Building in Public
I’ve been “building in public” long before it became a thing in recent years. This blog, my various podcasts, and videos have always been a natural outlet for me.
Sharing my work and seeking feedback from my peers has been an important part of my creative process. It’s taken various forms over the years.
Lately, I got back into the swing of building in public with a string of daily(ish) videos sharing my current work on my SaaS product, Clarityflow.
See them when they drop on Twitter (ok fine, X)
But… Why spend the time?
Building in public often seems like a waste of time and energy. Because it does truly take both of those things: A non-zero amount of hours go into preparing, recording or writing an update, and sharing it out. That’s also very energy-draining.
Wouldn’t that time and energy be better spent actually working on the business? Product work. Marketing work. Sales work… Why add more to-dos onto of all that?
I often question this. It’s why I go through phases of actively sharing publicly and phases where I’m pretty quiet publicly (but still very busy at work).
But looking back on my 10+ years of building in public, I notice a strange, but interesting trend: When I’m regularly sharing publicly, momentum in my business seems to swing up and to the right.
Specific benefits
Here's, specifically, why I continue to invest my time and energy into building in public (albeit not always consistently):
1. It helps me stay accountable
I don't really have any issues with motivation or shipping.
But I do find myself getting sidetracked into projects and rabbit-holes that aren't always the highest priorities in the business at the moment. Sure, I have my lists and ways to manage my focus, privately, at work. I also turn to my mastermind groups to help me stay focused on priorities.
But sharing my priorities publicly, and knowing I intend to share my execution on those goals publicly, gives me an extra bit of "fire" to ship and avoid embarrassing myself. It actually works!
2. Network effects
I'm not specifically trying to "build an audience" (but that tends to happen, to an extent, when building in public).
I also don't expect people to watch my videos or listen to my podcasts and then go become a customer of my products (although that has happened as well).
It's the more indirect network effects that I'm after when I invest into building in public.
Specifically:
- Folks who follow my story tend to share my products with people that they believe are good customers for me. This really happens!
- I get invited to be a guest on podcasts, webinars, conference talks, and the like. This happens a lot more regularly than it would if I were totally unknown and not putting myself out there.
- Hiring great talent is a lot easier. People seem to be more eager to work with me, because they already (sorta) know me. That means that super talented people make themselves available, and I believe, put an extra level of effort to do their best work with me because it's fun and has the potential to give them some additional exposure too. This isn't always the case, but I think it's a factor.
- Partnerships also seem to happen more easily. Integrations, joint-ventures, joint promotions, affiliates, etc.
3. Something to look back on
Maybe this has become more important to me since having kids (my girls are 7 and 9 now).
I like to think that someday, my kids can look back on this blog, my old podcasts and videos and find some nuggets of wisdom that I may have had in the moment.
That reminds me—Great ideas and concepts often slip away with time. I think it's much more interesting and useful to share them as close to real-time as possible, while all the nitty-gritty details are still available to share.
So there's my take on building in public. See ya on my next update!