Ep 188: Creating More Connection & Value Equals More Revenue For Your Blog with Jeff Goins

Jaryd Krause (0:00)

The more connection and value you create, the more money you'll make. Hi, I'm Jaryd Krause, host of the Buying Online Businesses podcast. And today I'm speaking with Jeff Goins, who was a writer, keynote speaker and entrepreneur with a reputation for challenging the status quo is the bestselling author of five books, including The Art of Work and Real Artists Don't Starve. He's an award winning-blog, Goineswriter.com is visited by millions of people every year. And his work has been featured in Washington Post, USA today, Entrepreneur, Forbes, Psychology Today, Business Insider, Time and many others. And he is the creative force behind the ghost writing agency Fresh Complaints. Now I am a massive fan of Jeff, I tell a story in the podcast episode about how I discovered Jeff and what I got the all the value that I got from Jeff now in his podcast episode, Jeff and I actually break down how to create connection within our blog posts.

And within our writing, we also talk about how to get people to take action on our blog posts that can lead to deeper relationships, more connection, and actually more money through our blogs, as well. We will talk about how to touch people with your writing, which is really, really important some of the 80/20 principle that Jeff talks about, and the 80/20 principle being within writing and within challenging the status quo and what that actually looks like for you, and how you can instill that in your blog post, then Jeff, and I move into talking about how and why you should play the long game with your content and not ask for too much too quickly in terms of trying to make sales straightaway and trying to make money straight away. And instead adding value playing the long game.

Jeff Goins (3:21)

Jaryd, good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jaryd Krause (3:23)

I remember I was going to tell you a little story before we hit the record buttons. But I want to tell you now on so everybody knows, I think it was 2012, 2013 when I first started my blog, I started writing travel articles, and I wanted to become better at writing. And I came across your writing and you were helping bloggers and stuff like that, and you had really good writing. And I looked up to you and I learned so much from you. And I just want to say thank you. And I'm really grateful. And I'm so stoked to be able to talk to you on the show now.

Jeff Goins (3:52)

Thanks. Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate that.

Jaryd Krause (3:54)

Since then things have evolved in my life and businesses and stuff like that. And I'm now helping people buy blogs and content sites. And I see that there's a bit of a problem in our space, Jeff and I that's why I wanted to get you on to chat about writing and writing better blogs because most people blogging in our space because they want to replace their income and just do it for the money and what's been lost is writing style and just writing really good content, not just for the money, but to help people and serve people.

And not as much people care about their work. They're playing a numbers game, they want to put out as much content as it possibly can they got a lot of ghost writers and I don't think that's a problem. But the editing of that is insufficient in in many, many ways. So as a blogger, I want to I want to speak to you about how to not be boring in our writing and how to serve better so you talk about exceptional writing.

What are some of the ingredients like you to speak to so many people what are some of the ingredients that you would be sharing with people that can allow them to have exceptional writing if they've got blogs trying to make money. But also put some love into that. Right?

Jeff Goins (5:04)

Right? Well, money follows value. And value in many cases is a byproduct of connection. Right I value the things that I'm connected to, that I feel connected to. So think about the relationships that you value the most, they're often your deepest, most meaningful connections. So, money and connection, one could say, are not the same thing. But related. I never tried to make money off of my writing, mostly because I didn't know that it was a thing that you could do.

And I started blogging in 2006. Yeah, but I always wanted to make a connection, right? And the reality is, if you make a connection, you can make money, right? Think about, I don't know what things are like in Australia, but in the US, if you're walking through, say, a shopping mall, right? Or walking down the street in a busy city, you might have somebody say, hey, excuse me, can I talk to you, and you ignore them, because they're trying to sell you something, they don't actually want to talk to you.

But even in that, sort of, what I'm saying like, even or like, back in the days, when people would call you and they would get, they would get your phone number, and they would call you and try to sell you something. Now, my iPhone literally says spam, no, answer this. But even then, even those people that are trying to sell you makeup in the shopping mall, or whatever, they understand that, before I can make a sale, I first have to make a connection.

