Hey {{first_name}} ,
I wanted to start this newsletter in 2020.
I had the idea, I had the intent, and I had a clear sense of what I wanted to build. What I did not have was the time, the right setup, or the conditions that made it feel possible. So the idea sat. For four years, it sat.
I finally started building it in 2024. And when I did, I made a decision that shaped everything about how this community grew. I shared all of it. Not just the editions. Not just the milestones. The struggle to keep the weekly schedule. The weeks where I was not sure what to write about. The process, not just the product.
There was a moment early on where I almost went the other way. I thought about keeping parts of the framework private. Protecting the methodology. Sharing the outcomes without explaining the thinking behind them. That instinct made sense on paper. If you give everything away, what do people need you for?
But hiding the framework never sat right with me. The brand I was building on LinkedIn and X was built on openness. And the moment I started sharing the process, including the parts that were unfinished and uncertain, the audience responded in a way that the polished content never had.
This edition is about why that happens and what building in public actually means for your personal brand. Let's get into it.
Why People Get This Wrong
Most people wait until the story is finished before they tell it. They want to share the result, not the process. The successful launch, not the months of uncertainty before it. The milestone, not the struggle that preceded it.
The logic makes sense. Nobody wants to look like they are figuring things out. Sharing work in progress feels vulnerable in a way that sharing a polished outcome does not.
But here is what that approach costs you. By the time you share the result, you have skipped the part of the story where your audience could see themselves. The result is impressive. The process is relatable. And in personal branding, relatability is what builds the bond.
People do not follow you because you have it all figured out. They follow you because your thinking helps them figure things out. And your thinking is most visible when you are in the middle of doing the work, not after it is done.
Five Reasons Building in Public Works
Signal 1: The struggle is the most shareable part.
When I shared my difficulty keeping up with the weekly newsletter schedule, the response was larger than almost any polished edition I had published. Because every creator in my audience was facing the same thing. The moment I named it honestly, I gave them permission to name it too.
Signal 2: Transparency about your process builds expertise more credibly than credentials.
Anyone can claim to know how something works. Showing the actual thinking, the decisions, the adjustments, and the dead-ends—that is what demonstrates genuine expertise. It is harder to fake a process than to fake a result.
Signal 3: Your audience becomes invested in the outcome.
When people watch you build something, they want it to succeed. They feel a part of it. The community around this newsletter was not built by me broadcasting finished editions. It was built by people who had been watching the project take shape and felt ownership of its growth.
Signal 4: Openness about your framework does not reduce your value. It increases it.
The fear that sharing your methodology will make you replaceable is almost always wrong. The people who can independently use your framework were never going to be your clients or your community anyway. The ones who benefit from your thinking will value you more, not less, for having shared it.
Signal 5: It creates conversations that do not happen any other way.
Sharing a finished result invites reactions. Sharing a process invites collaboration. The most useful feedback, the sharpest questions and the unexpected connections come from people who are engaged with the work while it is still moving, not after it has landed.
What Building in Public Actually Requires
It requires letting go of the idea that your value comes from what you know that others do not.
That is a hard shift for a lot of people, especially those who built their careers in environments where information was power and protecting what you knew was how you stayed relevant.
In personal branding, the dynamic is the opposite. The more openly you share your thinking, your process, and your honest experience of building something, the more people trust you. And trust, not information, is what makes people want to stay in your orbit.
This does not mean sharing everything. It means sharing the things that are genuinely useful to the people you are trying to reach. The 2020 version of this newsletter idea would have been worth sharing even when it was just an idea. The four years spent waiting for the right conditions to start would have been worth sharing too. The messiness of building something consistently week after week is absolutely worth sharing.
None of that diminishes the work. It is the work.
The Question That Cuts Through Everything
What are you waiting to be finished before you share it?
And is the reason you are waiting actually about quality, or is it about not wanting to be seen in the middle of something that has not worked out yet?
Those are two very different reasons. One is worth honoring. The other is worth examining.
See Where You Stand
If you want to understand how your audience is responding to your content right now and where the trust in your brand is being built most strongly, head over to SocialJJ.com and check your Brand Score. It gives you a clear read on where you are and what to focus on next.
Check Your Brand Score at SocialJJ.com
Three Things to Do This Week
Pick one thing you are working on and share your current progress, not where you hope to be when it is done. A project, a goal, or a challenge you are navigating. Share the honest current state and see how your audience responds.
The next time you feel the urge to wait until something is polished before publishing it, ask yourself what your audience would learn from seeing the unfinished version. If the answer is "something real," publish the unfinished version.
Look at the last five pieces of content you published and check whether any of them showed your process rather than just your conclusions. If none of them did, that is a gap worth closing.
I wanted to start this newsletter in 2020. I started it in 2024.
The four-year gap is part of the story. The weekly struggle to keep the schedule is part of the story. The decision to share the framework instead of protecting it is part of the story.
That is what building in public actually looks like. It is not a highlight reel of finished things. The whole thing, while it is still being built.
Until next time,
Jerry
If this gave you permission to share something you have been sitting on, pass it along to someone who is waiting for the right moment to start. And if someone sent this your way, subscribe here: https://socialjj.com/newsletter