I don’t know how to describe the visceral state of affairs over the past decade. It feels like society is on Fast and the Furious 15 and we don’t buy the premise, nor do we remember what the original point was.
The last thing the world needs is another offer. A new business. Another product. Christ, I wonder if my idea of a free newsletter is just adding to the collective noise. I hate that I hate that. I wish I could tunnel vision like others seem to, push as hard and as long as they can, and never take stock of the dissolving world around them. But I can’t, and because of that I sit and think, a lot. Probably too much.
I have a building full of stuff. Equipment for training and recovery. Microphones and cameras for making things. For nine years it has been the centerpiece of my days, where I work, meet people, and create. A lot has worked here. Big events, businesses people genuinely love, a very bizarre community. And yet I feel detached from all of it, like I am not where I am supposed to be.
The cost of doing business is steep. Most people think it fits on an up-to-date P&L, but how do you line-item relationships, sleepless nights, or the anxiety of trying to make it all work? I have yet to put a value on a hard decision, but I know it’s a debt, especially if it’s the wrong one.
For almost twenty years, fitness has been my product. I have hated the industry from the beginning. I resent the average opinion and the average charlatan. I am disgusted by what people associate with it. But I have come to love the subject for what it has done for me and who it has allowed me to meet. What I realize more and more is that fitness is not the product. The product is connection and conversation, internal and external—with yourself and with others.
What I believe the world needs is more conversation, first internally, with the part of you that you ignore, and then externally, with the people you want to build a life around. You could argue there is more conversation happening than ever before and the world looks more uncertain than ever before. But what you see online, in the comment sections and the talking head videos posted every second of every day, is to conversation what WorldStar videos are to professional combat sports. The difference is qualification.
The reason I love my building is that it acts as a sieve. People don’t walk in and start spouting opinions. That would not go over well. They come in hesitant, nervous, a little skeptical. Ideally reserved. Then we apply the truth serum: training. We see how people act under difficulty. Do they hold back? Do they lie, hide, quit, complain?
Effort is a prerequisite for opinion. It is also a cleanser of pretense.
My product is open and honest conversation.
My packaging is training concepts.
My customers are seeking self improvement and I sell them self awareness.
My remote clients feel this directly. It is one of the things they notice is missing from their own lives: a place to air grievances, confide fears, and celebrate triumphs.
Maybe that is where the detachment comes from. For nine years I have measured this place by what I could put on a statement, a metric of success, and the thing it actually produces does not go on one. Nobody pays for the conversation. They pay for the training, and the conversation happens anyway. So the building has always looked like less than it is, and I have felt separate from it because I was measuring it with the wrong instrument. I could not see the value of what we do here, and I mistook that for the value not being there.
This is not what I thought I was building, but it is what the world needs more of. Places to examine thoughts. Places that are safe for observing unsafe ideas. A sandbox where what you are working on can be modeled in real time with real feedback. By people who are qualified to answer. These places are rare because, like me, you don’t know you need one until you build it.
This newsletter is merely a version of the building I can send through the mail.
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