How to build in public with Kevon Cheung

Akta: If you want to grow online, you might look into growth hacks and strategies. One of the most organic and effective ways to build a business around an audience is to build in public. 

Kevon: Building in public is not just about sharing. Sharing is the easy part. The important part is you actually loop in your community as you build your product.

Akta: This is what Kevon is known for. It helps him to build a Twitter following of over 19,000 subscribers. A newsletter list of 3000 subscribers and his cohort based course Build in Public Mastery. In today's episode of Creators on Air, Kevon shares what build in public actually means and how he's used it to build a personal brand and a business.

Kevon: A lot of people when they explain Build in Public, uh, they would say, oh, it's just being open. You know, you share your ups and downs. You're being open about everything. You're being authentic, right? I is that what you hear out there? Yeah, definitely. Okay. So I would say, because I've been teaching this topic for, um, almost two years now, um, I would say that's part one.

A lot of people actually don't know about part two. So in my version of building in public, I think. It's not just about sharing. Sharing is the easy part. The important part is you actually loop in your community as you build your product. So how do you take feedback from the community? How do you listen to them?

That is actually what building in public is about. So that's it. Open kitchen, but. You're talking to the customer instead of just showing them what you're cooking. I love that. 

Akta: You've given me a really nice visual to work with here. Um, why do you think that's so important for creators to actually do? 

Kevon: If we're specifically talking about creators?

Mm-hmm. I think it's because, you know, most creators, we start up with no budget. When I started out, Two and a half years ago, I didn't want to spend too much money because I didn't know where this is going. So I want to keep the expenses low. So building in public is good for that because you're basically leveraging your stories, what whatever you're doing right now, and then you're using that as your marketing.

And the plus size is not just marketing, but you actually, you know, get feedback, get a community around you. So, If you're doing it well, right? It's essentially zero marketing budget kind of strategy. So I think it's, it's good for, uh, creators to start with that, and then later on you can expand to other, you know, strategies.

And also we all know that personal branding is very important, right? Yeah. We trust a personal voice more than any brand accounts. So building in public actually helps you build that up as well. As you grow, maybe you're like, oh, I don't wanna focus on this product anymore. I want to do another product, and people will be okay as long as you're open about that because your personal branding is there.

Akta: Okay. I love that you've mentioned that because what I'm never sure of is, is it possible to build in public if you don't really know what you want to build or like what your niche is? And like how do you go about that if you're still figuring. Yourself out as a group, 

Kevon: right. I feel like that's a very common question that I.

Get all the time. It's not really a build in public question, it's more like entrepreneurship kinda question. I feel like a lot of people when they're starting out, they're looking for definite answers. Like, oh, I, I need my niche before I build my products, or I need my niche before I grow my audience. But my experience and my learning is that there's no definite answer, like even today.

I still don't exactly know who my audience is or what my niche is. I mean, I've been talking about building in public. So from the outside, people say KaVo, you're the building public person. Your niche is that. Yeah. But to me it's like not so clear. So the thing about building in public is, you know, let's use me as an example.

I, two and a half years ago, end of 2020, I was frustrated because I was like a nobody, right? So I decided to, you know, just. Went online and start my own. Project, the first project, and I told you I had no followers. So the first project was a writing guide. It's a building public guide. So I was working through that project and through that two months I was able to get some recognition from the community and get some signals.

And that's how I say this is my niche. Mm-hmm. So actually building in public helped me find my niche and I will be honest with you if I didn't get traction for that project. I would be focusing on something else. So to me it is a process. It's not like you need the answers and then now you can build in public.

Yeah. It's actually the opposite. 

Akta: I love that. I love that you've used building in public to help figure out what direction to go in. Um, and you chose Twitter as your, I wanna say, your main platform to building public Uhhuh, Uhhuh. What made you go with Twitter as that platform? 

Kevon: What's your favorite channel?

Akta: YouTube is my favorite.

