Stew Fortier

Writing Online and Building A Company For Writers

 

Episode Notes (by minute):

-2:00: What Stew learned from his Rice Mountain adventure and connecting and bartering with other people through his newsletter

-8:30: How Stew realized that people are willing to trade for things with less monetary value because of potentially for other intangible reasons

-10:30: How Stew realized that you can accomplish a great deal with a small audience

-12:30: How Stew has realized through his own writing and what he has seen through Foster: there is no real applicable formula for building an audience online applicable to everyone

-14:00: The importance of the skill of copywriting as a way to market your work or ideas

-16:30: Why the medium of where you write really matters. Different approaches are better for different mediums (e.g. Twitter, newsletter, book, etc)

-18:00: The importance of writing ideas that you are passionate about in the moment. When done consistently, it will may reveal insights about what people want to hear from you about

-20:30: How Foster started, their core community ritual, and how the product has evolved and improved over time

-23:30: How Stew and Foster got the word out about their company by interviewing other writers

-24:30: How Stew has learned that product evolution is iterative and takes time

-28:30: How a lot of influence is almost invisible and that with a small audience many great things can still happen

-31:30: The relationship between technological change and innovation opening up new markets. And the importance of thinking about how your company or your work actually creates value.

-33:30: How balance is hard as a Founder of a company. And the importance of writing when you have inspiration because writing can be the first thing to go

-37:30: How writing is communal and ideas come from talking with other people

-39:00: How the Rice Mountain experiment showed Stew that we may have a lot of goodwill that we can call on, and the importance of playing the long game

(Note: these are quick notes and takeaways by David Nebinski. Please see the episode for more accurate information)

Published Date: 8/18/22