How Dickie Bush kickstarted an online writing revolution

A former portfolio manager at BlackRock is leading a community of internet writers

Hey friends,

It’s no secret that in today’s world writing is an essential skill. Whether that’s Twitter, Threads, newsletter posts, or marketing your brand on LinkedIn, being able to present yourself properly is becoming increasingly important. Today, we are bringing you the story of someone who used this skill to not only build his own personal brand, but is also helping others do the same: Dickie Bush.

With a growing community of writers and an online presence of hundreds of thousands of followers across multiple platforms, Dickie has initiated a vibrant movement that is changing the writing scene as we know it. This is his story. 

From Main Street to Wall Street and back

Dickie grew up facing financial hardship, but he found a way out of the cycle. While playing football at Princeton, Dickie was set on pursuing a career in finance. In college, Dickie had an internship at BlackRock, which led to a full-time offer to join the firm after graduation. Little did he know that it would be the only corporate job he’d ever have. 

As a junior hedge fund trader, he was in his element working in macro markets. However, taking orders from other people was not going to cut it for long; he had discovered his inner entrepreneur. This coincided with his growing interest in writing, so he decided to lean into it a little further.

How 30 days can change your life

As many other writers, all Dickie wanted to do is share his thoughts on the knowledge he had gained from books, podcasts, and other media. When the pandemic hit, he decided to start posting online and publish one newsletter post a week. Slowly but surely, he got into the habit of posting, but wanted more. 

After some deliberation, he challenged himself to publish 7 pieces within 7 days, but soon hit a productivity wall. So, he turned to social media and asked for help. This allowed him to connect with a number of people who wanted to do the challenge with him as accountability buddies. Following research best practices around habit creation, Dickie expanded the project to 30 days. It was a great success, and helped  Dickie fully commit to writing while building a community of like-minded individuals. Eventually, Dickie realized that he had created something of value. So, he decided to take the challenge that had such a positive impact on his life and pass it on to others. And so, Ship 30 for 30 was born.

Sailing towards freedom

In 2021 Dickie teamed up with Nicolas Cole, another dedicated writer, and scaled Ship 30 to 30 to a cohort-based course that would help aspiring writers pursue their passion and become more efficient. By introducing an easy and consistent metric of 250-word essays a day, the program ensured that members were not writing too much, but they still had to face tricky questions such as where to publish and when to post. 

Soon, early adopters started seeing progress, and word of mouth spread quickly. At the end of the year , Dickie and Nicolas had amassed an armada of 2,000 shipers that had joined the challenge and purchased their course. After seeing promising results, Dickie decided to leave his job at BlackRock and scale his own venture instead.

Today, Dickie has been able to help over 7,000 people that have successfully turned into experienced writers. Throughout this journey he amassed 360,000 Twitter followers and 52,000 LinkedIn followers. But for him, this is just the beginning: in the next few years, he wants to show one million new students how to write online.

Cheers,

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