Kevon: I guess that's why we are on video. Yeah. Um, but, but the thing is, it's hard to create a lot of conversations and get a lot of feedback from YouTube. Sure. I mean, I am starting a YouTube channel right now after two years. And no matter how much I try to engage my audience, uh, I, I mean I have a very small, uh, following there.

It's just so hard to get that fast feedback loop. And building a public, as I told you, is about working with the community. So if you think about all the social media, right, Twitter is the fastest, not just the speed, but the volume of feedback you can get in a short period of time is amazing. And all those feedback are really just genuine because people, usually, when people type fast, you know, in 30 seconds, they're giving some.

You know, first impression, honest review for whatever you're asking. So to me, Twitter is the best place to build in public because of that feedback loop. But, but again, I don't want to confuse people, as in, if I want to build in public, you have to go to Twitter. Um, guess what? You should be building in public with your people.

Yeah. So I have people coming to me from Instagram and they say, can I build in public on Instagram? I'm like, Yeah, it's good. You shoot some stories and you share the behind the scenes, you ask people, Hey, uh, I'm thinking of creating this. Um, maybe you can get some feedback that way. It works on different platform, but just be in front of the people.

That's the key. Yeah, 

Akta: and I guess the thing that I struggle with in terms of getting feedback is I love getting feedback from my audience. But sometimes I struggle to distinguish between getting feedback from the right people, because sometimes you get comments from people who aren't necessarily part of your community or, I don't know, maybe it's not so much on Twitter, but on YouTube you might just get the random viewer who's just watching a one-off video.

Versus a viewer who's watching all my videos, and that's the person I want to get feedback from. Is that something you ever consider when you're building in public and who you are actually taking feedback from? 

Kevon: Yeah, definitely. I think my, my students asked me this question before, so building in public is great in a way that it gives you a lot of data, right?

Sometimes people say, oh my God, it's overwhelming, like too much data. But to me, I think it's a test of your. Entrepreneurial skills, like it's good to have data, but now as the entrepreneur, you have to filter out, you basically have to look at these people and say, who is my target audience? Who is actually a loyal follower who is giving genuine feedback, or who is randomly showing up and trying to give me a lesson?

Yeah, you need to like, Handpick. So usually I don't listen to all the feedback. You know, I collect all the feedback if they're useful. One, if people repeatedly say something, then I would know, oh, okay, this is actually legit. Mm-hmm. So maybe I should consider that. So it's, it's more getting feedback, but the filtering is still on you as an 

Akta: entrepreneur.

Yeah. And how are, how do you go about collecting your feedback? Like what, do you have a process for that where you are looking at comments or is it just as you go along? 

Kevon: Oh, so many ways. Um, oh really? Let's pick a few to talk about. Yeah. Um, the first one would be, you know, just tweeting, you know how people say you want to test your ideas first?

Mm-hmm. I think even writing content, instead of going out and write a full article or newsletter, what about having a tweet with four lines? First test out how people. React to this topic. If it goes well, then okay, maybe this is worth an article or a newsletter. So same thing as building products. For example, my early product was my book Find Joy in Chaos.

So I was wondering who here is actually up for. An authentic presence who here is not like a threat boy or like growth hacker. And I just ask people like, you know, just growing slowly, but actually building connections or working with your community. And I see a lot of people actually believe in this approach.

Mm-hmm. So that gave me some signal. Oh, okay. I can write a book about this and I don't think I'll be the best seller on New York Times, but at least I know a small group would find this useful. So that's tweeting. I have a newsletter. I just passed 3000, uh, newsletter subscribers, so Oh, congrats. A long time.

It's a thank you. It is a very slow process. I, I believe, uh, the listener will know, uh, every email you send, you get tons of unsubscribers. So it was a tough battle, but, I would actually this week because I'm taking some time off, uh, the last two weeks, so I'm just getting back to work. Now I'm thinking of my next step.

So my newsletter this week, I want to just send out a survey to my 3000 audience, and I don't wanna just ask them for feedback. I wanna incentivize them to do it. So I'm thinking of, hey, maybe we can do a lucky draw and then someone would get my newest course email course engine. So I, I know this works.

