I met with my first customer for a new project today. She bought on Saturday. We onboarded on Monday. I walked her through the software. Showed her how it works. Answered questions. But the most valuable part wasn’t anything I demoed. It was what I heard. Within minutes, she surfaced a feature need that wasn’t even on my radar. Not because I wasn’t thinking deeply. But because I wasn’t living in her world. So I slowed down. I asked questions. I asked how she saw it being used. How it would serve her clients. And right there, in real time, my perspective shifted. Together, we shaped a vision for a feature that would track results and deliver them directly to the end client. That idea doesn’t exist in the product yet. And I’m almost certain it never would have if I had: > stayed in a bubble and kept building > focused only on what I thought mattered > talked more than I listened This is the part you can’t shortcut. You don’t get this clarity from roadmaps. Or whiteboards. Or thinking harder. You get it from shipping. From onboarding. From listening. So now I’ll mock up the UX. She’ll review it next week. And the product will be meaningfully better because of one real conversation. The world gets a little more valuable when two people take the time to solve a real problem for someone else. You don’t learn that until you ship. 🚀 - James

The pattern I see im in is that im repeatedly doing this: Create new offer Design brand around it Build assets Start content Don’t fully monetize Start next thing It’s a builder dopamine cycle. Not good operator discipline. I love creating systems more than running them. But revenue comes from operating and selling, not designing. Im losing steam and making 0$ and cant swim like this. Looking for some guidance!