The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Creators Building In Public

Hey everybody. Welcome to the Building Public Podcast. I'm your host, KP, and on this show, I interview world-class entrepreneurs, ambitious startup founders, creators, and builders on the internet who are boldly building the future in public. This podcast is my excuse to take you all on a curious journey to understand, learn, and hopefully be inspired by the worldviews, insights, and stories of these fabulous people changing the world. So far, I've gotten the rare privilege to sit down with the Incredible guests like Gary Vee, Alexis Ohanian, Kat Cole, Sahil Lavingia, and many more leaders. So check out the full podcast listing at buildinpublicpodcast.com. Now buckle up and get ready for our latest episode. Hey everybody, welcome to the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Creators. Building in Public. I am KP, your host for this brief segment. And we're going to dive in and learn about the effective habits that I'm referring to here. First of all, this was inspired by this classic self-help book called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Some of you may have read about it. It's written by Stephen Covey. It's a great book. Highly recommend checking it out. But he outlines essentially like the unique things that highly effective and successful people do that put them in a whole different league compared to so many others. And so I'm kind of borrowing from that philosophy and looking at some of the elite creators who have been building in public in the last 4 or 5 years and trying to draw some lessons and insights from that. Observation and putting it out into this video. So stick around until the end and you'll learn a thing or two, I promise you. But let's get started with what is the definition? Like, what is building in public? To me, building in public is the practice of creating content and sharing stories with openness and transparency in order to attract like-minded people and nurture those relationships. The emphasis I would lay here is on creating content and sharing stories because not everything that you share, not every update you post, not every tweet you make, every video you make is about, in my view, is building in public. It has to have this blend of it should feel like content, which means you're actually intentional about it. You're creating it because you want to put out something. You want to share something. At the same time, it has to have an angle of story, an angle of something that is interesting, educational, useful, helpful, right? It has to hit one of these 4, but not like every mundane update qualifies in my view. I mean, at the end of the day, who cares? But for you to be effective, I think that's important to make sure that you hit those 4. Who am I? Well, I should have started with this, but I am KP, as I started introducing myself at the beginning. I am an entrepreneur. I'm an angel investor, and I am a founder coach and advisor to startups who are in YC. Some of these are on-deck startups, but at the same time, I'm also a podcaster. If you have listened to the buildingpublicpodcast.com, you may have heard my voice there. I also have been very intentional about my Twitter the last 2, 3 years. So I am @thisiskp_ on Twitter, and I have about 35,000 followers. On there, which I'm super grateful for. So I've you know I have some experience with this topic and something that is very close to my heart. I call as a tongue-in-cheek reference, I call myself a building public guy. But it's mostly because I'm obsessed about that topic, and hopefully I can you know share some lessons today. Let's get into it. First habit: highly effective creators have the habit of being consistent above all the. A lot of people think about shortcuts. A lot of people think about hacks and secrets. I think the overarching theme that I've seen in the last 4 years building in public has been that consistency beats everything else, right? So if you're consistent, I think by default, you're much more likely to perform. Your content's much more likely to perform better. You're going to rise up to the elite level because consistency breeds iteration. It breeds getting smart each iteration, getting better. And over time, you just understand how to navigate yourself in this world of building in public. Most of my favorite creators who do a great job at building in public are all extremely consistent. And if you see one of my favorite quotes there is David Perell talks about how B+ content, which is good enough content with A+ consistency, like world-class prolific consistency, will always beat A+ content with B+ or B-, mediocre consistency. So make sure that you are— if there's one thing you want to take away from this video, it has to be that you have to be more consistent than you think than be clever or be interesting. They're important, but more importantly, consistency is number one. The second habit is Around starting small and just playing the long game, right? A lot of creators who have so much to offer to the world, who want to get into TikTok, want to get into Twitter, want to get into Clubhouse, any of these new, you know, any of these channels are overthinking their first step. You cannot. It's like getting into a pool. You cannot overthink the first step. Just get in, get going, and then get better and play the long game. One favorite example comes to mind. It is. Well, we'll get to that in a second. But also another thing that keeps a lot of people from getting in, dipping their toes, is this concept around— it's this unhealthy obsession around virality. Virality is overrated. If you produce, I think I made 26,000 tweets so far. If you make those many tweets, inevitably some of them will go viral. It's just that you don't know which of those will go viral. So you can't be overthinking about them. And also, ironically, if