Ok, not going to lie but I just absolutely cannot believe what I am about to write in the next line:

We just wrapped up our 2nd cohort of the year for the “Build In Public Fellowship“.

Why?

Because it feels like a week ago when I made the decision to start the Fellowship (Jan 31, 2023) and it feels like yesterday when the 2nd cohort went live. (It was May 24th, 2023)

Time flies when you’re having fun. I loved the 1st cohort but I had a lot of fun designing and delivering the 2nd cohort because I got to iterate and improve on a lot of things to make sure they are up to the mark.

Wait, you know what BIPF is about, right? If not, here’s a quick blurb:

BIPF is a curated and tight-knit community and immersive program for founders and creators who want to commit to building their dream projects in public. Our 6-week program is designed to empower you with proven playbooks, a strong support system and iron-clad accountability so you can put yourself out there and build in public fearlessly. You will be surrounded by ambitious peers who’ll have your back and want to help you succeed in your pursuit. Including personalized feedback and guidance from me on your content and BIP experiments.

On this edition, I figured I’ll share public reflections and lessons learned based on my journey of running BIPF2 filled with a tight-knit group of 15 founders from 6 countries.

BIPF2 Recap:

• BIPF2 was ~6 weeks long

• 8 Live Workshops by me (that address all challenges of BIP)

  • Topics like “Twitter BIP Fundamentals”, “How To Make Asks In Public”, etc.

  • 2 Fireside Chats with World-Class BIP Practitioners (Blake Emal who has ~100k audience on Twitter and David Fallarme who has ~20k audience on Linkedin)

  • Here’s the curriculum in case you’re curious

• 6 months of Weekly Mastermind Sessions (these continue beyond the cohort!)

• 1 year Slack access and future cross-cohort events

• Tons of BIP templates, frameworks and worksheets in our Resource Library

Takeaways:

• Among all of my main teachings, the one that seem to resonate well with fellows has been this → “Think of Twitter like a campfire, use it like a iMessage/Whatsapp group message with friendly people”

• Another key message is this: “To build an audience, don’t be a rockstar on the stage, just a volunteer at a church event.” Serve people. This will make you feel fulfilled daily vs chasing metrics (likes, views, RTs) which will give you anxiety and self doubt.

• People seemed to love social mixers (we use Gatheraround) more than I assumed

• The most engaging and popular session was “How to shoot your shot” which inspired this blogpost

• Sharing clearly what to expect during the 6 weeks was helpful to an extent but I could be even more explicit in the Kick-off session

• BIPF Slack remains calm (which is how I like it) yet helpful when needed although most people are active and replying to each other on Twitter anyway

• This cohort had such a high caliber of people (podcasters, artists, solopreneurs, 2x exit founders etc.). Also, I am grateful for really special friendships formed here that I will cherish for a long time.

• Two BIPF2 wins I’m most proud of: (vs BIPF1)

  • a) Our Operations muscle has dramatically leveled up since I brought Maryam into our team. She’s incredible and I’m so grateful I get to work with her.

  • b) Our Curriculum has leveled up significantly as well. Each session this cohort, I felt super energized to deliver and handle questions because the slides were well prepared and aesthetically looked amazing (at least in my eye). Special thanks to Danitra who’s been helping me.

Mistakes made/ lessons learned:

• Don’t keep the curriculum secret, publish it online.

  • We didn’t promote the entire curriculum and the details as much as we should have. I feel like our magic sauce is in the specificity of things we cover and address in the cohort and if you’re not aware of it, you’ll likely never apply.

• Weekly challenges could be better

  • We did “okay” on designing and enforcing weekly challenges to help people put the lessons we discuss into action. But there’s a big room for improvement here in my view. We should make these 10x more captivating and fun.

• Making live sessions even more interactive

  • We had a sufficient amount of peer-to-peer interaction through out the live sessions but I feel like we could do better. I want to include even more breakout room activity through the sessions.

Challenges ahead:

• Overall, top of funnel is our #1 challenge. As a small bootstrapped community-based business, this feels normal because it is intentionally meant to be tight-knit by design. Currently, I’m planning cohorts of the size of 15-20 roughly 4 per year. In theory, we can do 2x or 3x more each cohort but we’re unable to because of the top of the funnel challenge which is what I want to resolve by the end of the 3rd cohort.

• Our current sales funnel is: Visit website → Apply to the cohort → Review in progress → Invite to 1:1 Zoom with me → Accepted (or passed) → Paid. The sales conversion is very high 90% after a potential fellow does a Zoom call with me 1:1 but getting people to fill out the application form has been a struggle. We are losing a lot of leads in the application stage itself.

• My goal in the next month is to increase the number of applications and the number of 1:1 calls booked with me. What can we do better or differently here? Any ideas? Would love your inputs!

That’s it. Thanks for reading my public reflection on how the cohorts are going!

Final note:

Today, I am super excited to announce that the applications for the 3rd cohort of the Build In Public Fellowship (BIPF3) are now open. Cohort 3 kicks off on Aug 7, 2023 and runs until Sep 15, 2023.

If you're convinced on the upside of building your project in public (whether it is your business, newsletter, Twitter etc.) and want to have fun doing it consistently, then BIPF3 is the perfect opportunity for you.

To apply, simply fill out the application form. Once you have filled out the form, it’ll lead to a 1:1 call with me to talk about your goals and we can assess mutual fit :)

In our 2 cohorts so far, we have attracted ambitious founders and creators like you from a range of backgrounds and profiles (On Deck alumni, Y Combinator alumni, bootstrapped founders doing $20k+ MRR, established founders with multiple exits) .. all with a frame of mind to learn and lift each other up. Which is pretty rate and magical as you can imagine.

Here's the word of mouth and social proof from BIPF Alumni. Here is an overview of the program in detail here.

If you have any questions or need further information, please feel free to reply. Once again, the link to application is here.

PS: Please note that each cohort’s spaces are limited as we want to have small and intimate groups (vs mass market cohorts) so please apply ASAP. If you join by July 14th, you'll be eligible for an early bird special rate of 25% off.