We often put impossible pressure on a first book – and then wonder why it never gets finished. In this episode, we talk about why your first book doesn’t need to be big, definitive, or impressive to matter.
We explore how releasing outcome pressure actually creates momentum and why small, clear, finishable books often do the most good. We’re all about choosing progress over performance and letting your first book be what it needs to be.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Why first books get stuck under unrealistic expectations
- The difference between “important” and “finishable”
- How starting small creates confidence, clarity, and momentum
- Why we believe the job of a first book is simply to be finished
RESOURCES MENTIONED
- This Week’s Free Action Guide: The Finishable First Book Filter
- The Smart Soulful Business Facebook Community
SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW
If you loved this episode, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Your support helps us reach more Christian women who need to hear this.
🎙 Thanks for tuning in to Smart Soulful Business Podcast! See you next week!
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022: Your First Book: The Goal Isn’t ‘New York Times Bestseller’ (Here’s Why)
Becky Brown 0:01
If you’re a Christian woman, building a business and want it to be purposeful and profitable, we’ve got you covered. I’m Becky.
Laurie Graham 0:08
And I’m Laurie. We have both built successful businesses that we love without losing our faith, humor or our sanity. This is Smart Soulful Business.
Becky Brown 0:17
Real conversations to help your business fit your life and not the other way around. Hey and welcome back to Smart Soulful Business with Becky and Laurie.
Laurie Graham 0:31
This is the place where Becky and I and all of you get to join in the conversation about building businesses that are thoughtful, practical and grounded. I almost want to throw the opposites in there, right, like things that are unintentional, not practical, and like scattered. We don’t want to turn everything into a hustle or even a personality test.
Becky Brown 0:51
For sure. And today, we are continuing our four-part series on writing and publishing a book. So if you listen to the first two episodes, today’s conversation comes right at the point where a lot of people end up stalling out, and they usually don’t even realize why. So by the end of this episode, you should feel clearer about what your first book is actually meant to be, what it’s for, and hopefully you’ll feel a lot less pressure about what it’s supposed to be, as we go through this. So before we dive in, we want to talk about something about like, how we Laurie and Becky, how we teach first books, because you might hear very different messages out there depending on who you’re listening to, because we heard all of those messages.
Laurie Graham 1:40
Yeah, Becky and I both said we have to put this caveat at the beginning of this episode, because you are totally going to have hear people say the opposite about what your first book should be like. It should be your biggest idea, your best work, your most polished thing. You should plan on taking three years to write a book. Like, have you heard that? Like, you should plan on a book taking you years to finish basically everything you’ve wanted to say all at once is supposed to go into this one book.
Becky Brown 2:05
Yeah, and we teach something different, very different, very different kind of the opposite a little bit, but not because that approach is wrong. We want your biggest ideas out there in the world. We want your best ideas. We want people to know all of the insights you have to offer. We want all of that, but it’s because what we’ve seen over and over again is that it’s this is exactly why people never write their books at all, because they get stuck here in thinking, I can’t do it all.
Laurie Graham 2:35
Yeah, yeah. And we want you to finish. We want you to feel amazing. We want you to feel confident. We want you to go, Oh my gosh, look what I did. Our goal, Becky and our goal, right? Becky and me right now. Our goal is not to turn your first book into this major stage performance. This is about taking real steps. You, not somebody else. You, listening to this episode right now. Take real steps towards something you care about, or even something you want to experiment with and try, we’re going to take first steps and finish a book in a way that actually fits our lives.
Becky Brown 3:08
Yeah, and we believe that everyone has influence. Your influence matters. The specific insights that you have matters. And if we can help more people finish one clear, purposeful book start to finish, even if it’s just a really small book. Yeah, that’s a really great way to impact this world. Because guess which books will never impact the world at all, the books that never get written.
Laurie Graham 3:35
Okay, I got goosebumps while you were talking. Because can you imagine, at the end of this year or another year, like getting emails, and, you know, in our Soulful Strategy Community, people saying, I finished my book, I finished my book. Like we should have, like a celebration and send out balloons or confetti or something, and like, let’s see how many people, because of this message, will actually finish a book this year. Finishing a book, just one book already puts you ahead of what most, most people who’ve ever wanted to write one like, and it’s not the competition, it’s not us being ahead, but it’s us being finishers, right? And once you’ve got one done, you’ve changed what’s possible next.
Becky Brown 4:18
And so that’s what today’s conversation is really about. So let’s dive into it. All right, okay, so why starting a first book often feels stuck before you even begin?
One of the patterns that we see over and over again is this, someone really wants to write a book. They’ve wanted to for a really long time. They’ve had all of these ideas that they want to get out into the world, and yet they never start, or they start and then they end up stopping before they get anything actually produced. And maybe they just circle this idea for years. And when we talk with people about why that happens, it’s usually not because they don’t care enough, or that they don’t have enough ideas or they don’t know what to write about. It’s because this book has unconsciously been built up to this monumentous task, and it’s just taken on way more weight than it needs to carry.
So Laurie, talk to me about some of the thoughts and expectations and assumptions that you think contribute to building writing a book, into this impossible task that people either don’t ever start or don’t ever finish.
Laurie Graham 5:30
You know I want to actually add to your question, because when you said, like, we built it into this impossible task, sometimes we’ve built it into a later task, like, sometimes we actually think we’re gonna do it, but we keep putting it off, like, this isn’t the year or this isn’t the time.
