[SGC-13] Sharpen Your Writing Skills With Connie Ragen Green

Connie Ragen Green: 00:00:00

At the end of the day, we want people to feel something. Whatever that emotion is, whatever that ends up being for them because if you don't feel something from something we hear or see or read, it's just another thing that day that we heard or we saw or we read. But I think once people feel something, then anything is possible.

Melissa Brown: 00:00:31

Content Creators, get ready to meet my next guest, Connie Ragen Green. Connie is a prolific bestselling author with multiple bestsellers to her credit. She is an independent publisher, international speaker, and online marketing strategist. She works with individuals and corporations on six continents to help them increase their credibility, expand their visibility, and explode their profitability. I recently sat down with Connie for a chat about how she got started on her online journey, and I uncovered some fascinating anecdotes about her life. Connie's story is inspiring. She also shared several ways you can work on improving your own writing skills. I hope you'll be moved to take action, maybe give back, and maybe make a difference much like Connie, because as you'll hear, we can all make a difference. Before we dive into today's episode, I wanna give a shout out to one of you listeners who left a very kind review on Apple Podcast in the last few weeks. Today's Content Creator of the week is Katie@SolopreneurCafe. Here's a short snippet from her review. Katie wrote, "After listening to the first few episodes of the She's Got Content podcast, I can tell you that they are packed with usable, realistic advice." Thank you so much for your review, Katie@SolopreneurCafe. I really appreciate that you took the time out to kindly leave a thoughtful review. You, too, can be my next Content Creator and I'll give you a shout out too. Just leave a review over on Apple Podcast. It's easy peasy and I so appreciate it. Thank you. Now, get set to listen in as bestselling author, Connie Ragen Green shares her story and also helps you sharpen up your writing skills. Welcome back everyone to the She's Got Content podcast. Today, I'm so excited to have Connie Ragen Green in the house. Welcome, Connie.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:02:38

Thank you so much, Melissa.

Melissa Brown: 00:02:40

This is really exciting. I have followed you, Connie for I don't know how many years, and I can't, I'm pinching myself now having you here on the podcast. This is really an honor. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom with us.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:02:55

Oh, well you didn't tell me about the wisdom part, but I'll do my very best for you.

Melissa Brown: 00:03:01

I know you always do. I often like to start off kinda with a, oh, we might wanna call it an icebreaker or whatever, but I'm finding out so many interesting facts about my guests here, and I like asking this question. Is there a little known fun fact about, Connie, that you could share with us?

Connie Ragen Green: 00:03:24

Well, I like to think everything is fun, but I'm thinking of, in particular, I have raised two chimpanzees that were very, very young when I got them to young adulthood. And most people wouldn't know that about me because it happened when I was in my twenties. I was in my twenties for both of them and I just loved them dearly. And that's a fun fact.

Melissa Brown: 00:03:46

That takes the cake right there. Alright, you're gonna have to expand a little bit on how that happened. How did that come to be?

Connie Ragen Green: 00:03:55

All right. So I wanted to be a veterinarian as I was growing up. Love animals, so much, And a friend and I, we volunteered at the zoo, so that was when I was in junior high age. And we would take two buses, maybe a third bus every Saturday and Sunday. We'd go to the zoo, we would volunteer, we would do all these things. And they had a chimpanzee there named Samantha who was really, we thought of more like a pet. And so we would spend time and we'd hold her and comb her and feed her and then get on with the rest of our volunteer work for those days. So a few years later, I was in college and I began working at a vet. So I was actually paid, it was a part-time position, but I thought, this will help me if I really wanna become a veterinarian. And he worked with some exotics, exotic animals of all kinds. And this is back when they allowed in the United States for you to bring in animals such as baby chimps. That's no longer allowed I'm happy to say but he said, I have one and the person that was going to take it just doesn't want to take him. Would you be interested? And I said, have my own chimp to have him. Well, yeah. So I ended up getting that chimp and that was Toby. He was the first one. And it's like having a little child. You potty train them and you except, well, except for different, they can kinda swing from the chandeliers, that kinda thing, but clothes, little clothes and everything. And then as he got older, so he was maybe a year and a half, he started to be a little bit aggressive. And so that's when I learned that you really can't keep them. And so we found a wonderful place for him to go. About a couple years later, there was another opportunity, and that was Tracy. And so Tracy came to live with us that's my husband and I. And again, it was about a year and a half or so and we had so much fun. It was just, cause see, it was a different world back then, as you can imagine. So I drove a Corvette and the chimps, you'd take off the tee tops and the chimps would stick their head up. And it's a wonder we never caused an accident. And one time we went into a movie theater and I had him and I was kinda holding him like an infant with a blanket, and a lady was giving me just kind of a really mean look. I don't know what that was about, but I uncovered the top of the head and she saw the baby chimp and I thought she was gonna fall over, but she stopped looking at me, that's for sure.

