What is building in public and why am I doing it? Should you? |Ep.2

Are you ready? Let's talk about building in public. Hello everyone and welcome back to my channel. My name is Nir Zavaro. Over the past 20 years, I've had the pleasure of doing a lot of things. I've been teaching for 10 years in colleges and universities. I've written 3 books. One of them is an Amazon bestseller. I owned 4 bars, ran a marketing agency for almost 14 years, and I've had the pleasure of speaking all over the world about marketing, sales, and branding. I'm currently here in Thailand while I'm writing my next book. It's called The Business Catcher: Why I Think We're All Building Brands the Wrong Way. And how or why we should fix it. So I had this idea of why not build it in public? I'm doing all this while sharing the journey. So I think we should start with a question: what is building in public? I don't even know what that means. No one knows what it means, but it's provocative. No, it's nice. Gets the people going. The idea of building in public is pretty straightforward and pretty simple. Building in public refers to companies who are deliberately building everything out in the open. They will discuss everything that they do from their financial structure, the ins, the outs, what is successful and what isn't. The idea is that if we share everything out in the open, the vulnerability, the authenticity will actually help us grow faster. So why would anyone like to share everything they do? Why would people or companies love or like, or should even be building in public. The idea was first and foremost when companies or people didn't have any budget to start. So the idea was very simple. I'll talk about it, I'll tweet about it, I'll do a YouTube about it, and the people who like it, who are interested, will start following. That was marketing with zero budget. The second point about building in public is to validate. Basically, instead of me building everything out there in a lab and hoping it works, Why not share it with you? You'll tell me what you think, what you like. You test everything quicker. The iterations become better and we can move faster. We're actually building the things that people want instead of building what we think they might need. Third and most important thing that people are missing about the idea behind building in public is you guys, the community. You see, what happened is people started to root the underdog, to help, to come up with ideas, to, to test things, to spend a bit more time, to share, to comment. I'm seeing this now where the first video I uploaded about building in public suddenly became a thing. Why? Because so many of you reached out. They liked it, they didn't like it. If they didn't, why? What they wanted me to change and how. Suddenly I got notes about change the audio, do this, improve this, stand like this, sit this. When people had questions— okay, I understand the concept, so why are you doing this? Why do you feel uncomfortable? What's being outside of your comfort zone mean? You guys are now helping me in 2 things. One is how to improve these videos, and trust me, it's hard, but I'm gonna do it. Why? Because I want to show you I'm getting better. The second thing is the fact that you are asking questions is taking a lot of the issues, the problems, the, the concerns about what should I talk about next. Well, everybody said, can you explain what building in public means? So here's the video. For me, the idea of building in public has 2 things. One is to document this process of me trying to improve everything I'm doing, whether it's the YouTube content creation, the newsletter, the numbers, and sharing all those. The second thing is, how am I going to scale the new company based on an idea, a book, a structure of something I think I can franchise? Take these 2 and that becomes my process. Should you be building in public? Now that's a whole different question. I think it's completely up to you if you feel comfortable enough to talk about certain things. Most people, that's not very comfortable. By the way, it's not really comfortable for me as well. I'm not still, uh, I'm still not sure I want to talk about certain numbers and specifics, the contracts. I'm trying to figure that one out. But should you build? Maybe. Maybe you start with one post a week talking a little bit about the behind the scenes. Maybe it's about the people you hire. Maybe it's about the concepts that are happening within your company or your business. Now that you understand what this concept is, what is building in public, how works. Let's talk a little bit about how I plan on measuring this. The first thing is the community. I hope that the numbers will grow and more and more of you will reach out, will be able to talk. Hopefully you'll ask interesting questions that will enable me to create more videos. But more than that, if we're looking at the idea of what are numbers and what can we chat about, what would be interesting, how it might look like, I think So many bugs here. Ah, Thailand again, again, again. Ah, so what are we going to talk about? Scaling the YouTube channel, staying consistent, 2 videos, and if the numbers are actually growing, if people are liking this concept. Posting daily on LinkedIn, the weekly newsletter which I'm immensely enjoying writing. I'm gonna keep the 2 Medium blog posts There are ideas that I