If you have been building a lot of trust with the audience, they, they're willing to help you. Yeah. So I'm actually going to do that with a short survey. And then the last one probably just ask them, because I, I teach students, right? So, We build a connection, uh, through that learning experience. So I just hit them up on message.

Yeah. Private messages and say, and just, just talk like, like you and me, right? I'm just asking question. And then they would answer me. That's how I get a lot of signals. 

Akta: Yeah. So it seems that building connections is actually a really important part of building in public. How do you go about kind of making sure you are building connections versus just an audience who's watching, but not necessarily engaging?

Kevon: Yeah, so, so many definitions around audience and community. To me, audiences, people just watching you do things. They're curious, they're interested in you. That's an audience. A community is more. Two way. It's more mutual. They actually talk to you. They actually reply to your emails. They actually leave you YouTube comments and you can recognize the name.

I don't have a huge community around me, so I always see the same name popping up and I'm like, oh, okay. I feel so cozy with these people. Um, How do you make sure you're nurturing community? I think it's, you know how when you are so hungry for growth mm-hmm. You might write tweet threats, you might start interviewing people, you might start writing tweets with 10 templates that work really well for other people when you do these kind of things that you're just growing an audience.

But, um, if you are trying to create conversations and then people come in, And they talk to you and you respect them and you reply to their replies. I think that's community building, so I make sure. I'm not trying to pull too many people in, but every people, every person who comes into my world, they get special treatment.

Like, for example, I promise I reply a hundred percent of my email. I really do. Uh, sometimes I'm a month late, but I really do. That's 

Akta: commitment. 

Kevon: I love that. I, I consider myself a small creator. I think that is something that you have to do when you're still small. Yeah, 

Akta: that extra step. And what if you, what if you did become a big creator, even if that wasn't your intention, would you still be able 

Kevon: to manage that, do you think?

I don't think so. Um, I don't think I can manage everything, but I think, for example, pat Flynn. Mm-hmm. Uh, very inspirational guy, you know, well known in this online marketing world. Community world. I know that he would still take time. To reply to people. Not every, everyone, but you know, just selectively, I think it's still a meaningful thing to do.

Yeah, yeah. 

Akta: And we've spoken a bit about authenticity and being open online, and that's like part one of building in public, but how vulnerable do you think you need to be? When you are building in public, like how much do you share and what's 

Kevon: oversharing? You know, it really depends on your line. Everyone has different line.

Uh, a lot of people ask me, like, KaVo, how, how are you so vulnerable? I, I don't know the definite answer. Again, I think it's because of my upbringing. Like I grew up in a single family. My dad passed away when I was 10, so, Maybe that made me really vulnerable that I'm able to share this kind of experience with people.

Mm. Like you don't need to say, I'm sorry, because it happened so long ago and I'm okay. I'm like 30 something right now. I actually just turned 33 last Friday, so it has been like 23 years. But, you know, coming back to building in public, I think it depends on your line. Like for me, so far, I'm still comfortable sharing all my numbers.

Like every year I publish revenue costs and profit. Uh, profit, profit margin? No. Yeah, just profit, not profits. Yeah. Okay. That's okay. I don't know if I can keep doing that as my business grow, you know, because it becomes complicated. But do you have to share your numbers? I. I don't think so. Like it's not a must thing to do in building in public.

But remember how I told you building in public is about looping in the community. Mm-hmm. Listening to them, getting their feedback. So what I learned is that you do need to be vulnerable in a way that you're lowering your ego. You're, you're kind of becoming a person that you're saying, I don't know everything, but I'm here to serve you, so tell me what you need and I'll be here to make it happen.

When you can do that. You can grow so fast because your community will love you. So I think that's the kind of vulnerability that everyone should try to aim for. But it's not the vulnerability kind that you're, you know, sharing all your numbers or you're sharing your traumatic events in life. You don't need to go there.

Akta: Yeah. Yeah. I like, I like the way that you framed that, but what I'm also curious about is when do you. Decide to share that. So for example, if you are, you know, building a product, for example, do you decide to share it as soon as you get the idea? Or do you wait until you've got something that you can physically share?