So set that aside for a second and go, Well, how do I how do I make a connection? Not being boring is a really important piece of that, because we ignore things that are boring, because more often than not, things that bore us feel ordinary they feel taken for granted, the sky is blue is a boring idea, because everybody knows that. And if I say the sky is red, on the other side, unless it really is because it's the sunset or something I say it's something, say something completely absurd. That gets dismissed. Right? So think about this in terms of the writing world, people will ignore your writing, because you're saying something so outlandish.

Even if it's true, even if it's like aliens landed in my backyard yesterday, and it actually happened. It doesn't matter that it's true. We don't believe the truth. We believe things that are interesting to us. Right? That's, that's really important. When you think about sales, marketing content, it's all the same thing, which is, I have to tell my reader a story that they're willing to accept. And if I don't do that, I lose. I can't I can't sell them anything. I can't get them to believe anything. And so rule number one is I have to surprise them with something that is not so outlandish that they go that's crazy.

I'm not listening to you. And it's an it's not so boring that they go well, yeah, everybody knows that. And so when these days, I don't spend a lot of time working on blogs, I write books, and I run a ghost writing agency now helping people write and edit books, we will go straight at wall so I help people work on their content. And I learned this from blogging, which is that just because you say something doesn't mean people are going to pay attention. And the stakes for blog posts are relatively low stakes for a book that you might spend a year or two writing and you might spend a lot of money working on that.

That's how you want to get that message, right. And so when we're working with a client, we always start with a big idea. And a big idea is always an idea that challenges your audience's assumptions. And so every time you sit, every time I sat down to write a blog post, I thought, I'm picking a fight here, what is the thing that I could say that I believe is true, that would also be upsetting to a certain group of people, and equally exciting to another group of people. If you do that, you win, which is I don't want to just go around pissing people off. But I also don't want to go around telling people exactly what they want to hear.

I want to challenge their assumptions, get them to think differently about something. And the little tool that I use is just a little simple formula. And you could use it for every blog post you ever write, which is everybody thinks Acts about a particular subject, everybody thinks blank about a subject. But the truth is why. And one of the reasons I succeeded as a blogger so many years ago, is every blog post was a fight. And I blogged every day for two years straight. I mean, I was very prolific.

And I never mailed it in or if I did I regretted it and, tried harder the next time but like I wrote every day as if my blog depended on it. I wasn't making any money off of it. I was just trying to get some attention. And then I turned that attention into, a seven figure business but before all of that it was just a fight for the attention.

Jaryd Krause (9:47)

Yeah, and I will say that you definitely did nail it and having a fight every day. I think it's a really good way to think about it because you've got an ideology and you want to I guess it's kind of like you're saying you kind of want to challenge the status quo. But you don't want it to be so far out there that people are like, well, that's a conspiracy theory or something like, oh, would I?

Jeff Goins (10:06)

Yeah, unless your audience loves conspiracy theory. And, again, because it's one thing to say these things broadly, it's another thing to sit down and do it, it's actually easier than it sounds. And think of it like this 80% The same 20% Different so let's say you're writing in a niche about auto something, boring and, and high cardio pick a fight with it, like plumbing or something. I have a blog about plumbing.

And so the first thing you would want to do is like, read some blogs about plumbing. Yeah. And go, what are most people saying about plumbing? Well, they're saying, well, this is the best pipe, for pleasure, or this is the best, right? Or anything about plumbing, this is the best wrench for plumbers. Or here's, here's my Amazon shopping list for plumbers. But you will kind of look at what your competitors are doing, or the people in your niche doing. And pretty soon, you'll see what most people are doing, like you, Jaryd know that there are other blogs and websites on the internet about buying other businesses, about acquisitions, and there's in that's kind of an interesting niche, because there's, there's probably not a ton, right? There's like hundreds of 1000s of blogs, that's still gone. But there's but there's yeah, there's something out there.

