The Tools You Need to Build a Dream

Most people only see the moment a dream begins — not the years of preparation underneath it. In this episode, Katherine Craddock shares the hidden work behind every dream: the research, the teachers, the quiet learning, the unexpected mentors, and the tools that slowly build your confidence. This is the part no one celebrates, but the part that makes everything possible. Let's get started!

Transcript

Speaker 0:03

Welcome to the Dream Blueprint where we build your dream into something real. I'm Katherine Craddock, and today we're going to be talking about gathering the tools, coaching, and mentors for your dream. Some dreams don't happen quickly. Some dreams aren't make the sales call, launch the business, just do it, dreams. Some dreams take years, even decades, of preparation before anything becomes real. And this episode is for those dreams. The long dreams, the slow dreams, the dreams that require seasons of gathering and learning and researching and becoming before you ever take the first visible step. This is actually my favorite part of dreaming. I love researching and gathering up for a good dream prep. In fact, I can stay stuck in that phase forever, which is one of my weaknesses, and maybe you can too. But this is probably going to be my absolute favorite episode because I'm going to totally geek out about what my secret sauce is and my processes for researching and preparing for a dream. If you've seen my podcast cover art, that's my actual house that we built from the ground up. And I only mention it because it didn't come from shortcuts or aesthetics or rushing. It came from years of gathering the right mentors and the right wisdom and the right tools. That house is a fruit of a long gathering season, and every dream worth building has one. When we built our dream farm, we named it Chalkhorse Farm. It didn't start with land or lumber. It started with 40 farm visits, just in the rain, in the snow, 700 different photos that I took and pinned to Pinterest and me researching the architect from a house that I loved. It started with my daughter running a full science experiment on hardwood flooring to figure out which wood was both durable and quiet. And Hickory One, if you're wondering, it started with every single light switch, doorknob, faucet, tile, paint color, window pane was researched, tested, touched, debated, and chosen with intention. I have a full historical reason and poetic reason behind absolutely every single detail in my house if you want to be bored to death one day. Each one taught us something that we didn't know. So I would get rejected and it'd be like, you got to fix this in your credit, or you'd get rejected and it would say, Oh, we've got to add more cash for a down payment, or you'd get rejected to say, Oh, one of us has to pick up another job, right? Or how can we add more income? How can we grow our net worth? And how can we refinance to a lower interest rate? Every no, though, we did it didn't stop us. It showed us a gap we needed to fill that credit that we needed, the net worth, side hustle, down payment. We weren't failing, we were gathering. We're taking the data, not taking it personally and saying, okay, here's the next step on the path forward. And here's the part that still shocks me. We've lived here for several years now, and over a thousand people have visited our home because we built it for hosting. And in all that time, in all those open houses and the lunches and the dinners, only one person has ever asked me how I did it. And that one person never even followed up. Meanwhile, we asked everyone that we met how they did it. We studied the books on their shelves, we asked for names, contacts, contractors, architects, builders, barn managers, lenders. And you know what? We found out that people who accomplish big dreams, they're not gatekeeping, they're not holding their secrets to themselves, they're not unwilling to share. They actually love to share what they've learned. But most people never have the humility to just ask, How did you do that? Instead, they sort of sit and stew in their own sense of like, oh, well, I could never do that, or I don't know how you do that, you know? And instead of like having the humility to say, you know what? I think what you did is pretty cool, and I'd like to have that myself one day. And I'm not gonna be jealous or comparing, I'm gonna just ask, How did you do that? What was your process? Long dreams require long preparation and humility and curiosity and the willingness to learn from anyone who's even one step ahead of you. So, today we're gonna talk about what you do while you wait for that dream. The biblical foundation of this it really comes in like two verses. The first is Nehemiah 2.18. Nehemiah was a builder who rebuilt the walls in Israel, and he tells the people that he's working with about the gracious hand of God on him, and they all reply as one, let us start rebuilding. So they began the good work. They all came together, they they agreed with the vision, and as a team, they they put this thing together. The other verse that's really relevant today is Proverbs 15, 22. Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisors, they succeed. Dreams aren't accomplished in a vacuum, they're not accomplished alone, they require counsel, they require community, and they require God's provision and your preparation. Once you know the dream, and that's what we talked about in the last couple episodes was figuring out what the dream is, you don't just like think about it loosely all the time, you just dive right in that massive imperfect action. And this is where like I when once I get the green light to research a dream, I'm like my editor side turns on, my my perfectionist side turns on, and I ruthlessly attack the process of researching every single nook and cranny. I Google it, I have long conversations with AI, I use Pinterest, I comb through every blog, I'll go on YouTube and I'll watch YouTubers on the different topics, I'll read articles about it, I'll go and I'll pull from historical sources. You know, uh we'll go and we like I said, we visited over 40 farms in the in that building season for our anniversary. Chris knew I was obsessing with this, so we went to like the Biltmore, like we went to big places that inspired big dreams of what I wanted to do. And I joined if if I'm researching a topic and if it's part of my dream, I will join every Facebook group on that dream. So I am a member when we I was researching horses, so I I'm a member of every single horse breed group, probably that's on the internet, right? Because I want to hear what are the conversations they're having, what am I missing? When my kids are researching a college, I'll join every single Instagram for every single college that we're considering. I'll join every Facebook group. I want to see what are the parents saying, what's the vibe? What information can I gather from these Instagram videos and these Facebook posts? Do they even have a social media presence, right? What is the messaging that they're putting out? What are their values? I join community forums, especially if you're moving to a new area or a new place, making sure you join all the community forums and just listen for a while before you ask a lot of questions just to see what the pain points are, what the points of pride are in a community. And I just go to every niche corner of the internet where people who already live this dream are talking. So you don't even have to know someone personally who has that dream. You can join in these communities of people that have it. I will go and I will pull my friends. I will like if I'm writing a screenplay and I get stuck on an idea, I'll say, Hey, can you guys tell me the funniest pranks or the craziest pranks you know of? And that's how I got a lot of the little prank ideas in the movie Touched by Grace. It was from my friends offering up the funniest things or the meanest things that had happened to them in that whole world of pranking and hazing and bullying. I I'll message people. If I can think, oh yeah, this person, they went on that trip and I want to go on that trip too. I'll message them. Hey, how did you do that? What was your itinerary, right? I will, and then if if I don't, if my friends don't know anyone, I'll say, Do you? I'll say, if my friends can't personally help me, I'll ask them, do you know anyone? Do you have any contact names or resources or books or tools? Like when I was getting into the screenwriting, was like, does anyone know anyone connected to the entertainment industry at all that I could just talk to and find out what the process is? There's a business principle from Seneca going all the way back to the Roman Empire, that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. And this episode is all about that preparation, that being ready for when that moment happens, where that dream moment happens, so that you can take action, cross the threshold, and start to be the hero in that dream. So I'm gonna use horses as an example. I I wanted horses ever since I was a little girl. I I read all the Marguerite Henry books and the Walter Farley and the first birthday party, my best friend's birthday party, her there was a horse, and I got to ride it, and it was just it was in my blood. But I never thought that I would actually like own a horse. And then when I looked at the dreams in my heart, I was like, this is a life dream of mine, but I had no money. I was entering middle age and I was pregnant, so I couldn't personally write, and I I didn't know how I could do this dream, but I I knew that I was gonna write it down. So I wrote it down, you know, I named it, I wrote it down, and then I asked this important question. I anybody can ask this question What can I do for free or almost free that moves me closer to my dream? And I just started brainstorming ideas of what I could do for free. So a friend of mine in my mother's a preschoolers group, she had a horse. And so I said, Would you let my kids have pony rides on your horse? I I remember I was pregnant. I didn't I couldn't ride the horse myself. And she said, sure, that would be fine. And she she let us ride her horse for free. I I bought a horse sweatshirt and a horse t-shirt, and I'd wear it around, and people would say, Oh, do you love horses? I love horses too. And then they'd tell me their horse story and I would learn about horses from them. I went to open farm days. We've got several parks in our area where you can still like you couldn't even pet the horses, but you could see them and you could smell them, and my kids could be around them. I even learned that some of the rescues in rural areas, they'll let you come and read aloud to older horses so that the horses aren't lonely and they have some companionship and something interesting going on in their day, which I thought was cool. That was pretty. I I would watch YouTube videos and about just to look at like how people set up their barn organization. I started a