Three people warned me off building in public in the span of five days. My fiancé, a fellow founder friend, and a TikTok that landed in my inbox from a founder swearing it off for good. It sent me down a rabbit hole, because I couldn't tell if being transparent about building my skincare company was going to work for me or against me.

Here's where I landed: "should you build in public" is the wrong question. It isn't a yes or a no. It's a set of decisions. In this episode I break down what building in public actually means as a strategy, the repeatable framework I use to decide what to share and what to keep to myself, and two founder case studies, one who's nailing it and one who walked away from it, so you can see the framework in action.

If you know you need to build an audience early but you don't want to do it at the cost of your company or your reputation, this one's for you.

Screenshot the framework below and come back to it whenever you need it.

HOW TO BUILD IN PUBLIC (WITHOUT TORCHING YOUR BRAND) — THE FRAMEWORK

1. Set your content pillars. The 2-3 buckets every post falls into. Ask:

• What are you building and why? → your founder pillar
• What industry are you in and what do you know about it? → your category pillar
• Who are you outside the work? → your life pillar (optional)

Cap it at three. If you can't sustain it, it won't work.

2. Zoom into your founder pillar. It holds five micro-pillars. Pick which one you're posting from and weigh the tradeoff before you share:

• Idea — share the why, not the formula. Be intentional about level of detail.
• Progress — share the progress that shows momentum, not the stuff that's just you confused out loud.
• Failures — only with a lesson attached. A failure with no lesson reads as incompetent, not honest.
• Numbers — only if they're strong, only with a lesson, and only after you've accepted that a slow month goes public too. When in doubt, skip it.
• Strategy — your POV, yes. Your exact playbook, no. Share it after it's played out, not live.

3. Route it to the right channel. Founder content lives on your founder/personal channels. Brand channels stay polished for the customer. If you show up as the founder on a brand channel, make it about why you built this, not the latest fire drill.

4. Final gut check: scars, not wounds. If there's no lesson, and you're not already solving the problem, don't post it. Confession with a lesson invites people to learn alongside you. Confession without one just asks them to hold you up. (Bonus check: would your audience feel betrayed if they saw what you left out? If yes, you hid something. If no, you curated, and you're fine.)

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