Should You Build In Public?

0:00All right, Neil, here's the question. Don't answer it this time too early. So should you build in public? So let me first define what building in public is. So building in public in public. 20, 20, 21 or so. A lot of people on Twitter is like, we're building in public. Here's our MRR, so our monthly recurring revenue. Here's how we're growing. Here's all the marketing strategies we're using. Here's all the product releases that we're doing. Like everything out there, right? And then even back in the day, people would reveal their income reports on their blog, on their podcast, whatever it is. I did it as well.

0:30Do you remember I did the$100 ,000 a month challenge? Anyone can build a business$100 ,000. Yours was like for a finite period of time. For other people, it was like for years, they were doing like a monthly update. I did the monthly update. I did 12 months. And the only reason I did it was to show people that anyone could build a business, but it was nothing that I was planning on doing after the 12 months. I stopped it right after. I just didn't care. Keep in mind a hundred grand a month in revenue doesn't mean a hundred grand a month in profit. Yeah. So Neil, you can give the answer and you can give your thoughts on why you should or should not build in public.

1:00I think it depends if you're trying to do it to build an audience. I think it's really smart to build in public because people are following your journey. I forgot who I took this one from. It was from aha to, oh shit, I'm doing everything on my journey to get to help. No, it wasn't help scout. It was someone else or a hundred thousand monthly visitors. I'm learning a lot. And so will you come along my journey and I'll bet you money. It's help scout. Help scout may have copied it. Not hub spot, help scout. Help scout did not start with it. I think it was someone else helps help scout tried doing something similar, but I remember because when I cited the person who I took it from, it wasn't HelpScout.

1:38Unless they took it from HelpScout and I didn't know, but I don't think it was HelpScout who started it. Either way, I think if you're trying to build a community, it's great to do. In the long run, once you have your community, I think it's bad to do because then people are just going to copy everything that you're doing. You're just going to have more competition. You'd be like, ah, very few people ever do everything, you know, less than 1%. But you know what? Once you're building an audience of like 100 ,000, that less than 1%, there's a good chance you're going to have a competitor and one of them may overtake you?

2:05My take on it is, yeah, up to a certain point, it's good because you're trying to audience build. You're trying to, more so you're trying to audience build the community build. I think you can build, you can only start to build a community after you've built an audience in general is what I'm thinking. But, you know, if you're building in public and you're at scale, let's say you're doing, you know, tens of millions or hundreds of millions plus, basically you're revealing your playbook to other people and it doesn't necessarily, like the upside for building the audience is not as great as the downside.

2:34And so you basically have to do it. Like you have to weigh the comparison between the two. And so early days, sure. There's a ton of upside, but as you get more mature, he built a massive audience. Pat Flynn did it, right? Do both of them still do it or no? Pat Flynn stopped doing it. He said at a certain point, it just doesn't make sense for me to reveal everything anymore. And then for John Lee Dumas, I think he still does it. No, let's go. Let's check out what is it? Entrepreneurs on fire? Yeah, here, I'm pulling it up right now. Fire income report. I'm sharing my screen. So can you see this?

3:06Okay. So August 2023 income, 122K, 150 million total listens, which is great. And this is what it is. He gives kind of the breakdown here. So view full report. He can see the entire year so far. And you can also see his net profit as well. And you can see the difference. Are you sharing this? Because I don't see it on the screen. I Oh, that's weird here. Let me share it again. So, you may have not shared the whole... Let me share the window. Here we go. Can you see this? Yeah. Oh, and now I can see it. Okay. August. So, 122 ,000. Total expenses, 12 ,000. Net profit, 110. Difference from August to July, he was negative 12 ,000.

3:48But still, profit margin, 90%. Great gross margins, man. Good for you. Why we publish an income report? I think it helps for someone like him. It's helped and build a bigger audience. But I think over time, unless you can grow the numbers, and this is really hard to do, but unless you can grow the numbers like 300, 500, a million, it becomes harder and harder to continually grow. The other thing is, is if your income numbers are also too big, like John's, because John's making a lot of money, it's also harder for people to relate versus when he's starting out and showing like 10 ,000. That's what Pat Flynn said.

4:21It's at a certain point, he's like, it's hard for people to relate to it anymore. And they're like, oh, you're too big now, Pat. Yep. And Tim Sykes ran into the same problem. He's a stock trader and he would share all the income he was generating from his trades and then people just kind of relate and his sinus went down. So then what Tim did is he's saying, I'm only going to trade with like$1 ,000 and show you how I can make money only trading with$1 ,000 or$5 ,000 and make a killing for the year. And he started with a small amount even though he had millions and he showed how you produce a high ROI and then people like, oh crap, this works.

4:51And that actually helped boost his numbers. Dude, in the last episode, we said, you know, our thoughts on selling courses, but Tim still sells courses, doesn't he? Yes, there's courses, but where he really makes his money is selling trades. And I don't know if it's called selling trades. I'm probably using the wrong phrase, but it's like an alert system. So every time he buys a stock or sells, he gets 25. So he's selling the alert. Yeah. And there's courses and stuff too, but people are paying for the alert. No one wants to read a book on how to trade stocks. They're just like, let me know what you bought at one price and when, and tell me right then and there so I can buy it.

5:23People want the magic pill. People don't want a diet. Yeah. Right. And better business. People pay more money for that than a book. Would you rather pay a thousand dollars for a book that teaches you stock trading or five thousand dollars and someone just tells you every time they buy and sell and have a proven track record and you can see all their past history and bank statements, etc. And also, if it's a bad trade, I can feel better about myself because I can just blame him. Yes. You know what I mean? and sometimes he loses money on, he'll show you, but he's like, overall, he's up a lot. That last time I checked, at least.

5:56Yeah. All right. So that is it for today. That's what we think about building in public. Early days, yes. Later days, probably not. And we haven't really changed our stance from the past. So that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe. It helps us grow, and we'll see you tomorrow.