The First Domino That Ends the Waiting

There is a thing we do in the Midwest that Bryan Neale swears the rest of the country will never understand. A car gets stuck in the snow. Three or four people appear out of nowhere, put their hands on the bumper, and start to rock it. Not shove. Not floor it. Rock. Back and forth, slow and patient, until the thing finds an inch of grip and rolls. Nobody wins that fight with brute force. You win it with the first little bit of movement.

I have known Bryan for a while now. Super Bowl official, sales coach, the guy who founded Blind Zebra out of Indianapolis. When he sat down with me, I wanted him to explain the one idea I have watched him deliver from keynote stages more than any other. He calls it the first domino. It is the simplest thing he teaches, and it is the thing almost nobody actually does. You can watch our full conversation at 1898creative.com.

The Car in the Snow

Bryan’s whole philosophy of action is built against a myth. The myth says that big change requires a big push. Massive effort. A running start. He does not believe it. He believes in the small, almost embarrassing amount of motion that turns a stuck thing into a moving thing.

He learned it the hard way. There was a season when he was bankrupt and out of work, and he told me he could have stayed in the basement with the lights off and the music on and let the whole thing swallow him. Instead he forced himself to a networking lunch. Then a walk. Then a book. None of it was massive. All of it was movement. That is how he climbed out, one small rock of the bumper at a time.

The Real Reason Nothing Ever Starts

Here is the line from Bryan that I keep coming back to. When people set out to do anything, weight loss, a business, a podcast, officiating the Super Bowl, the failure is almost never in the process. The failure is in the start.

Read that again, because it quietly indicts most of us. We tell ourselves we are stuck because the work is too hard, the plan is too complex, the timing is wrong. Bryan’s experience says otherwise. People think of the thing they want. They picture it. They talk about it. And then that is where it ends. They plan everything and they take no action at all. The stuck car is not stuck because the engine is weak. It is stuck because nobody has touched the bumper yet.

The Question That Stops Everyone Cold

Bryan has a way of exposing this in a room full of people, and it is a little brutal to watch. He asks who wants to run a marathon, then he asks what the first domino is.

The audience always guesses wrong. Get a training plan, someone says. No. Buy the shoes and the gear. No. It goes on like that until finally one person says it. Register. Bryan lights up. That is the first domino. You go to the Carmel Marathon page, you pay them fifty dollars, and you are registered. Now you are a person who is running a marathon, and the plan can follow.

Why does that order matter so much? Because if you build the training plan first and stare at it, you talk yourself out of the whole thing. Too much work. Not enough time. The kids, the schedule, the excuses that are always waiting. The process scares people off before they ever commit. The registration page does not give you time to be afraid.

The failure isn’t in the process. Mostly it’s the failure to start.

What the NFL Taught Him About Not Looking at the Whole Staircase

Bryan’s own story is the proof, and it is a big one. Getting to the NFL as an official is a brutal, decades long climb. High school first. Then JV, then varsity. Small college for years. Bigger college. Endless travel and weekends away. He told me that if someone had laid the entire path in front of him on day one, the years, the miles, the cost to his life along the way, he would have said no thanks and walked out.

But nobody made him look at the whole staircase. His first domino was almost laughably small. He registered with the high school athletic association to take a test to get his license. That was it. Send the money, take the test, get licensed. One domino. Then the next one was standing there waiting for him, and the one after that. Years later he was on the field at the Super Bowl.

You Will Never Be Ready

I asked Bryan about the flying lessons bit he does on stage, because it is my favorite. Someone in the crowd admits they have always wanted to fly a plane. Bryan calls them up, gets the local airport on the phone, and buys them a lesson right there in front of everyone. The room loses its mind. And the point lands every time. The only thing standing between that person and the cockpit was a phone call they were never going to make on their own.

Then he said the thing that I think is the whole point of the conversation. You will never be ready. You are never ready to get your pilot’s license. You are never ready to start the podcast. Waiting to feel ready is just a more respectable way of never starting. So the readiness is not the requirement. The first domino is.

