Ep. 136 - Ev Williams: A Co-Founder of Twitter Speaks

Today’s guest changed my life. Seeing as he helped to invent Blogger and Twitter, he probably changed your life too! The Internet’s last decade and a half of development as a forum for writing has taken place in large part on platforms built in part by Ev Williams. Evan “Ev” Williams is on the show today to talk about his new blogging platform, Medium, and how he worked his way up to the top spot he is now. “I worked my whole life basically broke and in debt,” he tells me, and this may be a familiar situation for you. Struggling to realize your dreams, working hard to create something new the public wants – we’ve all experienced these efforts in one way or another, and some of your attempts may have been more successful than others. The hardest part about running your own business is not only having the confidence to take the risks, but also to pull yourself together if that risk should fail. Even success can come with its own stress. Working to create Blogger and Twitter led Ev to a ton of success in media, but he talks about the strange kind of success Google brought him and how you don’t always necessarily know what to do with it. In fact, he didn’t handle success very well at all the first time. As he said in an article in The New York Times “It wasn’t obvious to me that I wanted to sell my business,” he tells me when Google came asking for Blogger and absorbed him into the company. He was dedicated to seeing it become successful, but he did not know the rules and language of corporate success, and he ran into many roadblocks along the way. Of course, we know from hindsight that whatever he did was right, but how can you be sure of the outcome when you’re just starting on the path? Ev shares his answers to this difficult question, and his insightful advice on today’s podcast will teach you - How to find product-market fit for your business - How to monetize your web and media content in different ways - How to use multiple media platforms to reach your audience - How to use more than a website to get real interaction with your audience and clients Evan Williams’ new site Medium, www.medium.com, is up and running right now. Connect with Twitter, Facebook, or Google to get started, and see how you can use this new, larger platform to market yourself and interact with your clients. Resources: Ev Williams Twitter - @ev Ev Williams Medium here and here ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air! ------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltuchershow.com ------------ Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to “The James Altucher Show” wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsiHeart RadioSpotify Follow me on social media:YouTubeTwitterFacebookLinkedIn