Facebook group. I it's called Virginia's for Horse Lovers, and I started posting pictures of horses to the group. And then I started joining all the different community groups and all the different farms in the area. And whenever they had an event or had some information about horses to share, I would share that to the group. And I found out there's a lot of people just like me that didn't own land, that didn't have money, but that loved horses. And so I was able to bless them by showing them funny horse videos and pictures and horse information. And I was also able to learn myself about the local community. And I learned a lot of things about horses that I had no idea about. I thought that horses were kind of like dogs and they're not anything like dogs. So it helped me by giving me more education, but it also gave other people access and conversation to this world of horses. I visited fairs, I took carriage rides, I did trail rides whenever I could on vacations, I read every horse book I could find, I watched videos, I again I researched every breed, I know everything about every breed. And when my youngest was finally old enough for half day preschool, I saved up for once a week riding lessons. And at the time they were $30. It's more expensive now, but that was so expensive. I had to save up money to be able to do that. We were in ministry at the time, and we did not have almost any money at all, right? So it I didn't live in the big fancy house with the horses that I do now. I interviewed once we were able to purchase a property in a horse community. I interviewed every single neighbor. I I visited their barns. I asked, where can I buy feed? What tax stores are available? What vets are reliable? What what who are you using as a ferrier? What kind of fencing lasts? I learned, you know, do you use oak? Do you use pine? Do you use nails? Do you use screws? Do you cement the posts in? How how big should the boards be? How many boards should there be? The exact fan that would keep the barn cool and wouldn't break, how to build a dry lot, the whole process so that it just doesn't turn into a muddy swamp. And I'm so grateful every day for my neighbor who helped us understand how to build the dry lot. And from the day I took my first tiny step towards having a horse, or at least riding one, to the day that I bought my brought my horse own horses home, it took eight years. Eight years of gathering. But those eight years were a joy because I got to learn and dream and be adjacent to my dream for all of those eight years. The waiting didn't seem that hard because I was enjoying the process of gathering. The second principle that I like to talk about is that principle of gathering the mentors. You know, when we were building our farm dream or any dream that my husband and I set out to pursue and my kids, we ask everyone. I do it by like emails and Facebook messages and posts, and he does it by phone calls. He loves talking on the phone and texting, but it also sometimes it's in-person lunches or conversations at church. We ask everyone, how did you do this? Who helped you? Who should I talk to? Who do you know that I should know? What would you do differently? And is there anything I should have asked you that I haven't asked you? Again, people who accomplish big dreams, they're not gatekeeping. Most people never ask. It's astonishing. They never ask, they just assume that people won the lottery or were born with a silver spoon or something. But most people weren't. You know, when we were helping our son choose a college for track, we didn't actually start with name brand schools. And it kind of surprised everybody because they thought that he was gonna do like D1 and maybe football and stuff, but we started with him and what his dream was. We I did a lot of gathering about, I always ask my kids, do you want to live in a city? Do you want to study in a suburb? Do you want to study in a rural environment? Do you want a big school? Do you want a little school? What do you want to, what do you want your major to be? I start this conversation, poor kids. I start it when they're in seventh grade. I start planting those questions and visions. So we looked at his personality, his learning style, his faith, his major, his coaching needs, his desire to be close to home. And it turned out that he wanted to be about two hours away from home. He wanted to go to a small school that had a simple, clear layout. He wanted to go with small class sizes where he would be mentored. And his favorite sport ended up being track and field. He's a national level sprinter and long jumper. And we even looked at which schools had sometimes the track coach is a specialist in distance, and sometimes the special the track coach is a specialist in sprinting and jumping. And it's actually kind of hard to find jumping specialists. So even though he did get into some big D1 programs and some flasher named schools, we chose a small private college because the goal was the right fit for him. Through all our research with the coaches and I mean, we visited every place. We said, How does the air feel to you? How do you do you know, can do you feel homesick here? How does the distance feel? We made him drive to each school, right? Is this too far? I even researched down to like what is the pollen like at the schools? Like, I I really we had every shred of data that we could possibly get. And we were searching for a school that had his major, that had a sprint jump coach, that had a faith community, that had the