have and thoughts about working from home or remote work, about digital nomad life and other things, not necessarily about my core topic. I have my file, which you might have seen, with my top 3 priorities, the daily things. I even document there if I had milk, a flat white or a cappuccino a day, because I am trying to cut down. I'm writing if I went to the gym, and if not Why? I'm writing my top priorities, and if I couldn't make them, why? I want you to hold me accountable and help me become better, personal and work. Up to you guys. If you help me, I'll do it faster. It's a work in progress. I know. I'm trying. Of course, at the moment I need to say something important, there's a bell out there, or a truck, or a car, or— oh, for fuck's sake. Another thing I want to incorporate into the whole process of building in public is to talk more about book writing. What does that mean? How many words do I need? How are the chapters looking? What am I testing? Um, the whole process of writing a book, so many things— ideation, validation, talking to the branding agencies, understanding that people like the concept. And more than that, can I write it in a way that people will understand and be able to improve, be able to learn from it? And the answer is yes, but how? I need to understand that what I'm saying is interesting, but people could actually do it by themselves. And if so, how? So it's more than just writing, it's crafting another book that people can learn, uh, do-it-yourself branding book. I think it's still in the early phases. More than that, how do you franchise a new company? Can I franchise the company? I'm just talking about this. I'm excited. That's building in public— finding the right things and talking about them with you and getting your input and your questions and your ideas. And by the way, sometimes it's just about getting your pushback, which is completely fine. That's what I'm looking More than that, I think building in public means inviting everyone into my world, and this is what I'm doing now. Another thing we need to address, which I mentioned in the previous video— what does it mean being outside of my comfort zone, right? So building in public also means that while I do a lot of speaking gigs, paid speaking gigs all over the world— I was in Brazil to Australia, South Africa to New York, Manhattan, I don't know, Toronto, London, Paris, wherever you can imagine, I was there, which is great. Doing this means suddenly I need to do everything again. I feel uncomfortable staring at this camera and sort of improvising, working on notes, but maybe just bullet points. Is it okay? Is it not? How will I be perceived? Is it supposed to be this epic thing? And I'm saying, no, this is me, this is who I am. I need to feel uncomfortable in order to improve. And everything I'm doing from now on when it comes to the building in public is about feeling uncomfortable, being outside of my comfort zone. Building in public means that, um, if I said I hate going to the gym, I go to the gym. By the way, I'm at day 40, I think, so I have about 20 more days to decide if I still hate the gym or not. Being outside of my comfort zone means that I open a camera every single day and record 5 minutes. And trust me, in 50 days I would be so much better at this. It's part of it. Being outside of my comfort zone is uploading videos and knowing that the next one will get better, but I might get backlash. Oh, I got— I might get laughed at by some of my closest friends. Why? Because this is how it happens. It is what it is. Being outside of my comfort zone means that I don't have a place to live. I became this digital nomad. I'm traveling, I'm moving around. I have no idea what's going to happen next month. Being outside of my comfort zone means that I just committed and paid to go to a conference where I'll be actually speaking. How weird is that? You pay to speak at this big conference, which is the first for me ever. But I'm going to talk about something so 1%, something that you wouldn't tell anyone else, and I'm going to talk about with 200 entrepreneurs. Being outside of my comfort zone means that I'm talking about these things and someone heard it on the other side of the world and started to follow this journey of building in public. And guess what? Next month I'm going to talk about resilience in India because I'm doing these things, because I feel uncomfortable. And I think in many ways everybody would like to be a bit of a building in public person. I think a lot of you would like to be a bit outside of your comfort zone because you understand It's like moving the muscles, right? If you want to build something, you have to break it a little bit to build it up again. It's part of who we are. And I think a lot of you would like to say things you don't necessarily feel comfortable saying on social media. But more than that, I think we need to stop talking about this concept of imposter syndrome, just start doing, but finding our own voice. And if we're able to, I think a lot of interesting things will happen. If you enjoyed this video, feel free to follow, subscribe, do whatever you want. But more than that, tell me how you feel. DM me, send me a message, leave a comment. I want to start talking to more people, and the more questions you ask, the more of these I can create with you and for you. Go be epic, kids. See you soon. Take care.