I wrote and produced multiple books: the business books (the Subtract to Ship series) and magic performance books. The output captures nearly two decades of experience — and that’s what matters. Not the volume. Not the speed. The depth of learning distilled into each page.
When I mention the books to people, their first question is always “how?” — as if the answer is some secret productivity technique they could copy.
The “how” is interesting, and I’ll address it. But the more important question is “why.” Why write multiple books as an interconnected body of work instead of one book at a time? The answer isn’t about productivity. It’s about strategy.
The Strategic Decision
For twenty years, I’d been accumulating intellectual capital — frameworks, methodologies, case studies, insights — through consulting work. This capital lived in three places: my head, my client decks, and scattered notes. It was valuable but illiquid. I could use it in one-on-one client engagements, but I couldn’t scale it, sell it, or build on it.
Books convert illiquid intellectual capital into liquid assets. A book that articulates your methodology can be sold while you sleep, shared by readers who become clients, and referenced by peers who amplify your reputation. It’s the most efficient conversion mechanism I know of for turning experience into reach.
But one book has a single point of impact. Six books create a system — a body of work that covers different aspects of the same philosophy, serves different audiences, and cross-references itself into a coherent whole. The four business books build on each other. The two magic books serve a completely different audience but demonstrate the same principles (subtraction, craft, performance) in a different domain.
The strategic math: one book reaches one audience through one angle. Six books reach multiple audiences through multiple angles, with each book reinforcing the others. The marginal effort of the fifth and sixth books was lower than the first because the intellectual foundations were already laid. The marginal impact was higher because the body of work created credibility that no single book could.
This is the compound effect applied to publishing: each book makes the others more valuable by being part of a set rather than a standalone.
The AI Factor (Honest Discussion)
I used AI extensively in the writing process. I’m open about this because I think the dishonest version — “I wrote 400,000 words entirely by hand” — would be both incredible and untrue.
Here’s how AI actually contributed:
Research acceleration. AI tools helped me organize and cross-reference the thousands of notes, frameworks, and case studies I’d accumulated over nearly two decades. What would have taken weeks of manual sorting took hours. The raw material was mine — generated through years of real work. The organization was AI-assisted.
First-draft scaffolding. For some chapters, I used AI to generate structural outlines based on my existing frameworks and notes. These outlines gave me a starting structure to write against. The structure was a collaboration; the actual writing — the voice, the opinions, the specific examples, the personal stories — was mine.
Editing and refinement. AI helped identify inconsistencies across the books, flagged repetitive passages, and suggested structural improvements. This is essentially what a team of human editors would do, done faster and at lower cost.
What AI did not do: Generate original ideas. Produce personal anecdotes. Make strategic decisions about what to include or exclude. Determine the voice and tone. Choose which frameworks to feature. Decide the book structure. These are irreducibly human — they require the nearly two decades of experience that produced the intellectual capital in the first place.
The detailed process behind AI-assisted book writing is covered elsewhere. The point here is strategic: AI didn’t create the books. It accelerated the conversion of my existing knowledge into book form. The knowledge took nearly two decades to accumulate. The quality and the learnings captured in these books come from that depth of experience — not from volume or speed.
The Production Approach
The project had a deliberate structure:
Phase 1: Architecture. I mapped all the books simultaneously — not sequentially. This allowed me to identify overlaps, ensure cross-references worked, and design each book to complement the others. The architecture phase produced detailed outlines for all books, with chapter summaries, key frameworks per chapter, and designated personal stories and case studies.
Phase 2: Core writing (business books). The foundational business books were written in concentrated daily sessions during peak creative hours, using the outlines from the architecture phase as scaffolding. Each chapter followed a consistent structure: opening story, framework explanation, real-world application, practical takeaway.
Phase 3: Core writing (remaining books). The remaining books followed the same daily rhythm. By this point, the writing muscle was warmed up. The magic books required a different voice but the same structural discipline.
Phase 4: Editing, integration, and production. This phase was entirely about refinement: ensuring consistency across all books, polishing prose, verifying cross-references, and preparing publication materials. The editing phase was where AI tools were most valuable — scanning a large body of work for inconsistencies is exactly the kind of task machines excel at.
This approach worked because of two factors: the intellectual capital was already developed (I wasn’t generating new ideas — I was articulating existing ones), and the daily writing practice was sustainable (consistent output during focused morning sessions is demanding but not destructive).
The Real Reason: Leverage and Legacy
The honest, unvarnished reason for writing six books was this: I’m in my forties and I want my work to outlast my consulting career.
Consulting is wonderful and limited. It’s wonderful because I love the work, the client relationships, and the problem-solving. It’s limited because it scales linearly with my time. When I stop consulting, the revenue stops. The impact stops. The work disappears into the organizations I served.
Books create leverage. They continue working after you stop. A reader in five years will find the same frameworks and the same insights that a consulting client received in person. The books extend my reach beyond what personal interaction can achieve.
Books also create legacy — a specific articulation of what I’ve learned that exists independently of me. When I’m no longer consulting, the Subtraction Audit, the Revenue Engine, the Owner Dependency Score will still be available to anyone who needs them. That matters to me.
The decision to write six at once rather than one at a time was about completeness. I wanted to articulate the full system — not a fragment. One book would be an introduction. Six books would be a methodology. The difference between “this person wrote a book” and “this person has a body of work” is significant for credibility, reach, and lasting impact.
The founder’s definition of enough includes, for me, a component that isn’t financial: it includes having articulated what I’ve learned in a form that others can use. The six books are that articulation. They’re not perfect. They’re complete enough to be useful, which — in the spirit of everything I teach — is all they need to be.
What the Process Taught Me
The intensive writing process produced six books. It also produced several insights about creative production at scale:
The bottleneck is always organization, not creation. I had twenty years of material. The challenge wasn’t generating content — it was organizing it into coherent, progressive structures. If you have deep expertise in something, you probably have a book (or several) inside you already. The work is extraction and organization, not creation from scratch.
Constraint drives quality. Writing six books simultaneously is a severe constraint. That constraint forced decisive choices: which stories to include, which frameworks to feature, which tangents to cut. An open-ended timeline for one book would have produced a bloated, unfocused manuscript. The tight scope produced focused, practical books.
Daily consistency matters more than daily volume. I wrote every weekday throughout the production period. Some days produced 5,000 words. Some days produced 2,000. The consistency — not the peak output — determined the total. Missing a day was more costly than having a low-output day, because momentum is fragile and restarting costs energy.
Finishing is a skill separate from writing. The difference between a manuscript and a book is the willingness to stop improving and ship. The Ship Trigger framework applies directly: define “done,” and when the conditions are met, publish. I could have spent another six months polishing. The books would have been 5% better and six months later. The math doesn’t favor that trade.
The six books exist. They’re read. They generate conversations, clients, and credibility. They’ll outlast my active career. That’s why I wrote them. And that’s why the real story isn’t about productivity — it’s about a strategic decision to convert twenty years of experience into a permanent, shareable, scalable form.
Key takeaways:
- Books convert illiquid intellectual capital (knowledge in your head) into liquid assets (reach, revenue, reputation) — if you have deep expertise, the material already exists.
- Writing multiple books simultaneously allows cross-referencing, reduces overlap, and creates a coherent body of work that’s more credible than a single volume.
- AI accelerates the conversion of existing knowledge into written form but doesn’t replace the decades of experience that produced the knowledge.
- The bottleneck for most experts isn’t creation — it’s organization. Structure your material first, then write against the structure.
- Set a tight timeline and treat finishing as a skill — a focused book shipped on deadline creates more impact than a perfect book shipped someday.