option to watch or play football one day. And this was the kicker. They we found a school that through research, it was not on our radar. Through research, we discovered a school that used to have really high cost private school prices, but had recently cut their prices in half. So they gave us a financial package. We uh we just couldn't refuse. It was so compelling and it was so clear that they really wanted him in their community, which was really exciting for him to feel that validation. We found the perfect fit because we gathered the mentors, we had the conversations to say, hey, who knows of a small school? You know, who do you know who's a really good track coach? And we went and we talked to all those different coaches because we had a lot of phone conversations with coaches to pick just the right coach for him. The third principle of gathering is gathering the wisdom. You know, I'm an Oxford-trained historian, so this is where I absolutely nerd out. And my husband, he actually almost got a minor in history himself because he went to so many classes with me when we were dating because he found out he really enjoyed the stories. He didn't like the research part as much. But, you know, there's that whole scientific principle of measuring twice, cutting once, making sure that in history research, you gather all sides of the argument, you gather the primary sources, you gather the secondary sources. You know that if two people watched a fight, they're gonna have a totally different worldview and interpretation of how that fight went down, right? So we applied a lot of those like history type research skills back to when you wrote those long research papers in high school or college. But we apply those same kinds of principles to our dream gathering and our dream research. We also, you know, another principle is we gather the community because dreams are built in ecosystems. So I've gathered information from other track parents. I have a track friend on Sunday mornings, and we go, we talk about our sons and their progress together, and we shoot each other videos back and forth, and how's it going, right? I have the barn neighbors. I the I went to the feed store and asked them, hey, my horse that I just got is underweight. How do I solve this? You know, with builders, we we went to so many people that have had custom built their own homes and we got their advice. You have we have an architect obviously help us build. My brother-in-law helped general contract the whole project. So, community when you're dreaming, it's not optional, it is structural support. It is not look at me, look what I did all by myself. It really does take the whole village. It took the whole village to raise each of my children into their success. I know the names and the faces of all the wonderful people that invested in our family. You know, but sometimes, as great as find the free advice, as much free advice as you can, you know, there's a lot you can do with free. There's a lot of people out there that are willing to share their advice and their expertise willingly and for free, but there really are experts out there. And if you don't have the social resources, or you're in a new place or a totally new field, or you're trying to dream at an elite level, sometimes the free wisdom runs out. You have phoned all your friends, and sometimes your friends they have never grown to that level of the video game, right? So they can't help you get to that next level of your dream as good-hearted and wonderful as their advice has been. So if when you reach that roadblock, then it's time to make an investment. When my husband started doing real estate, I really struggled with the concept of him paying for a business coach. I was like, we can figure this out for ourselves. What do you mean? Like we had very intense conversations about that because it was the time that we were in debt from flipping houses. And he was wanting to take some of our precious money and resources and put it into a coach. But that coach ended up helping us get out of debt and into productivity and into the black. And that coach helped us not just build the real estate business that we were building, but also introduced us to the concept of other businesses that we could build. So helped us build multiple other six-figure businesses as a result of that coaching and changed our family's entire trajectory. So having the right coach can absolutely transform your life and be worth the investment. So now if we have someone who's pursuing an elite-level dream and they're committed to that dream, and we're getting green lights towards their success, and I'll talk about that in a later episode of sort of when you know it's time to invest time, talent, and treasures in a dream. But we invest in like I had screenwriting coaches and consultants. My son had a private track coach. My daughter had med school coaching and med school training. My actor, singer, and dancer son in New York City, he's had voice coaches that we invested in. My husband has a fitness trainer that helped him get shredded and ripped and get him his six-pack, which was one of his dreams. We have business coaches to this day. You know, all the kids, they've got soccer coaches and cheer coaches and teachers and all this. And the crazy thing about that is we often pay for lessons for our kids without blinking, without blinking. We write big checks for our kids to get private coaching or even group coaching, right? But we forget that we need coaching. I couldn't just