 Hi, this is Mitch Mitchell, and today I want to talk about ways to find inspiration based on stories. You know, I get asked often because I have so many blogs and I write all different kinds of articles. Where do I come up with ideas and how do I decide how to write? And I have written a couple of articles on this, basically what I do for the most part is I see everything as a story. And in my mind, if you've got a story, you can pretty much wrap it into almost anything. For instance, over the years on my I'm Just Sharing blog, I have compared a lot of things to blogging. I've compared being in an airport, poker tournaments, playing chess, you know, making dinner. I've put a lot of those kinds of things into talking about blogging. On my business blog, I have compared leadership with Harry Potter and Charlie Brown. I've talked about gang leaders being great leaders, some of them. You know, there's always a story. For instance, this past week, I have already written one thing talking about how I did some research on a book that I was looking to buy that I already own, which sounds really stupid, but I was thinking about buying an electronic version of it. And I decided to read the reviews, which I'd never had, you know, really paid attention to reviews before, especially with a book I've already read. And I saw some things that were shocking. And so I incorporated that by starting it off as a story into talking about why we need to go through with doing things in our lives because you know what, no one's going to like everything. That's just how life goes. Last week's video. When I talked about getting off of social media, it's because someone else had told a story and I'd heard another person who was having some kind of issues and wondering how to deal with it, or I said, you know, if you can't deal with social media, get off. Well, it began because of a story. I'm writing my finance blog post of all things that's finance, and I'm writing about making money blogging. And it seems like a strange connection, but the truth of the matter is, every day there's somebody out there who wants to know if maybe they should start blogging so they can make money. And every day you want to tell people, no. I mean, if you're starting blogging because you want to make money, it's a lousy way to do it. Still, there's a story in that. And one big story, which is coming out on my local blog, which is called SyracuseWiki.com on Friday, because I've already written it and got it going, is a story about this past weekend when I went out to celebrate someone's birthday, a friend of mine's birthday, and how it ended up at IHOP, which most of you are going to know, International House of Pancakes, and the most incredible thing happened there. And this is not a good thing. As a matter of fact, it's a shocking thing. And I'm not going to tell about it right now because I haven't told anybody else what the story really is until it comes out on Friday. But I can relate pretty much anything that happens in my life into a topic if I need to. For instance, I have a friend right now who's in Hawaii. And today, I guess she took a ride up a volcano and it kind of scared her getting up there. But then she got up there. She got to see the things and she got to come back down. Luckily, they always bring you back down. And she's trying to figure out how to turn that into something that maybe she can use in her niche and she can't see it. And she's in entertainment. And I'm thinking, are you kidding? I could come up with like five or six different ways to tie that in. I mean, for me, one of those strange things is that getting into entertainment is really one of the toughest things ever. You have to pitch yourself a lot and you have to suffer a lot of rejection just to get something. Well, look at you. You just went up a volcano. I'm never going to go up a volcano. Trust me, folks. I'm never going up a volcano. It's just not going to happen. I let all you other folks do it, take pictures of it, and then I will just live through you. So that's really my whole point here. I just want to kind of let you know that if you really are feeling lost about what you can blog about, tell a story. Find a way to relate it to your niche or just tell the story. Really, that's how come I have this video channel. Yes, I try to stick with certain topics most of the time. But in general, this is a place I get to tell stories and this is a story. So let me know your thoughts on that. Do you find that you can tell a story? Or do you think it's tough to relate a story into a particular niche? Love to hear from you. Y'all take care and enjoy your week.