Most of the conversations I have about building in public start in the same place. Someone tells me they understand why it matters. They’ve watched other founders do it and nodded along when someone said visibility is an asset. Then they pause and ask the question they actually came with:
“Okay, but what am I supposed to say?”
It’s a fair question. Over the last few weeks, I’ve written here about why building in public feels so uncomfortable and what it looks like when your career no longer fits in one box. Both of those pieces were about the internal side: the fear, the identity shift, the moment before the dots connect. This one is about the practical side. Because once you decide to be seen, you still have to figure out what to share, what to keep, and how to make it a habit instead of a one-time burst of courage.
In Theatre of the Mind, I opened the Build in Public chapter with a line I’ve heard more times than I can count: “I need to wait for ___ before I can start.” Wait for the raise. Wait for the board. Wait for the product. Wait for the numbers. I understand those concerns. I also understand that when you wait, you’re allowing someone else to dictate the terms.
I’m living this right now with Dirty Hippie. I’m running The Borden Group, building a marketplace in an industry I didn’t come up in, and talking about it openly while it’s still taking shape. So here is what I’ve learned from years of helping executives do this, and from finally doing it myself in a brand-new arena.
Building in Public Is Not Oversharing
The biggest misconception I hear is that building in public means putting everything online. Every number. Every setback. Every meeting. That version sounds exhausting, and for most leaders, it isn’t appropriate anyway. You have investors, employees, clients, partners, and competitors paying attention.
So here’s the principle I keep coming back to: share the lesson, not the ledger. The ledger is the private stuff: exact revenue, fundraising terms, a difficult conversation with a team member, the partnership that isn’t signed yet. The lesson is what that experience taught you, the decision it pushed you to make, or the question it raised that you’re still working through. People don’t need your spreadsheet to trust you. They need to understand how you think.
One of my favorite examples of this comes from Jessica Winder, an HR executive I wrote about in the book. When she started building her personal brand, she was terrified her employees would think anything they told her could end up online. It never did. Jessica never shared anything an employee told her in confidence. What she shared instead was her perspective on how work should be, and that perspective became the foundation of a following that grew from under 20K to more than 100K, along with stages, a promotion to SVP, a book, and a side business. She didn’t overshare her way there. She shared her point of view and protected everyone else’s privacy.
Draw Your Public Perimeter Before You Post
One of the reasons people freeze is that they’re making a judgment call every single time they open a blank page. Should I say this? Is this too much? What will an investor think? That’s the Theatre Loop: risk, racing thoughts, overediting, silence. Not because you’re incapable, but because visibility feels dangerous to your nervous system. The fix is to make the decision once instead of fifty times.
Before you publish anything, take fifteen minutes and write down your public perimeter, two short lists:
- On the table: your origin story, the problem you’re solving, decisions you’ve made and why, lessons learned, customer feedback, milestones, challenges you’re working through, questions you’re genuinely wrestling with.
- Off the table: specific financials you aren’t ready to disclose, anything under NDA, personnel issues, negotiations in progress, and anything involving a client, partner, or employee who hasn’t agreed to be part of the story.
Once that perimeter exists, most of the second-guessing goes away. You’re no longer asking, “Is this okay to share?” You’re asking, “Which side of the line is this on?” That is a much easier question to answer at 9pm when your cursor is hovering over the post button.
Use a Simple Formula So You Never Start From Zero
Blank pages are where good intentions go to die. When I work with executives, one of the first things we do is give them a repeatable structure so the content has somewhere to land. For building in public, this is the one I recommend:
- What I’m building: one sentence of context so a new reader isn’t lost.
- What just happened or what I just decided: the specific moment.
- Why: the reasoning, the tradeoff, or the lesson behind it.
- What I’m still figuring out: the honest, open question.
Here’s what that sounds like in practice. One of the examples I shared in the book is a founder who posted: “We just scrapped our original product roadmap after realizing our beta users weren’t using the features we spent 6 months building. Painful, but necessary. Here’s what we’re doing instead…” In two sentences, you know what happened, why it happened, and that there’s more to the story. No revenue figures. No internal drama. Just a decision and the thinking behind it.
That fourth piece of the formula matters more than people expect. It’s the part that invites conversation. When you say, “Here’s what I haven’t solved yet,” you give your audience a way in.
