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Secrets of a Top Writer on Medium (with Anthony Moore) · The Daily Writer

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you read articles about personal growth, success, business, money, the arts, or pretty much any other topic, there's a great chance that you've read some of them on Medium, which is a popular writing platform.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: But instead of just reading articles there, what if you could become a top writer there?
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hello, my friend.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is Kent Sanders from Inkwell Ghostwriting.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to this episode of the Smart Business Writing Podcast.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is the show that helps you grow your business, amplify your authority, and increase your impact through the power of writing.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me on this episode today.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: My guest is Anthony Moore, one of the top writers on Medium.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: He spent years as a writer without having much to show for it.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Then he discovered the power of Medium.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Today Anthony has over 75,000 email subscribers, over three million views on Medium, and a six-figure writing business where he helps other writers.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Anthony has been featured in CNBC, Business Insider, Fast Company, Yahoo Finance, and other notable magazines and outlets.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: He's also the author of the book What Extraordinary People Know.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: In this conversation, excuse me.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: In this conversation, Anthony shares secrets of writing great nonfiction articles, which is worth the price of admission all by itself.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: He shares his five main income streams, how to use the hero's journey writing voice, and how to develop relationships with high-level authors, speakers, and podcasters.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I took a lot of notes in this interview, so be prepared to learn some great tips for life, writing, business, and creativity as well.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's get right to the conversation with Anthony Moore.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Anthony, welcome to the podcast.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited that uh you have joined us here on the Smart Business Writing Show.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Can you give us a quick overview of, first of all, of your story about how and why you started writing for Medium?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Medium for a lot of people is kind of this mysterious thing.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: They don't really know how it works or how to get involved in it, but maybe they've read a lot of articles from there.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: How did you actually get started on there?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, thanks for having me on the show, Kent.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate it.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: I've been writing on Medium for a few years now, and it's been around for even longer than that.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, for those of you who don't know, Medium is just a big writing hub, basically.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was founded by one of the co-founders of Twitter, Evie Williams.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you can write about basically anything on this big writing hub site.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: And there's all kinds of publications like mini blogs within the Medium platform about politics, technology, social issues, personal growth, uh, fitness, health, whatever it is.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it's great for lots of reasons.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: And first of all, I'm not affiliated with them.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a huge fan of Medium.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: They're not paying me to say this.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: I just know firsthand how awesome it is.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: What you can do is you can write about all kinds of stuff, and there's a built-in audience in each of these publications or topics.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: So whatever you're writing about, be it you know rock climbing, uh nutrition, technology, whatever it is, there's an audience already there for that.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I tell my uh writing students, because I uh coach a lot of um writers on on how to be good writers, and I say that if you have a blog, which is what most writers have, like some kind of like your name.com or uh your your topic.com, a lot of us have that.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of us have had that for a long time.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: I have.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but your blog is kind of like a sad little like fast food burger joint in in the middle of nowhere, trying to get foot traffic to like come in every once in a while, right?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you're you know trying to get people looking at you through through paid ads or through guest links or through SEO.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas Medium, it's almost like you're setting up your shop in a huge mall with a bunch of people already looking to buy or going there for a specific reason to consume content.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: So uh Medium is free to use.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: You can pay$5 a month to become a medium member, which actually I think is one of the best investments you're ever gonna make.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because once you're a medium member, you become eligible to be to get paid for your articles, which is awesome.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: No other website right now offers that for us writers.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you can start writing there and get paid based on basically uh how long people are reading your work.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: They like change the algorithm, but basically it's it's who's reading your work and for how long.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a great resource for so many reasons.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's a built-in audience, you can get paid there, and people are already going to the site looking for new writers and content about what they want to read about.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's fantastic.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I don't want to brag, but I I did make eight cents from Medium last month.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a friend, huge, massive amounts of money.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a friend who put some of my blog posts up on Medium a while back, and uh, we haven't touched it in a while.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: So actually, I'm really glad you're helping me to get back into that on this episode.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I saw that email and saw my in my checking account.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Eight cents.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, surely I can do better than that.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm glad you're here to help us with this with this thing.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so a lot of new writers are are making uh the few cents when they when they first write out, but there's huge potential on the platform.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I personally know writers who have literally made, and like they've they show me uh the screenshots, they've made$25,000 in a single month just from their work.