I wanted to do a pop-up episode on this. I’m not behind my Yeti mic, I’m just on my phone — but I had to share it with you, because it’s such an important lesson and it’s so much a part of my own design.
So you may or may not know this — I wrote a book. 50 Not Finished. It came out a little over a year ago, last May, May of 2025. And I was proud of it. But being a classic 2/4 profile, I was like — okay, it’s okay. It was so much work, so much of my heart went into it, and I still couldn’t quite see it. I couldn’t see if it was anything special.
That’s so classic of a 2/4. The two cannot see her own genius. It has to be called out by others.
So I did the launch, and it was great — we made bestseller on Amazon, all of that. But I knew I was missing some components of really giving it its due. And for the last year, I haven’t been promoting it much. I kept telling myself I needed to redesign it, rewrite it, reorganize it. Was this missing? Was that missing? It became this big thing sitting out there that I just — wasn’t working on. I was going to relaunch it in September. And then September got close and I was like, oh, it’s really not ready.
And then two big things happened.
Number one, I got the major download that no — I’m not meant to be focusing on rewriting that book right now. My focus needs to be on the IGNITE Her® Frequencies guidebook, all 64 Frequencies, the 12 profiles, the 36 superpowers — probably a 400-plus-page guidebook my certification women will use to study their own design. So the book didn’t need a rewrite. It needed a few minor tweaks — a couple of the calls to action, because my website moved over to Substack — and then it needed to go back out into the world.
But I also decided I really needed to read the book again myself, cover to cover. I’ve done it many times, but I wanted to do it again — and I realized I didn’t have a lot of time.
So I said, there’s got to be a way I can have this read to me, like an audiobook. It’s not available yet as an audiobook — it will be — but I was sure I could have it read to me. And I asked Claude, and Claude said, yeah, there’s plenty of tools, Speechify is one. And I was like — oh, I tried Speechify years and years ago. It was okay. But of course the AI has changed. So I said, all right, I have a three-hour drive this afternoon, let me get the PDF of the book into Speechify and listen to it on my drive.
And I got to pick who I wanted to speak it out. And Gwyneth Paltrow was one of the voices. And I really like her voice.
So I was like — yeah, right, I’ll have Gwyneth read this to me. And I’m laughing, because in such a 2/4 way, I needed to hear someone else’s voice reading my book back to me to actually realize how frickin’ good it is.
And here’s the funniest thing. I’m listening on the car ride, and my twelve-year-old fell asleep. So it’s just me and the book. And there were certain times I forgot it was my book. Because it’s Gwyneth Paltrow reading it — I’m forgetting it’s mine that I’m listening to. And I’m like, oh my God, that’s so good. Oh my God, that’s so right.
And having Gwyneth Paltrow speak it back to me — it finally hit me. I actually had tears in my eyes.
Because if I feel this way, so many people feel this way. We cannot see our own genius. We cannot see what we have the capability to create.
So actually having her read it back to me, I got more convicted than ever that this book needs to be out in the world in an even bigger way than it was. For the last year I’ve been doing a complete disservice — not getting this book into the hands of every woman. And it hit me, the power of what I put together, and — shame on me. This is where we always come back to it. Our own self-image, how we see ourself, how we see our work — how I saw my book was the biggest limiter to my fulfillment and my legacy work.
I updated a few things, and I’m sending it to my publisher later today. We’ll get it updated on Amazon, I’ll make an announcement when the latest is live. And we’re going to be creating an audiobook — which is critical, which is coming — and really focusing on getting this piece of work into more hands, because it has the power to be a catalyst and a reference guide.
Here’s how I see this book. You can read it, or listen to it, on the first pass, and it’s going to ignite you. It’s going to fire you up into the work you’re here to do. It gives you the tips and the tricks and all the lessons from the various mentors and guides that helped me across my own growth and fulfillment.
But it’s also a reference book to go back to when you’re feeling stuck. When you’re not sure of your next steps, you can take out 50 Not Finished, randomly open it up to any chapter, any page, and get gold nuggets. It’s truly all of my work. I don’t know what you need to hear about your genius, about what you’re here to bring into this world — but if you need to hear it through another voice, I highly recommend it.
That was a game-changing, pivotal moment for me yesterday — to actually be able to see what I’d created over a year ago, and the mission to get it into more hands to help change lives. You have that too. You just might need to hear it through someone else’s voice.
So here’s my little tip for today. If you need to see your work in a different way — take a transcript of your own stuff, upload it into Speechify, and have Gwyneth speak it to you. Because I think you’ll be shocked. We don’t love the sound of our own voice. We can’t see the genius we have, because we think everyone can do what we do.
I’ll keep you posted on 50 Not Finished. When the updates are made, get a copy, use it with your clients, do a book circle around it — we’ll probably run one ourselves, and you can join us.
So funny how we operate, and how we’re limited by how we see through our own eyes, our own paradigms, our own self-image. And sometimes we need someone else to show and reflect back to us our genius.
All right, my friend. Have an incredible day.
— Julie
