It's time to tell your story.

Zipwrite helps people with great stories bring their words to life fast—and share them with the people they care about.

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Everybody has a story.
Not everyone has time to write it.

Whether it's your life story, or a parent's, or a grandparent's, it's critical to get the details down now. With Zipwrite, if you can have a conversation, you can write your story.

1. We'll Connect Quickly With a Highly Professional Zipwriter

Sign up for Zipwrite, and we'll connect you quickly with a top-rated Zipwriter, who can guide you through the process, conduct your interviews, and make the whole thing fast and fun.

2. Enjoy the Interviews and Share Your Story

Working over Zoom, via phone, or even in person, your Zipwriter will as you guided questions to help you focus on the structure and theme of the story you want to tell, and fill in the details that make it come alive. (Each story module takes about 40-45 minutes.)

3. Get It Back Fast, and Be Amazed!

That's it. Within 48 hours in most cases, your Zipwriter will present you with a polished draft of your entire story, with all the details and themes you'd want to include, told in your voice, in your own words. Of course, you'll also get the video or audio version. You can share your story with the world, or even have it published in book form.

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Communication in the workplace

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Zipwrite helps people with amazing life stories bring their words to life fast—and share them with the people who matter.

• Learn more

Communication in the workplace

just another section

Zipwrite helps people with amazing life stories bring their words to life fast—and share them with the people who matter.

• Learn more

Communication in the workplace

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Sample Zipwrite Stories

This sample runs 832 words...I was a social worker beginning in 1975, and then became a member of the first graduating class at CUNY Law School in 1986. Then, I returned to Pennsylvania, to the Lehigh Valley, and worked as a lawyer for Legal Services.My son was born in my last year of law school and my daughter was born 16 months later. The irony was that my family income was so low at Legal Services that if I’d gone in as a client, we would have qualified under the federal poverty guidelines. It was a hardship for me and my family.So, I started a law practice in Allentown with a friend, Michele Varricchio. Because law school didn't teach us how to run a law practice — a business — we had to learn through the school of hard knocks. I wouldn't wish that experience on my worst enemy.But, we were lucky enough to have people in the legal community to guide us and mentor us.We always had clients, but they often couldn’t afford to pay. Still, pro bono is good karma. Every time I reduced or waived my fees, the blessing came back to me, triplefold.Somebody would, say, get hit by a car and they’d ask around the neighborhood, “What lawyer do we go to?”“Well, there's this guy, Fred Rooney…”I carved out areas of practice like Social Security Disability, to some extent Workers' Compensation. I did lots of family law, bankruptcy and consumer issues and landlord/tenant issues.Most of my clients were people who had everyday problems and they needed someone to turn to who wasn't going to make them remortgage their lives to retain me.We also realized that to do good in our community, we had to do well. I was eventually able to buy my first car and go on vacation and provide for my family.We proved that you could have a very satisfying law practice and feel like you were making a contribution to society — by enabling people of limited income to claim a right, or undo a wrong.In 1998, I returned to CUNY Law to teach law grads to develop their business and professional skills so they could set up shop in underserved parts of NYC. In 2007, we started a pilot incubator project for nine lawyers called the Incubator for Justice.Prior to that, I had no idea of what a business incubator was, but I looked around and found incubators for bakers and graphic designers. Why not lawyers?The New York Times wrote about it in 2008. The next thing, my phone was ringing off the wall. By 2009, law schools across the country, and then bar associations, wanted to develop incubators.The movement took off. It was a win-win for everyone since law grads created their own practices, clients secured affordable and competent representation, and law school employment stats rose.Today there approximately 70 incubators that have spun off the CUNY model, which is almost hard for me to fathom.Given my lifelong interest in travel, I applied for a Fulbright Scholar grant to see if CUNY’s incubator model could be replicated internationally. I went to the Dominican Republic and created the first legal incubator outside of the U.S.Then I became a Fulbright Specialist, traveling back and forth to Islamabad, Pakistan, working on incubator development.Over the last decade, I’ve travelled all over the world to promote the incubator model. I’ve worked to help law grads who have a deep commitment to social justice create practices focused on providing representation to women, and to marginalized and vulnerable groups.In 2017, I began working with Roma communities in Spain and the Balkans. Historically, Roma communities throughout Europe lag far beyond in access to health, education,employment and justice. In a country like Spain, where there are approximately a million Roma people, the number of Roma lawyers is negligible. In Bulgaria, where we recently launched an incubator, the numbers are shockingly low.Prior to Covid, I generally flew around 125,000 miles a year. I came back from Spain and Morocco the second week of February, and I was scheduled to see my son in Portland, Oregon the following week.That never happened. I’m now in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, landlocked like everyone else (for the first time in decades), unable to complete my Fulbright in Bulgaria, and I’ve postponed trips to countries like Argentina, Romania, Albania and Qatar.I'm 67. Life goes by quickly. I remember when I was 18, I used to think I could change the world, right?But I realized that even if I couldn't change the world, I should use my time on the planet to try to impact in a very positive way as many people as possible. Hopefully, I still have a lot of traction left, since I’m ready, willing and able to go.I'm just waiting for the flights to be safe and travel affordable so I can get back “on the road again.”

