block, just one page. Now here's what's interesting.

At book signings, it's not unfrequent for somebody to come, oh, well, Mr. Hampton, it's so nice to have heard you today, and I love your book, and yada yada. I've always wanted to write a book. And I'm thinking, why don't you just write one? Because if you wrote a page a day for 365 days, you'd have some really serious editing to do at the end of a year.

Teddy Smith (22:21.336)
Yeah.

Teddy Smith (22:33.89)
Yep.

Walt Hampton (22:34.045)
Because you know, a prescriptive non-fiction book, know, 150, 175, 200 pages, you know, 365 pages. It's a lot of content. Just one page a day.

And so that's a really good way to approach it. Now, know, a year sounds like a long time, but I don't know about your listeners looking back over those last year, it's gone by pretty quick.

So one page a day gets you to an amazing destination.

Teddy Smith (23:10.082)
That's yeah. so, when, so when you're, and then your next step was to set the hours time block. So are you saying that each of those hours would be like one of your pages or is it a different way of looking at it?

Walt Hampton (23:19.065)
It could be. No, it's just two different models here. I mean, having the time to write a page a day, so your time block might say, write one page.

Teddy Smith (23:31.83)
Yeah. I mean, before you even got to writing a page, do you have a method for trying to structure that book? Would you try and get that outline done first or would that be one of your pages?

Walt Hampton (23:42.703)
I would, well, it could be one of your pages, Teddy, absolutely. I think knowing your destination, we're all used to getting into our cars and having our navigation system tell us what the destination was. Back in the old days, you'd open up Google Maps or you'd open up an old paper map and you'd trace your destination. You don't really start off on a

trip somewhere without knowing the journey. And I think that's a really important thing to think about when you're writing your book is how do you map? You're mapping out the trip.

Teddy Smith (24:22.444)
Yeah. So you're doing page a day and you're setting your time blocking for the week. And then this third one, you're talking about booking coaching. Was that the third one?

Walt Hampton (24:31.313)
Well, no, the first one was a page a day. All right. The second way, this is actually a resource that we share as part of our promotion of Summit Press. How to write a book when you don't really want to write a book. How to write a book when you don't want to write a book. The second one is a blog a week. So I work with a lot of

Teddy Smith (24:34.136)
Yep.

Teddy Smith (24:49.838)
You

Walt Hampton (25:01.245)
high-performing professionals who are often doing content marketing of some sort. They're writing a newsletter article, they're writing a blog piece, they're writing a LinkedIn newsletter, they're doing something on a regular basis. And oftentimes, these are between 500 and 1,000 words a week.

Teddy Smith (25:24.952)
Yep.

Walt Hampton (25:27.223)
Over the course of a year or two years, there is a tremendous amount of content. And what's fascinating, Teddy, is because it's the person writing it, there becomes embedded themes in what we write about. There's a rhythm and a cadence about what we write about.

Teddy Smith (25:37.058)
Yep.

Walt Hampton (25:55.269)
And if you were to take, if one of your listeners were to take their last 18 months of content marketing and print it out and put it across their conference tables, they'd go, I can see how this could be a book.

Teddy Smith (26:16.003)
Yeah.

Walt Hampton (26:17.125)
My very first book, which was very successful, Journeys on the Edge, Living Life That Matters, was done just that way. It was two years of content marketing that I had already done. And when I started doing the content marketing, I had no idea what would become a book. And that was very cool. Now,

In this day, when I'm working with executives or business professionals growing their businesses, one of the very first things I get them doing early on is a content marketing, a rhythm and a cadence to a weekly content marketing. And I pre-frame this. I say, who knows? Could be a book someday. But let's just start. This is going to serve the growing of your business by doing content marketing, good quality content marketing.

Teddy Smith (27:02.893)
Yeah.

Walt Hampton (27:10.803)
and it becomes this amazing reservoir.

So a blog a week. That's not hard.

Teddy Smith (27:18.648)
That's amazing. No, it's not hard. And also it's what's interesting about that. I work with a lot of people who have written a book and they want to think about how they can expand their reach slightly further and maybe start a website. And I say, well, you've already written 30,000 words. mean, out of those 10, say it's broken into 10 chapters and each chapter has three main points in it. You know, each of those main points can be a blog post or a newsletter.

suddenly you've got six months worth of content to post without having actually have to do anything. You're just repurposing the content you've already got. So it sounds like you're kind of saying, doing it the other way. You've written all this stuff. Let's bring it back into turning it into a book, which is neatly packaged in one place. Yeah. I love that.

