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Coleman John
Blockbuster and Netflix are two of the most well-known names in the entertainment industry, and both significantly impacted how people watch movies and TV shows. Blockbuster was once the dominant video rental market, with thousands of retail locations worldwide. However, with the rise of digital streaming, Blockbuster struggled to keep up and eventually declared bankruptcy in 2010.
Netflix recognised the advantage of technology early on and leveraged it to disrupt the traditional entertainment industry. The company was one of the first to offer a DVD rental-by-mail service, a game-changer for customers tired of the hassle and inconvenience of visiting physical rental stores. Netflix then embraced the digital age by launching its streaming platform, which allowed customers to watch movies and TV shows on their devices instantly.
In contrast, Blockbuster was slow to adapt to the digital landscape and failed to recognise the potential of technology. The company relied heavily on its retail locations and could not see the writing on the wall as more and more customers switched to digital streaming. As a result, Blockbuster missed opportunities to innovate, such as the potential to launch its streaming platform, and instead focused on maintaining its traditional business model.
Blockbuster was a video rental chain popular in the 1980s and 1990s. Customers could go to a Blockbuster store, browse the selection of movies and TV shows, and rent a physical DVD or VHS tape to watch at home. Blockbuster also offered a mail-order rental service, where customers could order movies online and deliver them to their homes.
Organisations that are not using or planning to use innovative technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Understanding (NLU), inevitably, given enough time, will join the line of bankrupts such as Blockbusters.
On the other hand, Netflix is a streaming service that allows customers to watch movies and TV shows online on a computer or various devices such as TVs, tablets, and smartphones. Netflix originally started as a DVD rental service similar to Blockbuster, but it quickly evolved into a streaming service as the technology for streaming video improved.
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I started writing because I was jobless and needed to turn my life around. I was an over-saturated news consumer with nothing to show for it. I loved ideas, but had nobody to talk about them with. When I brought up intellectual subjects, my friends mocked me.
The game of online writing rewards people who publish consistently. Though frequency is the price of entry, quality writing is a force multiplier on your success. If your ideas resonate, the number of opportunities available to you will explode.
Become known as the best thinker on a topic and open yourself to the serendipity that makes writing online so special. Uncover your strengths, clearly communicate your values, and start building your reputation online. Download the guide to your Personal Monopoly.
Once I learned to Write from Abundance, I saw how the practice was alive in many fields. I last saw them when I visited my tailor and asked him for help making a blazer. Instead of starting from scratch, he put a bunch of materials on the table (silk, buttons, swatches, etc.). Then he mixed and matched the possibilities until a design emerged. Your notes are like those raw materials. If you ever get stuck, you can pour them onto the page and see what materializes when your ideas collide.
I once attended a comedy show with a group of friends. Since the venue was across town, we split a Chevy Suburban SUV. From the moment the driver hit the gas, everybody was on their phones. From the back row, I watched my friends scroll their social media feeds with ferocious intensity. One thing stuck out: everybody in front of me only consumed content created within the last 24 hours.
Short-form: Social media is at its best when it matches you with people who share your exact interests and teach you about what you want to write about. Unfollow celebrities. Replace them with people who make you smarter and bring long-lasting joy.
Medium-form: Read less of the news. Subscribe to magazines and YouTube channels that post timeless ideas. Read essays and speeches that have stood the test of time. Find people whose recommendations you consistently enjoy and subscribe to their newsletters.
Long-form: Get away from your screen and read more books. If it helps, start a book club. Find classic books to read. Watch old documentaries and listen to lecture series. Crawl the Internet for college syllabuses so you can read them on your own time.1
I never read articles in my web browser. When I come across an interesting article, I save it to an app that automatically downloads it to my phone so I can read it later. Saving these articles gets me out of a reactivity loop, where I read things immediately after I find them (which is what most people do). I want my reading to be much more intentional than that.
Read-it-Later apps act as a quality filter for your reading too. By saving articles to an app and refusing to instantly read things you come across on the Internet, you raise the bar for what grabs your attention. With a Read-it-Later app, whenever you sit down to read, you have hundreds of articles to choose from. You can allocate your attention to the best one.
Embrace the dance of conversation. Good conversations push the frontier of consciousness. Pick one small part of your idea and put it out there. Observe. Watch their body language as you speak. Notice the questions they ask and the assumptions they bring to the table. All those responses yield new information. You see the map of your idea through their eyes, which shapes your next move.
Many of my best essays have started by sharing embryo ideas in my newsletters and engaging in conversations with readers. I read every reply. Those replies highlight which ideas have legs and are worth pursuing. Sometimes, the responses catapult my writing on a new trajectory.
In later phases, when the piece is coming together, it helps to get reactions from your editor. As they read, they can highlight sentences from your draft and share their feelings with you.
In Write of Passage, we use an acronym called CRIBS. Editors mark if a section is confusing, repetitive, interesting, surprising or boring. The method is universal because it focuses on standard emotions that everybody has instead of the mechanics of writing, which fewer people are familiar with.
Early ideas become final drafts in the same way that tree sap becomes maple syrup. What begins as a bunch of raw material gets distilled into sweetness. Just as it takes 50 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup, writing is always a process of distillation. Good writers distill hours (or weeks) of experience into a short, compressed artifact.
Building an audience begins with attracting people on public platforms like Twitter and Reddit, both of which act like public squares where you can reach people at scale, for free. These public platforms are governed by algorithms that match people with similar interests. Since the biggest ones have hundreds of millions of people, they are divided into tiny subcultures, most of which are too niche to function in the physical world.
The difference between Substack and a website is like the difference between a mall kiosk and a retail store. Sure, you can sell clothes from a kiosk. You have low overhead and a bunch of walk-by foot traffic too. The problem with a kiosk is that each one looks undifferentiated to the casual observer. In a retail store, you can control the branding, lighting, sound, smell, the checkout experience, and the whole shebang.
Websites let you design your reader experience. By using a Start Here page and Essay categories, you let readers choose their own adventure. Guided by their curiosity, they carve a unique path through your body of work.
Your Start Here page will be the first thing people see when they land on your site. Readers want direction. They want to know who you are, what you write about, and which essays they should read first. Aim to achieve all that in 10 seconds or less.
Newsletter platforms restrict the aesthetic quality of your site. You typically get to pick one accent color, and then you choose from one of three fonts (modern, newspaper, or robot world). Everything looks the same.
On Twitter, even though I have more than 300,000 followers, only my most viral tweets reach that many people. Meanwhile, the emails I send reach basically every person who subscribes to my newsletter (partially because everybody checks their inbox). Just as subscriptions lead to recurring revenue for software businesses, email lists lead to recurring attention for online writers.
No matter what option you choose, remember that you need a public platform to spread your ideas and connect you with new readers. Once they find you, it should be easy for them to sign up for your newsletter.
Like Foote and Caro, take inspiration from people who are nothing like you. A unique voice can show up in all kinds of ways. Packy McCormick injected humor to the antiseptic world of business writing, and explained ideas with memes. Tim Urban got tired of buttoned-up explanations of intellectual concepts and played around with stick figure drawings instead. Nassim Taleb personifies his ideas by pulling from a cadre of make-believe characters like Fat Tony, an Italian guy with serious street smarts who belongs in a mafia movie like The Godfather.
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