So I have a dear friend right now in my head who has, literally will say, I have a book in me. My parents know I have a book in me. Like we all know I have a book in me. I even have the title. I even know what’s it about, what it’s about, and it’s been simmering for a couple years. Like this is common. Like this is literally common, that we have things in us that are simmering. And again, whether you you’ve had your heart center writing a book and you have a million ideas, or there’s just one thing like you want to write about your family, your history, your background, just so you can pass it on to your grandchildren, like I hear that too. And so let’s talk about some of the thoughts, expectations, assumptions.
Becky, I’ll throw some of the ones out that I’ve hear, or I hear a lot of, or I’ve had myself, and feel free to like to interrupt me too, because I know you’ve probably, I know we have a lot of things in common. We’ve heard, but there’s probably some differences. But I think one of the things is that feeling that we’re not ready, that we don’t have the time, that it’s a bad timing, which I’m going to tell you it’s a good time to start writing your book anytime like we can be writing in the middle of our lives.
Our books are actually better if we write in the middle of our lives. And another thing is, like, what I have to say, it doesn’t matter enough. Or I feel like it matters, but maybe it’s not going to matter to other people, or it’s not complete. Like, I’ve got this great idea, I’ve got these thoughts, but I need to put it all together. And it needs to be everything, like this one book needs to be everything and Becky, I know in the other episodes you’ve talked a little bit about visibility or being invisible. Were you just gonna say, talk about that, because I want you to talk about that.
Becky Brown 7:24
How? Gosh. Well, my brain went a million places because each of your points I had caveats for like, when you were I’m gonna go backwards just a little bit, so bring me back and remind me to come back to this.
But when you were talking about writing in the midst of your own life, I have this Devotional that’s on the top of my head. I want to write it, and I haven’t had time or space to do it, but oh my gosh, the desire is there. The ideas are there. And some of my best talking points, the ideas that I want to get down, have come in the middle of sermons. So I’m writing sermon notes and then flipping to the back of my journal, and I have this whole page of ooh, and I want to make sure to include this verse and this topic and this idea and this insight and that it like talk about being incorporated into your real life. That is what book writing looks like for me. Sometimes, it is sitting down quiet chunks of time without my boys around.
Sometimes writing does look like that, and sometimes my best ideas come woven into actual real life, and that like that’s part of what counts too. So I wanted to dig into that one a little bit, and what that’s real life looked like for me.
Laurie Graham 8:23
Oh, no, I totally love it, but like, let’s just a couple more, because we got to make sure we get to solution. But a couple more reasons why sometimes people don’t write their books, or we build it into this insurmountable or later time task. I think another thing is, I don’t want it to be wrong. I don’t want to be embarrassed. My friends might not like this. This might separate me in some ways. I know that’s kind of a bigger concept, but I think that’s internal. Like, we don’t even always know that sometimes is there. But I think we mostly, we just make it bigger in our head than it needs to be, don’t you think?
Becky Brown 8:56
Well, yeah. Like you talked about the insecurities, my insecurities scream pretty loud in like, who would actually want to hear that from you? Other people have have written about the topic. Why would they want to hear it from you? Yeah, you don’t know all the things you’re not the foremost expert in this area, all of those insecurities that tell you, yeah, don’t write the thing.
Laurie Graham 9:13
Okay, I gotta say this. I thought of this phrase like, we think this book has to be amazing, and you are the one that broke me of that, Becky, and I’m just gonna tell everybody listening right now, we really believe this, your first book does not need to be amazing. It doesn’t need to be amazing at all. It just needs to be done.
Becky Brown 9:33
It’s true. And we do think you’re amazing. We do think you’re amazing, but also, like when you’re doing something for the first time, it doesn’t have to be amazing. So once that assumption is there, this does not need to be amazing, it changes how people think about what kind of book they’re allowed to write in the first place.
Laurie Graham 9:50
Yes, so let’s talk about the fact that your first book doesn’t need to represent every single thing that you know. And I just want to say this as honestly as I can. Because I truly believe this your first book, I’m gonna say it shouldn’t. I hardly ever say should. I hate to say shouldn’t.
But your first book, it’s not meant to represent the full scope of who you are, your ideas, your experience, your potential, your wisdom like get let’s get that straight out of our heads. We are not Yoda. We are not creating a lifetime legacy book right now, this is not a summary of your life’s work. It’s not a forever statement.
It’s the beginning. It’s a start. But Becky, when we talk about like, you know how we feel or how we’re coming into this place personally to write a book, what do you think shifts when we do that flip from our book has to be everything to our book doesn’t have to be everything. What do you think shifts?
Becky Brown 10:48
Yeah, well, that was a shift. I lived because I really did think, oh my goodness, I have lived out. My example is Christian Weight Loss for my first Devotional, oh my goodness, I’ve lived I have a million stories to share. Well, you shouldn’t fit a million stories into a 30-fay devotional. It’s not helpful to people. It’s not whatever you can’t boil that down. It’s an impossible task.
Talk about the things that build it up into an impossible task. That’s one of them. So what shifts when you change your expectations of yourself and allow yourself to share something smaller and not all inclusive, is it becomes, you know, I’m a one small change person. I think you can break every big task into one small changes that make it realistic and doable. So you change this impossible task into something that you can take a first step on in the next 10 minutes. That’s what you do when you when you change it and your expectations. It’s just an expectation shift.
Laurie Graham 11:42
Okay, I love that, and it really it also changes what feels possible to write, even in the now, like I’m thinking of my friend and their book that they want to write. It is a big, great topic book. It is a new way to look at a big concept that all of us live in real life with these four big points and these big chapters, like, it’s a big thing and it’s going to be a meaningful book. And as you were talking like, what happens to this big thing that we want to say? What if my friend started with some of the concepts in that book without doing the whole book first? What if they did do a 30-day devotion on how to make this better in your life, how to build a better blank right? And it hints into these ideas, but doesn’t unpack it to get that experience. Like, how cool would that be? Like, maybe we want to say everything, but maybe we take one of the ideas, one of the thoughts, a guidebook, a handbook, a prayer journal, a devotional, so that we get the process down. Like, what do you think of that?