Melissa Brown: 00:06:16

Interesting. Yeah, I don't think I've ever heard anyone tell me a fun fact about themselves that they had raised a chimpanzee. That one is really, well, you learn something about people all the time. And I know, Connie, you've got a really interesting story about coming on career, career-wise is just really interesting. You started out as a teacher, well maybe you started out as a vet tech first, but I think that your story is so interesting and I would love for you to share your journey on coming online. Share your journey with our audience, if you will.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:06:57

Okay. All right. Well, I grew up, it was just my mom and I, and so my parents divorced when I was three, and I didn't have much of a relationship with my father growing up. So it was my mom and I. We were so poor and she taught me that education was the way out of poverty. So I went on to college, ended up at UCLA, graduated from UCLA. And I really wanted to go into real estate. I wanted to do things with real estate, but I wasn't really knowledgeable enough and I was too young. Usually somebody young in real estate has bought and sold a house or two and I hadn't. So over time I decided, well, you know, maybe I need to find something else. And then the space shuttle, the Challenger disaster occurred. And I had gone to my real estate office at that point, cause I was working part-time in real estate. And it was on the tv. And when Christa McCullough her students, they had 'em there and they were in New Hampshire, I believe. And at that moment I thought, I had wanted to be a teacher growing up. I used to teach my stuffed animals in front of a chalkboard and stuff. And so I thought, I'm going go back to school. And many people were inspired to do something, to join the military, to go back to school, something because of that disaster. And within a year, I was an assistant in a classroom, then I was a substitute. And then I was hired on an emergency credential for a full-time teaching position. So by that point I was 30 years old. So I became a teacher at 30. Now I was going to give up real estate, but I thought, let's see how this works. The first couple of months, well, we went on strike, and when you go on strike, it's a work action that you're choosing to take and nobody feels bad for you. People would yell at me in grocery stores, all kinds of things. And I thought, I don't know how long this strike's going to last, but I no longer have a job and I've chosen not to. So I would go to the real estate office, after we would walk the picket line in the morning, and I decided to keep both careers, real estate as I was getting more experience with that and classroom teaching. So I did that for the next 20 years. But over that 20 years from age 30 to age 50, we get older, we have illness, we have injury, we have all kinds of things. And also the school system changed. I was in Los Angeles Unified School District, which is probably the second largest in the country or the third.

Melissa Brown: 00:09:10

Right.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:09:10

And finally we had to teach to the test, which they kept saying, we're not doing that, we're not doing that. But it was exactly what they were doing. It was no fun. Nobody wanted to be there. And I thought, I'm the adult. I have to do something different. So my prayer is to find something I could do from home. Dear God, I need something I can do from home, from my bedroom, if necessary, because of my illness and injury. I wanna be able to meet all of my financial obligations with grace and ease. My mother was still alive. I'm the only child. I was helping her, and sure enough that prayer was answered when I found out that individuals, this is in the spring of 2005 by now.

Melissa Brown: 00:09:50

Um hmm

Connie Ragen Green: 00:09:51

So individuals had businesses online. I had no idea. I knew that bookstores and Montgomery Ward and different places had businesses online, but I didn't know individuals did. So I made my plan and by June of 2006, I had resigned my teaching position and given away my best real estate clients and started an online business. And there I sat that summer in front of the computer and wondered, how in the world will I actually make money from this? I had left that part of the plan out. I was so getting money from teaching in real estate and moving to a new city with a new house and a new house payment, and so I thought, I have to figure this out, and I did.

Melissa Brown: 00:10:36

That's so interesting. It just seems like I'm hearing time and again, time and again how necessity being the mother of invention, how

Connie Ragen Green: 00:10:45

yes.

Melissa Brown: 00:10:45

People have been presented with a situation where it's like, sink or swim here, I've gotta figure this out. And you did. You figured it out and beautifully figured it out. And I'm not saying it was an overnight success. I know that never happens.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:11:00

No.

Melissa Brown: 00:11:01

What is that old saying? The overnight successes happen after three years or something takes three years to become

Connie Ragen Green: 00:11:07

we're still, you and I, we're still overnight successes in the process, right?

