Why I Stopped Building In Public

Build-in-public was a major PLAI thread in year one. I posted progress daily, shared decisions, ran public retrospectives. Year two I dialed it back sharply and the business got better. The build-in-public narrative oversells the benefits and undersells the costs.

What Build-In-Public Actually Bought Me

• A small, engaged audience of other builders
• Occasional generous feedback
• Accountability through visibility

Real benefits, but bounded. None of these translated directly to client revenue.

What Build-In-Public Cost Me

• Constant performance of progress, even on bad weeks
• Clients comparing themselves to other clients they could now see
• Competitive information leaking to people I did not know were watching
• Decision inertia when I had posted a direction and wanted to change it

Each cost was small in isolation. Together they became a tax on real work.

The Switch I Made

I stopped narrating daily progress and started publishing finished thinking. Articles after the work was done, not tweets during. The audience stayed roughly the same size. The quality of engagement improved dramatically. The work got easier because nobody was watching the messy middle.

The Client Side

Clients hire consultants who look competent. Build-in-public reveals the uncomfortable truth that competent work has an uncomfortable middle. That truth reassures other builders. It does not reassure buyers. Prospects rarely appreciate the authenticity of watching you debug.

What I Still Share

• Finished articles with strong opinions
• Case studies after the project ships
• Public pricing and public minimums
• Retrospectives after full cycles close

All of these share finished thinking, not in-flight work. The distinction sounds small and is actually huge.

When Build-In-Public Works

Build-in-public fits solo creators with a product they own outright, selling to other builders. It does not fit consultants, agencies, or anyone whose work depends on client relationships. The incentive structures are different. Copying the creator playbook as a consultant quietly damaged my business.

What I Tell Other Consultants

Pick your audience. If it is other builders, build-in-public is fine. If it is buyers, build-in-private and ship-in-public. The latter pays better for the kind of work most consultants actually do.

Derek Sivers has written about the difference between sharing and performing for decades. His framing held up.

The Trade I Accepted

Dialing back build-in-public meant losing a small amount of audience growth. I accepted the trade because the audience I had was not converting to revenue and the work was becoming harder to do under constant performance. The audience I kept is more aligned with my actual business. That is a better audience, even if it is a smaller one.

The Honest Version

Some of the build-in-public advice is excellent. Some of it is survivorship bias dressed up as playbook. Reading the same advice from people who happen to have benefited tells you nothing about the silent majority who followed the same advice and got nothing. Be skeptical of any audience strategy that assumes you will be the exception.