Like how do you decide when's the right time? Yeah, yeah. To start getting feedback on 

Kevon: things. My understanding of building in public definitely changes in the last two years. I still remember the first time I was teaching this topic. I was basically setting up 15 email prompts and telling them, Hey, today, share a mistake you made in the past, uh, tomorrow, share, um, something you're struggling with.

So I'm just prompting them to share things and I realize it doesn't work that well because that's not really building in public. So, Now, nowadays I reshape my framework. Um, I find that if you're like a knowledge creators, so we are both part of J Cloud's community, right? Yeah. So there are so many knowledge creators.

I find that it's so useful when you're trying to build, let, let's say a course and you have the idea. A lot of people would say, okay, let me just like, Sit quietly in my office or home office and just like hack out the whole curriculum. Film all the videos, and then you're like, okay, so where do I get people to take my course?

But that's not gonna work, right? So my way is when you have the idea, you're thinking, okay, where. It's your community. So you start sharing bits here and there. You're talking about your outline, you're talking about how you're thinking about this course. Is it long or short? You're sharing a lot of those as early as possible so that you're building up kind of like a wait list.

Mm-hmm. And I call that. Collecting momentum. So you're like, you have this little ball and because you're sharing so early, that little ball will grow. And by the time, like let's say eight weeks later when you're about to launch, you have this huge list of people for, it doesn't have to be huge, like 200 people, and you can just tell them, Hey, by the way, It's ready.

You don't even need to like write a bunch of promotional materials. You can just say, Hey, it's ready. So I, I think that is why, to get back to your question when you're committed to build that out, I think share as early as possible because it takes time to build up that momentum. I love 

Akta: that. And I'd love to know what you've been building.

So since building in public, how have you monetized as a creator? What are your current revenue streams? Because I saw that in Jan you hit your first 10 K month, which is huge. So like you've done really well by building in public. So how has that journey evolved? 

Kevon: Thank you. I, I hit 12 K in April. Oh, nice.

So that was a, a newer mi milestone. But honestly, I can tell you, I. The highest number. Right? But in my newsletter I tell people, Hey, but the other months I'm making two, three K. Yeah. So it average out to about five, six K right now, which is, which is still pretty good for my journey. But I don't want people to have that false impression like, oh wow, this guy, this guy's making 10, 12 K every single month.

It's not like that. So let's talk about my product building journey. It. Has been a lot of trial and errors. You know, two and a half years ago, I started outright, I actually decided to make $0 for the first six months because my, my whole plan, my whole, uh, strategy was to just build enough trust and credibility because no one knows me.

Like I'm sitting here in this corner of the world and doing things online. Really no one knows me. Uh, no one even care about my LinkedIn profile. So why would they listen to Kevon? I was thinking about that. So, I was just giving, giving, giving, building free products, building public guide. And then I built the, making Twitter friends free email course.

So I, I get a lot of people studying my materials, but I never charge anything until half a year later, my wife knock on my door, came in and she was like, come on, when are you going to charge people? Like we, we need to sustain this family. Like, we have a daughter back then, now we have two daughters. So I was like, oh, no, I.

I need to monetize. Yeah. Long story short, my first paid product was a paid community because I thought, oh, now I have people interested in building in public. The easiest way is put them together and then I can help them as they hang out. Four months later, I shut it down because I couldn't handle the burden of a subscription model, even though.

It's only five US dollar a month for each member. Oh, wow. So it's, it's not a lot of money. Yeah. But I later learned that charging that low is actually a curse because people just don't care. Mm. They would still pay, but they actually don't care. So you're in that really, really tough position. Like, what are you doing?

They don't care, but they still want to pay you. Um, so at that point I thought, do I really want to run a pure community? With nothing holding the people together. Mm, no. I, I, I didn't wanna do that. So I started moving away from that and started building courses and I think, because I used to run a kids coding school next to the founder, so I was her left hand person for four years.