you're tweeting for virality, somehow you're not really building a connection. You're somehow, you're just not doing it for the right reasons in my view. And people can sense it, right? So tweet for resonance, not virality. That's something I've been saying a lot in my workshops. And virality may bring views, but resonance builds community and connection. That's what you want on the internet, right? Right? It's not just the views and likes and shares. You want to feel connected to your audience and vice versa. So a great example is actually one of my good friends, Janelle, who I worked with closely the last 2, 3 years. She started when she had, again, 57 followers, very few. And she started in, I think, July 2020. And she kept posting and building in public. She took her entire maker journey in public where she built this newsletter OS platform. And again, she built— it went up to 10K, you know, with just 57. A lot of people assume that you need an audience to build an audience. Her story debunks that myth, even including my own story where I went from 414 followers on Twitter. So I didn't have any pre-existing followers. That's just what I had. I think, you know, 414 or something like that. And I, you know, built 35,000 towards the end. So, and You don't need a huge audience to get started is my whole point there. Another fun example is actually David Perell's story of how he did, I think, a video a day challenge. And he kept building and kept shooting videos and publishing them for 114 days back to back and still only got 31 subscribers in total. So it is actually a long game. You have to just be in it for the right reasons and have fun while doing it. You have to have joy of creating content, producing content. Otherwise, you're going to give up, right? And also the fun thing is nobody remembers your failures. Right now, he's at 23K on YouTube. And so most people who may look at him today and they're like, oh my God, this guy must have been a runaway success or must have taken off right away because he speaks so elegantly, so smart. Like growing your audience on the internet or growing your influence on the internet has nothing to do with how smart you sound or how passionate you are about the topic or how much of an expert you've been. It humbles you. The internet humbles you very quickly and everybody has to start from the bottom and then rise up. So play the long game and start small before you think you're ready. Of course, another great example is Jack Butcher. You know, he again kept going. You know, he was, I think a whole year he made $366 and then within a year he made, you know, $48K. And I'm sure the numbers are much bigger now, but you know, you just have to keep going. My favorite quote from Arvid comes to be this, which is at the end he says, every expert was once a curious learner at some point. So start with the curiosity and start with starting small and just like putting something out there and then iterating from there and play the long game. That's my number one advice. The third tip or the third habit highly effective creators have is that they're doing it to expand their luck surface area, right? Building in public is not about chasing vanity metrics like followers, follow counts, likes, and retweets. They will come. There are side effects to your actual main journey. Your main journey should be about expanding your luck surface area. Attracting opportunities that are rare to find, right? So it's basically becoming a magnet to such opportunities. And like, for example, my life, I've seen personally up and close these rare opportunities that came to me through real tweets because in 2020, I made a tweet about being open to a startup job because I just got a— I just got out of a corporate career and then was looking for Startup jobs. And that manifested, that resulted in me attracting a great role at On Deck, being the director of On Deck No-Code Fellowship. And the same thing again this year in May, when I was leaving On Deck, I made a tweet about this. And then I wrote a list of qualities and criteria that I was looking forward to in my next role. And that manifested within 2 months into a great role where I work right now at Day One. So a lot of the times that's what to me building in public is about. So I've extended the expansion, expanded the definition of building in public to beyond products. It can be a career. In my case, I'm building my entire career in public. So that's another tip. Number 4 is highly effective creators don't wait for big wins. They celebrate and share small wins. There are so many ways you can create content that is about small wins. And one healthy framework to have is no win is too small to celebrate. Do not say like, oh yeah, it's only 100 followers, or it's only like 40 people who followed me or 8 people who read my email. I actually made a video in my YouTube channel. If you go check it out, I have a video celebrating 100 subscribers on YouTube, which is bonkers, right? Which is nothing compared to like 35,000 on Twitter. Or whatever, all these thousands and thousands of numbers. But to me, it made it meant something, right? 100 people on this new channel on YouTube where I'm this is brand new territory for me, and 100 people who actually chose to hit follow or subscribe is a big deal. So I documented that moment and created content for that particular milestone because it was fun, you know. And I think it also teaches you to be humble and allows you to celebrate every step of the way and not just wait for one big prize day that happens. 