get on a horse and know what to do. I did have to invest in paying for the training for what to do. You have to invest in paying the people who build your house. So if you're sure of the dream and you're sure the coach can get you the result, then the investment is part of the blueprint. A sixth principle of dream gathering is this is one of my favorites, is that sometimes even if you've paid for the coaching and and even if you've exhausted all your free resources, there's gonna be a moment where you just absolutely hit a wall and you go, I don't know how to do this, and I don't know anyone who does know how to do this, and I'm so intimidated, and I'm already knee deep in my dream, and I can't quit now. What do I do? And the beautiful thing is, if this is a dream that's that divine dream, that's that destiny dream, that that's that that's that God-given dream, then God will send the expert. I absolutely hit a wall in my home building process. It I I figured out the loans and I figured out, you know, I found the architect, and and we had the blueprint and the design, and I had the builder. And the thing that I'm really not great at is aesthetics and detailed interior decorating and interior design. I I'm just not naturally gifted in that area. I've watched every HG TV show ever, but I still am not real talented at putting together a vignette or like matching patterns or what I can pick a good tile, but those kinds of layers. And I just I got to that point where we were, it wasn't about the bones of the structure anymore. It was about the like beauty, uh, the interior beauty. And I just the dream felt too big. I was overwhelmed. And I was in church that Sunday, and this goes back to the Nehemiah thing that I was by verse that I referenced at the beginning. The pastor happened to be talking about Nehemiah and how God didn't just give him a vision for the wall and be like, Good luck, you need you need to rebuild, you know, Jerusalem. Enjoy the process, you'll get no help. He actually brought craftsmen to help the craftsman that he needed to complete it. So as I was listening to that sermon, I just kind of said a little prayer in my heart that like God, I need help. I send me the person who can see what I'm trying to build. And, you know, church lets out, I go pick my daughter up. It's a church that has multiple services, and we had gone to the middle service. I'm walking out the door, and up the steps, I'm gonna get emotional about this, of course, because it was such an incredible moment. As I'm walking out the door, up the steps of the church, my friend Kathy is walking in. And I hadn't seen Kathy in probably 20 years. We had been young life leaders together, and when we were young life leaders, I knew she was a very talented interior designer. And I saw her and she said, How are you doing? I'm doing great. And I shared with her that I was building this house and you know, could she maybe help me? Because I knew she was an interior designer, and she had known me be when I was younger. She had known, she knew exactly where my heart for this dream for this house came from because we had been young life leaders together. She knew immediately that my heart was for welcoming in the community to a spiritual shelter and especially my heart for teenagers. She didn't question for one second why is your house so big or or what are you trying to? She knew, like she knew what my basement was for. She had she knew the design of the house. And she wholeheartedly said, I would love to help you with this dream. She came up with all these great innovations for like how the kitchen should be shaped, and you're gonna want soundproofing in these walls, and here's how we fix this, and the hinges on the door should go this way, and you need lighting here. And she poured over these blueprints with me and my coffee table in my house, and together we she she would come over at night and she would show me like options for lighting and various things. She did it all for free, which is overwhelming too, because I was getting insane quotes from interior designers that I did not have the ability to pay at all. And she helped me with my need, and I helped her at her time because we just were able to share on a deep level because we think poetically and we think creatively and we think spiritually, and it actually set her career up for future opportunities. So God sent her at the exact moment that I needed encouragement, and he sent me at the exact moment that she needed encouragement too. And when you gather together in community, when you lift your needs up to the Lord, if the dream is from Him, He sends you exactly who you need to complete the dream. You know, I had a powerful sermon type illustration one time when I was talking to interviewing a screenwriter and director to get his advice on not to ask anything from him, like hook me up with the industry, but like, you know, what is your process? And and he gave me this spiritual wisdom. He said, when Jesus tells the disciples to go find the donkey for Palm Sunday, the amazing thing about that is that God had already prepared the heart of the donkey owner so that when the disciples come and say, Hey, can we have your donkey? It's for this the master is asking for it. The man with the donkey didn't hesitate to let them take what essentially was his personal vehicle. It's like Jesus telling the disciples to go ask for a brand new car, somebody for their brand new car, and the owner of the brand new car being like, Absolutely, yes, God told me