Becky Brown 12:38
Oh, I think that’s what, that’s what makes the impact, right? Remember, what we started this podcast with is that you’re not going to take action if you, if it’s not realistic, it will, you won’t be making an impact on the world. So we say this all the time, that the people who finish books are rarely the people who started with the biggest or the best or the most unique ideas. They’re the people who chose something manageable and followed it through.
Laurie Graham 13:05
Okay, I’m sorry. Can you, I don’t know if you have that written down or not. Can you say that again? I think this is like the whole purpose of the podcast, like we could stop here, but we’re not gonna stop here yet. But say that one more time.
Becky Brown 13:17
Yeah, so the people who finish books are rarely the people who started with the biggest or the best or the most unique ideas. They’re the people who chose something manageable and followed it through. Yeah, follow through is important.
Laurie Graham 13:33
So good. And if you’re one of the people listening right now who have the big book idea, yeah, we’re not kiboshing that. We’re saying, start with something smaller, get it done, because it’s going to build your confidence, it’s going to build momentum. It’s even going to build your fans, quite honestly, and people who actually want to read your big book. So this totally leads directly into the question that everybody ends up asking next, how do you know whether a book idea is a good idea for your first book? So maybe we have a million ideas. Maybe we just have one big idea and we’re like, it’s too big. How do we know whether it’s a good idea for your first book?
Becky Brown 14:09
Yeah, so having a meaningful idea doesn’t automatically make it a good first book. We’ve talked about that your friend with this huge, ginormous life transforming great ideas. It’s not a judgment to say that. It’s just the practical piece of learning this new skill and doing this thing, a first book. It has to fit into the capacity that your real life allows for right now. It has to fit into the time you actually have, the energy you actually have, the season you’re actually in right now. So we’re going to give you some ideas. Laurie, what are some of the things you would say that actually make a book idea finishable? Let’s talk more specifically about what this could look like.
Laurie Graham 14:50
I think narrow. I think simple. I think smaller. I think one main point, instead of 18. I think changing it from a college course into a nugget like, that’s good, if you really think about what we repeat, what gets shared on social media, all these things, it’s a phrase, it’s a quote, it’s not the whole book.
And you know, I grew up in churches, from growing up in some mainline denominations where the sermons or the homilies, were 10 to 15 minutes, and then getting into other churches where the sermons are 45 minutes and an hour long, and even longer, I gotta be honest, I get more out of a shorter talk, yeah, because it stays focused and it doesn’t send me in rabbit trails. And can we think about books like that? Now, not all books like I’ve shared. There’s some long books I like, but for our first book, like, let’s make it a nugget that people will actually remember, instead of, uh, you know, a five-course buffet where it’s confusing and stressful because I want to eat it all, but I can’t fit it all in my body anyway, right?
Becky Brown 15:57
Yeah, absolutely. Well, and think about the we’ve talked about this on the last book podcast that we recorded. The things that have been most helpful for us are usually things we’re looking for in desperate moments, where we are looking for a very specific solution to a very specific problem. Not, oh, I want to explore this huge world of ideas that’s not typically what we’re looking for. Usually looking for something small and actionable that we can digest easily.
Laurie Graham 16:24
Okay, I love that you said small and actionable, because I think you just took what I just took five minutes to say and boiled it into two words.
So everybody, here’s another mic drop moment that you’ll remember. Small and actionable. You can forget ever all the unpacking Laurie just did and remember Becky saying small and actionable. I think that is the sign, the idea for a first book is small and actionable. And again, we’re not saying we never want all the hows and the whys and the what’s like there’s times when I do want to understand neurobiology and why my brain is acting the way it is.
But what we’re saying is, for a first book small and actionable can actually. I also want to say it doesn’t mean it’s insignificant, correct? Like small actionable is often more transformational getting away from all the information I’m getting all excited here, Becky.
Becky Brown 17:10
I know. I know. No, so let’s go back. So choosing a small actionable book is not limiting your future potential of writing your huge, ginormous book. It’s the first step to open it, right? And so when, yeah. And that also brings us to something that also doesn’t get talked about enough, is what actually changes when someone finishes a book, finishes a book.
Laurie Graham 17:38
I want to go on a tangent. I’m looking at our time to see if I have time to go on a tangent. I’m going to go on a tangent. I’m gonna go on a small little tangent. Because I’m learning while you’re talking. I don’t know when you’re listening to this podcast, you all. Whether it’s when we recorded it, when it went live in 2026 or later.
But I have a book like, Becky and I are always in process while we’re teaching, we’re in process. Becky just published a book. She has another one. She’s starting. I have a big girl book. I call it a ‘big girl book’ because I’ve never written a big girl book, like a 40,000-word book on bullying in churches and what lay people how lay people can have an influence in their churches with bullying and church hurt. I wrote it. It’s not edited yet, but I wrote it maybe four or six months ago, it is just sitting there because I don’t have the capacity right now to get into it, but it’s even done. But as you’re talking about, like, you know, getting the small one out doesn’t limit like, why don’t I just write a quick 30-Day Devotional on bullying in the churches? And you know what I mean? Like, why don’t I just do that? I literally could have that out this month, and it could lead up to the big release of the of the big girl book. Okay, let me come back. Why finishing matters more than publishing it first?
