Episode 3 with Warren Shaeffer (Co-Founder & CEO of Knowable)

Welcome everybody. Welcome to yet another episode of Build in Public podcast. I'm excited to invite a friend of mine and the current CEO and co-founder of Knowable, Warren Schaefer, to the podcast. Welcome, Warren.

Thanks for having me, Kavya. Excited to be here.

I, um, I want to give a brief intro to Warren. So Warren runs Knowable, as I mentioned earlier. It's an audio-first learning platform that's working, uh, to unlock billions of hours of quality learning time. And the focus is on learning, which is, you know, my favorite activities. Um, Knowable launched in 2019 and is backed by top investors like a16z, Initialized, and Upfront Ventures. And, um, Beyond his professional life, he's a first-generation American, is a lifelong learner, and he's a parent. And he just— we were chatting about the work-life balance and being a parent, and he has 3 kids. So I definitely admire his view of balancing both worlds. So Warren, super glad to have you here on the Building Public podcast.

Thanks again for having me, KP. I'm a big fan of yours as well. I'm excited to chat about building in public. You and I met through Twitter and I got really inspired by what you've been putting out into the world. And so it's an honor to speak with you.

Cool. So I'll open it up with sort of the why question. When you got to the building in public You know, chapter of your life? Like, what was your why?

I really have learned a lot from people who don't just share their highlights, but who also have shared their vulnerabilities. And I'm really grateful to those people because you don't often get that. People are pretty protective of their hard moments. And so the impetus for me to start building in public, and we can have a longer discussion of whether I'm actually even doing that fully, and sort of the definition. But my first kind of foray into sharing it on Twitter was last fall, when I had a third kid and wanted to be very open about the challenges of running a company and also being a parent. And to normalize what I think are the very normal highs and lows of being an entrepreneur. So for me, it's often— I tend to try to share the stuff that often feels scary to share because it is vulnerable, but that I think can be helpful to another founder or somebody who might be in a similar situation.

I know exactly what you're talking about last fall. Because a friend of mine, shout out Sharath, was the first one who introduced your tweets and your profile to me on Twitter. He DM'd me saying, KP, you would love to see what Warren's writing about or what he's sharing about. And frankly, I almost didn't believe what I was reading because I was like, this can't be real. Like this stuff with this vulnerability, this person, like, what is this? This is like, I almost had a, what, is this real moment? And that kind of tells you a little bit about like how protected and guarded most public founders are. And we get to read about their stories almost like wartime stories after the fact, right? Steve Jobs' biography came way after the fact, almost to a point where like, you know, the lessons are irrelevant to a young founder. So Your content to me is so refreshing because you take almost like an opposite stance and you sort of open it up and in a welcoming way. It always feels like you are sharing what you think could be useful to somebody else. So is this something that you have felt that you've been doing within the team and you wanted to extend that beyond the walls of Noble?

I think most startup people will agree that the more transparent you are with your team, the more everyone can row in the same direction, right? When you hide and guard information, it's really hard to have other people help you or to understand what's going on. So as a startup founder, I tend to err on the side of transparency internally. I think the idea of sharing information externally, that's a balancing act. And you and I had a previous conversation about kind of pros and cons of building in public, and we can get into that, I think. You know, there really, there definitely are instances where there's just information that you just can't share publicly, right? Right. Because you might not want to share your full product roadmap because competitors might copy it, or you might not want to share the details of your financing because that's very sensitive information and it could complicate a process. So there are some things that you just unfortunately can't share, and I have some thoughts on this that I want to chat about with you, and we can get into it later, but Generally, I think that when you share with others, it's kind of a view of being optimistic, right? This idea of if you put something out into the world and people know what you're doing and what you need help with, then they're more likely to want to help you. Right. They can't help you if they don't know what you need help with. So transparency internally, I think, definitely makes sense. Sharing numbers, you know, at the company, we've always shared our numbers internally. We want everyone to know how we're doing. Um, but then externally, you know, I increasingly think that we're living in a world where you can be really helpful to others when you share your story, right? And you can also get help and be benefited when you share, right?

Right. People— I think people underestimate, um, how many really just kind people out there are wanting to just help. Uh, I know you and I have Uh, chatted about this one time, and I wanna— it's probably a little bit of an off-topic thing, but I wanna ask you, like, what— how do you define someone who is kind versus someone who is nice? Because I know that's your pinned tweet, and that's something that we chatted about one time.

