Rebel Talk: A day late, a dollar short.

This one’s late.

I shoot for noon on Sundays, and I missed it. For those of you who wait for these—who make space for them in your week—I don’t gloss over that. I feel it. Because showing up isn’t just a concept to me. It’s a discipline.

And that idea hit me again during Christmas church last week.

You’ve seen it. Multiple services. Every pew full. Extra chairs jammed into aisles. People standing in the back. Parking lots overflowing. The building buzzing in a way it never does the rest of the year.

Then my mind drifted to a normal Sunday. Quiet. Open rows. Space to spread out.

Sitting there, surrounded by people, I caught myself asking the question most of us think but don’t say out loud:

Where are all these people the other 51 Sundays?

Why today? Why now?

Because Christmas is an event.

And people love events.

They love moments that feel meaningful without requiring much commitment. It’s easy to show up when it’s expected, celebrated, and comfortable. No judgment—just truth.

And that’s when it clicked. This isn’t about church.

It’s about life.

Most people don’t struggle with effort once in a while. They struggle with patience—specifically, uncomfortable patience. And uncomfortable patience is a skill. One you don’t stumble into. One you earn.

I learned that building a real estate business.

In that world, you show up every single day. And if I’m being honest, 99% of the time it sucks. It’s uncomfortable. It’s uncertain. It’s lonely. It’s scary. You’re making decisions with incomplete information, carrying risk no one else feels, and wondering more times than you’d like to admit if you’re wrong.

There are no packed rooms.
No applause.
No guarantees.

Just showing up.

You keep building in the quiet. In the dark. When it feels like nothing is working. When it feels like you’re failing. When progress is invisible and the doubt is loud.

And then—usually when you’re not expecting it—it shows up.

A deal closes.
Momentum shifts. Something clicks.

Not because you showed up once.
Because you showed up every day.

That same lesson lives inside Relentless Rebel.

This brand wasn’t built in a spotlight. It was built in belief—mine—long before I knew if anyone else would feel it. Writing into the dark. Designing into the unknown. Putting words out there without knowing if they’d land, or if anyone would even care.

There were plenty of quiet Sundays.
Plenty of moments where it felt like yelling into the void.
Plenty of times I wondered if the message was too raw, too different, too honest.

But I kept showing up.

And one day, it showed up back.

People connected. People felt seen. People found inspiration. Not because it was an event—but because it was consistent.

That’s how faith works too.
That’s how relationships work.
That’s how anything worth having is built.

You don’t build a life by showing up occasionally.
You don’t build belief by waiting for the room to fill.
You don’t get rewarded for attendance—you get rewarded for endurance.

“A day late and a dollar short” isn’t about bad luck.
It’s about absence.
It’s about skipping the uncomfortable patience required to build something real.

So don’t wait for Christmas to show up.
Don’t wait for the crowd.
Don’t wait for it to feel easy.

Show up on the quiet Sundays.
Show up when it’s uncomfortable.
Show up when it feels pointless.

Because the people who eventually get surrounded by a full room?
They earned it in the dark—one ordinary day at a time.

Stay Relentless,

Ryan