Melissa Brown: 00:11:10

Yes, absolutely. When you say you figured it out, what did that look like or how did that manifest itself initially?

Connie Ragen Green: 00:11:19

Well, initially, the person that had got me interested, I had heard a CD from him, and I had become just so enthralled with this idea of making money while I sleep and doing it from a home computer and this and that. He was selling an information product that solved a problem on a one page website. And I thought, well, if I could just think of some problems and just write something about the problems and sell to people. Well, I just wasn't very creative at that point. Since then, I consider myself very creative, but not then. And I thought, okay, well then what should I do? Well, I was fortunate enough through this man who wasn't a great mentor for a brand new person. But I thought, what can I learn from him during that year? Cause I paid him quite a bit of money.

Melissa Brown: 00:12:00

Mm-hmm.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:12:01

And I was connected with people that then were going to be the ones that would help me and I wouldn't have found them on my own easily. And starting a blog was the first solution to how do you get started online. Cause your blog is your home on the internet. And so I was an overachiever a bit. I started 12 blogs. Yes. Because I said, this is what I told myself, Melissa. I said, I am a college educated woman of diverse interest and I can't have one niche. I can't. It's not possible. So I had my dog blog cause I love dogs and always have dogs. I had my reinvent your life blog. Healthy walking, something about that. I had law of attraction. I had just a number of things. And finally, I had one on ebook writing and marketing, cause people were writing eBooks. They were pretty new in 2006. And I took a course from Joe Vitale and I also connected with Jimmy D. Brown and Jim Edwards, a few people that I still know today and consider friends, all three of those today. And I started doing the ebookwritingandmarketingsuccess.com site. That was the one I landed on. That's the one where I would practice my writing, cause I wasn't a writer. I'd always wanted to write, but I didn't do much of it. I came online and realized you really have to write. So a year or so later, ebookwritingandmarketingsecrets.com got forwarded to ConnieRagengreen.com. So those sites are still there. Still exist. And by doing the writing, I learned that at the bottom you always put a call to action. So on the blog itself, people can opt in. It's usually on the right sidebar. You give them a gift of some type. They give you their name and email address so you can be in touch with them via email. And also at the bottom at every article, I've done this now about 3,700 times in all these years. At the bottom is something for sale. It might be something of mine, it might be an affiliate offer, but it's something inexpensive. And that's how I started to monetize everything. So through affiliate marketing, finally through my products. But the blogs continue. I now have three blogs. I started the third one in 2019, and that led to my most recent book.

Melissa Brown: 00:14:17

Okay, let's talk about that for a moment. You said 'your most recent book.' I know you're a prolific author. You are constantly writing, and I know I've been fascinated hearing you talk about your day. Like how you get up and you write and it's just a habit for you. But tell us about these eBooks that you've published.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:14:41

Well, in the beginning I was publishing them on my own website, which is still an excellent idea, because you keep all the money and you can sell them for more on your website than you could on Amazon. The problem is, you have to drive traffic to those sites on your own. And paying for traffic gets very old very quickly. As soon as you stop paying, the traffic stops coming. It's like a newspaper where once the ad is not paid for, it's like an old newspaper, it's just goes in the garbage. So I thought, okay, so let's see what Amazon is doing. Well, I came online 2006. By 2009, Amazon was in the publishing business and there were many people that were upset. They didn't like that idea that they were taking business from traditional publishers, but for me it would be two more years before a traditional publisher even gave me the time of day. And by that time, I was sold on self-publishing. So I was able to sell things on the Kindle version cuz Kindle didn't exist. Create space, if you remember that, from Amazon? None of that existed in 2006, but by 2009 it had a strong hold. So I started writing and publishing books. And it became so much fun. The first book, I blogged. Huge Profits With a Tiny List:50 Ways To Use Relationship Marketing To Increase Your Bottom Line. And then from that I just turned myself into a writer. I wanted to be a writer and now I am.

Melissa Brown: 00:16:07

You said you blogged that first book, meaning you wrote blog posts and then collated them into this ebook?

Connie Ragen Green: 00:16:16

Yes. I had a couple of mentors, and these are people that took me under their wing informally, and I'm still friends with them. Alex Mandossian. If you know him, and Raymond Aaron. That may not be a common name. But both of them within a couple of months of each other, they both heard me speaking at an event and they both said, you're making lots of money with a small list. You need to write about that. And I told both of 'em that the other one had said it and I said, yeah, I'm gonna set up a blog and do it. So that was my second blog, in 2009, hugeprofitstinylists.com. And every couple of days I would think of a new idea. And I would add a new blog post. And finally I went from 10 to 20 to 25, and I thought if I have 50 ideas, I could copy /paste those into a book. And people would say, but why wouldn't people just read the blog? We'd rather pay $10 and have the whole thing put together in the book. That's really the answer.