Okay, yeah, finishing a book does something internal. I know we’ve said it, but I want, I want you listening to hear it. It does something internal before it does anything external. But I want to say I think what it does internally is bigger than what it does externally, like it changes how when I wrote my first book, which I don’t even know how many people have read it, it’s not a bestseller. It’s not, you know, getting shared all over the place. It changed how I related to myself. It changed how I felt about myself, like I can see my little name on the spine of the book on my bookshelf, like, right now. Like there’s something about it. It’s, it’s not like an it’s not an egotistical like, Oh, I’m famous because I know I’m not like, hardly anybody’s ever read this one little book.
But it did something for me. Like, I finished it. I did it. It changes how I approach future projects. It changes what I think I’m capable on and even following through on my ADHD nature, who’ve been told I don’t finish things. I finish things all the time, and it’s like a visible representation of something. So Becky for you, what does finishing a book teach somebody about their own capacity. And even, why does that completion matter before the visibility or the external sharing?
Becky Brown 20:10
Yeah, well, and you know, I’ve mentioned before on the importance of following through on your own word to yourself having these ideas and taking action on them. And one of the phrases that I’ve actually journaled a lot in my own personal quiet times recently is finishing well. So it’s great to feel inspired and to have ideas and and good intentions and good motivations. That’s a wonderful piece, but if you can’t finish them well, then it loses its impact.
And so finishing well, yeah, like, okay, so it matters that this book gets into people’s hands, but it’s almost like you have to reverse engineer it first. It can’t get into people’s hands if you don’t have something to hand them, yeah? And so you have to have this thing written and completed, because as long, like, how many? Okay, Laurie, I’m going to jump to a side note, not even book related. How many times did we talk about starting Smart Soulful Business, not in these names, because we didn’t know the business name for the longest time. How many times did we say, Oh, my goodness, we need to create this. People keep asking for this resource, and we don’t want to give to them.
Laurie Graham 21:16
Yeah, a lot, a lot. Probably for a couple years.
Becky Brown 21:19
Yeah, years and so yeah, and, and we’re here now because we have taught ourselves through book writing, through doing the things, through finishing well, that it matters. It matters to finish. Well, that’s why we’re here.
Laurie Graham 21:34
Yeah. And, you know, I love what you talked about, reverse engineering, too, and finishing well, because I can easily shame-spiral over all the things I haven’t finished. And if you’re listening right now and you’re like, oh my gosh, I’m not finishing, well, you’re so right, I should have finished. Well, the point isn’t a shame-spiral. The point is to make it smaller so you can finish well, like, we are proofs of this. And again, this is not what other people how other people might tell you to write your first book, but we’re having a heck of a lot more fun, aren’t we, than other people who are in the middle of a three-year process of writing their big book. You know, most of them don’t finish.
Becky Brown 22:11
And the other thing about this, is that I think sometimes like if we feel like we’re making this this first book too small. Remember, the purpose of the first book is to finish it. A finished book gives you clarity on what comes next. It’ll change. If you have this big idea for a book, it might change the course of what that looks like, and when that looks like, and all of those things. It gives you clarity when you take actions and do the thing, it gives you clarity.
Laurie Graham 22:37
And sometimes the clarity is even that you might decide you don’t want to be a book writer, you might want to be a podcaster like literally. And I think Amy Porterfield, who does a lot of email teaching, she talked about how she tried to make herself into a blog writer for a long time, and then just realized how much easier podcast, right, podcasting is for her. And she’s a very successful person in business, and she changed what she wanted. And I think sometimes when we write the small book, we feel so great finishing, because this happened for me, it became less of a priority.
When I wrote my first book, my whole goal was to be a prolific writer. I was going to be publishing on Amazon, like 30 books a year, and I had it all mapped out in my head. And after I did my first one like I enjoyed it, and I’m gonna keep writing, but I was like, Oh, I don’t want to do this all the time. And so that’s the other piece of clarity that can come as you might do your first book and say, Oh, I think I’d rather create digital courses. I think I’d rather do a podcast. You know, I think I’d rather and, but the finishing is necessary for the clarity.
Becky Brown 23:42
It is. It is yeah, and so again, just a reminder that this is not about lowering the expectations for yourself or what you’re sharing, lowering the importance. That’s not about it’s just choosing the right expectations for your first step into this world of book writing. So here is.
Laurie Graham 24:00
Love it, love it, love it. We’re so excited.
Becky Brown 24:03
We are. So here is the big takeaway from today’s podcast, your first book.
Laurie Graham 24:08
Write your book, isn’t it? Just write your book?
Becky Brown 24:12
Your first book, does not need to be everything. It doesn’t need to cover the full scope of what you believe and what you want to share with this world and the impact. It does not have to include all of that. It doesn’t need to be impressive. It doesn’t need to be the most amazing. It doesn’t need to explain everything that you know. It needs to be finishable. So because finishing is what teaches you that writing a first book and a second book and a third book and a fourth book is possible.
So we really want you to download this free this week’s free Action Guide. Every podcast we record comes with a free Action Guide. This week’s is called the Finishable First Book Filter, and it’s a really short, practical tool. You can go through it in about 5 to 10 minutes to look at a book idea and see whether it’s realistic for you iIn this season of your life. So you’ll find the link in the show notes. Make sure to download that. Go through it really quickly, and it’ll get you that next step for moving forward.
And if you want even more support, we have a course called How to Write Your First Book this year. We completely designed it to walk you step-by-step through helping you choose the right first book, helping you build the momentum, helping you write it and actually finish without turning it into this monumental unfinishable task. So that link is also in the show notes. Thank you so much for spending this time with us today on Smart Soulful Business.