Let Your Audience Into the Decisions
Building in public isn’t a broadcast. The most effective version involves people in the process. Ask for feedback. Put two options in front of your network and let them weigh in. One example from the book is a go-to-market leader who asked their LinkedIn network to choose between two taglines ahead of a brand launch. It’s a simple post, but it does something powerful: it turns observers into participants. People who help shape something are far more likely to care when it launches.
Then close the loop. If you change course because of what you heard, say so. Showing that you’re willing to learn and adapt based on public feedback builds more trust than pretending you had it right from the start.
I’ve felt this with Dirty Hippie. When I started sharing more about what I was building, people reached out asking when it was coming to their area, how they could get involved, and whether there were opportunities to partner. That didn’t happen because I had a perfect content strategy. It happened because I was talking about the work clearly and often enough that people knew where to raise their hand. So give them a place to do it. A waitlist. An introduction. Feedback on a specific question. Local businesses who want to be part of a launch. A soft, specific ask at the end of a post does more than a hundred posts that only describe what you’re doing.
Keep a Build Log
You don’t run out of things to say when you’re building something. You run out of things you remember to say.
So write them down while they’re happening. Every Friday, take ten or fifteen minutes and answer three questions:
- What did I learn this week?
- What decision did I make, and why?
- What surprised me?
Most weeks, at least one of those answers is a post. Over a few months, it becomes a record of your thinking that you can draw from for talks, podcast interviews, pitch conversations, and eventually, the story you tell when the dots finally connect. This is the part most leaders skip, and it’s why their visibility comes in bursts. Consistency is what compounds. When Steve Adragna, a client I wrote about in the book, got on our first discovery call, the first thing he said was, “I’ve been following you for years, and I love what you are doing.” That’s what consistent visibility does. People get to know you long before they ever reach out.
If You Lead a Team, Build in Public Together
Building in public isn’t only a solo sport. Some of the biggest results I’ve seen come from what I call synchronized messaging: a leadership team where every person has their own strategy and goals, but their efforts are aligned around the same company moment, whether that’s a raise, a product launch, or an event. One voice builds presence. Many voices build momentum. When five or seven people post from aligned strategies across connected networks, you show up in more feeds, multiply impressions, and own the conversation without paying for it. But alignment has to be real. Buy-in must happen willingly. If one leader feels forced into it, the resentment shows up everywhere, and it can quietly undermine the entire effort. Start with the people who are genuinely excited, connect it to a tangible goal, and let the results do the convincing.
Measure the Transfer of Trust, Not Applause
If you judge building in public by likes and impressions, you’ll probably quit too early, or worse, start optimizing yourself for applause instead of authority. Chasing vanity metrics creates reactive behavior: What will get more engagement today? That loop always ends in disappointment.
Instead, track the signals that show trust is transferring:
- Inbound messages and questions
- Introductions you didn’t have to ask for
- People referencing something you wrote in a meeting or on a call
- Investors, partners, or customers who already know your story before the first conversation
- Invitations to speak, contribute, or collaborate
- Referrals, partnerships, and new opportunities
None of those sit neatly on a dashboard. But they’re what turn visibility into professional equity. Steve’s story is a good reminder. As he started showing up more intentionally, new doors opened, and one of them led to a deal that transformed his career. Within six months, he sold the company he had built publicly. Likes didn’t do that. Trust did.
Consistency Beats Polish
The last thing I’ll say is the one I have to remind myself of most often. The polished post you never publish does less for you than the honest one you published on Tuesday. You don’t need to be fully ready to start showing up. You just need to start showing up. Awareness is the key. Action is the antidote. And committing to share your progress before it’s perfect is one of the most powerful ways to dismantle fear and generate momentum on your own terms.
So, Here’s the GIST (Growth/Impact/Strategy/Trust):
1. Share the lesson, not the ledger.
Protect the numbers, the confidences, and the deals in progress. Share the thinking, the decisions, and what you’re learning. People trust how you think, not your spreadsheet.
2. Structure removes the fear.
Draw your public perimeter once. Use the four-part formula: what I’m building, what happened, why, and what I’m still figuring out. Keep a Friday build log so you never start from a blank page.
3. Participation builds momentum.
Invite your audience into decisions, make one clear ask, and if you lead a team, synchronize your messaging. People support what they help build.
4. Trust is the metric.
Track inbound, introductions, referrals, and people who already know your story. Applause fades. Trust compounds.
I’m still learning this from a new seat, and I expect I’ll keep learning it for a while. But here’s what I know so far: you don’t build in public because you have it all figured out. You build in public so the right people can watch you figure it out, and decide they want to be part of what comes next.