Walt Hampton (27:59.869)
Exactly, exactly. And what you've just shared is closer to the third one, which is do some archeology across everything that you have created as a business owner. So, you know, in our business, we've got, you know, multiple social media channels. We have multiple downloads and...

lead magnets and webinars and teleseminars and books and ebooks. And we have all of this content. And if we didn't yet have a book, it would be the exercise would be to go in and look at all of the content you have created. And then with a bit of archeology and arrangement deciding what that book will be.

and you can repurpose as you have just suggested. The blog is a slightly easier way to proceed because you've got the defined content that actually probably are chapters to the book in many cases versus trying to source the archaeological pieces from social media stuff or LinkedIn articles or

Teddy Smith (28:58.69)
Yeah.

Walt Hampton (29:23.523)
newsletter pieces you've written. But doing the archaeological work, the content creation, is the third way of approaching a book, to write a book if you really don't know how to write a book.

Teddy Smith (29:36.622)
Yeah. Do you use any tools to do that repurposing? Like for example, do you use AI to bring everything you've written together and work out what the tools could be?

Walt Hampton (29:44.943)
I love that you asked the AI question. as a publishing house, leaned in before any other publishing house around the AI. And AI is an extraordinary tool. And used well, it is brilliant.

If I'm as acquisitions editor and I'm looking at a piece, I can tell immediately if something is written by AI and it's an immediate no for me. I mean, AI, something entirely generated by AI is devoid of soul. But what's fabulous is that you could ask AI the question of

Teddy Smith (30:17.496)
Yep.

Teddy Smith (30:25.218)
Yeah, definitely.

Walt Hampton (30:37.521)
I'm thinking about writing a book on time management and productivity.

what might be a chapter layout that I would use for that book. And it will give you a brilliant chapter layout. But coming back to your question of doing the archaeology work, if you create a project, and for example in JetGBT or Claude, and you upload into your project files all of this content stuff, and ask AI to give you some feedback as to what possible

Teddy Smith (30:49.198)
Mm-hmm.

Walt Hampton (31:13.799)
themes or topics or ideas coalesce around the content you have uploaded, it will give that to you.

Teddy Smith (31:22.082)
Yeah. Yeah. So say, example, you've written a blog, you could upload either a link to those blogs or the actual articles and say, but this is what I've written. want to write a book about something to do with this. Help me brainstorm ideas about where we can bring all this information together into one place. And I think that's, that's how I would use it. If I was, if I was following your approach.

Walt Hampton (31:34.481)
Mm-hmm.

Walt Hampton (31:43.109)
Yeah, and I like that term brainstorm. So as back in the day when I was an attorney and managing partner of a law firm, I had minions, young associates who worked for me, and I'd bring them in and ask, you know, I have this brilliant idea for a brief that I'm gonna do for the appellate court. And you know, here's what I'm thinking, go out and get me the stuff for it. I use AI to brainstorm with.

I use it as an interactive partner. in that regard, it is a brilliant tool.

Teddy Smith (32:18.742)
Yeah, definitely. and I think one of the other things you talked about, it's just, are a publishing house. mean, mostly we've talked about the writing today, but we're talking about getting a actual finished book out. there any, know, it's just because we're touching on AI, I'm just thinking now about jobs you can outsource. Obviously we've talked a lot about the writing, which parts would you start, would you not do yourself? Like, would you think about outsourcing editing, for example, or what point would you think?

I don't want to do this part. I want to do someone else to do it for me.

Walt Hampton (32:49.317)
Yeah, so the obvious one is proofreading. AI, we're using actually multiple tools to actually solve for proofreading. But proofreading is an obvious one to enroll AI in. Line editing, content editing, we still

Teddy Smith (32:54.038)
Yes.

Teddy Smith (33:10.68)
Yep.

Walt Hampton (33:18.821)
use people on our team for that because, we have worked so long often with our clients that we know where it needs work, where the voice needs to be extended, what becomes repetitive. And that's, by the way, another huge AI tell. AI gets lazy.

If you have it working on a 60,000 word manuscript, becomes so obvious that it's sourcing its own stories after a while. And so it's not a useful tool for actually creating a beautiful manuscript that continues to develop new and fresh ideas throughout it.

So right now, I would say the most valuable place is in the proofreading arena.

Teddy Smith (34:23.854)
Yeah, definitely. You can't really mark your own homework. So you've got to outsource that part. So the next steps in the six paths. what's...

Walt Hampton (34:29.305)
Yes. then we've got so then we've got, know, a page a day, a blog a week, you know, searching out your archives and curating the work. And then, you know, if if that's not working for you alone, then get a book coach. That's number number four, get a book coach.

and someone who will work with you to create the accountability and the rhythm and to give you feedback on what you're writing from week to week, month to month over an arc of time. So that's number four. Number five is a variant of that. We call it book doctoring. Somebody's got a pile of stuff. They've done their best to...

