Day 30 of the 7-40 Challenge
Friday, January 30, 2026
“Put in the time. Your ideas are worth the effort.”
That’s Carmine Gallo in Talk Like TED, talking about the preparation that goes into great speeches. I’m on Day 30 of the 7-40 Challenge, reading Gallo’s book, and learning that what separates good ideas from great ones isn’t just having the idea—it’s being willing to test it.
But what does that actually look like in practice?
Let me show you what it looked like for Amanda Palmer.
The Tour Before the Tour
If you’ve watched Palmer’s TED talk “The Art of Asking,” you know how it feels—raw, authentic, like she’s having a conversation with 1,400 of her closest friends. She tells stories about being a living statue, about crowdfunding her album, about the vulnerability of asking. It doesn’t feel rehearsed. It feels real.
That’s exactly what great preparation is supposed to look like.
But here’s what you don’t see: the tour before the tour. Palmer didn’t just show up at TED and wing it. She took that talk on the road. Different venues. Different audiences. She gave variations of her prepared speech over and over, using each performance as a testing ground. Every time she delivered it, she was watching for what landed, what fell flat, where people leaned in, where they checked out.
And then—and this is the brilliant part—she used her community as her feedback engine. Palmer has spent years building genuine relationships with her fans, and she enlisted them in making this talk better. She asked them what worked. What didn’t. What confused them. What moved them. She treated her community not as passive consumers but as collaborators in refining her ideas.
This is the opposite of the lone genius model. This is preparation as conversation. Iteration as relationship. The speech got better because she let people help her make it better.
The Risk of Real Feedback
Think about what that actually means: Palmer valued her idea enough to test it. To expose it to feedback when it was still rough. To risk hearing that parts of it didn’t work.
Most people are so protective of their ideas that they either never share them at all, or they wait until they think it’s “perfect”—which usually means they’ve polished it in isolation until it’s lost all its rough, human edges.
Palmer did the opposite. She put her rough draft in front of real people and let them tell her the truth.
This applies to so much more than public speaking.
Writers do this with beta readers—trusted people who read your manuscript before it’s finished and tell you what’s working. Stand-up comics do this every single night in small clubs, working out new material in front of live audiences, adjusting based on what gets laughs. Software developers do this with user testing. Artists do this with gallery shows and studio visits.
The best work comes from feedback loops, not from isolated genius.
What This Looks Like for Me
Right now, I’m waiting for my wife and son to finish reading my novel manuscript before I dive back into revisions. I could have ignored their feedback and just polished it on my own. But my idea—this story I’ve spent so much time on—is worth the effort of getting real feedback from people I trust. Their insights will make it better than anything I could do alone.
And the 7-40 Challenge itself is a feedback loop. Every blog post I publish gets responses. Every video on social media gets views. I’m documenting my transformation in real-time, and feedback tells me what’s resonating and what’s not. I’m not waiting until Day 280 to share “perfect” results. I’m sharing the messy middle right now and letting the feedback help shape what this becomes.
That’s preparation as conversation. That’s using community as my feedback engine.
The Takeaway
Your community, your beta readers, your test audiences—they’re not a weakness in your process. They’re not a sign that you couldn’t figure it out on your own. They’re part of the preparation. They’re how good ideas become great ones.
So here’s what Day 30 taught me: If your idea is worth doing, it’s worth testing. Put it in front of people before you think it’s ready. Use your community as your feedback engine. Be willing to hear what’s not working. Iterate.
Put in the time. Your ideas are worth the effort.
And sometimes that effort looks like asking for help.
Day 30: Complete ✓
All seven habits executed. Three-quarters through Round 1.
Round 1 Progress: 30/40 days (75%)
Assessment Week begins in 11 days.
See you tomorrow for Day 31.
The 740 Challenge 