Yeah, there's a big difference between the two. And a lot of people think that nice and kind are the same, that they're synonyms. And in my mind, nice is short-term pleasant Because you want to avoid discord, right? And you can be nice and kind in some situations, and if you can, then you should. But there are some situations where you can't be both, and in those situations, it's better to be kind than it is to be nice. And what do I mean by kind? Well, kind is— I can say something that might in the near term feel offensive or harsh or like a critique, but it's out of long-term consideration, right? Somebody has food in their teeth. And you can tell them, hey, you've got food in your teeth, and, and do it in a way with levity and grace, but it can still feel a little bit like a position of discord. But you're saying that because you don't want them to feel embarrassed at the end of the day when they look in the mirror and realize that, you know, no one told them that they had food in their teeth, right? So that's, that's what I mean by being kind. And I think a lot of people try to be nice. The impulse is to be nice and to not actually say what they're thinking. And sometimes people— this gets people into trouble because if you don't say what you're feeling, then you're not being fully honest, right? And that doesn't serve you and it doesn't serve the person who you're interacting with.

Right. I mean, especially in the startup context. So tying it back to like one of the most dreadful memories I've had in the startup context was when I was doing customer discovery. for, for one of the SaaS ideas I had like 4 years ago, people were constantly being nice to me. And I was like, please stop being nice and tell me how you actually want to use this, or tell me what's your current workflow. Like, what do you— like, what's your current habit, uh, map look like? Because I think that's one of the hardest things. And I learned this finally. I washed it away out of my system by reading this book called, uh, Mom Test. Shout out. Rob Fitzpatrick, he helps founders or people who are usually doing customer discovery ask the right questions without literally just asking for compliments or asking for—

Right. How much do you like my product?

Right. Like, hey, have you ever— and also, and most likely 99%, they're trying to be nice to you and you never hear the truth in the kind answers. I think I've seen the effect of that enormous barrage of nice and nicety. And then it frankly was short-term pleasant, but long-term unhelpful.

Totally.

And to your point, the kinder answer there would've been like, KP, like, you know, I know you're asking about these workflows, but like, let's pause here. Let me tell you what I do currently. And it may not, it may be the case that what you're building is actually not useful to me. That would've been like so, so life-saving for me at the time. So anyway, I love that definition. And I try to think of like, you know, when I give feedback to founders. So when I'm like, you know, helping no-code makers, I'm always trying to see like, what is the fastest way for me to give the truth that they would not hear outside? Yeah. But do it gracefully. That's, I think that's very important too. I think, You know, you don't have to be a dick about it, right? Um,

yeah, you could, you could try to be nice in your kindness.

Yeah, right. But in the worst case, if it's not working, just still be kind and then get on with it, you know?

Um,

so bringing us back to the building public, uh, highway. And so you, you touched on a couple cons, and, and we'll— I want to get to the cons section, but let's, let's talk about some benefits. Let's talk about some pros. What have you personally seen, like, since last fall? You said I know you've been a little intermittent, and I'll blame that on, you know, your work style of like all these things that are going on, I'm sure.

I want to talk about this. I want to talk about—

Go on then, please tell us then. Unpack it.

Well, I think there's so much stuff that as a founder I want to share, but I do sometimes feel like, oh, this is sort of time sensitive, and I have an idea which is to just write the tweets but not post them until some sort of declassification period, right? And I'm curious if you've seen anyone do this where it's like, hey, here's my, here's my kind of live journal, but it's 6 months ago, so things have changed. You know, this person won't— it won't feel as personal, or, you know, the outcome isn't so undecided. But—

I have not personally, um, seen a lot of examples where people, um, had been maybe saving things in drafts and on Twitter, and maybe they have— maybe they publish like 6 months later, but I have to believe that they're documenting this in their journals or in their, you know, in whatever note-taking apps they have. And maybe it's coming out later. And the framework that I use is I try to talk— I try to save up— I try to leave out the details that will personally affect anybody in the situation. And I think about the framing from like, what can be learned here and in a broad context. So for example, we had like a, you know, we had like a, let's say we had a marquee event, you know, and I was the host and, you know, let's say somebody was late. So like my building public update is not that the fact that that person was late. To me, it's like, it's a net negative or it's not. a positive thing. But the fact that maybe something that they still said, or maybe another person's patience that inspired me to be a bit more patient is the takeaway. So it is quite fascinating, but I do wonder to your point, like how many stories will come out 6, 7 months later, including yours. So we'll see.