So I think that, Really left a mark in me that education is important. Yeah. Like we were teaching kids like from four to 18. Oh wow. Coding. That was really fun. So, you know, once I got to the course, like teaching side, I really love it. Like, I don't need to worry about your recurring payment. To me. You just pay once and I teach you something and then we're good.

Yeah. If you still wanna learn from me, that's okay, but if you don't, that's okay. I love it. So for the last two years I've been just. Iterating on my building public course. Um, first cohort, all three for the community members. Second cohort, 50 bucks, third cohort, a hundred bucks, and then 500 bucks. And then now it's like seven fifty, twelve hundred and twenty four hundred.

So three pricing plan. Amazing. Um, but basically, you know, people from the outside look at this course, it's like, oh my God, this is amazing. You're. Charging quite a good number. But the thing is, uh, this course is my whole business. It's my startup. Every day I'm working on it. Every day I'm tweaking. Wow. So it's not as fancy as built ones.

And then you can sell for wherever for high price. It's not like that. So my biggest revenue stream has been the cohort based course. Yeah. Building public mastery. And how 

Akta: did you decide on, I mean, you've already touched on the fact that you started with the community and then decided that courses was right for you.

Do you have any advice for creators on how they should decide on the format of their products? So whether they go down, you know, writing a book like you mentioned, or, or a course or a community, like how do you figure that out and is that part of the building in public? Process, like, do you involve your audience in that?

Kevon: Honestly, um, if you asked me this question a year ago, I probably didn't know how to answer that because I was so early in the process. But now because I have a book, uh, self-publish and then I have multiple courses, one live cohort and a few video courses, I think I can share a little bit here. Um, the way I look at it is a book.

It's very hard to write if like, like if you're not used to writing, if, if you're a professionalist, it's even harder because I can tell you, uh, it took me 10 months to write the book, find joy, chaos. Wow. Well, I mean, I took a five month break, but it's still five full months, like just working on the book and.

Book, you cannot charge too much for it, right? There's this fixed price, like, uh, maybe $10 for Kindle. 20 bucks for paperback is pretty fixed. So looking back, um, I actually have a YouTube video talking about that you should really be writing a book only when your whole framework. It's getting traction and that philosophy is kind of your name card.

My best example would be, I think Paul Miller. Mm-hmm. Uh, the Pathless path. Yeah. I think, you know, that is his name card. He can just go around, talk about it for decades, and that book is the anchor of all his work. My book is about Twitter presence. It's actually one part of my philosophy. Yeah. So I'm not gonna keep talking about Twitter presence because I'm more interested in building in public.

So I think I chose the wrong topic to write a book on. So don't write a book until you are very firm in your philosophy. And a lot of people are already buying it, right? Yeah. Um, okay. Courses, I would say courses is. Revenue generating. It's easier to create. You can fix it anytime. You can update it. A book is hard to update.

You know, paperback are out and you know that. Internal pressure of a physical boat out out there makes it harder to create. But the book is, you know, you can charge like 50 bucks, 150, and it's easier to create. So I think it's when you have something really good you wanna share with people, I think courses are usually a better way to go.

But again, I still want to tell everyone that creating courses is not just creating a bunch of videos. Yeah. The hardest part or the part that you should spend your most time on is structuring. Learning experience, like why do they need this first video or what goes into the first module? What goes into the second module that is more important than what goes into each video because people want to learn a framework and they wanna do it step-by-step.

If you are teaching like all these topics randomly Yeah. In different orders, they're gonna. Not enjoy your course. Yeah. So, yeah, that's my little sharing. No, I think that's 

Akta: really good advice, and I think it's really nice that you've reflected on your own journey to be able to give that advice as well. Um, you mentioned that your courses, like the price has gone up over different cohorts.

How do you go about pricing your cohorts and like how do you decide how to price a value that you're giving and how much feedback are you taking on from your audience? On that as well to say like, okay. You know, does that 

Kevon: influence it at all? I love all your questions. Thank you. It's kinda like, like, uh, kind of business school 1 0 2, like a lot of deep things that we're talking about.