Teddy Smith (35:18.443)
Okay.

Walt Hampton (35:26.759)
do the archival work around it, but it's still just a pile of stuff. You know, we call that is book doctoring. Okay, let's go and do some minor or major surgery with this. And we'll go in and create the book with the stuff that you've brought us. And then the last piece, as you well know, and it's something that we love to do on a very selective basis is ghost writing. You know, somebody,

Teddy Smith (35:31.534)
You

Walt Hampton (35:56.113)
somebody who is interviewing, somebody from our team who was interviewing the author and getting inside their heads, understanding their voice, what their arc is, what their why is, and then settling in and creating that for them. So those are the six ways.

Teddy Smith (36:19.054)
Perfect. And so with Summit Press Publishers, do you help with every part of those stages? Do you help with even up to the ghost writing?

Walt Hampton (36:28.435)
yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, we've got a number of very interesting ghost writing projects going on.

Teddy Smith (36:34.35)
Yeah. And who are the sorts of clients that usually want to be working with?

Walt Hampton (36:39.047)
They are business professionals or entrepreneurs who understand that having a book in the world is the thing that helps them stand out above the noise, above the competition to be seen as an authority, as an expert in their industry. And they wanna make a bigger impact in the world. They wanna get their message out in a bigger way. And so we've worked...

across industries, financial professionals, mental health professionals, physicians, coaches, consultants, speakers. We've done a lot of work in the parenting industry. We've done a lot of work in the how-to, as in time management, how to grow a business, how to avoid burnout business. As I said, we

have a book recently with professionals who are working in the sex addiction industry. So, broad range of entrepreneurs and business professionals who understand the book can get their message out into the world and impact a lot more people.

Teddy Smith (37:52.271)
Amazing. And if, I mean, if you could just literally just give one piece of advice to someone who wanted to, you know, take control of their time and actually start writing their book, what would that one piece of be?

Walt Hampton (38:03.303)
We honor the dream, block the time for next week to make it happen. Block, set aside a time for it. mean, if you were to look at my calendar, and it seems almost a little OCD, but I have on my calendar the time that I do my morning run. I have the time, the three times in the week that I go to the gym.

Teddy Smith (38:23.118)
You

Walt Hampton (38:33.085)
I have the times that I connect with my partner on there. I have all of my tasks during the day. And one of the things our publisher says is with discipline comes freedom. And so if we honor the thing that we want to do by devoting the time to it and then just sitting down and doing it, however imperfectly, we don't need to get it right on the first go.

There will be lots of different, there'll be lots of time to refine the work. Just begin, just get it down.

Teddy Smith (39:09.774)
Yeah, I love that. With discipline comes freedom. I love that. That's probably going to be the tagline for this podcast, I think.

Walt Hampton (39:16.155)
Well, it's not sexy really. I the idea of disciplining ourselves, but I have a pretty vigorous, my subtitle of my second book, The Power Principles of Time Mastery, Do Less, Make More, Have Fun. I love the F word. I love having fun.

And so, you know, I spent a lot of time, particularly in the winter, backcountry skiing and ice climbing and downhill skiing and in the summer trail running. I get to do that because I have blocked the time. And when we have important work to do in the world, most of our authors are really mission driven. They're driven to get their work out into the world.

And if we're mission driven, then we must honor that mission by giving it the time it deserves.

Teddy Smith (40:14.35)
Well, thanks so much for coming on. mean, I've just been taking so many notes about how I need to basically just work harder to get my books out. I know you mentioned you've got the publishers, you've got a new book coming out, Brick by Brick. Do want to just tell us a little bit about that?

Walt Hampton (40:23.921)
Ha ha ha ha.

Walt Hampton (40:33.949)
So Brick by Brick actually breaks down a lot of the things that we talked about today. And it's available on Amazon, so you can go and get it there. And then I mentioned in my book, the journeys on the edge, living a life that matters, and my second book, The Power Principles of Time Mastery, also available over on the Amazon. the place to find us in the interweb world is Summit Press.

Publishers.com summit press publishers.com all run together with the dot-com

Teddy Smith (41:09.742)
Great. We'll put notes all that in the show notes as well, so it's easy to click. thank you so much for coming on, Walt. It's been great chatting. Yeah, love to speak to you again. And thanks for coming on.

Walt Hampton (41:12.861)
Yeah.

Walt Hampton (41:17.937)
Such a gift to spend time with you and your listeners. Thank you for having me.

Teddy Smith (41:21.944)
Thanks for all. Bye.