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, that's pretty atypical, and uh I'm not making that, that's that's not the common um you know result there, but you can make that much, and I I I know a lot of other writers who are making thousands of dollars, like under$5,000 a month, just for, I mean, it's all like house money, like it's all it's all gravy.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: You're writing what you want to write about when you want to write it.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: There's no editors, no one's trying to like tell you what to do, or you don't have a boss.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's all your work, which is awesome.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: You own it, you can do what you want with it, and you get paid for it, and there's huge potential there uh if you're consistent and kind of know how to use it.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any danger being on medium in terms of you know, with your blog, with an email newsletter, with books, you own that content and you own that platform with medium or with other social media platforms?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure if you would describe medium as social media.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's kind there's some elements to it, but it's not really.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: How would you respond to that in terms of you know, medium could take your stuff down at any time?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: They could do what they want with it, they could shut down.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a danger to that, or is that kind of an unfounded concern?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good question.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: Raises a good point.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I would say that technically, yes, uh, medium owns the platform and they theoretically could take these articles down or or for whatever reason kind of shut you down.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that has almost never happened in any case I've heard.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: I have heard of a couple cases where they temporarily suspend your account for some reason.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: There are obviously guidelines there.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yes, that does bring up a good point.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: You don't technically own those followers and they could take things down, which is why I tell all my readers and writing students to build up your email list and I copy and paste all of my content from medium onto my personal blog just in case.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've been pushing, you know, like the walls of medium for a long time, like including things like call to actions, getting subscribers, uh, just just just seeing what what I could do.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I've talked a lot with medium editors and I've gone to actual medium conferences at the headquarters and like talk with them.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: And there are guidelines, obviously, but just in case uh something happens, I do have my own things uh backed up, which is I I encourage all other writers to do just in case.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: But again, very, very rare.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've heard of weird problems.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: The concern, though, it it's a little, I mean, that could happen with any platform.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Amazon can take your books off at any time.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And some authors have experienced that.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: They can mess around with your price, they can really do whatever they want.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: So all of us are in some sense relying on really these corporate giants in some way to get our message out there, and that's just kind of how life is, unless you happen to own Facebook or Twitter or Amazon or something else, which nobody listening to this probably does.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I always want to have uh as much control over my content as possible.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've been doing full-time writing for a few years now.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: I've worked in corporate America for years, and I just hated how I was, I just felt kind of like a puppet.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: I I had to do all these things, and anything can be taken away, and projects were canceled at the last second, all kinds of you know, bureaucracy and and red tape and how that works.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: I want to have as much control as possible.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: And even though Medium does have that control over my content, I'm still gonna post there 10 times out of 10 because of all of the benefits they they offer me.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, still theoretically, I I could lose stuff, but I back it up by copy and pasting on my blog and getting email subscribers, so I own them.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: And just the awesome, there's the there's there's so many ripple effects that you can get from Medium.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: People seeing your work.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've I've gotten guest posts on huge blogs just because they saw it first on Medium.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: I have a ton of traffic.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um I my my uh book that I wrote, What Extraordinary People Know, came out in 2019.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: My book publisher saw my work on a blog that picked me up from Medium and offered me a book deal.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's all these huge, huge kind of kind of pros that can happen versus the cons on Medium.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: So sure, you don't own it, but again, it's like even with all that, it's like a no-brainer to write on the platform.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think traditional blogging is dead in the sense of you know, like if you think of how your business is built and how so many other successful writers build their business, it's not typically from blog posts on their own blog.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's your email list, which of course anybody in online business is going to say that's such a huge important factor.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Writing for maybe large publications like Medium or Fast Company, Inc., entrepreneur.com, if you're in the business space, putting things on LinkedIn, uh having your own books, those kinds of things.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: So for people who are really focusing on writing blog posts on their blog, that to me seems like for several years now, that's kind of been dying a slow death.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Is that am I correct about that or or not?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: For me, I would ask blog owners and people who are solely posting on their blog and really kind of you know waving that banner of personal blogs, uh, I would ask, what is the point of this and what are you trying to achieve?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: And if you just want readers, if you want to reach your small little community with free content, great.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but if you want to do more, earn income, uh, reach a huge audience, like get posted on bigger and bigger places, get seen by bigger and bigger uh people, uh, I would ask yourself, is that possible on your blog?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: And there's two ways where it's it's pretty it's it's pretty possible.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's either if you're rich or if you're famous.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: And most of us are not, those things, even one of us things, and so it's harder.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's a great quote by Robert Kiyosaki that comes to mind.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: He wrote Richette Pordi, a great plancha book.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: He, I mean, he's like, you know, New York Times best selling author a million times over.