Melissa Brown: 00:17:12

Brilliant. Just brilliant

Connie Ragen Green: 00:17:16

But now that's a real popular idea. People are blogging books.

Melissa Brown: 00:17:19

Well, but actually doing it is another story because we all know many of us have creative ideas and just doing the do is sometimes the hard part.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:17:31

We can discipline ourselves though to make it happen. We have to, and I hated discipline. I hated the idea of it and now I embrace it.

Melissa Brown: 00:17:39

And sometimes it's just a habit, right? I mean discipline is often just a habit.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:17:44

Yes. Yes.

Melissa Brown: 00:17:46

Do you have a total number of how many eBooks you have written over the years?

Connie Ragen Green: 00:17:50

Well, at some point I started releasing my books, paperback and Kindle version. So starting from that first one, pretty much they're all in both formats. And now with this new one, I've done the paperback first, then the pinball slash ebook one will come out in a few days, and now hard back. They're doing hard cover over at Amazon now. So it's very exciting. So I have 26 books and

Melissa Brown: 00:18:16

Amazing.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:18:17

They're out there and my goal is one per year for sure. I've done two or sometimes three in a few years. Last year I did one, my In Pursuit of Healthy-Ness, How I Used Intermittent Fasting to Reinvent My Life. And this most recent one, which is Essays at the Intersection of Hope and Synchronicity.

Melissa Brown: 00:18:37

Love it. I wanna circle back to something you said previously about how you claimed that you didn't really know how to write in the beginning. You were not a writer, correct?

Connie Ragen Green: 00:18:49

Yes. Yes. So it goes back to fourth grade and there was a boy named Danny Lucas. He was just kind of a peculiar child. He looked peculiar and he acted peculiar, but he was my friend. And he was a writer. He was already a writer at nine years old, and he was going to write something that they were gonna use at school. And he said, do you wanna write with me? And I said, yeah, I'll do it. And I thought, this is it. I'm in. I'm gonna be writing with Danny Lucas. What could be better? Well, I wrote a little bit, Danny didn't like what I wrote, I don't remember the details, but finally he said, I'm just gonna finish this on my own. We'll write something next year. Something like that. He was very nice. Let me off the hook. But he continued to write and I continued to feel like my writing, it just isn't much. The reason my writing wasn't good was I didn't do it until I was given an assignment at school or took a class and had to write something. I would do the work, but then the class was over. I would go on to the next grade and then I didn't keep writing. And then high school, college age, I wanted to write for television and film. And I get to UCLA and I actually know people that are writing professionally, and I thought that's what I wanna do. And I took a couple of writing classes and I did the assignments, but once again, when the class was over, I stopped writing. So came online and I thought, I'm gonna need to write. So that was the first habit that I made myself get into. Writing every day. And I still have those old original blog posts and short reports. They're horrible. It's embarrassing, but that's how I got started. We only get better if we continue to do something. That's the only way. All those years I was teaching, Melissa, 20 years, I seldom had a child who was a native English speaker. They tended to speak Spanish or Tagalog from the Philippines. And writing was going to be the most difficult thing for them. And I said, you have to write every day, even when we're not in school. Every day, Mrs. Green? Yes. Write a paragraph. Write something. Your writing will improve. The ones who did that, the writing improved. The ones who didn't, they suffered year after year. I came online and took my own advice. Finally. And now if I don't write one day, well, I don't know if that would even happen, but it feels like I've left the stove on or I've lost my keys or something. I didn't write.

Melissa Brown: 00:21:02

When it becomes a habit like that. Yeah. It's like you don't wanna, as Jerry Seinfeld says, don't wanna break the chain. Writing is a skill that you can hone.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:21:13

It is. It is. And I was talking about that today on a call. I was saying that talent is one thing, and I don't know that I ever would feel that I was talented with writing. The skill is developed over time and the discipline, you make it a habit, that's something you have full control over.

Melissa Brown: 00:21:29

Mm-hmm.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:21:29

So now I write, anybody that knows me knows that I'm going to write. I use a site, I don't know if you know a site called 750 words.com, so it's the number seven 50. Yeah, so I've been writing there for several years and I was purposely breaking my streaks there so I wouldn't become a slave to the streak. Right now I'm on about a 300 day streak with them. I'll break it maybe at the one year mark or something, but I love that to just keep me focused on what's important in my life because at this point I've started doing professional writing for film and television. Which is something I always wanted to do, and I wouldn't have been able to break into that field if I hadn't been doing what I've been doing since 2006.

