Writing “Clever Girl Millionaire”: What It Really Takes to Write a Book That Matters

By Bola Sokunbi, Author and founder of Clever Girl Finance

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I’ve written six books. You’d think by now I’d have a writing system so polished it practically runs itself. And in some ways, I do. I understand deadlines. I understand establishing structure with my writing. And I know what having a finished manuscript feels like.

But Clever Girl Millionaire was different. This one asked something different of me, not just as a writer, but as a woman who has spent over a decade helping other women reframe and improve their relationship with money.

Let me take you behind the scenes.

The middle is where the real writing happens

From the outside, writing a book looks exciting. There’s a cover reveal, a launch date announcement, and then the pre-orders start coming in. There are social media posts where everyone congratulates you and celebrates this accomplishment with you.

What people don’t see is that messy middle that looks like printed drafts of your manuscript covered in handwritten notes. It looks like the chapters you rewrote more than once, not because they were bad, but because you felt they weren’t strong enough yet. It looks like reorganizing the table of contents at 2am (a time I found myself writing a lot with this book) and asking yourself, for the 100th time, whether any of it actually serves the reader.

I gave myself a head start on this particular book. Even though my contract timeline officially began in December of 2024, I started writing nearly three months earlier. I knew going in that this book would need more thinking time than the others. And I was right.

There were days my ideas flowed clearly but there were also days where I questioned everything possible. My book the structure, it’s clarity, whether I was pushing the core premise far enough… On those days, I still wrote. I wrote even if all I could come up with was a word or a short sentence. Because one thing I know for sure is that my consistency matters more than my mood; that’s something I’ve learned across six books and, honestly, across building a business from the ground up.

Why this book had to exist

My earlier books focused on financial literacy foundations: budgeting, saving, getting out of debt, building your first investment portfolio. They were designed to help women stabilize their finances and feel genuinely confident managing their money, and I’m proud of that work. But over time, I started noticing a pattern.

Women were learning how to manage their money, but many were still playing small when it came to building real wealth. I found that the personal finance conversation often stops at responsibility. It doesn’t always move into ownership, or asset-building or into thinking long-term about legacy and what it means to have real options in your life, especially as a woman.

I didn’t want to write another “how to budget” book. I wanted to shift the conversation from financial survival and safety to wealth expansion, and that shift required me to write something bolder.

At its core, Clever Girl Millionaire is about agency. Wealth isn’t just about numbers, it’s about options. It’s about having the power to decide how you live, how you work, and what you leave behind. That was the missing book I felt called to write.

The pressure of writing book six

Writing a sixth book came with its own kind of pressure. Before I went too deep into drafting, I mapped everything out visually. I outlined my major pillars, tested different chapter flows, and asked myself questions to make sure the book was aligned with the outcome I’d like the reader to have.

As I reviewed that initial drafts, I found there were sections I genuinely loved that wouldn’t make the final cut. Not because they were bad, but because they diluted the focus. 

The word “Millionaire” in the title set a high bar for every single chapter. And one of the biggest lessons I have to learn during my book writing process is restraint.

As a financia educator, I teach so many aspects of financial literacy. But that doesn’t mean everything belongs in one book.

So I stripped out the extra layers and got really clear on the central message: wealth is buildable, repeatable, and accessible, but it requires a shift in mindset just as much as a shift in strategy. It also requires giving ourselves grace, knowing that mistakes will happen, that you are not behind on your journey, and that legacy isn’t just for the ultra-wealthy. It’s something every one of us should be thinking about, in whatever way makes sense for our own lives.

Claiming the word “Millionaire”

I’ll be honest, using that word in the title made me pause. There’s a level of visibility and authority that comes with it. And I had to be honest with myself about any hesitation I felt around claiming it because yes, even after six books and a platform that reaches hundreds of thousands of women, that hesitation showed up.

But I’ve also realized along the way that if women don’t normalize talking openly about building wealth, not just managing it, not just surviving, then who will do it for us?

I can’t separate my writing about wealth from my own upbringing. My parents are both first generation “everything” in their families. The first to go to grade school, high school, college and to obtain working class jobs. I also watched my parents rebuild their lives from very little as immigrants to the United States and as they rebuilt, I also saw the cost of having limited options, especially in the early days.

So when I write about wealth, I’m not writing from theory alone. I’m writing for the women who don’t see themselves reflected in traditional wealth narratives. When most people picture a “millionaire,” they picture something very specific,  and it doesn’t always look like us.

Writing this book required me to fully own my message; not soften it or shrink it. And I’m glad I did.

What finishing my 6th book taught me

Every book stretches you in a different way. This one stretched my thinking about what I’m actually here to do.

With earlier books, I positioned myself primarily as a financial guide, someone breaking down systems and making them accessible. With Clever Girl Millionaire, I stepped out more intentionally into how women can shape their visions for wealth by leaning heavily into my personal experience of shaping mine.

Writing this book was more exposed. It required me to fully claim my authority about wealth building in a space where women are often encouraged to stay cautious and modest or to simply focus on survival. But growth doesn’t stop at survival. We can and should pursue abundance.

If there’s one thing I hope women take from this book, and from this essay, it’s this; you are allowed to want more. You are allowed to build more. And you are absolutely allowed to say that out loud.

Bola Sokunbi is the founder of Clever Girl Finance, one of the largest personal finance platforms for women in the U.S., and the author of six books including her newest title, Clever Girl Millionaire: A Guide to Redefining What’s Possible, Turning Ambitions into Actions, and Dreams into Millions.

Website & 30+ free courses: https://clevergirlfinance.com  

IG: Instagram.com/clevergirlfinance

YT: Youtube.com/clevergirlfinance

Clever Girl Millionaire: A Guide to Redefining What’s Possible, Turning Ambitions into Actions, and Dreams into Millions

Educational and inspiring; A step-by-step guide to follow on your journey to wealth creation!

Clever Girl Millionaire isn’t just a book you read once and place on a shelf; it’s your indispensable guide to support you as you build real wealth, step by step, on your own terms. Each chapter is crafted not just to educate and inspire you, but to help you build momentum through action steps, thoughtful prompts, and practical exercises to help you apply what you’re learning in your real life.

Written

by Bola Sokunbi, a self-made Black woman millionaire and founder CEO of Clever Girl Finance, one of the largest personal finance media/education platforms for women in the US, this book helps you:

• Sow seeds for your millionaire mindset by building confidence in your ability to build wealth, spending intentionally, minimizing debt, and putting your money to work for you
• Bounce back from setbacks by assessing the damage, creating a recovery plan, and giving yourself the grace you need to move forward without shame or self-judgement
• Build a long-term wealth blueprint through intentional goal setting, smart investing, and everyday habits that compound into lifelong financial freedom

A celebration of ambition, possibility, and the power of financial empowerment, Clever Girl Millionaire is required reading for anyone seeking an inspiring and practical guide to wealth creation.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing