The best leverage of building in public
It is not about posting your updates. You can do better.
Everyone says, “Just post consistently.” But most posts do nothing. No traction, no sales, no community.
If you're building something real, you need a better kind of leverage.
Here are the posts I get so bored with:
The show-off posts: “I have this achievement, I need them to know!”
The I-want-to-say-this posts: always theories, opinions, and some how-to tips
When people see these posts, they initially resist the urge to react. Then over time, they don’t even want to follow you anymore.
There’s a bigger problem.
This does nothing to push for product development or community development. If you have a business and product to run, don’t you want to achieve more in these two areas?
Like making better products and getting more people to buy?
What I do instead: the real building in public that gives you leverage
The misconception of building in public is that you share updates publicly on social media. You shout and shout. You want the whole world to know what you’re doing.
That’s the worst way to build in public.
Here are the things I do:
1. Find the right speed to build your product
If you develop too fast, you don’t have time to talk about it to bring people on board.
For example, if you hack something out over a weekend, then you only have two chances to share, which is most likely during the weekend and after the weekend.
When I took 2 months to write my first ever Internet project, Build in Public Free Guide, it got 2,100 readers in 3 days. It kickstarted my whole journey to have a voice to share and build more products.
If I had written that in one weekend, I would have gotten ZERO traction.
On the flip side, if you build your product too slowly and only share about it once a month, you lose momentum.
2. Openly invite people to join you
The essence of building in public is to find different angles to talk about how you build your product. Again, I don’t mean sharing your secret sauce.
Your audience doesn’t care about the secret sauce. Only your competitors do.
Your real fans care about why, how, and what you are doing with the product. Some of them might feel the pain you’re solving, so they are excitedly waiting for your product.
The tricky part is that a build-in-public post can be super quick. No one has time to read every post. For example, an image + 2 lines = powerful.
But you always need a call-to-action so that when you intrigue someone with your post, they are aware of your product. Now you need to give people a way to join you. It can be a waitlist or pre-order, whatever fits best.
Today, someone made my day. I saw that someone was gifting a friend my book, Find Joy in Chaos.
The book has reached readers globally, but I don’t expect something like this to happen 4 years after publishing. To get early traction to kick this book off is all thanks to me inviting people to help me out early on.
3. Real connection = real growth
I always value the people who give me their time.
Like last time, when I welcomed anyone who is interested in StoryPal to share a bit, I got dozens of replies! I couldn’t possibly reply to everyone one by one, so I picked the best sharing and I emailed them one by one.
Think about it. When people are excited about what you’re building and they even engage by sharing their honest feelings, then they hear nothing from you.
Will they eventually buy from you? Highly unlikely!
Yes, 50%+ of people won’t respond. But the people you’ve developed a connection with? They will fuel everything you do going forward.
This is the mistake a lot of builders make, treating attention as a one-way street. They want people to care about what they do, but they actually don’t care about people.
When you put in the effort and they also put in their effort, this is a co-creation. A lot of people don’t get this. If you do, you’re way ahead.
Forget about “posting”
If I have to give it a business-y name… I’ll call this Human-Centered Marketing, but what a boring name.
Real building in public is an effort to engage real people. You’re connecting the dots between:
Getting feedback to improve your product
Seeding a message so you don’t have to sell
You’re doing marketing without using the same boring marketing techniques.
You’re cultivating your first group of users.
You’re showing people your commitment to building and serving. No shortcuts.
When they know I’m committed, they are more willing to try my product when they need it (of course, you need to be solving their pain points).
It is really fun, but it is also very hard. That’s why I’m building StoryPal to make this easier. More down below ↓
Get my framework with a birthday special 🎉
I turned 35 last week, so I want to celebrate with you.
For the next 7 days (until Jun 24), you can get my signature program, Build in Public Mastery, for $139. That’s 30% off.
Program Details — Enroll with Birthday Special
If your internal lightbulb sparked reading this, this program can help you build in public and attract fans
As usual, 100% risk-free refund if you don’t like it. I feel terrible whenever I buy something that doesn’t work the way I expect it to, so I have your back.
And just yesterday, I got this message from a new student:
What’s up with StoryPal?
I shared the reason I’m building StoryPal, but I haven’t really talked about what it does.
Let’s put it this way:
You’re very busy. You have to manage people. You have to do the work. You have to get coffee with many people. You sometimes get interviewed. But you care about love, so sometimes you go on a walk with your partner to talk.
What I’ve discovered is that there are a lot of thoughts and stories already embedded in your day-to-day life. I don’t want you to sit in front of your laptop to chat with AI for an hour. I want to help you:
I’ve created a waitlist so you can join to follow this journey. At one point, I’ll invite beta users from this list. Can’t wait to let you try it!
I really like this mapping of storypal Kevon. Nice work.