Welcome back to Little Leadership Lessons, my newsletter highlighting short but powerful insights to help you lead with confidence and create lasting results. These lessons come directly from my research, interviews, and coaching work with six- and seven-figure creator-founders.
I hope you had a wonderful week full of productive work.
Did you encounter a new idea, book, person, or experience that inspired you this week? Hit reply and tell me about it. I’d love to hear from you.
I had a full week of client work and recorded a new podcast conversation with 86-year-old author and teacher Parker Palmer. It’ll be coming to you soon (I have a whole queue of episodes lined up!)
It was also a hard week, as we received some tough news on the family front. This particular phase of life with young children and aging parents is a practice in holding beauty and destruction, joy and grief, wonder and reflection all at once. I’m listening for what there is to learn as we move through it.
Let’s get to it!
A Beautiful Photo to Quiet Your Body and Mind
As a reminder, each edition of this newsletter is the direct learning from a $1,500 coaching session translated to you and your business in 10 minutes or less. Here’s this week’s…
The Situation
I was coaching a bestselling author recently… someone with a massive global audience and a track record of building beautifully designed businesses around her ideas.
She’s in the early stages of working on her second book.
The first one did incredibly well. And now… the pressure’s on.
She walked me through several draft ideas. One by one, she read them out loud. Each one was carefully structured, logically sound, and designed to follow the conventions of nonfiction bestsellers.
At the end, I paused and asked,
“How do you feel about these?”
She hesitated, then said,
“Honestly? They feel like the book I should write… but I’m not that excited about any of them.”
“The one that felt alive, the last one, wasn’t on the list before. It just came to me as I was talking.”
And there it was.
The Emotional Blocker
This is a pattern I see often—especially in ambitious, high-achieving creators.
When you’ve built something successful, the temptation is to follow the same formula. Repeat what worked. Do what you “should.”
But in doing so, you risk losing the spark that made your first project resonate in the first place.
This client didn’t need more productivity frameworks or positioning tricks. She needed to reconnect with what made her want to write in the first place.
What emerged was a concept that was deeply personal, emotionally resonant, and quite different from her first book in style and structure.
It felt riskier because it was less polished. But it also felt real.
When we dug in, we found the core desire wasn’t just to teach something. It was to speak directly to the reader’s heart. She wants to write in a way that mirrors her most trusted medium, which is conversation.
She wants to create something that will leave the reader not just informed, but maybe even changed inside.
The Breakthrough
As we explored the concept further, we found a structure that felt creatively energizing but still grounded in strategy.
The big shift?
Instead of writing to prove her expertise, she would write from wisdom.
She imagined the book as a dialogue between a younger, searching version of herself and a wiser, future self. Not autobiographical. Not overly specific.
Just emotionally honest and relatable at the level of hope, fear, confusion, and longing.
She doesn’t need to explain every circumstance of her life to make it resonate. She just needs to write from a place of truth.
That conversation unlocked something.
What started as an offhand comment became the seed of a great book. A book only she can write.
And more importantly: a book she actually wants to write.
Coaching Questions to Apply This to Your Business
- Where are you choosing the idea that feels “correct” over the one that feels alive?
- What would change if you gave yourself permission to pursue what excites you most?
- How might your work shift if it came from wisdom, not trying to prove your value?
- What project are you avoiding because it feels too personal or risky?
You don’t need more ideas. You need the right idea. The one that feels undeniably yours. The one that makes your chest buzz a little when you talk about it. The one you’d be proud to put your name on, even if it’s not what you think you “should” do.
Trust that. That’s where the magic lives.
Much love and respect,
PS: After wrapping up two group programs at the end of July, I now have two rare open spots on my coaching roster. If you are a seven-figure creator or entrepreneur and going through a period of inner or outer transformation, please fill out my application to work together.