Introducing Scott Young

Recently I was fortunate enough to interview a very engaging, intelligent young blogger by the name of Scott Young. What follows below is a transcript of our interview. If you enjoy Make It Great!, I think you'll enjoy Scott Young as well. The most interesting fact about Scott, to me, is that he's a senior in high school, and is offering some AMAZING insights for someone ANY age!

Q: What's your name, location, and other personal items of interest?

A: Full name is Scott Thomas Hume Young.  I live in The Pas, Manitoba,
Canada.

Q: Tell us how we can find you, and what's your RSS feed so folks can subscribe to your stuff:

A: Website: http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/
Feed: http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/feed/

Q: Why did you get started blogging?

I started blogging to improve my writing skills and to build traffic levels to my website.  In January I had started working on an interactive program for setting goals.  Blogging seemed like a good idea because I could improve my writing skills for the project and create some traffic so there would be some people there when I released it.

Q: Why do you continue blogging?

Blogging greatly exceeded my expectations.  Although initially I had seen blogging as a side activity that might help my major projects, now I can see that blogging in itself will probably be the focus of my website with other projects forming a side activity.  Although I still have a long way to go in terms of traffic levels for my blog, I am already very pleased with the progress it has made.  In a little over four months I have gone from about 50-100 page views a day to now where my typical daily traffic is between 2000-2500 page views.

Because my blog is focused on personal development I have also been surprised by just how much personal growth I have experienced as a by-product of running my blog.  By writing your thoughts and experience into articles you can really articulate and solidify the things you already know.  Often I feel a much greater level of clarity into a subject after I have written about it.  Secondly, by writing to an audience you are also holding yourself to a much higher standard.  By writing about personal development you are forced to live it.  As a result I feel I have had more improvement and growth in the last four months than I have had in the entire year before it.

Q: What's your favorite part about having a blog?

Getting feedback.  I love getting email or comments from people who read my blog.  Getting feedback from other people makes blogging feel like you are connected  with other people.  Sometimes I forget that most people who read my posts won't write a comment  even if they liked the article.  I am aware of this fact when I get tracked back from another blogger weeks after I wrote something.  

Feedback allows you to make the immediate connect that what you are doing is impacting other people, not just webstats.

Q: What's your favorite post that you've written?

My favorite post that I wrote would probably be the longer essay I wrote about Balancing Today with Tomorrow.  I think the post was a bit too esoteric and lengthy, so I may revisit the idea in a series at a later time.

The favorite post of my readers, based on the number of links and traffic received, would have to be my Habitual Mastery series.  I got lifehacked from that post which lead to a huge wave of traffic.  In  one day I had received more traffic than I had received in the past two months.  I honestly have very little understanding about why some posts are hugely popular and others aren't, but the surprise makes blogging interesting.

Q: Name a few blogs/websites that inspire you

A: Definitely Steve Pavlina's blog at www.stevepavlina.com.  While he has been blogging for almost two years and has built a very successful blog, I can remember reading his articles when he was writing about independent game development for his old business at
www.dexterity.com/articles.  Some of his articles were very  personal development oriented back then as well.  Now of course, most people don't think of Steve as anything but a personal development blogger, but when he was originally making his transition, most people saw him as a game developer and thought he was crazy.

Another blog I have been reading lately is Ben Casnocha's blog at ben.casnocha.com.  Ben started his first company when he was twelve and started the company he owns today at fourteen.  Although I get some feedback from people who are amazed that I am still a high school senior, Ben is someone who is personally inspiring to me.  When I was starting out in my blogging I felt like holding back a bit and not giving it a 110%, due to my own inaccurate beliefs that I couldn't really write about personal development because I was so young.  Seeing Ben's website and seeing what the results are when you do give 110% was a trigger for me to give that extra ten percent.

Of course, Make It Great! is one of my favorite blogs that I subscribe to.  I am very selective about what blogs I subscribe to, and Make It
Great! is one of them.

Thanks Scott!

Q: What's your favorite quote?

A ship is safe in the harbour, but that's not what ships are for.

Q: What about your favorite book?

I can't say there is any one book I felt was the best I have ever read. Some books I have really liked were Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point", Jim Collins "Good To Great" and a recent favorite is Daniel Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness".

Thanks for your time Scott! Very interesting stuff!

Go check out Scott Young today, and let him know you found out about him from Make It Great! You can help Scott Make It Great! by leaving him a comment if his work inspires you to do so!

Make it a great day!
Phil

Phil Gerbyshak
http://makeitgreat.org


Technorati Tags: scott young, self-improvement, blogger, interview

Comments

[Scott Young]

Thanks for the post, Phil. Have a great day!