There's a version of a man who keeps his head down, clocks in, clocks out, and hopes something eventually changes.

That's not the version I'm building.

Right now, my life looks like a lot of moving parts — and honestly, it is. But every single one of them is intentional. I want to lay it out plainly, because that's what Building in Public means. No polished highlight reel. Just the actual strategy, in real time, from a guy who's still in the middle of it.

The Career: WinCo Foods

I'm a Manager in Training at WinCo Foods. I stock shelves, I learn the operation, I show up every shift ready to grow into a leadership role inside one of the most interesting companies in American retail.

Most people hear "grocery store" and think it's a placeholder. It's not.

WinCo is an Employee Stock Ownership Plan company — an ESOP. That means every hour I put in, every year I build tenure, I'm earning ownership in the company. Not a bonus. Not a gift. Ownership. My work directly translates into equity. And that alignment between effort and ownership is one of the core things I believe in as a man.

Here's what most people don't realize: the more WinCo grows, the more the ESOP stock is worth. And the more customers walk through those doors, the better the company performs. So when I tell people to shop at WinCo — and I do, often — I'm not just doing a favor. I'm investing in my own future. Every shopping trip someone makes based on something I said is compounding in the background. I don't need to track it. I just need to keep building the audience and sending people there. The flywheel handles the rest.

That's the career right now. I'm showing up, learning the business, earning my stripes, and building equity one shift at a time.

The Brand: justindcstephens.com

At the same time I'm clocking in at WinCo, I'm building this. The brand. The platform. The long game.

The personal brand exists because I believe your life should be doing more than one thing at once. Your time is the most finite resource you have. The work you do today should pay dividends in more directions than just a paycheck.

Right now, the brand does a few things:

It sends people to WinCo. Every piece of content I create that talks about my work, my career, what WinCo is as a company — that's a soft referral to one of the best value grocery stores in the country. It's aligned. It's authentic. And it compounds.

It's building trust for what comes next. I'm in early conversations about partnering with my mom — she owns an accounting firm — to launch something together that serves entrepreneurs and business owners who want better visibility into their finances and their future. The brand is the funnel. The audience is the foundation. When that partnership is ready, I won't be starting from zero.

It's creating a platform that can evolve. A coaching or training program. A partnership with a company that aligns with my values. A political voice. The brand isn't locked into one thing. It's the infrastructure for whatever I build next. That's by design.

The content isn't manufactured. It's my actual life — the uniform, the parking lot, the late nights, the lessons I'm learning in real time. If you follow along here or on social, what you're getting is the unfiltered version of a man building from the ground up.

The Product: Christmas Ornaments and the Shipper Vision

I've been doing annual Christmas ornaments for a while now. This year, I'm taking them more seriously.

The dream — and I'll say it plainly because I'm building in public — is to get the ornaments into WinCo stores across the country. That means creating a shipper: a self-contained retail display unit, pre-filled, ready to drop into a store location with zero friction for the retailer. You put the shipper on the floor. Customers see it. Done.

That's the long-term vision. But I'm not waiting for the long term to start proving the concept.

This year, my goal is to build a prototype shipper, fill it with ornaments, and place it in the employee area at WinCo — so every employee who walks by can grab one for free. No pitch. No presentation. Just the concept doing its work. If a buyer sees it, or hears about it, or starts asking questions, I want them to already have the proof of concept in hand.

At the same time, I'll be selling ornaments online this year and running Facebook ads to get in front of people who actually want them. This serves two purposes: it generates real revenue, and it grows the audience. Every person who buys an ornament from me is now connected to this brand. That's not a transaction — that's a relationship that can grow over time.

The Philosophy Behind All of It

I'm not trying to be a guy who looks like he has it figured out. I'm a guy who's actively figuring it out — and building the whole thing in public so other people can learn from both the wins and the hard lessons.

The through line in all of it is ownership. Ownership of my time. Ownership of my career. Ownership of my future. Not waiting for someone to hand me a path — building one deliberately, one decision at a time.

The job builds the equity. The brand builds the audience. The product builds the revenue. The audience amplifies everything.

None of these are disconnected. They're the same strategy, running on parallel tracks, compounding toward something bigger than any one of them alone.

That's the current state of the play. I'll keep showing up here and telling you exactly how it's going.