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: He said, um, it's not called uh best author, it's called best-selling author.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I understand that there's so much more than just selling and like being this like kind of scammy sales y person, but it's about making an impact.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're just posting on your blog, I really don't think, unless you're rich and famous or lucky, or paying a lot of money for ads or for SEO or whatever, you're probably not going to see anywhere near what you could achieve if you're writing on places like Medium and know how to really understand the business of writing, how to get people to read your work by crafting great headlines, crafting great articles, knowing how to connect all kinds of tools.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, email, webinars, uh, trainings, online courses, whatever it is.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, just traditional blogs, they're they're dying for so many reasons.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and if you don't know how to utilize the business of your work, I think you're just gonna get left in the dust.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just getting hard and hard to make Trisha Boss work on that.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: So if someone is writing on medium, what are some of the main commonalities that people have, despite whatever their topic is, for being successful on medium?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: I know there's a lot that goes into having a large readership and an engaged following and all those things, but what are the what are maybe several key factors for growing an audience on medium?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: So let me share some kind of behind-the-scenes secrets from from from Medium I've learned over the past three years.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I've been writing for just over three years now.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I've gained about 45,000 followers from Medium and another 70 or 80,000 email subscribers from Medium.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I typically make anywhere from three to six thousand dollars a month just from Medium.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I get about 200,000 views a month.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's taken a while to get there, but I've been I've been seeing these numbers for several years, and I've learned a lot about how this works.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I've coached other writers, I've talked to other writers like me, and there are actually some very clear fundamentals for how to be successful on medium.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: So there's lots you can write about, right?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Technology, social issues, whatever it is.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but basically, whatever you're writing about, typically the articles that do the best, meaning people who click on it and read the whole thing, which is again how you get money and uh how medium's algorithm kind of rewards, you know, views, uh, is writing a bit more in-depth of a piece than you would uh on a usual social media site or a blog.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you want to go a bit more in-depth in your topic and show that you are kind of skilled in your craft, that you know what you're talking about, and that you're an authority.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and when it comes to actual numbers to describe this, usually what I've seen is uh the sweet spot for medium, and I've kind of confirmed this with lots of other writers and seen it myself, done lots lots of experiments.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: The sweet spot is usually about a seven to eight minute article.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's about 12 to 1500 words for the the writers out there.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that's broken up into a few different key points with a larger point that you're trying to make.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so obviously you can change this, and there's lots of potential for shorter pieces and longer pieces, but in the long run, these like three, four, five hundred articles aren't really gonna cut it in terms of what medium's audience wants.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: So medium just has a vibe or theme of hey, when you come here, you're gonna get a bit more information and a bit more of an in-depth look at the topics we're talking about.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: So kind of sit down, read it over your food, um, kind of like chewing it like for a few minutes here.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's not gonna be a quick read, it's gonna be something that's that's gonna give you more information on this topic.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: So you want to be in depth and you want to give them at least 12, 1500 words to show, I guess, medium's algorithm, like, hey, this person then knows what they're talking about and kind of catering to medium's audience.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then obviously being consistent with that over time is a key point.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: How often ideally should someone be posting articles like that on medium in order to build up an audience over a number of two, three, four years?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: So uh two cases of writers here beginner writers and the top top writers on medium.com.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I have a couple friends who are making$10,000,$20,000 a month on Medium, which is crazy, right?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I've studied them uh intensely because I like want to, you know, kind of model up that behavior.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, what I'm seeing is that those top writers are writing many, many more times the content than anyone else is.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: And uh sometimes they're publishing between 50 and 100 articles every insane.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that is what I know, it's crazy, crazy, crazy amounts of content.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, most writers just can't do that at the quality they need, right?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's that's a pretty uh unique skill there.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what they're doing.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Now, for everyone else, though, who's starting out, who's listening to this, maybe you've been on meeting for a while, maybe you've made your own you know nickel or dime here and there.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what I would uh recommend.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so for me, I write about two or three articles a week, and I've been doing that for for years.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's just how consistent I've been.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: But when I first started out, I had all kinds of the you know typical writing questions.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: What do I write about?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Who is my audience?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: How do I know what they want?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: How can I be consistent?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: What interests me?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: All like what's what's my voice, all kinds of good writer questions, right, that we all deal with.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: The way I found the answers to basically all those problems was to write a lot.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, that was just writing one article a day for a few months.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And what that did was uh again, since Medium's audience is built in, you have instant feedback on whether your work is good or not.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: So on your blog, if no one's reading it, it's hard to tell, like, hey, was this good?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like, do people like it?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: I I have like the same number of views as always.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: I have the same, you know, low comment numbers.