Built in Public

Anthony Smith was about to quit editing forever the night he saw the Diary of a CEO job posting. He'd just told his girlfriend he was done. She said give it one more chance.  He stayed up all night building a portfolio site on Wix, tracked down the co-founder's email, and turned a 20-minute job interview into a two-hour conversation. Now he's the Director of Trailers behind the content...

Alexandra Steinacker-Clark got her foot in the door at Sotheby's through a cold coffee request, built 27K followers on LinkedIn without a strategy, and landed a book deal with a Hachette subsidiary through a LinkedIn DM that sat unread for five months. Alexandra is the host of the 'All About Art' podcast and the author of 'Working in Art: How to Build a Career in the Art World'...

Chandler Bolt was painting houses door to door at 18, getting cussed out and threatened, and then dropped out of college to co-author his first book at 23. Now his company publishes two to five books every single day. Chandler Bolt is the founder of Self-Publishing School, one of the leading platforms for writing, publishing, and launching a book. He's helped over 7,000 authors bring their boo...

The people closest to Keren Eldad thought her content was so embarrassing they offered her a loan, a place to live, and her old job back. Keren Eldad, better known online as Coach Keren, is a coach, author, and speaker who built a business around mindset, identity, and behavior change.  In this episode, we get into why Keren started calling herself “Coach Keren” before the business even existed, w...

VCs laughed Ruffin Mitchener out of interview rooms for posting on TikTok. Four years later, she's the angel investor writing the checks. Now she’s built a six-figure creator business, landed recurring deals with brands like TurboTax and LinkedIn, and built one of the fastest-growing investing communities for women in startups and VC. Ruffin started in accounting at Deloitte, moved into fintec...

40 million LinkedIn views a month. Two to three videos a day. And she built it after returning venture capital money because she realized she hated the company she was building 😲 In this week's episode, I sat down with Avni Barman, founder of Gen She, creator, speaker, and one of the smartest people I know when it comes to audience building and career leverage. She started with a two-minute c...

I've just hit $200K on Stan. And John Hu built the platform that made it happen. John is the founder of Stan, the platform that has now made over $500 million for creators, and he started it because he needed it for himself 😲 In this episode, John gives us his full take on why your first digital product is probably already sitting in your Google Drive, why the creators making the most money o...

In this week’s episode, I’m answering your questions and digging into something that comes up over and over again in my work: why social media feels so uncomfortable for so many people, and why that discomfort is often the very thing that leads to growth, opportunity, and money. At its core, this episode is about visibility. But not in the “post more” or “just be confident” way it’s usually framed...

She became a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model and a Penguin Random House author, and neither of those things came from a talent agent, a manager, or a plan. They came from a LinkedIn post and a cold DM. Gigi Robinson has been building her personal brand since she was 12 years old with a Squarespace portfolio and a competitive swimming injury. Now she's a speaker, a creator, a published author...

Nobody quits a $252K job when they're the #8 sales rep out of 5,079. Brian Luebben did, driving through rural Georgia with a backseat full of Carhartt pants, realizing that a quarter million dollars a year still wasn't enough to make him stay. Four years later, he runs Action Academy, a mastermind community that went from $0 to $5 million with zero ads, built entirely on a $279 podcast mic...

You're overthinking your content. Meanwhile, a 16-year-old was editing videos under his desk in math class and accidentally stumbled into building one of the biggest personal brands in business. Sam Gaudet started working with Dan Martell's videographer at 16, joined Dan's team full-time at 18, and has spent the last eight years as the brain behind a content machine that now generates...

Her first client paid her $700. Her second paid her $30,000. She didn't even have a website. Hala Taha, aka 'The Podcast Princess', started her career as Angie Martinez's assistant at Hot 97, spent years trying to make it online before anyone used the word "influencer," and finally found her breakthrough on LinkedIn when everyone told her it wasn't the place for that...

The personal brand space has sold you this idea that you need a website, a logo, a niche, and a strategy before you start. You don't. And Jasmine Star is proof. Jasmine Star dropped out of law school with no camera, no portfolio, no business cards, and no plan. Instead of waiting until she was ready, she started documenting. She rented gear she couldn't afford, shot 11-hour weddings for on...

