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What do you want to do with your life?
It’s not a rhetorical question.
What do you want to do with your life?
That's the difficult question a good friend of Jeff Goins asked him a few years ago; before Jeff had created Goinswriter.com, before Jeff landed a deal with a publisher, and before he truly started living his passion.
The questions we ask ourselves (and get asked) matter. The hard ones usually matter the most.
Stop Hiding
Jeff thought earnestly about the question and answered: "I want to be a writer."
His friends response: “You don’t have to want to be a writer, you are a writer. You just need to write.”
The realization hit Jeff like a ton of bricks. His friend was right. All he had to do was start writing.
So, with a clear purpose and direction, Jeff created his blog: Goinswriter.com.
In his first year, he wrote over 300 blog posts (300!) for his website and another 100 (100!) guest blog posts for various other websites. In less than two years, Jeff built his blog to a monthly readership of 100,000 people.
So what happened that sparked his incredible success?
In Jeff's own words: "I stopped hiding."
About Jeff Goins
Jeff is a blogger, speaker, published author, and, at his core, Jeff is a writer.
His blog, Goinswriter.com is all about writing, putting your work out there, and telling better stories.
Jeff's blog focuses on some essential questions Like:
- How do successful writers make a living?
- What does it really take to get published?
Jeff's blog is an incredible resource for aspiring artists and writers alike.
Jeff has been featured in Copyblogger, Problogger, and Zen Habits, among many other publications.
You can find his most recent book Wrecked: When a Broken World Slams into your Comfortable Life online and in bookstores everywhere.
Awesome Quotes From the Interview:
- You don’t have to want to be a writer, you are a writer. You just need to write.
- When I started creating my very best work, people started paying attention.
- Blogging literally is publishing. (tweet)
- Consistency is important, frequency is important, getting your name out there is important, but for me, it all comes down to creating your very best work.
- It’s really important to not assume my readers attention but to earn it. (tweet some more)
- Building [online] relationships is not the hard part. The hard part is having something to say and saying it in a way that is going to earn people’s attention. (tweet)
- People don’t find their purpose until they learn to give their lives away. (tweet this)
- We follow writers and authors and communicators not for their subject, not for what they say, but for how they say it.
- I had believed this popular paradigm online which is that you pick one subject and you just write about it and become an expert about it. I had started down that road but there was something about that that didn’t resonate with me. And I think the reason was that all the writers and authors that I read and appreciated didn’t stick to one particular subject or even genre. Maybe they started this way, but once they proved themselves they branched off into new areas.
- Great writers can write about any subject. (tweet tweet)
- Stop hiding. (definitely tweet this)
- The only, ONLY way that you get good, that you get REALLY good, is by creating something and sharing it with the world.
In this conversation, Jeff Goins and I talk about:
- Why calling yourself a writer is essential to your success as an author/writer/artist
- Why trust and permission are ESSENTIAL for the success of anyone (yes, that includes you)
- What it takes to become a great writer
- The truth about publishing (it’s not easy)
- How to grow a blog to over 100,000 readers a month in one year
- Why you don’t have to compromise your art to make money
- The ridiculous amount of commitment and grit necessary to create a successful blog
- Why most people waste time trying to create a successful blog instead of doing this one simple (but tough) thing.
- Why you need to create your best work
- How blogging requires more than just the ability to write (you need to be able to do it all: create, edit, publish, etc.)
- Why trying to hold onto a certain quality of life will make you lose out on your best possible life
- What Taylor Swift can teach us about pacing our content and art
- Why you need to stop hiding and starting shipping!
- The power of soul searching and questioning yourself to find your passion
- Why you need to hustle if you want to make it
In The Trenches with Tom Morkes on YouTube:
Socialize:
Reach out to Jeff and say hi!
Additional Show Notes:
Some of the stuff not linked or mentioned above:
A Manifesto for Misfits (the thing that instigated the full length Wrecked novel)