A leadership book starts long before the writing

 When people tell me they’re thinking about writing a book, I usually respond with something that sounds vaguely discouraging: “A book starts long before the first word is written.”

What I mean is that before you open your laptop, you need clarity about three things—your purpose, your brand, and your audience. Those are the foundations. But here’s the twist: the process of writing the book almost always changes them.

When writing redefines the brand

Most of my clients arrive believing they know exactly what they stand for. They’ve built companies, led teams, and spoken on stages. Their message feels honed. Then we start talking—and a few chapters in, the edges blur. Their “brand” turns out to be broader, fuzzier, or more generic than they realized.

One client, a CEO who’d spent years preaching about resilience, discovered mid-book that what really drove him wasn’t resilience at all but curiosity—the restless urge to keep reinventing himself. Once we reframed the book around that idea, everything snapped into focus. His brand sharpened, his talks got stronger, and his next company announcement sounded more like him than his PR team.

That’s what happens when you write a serious book. It’s like holding a mirror to your professional identity—it reflects what’s true and exposes what’s still out of focus.

The collaboration that clarifies

As a collaborator, I don’t show up with all the answers. My job is to ask the right questions and listen hard. To notice when your language gets vague, when you repeat yourself, or when your tone shifts from conviction to camouflage.

The clarity doesn’t come from me; it comes from the conversation. Somewhere between your third cup of coffee and your tenth story about “the early days,” the big idea reveals itself. Sometimes it’s a theme you’ve lived for years without naming. Sometimes it’s the contradiction you’ve been quietly avoiding. Either way, it becomes the spine of the book—and often, the spine of your brand.

That’s the challenge, the adventure, and frankly, the joy of doing this work. Every collaboration is part excavation, part strategy session, part therapy with footnotes.

A book is a strategy, not just a story

A leadership book isn’t a literary indulgence. It’s a strategic act. Done right, it aligns three things that are often slightly out of sync: what you’ve lived, what you believe, and what your audience needs to hear.

Writing forces you to articulate not just what you did, but what you stand for—and that process can reshape your entire platform. You start noticing which stories resonate in conversation, which ideas draw nods instead of blank stares, and which paragraphs sound suspiciously like everyone else’s marketing copy. Those observations become data, and that data becomes brand strategy.

When a client tells me they want their book to “build credibility,” I always ask, Credible to whom? Because credibility is relative. The more precisely you define your audience, the more persuasive—and profitable—the book becomes.

The myth of the finished brand

Here’s a truth that surprises many executives: your brand is never finished. It’s a living thing, constantly evolving as your priorities change. A book accelerates that evolution. The act of writing—of pinning your ideas to the page and testing them in public—forces choices. What will you double down on? What will you leave behind?

One client in the financial world started writing to burnish his professional reputation. Halfway through, he realized his real mission was personal—helping families talk honestly about money. That insight didn’t just change the book. It changed his business model and his speaking calendar. The manuscript became the business plan.

The early audience

And one more thing: audience building doesn’t start on launch day. Ideally, you begin cultivating your readers before you ever start the manuscript—sharing ideas, testing themes, inviting conversation.

Think of it as rehearsal. Post a thought on LinkedIn. Write a short essay on your website. Watch what lands. Writing publicly, even in small doses, teaches you who’s listening and what they care about. By the time your book comes out, you’re not shouting into the void—you’re speaking to a community that’s already leaning in.

This isn’t marketing in the cynical sense. It’s engagement. The most effective authors think like publishers long before their first book deal: they create dialogue. The book simply becomes the centerpiece of that ongoing conversation.

The double payoff

The tangible payoff of a leadership book is easy to measure—credibility, clients, keynotes. The quieter payoff is harder to quantify but just as real: perspective.

Writing forces you to slow down and think in complete paragraphs again. It demands that you connect dots that have been scattered across decades. It asks you to translate instinct into language—so others can benefit from what you’ve learned, and so you can see it more clearly.

Many clients tell me that somewhere around Chapter Six, they realize they’re not just writing for their readers anymore. They’re writing to understand their own story.

Where the real story begins

So yes, writing a leadership book is a serious undertaking. But it’s also an energizing, occasionally humbling process that can sharpen not just your message but your sense of who you are and what you want to say to the world.

Because the book doesn’t really start when you type the first word. It starts the moment you begin asking the questions the book will eventually answer. And it doesn’t end with the final chapter—it keeps reshaping you every time someone new reads it and says, “That part—that’s me.”

That’s why, when people tell me they’re thinking about writing a book, I give the same discouraging advice: A book starts long before the first word is written.

And if you’re lucky, it keeps teaching you long after the last one.