Hollywood told them they were "respectfully, nobodies." So they sat down at a kitchen table and built one of the fastest-growing podcasts in the world. Cherie and Jean Luo come from the most traditional path you can imagine: Ivy League degrees, Goldman Sachs, Snapchat, Stanford MBA. Instead of keeping that knowledge locked inside boardrooms, they chose to share it publicly. Tiger Sisters...

The internet has sold you this idea that going viral is the goal. It's not. And it never was. JT Barnett left professional hockey with $0, no degree, and no plan. Instead of following the traditional path, he started posting, started failing in public, and started figuring out what makes people memorable online.  He went from filming fitness content to growing a TikTok house from zero to a mil...

Most people treat LinkedIn like a job board. Mischa Collins treats it like the most powerful business development tool on the planet, and she has the receipts to prove it. After being laid off in 2024, Mischa didn't scramble for her next role. She built in public (literally). Within 12 months, she grew her LinkedIn audience to over 50,000 followers, signed clients through inbound DMs alone, an...

There's a reason some people walk into a room and everyone notices. It's not luck. It's not looks. And it's not something you either have or you don't. Today I'm sitting down with Whitney Uland, founder of How to Be Famous, to talk about the one thing most people building a personal brand are missing: the it factor. And no, you're not born with it. You build it. Whitney...

If you’ve ever thought, “I don’t really know what a personal brand is” or “how do I even start a personal brand???”, this episode is for you. Today I’m joined by Danielle Canty, former co-founder of Bossbabe, to break down one of the biggest misconceptions about personal branding: You don’t start a personal brand. 
You ALREADY have one. Danielle shares how she went from working in the medical fiel...

Welcome to the first official episode of Built In Public! If you’ve ever felt stuck choosing a niche… frustrated with low engagement… or unsure how to turn content into actual conversations and clients, this one’s for you. In this episode, I’m breaking down the philosophy behind building in public (the authentic and awkward version) I break down the biggest engagement mistakes I see creators makin...

In this week’s episode of Slay The Gatekeeper, I sit down with Andrew Kroeze for a conversation about the mindset that shapes everything we build on the outside: our work, our businesses, and our lives. Andrew shares his story with a lot of honesty, starting with the years he spent feeling stuck and disconnected, and the moment he realized that no one was coming to save him. From there, we talk ab...

In this week’s episode, I’m answering your questions and digging into something that comes up over and over again in my work: why social media feels so uncomfortable for so many people, and why that discomfort is often the very thing that leads to growth, opportunity, and money. At its core, this episode is about visibility. But not in the “post more” or “just be confident” way it’s usually framed...

In this week’s episode, I’m joined by Lauren Douglas, founder, strategist, and creative leader, for a conversation that cuts straight through some of the most persistent myths women face in business. At its core, this episode is about visibility. But not in the “be louder” or “be more confident” way we usually hear it framed, but as a real, practical skill women have to learn if we want to move fo...

In this week's episode, I sit down with Whitney Lasseter, Founder and Visionary of ATMA Church, for one of the most expansive, honest, and nuanced conversations we’ve had on the show. Whitney is a Bufo facilitator, ceremonial leader, and spiritual guide who works at the intersection of sacred medicine, trauma healing, and integration. Together, we ungatekeep a modality that is often misunderst...

There’s a moment most people reach where they’re no longer confused, uninformed, or unprepared; they’re just hesitant. This episode lives right in that moment. In this week’s episode, I’m joined by Kassidy Warren, and we go deep into why so many people stay stuck under the idea of “I’m in the process of healing.” We unpack how healing language, self-work, and “doing the inner work” can quietly bec...

Hi friends! I’m back with a solo episode to close out the year, and I wanted to talk about something almost every creator faces the moment their visibility starts to grow: trolls, haters, and negative comments, and why they’re not something to fear, delete, or avoid (at all). If you’ve ever opened your comments and felt your stomach drop, questioned whether you should post again, or wondered if be...