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: How do I know if this works or not?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: On Medium, you can actually tell if it works because you're getting views or you're not getting views.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I wrote all the time for like about an article a day for a few months, and I was experimenting with uh short articles, long ones about different topics, what interest me.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, I hit this kind of mini jackpot.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: One of my articles went viral, quote unquote, which which for me was like a few thousand views in a single day, which was the most I'd ever, ever had ever, right?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, okay, this works.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: I found some kind of like vague formula, maybe I can follow this.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so I doubled down on that over and over and over until I kind of honed uh my structure I have today.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I found out what works, and now I post that two or three times a week.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: But for all of you guys listening who are just figuring it out, I would say write about once a day, publish on Medium, see your numbers, and you might even hit your own mini jack plots there that that just tell you, hey, this is the direction I need to go in.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Man, that's a lot of good stuff there.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna have to go back and re-listen to all this to really recapture all I know, just cramming it in all the goodness that you're that you're sharing here.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Can you walk us through um so one of the questions that I had prepared is how do you write great nonfiction articles?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: You've already mentioned a couple things about that.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Are there any other tips that you'd like to share about?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Here's how to write a really great piece on medium.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Even in terms of how to structure it, um how many main points to have, whether to have a specific call to action, how to construct an introduction, any really specific things like that.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, writing has changed, and especially online writing.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I have a few friends and like writer colleagues who are kind of like, I guess purists you would call them, like very much like Hemingway-esque and Kafka and Milton, like how like just kind of decrying the current state of writing and how like it's just not what it used to be.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not, and frankly, people reading online don't have the attention span they would they would give to a book, especially like a really intense writing book like Vonnegut or whatever that that us writers are used to reading, right?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: So medium and online writing is different, and if you can't cater to that, you're gonna get left behind.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: But fortunately, there is lots of way that there are lots of ways to write great content without kind of selling out and being too clickbaity or just just catering to trends, right?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: I believe that that great writing should be evergreen, it should be founded on the basic fundamentals of great writing.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: So here's what I found.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, on Medium, even though these pieces are more in-depth and you know, 1,000, 2,000 were long, you know, 10-minute reads, so to speak, uh, you want to break it up so that people aren't seeing a huge wall of text.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And furthermore, uh, you can see on Medium uh who's reading your content and what they're reading on, like what actual device.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: And 50 to 60% of my readers are reading on a mobile device, uh like on an iPad, smartphone, whatever it is.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: So most of your readers, I mean, maybe even the majority of them, are not reading sitting down on a desktop.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're on the go, they're taking their, you know, uh lunch break, reading it, they're in the car waiting, traveling, whatever it is.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: So you want to make sure that on the small screen you're looking on, they're not gonna kind of just just go away immediately.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I always break up my paragraphs.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: I usually have no like no longer than than uh four or five lines on my desktop because I know that's like seven or eight lines on a phone, and that can kind of scare people away.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, there's there's a rhythm to it, like there's like a one-liner, three-liner, and like a big 10-liner back to like two or three, and and there's ways you can really kind of show your personality and your skill in your work.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: But basically, I some of the biggest amateur rookie mistakes I see are people writing huge chunks of text about really kind of in-depth, crazy topics without backing them up into easy to consume, um, like skimmable ways, right?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Another thing is uh just using all of your own authority without borrowing or using the authority of other people.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, some of my most highlighted pieces of uh content, and because on Medium you can highlight work and you can see who highlights what.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: The most highlighted pieces are usually like the science-backed research studies and the quotes and the credibility of like, hey, here's what I'm saying, and here's all these things.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: And people like, oh, now I trust this person because he's on his research.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: This point, I agree with it.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: I did I didn't know about that, and it's backed by credible sources, right?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: So uh showing this audience who is looking for more in-depth content um that hey, I've researched this, you can you can trust that that this is not just me making this up, right?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: So skimmable, easy to see, obviously, really high quality pictures, like just the whole article needs to be uh really high level stuff.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and just knowing that you that your audience is reading it on their mobile devices, so it shouldn't be too long.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: I love using formatting as my skill.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like that's that's our paintbrush as writers sometimes, like using the headline and the sublines and then bullet points and italics and not you know making it like an eyesore, but using it to uh kind of keep your readers engaged, especially in this very like low attention span uh time we're living in.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I make it skimmable, easy to read, but also I back it up with uh sources, uh credibility, and I use my own experience using personal anecdotes and uh just kind of being vulnerable and on authentic and kind of writing about pretty intense stuff that people can can relate to for me as this kind of like hero they're looking at and I want to find.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I want to get to the hero's journey question in just a minute, because it that's a question that that you had talked about before, and I really want to dig into that.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: But something that I am really fascinated with, this is a very geeky kind of a thing.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: I I understand that, but something that I'm fascinated with is how people craft an introduction to an article.