And if there wasn't, you should be worried because then then that means there's probably not an audience for it. So you, you look at your competitors, you look at the people that are doing what you're doing. And maybe they're even like doing it better than you are, they're making more money, they're reaching more people wonderful. Figure out what they're doing that's actually working. And you may not know, and so you'll have to try some stuff, you'll have to copy what your competitors are doing. This is wonderful. Do that. And then, don't plagiarize, of course, yeah, yeah. And then make it 20% different, just a little tweak, right? So go, okay, all of my competitors agree with this one thing, maybe there's 10 rules to a great plumbing blog, or there's 10 rules on what you should do to buy a business.

And I'm going to disagree with like one or two of those. And that that's the thing that I'm going to hang my hat on. So there's a lot of people that do what I do, which is their ghost writers or editors, they help people make books, right? And most of what my competitors do. I do, because how do you make a book is how you make a book, we've been doing it the same way for about 500 years, right? You come up with an idea, you outline it, you write it, you edit it over and over and over again, and then you publish it. But the one thing that I sort of challenge is, we won't let you write a boring book, right? Because if you write a boring book, nobody's going to talk about it, and nobody's going to read it.

And we just found out that night, this is true. This just came out in the news the past couple of weeks, with the big merger that's about to happen in the publishing world that's being challenged right now. And over 90%, nine, zero over 90% have traditionally published books, these are books, the publisher said, we're going to publish this book where he because we think it'll sell over 90%, sell fewer than 25 copies to 525 copies in the first year. Right. So what does that say to you like, either these authors have no friends, because I could think of 30 or 4050 people who would buy something just because they like me, because I asked them, because I went out to lunch with them. Or they're writing boring books.

And there are a lot of people, there's a publisher, there's an editor, there's another, there's a lot of people who are letting these people write boring books, you don't want to read a boring book, I don't want to read a boring book. I mean, look at this is not just about marketing, because marketing a bad product, as David Ogilvy famously said, only makes it fail faster, better marketing makes bad products fail faster. It's not just a problem of marketing. Because if you write even if you read a great interesting book, that you don't mark it at all, somebody's going to read that and talk about it, it is going to sell more than 25 copies.

So that's the fight I'm picking is most authors write boring books, and they don't know it until it's too late. And I want to stop that all you have to do is looking at what your competitors doing, do most of the things that they're doing, because that's what works Otherwise, they wouldn't be in business. And then pick one or two things that you're going to do different.

Jaryd Krause (14:20)

I like it, I like it so much. And I have a goal as well is I want to help people to not have a boring blog post. Similar to you not people having a having a boring book, because it's just, it's going to make there's so many blogs out there that are just boring. And we know that and, it could be a similar stat, it could be 90% of blogs, people don't read because they're bored or I'm sure I wouldn't be alarmed if it was a similar stat and we have the opportunity to help people and serve people with better blogs and better writing where we can actually connect people will create a connection to build trust, and then help them get the right product or the service or the right ideology from our blog.

So want to talk about the connection, I'm sure that there's people that do agree and go, Oh, yes, I've thought about those that 20% of the thing within that certain niche that I don't agree with either. And it really lands for them and creates that connection. And we need that connection to build trust. And that's marketing, right, the more trust and stuff we have, the more value we're going to be able to give to people and make other some other things that we can do to create that connection outside of just the 20%. Or is that 20% being different? Or is the other layers within that 20% of being different?

Jeff Goins (15:42)

And they'll both have, right? So yeah, no, so I think the 20% thing, right, like, pick a fight, do something different. That's the topic. That's the title. That's the headline, that's what we're going to start with the big idea. So like, like, let's make it real. Like, let's pick an actual let's use you as an example. Like, let's pick a topic that would be let's go big enough that you would with what.

