Tag: Marketing

Pat O’Bryan told me about a really cool time-waster or priceless-educator called Stumble Upon.

I signed up for it, told it my main interests, and before you know it I was “stumbling upon” website after website that were amazing, curious, odd; all relevant to me; and most of which I had never heard of before.

It’s a wonderful learning experience to look at a parade of websites — all containing information relevant to your declared interests — and wonder why you don’t stay at any of them longer than nine seconds.

It’s a reminder that people are landing on your website and making the same kind of snap decisions.

In short, your site better load quick and get to the point fast, or give a good reason to stay, else your new visitor will be gone in a flash.

After thirty minutes (or was it four hours?) of stumbling upon new sites, I finally came across this message:

You Have Reached the End of the Internet

Go out and get some fresh air.

And that’s what I’m gonna go do.

Ao Akua,

Joe
www.mrfire.com

PS – If you want help in how to create websites that work, consider the Joe Vitale Executive Mentoring Program. No cost to apply. Do it and then get some fresh air.

Jeff Chavez operates Northstar, the company that manages my mentoring and miracles programs. His brother was a semi-finalist on the television show American Inventor — and just won!

 Here’s what Jeff emailed out to all:

Friends,

Our Big Brother Greg won American Inventor!

I want to sincerely thank everyone who supported Greg with votes, email, and encouragement. Greg is truly grateful to everyone and very humbled by this unique turn of events in his life.

If you missed the final episode, you can watch the key segments on blog. Go check it out:

http://northstarthinktank.typepad.com/northstar_thinktank/2007/08/our-brother-gre.html 

On behalf of Greg and our entire family…thanks again for cheering him on.

Jeff

Congrats!

Joe 🙂

www.mrfire.com 

Helen Hadsell just told me that she received an overwhelming response to my previous post.

She has received hundreds of orders for her book, all in one day.

She said to tell you that she will answer all emails, but it may take her weeks.

She also said she is now sold out of her Contesting book, but she will consider printing more.

I’ll help her if she wants.

Just FYI.

Be patient.

She’ll write you back.

Ao Akua,

Joe
www.mrfire.com

PS – Thank you for supporting her and for reading my post about her. She deserves all the good vibes going her way.

Back in the 1980s I read a life changing book called Contesting: The Name It and Claim It Game.

It was by Helen Hadsell, billed as “the woman who wins every contest she enters.”

The book showed the practical side of metaphysics. My attract a new car program is in the same genre: the idea is to show how tools like positive belief, visualization, feeling and action lead to concrete results — like winning a contest or manifesting a new car.

Contesting was a breakthrough book for me and many others – in fact, millions of others. The book sold three million copies. A few copies are still floating around, but you’ll pay anywhere from fifty to two hundred dollars for one (unless you’re smart and read this post to the end).

What most people don’t know is the author is still with us.

I talked to her on the phone the other night.

Helen Hadsell is 83 years old and a hoot. She’s vibrant, humorous, active, a hypnotic storyteller, and still as plugged into metaphysics as anyone around. She should have been in the movie The Secret.

Movie producers are in fact considering making a film of her life. I’d love to see that happen.

Helen and I spoke for about an hour. She’s still writing. She sent me her recent autobiography, Confessions of an 83-Year-Old Sage, which I’d love to see published, and one of her lesser known books, In Contact With Other Realms: An Adventurer’s Experiences in Awareness.

She personally knew many of the great teachers of the New Thought Movement, from prolific prosperity author Joseph The Power of Your Subsconscious Mind Murphy to Silva Mind Control creator Jose Silva to the mystical founder of Eckanker, Paul Twitchell.

Helen is delightfully fearless. She calls it the way she sees it, even if what she sees is invisible. She told me I was a monk in a past life who spent too much time “monking” around.

I guess that meant I got tired of being celibate.

She says we knew each other then.

Hmmmmmm…

I didn’t know how to respond to that esoteric observation, so I asked her about her most famous book, Contesting. The story of its birth is a great marketing lesson.

A young man who was so broke he lived in his car, heard of her winning contests with spiritual principles and said he wanted to publish her book explaining how she did it.

He didn’t have any money.

He didn’t have any experience.

