Jeff Goins

Jeff Goins is a best-selling author of five books including the The Art of Work and Real Artists Don’t Starve. He also founded the Tribe Conference and now teaches online courses for writers and bloggers, speaks at events, and runs an online mastermind for creative entrepreneurs.

Tell us a bit about the work you're doing right now.

Recently, I've been getting back into poetry, both reading it and writing it. It was my first love but something I neglected for twenty years. For some reason, it came back into my life a few years ago and is now a daily practice.

The Tribe Conference had its fifth and final year last year, and I loved running a conference. But it also taught me a lot about myself and the kind of work I really want to be doing. I love events, but they are a lot of work, and I don't want to be a professional event planner.

Now I'm focusing more on writing projects and on the event side: facilitating experiences for our mastermind group which meets virtually twice a week and in-person two times a year.

I see in the past you worked in communications and toured with a band. Do you miss those gigs, or is writing and speaking much more fulfilling?

Honestly, I don't. I love travel, but touring with a band was stressful.

My favorite part of playing professional music was the weekly blog posts we would write and publish on our website about where we had gone and what we'd done. I always loved sitting down to write those.

What's a common misconception about the work you're doing now?

That it's one thing, i.e. writing. The truth is I spend a good amount of my time communicating with my small team and the clients I work with.

Currently, I'm doing quit a bit of ghostwriting, so my schedule is a mix of phone calls, writing, and emailing.

You've had several books come out now, so talk a bit about what the experience was writing the first one. What was hard? How'd you get through it?

I've published five of my own books and one ghostwritten one now. The first book is always the hardest and the easiest. It's hard because you've never done it before, but you're also ignorant of the process, so in that sense it's easy. You don't know any better.

I often say just write your worst book first, because that's what it'll end up being. In my case, the more I write books, the harder it gets, because the better I want them to be each time.

If you had to give one piece of advice to writers who are doubting themselves or struggling to hit publish, what would you tell them?

Join the club. As Steven Pressfield says: it's only the amateurs who are "wildly self-confident." If you're doubting yourself, you're more of a professional than you realize. Take heart, hit publish, and keep getting better.