Play Your Position With Mary Lou Kayser

I first met Karen Lopez McWilliams in the lobby of a Hilton Hotel in Southlake, Texas. It was late June 2015 and she arrived with all the materials she’d agreed to bring for our two day strategy session together on her passion project: big post-it paper, colored markers, legal pads, pens. For the next 48 hours, we hashed out the game plan she would use to create her book, The Ones Who Believed: True Inspirational Stories Honoring Everyday People Who Took a Chance, Shaped a Life and Made a Difference. All those proverbial Xs and Os made sense and showed us something incredible was unfolding before us. At that point I did not yet know my role in the project would extend beyond the planning stage into the subsequent 18 months of full-time writing, revising, designing, publishing and ultimate launching and promoting the book right alongside Karen. What I did know was she had an incredible concept on her hands that no one else had explored the way she wanted to. Writing a book is no easy feat and it takes a team o