Mike fixes pipes. He started a blog because someone told him he should. It went nowhere for eight months.
Then he took a journalism basics course thinking it might help with writing. The instructor taught them how to conduct interviews: ask open questions, listen more than you talk, find the interesting detail everyone else misses.
What he did with it
Mike started interviewing his customers after each job. Not surveys—actual conversations. "What made you finally call someone about this?" or "How long were you dealing with this before reaching out?"
He turned those conversations into blog posts. Real stories about why people avoid calling plumbers, what they're actually worried about, the weird temporary fixes they try first.
The unexpected result
His website traffic went from basically zero to 2,000 monthly visitors in five months. People shared the posts because they saw themselves in the stories. Other plumbers started reading his blog to understand customer psychology better.
The journalism skill he used? Finding the human angle in ordinary situations. That's it.