Melissa Brown: 00:22:14

You've circled right back. You wanted to be a writer for television and now your dream is coming true.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:22:21

It is.

Melissa Brown: 00:22:22

Has come true.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:22:22

It is it's really, it's so exciting, because we really do have control over our destiny. We have control over so much. That we make excuses for it. That we weren't lucky or they wanted someone else or something but that's just stories we're telling ourselves. It doesn't mean there's any fact in them. Not much, at least.

Melissa Brown: 00:22:40

Hmm. For the coaches or the small business owners who are listening today and they think that they're not good writers, I stumbled across one of your blog posts on ConnieRagenGreen.com, and it's about sharpening your writing skills. It was seven ways to sharpen your writing skills that you've discovered over the years. The first one is knowing your audience. So yeah, if you don't know who you're writing to, just as you discovered probably with screenwriting for television, you gotta know your audience, right?

Connie Ragen Green: 00:23:18

You do. And it's interesting cuz I'm in a professional group. I'm in a few different writing groups, but one, it's really a professional group and what I love about it is that I'm really at the bottom in terms of experience professionally writing for film or television. And we're given assignments regularly and you submit it. The leader of our group is a very well known person in Hollywood with writing. That's his passion. And he reads it over and then he posts it for the group. And it's interesting because that's a different audience in my mind. It's people that are going to critique, they're finally gonna have comments about how we've written and what we've written. And it's interesting how that makes a difference, because any one of those people could be very similar to me away from the writing world, but I don't know them in that way. They don't become friends in that way, where you would know, do they like to drive cars or to travel to Europe or something? You don't know those things about them. So it's interesting because if you know your audience, it makes it a whole lot easier because you know what they might need and or want. And if you can give that to them. Because I think of everything we're doing in business, we're serving people.

Melissa Brown: 00:24:31

Yes.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:24:32

Serving. Once we serve people, cuz if somebody writes something about writing that will be helpful to me. I'll read the whole book just to find a little part of it, serving me with what I want and need.

Melissa Brown: 00:24:43

The golden nuggets. Right. That was your number one of the seven ways to sharpen your writing skills. The number two was outline before you write, and I know so many people resist that.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:24:57

Yes, I did.

Melissa Brown: 00:24:59

I do. Yeah, I resist it. I do it, but I resist it.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:25:03

Because I was the person in school and I did fairly well in school. I made A's and Bs. But when they wanted an outline for something, I would always write first and then go back and do the outline from my completed writing.

Melissa Brown: 00:25:16

I did the same thing.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:25:17

Did you do that? But the writing was so much better the other way. Once I discovered how to do an outline for my books, now it's kind of simple. I'm gonna start writing a book with a colleague in January. In 30 days, we're gonna have a 30,000 word book. No sweat. It's easy because we'll be working from an outline. And I teach that to people now twice a year. I have a 10 week author program, and it's so wonderful that they have to have a tight outline. If you're writing flounders, you have to go back to the outline. Once you fix up the outline, the writing flows.

Melissa Brown: 00:25:50

Yeah, it's like creating the bones and then you fill in the flesh in between. Isn't that kind of like what happens with the outline?

Connie Ragen Green: 00:25:58

Yeah. I think of a book called Writing down the Bones.

Melissa Brown: 00:26:01

Yes. I think that's sitting on my shelf actually.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:26:04

Yeah. Cause the writing, there's such great joy from it and it's appreciated by people around us. So I live in two cities. And in one of the cities, there's a man that I've talked to him and his wife on numerous occasions when I've been walking a dog or something, and he has a motorcycle. And then he became a principal of a middle school. And I saw that in the email I get from the newspaper. And he was so excited. I said, you're famous. I saw your name and your picture. And he said, they sent that out? And I said, yeah. So I was telling him that I write and he had asked me, well, can I buy one of your books sometime? And I said, no, I'm gonna give you a book or two. Well, I had forgotten about it. So the other evening I was over in that other city and I said, you know what, I've got books with me. So I've got three books, including the new one. And I wrote it to him and I took it down. His wife answered the door. They were so excited. And both of them, 'we know an author, we know someone who writes books.' It's such a big deal. And I apologize for forgetting for a couple of months and doing other things. And I'll tell you the biggest impact that this brought me ever, Melissa, my mother, before she passed away, she broke her hip and was in an assisted living. And so I was going there and that's when that first book, Huge Profits With a Tiny List. That's when that book came out and they send you some proof copies if you request them. And I did. And I took one over to her and gave it to her, and she was 93 years old when she had the book in her hand. She didn't know the world of computers. She knew typewriters, right?

