Doin' The Thing w/ Dillan Taylor
Doin' The Thing is a show for creators who want to build their thing better and faster. It's hosted by Dillan Taylor—certified life coach, writer, and CEO of Grindstone. He tracks the journey of scaling his first company, interviews top creators, and tells stories from 4000+ coaching sessions...to help you make better stuff, grow an audience, and make more money.
Doin' The Thing w/ Dillan Taylor
How a Newsletter Revived This Chess Master's Career (w/ Nate Solon) | 043
Dillan interviews Nate Solon—a chess coach, writer, and FM (FIDE Master) in chess. There are only about 9000 FMs in the world, which means Nate is in the top .3% of all chess players on the planet.
Nate writes the Zwischenzug newsletter, built a nice Twitter audience, made a few chess courses on Chessable, and even wrote a chess book. Nate uses his data science background in his content to help intermediate chess players study and improve at the game.
They discuss: how Nate revived his chess career after a long hiatus, how Nate grew an audience through long-form writing in a world of video content, Nate’s sales funnel for getting chess coaching students, how Nate builds Chessable courses, why Nate started and closed down a paid community, and at the end of the convo Nate and I play a quick blitz game.
Nate's links:
Website / Coaching / Courses: https://www.natesolon.com/
Twitter / X: https://x.com/natesolon
Newsletter: https://zwischenzug.substack.com/
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Follow Dillan on the interwebs:
Twitter / X: https://x.com/dillanroytaylor
Newsletter: https://newsletter.grindstone.work/
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0:00 Intro
1:37 Nate's chess career
5:05 What's an FM?
10:10 Why Nate started content
15:07 Can anyone make a chess course?
20:43 How Nate advertised
25:41 Types of chess content
28:11 Niche vs broad
35:54 Nate's ideal audience
39:27 Nate's paid community
