This one’s for people who live with voices and visions — people who know the special loneliness of living with something inside that’s struggling to be built or to be made better.
Bringing your dream into the world is tough enough. But bringing it to the world — putting it in front of the people who’ve been waiting for it to show up — is a whole other challenge.
It helps to understand something about sonder, which Seth Godin has been teaching about for the past couple of years.
Sonder is the second big shift. The first, as it was presented to me in college, is realizing that you have an interior life, and it matters. Sonder is when you realize that everyone else does, too.
The upshot of sonder — especially in a busy, rushing, overwhelmed world — is that you can only sell people the tip of the iceberg. Yes, the creation story of that thing you built matters, but it might not matter in exactly the way you’d like to think.
Most people aren’t looking to buy the sweat you put into the work.
So, when it’s time to ship, be proud of your sweat — then get out of your own way and package the product for the people you’re seeking to serve, not as a memorial to your effortful creative journey.
Colin Steele 