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say okay, if you were writing an article on uh five ways to be successful on medium or whatever it is, I'm just throwing out a generic, totally made up potential article.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: In your mind, do you have a particular template that you use for how to?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Get into a subject in an interesting way.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're not just going to say, hey, in this article, we're going to talk about five ways to be successful on medium.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: You're probably going to start out with a story or some unexpected thing or something to grab their attention.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: What are the what are your go-to ways for grabbing the reader's attention in your first one to three paragraphs?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: That is hugely important.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: And if you can't do this well, I mean, people aren't aren't going to read your work.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's the difference between getting a lot of views with people who who read the whole article and getting a lot of views of people who immediately click away because they're bored or they're uninterested or whatever.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a great quote by Hemingway comes to mind.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: I just read it.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: I I think he he uh wrote a letter to one of his friends and he said something like, just write like the truest sentence you can think of, uh, which is helpful for me.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, what is the one thing you can say about this?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and when you're crafting that sentence, um, for me, I love drawing a line in the sand, kind of separating me and my readers from everyone else.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: And not just to be controversial for controversy's sake, but it's like saying, hey, this is what is true, this is what I believe.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, you can you can back it up.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: But for me, it's like that fires me up.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: That gets my fans uh kind of upgraded to like actual like followers, like, hey, like this guy believes what I believe, and it kind of pushes people away who I don't agree with at, and they can you know comment below which which they do saying, like, hey, this is silly, and like we can we can kind of have a good debate.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: But I draw a line in the sand, and I I love using phrases like like most people fill in the blank.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like, this is what the this is the reality of life.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: For like the truth is this, and there's so much you can do with that as a writer.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: You you can go back and forth, you can use examples from from both sides, but but basically kind of putting in some some some educated, like high-level controversy, saying, like, hey, this is this is what I believe, and this is what they believe, and here's why I'm right, here's why they're wrong.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, of course, being cordial and like professional about it, it's not good.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: But writing down just this the truest thing you can think of and phrasing that in a way that can get people to to think, hey, this is actually really interesting, or like there's no way this is possible.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: Both are wins because ideally both are gonna read you, and either they're going to support you more, or they're going to disagree with you and show you why you're wrong, which you can you know use to learn, or you can kind of correct them, or like there's there's all kinds of great potential for just drawing that line in the stand saying, hey, this is who I am, this is what I believe.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm making a stand for my facts and data and stance here, and that's just gonna have a great effect on all of your readers.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that is so true.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Something that I think a lot of writers amiss is particularly if we're sort of nice guys or nice gals, we don't want people to get upset with us.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we don't like conflict, we just kind of want to write and have everybody love us.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes we forget that any emotion that we provoke with our writing typically can work in our favor.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: If they love us, obviously that's great.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: But even people who disagree with us who are irritated or agitated in some way, if they're talking about it or if we've prompted some kind of emotional response from them, that's actually a good thing because it gets conversation going and it's almost like even bad press is still press in a way.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I love that idea.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm totally gonna start using that.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never thought about that Hemingway line in relationship to an introduction to an article, but that's great.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, for a long time I was blogging just on my personal blog, and it was uh very just vanilla bland content.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I I recall writing some article, it was like some some some dumb humor article about work, and someone left a comment, and I just still distinctly viscerally remember reading this comment.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: They said, This is the worst article I have ever read.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it crushed me, Kent.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it just destroyed me.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: And for like at least two years afterwards, I made sure everything I wrote would never be bad enough to actually get that comment ever again, right?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I was just, it was, it was, it was, it was this fear-based writing of like, how can I make sure no one would ever say that to me again?
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so what happened was no one ever did write that because my work was so bland and so boring and so uncontroversial, gray bleh, that no one ever commented or read anyways.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: So it wasn't until I finally kind of got back on the horse and said, Hey, people hate it, that's fine.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: But I started writing pretty controversial, like line in the sand stuff, and people did hate it and did write lots of, you know, not very nice things, but way more people loved it.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it's hard to kind of be brave and like do that.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I get that.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I just recall it was like 2013 reading that comment and how horrible I felt, right?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: But what I've seen is that nowadays when I'm writing, for every like negative comment I get, I get 10 to 100 better positive comments instead.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's really cool.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Take us on a journey, and I am gonna get to this hero's journey thing now.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that you say, it like prompts 10 of the questions because it's so good.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Take us a little bit, if you can, through the journey of okay, you do a post on Medium.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: What actually happens to that post after you publish on Medium?
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Does do you send out a link to your email list?
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Does that go maybe later into a book as content?
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Does that go on your own blog and that's published there?
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Does it go into a podcast episode?