Melissa Brown: 00:27:31

Yes.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:27:32

She knew books that you buy in a bookstore or check out at a library. When she had that book in her hand, all of a sudden she understood me and what I had been doing for a few years and she said, well, you must bring me more. My friends will want these. And I'm so thankful. Thank you, God, that I did this while she was still alive because I didn't understand how powerful it would be.

Melissa Brown: 00:27:55

Ah, that's a beautiful story. Yeah, so she got to hold that book in her hand. She got to read it too, I'm sure.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:28:02

Yep. Yeah. Over and over. Yeah.

Melissa Brown: 00:28:05

Getting back to your sharpening your writing skills numbers. I have another one. The number three one, writing your first draft. And as many as you need. That first draft- oh man, I got into the trying-to-edit-while-I-was-writing deal.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:28:23

Yeah.

Melissa Brown: 00:28:23

I don't do that now, but in the beginning it was like, oh, it was such a slog. Writing was just so slow. So write your first draft and then go back and edit. Right?

Connie Ragen Green: 00:28:36

Yes. Yeah. I just published a short article with that very title, Writing Your First Draft, this morning. I finished it last night, but I scheduled it, it came out this morning. It's different parts of the brain perhaps.

Melissa Brown: 00:28:48

Yes. Yeah. That's it.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:28:49

More about this than I do. So the only thing I'll do if I'm doing it on screen, then I can just do an X. I do a capital X next to something that I know I need to come back to edit. There are different things that different writers use. If I'm writing by hand, it's real easy to use a different colored pen. I write in black usually, so I can use blue, but I know better than to try to edit because I've been down that path too many times. And then it ruined my creative flow for the writing itself, and I end up with one page that's perfectly edited perhaps, but 10 pages that were never written.

Melissa Brown: 00:29:22

Yeah. I hear you. So just write that first draft and then go back. And I like to let mine marinate for a while, at least overnight.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:29:31

Yes.

Melissa Brown: 00:29:31

And then go back and do the editing. And it just makes it flow so much easier. And another tip you give is about using conversational tone while writing. That was one that was very difficult for me to switch over from academia writing and the way that I had to write notes for medicine and how you write for your audience.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:29:54

Yeah. It's funny cuz I've had medical issues over the years and in one, I was reading my own report, they had written about me and they called me a well-nourished female. And I love that. It's so polite. Instead of saying, boy, she's overweight, she needs to lose some weight, I was a well-nourished female and at first, I smiled and then I frowned. I thought, oh, I don't wanna be so well nourished. That was pretty funny. It is a different type of writing and it's a world that I wasn't a part of. I wasn't part of the corporate world. I wasn't part of a professional world such as, you continue to do, I guess and everything. But I think we all have to start from where we're at. I wrote poetry growing up because it was short. You could finish it pretty quickly, or in my mind I thought that. But once when I wanted to write blog posts and they got shorter and shorter, they started out 250 words. Then nobody wanted them. If you were gonna submit them to a directory, nobody wanted under 300, then they went to 500. Now, I can't imagine publishing anything less than 750 words. Most of what I publish is 1500 to 2000 words. I have experience now. I've been doing it every day, so it doesn't feel like much at all.

Melissa Brown: 00:31:03

It's amazing how the trends have changed in blog post or article writing.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:31:10

Yes.

Melissa Brown: 00:31:11

I don't wanna call it controversial, but another thing that you suggest is having an opinion, and don't be afraid to say what your opinion is in your writing. I see a lot of people create that vanilla- type content where there's no opinion. It's just the facts, ma'am, so to speak. And when you start putting the opinions, and stories, anecdotes, things like that. That's what gives it such life. That's what gives your writing so much flavor.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:31:44

