Working in Public - How to Build an Audience While You Do a Thing

Right now, I’m breaking a habit. It’s happening daily, in real time, and the experience has me buzzing with fresh energy and vivid possibilities.

The habit being broken is working in private.

In the past, I talked about projects, books, courses, programs, and products after I finished them.

Perhaps my education in Literature is partly to blame? The authors in the literary canon published complete, polished books. What we buy is The Sun Also Rises, produced in solitude by an Ernest Hemingway, then shaped and shepherded by an editor like Max Perkins.

What we don’t see is the creator’s process: stacks of loose pages with coffee stains and big red X’s through entire paragraphs, or waste baskets brimming over with discarded ideas, or a journal with honest entries about frustrating days or ones with no writing done at all because the electrician came and made a racket the whole morning.

Writers keep their writing to themselves, or to an inner circle at most, before the big reveal. Any glimpses into the creative process comes months or years later, when the author gives an interview or writes a book about writing.

That was the way of things for centuries, millennia: Artists and makers worked in private.

Perhaps many were introverts who preferred the solitude. Perhaps many were pragmatists who understood they’d never finish with people milling around.

Perhaps many assumed that no one really cared about the steps gone through, techniques reached for, and thinking invested except the odd apprentice.

Perhaps they were right for the most part, but regardless, sharing in real time at scale is now possible, and the idea of working in public is now a thing. Not only a thing but a strategy.

Here’s what I mean by working in public just so we’re clear:

• You have a project you’re working on, such as writing a book, launching a business, or developing a new product.
• You assume that building an audience and anticipation is as important as the project itself.
• You cannot reasonably expect to people to fall over themselves to support or buy the thing once you finally share, launch, or reveal it. You’re more like to hear crickets.
• There’s always a risk with working in public that an aspiring competitor will use your ideas or try to capitalize on an opportunity before you can. (This happened to me once with an iOS game I developed.) However, this risk is much lower than you think, and thieves by definition invest their time and effort in building the least valuable skill set.
• People actually like seeing the mistakes, dead ends, and detours. They have a taste for sawdust. By sharing “unfinished” work, you don’t undercut your own professionalism or authority. You humanize and endear yourself to your audience.
• The more people pay attention and follow along, the more emotionally invested they are. They will give you free advice, feedback, and encouragement. They’ll promote you and your project without being asked. These early supporters will become your early buyers.
• Even while working in public, you still need to gather the sawdust in piles and try to make sense of it for your audience, whether through stories, lessons, insights, or humor. There’s still a contract in place, and that contract says you’ll try not to waste their time.
• You’ll create content about the unfinished project: screenshots, videos, progress reports (e.g, your daily word count), lists of things accomplished, breakthroughs, tools used, funny anecdotes, tools and resources you found, what you’re learning.
• You still need to ask for help and ask for people to opt in. Use working in public as a strategy for growing your audience, not just for finishing your project.

For the record, that people care about how I create things still surprises me.

To me, it’s rather like narrating my choices during the assembly of a turkey sandwich:

“Bread’s still good. The mayo is iffy. That tomato is a horror of bruises. It’s all we’ve got though. Where’s the friggin’ Lusty Monk mustard? Maybe in the basement? Or maybe we're out. Add that to the list. I’ll roll with the dijon.”

Bored yet?

Want to see me get saucy with some wilted syntax?

Jokes aside, I’ve been wrong wrong wrong in believing people only care about the finished product.

Just ask Steph Smith, Daren Smith, Kevon Cheung, Tiago Forte, and others who wrote in public. The model is now proven. Steph made $130k self-publishing her book.

Would she have banked that kind of cash if she’d worked in private? Definitely not.

Where have I been?! Stuck in 1926 with Hemingway.

Working in public has undeniable benefits.

Here’s an incomplete list:

• Build an audience around your project.
• Get more feedback earlier in the process.
• Create a groundswell of early reviews for launch.
• Make more money and create more opportunities too.
• Decrease the likelihood that you launch someone no one wants.

The first and last benefits strike me as the most important. None of us aspires to a flop.

That’s especially true for nonfiction writers who want their books to be useful and for creators who want their products to sell.

By writing the thing in public, you may embarrass yourself. You risk people’s complete lack of interest. You expose yourself to unfair criticism and trolls.

Even so, you risk more by working in private. Avoiding criticism, embarrassment, or rejection is perhaps the world’s worst impulse for entrepreneurs. Peter Kaufman said as much in his llecture, “The Multidisciplinary Approach to Thinking”: “If you’re getting beat in life, chances are it’s because you’re afraid of appearing foolish.”

Give people a chance to care.

My shy friend Tommi was once telling me about a need she had, one that I felt sure she hadn’t shared with the rest of our friends.

“Never underestimate how much people will care if you give them the chance,” I told her.

Whatever it is you’re working on, are you giving people a chance to care about it? Are you giving them many chances?

Will you work in public?

Working in public is the many chances approach to creating and sharing something new, and I’m telling you right now that I may never have finished my book Free Money if I hadn’t chosen to work in public.

Now, I’m creating my next offer for freelancers.

If you want to follow along and see how I do market research, test my own thinking and assumptions, and craft (hopefully) a product that achieves liftoff, then check out the journal here.

Go here to read the How I Develop Products Journal. →

When you’re ready, here are ways I can help you:

1. Free Money. A pricing and money mindset guide for freelance creatives. If you’re unsure about your freelance pricing, this is the book for you.
2. Morning Marketing Habit. This course will help you build an “always be marketing” practice, become less dependent on referrals, and proactively build the business you want with the clients you want. My own morning marketing habit has enabled me to consistently make  6 figures as a freelancer.
3. **Custom Business Roadmap.** Gain clarity, confidence, and momentum in your freelance or consulting business.
4. Business Redesign. Raise your effective hourly rate, delegate with confidence, and free up 40 hours a month.
5. Clarity Session. It’s hard to read the label when you’re inside the bottle. I've done well over 100 of these 1:1 sessions with founders, solopreneurs, and freelancers who wanted guidance, a second opinion, or help creating a plan.