Yeah. Well, I think it's sort of a good way to I mean, this is what governments do, right? They declassify documents at some period later. And I feel like that might be a really more novel way to get people to share their build-in-public stories without the sense, without the fear of having some near-term impact, right? Of it influencing an outcome in the near term. Right. But yeah, I keep a journal. Again, though, the problem is, is when you journal and when you try to tell a story in hindsight, You lose, you forget, you know, the indecisiveness, the uncertainty of outcomes, and then it always feels somewhat inevitable once it's done.

Right. The, the other thing too is I think when you recount when it's like far out, or when it's like you've lived through that, let's say 6, 7, 8, 9 months later, you almost have this narrative fallacy where you think that happened because of the factors that, you know, are fresh in your mind on that day. But really there could have been 7 other factors that you missed 3 months ago, right? Yeah. So it's a balance, you know, at the end of the day, I don't think there is really a right or wrong answer. We're all trying to tell stories in almost a subconscious way each day, you know, we're telling a story to ourselves about what the day is about, you know, how good the day was or how bad the day was. And so to me, it's just, it's fascinating that now I can not only hear my own story and tell my story, but also I can check out what Warren is up to. And back in the day, it was very annoying because it was only about the cars you drove or the cities you went to and the selfies. And I feel like social media is like, at least the social media, maybe the bubble that I live in, is getting more intimate and real that it feels like friendship. Yeah. Vulnerable and real. So,

um, it's a good trend. I don't know how much of it is algorithm-based for you personally versus, you know, the macro, but I think it is. There is— I am seeing it too, right? This trend of people trying to be more of a whole self rather than, here's my work persona and here's my brand and here's my home life. It's no, we're all, we're all fallible humans and—

Right.

We're all figuring it out as we go. And I think that's healthier and better for everyone to accept and be a part of.

For sure. So a couple other questions I have here for you. Like, when did you— I know you mentioned like last fall, like when did you hear the phrase building public?

Such a good question. I, I sometime right around then. I, and I mean, you, you know, I think I posted this thing and then I was like, oh, I've heard this phrase build in public. And then somehow I found your profile and just started learning more about you. And I was like, this is awesome. He's being so helpful and what a great movement. And found more people who were doing it too.

And my follow-up was going to be like, who were some people that inspired you? And I think, you know, you can skip me on this one. I'm just kidding. But like, actually the follow-up question is, How would you explain like Build in Public to someone like your partner or your mom, who's hopefully, who's not in tech, you know? And I struggle with this so much because my partner is not in tech. She is an educator and she could care less about what I do on Twitter. And she still thinks that I'm just playing and it's a toy. Yeah. How would you, how do you explain what Build in Public is to a layman?

I don't know that I have the perfect definition. I think it's a work in progress, but in my mind, building in public is about sharing your values publicly. And the heuristic that I use, or try to use at least for a tweet, is, is this going to be helpful to somebody? Right?

Yeah.

Like, is this value add to somebody else? And it doesn't have to be to everybody, but is there a person who's going to benefit from reading this out there. And I think in many ways it's also a pay it forward. There's a pay it forward component. I'm really grateful to the people who have shared their learnings with me. And it feels really good to try to add knowledge to the world. Right. So I think there's that component. And then there is a benefit component too, which is that you start to— it is kind of content marketing, right? Like you start to attract like-minded people who appreciate what you have to say. And so there is a flywheel and a reinforcing mechanism. I

think I want to underscore that last point you said, which is the flywheel part, where in the beginning for me, it felt like just the benefit was internal. Like I was like, oh, this is great. I feel good about sharing something that may have impacted one person today. And then, you know, in the early days I was like, I wanted volume. I wanted like numbers. I wanted like, you know, number of impressions and everything.

Right.

