Are You Ready to Write Your Book?

     About once a week, I get a text, DM, or email from a colleague or friend of mine asking me to coffee so they can “pick my brain” about a book idea. As a ghostwriter and consultant, I do my best to help those I can, but it’s impossible to take on every request. So I started to vet potential clients. I can usually tell within a couple of sentences if they are really ready.

     Their messages usually sound the same: After a few compliments and catching up, they hit me with their ask: I have so much experience to share, and I really believe the entire world–everyone–needs this right now.  I think I am ready to write a book. I just need some help getting started. I don’t know where to begin. That’s where you come in. Can you help me write?

    In those few sentences, I know everything I need to know. As Justin Bieber said to James Corden in the TikTok seen ‘round the globe:  “Immediately, no… Immediately, no. I seen (sic) everything I needed to see, and immediately, No.”

     Am I being judgy? Maybe. But judgmental is just another word for discerning. After working with enough leaders and founders and writing over 45 books with them, I know what “ready” sounds like.

Are You Ready to Write a Book?

    Ready sounds like you’ve done your homework. You know your audience. You know your message. You know your mission. You don’t “believe,” you know.

    Ready knows who you are writing for. You know the “entire world” doesn’t need your message. That is because “everyone” is not an audience. Chasing everyone or talking to everyone is a fools’ errand. And as a business leader, you know that already.

     Ready also knows that a book is not about YOU, or your “experiences”. Yes, story is important. Your story and experience matter. As the Biebs told Corden in that same Carpool Karaoke– “It’s valuable. You have value.” But, your reader is going to need more than that.

     Trust me when I say no one wants to hear how you got started as a paper girl and pulled yourself up by your bootstraps. And no one wants to hear all about the nuances of your daily life (unless you’re Paul McCartney or Oprah–or you’re a guest in someone’s home and you have to listen to them). Otherwise, your stories give more “Yada, yada, yada” than “Yay, tell me more!”

      What readers really want to know is how you can make their lives better.

     In other words, your experiences are great, but that is NOT what is going to make a reader pick up your book, let alone get you an agent, a publishing deal, or even best seller status.

What Is Your Why?

    I believe every great book begins long before the first word is written. Simon Sinek would say: It starts with why: Why are you doing this? What is your purpose?

     I’d back that truck up a bit more, and reload it, lest a heavy wind knock it off the highway before it arrives at its destination.

    If I were sitting across from you and drinking the cappuccino (double, nonfat) you bought me, I’d ask: What did you desperately desire to know five years ago, ten years ago, yesterday—that you wish someone had told you? That desire lives today in someone you are writing for who desires that same thing you once did. That desire motivates a reader to buy a book as an answer to their questions. 

     This answer is your message. Your message becomes the reason (the why) you are writing.

Who Needs to Hear Your Message?

     Once you have a message, you have to know exactly who you want this message to go to. Like a homing pigeon who only knows how to fly between two fixed points, your message is designed to reach a predetermined audience. You are sending your message via proverbial homing pigeon (your book) out to a designated location (your reader) with the hope that both the message and reader comes back to you—in the form of a following, an offer, and more importantly, your legacy. That’s right. I said what I said.

Being Intentional About Your Legacy

     Your book, your message, your words live on–in your book and in the readers who carry that message everywhere they go. You don’t want to make this book anything other than great. You have to start with an audacious goal. You have to want to make it incredible. The world has enough books (yes, I said it) of “meh” writing from people who “Just want to get their story out there.” The world doesn’t need any more junk, whether it is fast fashion, plastic water bottles, or fast books with no clear audience, message, or authority, let alone good writing. All of it is mucking up the works.

     Let me be clear, if you feel rushed to write a book “to make money ASAP,” I don’t want to work with you. If you want to write a book to make it “just good enough” or “to just get it out of you,” I don’t want to work with you. If you have no desire to do something audacious, bold, and put your entire self into it, I don’t want to work with you. Why? Because you’re really not ready to write a book. Because doing anything less than great sets us both up for failure. It sets you up for slush piles and for being just another print-on-demand book on Amazon. It sets me up for frustration and trying to pull a message out of the ether.

     And make no mistake, you can do it fast and cheap (hello, AI), but you can’t do it well. AI can’t write the words that will endure. It’s great at making word salad. Taking the words of others and assembling them into coherent, grammatically correct sentences. But, it can’t write what only you can. No one can write your book but you (with the help of a talented writing consultant or ghost, of course).

Preserving Your Legacy with Intention

     When we die, what remains is our words. After two generations, if we do not leave a written legacy, we disappear into the annals of time. Who will remember what we have to say long after we are gone?

     Everything we know today about great leaders and changemakers was codified and communicated to us through the written word. Their stories, their lessons, their words endure long after their own progeny left this earth. If you want people to keep returning to you and for your message to live on, you need to write a book that is intentional from day one, that lasts, and that people will return to again and again and again.

     It means thinking about your book with intention today. It’s not something you can just throw together. It’s not simply a chronological or historical list of all that you have accomplished. It’s not about you at all. It’s about what you intend to pass on to others and future generations. It’s definitely not something you can get a handle on over a quick coffee. And it’s not something you can leave AI to create.

     You wouldn’t hand your bank account over to anyone and say, “Here, manage my wealth and inheritance.” You wouldn’t go online to have a generic AI program craft your will to preserve your trust, home, prized possessions, and wealth for future generations. No, you would hire expert wealth managers and lawyers. (And you’d be willing to pay them.) Yes, you would invest in talent, experience, and precision. You would make sure your legacy was in the best hands possible.

What if I told you most inheritances run out after three generations if they aren’t properly protected and maintained? And what if I told you most people aren’t remembered or even visited at the cemetery after two generations? You know what lasts? What does endure? 

     Books.

     Your writing and insights keep your memory and legacy alive forever–that is, if it offers value to the readers, not just now, but for all time. Your book should be timeless, evergreen, and distinctively you.

    Our words are our most enduring and powerful legacy, and yet so few of us give it the intentionality they deserve. Most people don’t recognize the time it takes, the patience, the rewrites, and the strategy required from day one. But, you’re different. You’re a leader. You know everything worth having takes work, effort, time, and purpose. 

     Before people meet with me, I like my potential clients to think deeply about a few topics that every ambitious, bestselling, evergreen book is built upon. I have created a checklist that will help you be “ready” when you sit down with your ghostwriter, consultant, or even yourself to write your book.

    After all, a well-crafted book isn’t just a creative endeavor—it’s a strategic business asset and an enduring piece of history. It can open doors to new opportunities, amplify your authority, attract ideal clients, create sustainable brand growth, and endure long after you are gone.

     But before any of that can happen, you need to know exactly what your book is, who it’s for, and what it’s meant to accomplish.

     Use this checklist to get READY—before you ever sit down to write. And then give me a call. I promise, I won’t say, “Immediately, no.”