Why I'm Building in Public (And Why You Should Too)
- Isaac Lester
- 12 minutes ago
- 7 min read
From below deck of the Fleet Sailing Vessel: Matilda, I write to explain my concept of building in the open, and share the benefits I've found.
I'm not building in public for the engagement metrics or the "authentic brand" bullshit that the high gurus preach.
I'm building in public because I spent the better part of three years in my mother's basement consuming literal thousands of hours of "how to escape your life" content, and every single creator left out the part that mattered: what it actually looks like at 2am when you're googling "how to start over with nothing" while everyone you know is asleep in their comfortable prisons.
They all had the "after" photo or a polished breakdown. Nobody showed the true "during".
The Non-Existent Empire Builders Tutorial
Here's what pissed me off enough to document everything:
Every course, every YouTube channel, every "transparent" creator cuts from "I was broke" to "here's my Lamborghini." They compress three years of bleeding into a 47-minute webinar. They edit out the part where they cried in the park when their car got snatched up by the repo man. They skip the details behind the failed business ventures. And everyone loves talking about family until they have to sever them like gangrenous limbs just to have an opportunity to survive.
I wanted the tutorial that included the actual daily task lists from Day 1 to Day 1,000. The 3am journal entries when nothing was working. The exact messages sent when people had to be cut off. The failed attempts nobody talks about, and specifically how people overcame them.
I wanted proof that the person I was watching had actually been through my current hell, and I wanted the gorydamn crash-outs and after action reports!
But that tutorial doesn't exist. So I'm building it in real-time.
Why Radical Transparency Is My Moat
For me, radical transparancy pushes past marketing tactic and ventures into philosophy territory. It’s how I build trust, create momentum, and remind myself that the process is the product while staying accountable to reality.
When I started sharing the mistakes, the spirals, and the late-night realizations, I did it because it kept me honest.
Somewhere along the way, I realized that transparency itself was the moat.
“The more we share, the more one bowl will be plentiful, yo’.” If everyone who escaped their personal basement left behind a detailed map, anyone could piece together their own route to freedom. Every recovered soul becomes another contributor to collective progress.
The worlds don't need another success story to add to inspiration highlight reels. The worlds need your documentation trail to show others how to navigate their own paths forward.
The Actual Cost of Not Documenting
Every day you don't document is a day someone like you stays stuck.
I'm building for the veteran at 3am googling "how to quit my job and start over without destroying everything." For the 30 something-year-old wondering if it's too late to chase a dream and live life. For whoever just discovered they've been running on autopilot. For anyone who can't explain why leaving feels safer than staying.
I'm building for my future children, so when they ask how I knew it would work, I can hand them years of receipts instead of platitudes.
But mostly, I'm building the exact map I needed when I was drowning.
When I was in that basement consuming content, paralyzed by infinite options, another mindset course was worthless. I needed to see someone else's actual journey, not their advice about my journey. Subtle difference. The real decisions, the actual costs, the genuine failures. Documentation beats inspiration every time because documentation is evidence that someone like you already did this and found a way to not just get around the pitfalls, but to put those pitfalls on a map for others to avoid in the future.
From where I stand, the difference between reading "you can change your life" and seeing someone's daily task list from Day 1 to Day 1000 is the difference between a motivational poster and an engineering blueprint. One makes you feel good for five minutes. The other shows you specifically how to manufacture something real.
The Three Flavors of Building in Public
Most creators cook with what I call Flavor 1: Performance Transparency. They share wins, curate their struggles for maximum relatability, edit the narrative to maintain their image, and call it "building in public." It's theater. Well-produced theater, but theater nonetheless.
Flavor 2 is Radical Documentation, which few attempt because it's genuinely uncomfortable. This means sharing the actual process, including the failures that make you look stupid, showing the real math even when it's embarrassing, and maintaining consistency even when nobody's watching. Maybe 5% of creators actually operate here.
Then there's Flavor 3: Weaponized Archive Building. This is what I'm aiming at.
I turned documentation into a game. Every day, I'm creating forensic evidence that transformation is possible. Not just sharing what I did, but why I did it, what I was thinking, what scared me, what I fucked up, and what actually worked. My entire operating system from Obsidian vaults to daily routines is becoming downloadable, replicable, observable.