At some point down the line, I realized it was not about that anymore. It's not about how many individual impressions you have. or how many metrics you can hit that day. It's really about this sort of nebulous impact. And it's very hard to define and like containerize impact. And you just suddenly, I get a DM like from Germany, from someone in Germany saying like, KP, thanks for sharing that thread. It really helped me. And I'm like, I don't even know you, man. Like, what do you mean? Like, I didn't write it for you, right?

Yeah.

But then did I not write it for? I wrote it for someone who could benefit. And so, it over time became much more about, is this useful to at least one other person? And if the answer is yes, I'm going to ship it. No judgment, no thinking, no overanalyzing, just ship it. Boom. And you mentioned this flywheel component, which only recently came into my radar where I realized that the more I'm pumping out that kind of content, useful threads, Real lessons, breakdowns, the more I think Twitter algorithm is working in my favor or the content creator's favor. And I'm getting more and more people who want that. And I did not realize that that's how like the flywheel, there is this content flywheel that works. And so it gets over time easier and easier to reach broader and broader.

Interesting.

So there's this point where you realize that up until there, you're just pushing the boulder up. But then after there, you feel like it's— you're just pushing it. It's just going and you're riding the wave, you know?

Yeah. Well, just like what we were talking about earlier, I think before, before you started recording, but you just get better at everything once you do it more too. Right. You probably feel more comfortable and have less second guessing about what to tweet and

should

you, you know, there's less of the critic and your audience is bigger. And so you're learning faster. So. It's a skill and a muscle. And yeah, I know I'm fairly new to using Twitter regularly, but I remember being very hesitant to press tweet all the first time. Yeah. And I still have doubts about pressing tweet, but I think that heuristic of, is this going to be helpful to somebody, is a really good one to try to follow when you're debating, should you put something out there or not.

It's funny you say that, because that leads me to my next question, which was, This epic tweet bomb that he dropped about this is December 22nd, and this was the most vulnerable Twitter thread I've read. And I've been very active on Twitter, so I can that I can that's puts probably his top three all time greatest tweet threads that that speaks about vulnerability, honesty, and just you know just accountability too, right? Made me a big fan until then. I was like, okay, let's let's let's see who this guy is. And then I was like, okay, I'm a fan now. So. Walk us through like the night before you hit send on that one, because that's the— so for anyone who's listening, you know, I'm gonna put that at the show notes. It's basically a tweet thread where Warren talks us through, uh, the very difficult decision of letting some of his team members go because of, you know, COVID-19 impact on the company, on the startup. And, and so it's a very, very vulnerable post. So Warren, like, what was going on the night before in your mind before you hit

I wish I knew exactly the emotional state that I was in. I mean, I think, you know, frankly, I was— I think I wrote it in a tweet. I don't have it in front of me, Katie, but probably the second tweet in that thread is sort of the rationale for why I was posting it. And it's a little bit of what we talked about already, but I wish that more people would share their behind-the-scenes lows, because that's how we all learn. Yeah. Right. A lot of people are comfortable sharing their high points, and I think not enough people are comfortable sharing the hard stuff, and that's a disservice to society. And so I was trying to be very honest and very clear about my decision. And I think actually one other thing that we didn't talk about of a benefit from posting publicly is it really forces you to think clearly about your reasons. Yeah. And this was a very hard decision for me. The context was we didn't hit our numbers and I, in effect, overhired ahead of growth. And I faced a very difficult decision, which was cutting the team or trying to go get to our next milestone with a higher burn. And I ultimately decided on the former, and I wanted to explain to myself and to others, here's this very difficult situation, here's how I faced it. I don't know that it was— I handled it perfectly. I made mistakes. And but I think being open about it is beneficial to others. And I know how bad I felt, and certainly how bad people who were affected felt. And if one person can learn from that and not make the same mistakes that I did, then That feels worth doing.

Awesome. So another sort of off topic to Build in Public, but kind of is relevant, is this notion around compounding habits. And I know I've seen a couple of your tweets on that topic, and I want to hear like, what are some daily habits that you have today, these days, and you love honing on?

