About Lake Effect Creative

Our mission together: a book you can take to the bank (and hold in your hands)

Hi, I’m Amy Buttell.

I work with pros who are too busy closing deals to write their book.

I’ve helped hundreds of financial experts to get their words on the page -- in a way that makes their ideas clear, substantial, and memorable.

I’m a champion at translating industry jargon, mish-mashed ideas, and data-based gobbledygook into compulsively readable, clear-as-a-(closing)-bell stories.

Stories that actual, non-industry humans want to read.

You know too much. I know just enough.

I know which questions to ask to draw out your most original ideas...and I know which of your thoughts to shelve or toss. I want your book to show your life’s work, not to be your life’s work.

I can take terms like “sequence of returns risk” and turn it into human talk.

I can help you explain simply why checks suck.

I can navigate through a statement of cash flows.

Let’s get it done.

pick your mix…

ghostwriting

cheerleading

mind-reading

whip-cracking

ghostwriting cheerleading mind-reading whip-cracking 

You can hire me to

Write your book from prologue to acknowledgments

Sit on you till you type the final page yourself

Reshape and shine up what you’ve got

Clients love me because:

I love them, and I love their book projects. I care about their book as much as they do.

I “get it.” I understand finance, and all its hazy, multi-syllabic, euphemistic vocabulary. Dirty secret: I have an accounting degree. Friends ask me for business and investing advice, because I’m the only one they know who can speak human about it.

I do the heavy lifting, so they can still run their business. You’re in a business you can’t just “step away from” to work on your book. Well, you can -- but it won’t be there when you come back.

I listen. [Pausing here to let you talk.]

I’m not formulaic. When we’re done, we’ll have a book unlike any of the same ol’ business books crowding the shelves. It’ll be you in a book.

I give great compliance. (Yep, the geekiest reason by far.) I know how to write in a non-promissory way.

I get it done. At the end of this process, you will have a book you can hold in your hands; pass out to friends, colleagues, and potential clients; even show to your kids and grandkids. (One day, they’ll read it and say, “So this is what you do!”)

Who am I to help you?

I’m a journalist with 20 years and over a thousand pieces of client-authored content under my belt --  including pieces in the Journal of Financial Planning, The Wall Street Journal Custom Content Labs, Inc. Custom Content, Wealthfront, New York Society of Security Analysts, and more.

My clients come from boutique wealth management, fintech startups, and Fortune 500 companies.

I’ve published two of my own books, and ghostwritten for a collection of financial experts -- every one of whom had previously struggled for years to distill what made them different, in a book.

I wish I could name them, but you know -- those pesky NDAs.

-Amy Buttell, CEO

It’s hard to have set packages for this sort of service, but if you give me 30 minutes, I can figure out what you need.

Let’s talk, and then, if we’re a fit, I’ll shoot you a quote.