Joe Vitale On Starting His Blog and Inspiring People

Morty: Hi Joe! How are you today?

Joe: I’m doing great, I’ve been looking forward to this. I always love talking to you, Morty.

Morty: Thank you so much! What was the impetus to start writing your blog? I know that you have written many many books and have appeared in a lot of TV and films. What role does the blog play? How did that come about?

Joe: I was shamed into starting my blog. In 2005, by a search engine genius by the name of Brad Fallon. We were speaking together on a cruise ship and he told me that I was a fool not to have a blog. That blogs are what the search engines really love and that Google really loves them.

He said that even if I put up a blog and only posted a paragraph every other day or so, ultimately the search engine spiders at that time would find me and my rank would go up. He said it would be good for business and a great relationship builder.

So I reluctantly, very reluctantly, started a blog. Because I looked around and all the blogs were all diaries of a sort. People were just talking about themselves and it just seemed boring. So I started like everybody else and started talking about myself. But I tried to put a spin on it and tried to have a lesson.

Every time I talked about myself I tried to turn it into a teaching tale and come up with a self-development point. So I started because I was shamed into it and then I started to like it. I started to like running my blog and it was my favorite thing to do outside of my own books.

I tried to share my life and my thoughts and my lessons. I’m having a kick doing it. I enjoy it.

Morty: So you’ve been doing this now since 2006?

Joe: 2005.

Morty: That’s nine years. That’s a long time. You’re one of the early ones who got in.

Joe: And I thought I was late at the time! (laughs)

Morty: Actually not. What is your background in personal development that informs the blog? What have you studied, what have you done that helps you here?

Joe: What a great question. First of all, the person I was trying to help the most was me. I was my case study and I’ve been working on myself since I was a teenager, reading all the metaphysical books, self-help books, the pop psychology books. As I grew older, I started doing the seminars that I could afford from The Forum to Firewalking to different self-help teachers that I studied with personally.

All of this was to find out how I could grow. How I could go beyond my own limits. And as I would grow and stretch and come up with new insights or things that worked for me, I wanted to share them with other people.

So I’m really a product of my own study. And what I’m doing as an author is sharing what I’ve discovered that works for me. And I simply do it in my books and of course I do it more immediately in my blogs.

Morty: How often do you post?

Joe: Well, not all that often actually even though Brad Fallon told me to post every other day. I probably post a guaranteed once a month, sometimes once a week. But because my blog posts are more like full-length articles–I really put thought into them, I craft them, I make sure there’s an interest there, there’s a lesson there–I don’t just do it very flippantly and then post something. I really think through my blogs. So for me, every couple of weeks to certainly once a month I put up a blog post.

Morty: What would you say is your typical audience? Have you ever done a demographic, the kind of people that are interested in the kind of stuff that you’re writing?

Joe: I’ve done surveys. They’ve all come across as people who are interested in personal development, obviously. They’re all fans of the Law of Attraction which was made popular from the movie The Secret. Of course I was in the movie The Secret. So a lot of people who watched that searched my name or searched the Law of Attraction and they end up with my blog.

So these are people from an age range that are probably forty years old and up. They’re generally women. They are avid book readers, which is good for me since I crank out so many books. And they are interested in having more from life. They want happiness, they want health, they want romance, they want wealth. They want all the things that probably all of us want.

Morty: We were talking earlier before we started recording about all the bloggers that there are the personal development field. I don’t know if you are familiar with all of them but could you say in some way on how you think your blog would be unique? Why would somebody look at yours rather than anybody else’s?

Joe: My blog is an extension of me. So the only thing that’s unique about it is that it’s by Joe Vitale and about Joe Vitale. And if somebody is interested in me as an author, as a person, because they’ve read my books or they saw me on TV or movies or something and they want to know more, they go to my blog.

I don’t know if my blog is a leading-edge think tank for anything. Just today for example I posted about a very rare, priceless, handmade guitar that was given to me this past weekend in Las Vegas. It’s a really big deal in my life and I’ve written extensively about it in my blog and included photos. But I don’t think it’s one of those breakthroughs in neuroscience that somebody would rush to my blog to go read about. But if they were interested in me personally, they would go there to read that and they would get to know me better.

This is really the point from my perspective. It’s that I’m dealing relationships. People buy from people they know they like and respect.  The more they get to know me and if they like me and respect me, when I do come around and say “Hey I have a new book out called The ‘Remembering Process’ or a new book out called ‘At Zero’. At that point they might go “Oh yeah I know who that guy is. I like him.” Then they’ll go an buy the book.

So for me the only thing unique about my blog–unless I’m missing something–is me.

Morty: Well about that…well you are unique and that would make your blog unique! There is nobody quite like you. And that’s all favorable too.

Do you have a long-term goal for your blog? Is there someplace you want to get to? Or is it just continuing to do what you’re doing? Do you have any idea about where you might end up with it or something you might want to achieve with it?

Joe: What a juicy question. At one point in my life I probably would have started off and gone for this and gone for that. But these days, I am just content being here and share what I share. I want to keep writing my blog, I enjoy writing the blog. I want to keep sharing lessons that make a difference in my life and for other people.