Jaryd Krause (16:50)

Fishing or something like that. Fishing, fishing.

Jeff Goins (16:08)

Alright, cool. All right. So I have a fishing blog, right. And there's lots of ways to monetize that we won't get into that. But you could sell fishing gear, you could teach fishing lessons, whatever, I am aware that there are all these things that fishing blogs do and some of those things I go, I don't agree with that, right? And so I'm going to pick one of those things. And I'm going to write an article about that most, most fly fishers believe that you should, make your own flies. And I don't believe that I don't even think you should use flies.

I think you should use Rob eight all the time, you should use actual insects. I don't I don't know if that's yeah. And so I'm going to write an article, that's going to be my topic. That's my, the, like, most people do this, I'm going to do this. So why Rob Bates is better than making your own Lures. Right. So how do I engage people? Well, a story, we've been telling stories for all of humanity, that's a pretty good way to start. So opening with a story, or a hard hitting, like blow my hair back kind of thing. And there's different ways to do this. And I don't want to like, I mean, gosh, I used to, speak multiple courses teach multiple courses on writing different kinds of blog posts.

So I don't want to be too general, I don't want to get like too nerdy about things, I would start with a big idea in the headline, I would tell a story. And then within that story, I would have some sort of aha moment where you are going to share with the reader, where you are the person that you're telling the story about experienced a transformation, an epiphany, a wake up, call something where they go, I thought this, and now I think this and then you want to bring it home and apply it to the reader in some sort of actionable way. And that action, and that action can be live bait thing on Amazon. Or it could be something a little bit more implicit, like, next time you're out fishing, consider this instead of that, but in general, a call to action actually needs to call the reader to act, they need to do something.

And this is how you actually know that you're engaging people. A page view is not engagement, that that might mean they read your page visit or whatever that might mean they went there, they looked at it and then bounced or whatever. And so as much as you can measure action on your blog, the better your data is going to be, and the more feedback you're going to get. And it could be what leave a comment here or go like this, or go by this or any, yeah, right click here, I can very easily measure if you came here from Google, read this article, and then went read another article that's wonderful, you're engaged or becoming kind of bought into the system.

But it's not enough for you to just read my article I want you to, I want the big idea to catch your attention. Yes, I want to lure you in with some blue or hey, it's a fishing blog, I want to lure you in with a story. I want to get you to trust me. And then I want to get you to do something in order to get you to do something, I have to get you to sort of change your mind about something right? That is education. Actually, the word education literally means to lead out of ignorance. And so if I'm going to teach you something, I've got to I've got to grab your attention.

I've got to sort of lead you through some sort of narrative process. And then there's got to be some big moment and that's it. I mean, that that's how that's what all personal transformation is. That's what all teaching is. That's what all marketing is, hey, can I get your attention? Bla I'm introducing a problem to you and now my product solves that problem. So in a way a really good blog post is actually a good sales pitch, even when you're not selling something, because you're interrupting them. And then you're earning their trust, and you're getting them to do something.

And when I was writing every day, I realized, oh, I don't have to get them to buy something from me every day, I just have to get them to do something, come back tomorrow, go read this other thing, go read somebody else's blog, sign up for my email list. And the more I get you to show up and get you to do stuff, the more you're trusting, and the more you trust me, the more I can sell you stuff or get you to change your mind about something or leads you somewhere else.

Jaryd Krause (20:37)

And that call to action so big, it's an I believe is it's not best to make a sale straightaway. Like, try it. Like, when you're trying to build a relationship. I see. Sales and marketing is like you're basically relationship building and building a strong connection, building that trust and then when somebody trusts you, then they'll more than likely take an action. But if you try and get them to take an action too quickly, for example, you just start dating somebody and then a week later you go let's get married, that's more likely relationship over, I find the same thing can happen with sales and marketing.

