160 miles and a 20-pound problem

I'm about to walk 160 miles across Spain, and I'll be honest — I'm not ready.

Not in the inspirational "I'm not ready but I'm doing it anyway" kind of way. I mean I literally haven't done the reading. I haven't listened to the podcasts people sent me. I haven't opened the Facebook group someone invited me to. I haven't even figured out why I'm going — beyond the fact that my buddy Mark invited me and I said yes.

Oh, and my backpack weighs 20 pounds. It's supposed to be 10% of my body weight, which means I either need to cut half my stuff or eat an irresponsible amount of food between now and departure. I'm considering both.

My friend Mark Manry is organizing this trip. He's a professor at Rochester Christian University — the same school that changed my life — and he received a grant from Wake Forest University's Educating Character Initiative to study the Camino de Santiago. He invited me along as a friend and a fellow storyteller to help capture some of the stories from our group and the other pilgrims on the trail.

When Mark first invited me, I did what any married man does — I asked Andrea. She said yes. And then immediately followed up with, "Where do I get to go?"

She's booked a trip to Europe this summer with her mom and her two sisters. That's how marriage works. Or at least that's how this one works.

On one of our prep hikes — just trying to get some miles in before the real thing — Mark brought microphones. He'd taken my suggestion to capture stories before the trip, not just after, because the most interesting stories involve transformation. And you can't see transformation if you don't know where someone started.

So he mic'd us up one at a time as we walked and asked us questions:

Why do you want to go on the Camino? What do you think will be the most difficult thing you'll experience? What is one thing you expect to discover? What is something you hope to learn about yourself?

The first couple I could handle. But that last one bent my brain a little.

Here's what came out.

I've spent the last 20 years sitting across from people and hearing their stories. That's been my job. Business owners, dads, sisters, pilgrims. NFL Hall of Famers. Billionaires. The poorest of the poor. Someone who just lost their spouse. Someone who just lost their child. People who look completely different from me, live completely different from me, believe completely different from me.

I've heard stories from people all over the world, in all forms of life. And I think doing that work has made me a lot less judgmental and a lot more empathetic. It's hard to not care about someone when you know their story. It's hard to hold onto your assumptions about a person when you've heard their decision-making process — or heard that there was no process at all, that life just happened and they could only respond.

That changes you.

And everything I've heard from people who've walked the Camino before is that the same thing happens on the trail. You meet someone from somewhere far away from you, and when you hear their story — their why — it expands your own.

That's the part I'm most looking forward to. Not the miles. Not the scenery. The people and the stories I haven't heard yet.

As for what I hope to learn about myself?

I'll be honest — I kind of froze on that one.

I'm in the middle of a lot of new things. I'm writing a book. I'm building this newsletter. I'm showing up on YouTube for the first time in a way that actually feels like me. I'm doubling down on the personal brand after 20 years of being behind the camera instead of in front of it.

And I think this trip is going to help write the next chapter. Not because I have a plan for it — but because every time I've gotten out of my routine and into someone else's story, it's changed how I think about my own.

I want to be open to whatever comes. The people I meet, the stories I hear, the things that get refined or rewritten in my own head about work and family and how I spend my time and energy.

I'm a compartmentalizer. I'm a quick start. I'm the guy who says yes to the trip and figures out the why later. And maybe that's fine. Maybe the why finds you on the trail.

The hardest part of this trip isn't the miles or the backpack. It's that I'll be gone for two and a half weeks, and I'm going to miss walking my fifth grader to school in the morning — something we've done together every day since she started elementary school.

Not being there for those walks makes my heart sad. There's no way around that.

But I think I'm learning that what my kids will hopefully see in me doing a trip like this is that it's important to do things even when it isn't the easiest or the best timing — whether it's finances or a busy schedule or just not wanting to miss the small, everyday stuff that means everything.

Maybe that's part of the lesson too.

So if the newsletter is a little different over the next few weeks — or if it skips a week — that's why. I'm walking.

I'll bring stories back. That's kind of what I do.

One more thing before I go.

I've been building something I'm really excited about, and I finally have a name for it: The VIP Visibility Intensive.

It's a 90-day experience for founders and experts who are done being the best-kept secret in their industry. Small group — 10 to 12 people max. Twice-monthly calls, direct access to me, and one VIP day at my production studio in Lake Orion, Michigan, where my full team puts you on camera the way we've done it for 20 years.

AI can write your captions and edit your reels. But the one thing it can't fake is the soul of a real human telling a real story. That's what we make.

If that sounds like your kind of thing, get on the waitlist. I'll email you personally when enrollment opens.

To walking,

Ryan

P.S. If you don't hear from me for the next couple of weeks, I'm somewhere in Spain with a 20-pound backpack and a lot of questions. Pray for my shoulders.

P.P.S. Seriously though — the waitlist is the only way to get first access when the Intensive opens up. 12 seats.