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The Four Sharing Archetypes - Write for the Forward

The Story

CJ Gustafson designs posts around who would forward them, not who would like them. The Rough Draft podcast write-up describes his “virtuous cycle of sharing loops,” each with a specific motivation (Source 1):

  • “Venture capitalists and investors share CJ’s posts with their portfolio companies to feel as though they’re adding value.”
  • “Analysts and operators will forward his writing to their bosses to signal their intelligence and ambition.”
  • “CFO’s and leaders will pass CJ’s posts along to their teams to incorporate into their decision-making and workflows.”

The host adds: “The key is that CJ writes with these specific sharing scenarios in mind, understanding why and how his audience would pass along his writing. He even uses it as a barometer to gauge the quality of his posts” (Source 1).

The 12 Lessons follow-up describes a four-bucket version of the same model (Source 2):

  1. Aspiring CFOs who want to forward it to their boss
  2. Current CFOs who share it with their teams
  3. Investors who pass it to portfolio company CFOs
  4. CEOs who want to understand their own numbers better

Then he writes something useful enough to make them look smart. His own line on the operating principle: “I want to be the person they forward, because they want to look good” (Source 2). And the metric he actually optimizes for: “That’s what he optimizes for: the internal share. Not the like. Not the open. The moment someone hits forward and says, ‘You’ve got to see this’” (Source 2).

The What Worked transcript captures him running the same checklist out loud: “Every time I sit down to write something or really before I hit post, because I want it to be shareable, right? Is this for the CJ 10 years ago who was working in an FP&A department trying to get smarter, who can share this with their boss to say, look how smart I am and signal that? Or is this for CJ, the CFO who would share it with his team to say, hey, we should really look at incorporating this into our monthly cadence? Or is it for the third bucket, the investor who wants to quote unquote, add value and wants to brush up on different terms or, different ways of looking at business who will forward it to the CFO at their portfolio companies saying we should incorporate this in the next board meeting?” (Source 4). His summary: “By doing that, I’m solving for like the job to be done for all, for one of those audiences. Sometimes it’s more than one and it allows for it to spread organically on its own” (Source 4).

These days he doesn’t measure list growth as the primary signal anymore: “These days, CJ doesn’t pay as much attention to email list growth, choosing to keeping a closer eye on readership and people interacting with his posts. He can tell within 20 minutes how a post will perform based on early interactions (e.g., likes, comments, and shares)” (Source 1).

Lesson for Creators

Engagement-as-a-vanity-number measures the wrong thing. “Forward” is the metric. A like dies on a platform; a forward enters a private inbox with an implicit endorsement from someone the recipient trusts. To make a post forward-able, you have to know in advance who would pass it along and to whom — boss, team, peer, portfolio. CJ writes every piece against four named sharing motions and uses them as a quality bar before he hits send. If you can’t name who would forward your next post and why, the post probably won’t move.

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