I grew up 30 minutes outside of Cincinnati—cows by the side of the road, and a very rural high school. I was captain of the basketball team. Three days after graduation, June 1995, I was at Fort Jackson, basic training, marching in the rain.I was 17 when I enlisted. Then, I heard about West Point Prep School, and I wanted to go because I wanted to play basketball.When I got there, the commandant showed us the class profile. There were two slides with all our SAT scores on a graph, and one little dot off to the side on each.That was me, the “dot on the left” both times: 310 for math and 440 for English.I just wasn’t prepared academically. In math class, I looked at a problem on the board and asked, “What’s that checkmark thing?”“You mean, the square root sign?”I had no idea. The teacher told me afterwards that I was a lost cause. She said, “I’m not going to waste any of my time on you.”So I had two choices: Give up, or find a tutor and work harder.That’s what Charles Woodruff did for me. He’s still a friend. We had to start with a seventh grade math book, all the things I’d missed in high school.Eventually, I caught up. I made the commandant’s list, which is like the dean’s list, and by the third quarter I started tutoring other people in math. I still loved playing basketball. Sleep was what I gave up. I never got to sleep.We moved on to West Point, and I turned 21 during cadet basic training. I was back where I started, struggling academically.It was a different animal, the first semester of real college. But eventually, I figured it out. I realized I was never gonna be at the top, but I was going to live in the middle of the class academically.The friendships were the best part about West Point. It was two decades ago, and we're still close. I'm still in a fantasy football league with 10 of those guys. One of them is coming down this Friday, he lives in Denver.And then, 9/11 happened during my senior year, and I was in Iraq two and a half years after that.I knew I was going into combat. That’s why I chose infantry. I just had no idea how bad it was going to be.We lived through Black Sunday — that’s, well you know — Martha Raddatz’s book The Long Road Home, and it was a miniseries on National Geographic.We had 68 people wounded and eight dead in less than an hour and a half. And we had 82 straight days of combat, and often multiple firefights every day.There was this one day in particular. The sun is coming up, and we’re on this road called Route Silver, in Sadr City. Nobody wants to be on Route Silver. We were in Humvees and we had windows open at the time, because this was still OIF II, and it was the Wild West.I remember seeing an IED: two 155-millimeter artillery rounds packed full of C-4, and a fuse. And there was this split second of: “Well, this is it.”And then it didn’t explode. I'll never know why. The fuse went out or something.My driver saw it too, and the gunner behind me. Everyone freaked out. “Sir, we were dead!” The translator was crying.There’s no way we should have lived through that. It’s that kind of moment when you’re like: Why was I chosen to be spared?Later, we were in Bradleys [ed note: like this]. Take Mother’s Day 2004, for example. I ran over 40 IEDs in one day. Forty. Four-zero.And of course later that summer was when I lost Martir. You know that story. We were in an alley and he got shot in the side and fell right into my arms. He was the only soldier I lost in my platoon.I had five others wounded badly enough to leave for good. And six or seven that got double Purple Hearts, but they stayed the whole year.You asked if I had thought of the army as a career, and