8 years from today, you know, whether it's a million followers or 100,000 subscribers, you know, who knows that may come or never come, but it's journey that's important than destination. So yeah, some great examples. Sharath, a good friend of mine, also tweets about some of the small wins. In fact, he was tweeting on the right side, you'll see that he's been having a week-long sales drought and he just like was giving a shout out to the fact that the drought ended that day with that one particular sale. So even small numbers like that, small wins like that are such great content for building in public. The 5th habit is highly effective creators embrace authenticity and vulnerability. This should be obvious by now. If you've seen my content, if you've seen some of the people that I follow, authenticity and vulnerability are so rare to find on the internet in a world where everybody's trying to flex, everybody's trying to be fake. And you know, inhuman or like not impersonal. It is so much of a superpower if you can be real, if you can be yourself on the internet and authentic and honest, you know, and earnest. So that is another great tip. And I see people like Sharath do a great job. Arvid Kahl does a great job of just, you know, being who they are, you know, on the internet, on video or on audio or on tweets, just completely being, you know, authentic. Um, so Sharath talks about Like in this particular tweet here, he's talking about nervousness and launch jitters. You know, I routinely post about like things I'm nervous about or things that I'm not sure about. And how, like, you know, even this example on the right side, he's showing like SaaS is not a fairy tale. There will be low moments. Like in this case, it's a churn situation where I think some customers got canceled. They canceled, you know, for canceled shout out, which is his product. It shows that, you know, it shows the, the more complete side of a person. I think that's what people are looking to root for. You know, they want, um, people want to hear from authentic and real humans. Number 6, highly effective creators are not afraid to put out a bat signal. A bat signal is essentially you saying, here's what I'm manifesting, here's what I would love to get help on, here's what I am thinking about as my next big step. And kind of putting out that desire intentionality on the internet, you know, um, and not being embarrassed about it, right? So Vincy, a great example here. She put out the fact that she was applying for a role at On Deck, uh, you know, this is back Feb 2021, and she applied for that role in public, you know, similar to what I did, you know, a year ago. But I think that is— that takes guts because you could Essentially, that could fail and, you know, it could be an embarrassing moment. But, you know, growing beyond that embarrassing situation, like kind of embracing the fact that it is okay to fail in public, is part of the lessons. It's part of the journey in my view. Sharat on this side, on the right side, is showing a tweet where in that tweet he's showing, um, how he's looking for a technical co-founder, right? And, um, again, putting a bat signal out there. And I know that he got a lot of inbound and I know that he found Curtis, who was eventually his CTO. And that sort of started their journey. Same thing with Vensi. She was hired eventually at On Deck and that started her journey too. So sometimes it's helpful to sort of share your intention in public. The last one, highly effective creators celebrate others and elevate people whenever possible. Celebrating others is the easiest way to build connection with, you know, your followers, your community, your audience. Because in moments where you're looking for content, you're looking for new things to post about, why don't you take a pause and reflect on 1 or 2 people who've done something nice for you that week and give them a public shout out? People love a public compliment, especially when it's earnest and when it's like coming from your heart. And it elevates, you know, their brand. It It makes them look good in front of, you know, in front of the audience and the internet. But it's also a great way to co-sign on someone's specific qualities that you admire in them. So I routinely do this all the time. You know, Dickie Bush on this example here has given a shout out to Sharath. Arvind Kaul does a great job of this. It, I think, humanizes you again, right? You're not just tweeting a man— you just don't have a manicured, you know, feed on your Twitter. You know, you're not just talking about me, me, me, me, me. You're trying to be a bit more human, a bit more empathetic, a bit more authentic, and a bit more other-oriented. And I think those are some very likable qualities in creators. And that's what people are rooting for. So that's my list of 7 highly effective habits for creators. And the last one, well, to summarize, most important thing is to remember that life, Twitter, social media can be viewed through either a zero-sum lens or a positive-sum lens. Zero-sum is that for you to shine, for you to be big, somebody has to go down. Somebody has to be taken down or dunked on. Or positive-sum is where there could be 2 winners. For you to rise, you can also lift somebody else, right? It's not a zero-sum situation. So Remembering that and making sure that you're keeping your feed, you're keeping your content free from drama, free from politics, free from nasty comments and negativity and toxicity, I think is a good move even for your own mental health. So while you build in public, I recommend staying away if you can, as much as possible from negativity and toxicity. I'm not saying you have to be like an absolutionist, but if you can, I think this is always a great, great healthy attitude. Well, thanks for checking this out. Here's the links where you can find out more about me. The podcast link is buildingpublicpodcast.com. If you want to read my newsletter, it's kp.substack.com. And if you loved what I talked about so far, if you want to follow me on Twitter, it's @buildingpublicpodcast. This is KP underscore. If you like this video and want to watch more of this stuff, hit subscribe and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you.