If this episode helped you rethink what’s possible, feel free to share it with someone who has also been circling this idea of writing a book for a while. And if you want steady support as you build with real time feedback, come join us in the Soulful Strategy Community. It’s our $9 a month membership, and the link is also in the show notes.
So one last thing, if this conversation was helpful, leaving a really quick review is one of the simplest ways that you can support this show and help the right people find it. So we are really glad you’re here. We want you to write your first book, and we can’t wait to hear all about it. Go team.
Becky Brown 0:01
If you’re a Christian woman, building a business and want it to be purposeful and profitable, we’ve got you covered. I’m Becky.
Laurie Graham 0:08
And I’m Laurie. We have both built successful businesses that we love without losing our faith, humor or our sanity. This is Smart Soulful Business.
Becky Brown 0:17
Real conversations to help your business fit your life and not the other way around. Hey and welcome back to Smart Soulful Business with Becky and Laurie.
Laurie Graham 0:31
This is the place where Becky and I and all of you get to join in the conversation about building businesses that are thoughtful, practical and grounded. I almost want to throw the opposites in there, right, like things that are unintentional, not practical, and like scattered. We don’t want to turn everything into a hustle or even a personality test.
Becky Brown 0:51
For sure. And today, we are continuing our four-part series on writing and publishing a book. So if you listen to the first two episodes, today’s conversation comes right at the point where a lot of people end up stalling out, and they usually don’t even realize why. So by the end of this episode, you should feel clearer about what your first book is actually meant to be, what it’s for, and hopefully you’ll feel a lot less pressure about what it’s supposed to be, as we go through this. So before we dive in, we want to talk about something about like, how we Laurie and Becky, how we teach first books, because you might hear very different messages out there depending on who you’re listening to, because we heard all of those messages.
Laurie Graham 1:40
Yeah, Becky and I both said we have to put this caveat at the beginning of this episode, because you are totally going to have hear people say the opposite about what your first book should be like. It should be your biggest idea, your best work, your most polished thing. You should plan on taking three years to write a book. Like, have you heard that? Like, you should plan on a book taking you years to finish basically everything you’ve wanted to say all at once is supposed to go into this one book.
Becky Brown 2:05
Yeah, and we teach something different, very different, very different kind of the opposite a little bit, but not because that approach is wrong. We want your biggest ideas out there in the world. We want your best ideas. We want people to know all of the insights you have to offer. We want all of that, but it’s because what we’ve seen over and over again is that it’s this is exactly why people never write their books at all, because they get stuck here in thinking, I can’t do it all.
Laurie Graham 2:35
Yeah, yeah. And we want you to finish. We want you to feel amazing. We want you to feel confident. We want you to go, Oh my gosh, look what I did. Our goal, Becky and our goal, right? Becky and me right now. Our goal is not to turn your first book into this major stage performance. This is about taking real steps. You, not somebody else. You, listening to this episode right now. Take real steps towards something you care about, or even something you want to experiment with and try, we’re going to take first steps and finish a book in a way that actually fits our lives.
Becky Brown 3:08
Yeah, and we believe that everyone has influence. Your influence matters. The specific insights that you have matters. And if we can help more people finish one clear, purposeful book start to finish, even if it’s just a really small book. Yeah, that’s a really great way to impact this world. Because guess which books will never impact the world at all, the books that never get written.
Laurie Graham 3:35
Okay, I got goosebumps while you were talking. Because can you imagine, at the end of this year or another year, like getting emails, and, you know, in our Soulful Strategy Community, people saying, I finished my book, I finished my book. Like we should have, like a celebration and send out balloons or confetti or something, and like, let’s see how many people, because of this message, will actually finish a book this year. Finishing a book, just one book already puts you ahead of what most, most people who’ve ever wanted to write one like, and it’s not the competition, it’s not us being ahead, but it’s us being finishers, right? And once you’ve got one done, you’ve changed what’s possible next.
Becky Brown 4:18
And so that’s what today’s conversation is really about. So let’s dive into it. All right, okay, so why starting a first book often feels stuck before you even begin?
One of the patterns that we see over and over again is this, someone really wants to write a book. They’ve wanted to for a really long time. They’ve had all of these ideas that they want to get out into the world, and yet they never start, or they start and then they end up stopping before they get anything actually produced. And maybe they just circle this idea for years. And when we talk with people about why that happens, it’s usually not because they don’t care enough, or that they don’t have enough ideas or they don’t know what to write about. It’s because this book has unconsciously been built up to this monumentous task, and it’s just taken on way more weight than it needs to carry.
So Laurie, talk to me about some of the thoughts and expectations and assumptions that you think contribute to building writing a book, into this impossible task that people either don’t ever start or don’t ever finish.
Laurie Graham 5:30
You know I want to actually add to your question, because when you said, like, we built it into this impossible task, sometimes we’ve built it into a later task, like, sometimes we actually think we’re gonna do it, but we keep putting it off, like, this isn’t the year or this isn’t the time.
So I have a dear friend right now in my head who has, literally will say, I have a book in me. My parents know I have a book in me. Like we all know I have a book in me. I even have the title. I even know what’s it about, what it’s about, and it’s been simmering for a couple years. Like this is common. Like this is literally common, that we have things in us that are simmering. And again, whether you you’ve had your heart center writing a book and you have a million ideas, or there’s just one thing like you want to write about your family, your history, your background, just so you can pass it on to your grandchildren, like I hear that too. And so let’s talk about some of the thoughts, expectations, assumptions.
