Earlier this year, Alaina Booth carved out 15 minutes once a week to do one thing that scared her. She called it “F*ck It Friday.”
Within 8 months, Booth left her full-time job to build her creator business in public.
Zoom out: Building in public has become one of the defining creator trends of the moment. The playbook has roots in startup culture, but for Booth, building in public is the product.
Here’s what Booth has “found out” since “f*cking around” →
1) Don’t force the format. Booth and a former coworker did “F*ck It Friday” for months before she posted it. People now come to her asking how to find their winning format. Her answer: you can’t force it.
“I wasn’t trying to find my ‘F*ck It Friday,’” Booth said. “It found me.”
2) Set boundaries. Building in public doesn’t mean you owe your audience full transparency. Booth keeps professional pitches and stories from other peoples’ personal lives private so if she pivots, she doesn’t have to do damage control.
“I don’t have to explain myself if I don’t want to,” Booth said. “[Your followers] actually don’t care that much. They just want to see what’s next. They just want to see progress.”
3) Copycats are a good thing. When your whole brand is public, people will rip it off. Instead of getting defensive, Booth reframed the inevitable:
“[Copycats are] the best feeling in the world. I see it as amazing UGC that’s on behalf of my brand. It’s a sign that it’s bigger than me.”
Today, Booth is documenting what happens when you “f*ck around and find out” publicly.
“I’m trying to make myself into a case study that this works in real time,” Booth told us. “I’m not like, ‘guys, this will work.’ I’m kind of like, ‘let’s figure out if it works together.’”