I definitely had. But, I had met Reyna three months before I deployed. (She says hi by the way.)After I got back, I looked at it as a choice: Do I choose having a family? Or do I choose deployments every other year of my life, where I feel like I’m definitely going to die?So I got out after five years.I had 60 days of leave at the end. I biked across the United States, raising money for two cancer nonprofits. I try to do something like that every year now. In 2018 it was climbing Mt. Ranier. In 2019 it was this thing where you climb Stratton Mountain 17 times in a row because that works out to the same elevation as Mt. Everest.But then there was the transition: I was in Texas, and there wasn’t anybody really to guide me. So, I had four jobs in two years.I worked for a corporate recruiter, then a project manager for renewable energy, building windmills. Then, I was substitute teaching. Finally, renewable energy consulting.Then I came back to Austin and started as an IT project manager at Charles Schwab, and also started my MBA at the University of Texas — executive MBA, where you go every other weekend for 21 months. I did well. I got the Dean's leadership and service award, which was pretty cool because I didn't know it existed. Basically it means I had become the unofficial leader of the class.And, I started my PhD. ABD now, all but dissertation. So, just gotta get that thing knocked out. I was let go from Charles Schwab in the fall, and I was looking for positions for a long time. Anybody trying to find a job during COVID knows, it was not fun.But I wound up getting this position that's perfect, which is a career consultant for people in the master's program at UT. I love it. I’m spending my days helping people navigate the same kind of transition that I had to navigate.I do a lot of speaking, too. I have one on Friday I'll be doing, virtually: “Overcoming the Power of No.” And of course, I wrote the book: Dot on the Left, which is about that year at Prep.I think if I have to summarize the big lesson, it's that failure is just going to happen, but you keep going. It’s only after you keep proving you’re successful, that people stop telling you're that you're going to fail. Or maybe they never stop.Early on it was, “you'll never play high school basketball.” Or, “you'll never graduate from Prep.”Or, “you'll never be infantry.” Or, “you'll never know what kind of leader you'll be in combat.” Or, “you'll never transition successfully in the civilian world.”And you just keep going.I spoke at the West Point Prep graduation last year. That was pretty great. The deputy commander now was my classmate. They're all cheering and screaming. I still get goosebumps thinking about it.It was amazing to walk in and tell this story, and know that I was in their seats 20 years ago.The students I'm talking with now, at UT, some of them feel like they're missing out, because they're not getting to network with people.But, I tell people all the time, this is the easiest time ever to network. You know? Like through LinkedIn, I can send a note: “Hey, I work at UT,” or “You're a student at UT, do you have 15 minutes for Zoom?”Who won’t do that, for a a student? I think it's easier now to meet anybody halfway around the the world. It’s just harder to meet somebody down the street.The other thing, if you could throw in there, I'd love for people to just connect with me on LinkedIn, too. That'd be cool if you could include that. I guess that's my only call to action probably, right now.Well, unless you want to put the link if people want to buy The Dot on the Left from Amazon. I guess you could do that too.

