Build Your Sagrada

The Sagrada Familia has been under construction for over a hundred years. I first saw the cranes and scaffolding in 2006. When we returned for a month in Barcelona in October, they were still there. 

So I pulled out my phone to ask: 

How much money has the Spanish government dumped into this thing?

Turns out they’re not dumping dinero. They’re piling profits. Tens of millions of euros a year. The unfinished cathedral is a cash cow. Gaudí’s been dead for a century and his building is paying for itself and then some.

Starting My Own Sagrada

This realization struck me because in 2025 I started laying the groundwork for my own multi-year – hopefully multi-decade – development: the Innate Edge methodology. 

My Innate Edge methodology is my Sagrada. 

Innate Edge is an interconnected set of frameworks that help people decode their wiring and design a life around it. Just as Gaudí’s cathedral externalizes his faith, aesthetic, and Catalonian pride, Innate Edge is an outward-facing manifestation of my wiring, values, and weirdness.

My Sagrada is over 150 pages now, but still a rough shack with a bunch of annexes. It will never be finished. Even so, it is already my pride and joy.

Everything I learn, I view from the lens of, “How could this improve my Sagrada?” With every client interaction, I collect new ideas to add to it, or feedback to tweak it. Books or brainstorms occasionally give me a new framework to add as an additional wing. It keeps developing. 

My Sagrada is so under construction that only just got around to building a landing page facade on Monday. But it is already distinct enough to be useful. That usefulness is bringing in resources to keep building. Those resources make it more useful. So the flywheel is starting to work like the one powering Gaudí’s cathedral, just mine’s much smaller, has no blueprint, and is made of ideas instead of stone.

Not Only in Barcelona

Then I got to thinking about the guinea pigs / beta testers who have already visited my Sagrada and benefited despite the under-construction mess. 

Do they have Sagradas in them too?

Ross, for example. Through our work together, we found his archetype: Scoutmaster for Cities. Scouts say “Be Prepared”. Ross says it to cities, designing systems to close the gap between threat, hazard, and preparedness. He’s building a methodology around it. Every project he takes on, even tangentially related ones, adds new detail and nuance to it. That’s Ross’ Sagrada.

Or Paul. You know how boxers have cornermen? That’s Paul, but for entrepreneurs, immigrants, and anyone else brave enough to create within society rather than conform within it. He’s building the infrastructure that gives them what comes easier to conformists: financing, support, a fair shot. His Sagrada grows with every fighter he gets in the corner for.

Sagradas Don’t Have to Be Gaudí

Odds are none of us will build anything as grand as Gaudí. 

Let me tell you about Santiago.

Back in 2017, when Kim and I were living in Medellín, our roommates surprised us by taking us to visit Santiago’s house. 

It’s called La Casa de las Piedritas, the House of the Little Stones. It started with a single stone Santiago brought back for his wife, shaped like a heart. A token. He decided to bring a new one every day. And he has – for weeks, then months, then years, then decades. Piling one on top of each other until it became a multi-story house like nothing else in the world. Every detail handmade. Every stone a story.

Unlike the Sagrada Familia, Santiago’s house is not surrounded by hordes of tourists and trinket shops. And it’s not making millions. But I could tell from the look on Santiago’s face as he showed us every nook and cranny that he wouldn’t trade his house for anything. 

I was just a travel blogger back then. I wrote that Santiago’s house was my favorite attraction in all of Medellín. Now it’s obvious why.

Give It a Decade

Santiago’s house and Gaudí’s cathedral stand out. More than ever these days, when everything else is getting shorter – attention spans, videos, job placements.

Sagradas may not look like much at the beginning. Mine sure doesn’t. Give it a decade, though, and the world can’t help but notice. Give it a lifetime, and you’ll have built something it won’t forget.

When you’re building something aligned with your nature, you don’t need extreme discipline or hustle. You can’t stop. You won’t. 

Eventually, others won’t want you to stop either. And no one else can replicate Sagradas you build this way. Because no one else has your wiring, your story, or those (stepping) stones placed in that specific sequence over that many years. 

So people will be impressed, even if it’s not for them or their style. The ambitious ones will feel inspired to start. That’s how Sagradas spread: from one cathedral, to a stone house, to a world full of them.

What might your Sagrada be?

Keep doing exciting things,

Chris