What Writing for Other People Has Taught Me About Ambition

Ghostwriting lets you sit front row to someone else’s ambition. It’s one of the few jobs where you’re invited into the engine room, handed their unfiltered truth, and trusted to turn it into something that carries weight in the world.

Over the years, I’ve worked with founders, leaders, celebrities, creatives, and people who’ve lived ten different lives before breakfast. Their stories couldn’t be more different, but there’s a thread I see every single time.

Ambition isn’t shouting your goals from the rooftop, it isn’t shiny nor is it particularly glamorous.

Real ambition is solid dedication and focus. It’s choosing the thing that matters when the rest of the world is demanding attention and making space for the work even when your diary suggests it’s impossible.

What's also interesting is that the people who look the most “driven” on the outside are often the ones wrestling with doubt on the inside. Books have a way of pulling that into the light. When someone tells me their story, I hear the same concerns again and again:
Is it good enough?
Does my voice matter?
What if I get this wrong?

They’re really common questions from people at every level of success, but from my experience, if you’re asking those questions, you’re usually on the right track. The people who don’t question themselves rarely produce anything meaningful.

The similarity between writing a book and building a business is that ambition isn’t about being fearless,
it’s about moving while your fear tries to negotiate a delay.

Working so closely with my clients has shifted how I see ambition in my own life and business. It’s made me far less interested in the noise and far more interested in intention, the kind that builds companies, books, careers, and legacies, brick by brick.

I think that maybe it’s one of the real privileges of ghostwriting. I get to sit in the silence before someone’s idea becomes a thing and get to watch them step into the version of themselves they’ve been circling for years. I get to see the moment words that lived only in their head become a story that will meet thousands of others and potentially change lives.

I know that I’ve been incredibly lucky to work with people who have never given up, despite in some cases the odds being stacked against them, and this has given me knowledge that I can and do use every day, building my business.

If you have a book to share, I’d love to help you make it exist.