I was born in 1966, in Indianapolis, Indiana, the heart of almost nowhere. I started out as a Post Office clerk in 1989. I was a single mom then, and my daughter has special needs, so I wanted to work days for childcare reasons.Even now, my daughter is 32, and she’s at the functional level of a six-month-old. Constant care. I still have to change diapers. I still have to do everything for her. Dress her, feed her.But it takes like 20 years as a clerk to get the seniority to work days instead of nights. So I became a janitor at the Post Office instead.What’s it like to be a janitor? Is that what you want to know?It’s an honorable job. But, I know that I have gifts and I know that I'm really smart. And, when you're a janitor, sometimes people forget that you're a person.The worst part was disgruntled employees in the bathroom. That was the worst. I would have to clean that up. I let the manager know of course, but I said, Don’t make a big deal. Don't make a spectacle. That’s what they want.I still have my dignity even when I’m doing the most disgusting tasks. They can’t take away my dignity.I didn't cry at the time, but right now I'm thinking about it, and it's like: That was really bad.But, most days were pretty good. Since I’d been a clerk and I knew a little bit about mail, I’d try to help when we were short. That got me some brownie points.I'm shy, really. I'm shy. And I was like in my mid-40s, Black, bald, an overweight African-American woman.I wanted to be noticed. I wanted to be famous. But, I didn't know how to get noticed.One of the first things I did was, they had Deal or No Deal auditions in Indianapolis. I had no interest in being on Deal or No Deal, but I figured there would be media, and if I dressed up kind of funny, they might interview me.So I contacted a reporter and I told her I'd be the Black, bald, belly dancer. It worked.Then, I started out with selfies.At that time on Facebook, you could post a picture with somebody, and everybody would see it. I started doing selfies with just regular people, and they would be seen everywhere. Like 5,000 people.Then, I was in a networking group at an event where the on-air talent quit, and the cameraman asked me if I knew anyone who could fill in to do interviews. And I said I’d do it.I was terrible at first, but I liked it, and I learned. I got the idea to start interviewing celebrities as they came through Indianapolis. The trick was to contact the organizers of events: “Hey, do you mind if I interview your guest?”So, I started interviewing. Dan Rather, Mike Pence when he was still the governor of Indiana, Lee Daniels, who directed The Butler, Soledad O’Brien, Travis Smiley. Who else? Michael Eric Dyson.A lot of people that are celebrities, but not necessarily like, A-list celebrities. I did the interviews, and posted the selfies, and became kind of local famous.And then I self-published a book called Schmingling: the Art of Being Well-Connected Through Blatant Self-Promotion.But, I felt embarrassed.Because I’m like, Oh, I’m trying to be this famous person who hangs around with celebrities. But I’m also like, I’m a janitor. This is what I do.And, I’d be at the Post Office, out in the lobby sweeping and emptying trash cans and cutting the grass, and somebody would come up and recognize me.It felt really awkward. I was grateful for the job and to be able to serve and support my family. But I felt that anxiety and angst.Then, there was one woman who had seen me on Facebook. She worked for the Post Office in sales, and she used to come in. I’d be walking around emptying trash cans and this lady would be “fangirling” me.And one day, out of the blue, she just asked me: “You’re obviously not afraid to talk to people. Would you want to work in sales?”So I went to work in the Post Office as a salesperson. It’s a bit more money. I was a janitor for so long that I was at the top of my pay scale, so it was just like $5,000. But, I am getting the experience.I go to different businesses and government agencies and help them use direct mail and shipping products — fulfill orders and reach customers. Instead of using UPS or FedEx, I show them how they can use the postal service.Now, I really want to help other people, especially the ones that are working these kinds of jobs, like janitors, because they need to take care of their family. And, that’s honorable, but they’re very talented, gifted, intelligent — and they don’t get the support and the attention.They’re invisible. People aren’t going to take them seriously.But if you can show social proof, if you can show you should be seen in a different light, they’ll take you more seriously.That’s what I learned. It’s what I want to share.I've got a speaking engagement on Thursday with executive women in health care here in Indiana. It’s my first kind of “big gig.” It’s not paid, of course.But I’m going to talk about how to get credibility. If you work in a hospital, how do you get credibility externally, outside the business or the company you’re working for?What can you give, or show your managers, or your C-suite people? “Hey, I’m valuable. I’m being quoted here. I’m on this podcast, and this show, and this is what I’ve learned.”I'm really looking forward to it. And, I'm really nervous about it.I'm a shy introvert, really. A really shy introvert.I know you can't tell now, but I am.

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