Byrne Hobart has grown his newsletter following to more than 50,000 people, and he's fast become one of the most popular writers in Silicon Valley. Here's what he's taught me about writing: 1. Successful people converge on three ways to learn: lots of reading time, some exercises and projects, and some conversations with people who are slightly ahead of them. 2. Smart people read. 3. Smart and successful people read the most. 4. If you want to reach successful people, learn to write. 5. If you commit to writing about a narrow enough niche for a long enough time, you're basically guaranteed to become one of the world's experts on it. 6. Understand the tension between hooking people in, which requires surprise, and keeping them interested, which requires familiarity and relevance. A newsletter's sweet spot lives at the intersection of surprising and relevant. 7. Byrne puts all his writing to The Reader Test: If he was a reader, would he check out the newsletter first thing in the morning? 8. The people at the top of companies need highly compressed information because they're so void of time. If they trust you to be their intellectual zip file-that is, someone who compresses important ideas without losing any value-then they’ll pay a premium for your work. 9. Newer writing is cheaper to produce and easier to search than other kinds of content, so if there’s one specific piece of information you need, you’re more likely to find it in text than anywhere else. 10. The pathological outcome of rapid context-switching is that you’re the sort of person whose worldview is formed from the average of the first 50 pages of every major nonfiction bestseller, plus the average of the last dozen conversations you’ve had. 11. One of the great boons of the internet is that it’s taken a pathology of smart nerds - the desire to talk for hours about their favorite topic - and packaged it in a way that it’s a positive externality rather than a gaffe. 12. Hard work matters. Byrne said: “A long time ago I decided that I would never allow a situation where someone beat me at something I cared about not because they were lucky or smart, but just because they tried harder.” 13. The opportunity cost of reading a newsletter is higher than the price of a subscription.
Byrne Hobart has grown his newsletter following to more than 50,000 people, and he's fast become one of the most popular writers in Silicon Valley.
Here's what he's taught me about writing:
1. Successful people converge on three ways to learn: lots of reading time, some exercises and projects, and some conversations with people who are slightly ahead of them.
2. Smart people read.
3. Smart and successful people read the most.
4. If you want to reach successful people, learn to write.
5. If you commit to writing about a narrow enough niche for a long enough time, you're basically guaranteed to become one of the world's experts on it.
6. Understand the tension between hooking people in, which requires surprise, and keeping them interested, which requires familiarity and relevance. A newsletter's sweet spot lives at the intersection of surprising and relevant.
7. Byrne puts all his writing to The Reader Test: If he was a reader, would he check out the newsletter first thing in the morning?
8. The people at the top of companies need highly compressed information because they're so void of time. If they trust you to be their intellectual zip file-that is, someone who compresses important ideas without losing any value-then they’ll pay a premium for your work.
9. Newer writing is cheaper to produce and easier to search than other kinds of content, so if there’s one specific piece of information you need, you’re more likely to find it in text than anywhere else.
10. The pathological outcome of rapid context-switching is that you’re the sort of person whose worldview is formed from the average of the first 50 pages of every major nonfiction bestseller, plus the average of the last dozen conversations you’ve had.
11. One of the great boons of the internet is that it’s taken a pathology of smart nerds - the desire to talk for hours about their favorite topic - and packaged it in a way that it’s a positive externality rather than a gaffe.
12. Hard work matters. Byrne said: “A long time ago I decided that I would never allow a situation where someone beat me at something I cared about not because they were lucky or smart, but just because they tried harder.”
13. The opportunity cost of reading a newsletter is higher than the price of a subscription.
One of the most engaging dialogues in this show thus far.
Smart people read,
Smarter people write.
Loved this episode.
great pod like always