I thought I was the one giving

In 2016, I sat at a dinner table with my closest friends and completely fell apart.

It was a brutal year for my business. I was working harder than I'd ever worked, trying to force success through sheer willpower, and nothing was clicking. Every week felt like shoving a boulder uphill and watching it roll right back down. I was exhausted, embarrassed, and honestly a little lost.

We were just having dinner, the kind we'd had a hundred times. Somebody asked how work was going. And I held it together for about a sentence before I didn't. Not the dignified single-tear kind. The ugly kind.

And my friend Jay looked at me and said, without hesitating, "Whatever you need, we've got you. Groceries. A mortgage payment. Whatever. We're here."

The gang circa 2016

Here's what I want to be honest about, because I almost told this story wrong.

It wasn't that I couldn't accept help. If I'd truly needed it, I'd have taken it, and thankfully things turned around not long after that dinner, so it never came to that. That's not what broke me.

What broke me was the love behind it. Sitting there at my lowest, feeling like the whole thing was insurmountable, and realizing I had people who loved me and Andrea that much. People who were so certain we'd be okay, no matter what, that they'd already decided to catch us if we fell. Their certainty ran headfirst into my hopelessness, and I lost it. Not out of shame. Out of being loved that visibly, that unconditionally, right when I couldn't muster an ounce of that belief for myself.

I didn't have the words for what happened at that table until later. And honestly, some of those words came from a book.

I've probably read The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann more times than any other book. I had Bob on my podcast years ago, and I've gone back to that little book over and over. It lays out five laws of what they call stratospheric success, and here's the part that stuck with me: after four laws all about giving, the fifth and final law is receiving.

The fifth law is receiving.

You can spend your whole life being the giver, and I've tried to be, and still completely miss the other half of the equation. Because giving and receiving aren't opposites. They're the same circuit. One doesn't work without the other.

I knew that in theory. It took a thank-you note this week to make me feel it.

A few weeks ago I donated one of my coaching sessions to a fundraiser. My friend Selena Soo built an auction to support a family walking through one of the hardest seasons imaginable, a mom named Chantelle and her son Tate, with a long road ahead. Simple transaction, in my head. I have something of value, they need help, I give it. Done.

Then this week Chantelle sent a thank-you note, and it undid me all over again.

She wrote about how hard it was for her to receive. How she's always been the giver, the one carrying everyone else's load, and how sitting on the other side of that felt almost unbearably vulnerable. She even admitted she'd quietly wondered whether she was worthy of that much support.

And then she described what shifted. Near the end, she went back through every donated package and really looked, and she realized the whole thing had never just been about her family. It had become a ripple. Entrepreneurs finding mentors. People investing in themselves. Relationships forming in every direction. Her willingness to receive had cracked open something so much bigger than a bank account.

Her struggle was different from mine. She had to fight to let herself receive. I got ambushed by it at a dinner table. But we ended up in the same place, staring at the same truth.

Because here's what I finally saw.

When I gave that coaching session away, I thought it was a one-way act. Instead the whole thing came flowing back to me. I got pulled deeper into a community I already love, full of some of the most genuinely good people I've met. I got connected to the person who won the session, someone I hadn't met yet, who comes so highly recommended by mutual friends that I'm giddy to work with her. I got to feel like part of something bigger than my own little corner of the world.

I thought I was the one giving. I was the one who received.

And it sent me right back to that table in 2016. When Jay said "we've got you," he wasn't really offering me money. He was offering me the chance to be loved out loud. To let all of them in. The fifth law, in real time, at the worst moment of my professional life.

There's a version of the business world that says none of this belongs in it. Keep it professional. Keep it separate. Don't cry at the table.

Mine has never worked that way. The lowest point in my business wasn't fixed by a strategy or a funnel or a better content calendar. It was met by four friends at a dinner table who said "we've got you" before I even knew what I needed, and it turned out I didn't need the money at all. I needed to know I wasn't carrying it alone. Business and personal were never separate for me. The people around you when you're failing matter more than any plan you'll ever write.

So here's my nudge, and I'm preaching to myself as much as anyone. Let people love you out loud. Even when it's overwhelming. Even when you don't strictly need the help. The next time someone reaches out a hand, don't wave it off to keep the moment tidy. Let them in. You might be handing them the better end of the deal.

Grateful for you, and grateful for the people who've carried me,
Ryan

P.S. Two book mentions, because this letter was basically built on them. The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann is the one I keep coming back to, and Bob was a guest on my podcast years ago if you want to hear him talk through it: [link]. And Selena Soo, who ran that fundraiser, wrote Rich Relationships. Mike Kim introduced us, I've been to a couple of her Mixers, and if "networking" has always felt like a slimy word to you, she'll fix that: [link].