Yeah, so I'm a big habits nerd, and I think that they're basically— cultivating good habits is one of the best things that you can do to change the trajectory of your life. And at a young age, you know, now that I have young kids, I see how habits can be formed and how they can compound either positively or negatively. But there are so many things that are habits that we just don't even think about. That's the definition. It's something that you do without, without serious prefrontal cortex thought in an automatic way. Right. And, but, you know, in terms of some of the habits that I try to do right now is, I think that self-care is extremely important, right? And I, unfortunately, I think that a lot of people don't view it as something that is important, right? It is kind of, at least historically—

Afterthought, yeah.

An afterthought or even a mark of shame if you're saying I'm taking care of myself instead of working 100 hours a week. Right.

Yeah. And

the reality is that people who take care of themselves, they go farther. More people want to work with them. They're more— Right. And so carving out time and treating it as something that is important is a mindset shift that I'd also love to see happen in our society. And I think it is happening, but in an increasing way. So I try to exercise often. So I use the Streaks app. I've discovered that recently. And I think it's a really good way to keep track of, you know, where, when I'm Doing what I try to do and when I'm not. I try to meditate every day. I find the days where I do carve out 10 minutes to just sit and try to not think are the best days. I think we all can get very caught up in the freneticism of daily life.

Right.

And I try to read from a physical book, and that is really a rewarding experience. I know, KP, you've got a lot of books behind you. beautifully color-coded. But books for me have always been— books have always been friends. It's the greatest minds putting down their greatest thoughts after really distilling them and massaging the words into a very info-dense container, hopefully. And I love spending time with books. And I think especially in the digital age, it's hard to not get distracted.

Right.

You're staring at a screen. Whereas if you have a book, you know, I like to read with a pen and books, and I'm an annotator. And so that's a habit that I think is very powerful in terms of its compounding effect, right? If you learn a little bit of knowledge every day and you're thinking in the long term, that can really build on itself.

My favorite part about reading from a physical book, which is how I love to read, is that there are no notifications. No one can distract you. No one can Slack DM you. No one can message you. So it's— yeah, sorry?

Yes, no, I was agreeing wholeheartedly.

And so I have like, one of the things that I heard James Clear talk about in one of the recent podcasts was around this concept of leaving books around your workplace or your home so that you're never far away from a good idea. And I was like, oh my God, that is exactly what I've been doing. And my wife complains that I'm leaving books everywhere, but really that's what I'm doing. Like, I literally have a book here, you know, which I've been reading called Think and Grow Rich. It's a classic. I've been rereading it. And then they have a book next to my nightstand in my bedroom, of course, in the back. But I see with you too, like, there's all these books around. And what they tend to do is you pick up any page and you transport. It's like a It's like a time machine. You just transport to that thought that the author was having. And because these were written with a lot of clarity and then sort of editing and re-editing, you know that those thoughts were not just random junk. They were well thought of. So I saw you pick up something, come close to like, are you going

to— Yeah. I was going to ask, have you read this book? Have you seen this book, The Joys of Compounding?

No.

So it

sounds like— yeah.

Technically an investment book. It's written by an investor, but it's much more philosophical than that. Because it really— the kind of key insight that I got from this book was that really any decision that you make is an investment decision, right? You are deciding where to invest your time, or your energy, or your attention. And that frame has helped me think more about, okay, wow, I have to spend more time noticing what gives me energy. Like, what are the things that— where do I want to spend my time and limited resources, and where do I want to invest them? And what are the things that take energy, right? Right. And cause that negative compounding spiral. But I want to read this quote, which is the first quote in the book. He quotes Charlie Munger, who's Warren Buffett's partner. And Charlie says, I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up. And boy, does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you. Right. So it's just this idea of knowledge compounds. If you can learn something every day.

1% better every day. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's— I love it. I love it. I mean, you and I could do a habits podcast, literally.

I know, I know. That'd be fun.

I was so, so, I mean, in 2018, I feel like I had another sort of awakening of my life where I read this book called Atomic Habits. And I was cursing myself for not reading the literature around habits until then. Because I was reading all these business books, like all these, like, you know, ambitious, all these other kinds of books, nonfiction, but I missed on the power of habit. Yeah. And then, of course, I haven't caught up with any of the other habit literature books. And the first habit book that I ever picked up was Atomic Habits. And it definitely like literally just shook me up. I was like, oh my God, you know, there's no secret. All of it is compounding. That's it. And then nothing else. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to be like a superhuman. You just have to be an ordinary person who learns every day and gets better one person every day. And over time, Boom, you know, you're where you want to be. So it applies to everything, like being a leader, being, you know, building better, build it public, everything.