Becky, I’ll throw some of the ones out that I’ve hear, or I hear a lot of, or I’ve had myself, and feel free to like to interrupt me too, because I know you’ve probably, I know we have a lot of things in common. We’ve heard, but there’s probably some differences. But I think one of the things is that feeling that we’re not ready, that we don’t have the time, that it’s a bad timing, which I’m going to tell you it’s a good time to start writing your book anytime like we can be writing in the middle of our lives.
Our books are actually better if we write in the middle of our lives. And another thing is, like, what I have to say, it doesn’t matter enough. Or I feel like it matters, but maybe it’s not going to matter to other people, or it’s not complete. Like, I’ve got this great idea, I’ve got these thoughts, but I need to put it all together. And it needs to be everything, like this one book needs to be everything and Becky, I know in the other episodes you’ve talked a little bit about visibility or being invisible. Were you just gonna say, talk about that, because I want you to talk about that.
Becky Brown 7:24
How? Gosh. Well, my brain went a million places because each of your points I had caveats for like, when you were I’m gonna go backwards just a little bit, so bring me back and remind me to come back to this.
But when you were talking about writing in the midst of your own life, I have this Devotional that’s on the top of my head. I want to write it, and I haven’t had time or space to do it, but oh my gosh, the desire is there. The ideas are there. And some of my best talking points, the ideas that I want to get down, have come in the middle of sermons. So I’m writing sermon notes and then flipping to the back of my journal, and I have this whole page of ooh, and I want to make sure to include this verse and this topic and this idea and this insight and that it like talk about being incorporated into your real life. That is what book writing looks like for me. Sometimes, it is sitting down quiet chunks of time without my boys around.
Sometimes writing does look like that, and sometimes my best ideas come woven into actual real life, and that like that’s part of what counts too. So I wanted to dig into that one a little bit, and what that’s real life looked like for me.
Laurie Graham 8:23
Oh, no, I totally love it, but like, let’s just a couple more, because we got to make sure we get to solution. But a couple more reasons why sometimes people don’t write their books, or we build it into this insurmountable or later time task. I think another thing is, I don’t want it to be wrong. I don’t want to be embarrassed. My friends might not like this. This might separate me in some ways. I know that’s kind of a bigger concept, but I think that’s internal. Like, we don’t even always know that sometimes is there. But I think we mostly, we just make it bigger in our head than it needs to be, don’t you think?
Becky Brown 8:56
Well, yeah. Like you talked about the insecurities, my insecurities scream pretty loud in like, who would actually want to hear that from you? Other people have have written about the topic. Why would they want to hear it from you? Yeah, you don’t know all the things you’re not the foremost expert in this area, all of those insecurities that tell you, yeah, don’t write the thing.
Laurie Graham 9:13
Okay, I gotta say this. I thought of this phrase like, we think this book has to be amazing, and you are the one that broke me of that, Becky, and I’m just gonna tell everybody listening right now, we really believe this, your first book does not need to be amazing. It doesn’t need to be amazing at all. It just needs to be done.
Becky Brown 9:33
It’s true. And we do think you’re amazing. We do think you’re amazing, but also, like when you’re doing something for the first time, it doesn’t have to be amazing. So once that assumption is there, this does not need to be amazing, it changes how people think about what kind of book they’re allowed to write in the first place.
Laurie Graham 9:50
Yes, so let’s talk about the fact that your first book doesn’t need to represent every single thing that you know. And I just want to say this as honestly as I can. Because I truly believe this your first book, I’m gonna say it shouldn’t. I hardly ever say should. I hate to say shouldn’t.
But your first book, it’s not meant to represent the full scope of who you are, your ideas, your experience, your potential, your wisdom like get let’s get that straight out of our heads. We are not Yoda. We are not creating a lifetime legacy book right now, this is not a summary of your life’s work. It’s not a forever statement.
It’s the beginning. It’s a start. But Becky, when we talk about like, you know how we feel or how we’re coming into this place personally to write a book, what do you think shifts when we do that flip from our book has to be everything to our book doesn’t have to be everything. What do you think shifts?
Becky Brown 10:48
Yeah, well, that was a shift. I lived because I really did think, oh my goodness, I have lived out. My example is Christian Weight Loss for my first Devotional, oh my goodness, I’ve lived I have a million stories to share. Well, you shouldn’t fit a million stories into a 30-fay devotional. It’s not helpful to people. It’s not whatever you can’t boil that down. It’s an impossible task.
Talk about the things that build it up into an impossible task. That’s one of them. So what shifts when you change your expectations of yourself and allow yourself to share something smaller and not all inclusive, is it becomes, you know, I’m a one small change person. I think you can break every big task into one small changes that make it realistic and doable. So you change this impossible task into something that you can take a first step on in the next 10 minutes. That’s what you do when you when you change it and your expectations. It’s just an expectation shift.
Laurie Graham 11:42
Okay, I love that, and it really it also changes what feels possible to write, even in the now, like I’m thinking of my friend and their book that they want to write. It is a big, great topic book. It is a new way to look at a big concept that all of us live in real life with these four big points and these big chapters, like, it’s a big thing and it’s going to be a meaningful book. And as you were talking like, what happens to this big thing that we want to say? What if my friend started with some of the concepts in that book without doing the whole book first? What if they did do a 30-day devotion on how to make this better in your life, how to build a better blank right? And it hints into these ideas, but doesn’t unpack it to get that experience. Like, how cool would that be? Like, maybe we want to say everything, but maybe we take one of the ideas, one of the thoughts, a guidebook, a handbook, a prayer journal, a devotional, so that we get the process down. Like, what do you think of that?
