You Don't Need Permission. You Need a Deadline.

When the email came, I screamed so loud that my son, Dorian came running thinking something was wrong. Dorian had been invited to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania- not as a player, but as a Community Hero. And he wasn't just showing up. He was receiving a $1,000 donation to Brewer Little League on behalf of everything he'd done for his community.

For a baseball-loving kid from Maine, this was as good as it gets. And for me? The scream said everything.

Here's what you need to know about Dorian.

He raised $2,000 for his local Little League. He spent his entire birthday month asking for cake mix and frosting instead of gifts. He set a goal of 1,000 birthday items and ended up with 3,000. His story had already traveled far beyond Brewer, Maine before anyone ever thought to put it in a book.

I had thought about a children's book telling his story. I had a timeline. I had a budget. They were both daunting but they were real and they were mine and I knew exactly how to execute them.

Then the email.

Suddenly my careful timeline was a joke and my budget was essentially zero. We were going to Williamsport and if Dorian was going to walk into that moment with a book in his hands, we had a fraction of the time I had planned for and almost no money to do it with.

This is where most people would have said not yet. I'll have it ready for the next time. I did what I always do when the fear shows up: I opened a new document and started building the plan.

The first problem was we tried to tell too much.

Dorian's impact is genuinely hard to contain. There were multiple stories pulling at us and for a while we chased all of them. It was overwhelming. Every angle felt important because every angle was important and that's exactly how you end up with nothing publishable.

Finally we made ourselves stop and choose.

The birthday cake story. That was it. A kid who turned his own birthday into a community fundraiser, set a goal, and tripled it. Clean. True. Impossible to argue with.

Once we had that, everything else started moving.

Then came the illustrations.

We had no budget for a traditional illustrator. No time to find one, vet one, brief one, wait on one. So we used AI.

I want to be honest about that because some people will raise an eyebrow. But here's the reality- constraint forces creativity. We didn't have the luxury of the traditional path so we found another one. We built the illustrations, refined them, and kept moving. Every single day something had to move forward. That was the rule. Not perfect. Forward.

Tim Ferriss asks: what would you have to do to accomplish your 10-year goal in the next 6 months?

I used to think that question was about ambition. Living inside it taught me it's actually about ruthless prioritization. You find out fast what actually matters and what is just comfortable delay dressed up as preparation. The budget disappears. The perfect timeline disappears. What's left is the thing you're actually willing to fight for.

We were willing to fight for this one.

The best editorial feedback we got came from a child.

We printed a couple of proof copies and put them in front of kids. One little girl handed hers back with boxes drawn around the text — actual hand-drawn boxes with notes on positioning and layout.

It was the best feedback we received from anyone.

Why ask professionals when the person the book is actually for can tell you exactly what they need? We made the changes. We kept moving.

Was it perfect when we shipped it? No.

I've published other books. I know that the day you feel 1,000% happy with something never actually arrives. At some point you have to trust the work, trust the story, and let it go out into the world and do what it's supposed to do.

So we released it.

Dorian reviewing his book with Senator Susan Collins during our visit to Washington D.C.

And that is how you end up sitting across from a U.S. Senator - watching her lean into every single page, genuinely smiling and realizing that impact doesn't wait for the right moment.

You take the moment!

Dorian walked into Williamsport with a real book in his hands, a $1,000 donation going to the community he loves, and a story that started with nothing more than kindness and a willingness to lead. Nobody plans for the Little League World Series. You just keep doing the right thing until the email arrives and then you scream.

So here's what I want to leave you with.

You probably have a version of this story sitting somewhere. A thing that matters, that's ready enough, that you keep circling back to but never quite ship. You've been waiting for the budget, the timeline, the right moment, the professional illustrator, the perfect draft.

What if the email already came and you just haven't screamed yet?

Get going.

The book is called D-Max's Birthday Wish, written by Lisa Liberatore. You can find it right here on Amazon. Dorian's story is still going and something tells me the next chapter is going to be even louder than that scream.