I will be honest about why this hits me. We produce podcasts for a living at 1898, and I still catch myself overwhelmed by everything that has to happen for our own work. I tell clients to just start, and then I freeze on my own stuff. The first domino is the reset. Not what do I have to do to finish this. Just, what is the one small thing I can do today.

Your Move

You have something you were made to build. A business, a message, a platform, a craft that other people are quietly waiting for. The reason it does not exist yet is almost never the reason you think. It is not the plan and it is not your ability. It is that nobody has rocked the bumper.

So find the smallest possible action that makes the thing real. Register. Buy the kit. Make the call. Push the first domino today and let the rest of them line up behind it.

Watch the full conversation with Bryan Neale and learn how we help experts build their platform at 1898creative.com. Then go create your art. The world is waiting.

#createyourart

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Full Transcript

Bryan: I’m a huge fan of action, and not necessarily the kind of Tony Robbins, the self help guy, massive action. I like little bits of action to get traction and movement forward. We live in the Midwest. If you live in Florida, you won’t get this, but if you live in the Midwest, if you’ve ever helped someone get a stuck car out of the snow, we’re super helpful here in the Midwest. You see someone stuck, three or four people get out, and what you do is you rock the car back and forth, nice and slow. You just try to get the car moving. You don’t slam the gas pedal down and have everyone push as hard as they can. You get it moving, and then you’re moving. It’s that little movement that helps.

An example would be, I was bankrupt, didn’t have a job. I could have just stayed in my basement and listened to tunes. Easy. And done nothing. But I had to force myself out of bed, out to meetings, to networking meetings, go to lunch by myself to run into people, read the book, go on the walk or the jog or whatever. It’s that little action part that I think was the trick to climbing out slowly, versus jumping out.

Darren: That speaks very heavily to something I’ve heard you talk a lot about, which is this first domino thing. I’ve heard you share it at a handful of keynotes and in your trainings, and it’s so good. And it’s something I’ve said a lot over the last handful of episodes. It’s simple, but it’s not easy. So, first domino. Talk to me a little bit about that, because I think that’s what you’re saying. It’s like getting the car rolling a little bit. Explain that first domino principle that you like to live by.

Bryan: Just over observation and my own ups and downs, goods and bads, I have learned that when people set out on anything in their life, whether it’s weight loss or building a business or starting a podcast or reffing the Super Bowl, the failure isn’t in the process mostly. Mostly it’s the failure to start. So many people think of things they want to do, and that’s all they do. They never take a movement forward or an action.

While most people want to plan it out and figure out how do I do this, how do I do that, get this and that, they never do it. They plan everything, but they never take an action. That’s the first domino. The first domino is the first action, and it is typically not what people think.

I’ll use examples. People say, I want to run a marathon. I’m like, what’s the first domino? And people will say this all the time in an audience, get a training plan. I’m like, no, that’s not the first domino. Get my shoes and equipment. I’m like, that’s not the first domino. And then finally someone will say, register. I’m like, that’s the first domino. If you want to run a marathon, the first thing you do is you go to the Carmel Marathon, you go to the registration page, you pay them fifty bucks, and you register. Now you’re registered. Then you get going. Because if you put a training plan together and look at it, you’re going to go, I can’t do this, it’s too much work, I’ve got kids, I don’t have time to do this. They never register because they get scared away by the process.

I’m a huge fan of podcasting. I don’t know how to edit, I don’t know how to do all that, so I’m like, first domino for podcasting. And people say, get a topic, find a partner. But I’m like, nope. Somebody finally says, buy the equipment. That’s the first domino. Seventy five bucks on Amazon, it’ll be at your house in ten minutes. Ten minutes and you’ll have a podcast starter kit. That’s the first domino. Now it’s sitting there staring at you, like, hey, I’m a podcast kit, open me up. And then you go. That’s how it gets going.

Darren: Oh man, Bryan. How often, again, simple but not easy, in the sense that it’s overlooked. It’s overlooked. There’s something inside of somebody, right? There’s this, what we would call the art that we’re supposed to create. A business we’re supposed to start. We’re supposed to get out there. You’re almost saying, don’t be overwhelmed by all of the things. The first domino is probably to go register the LLC?