Totally.

So a couple of questions and then we can go to the audience section, which I've been curating. So if you were to say a couple downsides of building in public, I think one of the common questions people ask is around competitors and people who are like, you know, maybe stealing your plans or playbooks. Like, how do you encounter that? Or how do you navigate around those eggshells?

You and I talked about this and I asked you this because you have more experience building in public. And your answer to me was, well, you don't have to share everything, right? So you don't have to share your detailed product roadmap and So I tend to not share something that I think is very sensitive. I also think though that, you know, if somebody's copying you based on your tweets, like they're probably just not going to do as good of a job. Right. They just probably aren't going to keep up. So if you're being authentic to yourself and you're chasing something because you have a good why for it, it's probably— there probably isn't much that people are going to copy. And I remember from a previous business, we met co-founder and I met with Fred Wilson, who's this really legendary VC. We sat down with him at a diner in Santa Monica, and he's like, oh, is anyone else doing what you're doing? And I said, oh yeah, we've got this copycat company that literally took our terms of service and just copied and pasted it. You could just tell it was exactly what we were doing, an exact product, an exact language. And he said something that has stuck with me, which is, well, yeah, they can copy you on features, but they won't have your vision. Right. They won't have, they're not doing it for the same kind of calling reason that you are. And that's not to say that sometimes, you know, copycats can't be more successful than the first mover. But if you're moving towards something that you believe in wholeheartedly, then it is really hard for someone to replicate that.

Yeah. And people, you know, I know this is a, my thing is, my thesis is that people can sense it. Customers are not dumb, and customers can sense if you care. You know, and it's kind of like what Apple has been saying, right? You know, Jony Ive has been talking about this where he says the reason why they care as much about the internal working of something that you would never ever see as much as the outer appearance is because he believed fundamentally that people sense care. And the same way people can sense your thoughtfulness, right? And if you are a founder with a strong spirit of service and you're trying to really serve that niche or that community, they can sense care. I felt that historically, maybe this is exaggerating, but I never, ever, ever felt worried about a competitor because I felt that you can't outclass me in trying to serve my customers.

Right.

It's almost like flexing on the wrong things, but I'm like, There's no freaking way in the world that you will wake up and think about that person the way that I think about them. We talked about competitors. I want to understand the questions around IP and copyrights. I think we kind of touched on it earlier. There was a question earlier on this topic of IP and what about How do you protect your IP while building in public? What's your answer to that?

Again, this goes back to, if you have something that you think is really valuable and really easily copied, then maybe you don't share it. But I think we sort of answered it in the last question, or the last answer, which is, usually you tend to value IP more than you think. It's more than it's actually worth. It's usually about the execution and the delivery and so much more than that one-off. I mean, obviously, if you're a biotech company and you haven't patented your COVID cure, maybe go patent it before you post it in the open source if you're a for-profit pharmaceutical company.

Right. Okay, cool. So we're going to switch here to the audience segment, and I'll shoot off some questions from The Twitter thread that we just had earlier. Okay. I promised them I'll give them shoutouts on the podcast, which is also another building in public thing. So let's— let me make sure I get these right. Okay. So we have a question from Anthony Costantino, how to balance building in public on a side project while working a full-time job?

Ooh. Come on. How to do that. So I don't know, do you have an answer for it, KP? I mean, you must have—

How would you feel about, as now you're an employer, now you're the founder, if one of your employees had maybe a weekend project and they were sharing openly what they're creating?

My first answer is I'd feel that's really cool because I want— I don't think that people should just have one undying focus. If you're an employee at a company, and I think hobbies and other interests make you a more well-rounded person and a better contributor to the team. So as an employer, I think it'd be fine. If it was, hey, if it was interfering with your work, then yeah, then no. So I guess there's some balance to, you know, if you're posting at all times when you're supposed to be on a call, maybe—

Maybe just don't tweet You can't tweet while you're one-on-one with the CEO, right?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

no, but Anthony is— to Anthony's question, my answer is actually that was me. I did that while I was at Delta, Delta Airlines, for 2 and a half years. I was practically nobody on Twitter anywhere. So I started building an audience through, you know, late nights and early mornings and weekends, trying to like, you know, give myself a shot to get into startups. And over time, all of that compounded and it felt like, In 2018 is when I started. And I still was very active at work for the 8-hour window, but beyond that commute on the way everywhere, I was building in public and tweeting, and to a point where now that's my full-time thing. So it is definitely doable. You just got to balance.

