A weekly letter from Ezra Byer
Do What Matters
Tips for building a strong business while remaining true to your highest values.
What arrives every week
One idea each week from a leader who built something worth keeping, and one way to put it to work before Friday. Written for executives, founders, and authors who want their work to outlast their calendar.
01
One idea worth stealing
The best thing I heard that week, pulled from a conversation with a CEO, founder, pastor, or author who has already paid the tuition on it. No recaps, no listicles. One idea, explained properly.
02
One way to apply it
A concrete move you can make in the next five days. Sometimes a conversation to have, sometimes a decision to stop postponing, sometimes a paragraph to write.
03
One question to sit with
The kind that gets a book, a company, or a second act started. Most readers answer it in a notebook. A few answer it by hitting reply, and I read every one.
Who reads it
People with more to say than time to say it.
Executives who know a book is in them somewhere. Founders writing the operating manual for a company that did not exist five years ago. Leaders in finance and faith who want their ideas to travel further than the next meeting. If you have been meaning to write it down, this is the letter that keeps you moving toward it.
- A leader with a book idea and no first chapter
- A founder who wants to think in public without posting every day
- An author between books who misses the discipline of a deadline
- Anyone tired of advice that sounds good and changes nothing
Who writes it
I help leaders write books that matter. This is where I think out loud.
I'm Ezra Byer, a ghostwriter, editor, and book strategist. I work with Forbes Books and run a small studio that takes authors from a blank page to a finished manuscript. My clients have included Fortune 500 CEOs, founders, nonprofit leaders, and academics, and along the way I've sat across from a couple hundred leaders, on my podcast and off it, and asked them what actually moved the needle. Do What Matters is the distilled version of those conversations, one idea at a time.
I grew up in northern Ontario, hold a PhD in Intercultural Studies, spent more than a dozen years in nonprofit work, and am a certified John Maxwell coach. I now write from Idaho, where I also preach now and then. I believe most people have one book in them and that the hard part is not the writing. It's deciding what matters enough to say.
“Ezra is a talented ghostwriter with an uncanny ability to build meaningful rapport and relationships, helping entrepreneurs, CEOs, and leaders tell their stories and share their insights in a compelling and authentic way.— Adam Witty, Founder and CEO of Advantage | The Authority Company, publisher of Forbes Books
Start doing what matters this week.
Join the leaders, founders, and authors who get one clear idea in their inbox every week.