Becky Brown 12:38
Oh, I think that’s what, that’s what makes the impact, right? Remember, what we started this podcast with is that you’re not going to take action if you, if it’s not realistic, it will, you won’t be making an impact on the world. So we say this all the time, that the people who finish books are rarely the people who started with the biggest or the best or the most unique ideas. They’re the people who chose something manageable and followed it through.
Laurie Graham 13:05
Okay, I’m sorry. Can you, I don’t know if you have that written down or not. Can you say that again? I think this is like the whole purpose of the podcast, like we could stop here, but we’re not gonna stop here yet. But say that one more time.
Becky Brown 13:17
Yeah, so the people who finish books are rarely the people who started with the biggest or the best or the most unique ideas. They’re the people who chose something manageable and followed it through. Yeah, follow through is important.
Laurie Graham 13:33
So good. And if you’re one of the people listening right now who have the big book idea, yeah, we’re not kiboshing that. We’re saying, start with something smaller, get it done, because it’s going to build your confidence, it’s going to build momentum. It’s even going to build your fans, quite honestly, and people who actually want to read your big book. So this totally leads directly into the question that everybody ends up asking next, how do you know whether a book idea is a good idea for your first book? So maybe we have a million ideas. Maybe we just have one big idea and we’re like, it’s too big. How do we know whether it’s a good idea for your first book?
Becky Brown 14:09
Yeah, so having a meaningful idea doesn’t automatically make it a good first book. We’ve talked about that your friend with this huge, ginormous life transforming great ideas. It’s not a judgment to say that. It’s just the practical piece of learning this new skill and doing this thing, a first book. It has to fit into the capacity that your real life allows for right now. It has to fit into the time you actually have, the energy you actually have, the season you’re actually in right now. So we’re going to give you some ideas. Laurie, what are some of the things you would say that actually make a book idea finishable? Let’s talk more specifically about what this could look like.
Laurie Graham 14:50
I think narrow. I think simple. I think smaller. I think one main point, instead of 18. I think changing it from a college course into a nugget like, that’s good, if you really think about what we repeat, what gets shared on social media, all these things, it’s a phrase, it’s a quote, it’s not the whole book.
And you know, I grew up in churches, from growing up in some mainline denominations where the sermons or the homilies, were 10 to 15 minutes, and then getting into other churches where the sermons are 45 minutes and an hour long, and even longer, I gotta be honest, I get more out of a shorter talk, yeah, because it stays focused and it doesn’t send me in rabbit trails. And can we think about books like that? Now, not all books like I’ve shared. There’s some long books I like, but for our first book, like, let’s make it a nugget that people will actually remember, instead of, uh, you know, a five-course buffet where it’s confusing and stressful because I want to eat it all, but I can’t fit it all in my body anyway, right?
Becky Brown 15:57
Yeah, absolutely. Well, and think about the we’ve talked about this on the last book podcast that we recorded. The things that have been most helpful for us are usually things we’re looking for in desperate moments, where we are looking for a very specific solution to a very specific problem. Not, oh, I want to explore this huge world of ideas that’s not typically what we’re looking for. Usually looking for something small and actionable that we can digest easily.
Laurie Graham 16:24
Okay, I love that you said small and actionable, because I think you just took what I just took five minutes to say and boiled it into two words.
So everybody, here’s another mic drop moment that you’ll remember. Small and actionable. You can forget ever all the unpacking Laurie just did and remember Becky saying small and actionable. I think that is the sign, the idea for a first book is small and actionable. And again, we’re not saying we never want all the hows and the whys and the what’s like there’s times when I do want to understand neurobiology and why my brain is acting the way it is.
But what we’re saying is, for a first book small and actionable can actually. I also want to say it doesn’t mean it’s insignificant, correct? Like small actionable is often more transformational getting away from all the information I’m getting all excited here, Becky.
Becky Brown 17:10
I know. I know. No, so let’s go back. So choosing a small actionable book is not limiting your future potential of writing your huge, ginormous book. It’s the first step to open it, right? And so when, yeah. And that also brings us to something that also doesn’t get talked about enough, is what actually changes when someone finishes a book, finishes a book.
Laurie Graham 17:38
I want to go on a tangent. I’m looking at our time to see if I have time to go on a tangent. I’m going to go on a tangent. I’m gonna go on a small little tangent. Because I’m learning while you’re talking. I don’t know when you’re listening to this podcast, you all. Whether it’s when we recorded it, when it went live in 2026 or later.
But I have a book like, Becky and I are always in process while we’re teaching, we’re in process. Becky just published a book. She has another one. She’s starting. I have a big girl book. I call it a ‘big girl book’ because I’ve never written a big girl book, like a 40,000-word book on bullying in churches and what lay people how lay people can have an influence in their churches with bullying and church hurt. I wrote it. It’s not edited yet, but I wrote it maybe four or six months ago, it is just sitting there because I don’t have the capacity right now to get into it, but it’s even done. But as you’re talking about, like, you know, getting the small one out doesn’t limit like, why don’t I just write a quick 30-Day Devotional on bullying in the churches? And you know what I mean? Like, why don’t I just do that? I literally could have that out this month, and it could lead up to the big release of the of the big girl book. Okay, let me come back. Why finishing matters more than publishing it first?
Okay, yeah, finishing a book does something internal. I know we’ve said it, but I want, I want you listening to hear it. It does something internal before it does anything external. But I want to say I think what it does internally is bigger than what it does externally, like it changes how when I wrote my first book, which I don’t even know how many people have read it, it’s not a bestseller. It’s not, you know, getting shared all over the place. It changed how I related to myself. It changed how I felt about myself, like I can see my little name on the spine of the book on my bookshelf, like, right now. Like there’s something about it. It’s, it’s not like an it’s not an egotistical like, Oh, I’m famous because I know I’m not like, hardly anybody’s ever read this one little book.
