Doin' The Thing w/ Dillan Taylor

How a Newsletter Revived This Chess Master's Career (w/ Nate Solon) | 043

Dillan Taylor / Nate Solon
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00:00:00 | 01:13:01

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 Dillan 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

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