Maybe we've we asked them to take too big of a an Action from the first blog post they, or the first thing that we engage them with or connect with, then that might be out of there, they're just too salesy for me. So what are some of that, so you've got email, we can get email subscribers, get people to come back to write blog posts, and all that sort of stuff. I see this as playing a longer game.

And the more great blogs that we have more great content, we have more people are going to come back to our blog and our content, what are some of the things that you do other than just getting an email, subscribe to get people to come back or want to come back to read more of the content, more of your articles? Played a lot?

Jeff Goins (21:57)

Yeah mean, it depends on what you're selling, right? On one hand, you don't want to propose marriage on the first date. On the other hand, you don't want to spend years and years dating and get the other person, I think this isn't going anywhere, if the intention is for the relationship to go somewhere. And the relationship is always going somewhere. This isn't. I mean, we're not talking about dating, but it's a fun little analog, it's a good sort of parallel, a relationship is always headed somewhere.

And you either this is true, somebody told me this a long time ago, I forget who it was, you either raise the stakes of the relationship, or it slowly starts to die. And relationships only progress when you raise the stakes. And so the same thing is true with a relationship that I might have with my audience. Which means I don't want to just inform them, I don't want to I don't want to just throw information at them. And in fact, I did this, I did this wrong. I did this wrong. When I started my blog, the blog that I have today, and I've had for over a decade now.

That was sort of the basis for my business was I spent a year writing about stuff, teaching things, sharing things for free without selling anything, people started to email me once my email list got over, maybe a few 1000 people, they started to email me every time I sent out a newsletter, and they would say, Hey, this is great. Thank you for another free thing. I mean, I was doing webinars, I was writing an article a day, I was doing an email newsletter, I was sharing lots of free stuff, I was giving away eBooks, little guides, I was just trying to give, give, give, give, give, because that's what I thought you needed to do. And I wanted to make money, but I didn't really know how or what to do.

And I was sort of scared. And I had somebody email me one day, hey, this is great. But can I please buy something from you? And people sort of like asking, because the scales were so far tipped in the other direction, that it felt unfair. And this is this is like a psychological phenomenon. I forget what it's called. But I mean, basically, if I give to you, like if you and I are friends, and we go out to lunch, once a month, and we do this every month for a couple of years. And I always buy lunch for you. You start to feel bad. Most people do I think, you start to go, I feel like this is wrong.

Can I buy lunch like it starts to feel uneven? And the same thing is true with a content relationship. So not only should you ask your audience to do things on occasion, you should find ways to gradually raise the stakes, right? So it depends, right? Like I think an easy thing to do. Depending on what you're selling and how you want to sell it, an easy thing to get people to do is if you're if you're publishing a blog post that also goes out as an email or your or you are you're sending out emails connected your blog posts, which you should do, either ask people for a reply or a comment, a comment, but don't just say comment here. Ask them a question.

What do you think about this? Have you ever done this, because you're trying to get them into your world? And then it's not wrong to dare people to do stuff. And one of the things that I did early on is before I could sell my audience, anything, I was selling them other stuff, right. So I'm an author, I'm a writer, I want to write books, and sell books and create content that people want to buy. That was basically what I was trying to do. And so I started recommending books, and with an Amazon affiliate link, I could track if people were buying things that I was recommending them.

So first ask them, ask them to comment, ask them to engage, ask them to respond to what you're sharing, really important. If you're going to sell somebody, something, you would have a conversation, probably you might have multiple conversations. So that's how we're going to start to invite them to check out other pieces of content on your website, or on other people's websites, like you're just trying to inform them, because that's raising the stakes to learn more about this, read more, study more, whatever. And then the third thing is ask them to buy something that isn't yours. Unless you've got a whole treasure trove of products that you could sell tomorrow, which most people when they're starting out, they don't have that. And you're trying to go from zero to one.

