If You Build It, They Will Come

A mentor of mine, Bob Galen - known in the agile world as "the Agile Moose" - runs a community called the Moose Herd. It's a bi-weekly gathering of agile practitioners from around the world, sharing stories, challenges, and hard-won lessons. During one of those sessions, Bob said something that stuck with me: "You have a voice. You have a perspective. Share it."

I nodded. Filed it away. But I didn't do nothing about it.

For the next three years, I spoke publicly. Conferences, meetups, internal lunch-and-learns. Bob's words stayed in the back of my head the whole time - a quiet reminder that I had something worth saying. But speaking isn't writing. It's ephemeral. You show up, you deliver, you leave. Writing is different. Writing stays. Writing reaches people you'll never meet.

So when 2026 rolled around, I made a decision. I wanted to write a book. But before I could do that, I needed to figure out what people actually cared about from me. What resonated. What landed. What made someone stop scrolling and actually think.

January 1st, I launched my Substack. Started sharing what I'd learned from years in the agile trenches - the wins, the failures, the frameworks that actually worked versus the ones that just looked good in retrospectives.

It's now January 29th. That's nearly a month, 14 posts, and 60 subscribers. And I'm writing this because something Bob said proved true in a way I didn't expect.

The Field of Dreams Hypothesis

Last Friday, I was in the Moose Herd - that same bi-weekly call with Agilists from around the world. Someone asked the inevitable question: "How do you get your ideas out there? What's the motivation?"

When it got to me, I gave them a movie reference: "If you build it, they will come."

Field of Dreams. Kevin Costner. A voice tells him to build a baseball field in his cornfield, and ghosts - including his own dead father - show up to play. The whole movie is about faith. About doing the impractical thing because something tells you it's worth it.

I'll admit it: I misquoted the movie. The actual line is "If you build it, he will come." But the misquoted version - "they" - became more famous. Probably because it speaks to something universal. Build something real, and people will find you.

So did they come?

The Evidence: Four Weeks Later

Yes. From places I didn't expect.

Speaking invites. Meetups I'd never approached reached out. Something about consistent writing signals that you have something to say - and that you'll actually show up to say it.

LinkedIn messages from former colleagues. Not just "nice post" engagement, but genuine sharing. People I worked with years ago telling me they've forwarded my articles to their teams. My thoughts traveling through networks I can't see. Former managers checking in. Old teammates resurfacing with "this reminded me of that project we did."

Family networks opening doors. My brother mentioned someone whose son works in AI. They want to talk. Not because I pursued it - because my thinking got put into circulation. Conversations are happening about me that I'm not part of.

Recruiter pings. Way more than normal. I'm not looking, but apparently writing consistently makes you visible in ways that a polished resume doesn't. Recruiters are reading too.

People building things. This one caught me off guard. I've gotten messages from people who followed my guides, built their own tools, updated their own websites. Jamie Kriegel and Stu Blank took up the challenge and upgraded their personal websites, adding AI agents that promote them. Someone sent me a screenshot of their new site - they'd followed my Build Your Website in an Afternoon guide and shipped it. My process became their starting point. That's not engagement. That's impact.

Four weeks. That's all it took.

Or, if you prefer the honest version:

Years of speaking, years of learning, years of figuring out what I actually believed - compressed into four weeks of finally writing it down. Overnight success, if you squint. (Just ignore the decade behind it.)

The Real Lesson

I'm not saying this to brag. I'm saying it because years got spent waiting for the right time, the right platform, the right level of expertise. Waiting for someone to give me permission to share what I knew.

That permission was given years ago in the Moose Herd. I'd been slowly building toward it with years of speaking. But the writing - the consistent, public, permanent writing - that's what accelerated everything.

The only barrier is whether you'll start. Here's what I've learned about that barrier: it's entirely internal.

You don't need a complete strategy. You don't need an audience before you begin. You don't need anyone's approval. You don't need to know if it'll lead to a book, or speaking gigs, or clients, or community. You just need to start. Show up. Share what you know.

Write what you know.

A Word of Honesty

This doesn't always work. I need to say that.

Attention spans are fleeting. The algorithm gods are fickle. What works on one platform drowns on another. You have to make a choice: are you a writer, a podcaster, a video creator, a short-form content machine? You can't be everything to everyone. Pick your medium. Commit to it long enough to know if it's working.

And sometimes, the thing you build runs its course.

I've seen meetups die. Podcasts too. Not because the organizers failed - because life happened. Running a community or being a content creator is a massive commitment. People move, priorities shift, energy runs out. If you've ever built something that ended, you know the strange grief of it. The "what now?"

Here's what I've learned: appreciate it for what it was. Document the journey while you're in it. Those stories, those lessons, those relationships - they don't disappear when the Meetup group goes quiet or the Discord server empties out. They become the foundation for whatever you build next.

The Moose Herd has been running for years. It might run for decades. Or it might not. But the conversations we've had there? The encouragement Bob gave me? That's mine forever. No platform can take that away.

And since we're being honest: yes, I use AI to help me write.

The ideas are mine. Every story, every opinion, every lesson - that comes from my head, my experience, my perspective. AI helps with research. AI follows my story arc. I clean it up. I go back and forth. A lot. I document that back-and-forth because it matters - it's part of the human trail that proves this is my thinking, shaped and refined, not generated and published.

AI is a tool. The voice is still mine.

Your Move

If you've been thinking about putting your thoughts out there - whether it's a newsletter, a blog, a podcast, YouTube, or just regular LinkedIn posts - stop thinking about it.

Bob was right. You have a voice. You have a perspective. And if you build it?

They will come.

Don't know where to start? Try my Vomit Prompt approach. Pick up your phone. Ramble into it. See what emerges.

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Continue Your Journey

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