Yeah, Anthony, I think too, sometimes this goes back to something we talked about Earlier, where if you have something that you're excited about outside of work, it can make you more effective and efficient at work too.

Yeah.

Right. So I think you should do it. And if your employer doesn't understand it, you know, you can have a conversation with your boss.

So the— we have another question from Kavir. So how do you remain consistent with building in public, especially for longer projects that take more time to complete? I find building in public for weekend projects is easier. How do you keep that energy for all the way for a big project?

Unfortunately, I'm not very consistent.

Real talk right there.

What's that real talk? No, it's hard. It's just really tough. It's hard to do your job and also kind of keep the public updated. So it's a habit that I am trying to get better at. I should add it to my streaks.

There we go. Love that. I wanna, I wanna address another question here, which is Robbie Crabtree. Shout out Robbie. How do you deal with fear of negative comments and thoughts while building in public?

I actually just had an interview with Nels Covell. She's a— she's an Emmy Award-winning— I think she's won an Emmy. She's, she's a TV writer. She started Sabrina the Teenage Witch and she wrote for The Simpsons. And I did an interview with her on on how to grow as a creator and her big thing is basically it's not about what you start. It's not even about what you finish. It's about what you submit to the world to be judged and so you don't get better unless you get judged as a creator and I was like, oh, that's so powerful. Wow. And I think that's just once you have that realization, you realize that not everyone's gonna like what you make. And you're going to get better by hearing that not everyone likes what you make, and then you'll, you'll start to hone, and you'll figure out what's my voice, what is it that I care about, what's aligned with my values, and, and if once you're, once you're farther down the road, if somebody has negative comments, you'll listen to them, and you'll judge for yourself whether that's a person's, you know, if you want, if you value that feedback, great, and that'll make you stronger, and if you don't, then You politely disregard it.

Right. Okay. So probably the last question. Scott Mayer asks, how do you get people to care?

Ooh, yeah. Good one. How do you get people to care about what you're building? I mean, I think you have to care first, right? Like you have to convince yourself that you care. And if you do and you do it in a way that's helpful, then I think people will start to notice. But I think initially you're writing for yourself. You're doing stuff that your younger self would want to read or somebody just like you would want to read and they would find really helpful.

Awesome. Cool. So thanks for that answer, Warren. This was fun. It felt like just catching up with you at a cafe, uh, in, in Bay Area. Um, so thanks for joining me on this podcast. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. And, you know, I know, uh, this is a topic that's close to your heart as well. So I appreciate you, um, you know, coming by. Do you have, uh, any final words for our, for our readers and listeners?

I'm really a build in public novice. Um, so I'm grateful to you, KP, for, for leading the way and for, for You taking the time to fill me in and answer some of the questions that I think are top of mind for so many people who are considering public building. Thank you for having me on the podcast. This was definitely a really fun conversation, and I'm very grateful that we got to connect over Twitter, and I'm grateful that you're putting this out in the world and inspiring more people to consider sharing what they're doing in public and sharing it in a way with a heuristic of, can you do it in a way that's helpful? Right, to somebody else. And I think more of that in the world is gonna help you and it's gonna help others as well. And so I think it's a great movement and I'm excited to see more people do it.

Love that. Thank you so much. Warren, where can people find you on the internet?

The best place is Twitter, @WWShaef. I also highly encourage you to check out knowable.fyi. That's the company that I started. And we're all about building the habit of daily learning. And it's very easy and convenient. We're audio first. So if you're listening to this podcast, like learning, go check it out. We've got lots of daily lessons, including lessons about habits, lessons on mental models, lessons on feedback, interviews with people like Kat Cole, who's a big marketing leader, and Alexis Ohanian, who's a startup founder. And even Chris Paul has a course on Knowable. He is an NBA All-Star. So lots of great stuff there, and I encourage people to check that out.

Love that. Awesome. Thank you so much.

Thank you, KP.