If You Build It, They Will Come (Eventually)
Build it anyway. That’s how it begins.
Some people need proof before they act.
Others just need a whisper.
Me? I needed a field.
A spreadsheet.
A dorm room.
The Quiet Build
In Field of Dreams, Ray Kinsella hears a voice no one else hears.
If you build it, he will come.
So what does he do?
He mows down his cornfield — his income, his stability — and builds a baseball diamond in the middle of Iowa.
Everyone thinks he’s lost it.
Even Ray’s not sure it’ll work.
But he builds it anyway.
The Disruption
In Moneyball, Billy Beane is laughed out of the room for trusting a spreadsheet over decades of scouting tradition.
They say he’s ruining baseball.
That he doesn’t understand the game.
He listens to the data anyway.
Signs the players no one else wants.
And then watches the Oakland A’s win 20 straight games.
Not because the scouts believed.
Because he did.
The Obsession
In The Social Network, Mark Zuckerberg writes code in the dark — angry, isolated, and already two steps ahead.
Nobody asked him to create Facebook.
No one funded it.
It wasn’t even clear why he was doing it.
But he couldn’t not build it.
Sometimes, that’s the curse of vision.
You see something the world doesn’t — until suddenly, it does.
The Common Thread
Ray. Billy. Zuck. Different stories, same spine:
They were all told “This won’t work.”
They were all misunderstood — until they weren’t.
And they all built anyway.
Not for applause.
For alignment.
The Real Talk
When I launched Content Catalyst, I didn’t have an audience.
No waitlist.
No hype.
Just a pull — to tell the truth about brand, storytelling, strategy, and the emotional cost of reinvention.
It’s quiet right now. That’s okay.
Because if you’re building something real — something with depth, clarity, and soul — it’s supposed to be quiet at first.
The world needs time to catch up to what you're doing.
The Call
So if you’re building something no one else sees yet —
If you’ve chosen meaning over metrics —
If your voice still trembles when you hit “publish,” but you do it anyway —
Keep going.
Keep laying bricks in your field.
Keep pulling the data no one respects.
Keep writing the code no one asked for.
Because they will come.
And when they do — they’ll say it was obvious all along.