One morn­ing, you go into your mail­box and dis­cover there’s an enve­lope wait­ing for you from an unknown source. You bring the pack­age into your liv­ing room, tear open the enve­lope, pull out what’s inside, put on your read­ing glasses, unfold the let­ter, and begin to read the contents.

After com­plet­ing all of these steps, you then quickly glance at the let­ter to decide if the let­ter is worth reading.

If not, you throw it in the garbage.

But if the enve­lope looks like junk mail, there’s copy on the enve­lope and it screams “hype,” or the printed address label just says “dear occu­pant” as the addressee, chances are you won’t even think about open­ing it and you’ll just throw it away.

How­ever, let’s say the enve­lope works, curios­ity takes over, and the let­ter does get opened at this point. Once unfolded, though, if it looks like some kind of sales pitch at first glance, not even a sin­gle word will likely be read. So into the round file it goes!

Your web­site is the enve­lope. What does it say about you?

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I wrote this arti­cle way back in 1998. It seems to have made a resur­gence, espe­cially with today’s econ­omy. So I said to myself, “Why not repub­lish it?” So here it is. Enjoy!

If there is some­thing about which I’m pretty adamant, it’s the idea of attract­ing qual­i­fied prospects who are will­ing to do busi­ness with you. And this involves many dif­fer­ent things.

Posi­tion­ing is one of them. In fact, it has been one of my favorite mar­ket­ing con­cepts for this very reason.

How­ever, this fun­da­men­tal mag­net­ism is not only based on pure mar­ket­ing prac­tices or strate­gies. It also involves some­thing at a much deeper level that is far more effec­tive than any other mar­ket­ing tool or process in existence.

This “thing” to which I am refer­ring is, I believe, the most impor­tant mar­ket­ing secret I can ever teach you — and it’s far from being a secret at all. It is con­sid­ered as one sim­ply because it is often neglected or ignored by many mar­keters and businesspeople.

What is this “secret” that’s so elusive?

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Recently, I was tagged on Face­book by a few friends on this new topic, “25 ran­dom things about me.” The rules on Face­book are dif­fer­ent. I’ve changed the rules slightly for the blogosphere…

Here are the rules.

Once you’ve been tagged, you are sup­posed to write a post with 25 ran­dom things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose five more peo­ple to be tagged. You also have to tag the per­son who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you. To do this, you sim­ply link to their blogs so that they know you responded to their tag.

(You may include the above rules in your post so that the per­son being tagged knows them, too. You may also want to tweet your post to notify them on Twit­ter, too.)

Let’s start with things you may already know…

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When my wife released her con­tro­ver­sial report, Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Sins, we received mixed reac­tions. As expected, of course.

Some peo­ple thought it was about time some­one spoke out on these under­handed tac­tics and stu­pid mar­ket­ing tricks. Oth­ers praised Sylvie’s efforts and gushed her with appreciation.

Oth­ers, on the other hand, didn’t feel as… appreciative.

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We have all been judged at one point. But if you have ever judged oth­ers, par­tic­u­larly if you feel your judg­ments — no mat­ter how small — were incon­se­quen­tial or mean­ing­less, you have to watch this video.

My wife shared this video with me yes­ter­day, and I had a hard time try­ing to stop myself from tear­ing up. Watch it. Notice how even the tough­est and biggest bul­lies react. It’s quite amazing.

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Michel Fortin: Well, it’s the same idea. Jim Rohn said, “Don’t become wealthy at the expense of oth­ers. Become wealthy in the ser­vice of oth­ers.” Every per­son who is hap­pi­est in this world serves others.

Whether you’ve built wealth because you pro­duce a prod­uct or pro­vided a ser­vice that was at the ser­vice of oth­ers or you gave value to other people’s lives or you gave your life to char­ity serv­ing oth­ers, to me that is so important.

By doing that it is like for­give­ness in a sense, where you can get out of that this huge feel­ing in your­self that you’ve accom­plished some­thing that is true to you, not some­thing that is going to be a goal that you reach in the future, not some­thing that is going to be true to the other peo­ple around you who you’re serv­ing and you’re think­ing that you’re just doing this for other people.

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“I con­ceive that plea­sures are to be avoided if greater pains be the con­se­quence, and pains to be cov­eted that will ter­mi­nate in greater plea­sures.“
– Michel Eyquem de Mon­taigne (Circa 1500)

Remem­ber that it’s not your goals that really count but how you live your life accord­ing to what’s impor­tant to you. If you feel you can not incor­po­rate this sys­tem with your cur­rent job or other respon­si­bil­i­ties, you should first try it out.

You might find out that your job is indeed part of your pri­or­i­ties or that it doesn’t mean any­thing at all to you. If the first is true, then you will have a greater zest and love for what you do. How­ever, if the sec­ond is true, then start look­ing for some­thing you love or would love to do.

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