This episode combines two topics that I feel are relevant today: writing online and building a community. Stew has been writing online for years. He realized that despite there being a lot of material on writing, there was still an opportunity to build a community. He was right. Compound Writing is building the premier online writing community. Stew shared his secrets on why it's working and how he is scaling it.

The Daily Beast is a leading news site—receiving millions of hits a month. Candace’s job is two-fold: audience development and audience engagement. Audience development involves identifying readers who might be interested in the Daily Beast and acquiring those readers. Audience engagement involves retaining those readers and building loyalty with them. If you are looking to grow an online audience, this is a must listen to episode.

The biggest lesson from my writing is building your own distribution channel. You can't rely on others. Paris taught us that. She has a combined 34M+ followers across Twitter, TikTok and Instagram. She did licensing instead of sponsorships. She controlled her brand, making sure she profited from it. Attention is a powerful tool. It doesn't matter how you gain it What's more important is what you do with it. Paris used her last name. She turned that into a net worth of $350MM+ and invented a new industry in the process. Thanks, Paris!

Tony started the account in December 2019. He went viral immediately. A few months later he saw an opportunity. Sherwin Williams could use TikTok to market to Gen-Z. His manager loved the idea. His manager connected him to the corporate marketing department of Sherwin Williams. He emailed them a few times. He even LinkedIn them. He finally heard back ... two months later. They said no thanks.

Joe is a friend of mine who I met on Twitter. He might not be well known, but he is one of the best podcast hosts I know. His podcast, One Percent Better, has interesting guests and doesn’t ask the typical questions. He challenges them creating unique interview experiences. If you are interested in starting a podcast or already run one, I'd recommend listening.

I've been a stockholder of Disney since birth, No, I'm not joking. My grandparents bought it for me as a gift the day I was born. The stock has increased ~10.2x since that year, 1994. No doubt, a solid return. In that same period, the Dow Jones has returned ~6.84x. Not too shabby of a choice by my grandparents when you look at the Dow Jones.

Well, isn't Netflix simple? Open the app and start watching something. Yes, in practice. No, in theory. When do you actually go on Netflix and start watching something immediately? Rarely, if ever. How many times have you thought about watching something new to go back to reruns of the Office? If it was so easy to choose content, there wouldn't be 653M results for "What to Watch on Netflix?" This is a problem that Netflix thinks about all the time.

And this is why newsletters are becoming more popular than ever. Consumer attention is scarce. Just because a consumer follows you on social media, doesn't mean they engage with your brand. But a newsletter is different, they are letting you into their life. You are taking up a small part of their inbox.

Did you ever wonder how to become an executive? How someone can go from intern to senior leader? Well this week, my guest Mikey Sadowski explains just how he did that. He got into the communication world by happenstance; through hard work, and a little bit of luck found himself as the GM of PR and Communications at Intrepid Travel.