Hey Reader!
I'm writing my 5th book right now.
In between client work + getting ready to host the first round of something new and very exciting.
(In the margins, just like I teach.)
And I've got a 👻 spooky 🎃 secret 💀 to share with you today.
Even my own first attempts at planning a book need work to get right.
When I started planning Before the Book this summer (coming at ya 2027), I got everything out of my head first. The book promise I jotted down from all that brain-dumping was:
"Get ready to write a Damn Good Book for your business."
But: ew.
Basically true for what I wanted to deliver, but also flat, boring, and like—who would even buy/read that?
(Not you, right?)
And worse, if I'd just left my book's content at what I'd brain-dumped into my notes, not only would it have been a hard book to sell, it would've been a book no one read—because it would've just gone through a method and given no transformation for my readers to experience.
So I worked it through my own book mapping method, the same way I ask my clients to.
What I found is that the biggest change for my clients happens before anyone writes a word. It's the same change my readers need before they're ready to write their Damn Good Book:
These experts need to step into being the confident expert they already are, stop trying to overdeliver, and focus on the one thing their "pre-clients" need to become actual clients.
And that's what makes the writing work.
So my book promise became:
"Become the version of you who can write a Damn Good Book: clear on your business, confident in your work, certain of your book."
A brain dump is a good starting point.
It's raw material, and the first version of almost anything comes out flat... we know there's good stuff in there, but usually, there's too much of it for a book.
But a book takes planning and a few rounds of working it through before you start writing. The stories and content are the art, and the strategy that decides what goes in and what the book does is the science.
About 80% of the people I meet who've written an expert book skipped defining the promise and started with whatever came to mind on their "topic." Without a promise deciding what goes in and what stays out, the book ends up as a lot of spaghetti thrown at the wall.
That's the work we'll do together in Before You Write Another Word: The Book Strategy Workshop on November 11 (12pm ET, $27). Bring your brain dump. We'll do your book's money math, work backwards from the offer you already sell, and you'll walk out with a book topic built to bring you clients.
Your book bestie,
Holly
PS — In Before You Write Another Word: The Book Strategy Workshop on November 11 (12pm ET, $27), we take what's in your head and find the one book your business needs to help you reach your next-level goals.
PPS — Are you getting in your own way of your business? In the free private podcast series Beyond the Bottleneck, I get into which balls I let drop this summer, which I didn't, and how I did things differently so that this time "life" came at me, it went way better.