Building in public and where we go from here.

[00:00:00] You are listening to the Daily Five, an experimental podcast by Aurooba, where I talk about something for five minutes. So let's get to it, shall we? Last year I made it my goal to release two tiny products. These came in the form of two little plugins aimed to make the lives of content creators using WordPress a little bit.

[00:00:28] One idea came about from my heavy interaction with the WordPress community on Twitter. I saw someone complain about a pain point and decided to create a solution for it. The other idea came about from my own pain point as I was trying to rapidly create a bunch of draft content for myself. I built both plugins pretty much in public – sharing, screenshots, process, and even the places I got stuck in as I was trying to build that functionality.

[00:00:57] This led to not only more people discovering my work, it meant that when I did release those plugins, they got a decent amount of community wide press because it was anticipated. That was my first experience with building in public – what that could look like. As someone who historically doesn't like to fail in public, building something in public without a known outcome was a very intense experience for me, but it also taught me the value of it.

[00:01:26] Those two plugins would not have been exactly the same if I had built them privately and then released them. By building in public, I was able to incorporate feedback on a rolling basis and even understand the pain points others had that would make them seek the solution I was building. I was learning about product market fit in real time.

[00:01:49] They are not viral sensations, those two plugins, but they definitely solve a problem for a core set of people, and that makes me happy. The point that I'm trying to make is that building in public is one of the most interesting phenomenon of the internet, and without the internet, it wouldn't be quite the same thing.

[00:02:10] I have not been building in public recently. The closest I've come to that is creating this podcast because of its daily nature. But I remember and appreciate the lessons I learned by creating something out loud in front of a bunch of people, and I kind of wanna do that again. It's scary, but the merits of it are pretty clear.

[00:02:33] So as I think about where The Daily 5 should go next, and what it should cover, here is what I've come up with. I don't just wanna talk about productivity, creativity, and living a thoughtful life. I wanna practice it and share how I'm creating it for myself in a very real and tangible way. And something I've done a very poor job of this year is having smaller milestones in service of my larger goals.

[00:03:02] So with that in mind, starting in March, we're gonna have monthly themes. Every month I'll focus on creating or doing something very particular, and we'll talk through it and explore it from all the different angles, as I put it in practice in my own life. My hope is that in setting and hopefully achieving some of these small milestones every month, you also, you know, get some value from it as you come along on that adventure with me as I kind of build in public.

[00:03:32] But you know, just for the folks who listen to The Daily 5, a little bit like a journal, but I do hope that you get some value out of it too. I was thinking about something I read from some famous author a long time ago: that you can't really write interesting stories if you don't yourself lead an interesting life.

[00:03:51] And I think that applies to a lot of people and a lot of professions. And the great thing about building in public is that the very life you are trying to lead becomes the actual subject matter you share with your audience. The two in one bonus type of deal. And as I've always reflected personally, it's a lot of fun to follow someone's journey or adventure.

[00:04:12] The very first podcast I ever listened to in its entirety, at least the first season, was Startup by Gimlet Media. It was such a meta season where the whole season you followed the founders on their journey to create the very podcasting company hosting the podcast, Gimlet Media itself. I could never get into any of their subsequent season.

[00:04:34] I'm sure they were interesting, but it was the meta that really captured my attention. So let's get a little meta, hey? Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.