Max, a subscriber sent me this:
“Just building something without knowing if there is anybody who cares about it does not make sense – there needs to be a proof of concept in some ways, if it is to lead to a business.”
(Excerpt from Max W, email subscriber.)
This is a common sentiment — and on the surface, it makes sense: don’t build without proof. Don’t start unless the market’s already whispering (or shouting) its interest.
It’s a framing I once believed and even passed along: regardless of expertise, find an unmet need (^1), look for what people are already paying for (ads as a proxy), then build the solution and offer it for sale.
Rinse and repeat.
But I’ve come to see that this approach breaks down — or becomes irrelevant — once you’re operating from lived expertise.
If you’ve been deep in the trenches for years, seeing patterns emerge through repeated application, you’re not guessing…
You’re compressing.
Your sense of what’s valuable is no longer speculative — it’s intuitive, but only because it’s been hard-won.
This is where the “Maker’s Knowledge” enters the picture…
“Giambattista Vico claims that fully understanding an object means knowing from first experience how it was made. He claims that we only fully understand what we make with our own hands. Not just thinking, but making and thinking are required to fully know what something is. Truly realizing what an artifact is requires that we know how it was made. That we realize it with our hands and with our minds. To understand it, we need to create or recreate it. Truth is the realization of a design…”
— Maker’s Knowledge, 1.1 Verum Factum
You know a thing because you’ve made it.
You’ve shaped it with your hands, your mind, your time, your taste.
You’ve seen how it behaves in the wild. You know what breaks. You know where it sings.
… and that kind of knowledge doesn’t need validating upfront. It needs expressing. Sharing. Turning outward.
Now, there’s a catch — the classic chicken-and-egg problem (and returning to the subtext of Max’s question to me): how can you validate an idea when you don’t have an audience? And how can you attract an audience without something valuable to show?
But maybe that’s the wrong frame entirely.
Maybe we’re not stuck in a binary — “validate, then build” vs. “build, then hope.”
Maybe what we’re doing is spiraling: Make → Share → Attract → Refine.
Each loop builds trust.
Each round tunes the resonance.
Audience (participants, collaborators, co-creators!) becomes a byproduct of public practice.
Lean Startup thinkers like Eric Ries and Ash Maurya taught us how to iterate toward product-market fit: build, measure, learn. That loop’s perfect for startups seeking traction.
But what if you already have hard-won fluency?
What if you’re not looking for a problem to solve: you’re already solving it, because it’s what you’ve done for years?
In that case, the loop isn’t about validation. It’s about expression. Giving language to a novel idea.
Make → Share → Attract → Refine = The Practice Spiral.
Think of this as the spiral of public practice…
A way of working that makes your expertise legible, magnetizing the right people to your world (^2).
During lockdown of 2020 I got obsessed with building a racing simulator. I watched a hundred hours of YouTube tutorials. By the end of that binge, I felt like I knew exactly what to do.
So I ordered pieces…
The frame and sim pedals from Heusinkveld in the Netherlands…
A custom PC from Chillblast in the UK.
The direct drive motor and steering wheels from Fanatec in Germany.
The racing seat from Sparco in Italy.
Then I started building it.
… and instantly, I became a beginner again!
There’s a magic that only reveals itself through doing.
Through hands on material.
Through missteps and refinements. It’s the only place true knowledge gets made.
The same spiral: Make → Share → Learn → Refine…
That sim wasn’t just an expensive toy but a reminder that knowledge doesn’t come from knowing — it comes from building.
Years ago, I dove deep into craft books (I’ve read hundreds!) dissecting how fiction works. But it wasn’t until I wrote a story that I realized I didn’t understand any of it. Not in the way I needed to.
My words failed me. I fumbled point of view, muddled tense, butchered narrative structure. But that’s also when things started to click.
Practice did what theory couldn’t — it made me fluent. Through the loop: make, share, learn, refine.
Think of this as compression of fluency…
Fluency, in any domain, means being able to move through the complexity of a task or subject without conscious effort. You don’t have to stop and think about each micro-step — you just do, because you’ve done it a thousand times before.
But compression refers to how that fluency can look from the outside: like a shortcut, or a guess, or a flash of inspiration — when it’s actually the end result of deep, embodied knowledge.
The expert’s intuition, not the beginner’s guess.
The compression is mental…
It collapses all the years of practice, pattern recognition, failures, and refined taste into what looks like a gut instinct. But that “gut” is built from thousands of reps.