I don’t have a long-term goal. I’m not thinking that I want a certain number of people to see it or anything in particular to happen because of it. I’m pretty much in the Now. And in the Now, I enjoy writing. And out of that writing, if I can influence some other people, great. But beyond that, I’m inspiring me and hopefully inspiring a few other people.

Morty: Very good. Do you accept comments on your blog? Some people do, some people don’t.

Joe: I do. I’ve had mixed feelings about that because there have been times where people just posted advertisements for themselves. They weren’t even reading my blog. Then there are the times when people post very critical and even belligerent comments there. Which then I’ve had to wrestle with whether I wanted to leave them there or not.

And of course I want comments from the ones that tell me where I’m saying something that really helps them or I’m saying some thing that they have a question about. That helps me clarify what I write next.

So the short answer is yes, I do allow comments.

Morty: This is a big one. What’s your mission in life at this point and how does writing your blog contribute to it or does it? What’s your life about right now? I think I know that from my knowledge of you and my relationship, but I don’t think I’ve ever asked you that question so I’d love hearing you put it in your words.

Joe: That’s the easiest question of all for me. I am here to inspire people to go for and achieve their dreams. Inspiration is the key word.

If I can inspire people through an interview like this, through my blogs, though my books, through any speaking, any engagements, any private conversations…if I can inspire people I feel like I am fulfilling my life calling.

My blog needs to do that because even if I post about me receiving a guitar over the weekend, I turn it into something that’s going to be an inspiration to other people. I don’t want them to sit there and go “That was nice, Joe got a guitar.” I don’t want them to sit there and think “Oh I’m jealous because Joe got a guitar.”

I want them to think “Oh if that can happen to him, it can happen to me.” I don’t want them to think, “Well Joe gives a tremendous amount of things including writing the blog for free.”

Nobody’s paying me to write all those articles that go on the blog. But as a result, down the line, I’m rewarded with something like this collectible guitar that’s been made for me.

So when I share all of that I’m trying to teach people that by living a life of inspiration, they can live a life of inspiration. So the more I can inspire people with my blog or anything else, the more I feel like I’m completing my role in life.

Morty: Very good, thank you so much. Is there anything else you would like the audience–our audience, and your audience–to know know about you and your blog that we haven’t covered?

Joe: I’m now a musician. I’ve recreated myself as musician in the last three years. I’ve come out with seven albums. My eighth album, we’re beginning it right now because I have this unusual guitar which was given to me, I’ll be making an album. With that, I also picked up a saxophone a couple of months ago and I’m learning to play the saxophone.

Now when I say all of this, I don’t want people to hear it as bragging. “Oh Joe is now a musician, he’s got all these CDs.” I want them to hear it in this way: “If Joe at the age of sixty years old can completely start anew with becoming a musician, with no musical background, no musical training, no musical experience with anything but a harmonica–and if he at that same age can pick up a saxophone and learn how to play such a challenging, unusual and in some cases bizarre instrument–then what can somebody else do with their lives?”

I’m all about saying “If I can do it, then you can do it. If I have a dream that I am bringing into reality, what’s your dream and you can bring it into reality.”

So people may not know that I have a musical side. They’re think of me as a guy who’s either an internet marketer, an author, or the guy who was in the movie “The Secret” or any number of segmented ways of taking me in. But taking in a more holistic view, “Hey Joe has a musical side to him! Look out, he’s making the world dance now!”

Morty: Oh that’s exciting. That’s wonderful, thank you. Well I am privileged to know you and call you my friend and it’s always fun to talk to you about anything at any time.

This was good and I really appreciate your time, given how busy you are doing all the things that you’re doing. You have something very unique to offer in everything you do and certainly in your blog. I think a lot of people are going to be interested in checking it out and saying “Is this guy and what he writes about likely to be valuable to me?”

Everybody can always use inspiration. So to the extent that people get inspired by anything you’re doing or saying, it’s obviously a very valuable thing for everybody. No matter who they are or what they’re doing.

So what is the best place? Is it joevitale.com? Where would people find you?

Joe: Joevitale.com is the portal website to everything I do. So there’ll be links to the video blog, to the podcast, to the blog, my catalog, and everything. So if they went to www.joevitale.com, they would need to pack a lunch because the’ll probably be there a while there’s so much to see and do.

The blog itself is at blog.mrfire.com. “Mr. Fire” was my nickname and has been for a very long time. When I went on the internet in the mid-nineties, nobody knew what they were doing including me so I thought “Well I’ll just call my website mrfire.com.”

So they can go there as well. WWW.MRFIRE.COM.

Morty: Got it. Thank you so much Joe, I appreciate it. We will get this thing up sometime real soon and hopefully lots of people will listen to it and read the transcript and check out your blog and find the value that’s there for them. That they can be inspired to try things and do things in their life that they might not have done otherwise as a result of the model that you’re providing.

Have a good day!

Joe: Thank you, Morty!

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