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: What happens to that material once it's published on Medium?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I've set up all my content on Medium and anywhere else I post to tie in directly to everything else I'm doing, including my email list, all of my uh coaching and courses and book sales and freelance work.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's all connected, which uh really optimizes how much money I make and who I reach.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: I just everything's more tight and focused where in the past it was just like, I don't know who sees this and I don't know what's gonna happen.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like next article, right?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Again, just learning the business of writing is so important.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: So for me on Medium, I post an article.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: I uh put it into a big publication.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, like they're just kind of mini blogs within Medium about topics.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I post it there.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what I do there is uh I republish it to all of the you know kind of possible places that it would fit.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I put it on my I I actually rarely use social media.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like social media at all.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um I get lots of social media shares from my readers, which is funny.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: I just never do it.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: So uh if anyone tells you you need social media to be successful, you don't, and I'm gonna be able to do that.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: But medium is kind of a um that's a place where it does have some aspects of social media because it does encourage sharing.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's lots of people there.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: So there's kind of the I almost think of it as there's a lot of the benefits of social media on medium without all the drama.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: There is a lot of sharing within medium, and in a sense, yeah, there there are social media themes on medium, um, which which which is great.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it's again, it's all more high-level in-depth like conversations and like not just you know, clickbait, right?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: Facebook stuff.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: But for me, I post my published medium article.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: I copy and paste it or I share the link on my LinkedIn, I put it on my personal blog, and I have a few other guest columns like places like Thrive Global and Huffing to Post and Business Insider, wherever it is, and then and I post it there.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, once I post it, that kind of starts the engine for the for the rest of my business.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I get views which turn into subscribers.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I simply get one to three hundred email subscribers a day just from medium.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: So again, just this huge potential there.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, people are paying thousands of dollars a month on Facebook to get leads and like emails, right?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Medium, it's all free.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I put them into my email list, and then everything is kind of set and automated from there with trainings, courses, coaching.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's great because I do what I love.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: I write on medium, and again, it's all my content.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have any editors who are stopping me, whatever.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: I put it on there.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: That engine drives traffic into uh subscribers, which opens up the rest of my business.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I set up all kinds of you know passive income streams and automated income stuff to work.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just a great kind of one-two punch.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: Post on Medium, uh, get it out to the world, and I kind of reap the benefits of my subscribers who are signing up my my email.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now let me get back to the the hero's journey question.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um you have something that you call the hero's journey writing voice.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: What is that exactly, and how do you use that to create a really distinct brand in your products and your content uh in everything that you do?
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so if you were to Google how to lose weight, you would find a million, billion articles on very just technical, dry, you know, nutrition facts, workout building, like whatever it is, right?
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: But a few times you're gonna see some real juicy personality, and and you almost feel like you know the person writing because they're so relatable.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the way you that you can reach that level as a writer is by infusing the hero's journey into your work.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I'm sure that most of you guys listening know, at least basically, what the hero's journey is.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is the Luke Skywalker, the Frodo, um, I don't know, like like these like huge movies, like huge stories, where it's like there's this one person, they go on this huge journey of like exploration and suffering and finding things out, and they come back a change, better person.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the staple of you know movies and fiction books for uh centuries now.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what most nonfiction writers don't realize is that you can actually use that to a huge extent into your work that's going to upgrade every level of your writing from how you connect with your readers to how you're perceived by them, to your authority, to your credibility.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so for me, I spent a lot of time studying business, marketing, psychology.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: I have a master's in a psychology about how to connect with people, like what they connect with.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: And what I've seen is so many people connect way more with your story than they ever do with data and statistics and numbers.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, as strong as that is, people are gonna go to you because of you, not data in many cases.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I figured out exactly what kind of hero I am.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a great book to read is uh dot com secrets by Russell Brunson.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: He like talks all about like how to kind of do this.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have it there on your on your shelf right there?
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, this is the new version.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: I just got the box set like last week.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that stuff.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: Great, great book.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: All about kind of infusing this into your work.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: And there's all kinds of heroes that you can be.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: You can be like the reluctant hero, you can be the more um evangelist, like like an interviewer.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think Lord of the Rings is a good example.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's the Frodo, there's Aragorn, and there's a Gandalf.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: For those of you guys who haven't seen it, Frodo's like the young guy, Aragorn is a more veteran guy, and Gandalf's like the top-level wizard, right?
