I'm a designer who turned into a writer who turned into a startup CEO. My mission is to help creators earn a living. Subscribe for essays on building an audience and earning a living as a creator.
Lessons from 2 decades of publishing online
Hey Reader,
I'm out of town this week with my family at Disneyland. I'm not sure who's looking forward to it more, me or the kids!
FROM THE PODCAST
Dave Pell
Dave Pell has been writing online for almost as long as the internet has existed. His popular newsletter NextDraft has over 140,000 subscribers. NextDraft covers the day’s ten most fascinating news stories, delivered with a fast and pithy wit. We talked about how Dave merged his two writing passions into a successful product, the key to building a strong relationship with your audience, and how he dramatically increased signups to NextDraft.
FROM TWITTER
The odd story of our fake board candidate
I honestly don't even know what to say about this story, except that it happened. I still don't understand the end goal. Did they think they were going to get hired and actually work a job, or serve on a board they had no real qualifications for? It seems impossible but I can't figure out how else they benefit from this. Let me know if you've ever seen anything like this!
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Nathan Barry
I'm a designer who turned into a writer who turned into a startup CEO. My mission is to help creators earn a living. Subscribe for essays on building an audience and earning a living as a creator.
Hey Reader, What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? You’ve probably seen some version of this question before. It’s a good one, though sometimes the answer isn’t immediately obvious. That’s why I like Graham Weaver’s 8 questions for what to do with your life. Graham founded the private equity firm Alpine Investors, and he teaches at Stanford. In Chapter 2 of my upcoming book, The Ladders of Wealth, I credit him with a principle he shared with his MBA students called "worse first",...
Hey Reader, If I could solve only one thing in my business, that would have the biggest impact, what would that be? This is the question every great entrepreneur obsesses over. Rather than trying to do everything at once, you look for the bottleneck and focus on solving that. There’s a book called The Goal by an Israeli physicist named Eliyahu Goldratt. It’s a 1984 business novel that business systems nerds love. However if you’re not a business systems nerd you probably… won’t love it. It’s...
Hey Reader, Have you ever spent money on something and immediately felt guilty afterward? Will Guidara spends his money foolishly on purpose. And he thinks you should too. He once bought an entire barrel of whiskey and put it in his basement. He also put a skee-ball machine in the office. Is he going to get a monetary return on either of these things? No. But that’s kind of the point. He calls it the 95/5 rule: Manage your money and time like a maniac 95% of the time (no expense is too...