You know that feeling when someone asks how you’re doing, and you say “busy,” and what you actually mean is “I haven’t stopped moving long enough to find out if I’m okay”?
That’s the opening question of a new book I want to put in front of you today, a book called Valuable by Design, written by Travis Mahoney, an author I’ve had the privilege of working with directly on this launch.
Performance-based identity
Mahoney spent two decades chasing an answer that performance could never give him. By his early twenties, he had enough wins stacked up to look impressive from the outside, and enough emptiness on the inside to know none of it had actually answered the question underneath all his striving.
That question is the one a lot of us keep to ourselves:
If I stop proving myself, will I still matter?
Mahoney names this pattern Performance-Based Identity: the habit of looking to achievement, perfectionism, people-pleasing, usefulness, or approval to tell us what we’re worth.
If any of that sounds familiar, you’re the reader this book is for.
A train platform in Portland
Mahoney’s turning point didn’t happen in a church service or a counselor’s office. It was on a train platform in Portland, in an ordinary moment, when the striving simply ran out. No more performance left to give.
Valuable by Design blends that kind of memoir with biblical truth and practical insight, so you’re not just reading someone’s testimony. You’re holding a framework up against your own life and asking where this pattern is operating in you.
What this means for you
This book will help you:
Spot the hidden rules that keep your worth on trial
Understand why proving yourself once felt necessary
Tell the difference between healthy excellence and fear driven performance
Interrupt shame, comparison, and approval seeking before they run the show
Live from the worth God already gave you instead of the verdict the world keeps demanding
It’s for the achiever who can’t rest, the helper who can’t say no, and the believer who knows the truth about grace but still hasn’t let it reach the part of them that’s still performing.
Pre-order for 99 cents, get the Pacing Meter free
Valuable by Design is available now for Kindle pre-order at 99 cents, releasing September 19, 2026. That price won’t last, and pre-orders are more important than people realize. They’re one of the biggest signals Amazon uses to decide whether a book gets pushed through the algorithm on launch day. Every pre-order is a vote that says this book deserves to be seen.
So here’s what I’m offering to make that easy.
[Pre-order Valuable by Design →]
Once you’ve placed your order, send me a screenshot of the confirmation, and I’ll send you a free copy of The Pacing Meter, the tool I built for writers in the VIP Vault.
Paste in a page of your own writing, and it maps your sentence rhythm bar by bar, so you can see exactly where your pacing goes flat, where you’re leaning on crutch words, and where your sentences have started to sound the same. It runs entirely on your own device. Nothing you paste gets uploaded or stored anywhere.
Ninety-nine cents. A screenshot. A book that might name something in you that’s been waiting to be named. Plus a free tool for your own writing on top of it.
That’s the trade. Let’s make it.
Ordered! Where should we put screenshots, here or an email?
Just pre-ordered... should we send you the screenshot in a chat?