A dis­grun­tled, aspir­ing copy­writer wrote me demand­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tions. He believes most copy­writ­ers lie and exag­ger­ate their claims of wealth. Let’s call him “Chuck.”

I under­stand where Chuck is com­ing from. Because I’ve been where he is. So I responded, not because I wanted to acqui­esce to his demands but because I wanted to give him hope, ideas, and, dare I say it, a million-​​dollar education.

He says he will be ask­ing other copy­writ­ers the same ques­tion, and even threat­ened (although, that may be too harsh of a word) to pub­lish my reply. I’ve decided to take the lead myself, and pub­lish it here.

For all I know, this copy­writer may be gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion to cre­ate his own prod­uct. Who knows? If he is, I must say that his strat­egy is bril­liant. A tad decep­tive, but bril­liant. Regard­less, if he does cre­ate a prod­uct out of this, good for him!

But I’m reprint­ing the con­ver­sa­tion here not just to take the lead but also because I believe it will help a lot of other strug­gling copy­writ­ers out there. Also, I’m open­ing myself a lit­tle more than usual. I guess you can say that I’m expos­ing the real “Michel Fortin.”

My answer might sur­prise you…

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After the last, big, “mega-​​product launch,” and a bar­rage of me-​​too mar­ket­ing emails from the usual sus­pects, I’ve decided enough is enough. And it’s about time.

I’ve done some­thing I should have done a long time ago.

And I feel liberated.

I rec­om­mend you do the same.

That is, I unsub­scribed from 90% of the newslet­ters I was receiv­ing. I deleted fear­lessly. Unsub­scribed relent­lessly. Purged ruth­lessly. With­out blink­ing or look­ing back.

If you think it’s not a lot, let me give you a back­story. When I was the edi­tor of The Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Chron­i­cles newslet­ter over a decade ago (which has since been acquired by the late Corey Rudl), I sub­scribed to a lot of email newsletters.

Yes, lots. Like over-​​a-​​thousand lots.

I’m a speed-​​reader, so get­ting that many emails was never a big chal­lenge. And before you con­clude I was an email junkie, let me give you a few rea­sons in my defense.

For one, I wanted to be up on things. I wanted to stay abreast of new changes, new mar­ket­ing strate­gies, new soft­ware tools, and so on. (I still do.)

Sec­ond, it gave me a lot of fod­der while writ­ing edi­to­ri­als for the then pop­u­lar newslet­ter. I’m proud to have been instru­men­tal in help­ing them grow their list from 45,000 to 160,000 sub­scribers, and remem­ber that 160,000 back in ’98 was quite a feat!

And third, these emails served me well as they were also used for research pur­poses. As an up-​​and-​​coming copy­writer writ­ing a lot for the Inter­net mar­ket­ing crowd at the time, I wanted to see what oth­ers were say­ing, pro­mot­ing, doing, email­ing, and writing.

But this week­end, after last week’s ubiq­ui­tous mega-​​launch pro­mo­tional emails started clut­ter­ing up my inbox, it became the prover­bial straw that broke this camel’s back.

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I have been crazy-​​busy get­ting our newest prod­uct ready. It’s an all-​​in-​​one mem­ber­ship site that shows you how to cre­ate a mon­ey­mak­ing busi­ness online in just four steps.

We call it “Suc­cess Chef University.”

It cov­ers every­thing. Every busi­ness model, traf­fic type, and mar­ket­ing strat­egy. But do you know which ones you really need and why? What about out­sourc­ing any of it?

Like fol­low­ing a recipe, you need to use the right ingre­di­ents in the right order. Suc­cess Chef sim­pli­fies it all for you with step-​​by-​​step video tutorials.

Suc­cess Chef is still in the pre-​​launch phase. How­ever, we decided to invite you to join right now — long before we do launch — with a mas­sive dis­count.

Lim­ited to the next 50 indi­vid­u­als only.