But it did something for me. Like, I finished it. I did it. It changes how I approach future projects. It changes what I think I’m capable on and even following through on my ADHD nature, who’ve been told I don’t finish things. I finish things all the time, and it’s like a visible representation of something. So Becky for you, what does finishing a book teach somebody about their own capacity. And even, why does that completion matter before the visibility or the external sharing?
Becky Brown 20:10
Yeah, well, and you know, I’ve mentioned before on the importance of following through on your own word to yourself having these ideas and taking action on them. And one of the phrases that I’ve actually journaled a lot in my own personal quiet times recently is finishing well. So it’s great to feel inspired and to have ideas and and good intentions and good motivations. That’s a wonderful piece, but if you can’t finish them well, then it loses its impact.
And so finishing well, yeah, like, okay, so it matters that this book gets into people’s hands, but it’s almost like you have to reverse engineer it first. It can’t get into people’s hands if you don’t have something to hand them, yeah? And so you have to have this thing written and completed, because as long, like, how many? Okay, Laurie, I’m going to jump to a side note, not even book related. How many times did we talk about starting Smart Soulful Business, not in these names, because we didn’t know the business name for the longest time. How many times did we say, Oh, my goodness, we need to create this. People keep asking for this resource, and we don’t want to give to them.
Laurie Graham 21:16
Yeah, a lot, a lot. Probably for a couple years.
Becky Brown 21:19
Yeah, years and so yeah, and, and we’re here now because we have taught ourselves through book writing, through doing the things, through finishing well, that it matters. It matters to finish. Well, that’s why we’re here.
Laurie Graham 21:34
Yeah. And, you know, I love what you talked about, reverse engineering, too, and finishing well, because I can easily shame-spiral over all the things I haven’t finished. And if you’re listening right now and you’re like, oh my gosh, I’m not finishing, well, you’re so right, I should have finished. Well, the point isn’t a shame-spiral. The point is to make it smaller so you can finish well, like, we are proofs of this. And again, this is not what other people how other people might tell you to write your first book, but we’re having a heck of a lot more fun, aren’t we, than other people who are in the middle of a three-year process of writing their big book. You know, most of them don’t finish.
Becky Brown 22:11
And the other thing about this, is that I think sometimes like if we feel like we’re making this this first book too small. Remember, the purpose of the first book is to finish it. A finished book gives you clarity on what comes next. It’ll change. If you have this big idea for a book, it might change the course of what that looks like, and when that looks like, and all of those things. It gives you clarity when you take actions and do the thing, it gives you clarity.
Laurie Graham 22:37
And sometimes the clarity is even that you might decide you don’t want to be a book writer, you might want to be a podcaster like literally. And I think Amy Porterfield, who does a lot of email teaching, she talked about how she tried to make herself into a blog writer for a long time, and then just realized how much easier podcast, right, podcasting is for her. And she’s a very successful person in business, and she changed what she wanted. And I think sometimes when we write the small book, we feel so great finishing, because this happened for me, it became less of a priority.
When I wrote my first book, my whole goal was to be a prolific writer. I was going to be publishing on Amazon, like 30 books a year, and I had it all mapped out in my head. And after I did my first one like I enjoyed it, and I’m gonna keep writing, but I was like, Oh, I don’t want to do this all the time. And so that’s the other piece of clarity that can come as you might do your first book and say, Oh, I think I’d rather create digital courses. I think I’d rather do a podcast. You know, I think I’d rather and, but the finishing is necessary for the clarity.
Becky Brown 23:42
It is. It is yeah, and so again, just a reminder that this is not about lowering the expectations for yourself or what you’re sharing, lowering the importance. That’s not about it’s just choosing the right expectations for your first step into this world of book writing. So here is.
Laurie Graham 24:00
Love it, love it, love it. We’re so excited.
Becky Brown 24:03
We are. So here is the big takeaway from today’s podcast, your first book.
Laurie Graham 24:08
Write your book, isn’t it? Just write your book?
Becky Brown 24:12
Your first book, does not need to be everything. It doesn’t need to cover the full scope of what you believe and what you want to share with this world and the impact. It does not have to include all of that. It doesn’t need to be impressive. It doesn’t need to be the most amazing. It doesn’t need to explain everything that you know. It needs to be finishable. So because finishing is what teaches you that writing a first book and a second book and a third book and a fourth book is possible.
So we really want you to download this free this week’s free Action Guide. Every podcast we record comes with a free Action Guide. This week’s is called the Finishable First Book Filter, and it’s a really short, practical tool. You can go through it in about 5 to 10 minutes to look at a book idea and see whether it’s realistic for you iIn this season of your life. So you’ll find the link in the show notes. Make sure to download that. Go through it really quickly, and it’ll get you that next step for moving forward.
And if you want even more support, we have a course called How to Write Your First Book this year. We completely designed it to walk you step-by-step through helping you choose the right first book, helping you build the momentum, helping you write it and actually finish without turning it into this monumental unfinishable task. So that link is also in the show notes. Thank you so much for spending this time with us today on Smart Soulful Business.
If this episode helped you rethink what’s possible, feel free to share it with someone who has also been circling this idea of writing a book for a while. And if you want steady support as you build with real time feedback, come join us in the Soulful Strategy Community. It’s our $9 a month membership, and the link is also in the show notes.
So one last thing, if this conversation was helpful, leaving a really quick review is one of the simplest ways that you can support this show and help the right people find it. So we are really glad you’re here. We want you to write your first book, and we can’t wait to hear all about it. Go team.