Definitely, definitely. Because, I was the people pleaser person. I was someone that didn't wanna say anything to rock a boat or anything ,especially at work I was at, or schools I was teaching at. And when I did speak up and I spoke up for the kids, for my minority children that many of the other teachers didn't want to be teaching, then that was the first time I experienced that and it really was painful. It hurt. They were attacking me, not my idea. That's how I felt. And I thought, well, when I come online then that won't be a problem cause I'll just write what everybody wants to read. And very quickly I realized I couldn't do that. Once I had spoken up for those students, something inside me shifted. And now I have to speak my mind. So the first thing was about the huge profits with a tiny list. Somebody that was a big name who's still around, said, you're not a player in the online world until you have a list of 10,000 people. And very quickly and very vehemently, I guess is the right word, I said, well, good thing I didn't get that memo. Cause I hit six figures long before I had a thousand level and 10,000. So anybody can do well online. Your numbers don't make any difference. So that became a big issue online. And then I wrote that first book about it. I was blogging about it, and finally, now people don't even say that. It's good to have more people in your community. That's a good thing. But if they aren't responsive, they're just sitting like a bump on the log, taking up space and costing you money. We want people that are responsive and all that. But it was funny. I said, yeah, good thing I didn't get that memo. That was the phrase.

Melissa Brown: 00:33:17

That was the phrase, didn't get that memo.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:33:18

He didn't like that. He didn't like it one bit. And, that's okay. Now I'm okay with that. Cause I didn't attack him. I just felt what he was saying, he didn't fully know about.

Melissa Brown: 00:33:30

Speak your mind. Have an opinion, right?

Connie Ragen Green: 00:33:33

Yes. Yes. We must. We must.

Melissa Brown: 00:33:36

Your number six in that article, and by the way, I'm gonna make sure that we get the link for this article cause I think it's just so cool for everybody -is about the having the right story structure. Tell us a little bit about that story structure.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:33:52

Well, story structure, I guess that's something that we can interpret cause it's something right now I'm really working with in the stories that I'm telling that will end up being television or film. I don't even know where to begin with that. You have to know what your message is. What's your message to the world with what you're trying to write. And even if it's a 750 word blog post, there's a message in there somewhere. And then how is the person you're serving cuz your a reader, you're serving them. You don't want 'em to read it and say, oh, that was nice. That's a kiss of death. That's the worst thing that could happen. So you wanna explain how this can affect them. What they could start doing differently. So, I don't know if I'm really answering your question because it's a complicated, sophisticated strategy, the story structure. How do you think of story structure?

Melissa Brown: 00:34:48

Like you, I think there is a lot that goes into this concept of story structure. In marketing, oftentimes segueing in from the story where you had an emotion or you experienced something, and that's the same thing that your audience is experiencing. You're telling a story and you're segueing into, well, now here's why I told you that story. And then you provide a solution or you show them how you have overcome this problem. When I hear story structure, that's kind of where I go. But I know you've got a lot more about that in that blog article, which is another reason I want the listeners to go back and read that and really digest it.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:35:33

Yeah, because I think, at the end of the day, we want people to feel something. Whatever that emotion is. Whatever that ends up being for them because if you don't feel something from something we hear or see or read, it's just another thing that day that we heard or we saw or we read. But I think once people feel something, then anything is possible. So like today, it's giving Tuesday today as you and I are speaking. I give away 50% of what I gross each year, and that's become a big part of my life, a really huge part of my life. And today I was over on Kiva and I'm writing a story right now that's about someone that I grew up with. When my mom and I moved in next door to him and his family, it showed me that I could make money. I was 11 and then I was 12 and I was making money, and that meant we had food on the table and we'd always have money for rent. That was a big thing. He came from a very difficult situation, and the father was from Albania and had been very active with the Nazis. I learned this much later, so when I went to Kiva today, I just had Albania in my mind from the story I'm writing. So I lent $25 to a woman in Albania, who's growing crops so she can sell fruits and vegetables locally. That kind of thing. When I looked at her, I saw my friend who's since passed away. And I think that's what we want. We want things that are connected to each other. Things that are like a family of ideas, where one thing is connected to the next thing, to the next thing to the next thing. And if I could encourage one person to make a $25 loan. It's a loan. We're not even donating the money. And out of all the years I've done it, there's only one loan that defaulted in all these years. But if somebody could feel something from that, that's what makes a difference for the world, for all of us.

Melissa Brown: 00:37:38

Yeah. There are so many people I know that listen to this, that are out there to make a difference in the world. And giving back is, well, that's huge. That's huge. That Kiva program, I've, participated in that for many years. And you're right. Today is giving Tuesday, which, hopefully by the time people listen to this, it will be history and all of the non-profits have made all the money that they are seeking. Wouldn't that be a nice world?