You. I went to business school, so it's Oh, cool. I love talking about entrepreneurship. Yeah. I, I went to an entrepreneurship school. Yeah. Oh 

Akta: good. 

Kevon: So we're getting good advice there. I love stuff. So pricing, there's so many advice on pricing and there can be quite conflicting, so. What I know is people will say something like, charge higher.

You know, you are just holding yourself back, you know, just at a zero at the end. It's actually good advice, but it doesn't apply to early creators when you're still finding it hard to get demand. So my way, as I told you, right, first cohort free, because I just want to. Get a taste of teaching what it's like second cohort, 50 bucks, third cohort, a hundred bucks.

So you can see my strategy has been start low. Mm-hmm. So that I can easily bring in people and to bring in people. It's not just for the sake of it, like my whole intention is I want more people around me taking my course so that I can get more feedback, so that I can improve it, so that I can charge higher and get more testimonials.

And, Charge higher. It's, it's kind of like a snowball. So it's much easier if you can charge a reasonable price and get more people, because more data points, which means better product that you're building instead of starting out like, oh, my course is going to be 500, and then you get two, three people.

Yeah. What's the point? Right? Yeah. I optimize for feedback in the early days. I don't care about the revenue so much. So, but I guess like when you get enough. Students. And when your marketing effort is growing, you will get a sense of, huh, it seems like it's quite easy to bring in people at this price point.

Maybe I can charge a bit higher next time. And the, the beauty about this price increase in info product is that when you do that, by being honest, first of all, you don't wanna trick people by moving the prices here and there. But when people see that the pricing is increasing, that actually creates a.

Psychological effect. Like, oh my God, this is popular. I better get in now as well. True. That's a side benefit. True. But more so is your confidence in your teaching and the good words of your past customers. If no one is praising your course, don't, don't increase your price, please. So, yeah, that's how I see it.

So, 

Akta: That's good. And do you ever get worried about, cuz you said that you're a small creator, not that I think you're a small creator, but you know, you've built in public, you've got your community, and then you said that you don't have to do that much marketing because you've already got people that are interested in them there, but with each cohort.

Mm. Do you ever worry that you've kind of exhausted that community? So how do you kind of make sure that you're still bringing people along even though they've not been there in the 

Kevon: past? Wow. You, you, you, you hit on a problem that I'm thinking about right now. Oh, okay. Um, I think because Covid has been around for so long, we can see that high demand in 2020.

Yeah. And then everyone is talking about the demand is dropping. Right. Yeah. And I do hear from friends that they're finding it hard to get students for their cohort based course. Um, for me lately I've been thinking about, actually, I. Migrating to a year round training program. Uh, there are so many reasons why I would wanna do that.

But since you're talking about like, do I ever worry? Yes, because you never know how many students you would get. So for me, I'm doing everything myself. Right? In the last cohort, I get an assistant Arvind, he's amazing, but I'm thinking, how can I get more help? If I don't know how much I'm making next cohort, that's gonna be so hard to budget.

Yeah. And as an entrepreneur, you need to budget. So the reason why I'm trying to shift to a year long training program is because, you know, with a setup fee, with like a monthly recurring fee, I know how many students are here, then I can go out and bring in expert, I can hire community, person, assistant.

So it really becomes a. A solid program that we are all running together. Yeah. Not just Kevon is, um, you know, just launching and seeing who is here to take and then hope that enough people are signing up. That hoping is not a good strategy in business. So I, I wanna move away from that, but, um, but other than that, what I'm doing is I, I just try to, you know, grow my wait list a bit more.

I give like two, two months between each cohort and I do a lot of small things right in between, so people are coming in and then I just hope that they would sign up basically. 

Akta: Well, I think that's interesting though. I'm glad that we got to kind of hear about what you're currently going through and how you are.

Planning and preparing for that. So I think that's really interesting. I'm gonna end the podcast now with a quick fire round. So I'm gonna ask you five questions I ask every creator that comes on air, starting with what's your favorite thing about being 

Kevon: a creator? Um, recognition because I was a nobody, so I feel like somebody now.