Musicians: Jazz improvisation isn’t random. As my friend Paul has told me, and I paraphrase: it’s highly compressed fluency in music theory, phrasing, and timing — so compressed that it looks like magic.
Watching isn’t knowing.
Reading isn’t knowing.
The map is not the territory.
And yet, in the age of infinite tutorials, where everyone is remixing ideas of others, curated as their own, we risk mistaking familiarity for fluency (and expertise).
But fluency (expertise!) is earned through repetition, not recognition.
Which brings me back to audience-building…
To attract attention, you don’t need to validate an idea through polling or ads. You need to demonstrate lived fluency.
You need to show your work.
Write in public.
Share your process with the garage door up.
Vulnerable. Scary. But worth it!
Because the act of making in the open is the validation.
It earns trust.
It invites feedback.
It shows people what you care about and how you think.
And from that, your “audience” doesn’t appear fully formed — it emerges, slowly, as people find themselves changed by your work.
In a world obsessed with validation, doing the work in public is the ultimate proof.
To Max: He’s right to want proof. But sometimes, the proof isn’t in polling…
It’s in doing.
In being vulnerable enough to show your unfinished work to strangers.
In letting your expertise spiral into something others recognize as valuable — because they watched you build it, and in your words found what they’d always felt, but could never quite name or put their finger on.
When someone with deep experience gets a hunch that something is worth building, they’re not guessing. They’re compressing.
Years of trial, failure, and feedback are showing up as fluency — compact, fast-moving, and hard to explain. But no less real.
This is what I did in 2023 after leaving TLB/MMS and embarking on this journey…
I built this World you’re experiencing now — that my paid members have been inhabiting and helping from the inside. I didn’t build this in “stealth” then one day opened the doors — ta-da!
No. It was a slow steady building in public, attracting my people (repelling the wrong), through participatory validation.
Participatory validation isn’t about polling the market. It’s about showing up with fluency, sharing from the inside out.
That’s how (Tiny Digital) Worlds are built. One loop at a time.
~ André
Footnotes / Sidebars:
(^1): In 2012, when myself and my friend, Steve Gray, created the original idea for TLB (Tiny Little Businesses) — which started as a “manual” for affiliate marketers — we demonstrated our approach by “eating our own dog food.”
We entered a market we knew nothing about and built a little “money-maker” from scratch.
The unmet need we identified? Women getting married in 3–6 months who wanted to drop weight fast.
Obvious disclaimer: Neither Steve nor I were women. Or brides-to-be. Or in need of losing 10–20 pounds in a hurry.
But through surveys and feedback loops, we reverse-engineered the messaging. The campaign worked. It made money.
Still, that whole detour? It burned time we could have spent compounding something we already knew.
I wouldn’t recommend this today.
Start with what you know.
A “money maker” is not a business. Money makers are short-lived. Businesses endure. They’re built on deeper knowledge, accumulated trust, and longer arcs of value creation.
Because expertise isn’t theoretical. It’s not remixing. It’s the result of time spent, patterns internalized, instincts earned.
And those instincts — that intuition — they’re what help you spot the fractal buds. The fresh growths worth pursuing.
Validating an idea comes after you’ve put in the hours. Not before.
And if you don’t yet have an audience?
No problem…
You attract one by showing your work. In public. Generously. With care.
That’s how trust is earned. That’s how attention is invited.
⦿
(^2) In a previous post I shared The Campfire in the Wilderness metaphor. Now contrast it with the Make → Share → Attract → Refine loop.
You’re not launching a product…
You’re building a campfire in the wilderness — and letting it glow:
- Make = You gather kindling. Something real, from your hands.
- Share = You light the first flame. It’s vulnerable. It flickers.
- Attract = People see the glow through the trees. Some walk toward it.
- Refine = You feed the fire. Adjust the logs. Shape the warmth.
The campfire is your work-in-progress, and the people who gather aren’t leads — they’re fellow travelers drawn to the clarity of your flame.
P.S.
Derek Sivers wisdom I’m enjoying
“Well-rounded doesn’t cut” by Derek Sivers. Pair with “1,000 True Fans” by Kevin Kelly for a potent combo. These two philosophies will become even more valuable in the coming AI deluge of machine-created content. To surf above the tsunami, I suggest one human-scale win at a time. Think big first, and you’ll likely get lost, defeated by AIs instructed to do the same. Think small, and you’ll have a better chance of enduring… and snowballing into something big.
~ Tim Ferriss (5-Bullet Friday, June 6, 2025)