He didn’t know where to begin.

But he had a goal: “I want to make one million dollars and move to India.”

Helen had a goal, as well: “I want to make one million dollars and open a center of my own to teach these principles.”

They made a deal: the man would pay a royalty of fifty percent (virtually unheard of today) for every book sold.

The young man drove off to begin his mission. Helen trusted him (though her late husband did not). She let go and allowed things to unfold.

“If it’s meant to be, it will be,” she says.

Six months later the young man returned, this time with a check for Helen.

A large check.

Here’s what he had done:

#1. He rented a mailing list of people who had entered contests.

#2. He sent every person on that list a postcard about Contesting, by the woman who won every contest she ever entered.

Clearly that’s an offer to market match.

You can imagine the response.

The man sold millions of copies of Helen’s book.

He made his million dollars, moved to India, and gave all rights to the book back to Helen. He had achieved his goal.

Helen got her money and opened her center.

This was a win-win-win.

The publisher won, the author won, and all those readers won.

That’s my all-time favorite way to do business.

There are so many marketing and metaphysical lessons in this little story that I urge you to read this post again and consider what happened.

And then apply the insights to your own life.

While you chew on that, here is Helen’s ending advice about life from her unpublished autobiography:

Make Every Day Special

Share a joke, hum a song.

Pass some special joy along.

And if someone should come your way

who doesn’t share your joy today…

THE HELL WITH ‘EM!

Ao Akua,

Joe
www.mrfire.com

PS – Helen is a private person. She doesn’t have a website. She rarely gives out her phone number. She does “Blueprints” on your life path, combining astrology and numerology and whatever her own intuition suggests, for $35. She has a few copies of her Contesting book remaining, which she sells for $10 each (postpaid).  She’ll even autograph them. If you want one, write her at taptap88 at cowtown dot net. Tell her that her old lusty friend Joe the Monk sent you. 🙂

 The book signing in Wimberley last Saturday was a terrific event, though a couple of “freaky” things happened.

I signed books for five hours (!). Everyone was super nice and came from as far away as Houston and Dallas, and even Corpus Christi (a five hour drive).

There were some wonderful highlights, such as —

* The 8-year old boy who is selling something online that everyone has and hates. I’ll interview him one day for my Hypnotic Gold membership program. He said, “Dr. Vitale, I want to be a millionaire like you.” (He’s eight years old and has already made $500 online selling — are you ready? — farts.)*

* The woman who beamed as she looked at me and said, “You are single handedly elevating the consciousness of the planet!” (I am?)

* The man (a reader of this blog) who knows I love Amazon gift certificates but gave me a rarer gift: a genuine Cuban cigar. (Illegal for we Americans to buy so always welcome as a gift).

* The woman who said, “Your energy is softer than I expected.” (Did she expect some sort of pro-wrestler “Mr. Fire!” smackdown loud mouth author?)

* The young man who looked at my signature in his copy of Zero Limits and said, “Your handwriting reminds me of Al G. Manning’s handwriting.”

Now that was freaky.

Al Manning was an author and spiritual teacher of mine when I was a teenager, forty years ago. I was a card-carrying member of his E.S.P. Lab for many years. I haven’t heard his name mentioned by anyone but me in a long time. (Al passed on in 2006.)

It was a terrific day. Pat O’Bryan filmed the entire event. I imagine snippets will end up on YouTube.*

Master photographer Rodney Bursiel took many pictures. And this time he was alert enough to ask someone to take a pic of him and me. (That’s him above.)

I still don’t think book signings are a great way to sell many books, but they are a great way to meet new friends and have a good time.

I ended the evening by playing my Taylor 655ce 12-string guitar for our friends Rick and Mary Barrett — the first time I’ve ever played any guitar in public (for more than myself and a cat, anyway). They applauded and even asked for more, which was a real confidence boost.

All in all, a good day.

Ao Akua,

Joe
www.mrfire.com

PS – The best place to order genuine Cuban cigars (so I hear) is www.cgarsltd.co.uk/ They’d make a great gift for somebody. 🙂

* If you want to see a short video of ‘fart boy’ being interviewed, go see www.patobryan.com/blog.htm Enjoy.