Stop building it in your head

Yesterday I got on a call with an old friend I hadn't talked to in years.

We met more than a decade ago coaching high school football together, and we reconnected because he came to a workshop I ran a couple of weeks ago. He's in his mid-40s, not on social media at all, and he's starting something that actually matters. After a long career on the frontlines of a brutally hard job, he watched what it did to the people around him, the mental health toll, the stuff nobody talks about, and he decided he wants to build something to help. A nonprofit for people in that world who are struggling.

This is me yelling at high school boys 20 years ago. Today you can find me yelling at 30 high school girls on my daughter’s field hockey team 😛

He came to the call full of questions. Should he be making long videos or short ones? What gear does he need? How does he even start? And I recognized every one of those questions, because they're the exact ones that keep good people frozen at the starting line for years.

So I told him what I want to tell you today.

Stop building it in your head. Go build it in conversations.

Here's what I mean. Most people dream up the thing, decide it's a good idea, and then pour months, money, and enormous energy into launching it, all based on assumptions about what people need. Then they release it into the world and find out whether they guessed right. That's a wildly expensive way to learn.

There's a better order. Before you build the thing, go have conversations with the actual people you're trying to serve. Not surveys. Real conversations. Talk to the people who are suffering, the people who are helping, the experts already in the trenches. You'll learn where the real problems live, which is almost never exactly where you assumed. And you'll build a network of the very people your work is meant to reach, before you've launched a single thing.

So here's what I told my friend to do. Start a podcast.

Not because the world needs another podcast. Because a podcast is the single most efficient thing he could possibly do right now. Every episode is a long conversation with someone who knows the terrain, which is market research he can't get any other way. And at the same time, that one conversation becomes content. A 30-minute talk becomes an episode, plus short clips, plus a newsletter, plus social posts, plus a blog. One effort, aimed in ten directions.

He'd walk away understanding his people better and building an audience of them, at the same time, from the same act. That's the whole game.

Now, the part where I had to hold the line.

He had a lot of questions about gear. What camera, what mic, what setup. And I get it, gear feels like a safe place to start, because buying equipment feels like progress without the vulnerability of actually putting something out there.

But here's the truth. The phone in your pocket is enough. It's more than enough. Gear is real and it matters eventually, but it is almost never the thing that should stop you from starting. I'd rather you post an awkward, honest video from your phone about the thing you actually care about than spend three months and two grand assembling a studio you hide behind.

The opportunity to build trust right now, by simply showing up as your real self and talking about what you genuinely care about, is absurd. Most people won't do it. That's the opening.

I'll be honest with you about my own week, because I don't want this to sound like it comes from someone for whom it's all working out.

I got three nos this week. Three. On opportunities that were genuinely big, the kind you let yourself quietly get excited about. They came back to back, and it was a tough few days. I'm human, and rejection stings no matter how long you've been doing this.

And in the same week, we booked a $20,000 project, and I delivered story strategy blueprints to a couple of coaching clients who seem genuinely happy with them.

I'm not telling you that to balance the ledger or brag. I'm telling you because that's what it actually looks like to keep showing up and keep having conversations. Some doors shut hard, sometimes three in a row. Others open while you're still staring at the closed ones. You don't get to pick which is which ahead of time. You just keep making the calls, keep having the conversations, keep putting the work out there. The nos and the yeses tend to show up in the same mail.

Here's the thread underneath all of it, and it's been on my mind all week.

I've been listening to Theo of Golden by Allen Levi, and I'm a little in love with it. It's reminding me of something I felt deeply on the Camino this spring, that the most powerful thing we can do for another person is see them. Really see them, and let them know they are seen, loved, and valuable.

That's what my friend's whole nonprofit is about, seeing people who feel invisible. It's what the conversations I've been talking about actually are, underneath the strategy: seeing people. I want to carry that into every conversation I have, the business ones and the personal ones both. Not "what can I extract from this call," but "do you feel seen by the end of it."

Turns out that's not just the kind thing to do. It's also, quietly, how the best work gets built.

I'll admit the whole "just start a podcast" thing is a little self-serving coming from me.

I've been doing it for over a decade, more than 500 episodes now, and it's genuinely the engine underneath everything: the research, the relationships, the content, the trust. My mastermind has been pushing me for a while to take what I've learned and turn it into an actual course for people who want to start one and use it the way I described up top. So I'm building it. No name yet, and it's not open, but if "maybe I should start a podcast" has been rattling around in your head, I'd love to have you first in line when it's ready: [podcast course waitlist]

So here's my nudge for your week. Whatever you're dreaming up, go have one real conversation about it with someone it's meant to serve. Just one. You'll learn more in that half hour than in a month of building alone.

And if you had a week with a no in it, or three like I did, hit reply and tell me. I'm collecting evidence that we're all just out here taking swings.

Onward, my friend,
Ryan

P.S. If the thing quietly stopping you is the gear question, I've got you. I'm putting together a dead-simple starter list, equipment and software, so you can begin with basically what's already in your pocket: [ryankoral.com/gear]