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: And all of those have their own perspective.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you could be that in your writing.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: You could be the Frodo to your audience, be like, hey, I don't really know what I'm doing, but I'm gonna figure it out, and you can come along with me.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: Or you could be the Aragorn, like the more veteran person, like, hey, I kind of know my uh way around this, I know what to what to expect.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: You should follow me because I've been around the blog a few times.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's the you know, the top-level Gandalf wizard, like, hey, I am the ultimate thought leader.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever it is, there's all kinds of really powerful angles you can use in your work, and you can throw in all kinds of great kind of like side boosts to that, like personal stories, uh, lessons you've learned.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but there's there's just so many like like marketing psychological factors you can use to present this great work.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like you could write your own article, like how to lose weight, but you can do it in a way that people will remember you and will follow you and feel like they already know you just by writing a little bit.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I I share all kinds of stories of my struggle and of growth.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like when I was a kid, I used to stutter and stammer and I couldn't talk that well.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I write about that in my work.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so many people can have emailed me saying, Hey, that's me.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what did you do about that?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I want to be just like you.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I do that with everything, every single thing I can think of in my my life.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: I put into my writing as me, as this kind of hero on this journey.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: And people relate to that because they see themselves as a hero, and it's it's it's it's this really big effect in nonfiction work.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: People think it's just fiction, like novels.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: You can do that as a nonfiction writer, placing yourself as a hero and helping your audience on the journey that you're on.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: Man, that's crazy.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much more we could dive into with that.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, and I love Russell Brunson's stuff, particularly uh dot com secrets and expert secrets, because it's such a different way to approach a business.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And in writing, we don't think of it that way.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: We typically think of let's do an information dump and that will somehow change people, but information doesn't really people don't respond to information and data emotionally like they do with a story, for sure.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I love that.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: I tell people that um like I have lots of personal growth products like coaching and courses, and I would say the ultimate personal growth guy is probably what, like Tony Robbins, maybe.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um but people will still buy my stuff and they do all the time, even if Tony Robbins has a better version of it because of me and my story, and they connect with with me and my story.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: And for anyone listening here, if you have a book you're writing or or a product or a creation, there might be but very well be people with bigger, better versions of that for cheaper, whatever it is.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: People will still come to you for your work and your product because it's you and your story and they connect.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: Man, that is such a key point because it's easy to go, oh, there's already 15 other books on what I'm what I'm writing about or what I'm creating.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: Which they're all about.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but but really it's extremely rare that anybody puts out something that is totally original.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it probably never really happens.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: But it's your voice coming through, it's your story, your journey, and what that people connect with.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, one thing I would another one thing I want to ask about before we begin to kind of wind this down is I know that you have developed relationships with lots of high-level writers, authors, speakers, podcasters, and so forth.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the exception being this interview now, because I'm definitely not high-level.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just kidding.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: So no, actually, I'm not kidding.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not high-level.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just only an average Joe.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: What are some strategies and ways that people can connect with these types of high-level writers, authors, speakers, and so forth?
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, honestly, Ken, I learned a hard lesson about this, and it feels funny to share, but this is just what I've seen.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I've been writing for seven, eight years now.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: The first four or five years, I basically accomplished virtually nothing.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: No followers, no readers, no anything.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, nothing to speak up.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: The whole time back then, I was guest posting like crazy.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: I was, I was writing every single person.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was writing like snail mail like letters, like writing out handwritten letters to writers and authors I like, being like, hey, can you mentor me?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: Can you publish my work?
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: Any way I could think of, no one ever responded to me.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: And when they did, they're like, no.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: So that was heartbreaking.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: It was frustrating.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: I was trying to connect with high-level writers, doing everything I could think of.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody was was ever um responding to me.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's this kind of like this this horrible truth I've learned uh that might be kind of cynical, but like I just seeing how different it is now that I have some kind of like traction for my work.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, is that for those of you guys who are wondering how to connect with uh other writers and like other, you know, big name, like whatever podcasters, whoever they are.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, first of all, it's possible.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: It definitely is, but it's really hard.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I struggle with that for years, right?
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you're gonna see a hugely different perspective uh after you yourself have something to show for it.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so all the time I get emails from people who's being like, hey, Anthony, like you like have a book, you have an email list, can you promote me, right?
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of like like weird, like scratch my bag, I'll scratch yours.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: But uh they have like a hundred followers, and I have you know 100,000 followers.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't want to reciprocate that because it's kind of scammy and like sleazy and like just not very like nice.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but what I do now is I can reach out to semi big name people.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like uh one of my favorite authors is uh Ryan Holiday.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: He's a author.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: I love his books.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: He's awesome, right?
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: Way, way higher level than me.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he's on Medium, and he and uh I've like seen his work here and there.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I sent him an email saying, Hey, uh I just want to say hi, love your work, and uh see you on Medium.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: And he responded, he's like, Hey, I've seen your work, like of course, like nice to meet you.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: Blew my mind.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: I guarantee you that would not have happened if I didn't build my own kind of like thing first, which is the lesson there.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if you want people to respond to you, you can do a lot of hard work and uh kind of get there slowly over time.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I think one of my best kind of like ways to do that was to build up my own product first, like work on my writing, my business, get some numbers, like get posted on our places, and then come to people with this kind of like resume of work saying, hey, I'm not just an unname blogger, I have done audible work, we're connected here, and that's just really worked wonders for me because it's like not fair, it's like annoying, but it's only after I've kind of made a name for myself in some small way that people, even one on two levels higher than me, will start responding to me in ways they never would have before.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say there's great ways to like work on it, like like kind of go one step at a time, reach one or two levels above you, not like 10 levels, right?
