If you have been liv­ing under a rock in the past few weeks, then you might have missed one of the biggest ker­fuf­fles in Inter­net his­tory. Or so it seems.

No, I’m not talk­ing about the con­tested elec­tions in Iran.

I’m talk­ing about the recent Face­book user­name frenzy, when Face­book allowed its users to reg­is­ter user­names, mak­ing pro­file addresses shorter and more memorable.

Lead­ing up to it, they used a count­down timer. Brilliant.

Last week, I was watch­ing a movie with my wife Sylvie Fortin. At 12:01 AM, I decided to log onto Face­book using my iPhone, just to see. And wouldn’t you know it? I man­aged to secure Face​book​.com/​m​i​c​h​e​l​f​o​r​tin for me, and Face​book​.com/​l​i​c​o​r​ice for our fan page.

(Sylvie also cap­tured “sylviefortin” for herself.)

The Licorice Group, LLC is the name of our pub­lish­ing com­pany, located in Las Vegas, Nevada. Obvi­ously, “miche­landsylviefortin” was way too long and would defeat the pur­pose of get­ting a shorter mnemonic. So I decided on “licorice.”

Any­way, you might be won­der­ing why I said this was a ker­fuf­fle. Well, hold on tight, because this one is a doozie (and there’s a mar­ket­ing les­son in here, too)…

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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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“Are you green and grow­ing, or ripe and rot­ting?“
– Ray Kroc (Founder of McDonald’s)

What is a prob­lem? There’s a say­ing, which says that obsta­cles are what hap­pens when you take your eyes off your goals. I don’t agree because prob­lems can occur even when you are focus­ing on your goals. How­ever, I would cer­tainly agree that obsta­cles are what hap­pens when you take your eyes off your pri­or­i­ties. In fact, to the con­gru­ent per­son, prob­lems are not prob­lems but con­sid­ered as grow­ing pains.

You are always grow­ing no mat­ter what. Change is, in essence, the result of grow­ing. A “Help Wanted” ad caught my eye when it said: “We embrace change by hir­ing peo­ple who cre­ate it.” We do cre­ate our own changes. We are always grow­ing, always evolv­ing, always chang­ing. There­fore, since we can not stop that growth, the key to liv­ing a ful­fill­ing life is to choose how to grow and to grow in the right direction.

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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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From my hotel, I can see a beau­ti­ful view of Redondo Beach, Cal­i­for­nia, hug­ging the warm, breath­tak­ing Pacific coast­line lined with a panoply of restau­rants, mer­chants, and boats.

Enjoy­ing the scenery notwith­stand­ing, I’m not blog­ging much right now because I’m out of town spend­ing a cou­ple of days with Jay Abra­ham. Upon my return from Los Ange­les, my wife and I will be get­ting ready to leave again for Atlanta to be at the Big Sem­i­nar next weekend.

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Michel: The sec­ond law will never believe any­thing at first. And the third law is peo­ple will never do any­thing at first. So the three steps, I call it the three P’s. Pull them in, prove your case, push them back. And copy, when you should pull them in, the head­line, peo­ple will scroll down a web page.

So you’ve got tons of things that you can do to pull them in. Head­ers through­out the copy, the story. Prove your case is of course cred­i­bil­ity and proof and all that stuff, and your offer and value buildup and guar­an­tees and tes­ti­mo­ni­als. And push them to act is of course ask­ing for the order, mak­ing the offer.

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The last two weeks have been nuts. So I haven’t had the chance to post much. After writ­ing Frank Kern’s saleslet­ter for his big Under­achiever Mas­tery launch last Sun­day work­ing almost the entire time while at Stephen Pierce’s sem­i­nar in Detroit, bar­ri­cad­ing myself in my hotel room, it’s been more than crazy.

It’s been insane!

In fact, I promised a friend of mine in Wind­sor (Rick Beneteau) to visit him while down there, but Frank’s let­ter was such a huge affair, I had no choice. I was stuck. And now, I’m exhausted. (And that doesn’t count the fact that I’m writ­ing two other big projects — one for John Reese, and another for Armand Morin.

But now that the big­ger dust has set­tled, let’s roll.

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