Connie Ragen Green: 00:38:09

Yeah, because you know the story I told myself, Melissa, before I came online, I said, oh, someday, someday I'm gonna volunteer and I'm gonna donate money. I'm gonna do fundraising and all these things, but I don't have time or money right now. Well, it wasn't true. I had $50 a month. I really did, and I had probably two or three hours on a Saturday cuz I worked pretty much seven days, real estate and teaching. All those years. But I had two, three hours once a month on a Saturday and I had $50 I could have done. But I didn't. I didn't feel like it was enough to even do when that was so much. It was so much, there's so many things that we can do.

Melissa Brown: 00:38:45

We can all make a difference. Yes.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:38:46

We can all make a difference. And I'm in Rotary. That was the first service organization that I joined, and I've been all over the world with Rotary. That introduced me to traveling internationally to do work, to do good in the world because being poor in America or in Canada even, it's nothing compared to being poor in most of the world.

Melissa Brown: 00:39:07

Yeah.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:39:08

Our description of poor, like I say, when my mother and I, we were very poor growing up, that's nothing compared to what much of the world is experiencing on a daily basis. We have such impact with our platform being online. We can plant a seed of something. Somebody might say, Kiva, I don't even know what that means. And if they just learn the meaning of it today, that's enough. They've moved one step closer to doing something.

Melissa Brown: 00:39:34

Beautiful. Well, in the spirit of giving back, I know Connie, you've got something that you would like to offer to the listeners. Tell us about that.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:39:42

I do, I have a course, it's called Really Simple Authority Blogging, and I consider an authority blog one that will make a difference for you with your content, with credibility, with visibility, and that all leads to profitability. And I created this course about four years ago. I've taught it live, I believe, three times, and I probably will teach it live again, but I don't have dates set for that. So in the meantime, it's in home study. And I would love for people to be able to go there. You'll provide the link for them, you'll create a username and a password. You will be added to my list, but that could be a good thing. You never know. That way you can go through the course. You can email me anytime and ask me questions about it. You can get started and perhaps you're already creating content, you're already doing things, but having that blog, that's considered an authority blog. So when somebody googles your name, they'll find your blog right there near the top of page one. That's really what you want and you want to make an impact. You wanna change people's thinking so that they can have a better life. They can do something bigger than what they're doing now, that they might not even be desiring today. Cause we all have something bigger than what we're doing.

Melissa Brown: 00:41:01

That is so generous of you and I thank you for that, for the listeners here in the spirit of paying it forward, when you've got your authority blog, all set up, just pay it forward. Thank you, Connie, that is such a generous gift.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:41:18

Oh, you're welcome. You're welcome.

Melissa Brown: 00:41:19

I'll make sure that all of the links and information is in the show notes so people can find that easily.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:41:25

Excellent. Excellent. One way you can pay it forward with a blog is let somebody do a guest post for you. Give them an idea. Let them look at your blog. Read around a little bit, and perhaps you would do that, Melissa. She would write a guest post for my blog.

Melissa Brown: 00:41:38

Absolutely.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:41:39

Now I know you've been reading ConnieRagenGreen.

Melissa Brown: 00:41:42

Yes, absolutely. I would be honored. Okay. All right, well, Connie, this has been really great. We've gone all the way from you raising chimps to helping all of us with sharpening up our writing skills and such a generous gift that you've given to all the listeners here today. I thank you so much for being here and thank you for all you do in the world. And, yes, just thank you.

Connie Ragen Green: 00:42:09

You're welcome. And thank you so much for having me as your guest.

Melissa Brown: 00:42:14

And thank you to all the listeners here on the She's Got Content Podcast. And don't forget to go check out the show notes with all those links. And also don't forget to keep getting your content out there because somebody is looking for you. The more content you've got, the more likely they'll find you. So until next week, thanks a lot and have a great week. Thank you for tuning into this episode of the She's Got Content podcast. I hope you got at least one nugget to take action on this week. If you got value from today's episode, I would be so grateful when you leave a five star rating wherever you listen to podcasts. It only takes a second and it really helps me get my message out to impact even more people so they can in turn, keep the ripple going. If you're listening on Apple Podcast and leave a review of the show, it would really make my day, and you just might receive a shout out on the show as my Content Creator of the week when I read out your review. And last but never least, if you want an endless supply of just right ideas for content you can write about for your blog post, your emails, your videos, podcast episodes, all the content things, then you wanna head over to my website at shesgotcontent.com/content and pick up your free workbook, Never Run Out of Content Ideas. Look for that link in the show notes today along with the other links mentioned in today's episode. Until next time, Content Creators, you've got an audience waiting to hear from you and you've got content to share with them. Stop being the best kept secret and make a bigger impact when you've got content out there in the world.