Lessons From Builders

**David Nebinski** (0:03)
Hey, friend, it's David Nebinski here in Brooklyn, here at the Portfolio Career Podcast, where we take ownership of your career and design a life that you want to live. This episode is a Hot Pod podcast mixer, where friends share stories and ask each other questions in a very like casual group chat kind of way. The theme of this conversation is building things. So in this episode, you'll hear from people that are building companies, communities, events, and they share their related learnings and thoughts along the way. I start the episode by sharing about what I've been learning as a solopreneur since September 2025, where I've been working with founders and owners on community-led growth initiatives and hosting my own Chief of Staff events here in New York. You can learn more about the podcast, my learnings through my newsletter that you can subscribe to at davidnebinski.com/newsletter.
So excited for you to build and grow your portfolio career. Here we go with me sharing a story about what I've been building.
We got a special intro here by Luke. Do you want to do that again?

**Luke** (1:06)
Welcome to the building podcast.

**David Nebinski** (1:09)
Okay. If you're listening to this and you like that and you want that to be, yeah.
Luke is building a voiceover business. Yeah. So, wow, thanks everybody for being here. This is fun. In this Hot Pod podcast episode here around building things. And I have been building a solo partner business, I guess, or body of work.
And I think the biggest thing, and it's been going well, there's highs and there's lows today, and actually ended up in a good day. So cheers to that. I haven't checked my email in the last minute or two, so but in my mind, I think it's still going well. And I think one of the biggest things that I was reflecting on before this was like a lot of the stuff that has been going well and as part of building is like when I actually like tell people what like I'm building or like how things are going. I've been constantly surprised by like just like saying like, hey, I want to host more events or hey, I'm hosting this event and I'm looking for a partner. Hey, like I would like to collaborate on something in the fall.
Hey, I'm having a lot of traction with this. Like do you think, do you know anyone I should talk to? And I've just been like surprised by like almost like not every time, but like how often whenever I just say what's happening and where I'm at and like where I'm trying to go that like people just like respond to that. And they're like, oh, like I'm in for that or like, yes, let's do that. And it's been a journey of like me like owning that and getting more and more comfortable to just like say that and like kind of own like what I'm doing and that being like, oh, like, yeah, I'm like just doing this or, you know, it's like, but if I just say, hey, this is what I'm really trying to do, like I'm good at this and I really want to do this. There's like demand and there's interest. That just, yeah, been pleasantly surprised by people's reactions to that. And that like happened like twice today.
And so that's a, I think a lot of this like solo printer journey has been like a journey of just like becoming more and more confident. And so that's like probably the biggest learning. And now I'm glad that it's publicly shared. So then I can go back to this and be like, wait, what did I say that I was learning about building? So yeah, and I think related to that is that people want to like support, I think, solopreneurs and like early stage founders. So versus like maybe large companies that they don't really have like a face or so. So that's like my learning and maybe hopefully that's like interesting or relevant to you all. And yeah, any questions?

**SPEAKER_3** (4:15)
Comment and a question. Comment is I think the reason that people are so receptive and like down to do stuff with you, I think it's because of your body of work, your authenticity and the way that you build trust, you have been building trust over the course of like, since I've known you, but over the course of however many years you've been building community. So people just know, even though you're not with like a organization anymore, people just trust you as David Nebinski. So I think that's for me, it's a comment for like people are going to trust you because you've been doing great things and you do it authentically. The question is, how do you see yourself differing your mindset coming from an organization to doing something solo?