to give it to you, right? And this is if if God has if God has given you a task, if he's told you to go search for a donkey, he's also told somebody else to prepare their donkey for you. And those moments are just so magical, which is why I get so emotional because they don't happen often, but when they do, it's so affirming and it settles in your soul for the rest of your life. The final principle that I want to talk about is don't build on a temporary road. By my house, there's a street called Temporary Road. I drive past it every day when I go to take my kids to their soccer practices and their baseball practices. And it's the funny thing about temporary road is that it's been there since I was a little girl. So decades later, it was probably put up in the 60s or the 70s, and here we are in the 2000s now, and not the 1900s, and temporary road is still there, and it still has that name. I think about it all the time. Because when we rush the process, when we grab a quick fix, when we choose the shortcut, we often end up with temporary solutions that become permanent structures. So even if in the Bible it talks about don't despise the day of small beginnings, you know, you'll feel like, I'm just gonna give this business a name. This business isn't really gonna grow into something, right? But a lot of times it does, and then you're stuck with the name temporary road, you know, temporary business. So a temporary decision can become a permanent problem. A temporary workaround becomes a permanent solution. A lot of times I always say the time is the time, the time to do the thing is the time to do the thing. You don't know if you'll have another time. So you can't take the shortcut, you have to do it right in that time because a lot of times we don't have time to go and revisit what we did. This is why I take the time to gather and why I take the time to do the research. Because if I take the time, it can even be five minutes. Like, hey, can I research this thing for five minutes? If I can research it, then I'm not putting in something temporary that not only becomes permanent, but it can also multiply, right? So if you put seed into the ground and you like hope for the best, that seed has the potential for life. It has the potential for growth and it could multiply the wrong thing. I've got some wildflower seed that I ordered and I was gonna put it in the ditch along my fence line, but I care, I after I ordered it, I carefully read and I saw that several of the wildflowers in there are toxic to horses. On the advertisement on the website, it didn't say that. If I hadn't taken the time to read that label and read the ingredients that were actually in the wildflower seeds, I could spend the next decade of my life worried that my horses were going to eat something toxic and ripping out, spending all my time weeding out these plants that never should have been planted in the first place. So my husband and I, we work and move quickly when and decisively when we are sure of the right path. Like if we've done the gathering and we see the right opportunity, like boom, we implement it immediately. A lot of times you'll hear the right advice, and this is like a hallmark. If we hear the right advice for our dream, we don't wait on it, we implement it immediately. So as much as I love waiting, I also love a good quick implementation. But at the same time, we refuse to take shortcuts because shortcuts create chaos. And chaos and shortcuts require rebuilding. Sometimes the whole thing, they end up costing more in the long run, like the wildflowers that could just seed absolutely everywhere when you're trying to just grow grass, right? Or one kind of wildflower seed. I'm not interested in dreams that only work for now. I'm interested in dreams that last, that are solid, that are generational, they're legacy dreams, dreams that are built with materials that endure and systems that run smoothly from day one. I love that almost every single system that we set up in our house functions like I thought it would. We have had to rebuild very little from our original design. I love it when every room is being used. I I absolutely love that, that so many features in our house were built for a practical purpose and that they work. That's the best feeling in the world. It's it and sometimes people say, like, what would you change or what would you improve? And I actually not a whole lot because we put so much thought and research into what we implemented. So temporary road is a reminder: if you don't gather properly, you will build something temporary that becomes permanent, and then you have to go through a deconstruction, and that is no fun. But gathering and researching and taking even a couple minutes to pause and phone a friend and get some advice from the internet, it can protect you from that. So long dreams require preparation. Gathering is not glamorous, nobody even knows you're doing it sometimes. They can't see what it is that you're building. But gathering is faithful, it's humble, it's curious, it's persistent, and it's spiritual. When the door finally opens for your dream, you're not scrambling, you're full of confidence and peace, and you're ready. Of course, before you start gathering, you need to evaluate and discern what kind of dream you're about to start chasing. And if it's one that's worth pursuing at all. So in episode five, we're gonna sort that out together so you don't start gathering for the wrong dream. In the meantime, keep dreaming and I'll talk with you soon.