You don’t need a better idea; you need a better explanation.

People often say to me that writing a book must be incredibly hard. And yes, the writing takes time. But what surprised me most wasn’t the writing. It was what happened after. Because once the book exists, you discover something quickly: the job now becomes explaining the book. To a publisher. To a bookseller. To someone at an event who says, “Oh, interesting… so what’s it actually about?” You try a sentence. Then a slightly better sentence. Then a version that doesn’t make you sound like you're presenting an invention that involves at least three pulleys, a new Olympic sport, or starting a cult.

Eventually, you realise something. Writing the book was only the first part. The rest of the work is communication. Posts, talks, conversations, interviews, and little snippets explaining what the book is and why it might matter to someone who hasn’t spent the last two years thinking about it. You’ve also got to market it.

Now, marketing the book isn’t some mysterious dark art. It’s simply continuing to explain the idea clearly enough and often enough that other people can see what you see. Just like in the workplace.

Someone has a good idea for a project. Or a new approach. Or a change that would genuinely improve how things work. They explain it once. And then they’re slightly surprised when nothing happens. Because the idea seemed obvious to them. But to everyone else, it’s new. And incomplete. And slightly unclear.

So the real work begins. You explain the problem the idea solves. You connect it to what people care about. You adapt your explanation depending on who’s listening. A colleague wants to know how it affects their day-to-day work. A leader wants to know whether it’s worth the effort. Someone else wants to know what might go wrong. Each conversation shapes the idea a little further.

The truth is, most projects and change efforts don’t succeed because someone had a brilliant idea. They succeed because someone kept explaining the idea. They framed it well. They connected it to real problems. They repeated it often enough that it became clear, familiar, and useful.

If you can't communicate and talk to other people and get across your ideas, you're giving up your potential - Warren Buffet

Writing a book makes this painfully obvious. The idea isn’t the hard part. Helping other people understand the idea - that’s where the real work begins.