Hi friend,
I am usually in overdrive the week before a new program.
Lists everywhere. Reworking the same page for the fifth time. Awake at 2am running through everything that could go sideways. You would know me by the twitch in my left eye.
This time is different. I feel calm. Steady. At peace, in a way I am almost suspicious of. And I know exactly why.
Three days ago I did something I had quietly given up on.
In 2016, I wanted to build an app. A specific one, fully formed in my head, the way I knew my work should feel in someone's hands. I took it to developers. The quotes came back around 150 thousand dollars. And even at that number, what they described back to me was never quite the thing I was picturing. So I did what people do. I shelved it. I told myself it was a someday project, and someday quietly became never.
We got by with an app that was good enough but nothing that could truly display what we have created. And, because of this… our members were forced to just pick from the buffet rather than just get to enjoy it all.
I am a physician. I went to medical school, not engineering school. I have never written a line of code in my life.
This week, in about 72 hours, I built it myself.
The actual thing. The one from ten years ago. Mine, exactly the way I always saw it.
I have been sitting with what that did to me, and here is what I keep landing on.
For a decade I believed the version of this idea that lived in my head needed a gatekeeper. Someone with a skill I did not have. A budget I did not want to spend. A yes from a person who was not me. I let a price tag and a "that is not quite possible" decide what I was allowed to make.
You might have a version of this sitting on a shelf, too. The project someone quoted you a number for. The thing you were told was not realistic, or not your lane, or too much for where you are right now.
I want to tell you what the last three days taught me. The gate moved. The thing you were told you could not make without someone else, you may be able to make now, with your own two hands, faster than the time it takes most people to talk themselves out of it.
And here is the part that brings me the most peace.
It is not really that I built an app. It is what it does for you.
My Lifeboat Drill crew gets to be the first to live inside it this month. And tucked into it is a feature I have wanted for years. You can get answers from me. Right there, in real time. On a hard day, at 11pm, mid-workout, whenever the question actually comes up. Not three weeks later buried in an inbox.
For the first time, my work is not just easier to hold. It means you get to keep me in your pocket. You can pick my brain when you need me, the moment you need me.
That is the thing I could not stop smiling about at my kitchen counter this week.
I am not selling you anything today. I just wanted you to know what is coming, and that the woman building it for you is, for once, completely calm.
More soon.
With so much love, Ali