2 builders who never spoke to each other

Publish the piece you are afraid to put your name on

The essay you least want to sign can outreach everything else you have written, and the supportive replies that arrive privately dwarf the public hostility. Relatability as a beginner is a wasting asset in the same way: once you are the one giving advice, writing as though you are still lost stalls both the audience and you.

The method

1. 01

   The piece you are most afraid to publish under your own name can out-reach everything else you have written, and the private supportive response will dwarf the public hostility.

2. 02

   Your beginner relatability is a wasting asset: once you are the one giving advice, writing as though you are still clueless stalls both your audience growth and your own development.

3. 03

   When you take an unconventional tone, watch the numbers and the replies closely, because the same choice that wins one audience will make another leave in bulk.

What it returned

• 123

  Zue judged his 123 retrospectives over six years to be safe and largely useless to his growth as an entrepreneur or writer, and a crutch for producing content without original ideas.

• Zue's personal essay taking a contrarian position was viewed close to a quarter of a million times, was translated into Dutch and German by strangers, was moderated off Hacker News, cost him a few email subscribers and some hate mail, and left his site at more than ten times normal pageviews two weeks later.

Sources

• Friday Feature: The RollupLouis Nicholls · sparkloop.app · ✏️Steal this for your newsletter​ · undated
• Farewell, Building in PublicCory Zue · coryzue.com · Growing with my work · 2022-12-08
• A Five-Year Journey to Financial Freedom...and BeyondCory Zue · coryzue.com · Talking about the pandemic: half a year of failure… and finally, success? · 2022-01-25