Business owners have tons of ideas swirling around in their heads most of the time. Snatching onto a few and putting them in your outline should be pretty simple right?

The problem is usually that we pull a lot more than “a few” when we sit down to plan that outline.

The nice thing is that you should have plenty of ideas to populate that outline. When you do your brain dump, you can get all those thoughts on paper and discover exactly what was floating around in there.

I recommend starting with all those ideas instead of trying to stem the flow. Get everything out. Even stuff that you don’t think you will use. Put it all on paper. The more you have, the better you can narrow down and eliminate the pieces that aren’t necessary. Plus, some of it may end up being subtopics in your chapters.

Now, the trick is to know what is important and what isn’t .

When you’re going through the ideas that you wrote down, you have to determine what will actually help your audience. What do they need to know? What is their biggest problem? How can you help them solve it?

Eliminate things that don’t fit that equation. What’s left should be much more focused.

Next, you have to consider if you have too much information for one book. If you think you do, then you may want to do something that covers a broad set of information very shallowly. This type of book would give only the basics, but it would be enough to get someone through a process on their own if they really wanted to.

Another option is to break it into sections that would be able to stand alone. Narrowing your focus for this book allows you to more thoroughly explain a step in the process.

Consider what would be best for your ideal clients to learn about first. Use that to shape what information you pull for that book. And don’t scrap the rest of it! You can use it for a follow-up book or books.

When you narrow down your ideas, start by looking at the problem you want to solve. Break it into steps that you can address or segments that would make sense as standalones. Then consider whether you can present one of these ideas as a gateway to your world of genius.