Jaryd Krause (27:13)

That's amazing. There's so many good things unpacking there, Jeff, first and foremost, the one that the lunch analogy, you're adding so much value and providing so much value that's the other person or your audience may start to feel like hang on the scales have tipped here like this. Is this too good to not give back to this person that's given me so much already. They start to feel uncomfortable. Yeah, I had a guy who I spoke to that wants to do some coaching with me.

And he said, Jerry, I'm so grateful that it was you had a really good analogies, what you're doing is like with your content, you're putting so much out there, he's like, I'm really grateful that you're just putting so much bread on the water for the ducks is what he was talking about. That's that just speaks volumes to your blog, writing for so long, and then people going, Hey, look like you've done.

Basically, I've and I've talked about this with in dating, as well as where you actually deserve to make money. Because you've done so much you've given so much value that you put yourself in a position where you actually deserve to get something back from what you put out there.

Jeff Goins (28:16)

Yeah. And another way to think about it is if I give to you, and I never give you an opportunity to give back to me, I'm actually creating a lot of discomfort for you. Yeah, yeah, it starts to feel really weird, especially in like a capitalistic consumeristic society where like, people don't just do as long game. Yeah, like, let's do it. Like, I want us sort of even things out a little bit, or I start to feel a little bit weird.

Now, some people will just take and you don't want to go to lunch with those people anyway. But giving people opportunities to give back to you, especially in small ways, creates a sense of relief. Benjamin Franklin said, in his Almanac, many years ago, he said, the first thing you should do when you move into a new neighborhood, is ask to borrow one of your neighbors books immediately not offer to give them one of the ask to borrow one. Because what you want to do is get them used to doing favors for you. And because if our relationship is such that you're used to giving, doing favors for me early on, I'll be able to raise the stakes later.

And there's something interesting about that psychology, which is if I get you used to buying stuff from me first you're paying me your attention, then you're giving me some sort of response contribution. You're giving me your time your energy, and then you give me your money. I can only raise the stakes on that, but I've got to start with one I can't start with zero, you no one, I can multiply to infinity but zero and I keep multiplying. It's still a zero.

Jaryd Krause (29:55)

Yeah, this is the smaller actions that I find one of those smaller actions that you can get people the take on your writing is the commenting and why I've found this so valuable. And I'm sure you have as well is when people give you feedback allows you to know, alright, cool, they really enjoyed this, I can write more on this or create more content on this, which becomes more engaging, and you're actually giving people what they're asking for.

So they're going to come back, and they're going to read it, because they basically asked for it, they're not going to ask for something. And, if you don't, you're obviously should be creating that content, they're going to come back and they would feel bad if they didn't come back to read that.

Jeff Goins (30:35)

Yeah. And I mean, you're built when you ask for feedback, you're creating qualitative data, you're generating qualitative data. So quantitative data is I had 100,000 People coming to my blog. Last month, I had many this many, all the stuff that Google can tell you, I had this many page views visits I had, I had this many bounces, however nerdy and deep you want to get and that's fine.

And that can be really useful, depending on what you're selling. But those are people, right. And I'm getting actual qualitative feedback. Well, I liked when you said this, but I didn't like this thing. And I was curious about that. That gives you especially from a content creator perspective that gives you so much good stuff to work with, right? If I know that I wrote this article, and Bill like this, but he didn't like that. That's so much more helpful than a bounce, right? Because I don't know why they bounced.

I don't know why they came to my website, and then hit the back button and didn't look at anything else. And you can extrapolate from those individual experiences, things that you can apply kind of globally? Well, I bet there's a lot more bills out there than I realized, and I can write something for Bill. That's actually for a lot of people like him a lot of it.

Jayrd Krause (31:46)

Of it. Jeff, I want to leave you with one question around impact with writing, we did talk a lot about being controversial, and being different challenging the status quo of a niche or an industry, what are some of the things that and the aha moment? I feel like the aha moment might actually even be the answer.

But you might have something to add to that, or something different. But with your writing what's one or two things or multiple things that you have found have made the biggest impact in other's lives?

