Talking Big Ideas.
“Strive for continuous improvement.”
~ Kim Collins
We’re heading to Substack!
Next week, we’ll re-launch under a new name: Talking Big Ideas. I’ll continue to share useful tactics for crafting stories, building confidence, and being audience focused.
We’ll keep discussing broad topics in communications, psychology, philosophy, productivity, and health – along with big ideas in technology, innovation, next-gen energy, and more.
All with the goal of helping you become a better speaker and leader for the ideas that matter most to you.
Importantly, you don’t have to do anything. You’ll still get a free Friday email from me. You don’t need to create a Substack account or get an app on your phone – though you can do both if you’d like.
WHY MIGRATE?
Substack is the best place to write online. It’s been called “a major game-changer . . . the biggest disruption to journalism, personal writing, and thought leadership since the blog boom of the 2000s.”
Eric Hoel writes in All writing is centralizing onto Substack about “how powerfully it will amplify the voices of those who take advantage of it.” He compares the migration of writing onto Substack with videos centralizing onto YouTube and music consolidating onto Spotify.
Substack helps readers find good content – and it helps writers share their ideas with the world. We think there are more people that would find our newsletter useful. This is an ideal way to reach them.
THE BENEFITS
Several of you have encouraged us to migrate to Substack. We listened and agree.
The user experience is superior. You’ll find that Substack is easy to read. It has a clean and attractive design. And they make it effortless for you as a reader to find more authors covering the topics you care about.
Many of the best writers today have moved to Substack. Vanity Fair points out that “literary lions have joined Substack (Salman Rushdie, George Saunders, Roxane Gay, Chuck Palahniuk, Joyce Carol Oates), which has also begun to attract celebrities of varying stripes (Padma Lakshmi, Nick Offerman, Dan Rather, Edward Snowden, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar).”
I’ll be joining them all, alongside some of my favorite writers: Erik Hoel, Scott Alexander, Emily Oster, Bryan Caplan, Robin Hanson, Jon Haidt, Eli Dourado, and more. There are no gatekeepers at Substack, so it’s also an ideal place to support free speech and find independent, unique, and niche voices.
WHAT STAYS
Just about everything stays the same for you.
We’ll continue to publish a new piece at 10:30 am Durango Time every Friday. Our basic format, structure, and focus will continue.
Our goal remains the same: help people grow and connect. We’ll keep covering useful tactics for crafting stories, building confidence, and being audience focused.
And we’ll stay broad in our range: from communications and psychology to philosophy, productivity, and health. All as it relates to helping you become a better speaker, leader, and human.
SLIGHT CHANGES
We’re renaming the newsletter Talking Big Ideas.
We focus on public speaking and listening. We help innovators, builders, and leaders who are advancing ideas that will make the world better. Now, we’ll talk more about these big ideas: innovation, AI, next-gen energy, charter cities, free speech, abundance, and more.
We’re going to stop numbering our pieces. (This one, #109, will be the last to have a number.) Substack’s former head of comms says that numbering posts “does nothing to enlighten or intrigue the reader” and begins “with the least useful possible piece of information.” This is good advice – similar to our piece encouraging you not to lead with tax status when talking about what you do.
We’ll occasionally post on Tuesday in addition to Friday. These may be short tactical pieces, links to consider, or updated versions of something I’ve previously written.
***
We are deeply grateful to you for reading our newsletter. And we’re excited for you to join us on this iteration. We’re confident you’ll appreciate Substack! As the excellent Arnold Kling writes:
People who really care about ideas will turn to reading and writing on Substack instead of books and journals.
***
IDEA
We’re taking the newsletter to the next level.
Take a moment to explore Substack. I’m confident you’ll discover excellent writers covering the topics you care about most.
***
Cheers,
Bob
If you find this useful, please subscribe to our free weekly newsletter.