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: But while you're doing that, work on your own stuff so that when you're talking to these people, you can actually talk with them about stuff that you're you're connected with.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to reiterate what you said about Ryan Holiday.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: There have been a couple times over the last probably 18 months where I've just uh I think a couple months ago, I had a question about how he integrated his uh Daily Stoic podcast with the with his Daily Stoic like Daily, I forget what it's called.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's not Daily Journal, but it's uh Daily Stoic book or something like that.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I I wasn't sure how he was repurposing content.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I just shot him an email and he responded back within a few hours.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Give me a few sentence response, and it was like you know, for somebody at that level, that's really, really unusual.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not suggesting everybody listening go and email Ryan Holiday necessarily and ask him all your questions.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I was super impressed because people at at his level, you know, he's had multiple New York Times bestselling books and all this stuff.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Usually they just ignore you, but he's he's the genuine, he's a so super genuine guy.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's not always the case.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's not always the case.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you'll have better chances, yeah, like if you work on your own stuff and like just kind of show them, hey, I'm a professional like you, I'm not just some kind of like, you know, no name flash in the pan.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm serious about this, and I want to tech with you on your reliable.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Anthony, this has been a blast.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate you being on the show.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: I want to wrap this up by I want to ask one more thing.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: You have some free training available for our listeners, and I would love to hear more about that.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: So we talked a lot about media.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, Ken, I mean, I know we could talk about this for hours and hours more, right?
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but basically, I have an hour-long free training all about how to make remote freelance writing income on media.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: So if you go to freelance writer starterpackage.com, it's right there, just freelance writer starterpackage.com.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: Free training there that just tells you everything I know about how to create multiple streams of income, things from online courses, coaching, book sales, affiliate links, and general freelance work.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: You can learn all that in this free training at freelance writer starterpackage.com.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of everything I know is crammed.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's like one hour long uh training on how to do what I do and how you can model that behavior.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm gonna check that out and I will absolutely put that in the show notes.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: Anthony, thanks so much for lending your wisdom today.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: I took uh lots of notes.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: The only question is are my handwritten notes going to be legible when I go back to look at these?
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's about a 60-40 chance that those might be legible, so we'll see.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes yeah, sometimes handwriting's pretty bad.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks again.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: This has been great.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: And um, again, we'll have that link in the show notes, and I appreciate you making time to be on the show.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: You too, Catrix.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: Take care.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that conversation was an absolute blast.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: As I said, I took a ton of notes, and I trust that you got a lot of value out of it as well.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: Here are my three biggest takeaways from this conversation.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, Anthony shared some tips for writing a great post.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: And these would apply on Medium and anywhere else that you would be writing articles or blog posts like a blog or an article on another site or even in places like an email newsletter or a LinkedIn publisher article.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: You get the point.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: So here are several tips that he shared, and these are phenomenal.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: One tip is to show credibility and to talk about your experience.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: Another tip was to make the post skimmable by adding subheads or main points.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: And this way their reader can still get value out of it, even if they don't read it in depth, which is a great piece of advice.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: Another tip was to make it easy to read by adding lots of paragraph breaks.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then another tip that he shared was to use controversy to keep the reader engaged.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: So take a stand on something or take a stand against something.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be lukewarm and draw a line in the sand about an issue that you care about.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: Takeaway number two, use the hero's journey template in your storytelling.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna refer you to Russell Brunson's book, Dot Com Secrets, for a great explanation of how that applies in a business or a marketing context.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: Just get the book uh.com Secrets, it's really, really good.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then takeaway number three is follow Ernest Hemingway's advice for getting started.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: He said, write the truest sentence you know.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: That is really great advice.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: So use that the next time you feel stuck on writing an article or a blog post or even a book chapter.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: Just write the truest sentence that you know.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I want to give a huge thank you to my guest, Anthony Moore.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: Be sure to check out Anthony's articles on Medium, which you can find at medium.com slash at Anthony underscore more, and that's M-O-O-R-E.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: Also check out Anthony's free training called Remote Freelance Training for Medium Writers at freelance writers starterpackage.com.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: Both of those links will be in the show notes.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: And as always, thank you for listening.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate the time that you spend checking out the podcast and uh listening to our guest interviews and my solo episodes as well.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: It truly does mean a lot to me that amidst all the things you could be doing with your time, that you're spending a little bit of it with me.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as always, remember that you can find lots more resources for writers at KentSanders.net.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: And until next time, remember that your writing has the power to change people's lives.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you in the next episode.