The beauty of operating at this level: over time, patterns emerge that even I didn't notice while living them. Readers get to see my roadblocks in real-time, learn from my mistakes as I make them, and most importantly, they get proof that progress isn't linear but it is inevitable if you just keep documenting and moving forward.
My aim is to offer an actual roadmap from start to finish as opposed to just inspiration telling you which general direction to maybe kinda sorta think about heading in. Sure, it might be boring sometimes. Not every day is a breakthrough. But that's the point. Real transformation is mostly boring days stacked on top of each other until suddenly you're somewhere completely different.
Your Move Starts Today
Here's what I've learned: You don't need to be as intense as me about this. You don't need to build a digital empire or live on a boat.
Pick one project. Could be as simple as "get my life organized" or "learn to code" or "escape my situation." Start documenting it. Not the highlights, but the actual process. What you did today. What confused you. What small win you had. What failed.
Do this consistently and two things happen: First, you create accountability that's stronger than any external motivation. Second, you leave breadcrumbs for the next person walking your path.
The documentation itself becomes the forcing function for progress. When you know you have to write "Day 47: Did nothing again" it pushes you to do something, anything, just to have something different to document.
The Real Reason You Should Build in Public
Not for followers. Not for engagement. Not for personal brand.
Build in public because somewhere, right now, someone is googling the exact phrase you googled when you hit rock bottom. They're finding the same empty inspiration and overpriced courses you found. Your documentation could be the evidence they need that change is actually possible, and you can help them trace every step from where they are to where they want to be.
And here is the best bit overall on building in public: The person who benefits most from your documentation...is you.
I'm only a few weeks into seriously documenting everything, and already I can look back at entries where I was frustrated about problems that now seem trivial. I can see the exact moment certain concepts clicked. I can trace the evolution of ideas from "maybe this could work" to "here's the functioning system."
It's been a blessing and a genuine treat to look back and remember the confusion I felt while taking notes for the first time, the uncertainty about whether any of this would matter. Now those same notes are the foundation of everything I'm building. I can only imagine how it will feel when I look back on all of this from whatever heights I've reached years from now.
That's the gift of documentation, it proves to you that you're not stuck. Even when today feels exactly like yesterday, the receipts shows otherwise. Day 1 and Day 30 might feel the same while you're living them, but the documentation reveals the thousand micro-evolutions between them.
Building in public means creating a permanent record that you were here, that you tried, that you refused to accept the default settings of your life. It's evidence that you chose to become the architect of your own existence rather than a passenger in someone else's design.
In five years, you'll have documented your entire evolving transformation. More importantly, you'll have gifted yourself a story of how far you've come.
Even if nobody reads it. Even if it helps nobody but you. The act of documentation is the act of declaring that your transformation matters enough to record, that your struggle deserves to be remembered, and that your progress, however slow, is worth celebrating.
That's powerful. That's necessary. That's why I'm building in public.
And if you're still reading this from your own basement, literal or metaphorical, maybe it's why you should too. Start today. Document where you are right now, in all its imperfect glory. Future you will thank present you for leaving breadcrumbs back to this moment.
Per Aspera Ad Astra
Through Hardships To The Gorydamn Stars
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TL:DR
Most creators show the highlight reel. I’m documenting the middle. The mess, the failures, the confusion, and the climb archived in digital ink for as close to eternity as Humanity can manage...because that’s where the truth lives. Radical transparency isn’t a tactic; it’s my philosophy. Building in public is how I prove to myself (and anyone watching) that transformation is real, trackable, and worth recording, especially when it’s ugly.
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This is Week 2 of a 12-week series documenting my journey from the void beneath hell to ground zero just above the pit, and the frameworks that got me here. Next issue: "The System Behind The Chaos" - How I create structure when there's none, including my actual daily routines, task management, and the mental frameworks that run everything." Next Week: A look into my decision making framework to navigate life and face challenges well.
If you’re reading this at 2 a.m. wondering if starting over is still on the table...it is. I’m living proof. Don’t spend another day drifting alone in darkness; start building toward the light. If you need a guide, check out my publishing hub. I believe in you, frfr, yo'.
- Isaac
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