Jeff Goins (32:17)

Well, I would never say Just don't be controversial, be interesting, and interesting and controversial are not the same thing. Controversial content is interesting. But interesting. Content is not necessarily controversial. It's just interesting. And the best work is interesting, because it's interesting, not because you're,, trying to be controversial, saying something interesting is something that I carry around with me that I can't stop thinking about. It's that movie that had that stupid ending, and you're so mad, and you just keep talking about it. Right?

And it's like, well, that's a pretty good ending, if you thought about it that much. And you talked about it that much? I don't know. I mean, that's an interesting question. What I know is this, and this may not be true for everybody. But the more personal I've gotten with my writing, the more people have connected with it, the more I've shared something, it could be a simple personal experience.

It could be, the most painful thing I've ever exposed, whatever talking about my real life in front of the audience, has led to a relationship that I have with I don't know, 1000s 10s of 1000s of people that have paid me money. I mean, lots more people that haven't, but at least that many people that have bought every product I've ever sold every book I've ever released, every course I've ever taught, there are lots of people who have done those things where the transaction didn't necessarily make sense. Like I've had people spend $5,000 To spend a day with me, because they just wanted to support me, because they just trusted me, not because I, I said the right thing in my marketing pitch that spoke to the emotional need, that they eat all the stuff that marketers talk about. Yeah, and that's, that's real.

And I run a business based off of that stuff. But when it comes to content, the most powerful thing I ever did that I was hesitant to do was be really, really personal. And I actually think you don't have to do that all the time. I mean, my relationship with my readers is such that it is pretty transactional. I'm here trying to teach you something, share something, but every, again, 20% rule, like every once in a while, I just go oh, hey, I had a baby, right? I went through a divorce.

I learned this thing about myself. And because I'm willing to be a bit vulnerable with my audience, and I don't know, like, I don't know what that is in the context of like fishing a fishing blog, but, but it might be something I've never talked about this before, but the reason I love fishing, is because my dad took me every day from ages six to 12. And then he died. And I didn't pick up a fishing rod until I was 30. I start fishing again to connect with my dad and I started this blog, really as a way of sharing that journey with other people. And I never told anybody and I just wanted you to know, that's real, right?

Whether or not that's true for you, every time you go out fishing, you're going to be thinking about this guy and the story and why, what does this mean to me? So it's that, it's the fact that we as writers, and whether you think of yourself as a writer or not, if you're writing blog posts, you are writing, you are a writer, we are engaging with readers with people, not with algorithms, not with search engines, with people. And that, and I've believed this for a long time, I used to, like really play the SEO game, and I still respect it. But I realized, oh, all a search engine is doing all a robot computer is doing is trying to figure out what humans want.

Yep. So the best thing that you could do as a writer is figure out what the humans want and speak to those humans and try to build a relationship with those humans. That's wonderful. But a gift that you give your readers is that you let them know you're human to. That's connection. That's trust. And when you have that, you can take him anywhere you want.

Jayrd Krause (36:08)

Boom, walk her up. That's awesome, Jeff. I love that. Jeff, thanks so much for coming on. It's been a blast to chat to you. I really appreciate you and your body of work and everything you've done. Where can we send people to check out more about what you are doing?

Jeff Goins (36:21)

So my blog and website and podcast are at goinswriter.com. And I run like I said, a writing and editing agency for people who want to write better books and put them out into the world and that is found at freshcomplaint.com.

Jayrd Krause (36:41)

Awesome, Jeff. We'll put links to that in the show notes everybody that is listening as well. Thank you so much for listening. I want you to ask a massive favor. And your buddies a massive favor, please share this podcast episode with them selfishly it helps us help more people, but also people that do have a blog that want to get better engagement, want to connect better with their audience for the long game of adding more value to their lives and to their own lives through their business. Please share this podcast episode with them. It would be hugely helpful to everybody involved. So thanks so much, Jeff.