Creator Spotlight: Tyler Steinhardt

What is Creator Spotlight?

Each week we'll feature a newsletter on beehiiv that's experiencing tremendous success with their content and growth. It's a two part initiative packed into a single day:

1. an email showcasing their content, tips, and goals (this email here)

2. and a live Twitter Spaces today where you can join the conversation and ask questions directly

Tell me about Pique Action

Pique Action the newsletter was launched when we came out of stealth mode last October. At Pique, we’re seeking to change the conversation around climate change - instead of doom and gloom, we aim to inspire optimism and action by talking about solutions. The newsletter is aimed at drawing in those curious about climate change to a range of resources and solutions. Each edition gives a sneak pique at the upcoming films that we’re producing and also puts a spotlight on good climate news. We feel that it’s critical to amplify news that’s good in climate-related issues, since so often only the bad news breaks through.

You’ve previously worked in sports media—how is it different from climate-related content development?

There’s a built in infrastructure for sports, we have teams, leagues, players, beat writers to cover this stuff. Climate is a new topic and what we’re doing is an emerging field within the new topic. There’s not the same funding or infrastructure of what’s happening, despite it being a far bigger issue. Sports have been around and such a big part of society for so long.

How do you navigate the conversation with people that claim climate issues are not real?

A lot of folks in the climate space will tell you that the tactic of delay, i.e. saying climate change is not real, it’s manmade, was used by those interested in keeping the status quo. Now, we’re seeing the new strategy is doom- it’s too late to do anything, we’re screwed so why make any changes. It’s the same playbook to figure out how to continue to do business as usual.

Scientists are not always the best storytellers, they are focused on doing research in the field. We find what we think are interesting solutions, often on the frontier of technology. These are things that haven’t been done before. We also want to get the human stories as well, it’s not just about the technology being developed, but what is the story of the person(s) who developed the technology?

How is the conversation changing?

It’s becoming more personal, we’re seeing the results of climate change in our lives more than ever before. There were 20 weather and climate disasters that cost over a billion dollars in 2021. We have overlapping public health crises, including higher rates of asthma, fertility crisis, microplastics are showing up in lungs. As we become more aware of how these issues are affecting us, it’ll become more urgent.

But change will come when we understand that there are choices, alternatives. If you’re not aware that solutions are available, you’re not going to imagine a better solution. If you’re always told to not eat meat, or to use a paper straw, you’re going to run out of steam. These issues are global and we need policy changes, but we also need to know that there are inspiring people doing incredible work that address climate on a much larger scale than what we’re able to do as individuals.

We believe that if we’re able to shed some light on these solutions and tell the human story behind these humans, we’re creating more holistic and accessible information that can inspire action. We are often sharing content from other creators also talking about solutions, because we know this ecosystem is really important. The more people talking about this, the healthier the conversation. If we’re only ever hearing the bad things that are going on, it’s so easy to feel overwhelmed. It’s important we talk about the progress we’re making.

What are your goals around scaling?

We’re always looking to get more “climate curious” folks to sign-up. Our biggest referral generator is tiktok, so much so that we link to the newsletter in our bio. It’s a case of content finding the consumer and the consumer wanting to get more of it on a consistent basis. We have three hosts creating our content on tiktok, all with a fun, humorous take.

We use pollinate on our twitter which is great for bringing new subscribers to beehiiv, they are linked and it’s seamless. We’re excited about the referral program on beehiiv and will be launching that this summer.

Advice for other writers

Humor is a winning formula

Want more?

Join the conversation with Tyler Steinhardt on Twitter Spaces. We'll discuss how Tyler plans to scale and how we can do better making impactful environmental changes.

For those new to Twitter Spaces—you can join the conversation and ask Tyler (and others) whatever you want!

When: Today at 7pm ET Where: Twitter Spaces (link below)

In the meantime, be sure to follow Tyler on Twitter here and subscribe to his newsletter here!