Oh, I 

Akta: love that. And what's something that gives you the most inspiration for what you 

Kevon: create? Honestly, when my students are saying, Kavon, I learned this from you, and then I'm making this change and then it works. That feeling is incredible. Like I think for any teacher that's the best, uh, return off your work.

So that's my inspiration and 

Akta: also motivation. That's so wholesome. I love that. That's really wholesome. And what's a tool that helps you as a creator the most? 

Kevon: A tool. Yeah. Um, I would say Google Calendar. Oh, should I expand on that? Yeah, 

Akta: expand. That's a good one. No one's actually said that before, I don't think.

Kevon: Yeah, because I'm so busy. I have two daughters. One is two years old, one is three months old. Oh. Um, so my current way of. Planning my week is that over the weekend I would plan my priorities and then I would time block Monday to Wednesday. So I'll actually, you know, block time on my calendar. That's why calendar, and then I would leave Thursday and Friday pretty open, and so all the spill over would go in there because I'm working by myself, right?

Yeah. As a creator. And I'm doing this full time, so that helps me just really stay. Stay on track, hitting all the to-dos for the week and not slacking off. It's, it's so easy to slack off when I don't have those. Time blocked. Um, yeah, I can sense the difference in the last two weeks, like I was taking a break and I'm actually losing the whole system.

So I'm rebuilding right now this week. 

Akta: Nice. But I like that it's not like too rigid that you've got your Thursday, Friday it's a little bit more flexible. Cause most people who calendar block, I feel like it's very like, Structured. So I like that. And I guess this leads us onto Yeah. Oh, sorry. 

Kevon: No, the, the other thing is when you leave a bit of room, um, you feel much better about yourself because you are killing off the biggest task of the week.

But I feel like a lot of people plan. Too many things. They're overly ambitious. Yeah. And they end the weak feeling, oh my God, I'm behind. Why would you wanna do that? 

Akta: So true. And I guess this leads me onto the next question, which is, what's something that helps with your work-life balance? 

Kevon: I, oh, so I'm someone who, I really enjoy business.

You know, I, I spent a lot of time doing it. It. It's my work and also my hobby. But you know, to balance that out, uh, a young family. So I'm often stressed. I am worried about enrollments and talk to my wife. She's very understanding. She helps me out. But when I play with the babies, it's like, oh my God, I can't take my mind off business.

So, Business and family are the perfect balance for me right now. I don't have other parts of my life right now, like not much social, not much hang out with friends, not much personal hobbies, but I'm, I'm okay with that. That's, I have the two things that I enjoy the most. 

Akta: Oh, I think that's really important.

And what's, um, one piece of advice that you would give to other creators? 

Kevon: Um, don't listen to people's advice. I mean, it's kind of counterintuitive because I'm sharing a lot of advice here, but you can see that I want my experience to be something that you take reference, but you don't just go and say, Kevon has success with a cohort based course, so I need to create a cohort based course.

You don't wanna do that. Just by listening to people. Yeah. Like a lot of times I see Jay Klaus like, oh my God, he's doing so many amazing things. And then the next thing I would ask myself, but am I Jay? Mm. Um, I have two kids. Jade doesn't have a kid yet. He has, yeah. Dogs. Right. Is that something more for Jay or can I do it as well?

And most of the time it's no. Like I just need to focus on what works for me. So don't listen to advice blindly. 

Akta: I think that's great advice. It's about having that self-awareness. As you, you know, create and build, even though you're surrounded by loads of other inspiring graders. I think that's really important.

So that's pretty good advice. Thank you so much for coming on air. This is such a great conversation and I really appreciate how open you've been with me about, you know, what you're doing and what you've been building. So thank you so 

Kevon: much. Yeah, you can tell I'm an open book, so thank you so much for having me here.

Akta: If you're a creator managing sponsorships, check out passionfroot to help streamline your entire workflow. I'll see you in the next one.

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