The saleslet­ter is also inter­ac­tive, too. We’ve also recorded a spe­cial hour-​​long video to help you. That video is an edu­ca­tion in itself! In it, we share those four sim­ple steps to gen­er­at­ing income on the Internet.

Check it out if just for the learn­ing experience.

Recently, Michel Fortin, author of Drop Your Goals (And Man­age Your Life!), was inter­viewed by Ralph Zuran­ski. For over an hour, Michel dis­cussed some of the con­cepts based on his book.

Ralph Zuran­ski is the cre­ator of the “In Search Of Heroes™” pro­gram, whose aim is to gen­er­ate income to fund ben­e­fi­cial com­mu­nity pro­grams, activ­i­ties, equip­ment, soft­ware, train­ing and travel through cash dona­tions and affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing, par­tic­u­larly for, or geared towards, dis­ad­van­taged kids.

Ralph Zuran­ski, a for­mer spe­cial feature’s writer and pho­tog­ra­pher for the Coro­n­ado Eagle News­pa­per, cre­ated the In Search Of Heroes™ Pro­gram for High School Stu­dents in 1992–1993.

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“There are many who are liv­ing far below their pos­si­bil­i­ties because they are con­tin­u­ally hand­ing over their indi­vid­u­al­i­ties to oth­ers. Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be your­self. Be true to the high­est within your soul and allow your­self to be gov­erned by no cus­toms or con­ven­tion­al­i­ties or arbi­trary man-​​made rules that are not founded on prin­ci­ple.“
– Ralph Waldo Trine

“Take away the cause, and the effect ceases.“
– Miguel de Cervantes

In every­thing you do or want to do in life, you are always gov­erned by law and not by chance. Nat­ural laws are prin­ci­ples or expla­na­tions of why things are the way they are. Prin­ci­ples defined by Web­ster are “fun­da­men­tal laws or facts of nature.” Out of the many you have read or will read about in this book, there is one, how­ever, that is the foun­da­tional prin­ci­ple to all success.

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“Com­mit­ment is what turns a promise into real­ity. It is the words that speak boldly of your inten­tions. And the actions that speak louder than words. It is mak­ing the time when there is none. Com­ing through time after time after time, year after year after year. Com­mit­ment is the stuff char­ac­ter is made of; the power to change the face of things. It is the daily tri­umph of integrity over skep­ti­cism.“
– Unsourced

“Patience is bit­ter, but its fruit is sweet.“
– Anony­mous

You may have heard of Thoreau’s advice, “Do what you fear and the death of that fear is cer­tain.” I fig­ured that becom­ing a sales­per­son was the best way to fight my fear since rejec­tion is com­mon­place in sales. In the begin­ning, though, I cer­tainly was no sales super­star. Work­ing solely on com­mis­sion and with no income to show for, I filed for bank­ruptcy (one of two, if you recall). You might say that I became what my father pro­grammed me to believe.

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You’ve prob­a­bly heard the quote from Calvin Coolidge: “Noth­ing in this world can take the place of per­sis­tence.” Well, today, I learned about some­one I already know and admire, who cer­tainly embod­ies this trait.

Her name is Ladan Lashkari. She is a reader of this blog, and she even listed it as being one of her favorites. But when I learned her story, I was truly hum­bled.

The story was writ­ten by Eric Holm­lund. His blog, “Eric’s Tips,” is another blog I highly rec­om­mend. As you shall soon find out, he wrote a piece that’s so amaz­ing and inspi­ra­tional, that I had to tell you about it, with Eric’s gra­cious per­mis­sion. (And once you read it, you’ll be amazed like I am by how pow­er­ful Ladan’s story really is.)

If you think you have lim­i­ta­tions in your life stop­ping you from achiev­ing suc­cess, take some time to read about this woman’s lim­i­ta­tions. Her story is not only cap­ti­vat­ing, it’s awe-​​inspiring in so many ways.

So with­out fur­ther ado…

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