Build in Public Mastery Taught Me How to Share My Story Without Being a Marketing Sleazeball

This is written by Christine Trac (@christinetrac1)

I used to think the only way to sell my products and services was to sell my soul to the sleazy demons of the marketing world. 

But after enrolling in the Build in Public Mastery (BIPM) course by Kevon Cheung, I discovered that wasn't the case. 

Let me share my story and show you how BIPM changed my perspective completely. 

Before enrolling, I wanted to create a side hustle outside my job as a copywriter at a marketing company.

But I wasn't sure how. 

Do I have to hard sell like a sleazy car salesperson?

I thought the only way was to follow the traditional route of launching a product and hard selling like a sleazy car salesperson. Blah 🤮

That wasn't my style and went against my morals. 

It wasn't until I followed my good friend Mattia and his journey that I discovered building in public and his experience with BIPM with Kevon. 

Mattia's approach amazed me, he was building an army of raving fans. With less than 1000 followers, he was making insane results selling his first two products, The Simple Weekly Task Planner and The Database of Tweet Prompts

What fascinated me the most was how Mattia’s approach to building in public didn’t even look like he was ‘selling’. He shared his journey and stories while offering to help his friends with similar problems. 

I was instantly sold and wanted to enroll in BIPM to kickstart building my first product, which was a free ‘Evolving Editing Checklist’ Notion template for new online writers. 

Although my main goal was to learn how to build in public to promote my product… 

The real highlight of BIPM

It was building alongside 17 like-minded people. 

To this day, some of these people have become my closest friends who I even connect with better than my real life friends (Shhh, don’t tell them 🤫). 

Even if some of them are across the world with a 12+hour time zone difference, I felt connected and less alone. 

Incredibility supportive friends

These incredibly supportive friends helped me feel comfortable sharing my most vulnerable story while building in public.

 I tweeted about how I went from failing high school English 3x to now being a full-time copywriter. I’ve only shared this story with a handful of people in real life. But I wanted to connect with my audience to show them my journey and that they aren’t alone. 

As we progressed through the BIPM cohort, my classmates and my mentors helped me gain confidence in building in public and being vulnerable. However, this is something that isn’t always seen on Twitter. 

While everyone on Twitter was sharing their success with their product launch, like hitting $10K in revenue or selling out in the first 24 hours… 

I decided to cancel my product launch half way through the 21-day build in public challenge we did during the cohort. 

I didn’t feel like a failure

But at that point in BIPM, I didn’t feel like a failure. I felt like this was a great learning opportunity to share my story. 

Plus, I was able to help others see that it’s ok to make mistakes and move on from a project. I wrote a Twitter thread to share my journey and why I decided to cancel. My goal was to help at least one person who might be going through the same problem. 

If I’m being completely honest with you, I’ve never been more terrified to share my ‘failure’ online. I went back and forth with whether to publish this thread or not. 

I’m glad I did. 

To my surprise, the support from the Twitter community was amazing. People were saying things like:

Being vulnerable isn’t a weakness but a strength

Kevon and the building in the public community has shown me that I can build a personal brand and promote my products and services by sharing my stories (including the vulnerable ones) and work.

This thread contains my entire 21-day challenge if you want to see my whole journey!

If you’re looking to build in public and promote your product or service without being a marketing sleazeball, Build in Public Mastery is the way to go. 

*Disclosure: When you sign up through the link above, I earn a commission.