After read­ing and re-​​reading the lat­est FTC guide­lines, I’ve come to some impor­tant con­clu­sions that I want to share with you. Par­tic­u­larly as they relate to testimonials.

Last night, my good friend and top copy­writer John Carl­ton called me up, and we had an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion on this whole FTC thing and the hys­te­ria it has created.

I expressed to John my opin­ions about them, along with a very sim­ple solu­tion. And John agreed with me.

It’s a huge ben­e­fit to those who under­stand copy­writ­ing, because they can actu­ally turn around and use the FTC rul­ings to their advan­tage. Even make more sales as a result.

Part of the solu­tion is actu­ally sim­pler than you think. And it doesn’t involve tear­ing down all your tes­ti­mo­ni­als, plas­ter­ing a bazil­lion dis­claimers around them, or con­duct­ing painful, men­tal con­tor­tions to decide what is typ­i­cal or not.

You can start by doing this one sim­ple thing…

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Drop Your Goals (And Man­age Your Life) by Michel Fortin is a book writ­ten over a decade ago as the author was going through some tough times.

The result is a pow­er­ful look at how to stop set­ting goals and to start look­ing at your pri­or­i­ties and val­ues instead — called “guides” rather than “goals.”

It’s a bit spir­i­tual and meta­phys­i­cal in nature, so please read with an open mind. How­ever, the strate­gies it offers are real and practical.

I highly rec­om­mend that your read this book, which is brought to you free, and start using the G.O.A.L. method out­lined in the book, with tem­plates at the end.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

“I prac­ticed the art of get­ting more things done rather than get­ting the really impor­tant things done well.“
– Alec MacKenzie

“We can no more afford to spend major time on minor things than we can to spend minor time on major things.“
– Jim Rohn

Now is the time to set your GOALs. Your “guides” are goals that will most likely stem from your per­sonal val­ues because, hav­ing gone through the process so far, you will have a pretty good idea of what kind of goals you truly want. Take a new sheet of paper and write at the top the words “My Guides.” Then, write down what you want to be, do, or have.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

“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.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

“The more tran­quil a man becomes, the greater is his suc­cess, his influ­ence, his power for good. Calm­ness of mind is one of the beau­ti­ful jew­els of wis­dom.“
– James Allen (1864–1912)

This par­a­digm shift in time man­age­ment has led me to the under­stand­ing that goals by them­selves are sim­ply no good. If you ask me, they’re all a bunch of caca. The con­cept of goal achieve­ment today is so clouded in mis­con­cep­tion and uses up so much mis­guided energy that it lit­er­ally takes peo­ple away from their true success.

If you focus on the future or dwell on the past, you can become dis­tracted from what’s gen­uinely impor­tant in your life right now. Most goals are set because peo­ple have cer­tain needs or wants. How­ever, once those lacks have been filled, more often than not oth­ers were cre­ated or over­looked in the process.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Before we begin, you must under­stand the con­cept that under­lies this book. In today’s soci­ety, I believe we have expe­ri­enced two major shifts that have almost com­pletely rev­o­lu­tion­ized the entire busi­ness landscape.

The first and most impor­tant one is com­pe­ti­tion.

The mere fact that busi­ness is becom­ing increas­ingly hyper­com­pet­i­tive is an under­state­ment. Busi­nesses, par­tic­u­larly home-​​based busi­nesses and self-​​employed pro­fes­sion­als, are grow­ing at an explo­sive rate.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

I’m going to tell you why long copy is here to stay, no mat­ter what Michel Fortin and John Reese tell you.

And when it comes to guys who keep their ear to the ground and their eyes on the num­bers (and test results), no one has my greater respect than those two guys.

Yes, atten­tion spans are dwin­dling. Yes, it’s becom­ing more and more an audio-​​visual world on the Web.

But let’s look at the whole ques­tion from a consumer’s point of view.

Read the rest of this post or share it »