The real secret to building in public

Hello! Over the last few years, the concept of building in public has taken the internet by storm. I don't think it's a new concept so much as it's grown due to the new, handy name...but, in any case, it's become such common advice that it's becoming accepted as just the way everything "should" be done. And I get it. I like seeing how the sausage is made just as much as the next guy! Watching someone build in public can be inspirational and even helpful if what they're building is directly applicable to my work. This "build in public" advice is heralded as the way to build an audience online. Again, there's some validity here! There are a lot of examples of people whose audience grew as they began building in public – going all the way back to my now-friend Pat Flynn and his famous income reports circa 2008! Let's take Pat as an example. When he began sharing his income reports in 2008, he was giving a transparent look at the finances behind his actual business – an ebook created to help people pass an architecture exam. What he was ACTUALLY building was a digital products business for architecture students – and he was taking people along for the ride. Fast forward to today and a more recent example. Last week I interviewed Nick Huber, also known as the "Sweaty Startup" guy. Nick has made a lot of waves online over the last two years, building a Twitter following of more than 130K. His following exploded because he was transparently sharing the inside of his business, a real estate company buying self storage facilities. [twitter profile avatar] Nick Huber [Twitter Logo] @sweatystartup [What I do: Run a company that owns and operates 24 self storage facilities in small towns across the northeast. We find facilities with sub-market rents and no technology. We automate them with keypad-entry gates, security and software and run them remotely.]( July 5th 2021 93 Retweets 1,277 Likes What he was ACTUALLY building was this self storage company, and he was taking people along for the ride. So here's the problem with this build in public advice... For a ton of aspiring creators, they think what they need to BUILD is an audience. So when they build in public, they take people along for the ride of building an audience...they're trying to build an audience by showing people how they build an audience. 🤔 Or, even more commonly, they're trying to build an online business by teaching you how to build an online business. And when someone doesn't HAVE the thing they're teaching YOU how to get...that's not a very compelling hook, is it? Things grow slowly because, intuitively, we don't know why we would follow this person. "Wait, what are you trying to teach me? The thing YOU are trying to do?" Some folks push through with brute force. At some point, if you collect enough followers and your numbers begin to look aspirational, suddenly you carry more credibility. We'll start listening to your advice on audience building. But for most creators, they get stuck. They think they're building in public, but they aren't really building anything. I think those who are most successful building in public have actually gotten a head start by building in private. Then, once they have earned experience and insight, they start sharing in public. We are much more likely to pay attention to someone building in public that we KNOW has already achieved the outcome or transformation that WE aspire to. It's an open loop – we know how this person's story ends...but HOW did they get there? By sharing in public, they close the loop for us. But...without knowing that the story has an ending we aspire to...it's way less interesting to follow along. So for a lot of people who are enamored with building an audience, I don't think building in public is the fastest route. Creating content takes a TON of time and effort – in both conceptualization and execution. It's easy to lose focus and obsess over the "public" part rather than the "build" part. And without building something the public cares about...the whole exercise is hollow. I think the fastest route to building an audience is BUILDING something novel and valuable. Something that on it's own attracts customers or attention. Once you've made something people really like and are attracted to, then you can start talking about how you did it. But, until then, I think building in public is more of a distraction than a benefit. ​ --------------------------------------------------------------- ​ On Creative Elements 👨‍🔬 [Ali Abdaal on Creative Elements](​ This week I re-aired one of my personal favorite episodes of the show! Ali Abdaal is a Cambridge University medicine graduate, now working as a junior doctor in the UK's National Health Service (NHS). He started making YouTube videos in his final year of medical school at Cambridge University in the summer of 2017. As of October 2020, his channel has 1.1 million subscribers and earns over £100,000 ($130k) each month, with 5-10 hours of effort each week. And, as of today, it's 1.9 million! In this episode we talk about going to medical school in the UK, why he started his YouTube channel, how you can get started on YouTube, and why Efficiency has allowed him to do this on the side while becoming a doctor. ​[Click here to listen](​ ​ --------------------------------------------------------------- ​ Behind-the-scenes over here, I've been privately building a new brand identity for my writing, websites, courses, and so on. And I'm PUMPED about it. I'm going to share all of it with you in the next couple of months, but in the spirit of transparency, I'm not going to "build" it in public in front of you...I'm going to build it to a place I'm happy with, have a full story around, and then share it publicly. I'll take you behind-the-scenes to the process and the decisions that were made, but I don't think it's actually better for either of us to share it in real time. Stories are important. Narrative is important. And with this project, I have a beginning and a middle, but no end yet. And once I do have an end...a full narrative arc...that may change the way I tell the story entirely! Is that still building in public, if I share the build retroactively? I would argue that it is. And if that's true, is building in public anything truly that new? It just sounds like marketing and storytelling to me. I'd love to hear your thoughts on building in public, just hit reply! Cheers, Jay PS: I had a big birthday this weekend! 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