Bryan: Literally, that’s it. Just start the thing.

Darren: Yes.

Bryan: Yes, yes, yes. Think about, I mean, in my NFL journey, I got some advice from my coaches and things like that. The first thing I had to do was register with the high school athletic association to take a test to get my license. That was the first domino. If you would have said, here’s everything you have to do to get to the NFL, you have to get a license, you have to work JV, then you have to work varsity, then you have to work small college for this many years, then you have to work this many, thirty one weeks away, this and that, and it’s going to take you twenty seven years, and then it’s going to take you eight more to get in the NFL, and you’re going to lose your marriage along the way, and all this stuff, I’d have said no thanks. No thanks, I’m out. But instead I’m like, okay, I’ll send my money into the athletic association and take a test, and I have my license. First domino.

Darren: Wow. Man, I’m just sitting here thinking of things in my own life that I’m scared to start, or thinking of, or been dreaming about, or have watched nine thousand seven hundred YouTube videos on how to do the thing, and then I haven’t done the thing. And it’s the first domino. What is the first domino? I’ve heard you say that a thousand times and it still hits to this day. I’m like, oh man, I didn’t hit that first domino. That’s what it is.

<!– VERIFY: Speaker attribution for the beekeeping block below is reconstructed and LOW CONFIDENCE. First person markers (“a nerdy thing I’m doing,” “my wife got it for me,” “my first harvest”) all point to a single speaker, and the “Can I tell you a nerdy thing I’m doing” opener plus Darren’s immediately preceding self reflection read as Darren. However, the closing “people say I’ve always wanted to, I say buy a hive” construction matches Bryan’s teaching cadence used four times elsewhere in this segment. Confirm against audio before publishing. If audio shows Bryan is the beekeeper, swap the Darren and Bryan labels through the end of this block. –>

Darren: Can I tell you a nerdy thing I’m doing?

Bryan: Please do.

Darren: I don’t know if you know this. Do you know I’m beekeeping?

Bryan: No. You’ve got a beehive now?

Darren: I do. A lot at the house. So here’s the deal. I start watching these videos about beekeeping and I’m like, man, this is fascinating. I’m not a big earth guy or anything like that, I’m not an animal guy, but these bees just fascinate me. So I’m watching this and I find this thing called a flow hive. It’s the little bit lazy person’s beehive. I’m like, I can do this. So what did I do? Amazon. Twelve hundred bucks, fifteen hundred bucks. My wife got it for me for Christmas, and it shows up at the house. I opened my beehive up, and there it sat for a whole year. But the first domino was done. Finally got it set up, bought a brood, and I’ve got a full, beautiful beehive going right now. It’ll produce. I’ll have my first harvest of honey here in about three weeks. It’s the same deal. People say, I’ve always wanted to keep bees. I say, buy a hive.

Bryan: Yeah, that’s it. Get it.

Darren: I love it. I’ve been to a couple of your keynotes, and you do this with somebody. You say, has anybody ever wanted to take flying lessons? I want you to tell the story of what you do to those people in that moment.

Bryan: First domino. Someone says, you know, I’ve thought about flying a plane, and I’m like, oh my, have you ever taken a lesson? Nope. I’m like, come up here on the stage. I call the airport and buy them flying lessons right there in front of everybody. First domino. People are like, oh my gosh. But that’s it. That’s what people just can’t do, for whatever reason.

I really do feel like people are intimidated by the long term process, or by not knowing how the process works. And you will never be ready. You’re never ready to get your pilot’s license. You’re never ready to start a podcast. Ever. You will never be ready. So therefore, just start.

Darren: Yeah. Just start. I mean, I do the same thing. We obviously do a lot of podcast production for what we do here at 1898, but the thing is, I always get overwhelmed by all of the things that have to be done for ourselves. I’m out here telling everyone, ah, just do it, it’s fine, and then I get overwhelmed by it myself. So I love coming back to that principle of the first domino, because, yeah, what can I do today? That’s the one thing. One little step. So good. So good.