Last night while watch­ing TV, my wife and I had an inter­est­ing debate on the whole “The Secret” phe­nom­ena. And we came to the very same conclusions.

I believe in the law of attrac­tion. I also like the premise behind the book, which is largely influ­enced by Wally Wat­tles’ 1910 book, The Sci­ence of Get­ting Rich.

But with all the “new-​​wage” gurus out there giv­ing it a bad rap, the law of attrac­tion is get­ting an unde­served rep­u­ta­tion. Some peo­ple even call it the “flaw of attrac­tion.” How­ever, the real flaw isn’t with the secret in itself, as some suggested.

It’s with how some peo­ple have bas­tardized it for their own self­ish greed.

Here’s the problem…

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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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Some peo­ple tend to tweet, blog, post, and status-​​update their lit­tle hearts out. Be it on Twit­ter, Face­book, LinkedIn, MySpace, their own blog, or what­ever. They say it’s all about trans­parency, and trans­parency is good.

But I think we need to be careful.

While we may be open­ing our­selves up for the world to see, we may be open­ing our­selves up a world of trou­ble, too.

Trans­parency may seem like the lat­est fash­ion. But it can also become dan­ger­ous on many lev­els. Some dan­gers are obvi­ous, like being robbed after pub­li­ciz­ing you were out. Oth­ers, not as much, like being rep­ri­manded for say­ing some­thing you shouldn’t have said, or even being fired for insult­ing your customers.

My con­tention is, too much trans­parency can hurt you in many ways.

I agree that social media is great for devel­op­ing and nur­tur­ing rela­tion­ships. That’s what the word “social” in social media means. Or what it should mean, anyway.

But as with all rela­tion­ships, even when con­tin­u­ous, open com­mu­ni­ca­tion is an impor­tant com­po­nent, there should be a lit­tle mys­tique to keep the flame alive. A lit­tle room to allow for explo­ration and dis­cov­ery over a period of time instead of all at once.

In today’s open, Web 2.0 world, pri­vacy is more cru­cial than ever before. Why? Because trans­par­ent or not, every­thing you say online is per­ma­nent, can be found, and can be eas­ily mis­in­ter­preted. Espe­cially when taken out of context.

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It’s Thanks­giv­ing in Canada, so it’s time to give thanks. It’s also my birth­day. That’s why I’m the one who’s going to give you a gift (there’s only one con­di­tion, so read on).

I want to give thanks to all my loyal sub­scribers and read­ers. But there’s another per­fectly good and more impor­tant reason.

I need to make some room!

You see, I have 3,000 copies of one of my books in stor­age, and I need to get rid of them. Fast! So I’m fully pre­pared to give them away. For free. Let me give you some back­ground first…

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Ralph Zuran­ski: Hi, this is Ralph Zuran­ski. I’m on the phone with Michel Fortin. He’s one of the lead­ing copy­writ­ers in the world today. He is so suc­cess­ful in his writ­ing that he’s helped a num­ber of the Inter­net mar­keters achieve $1 mil­lion dol­lar days in sales.

He has been at a num­ber of the Inter­net con­fer­ences. Michel Fortin knows more about copy­writ­ing and test­ing copy than any­body that I’ve ever met.

I think that’s one of the rea­sons why he’s such a great teacher and also such a great copy­writer. He tests every aspect of copy­writ­ing to find out what works. I know that most of the time, on any of the copy­writ­ing pieces that he cre­ates, he has four or five tests that all run simul­ta­ne­ously… the color, the fonts, the place­ment of images.

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“Unless you live con­sis­tent with your deep­est val­ues, you’ll achieve but still lack the ulti­mate ful­fill­ment you truly deserve.“
– Anthony Robbins

“The secret to suc­cess and hap­pi­ness is to trans­late your val­ues into every­day life.“
– Hyrum Smith

Every­body has a set of deep core val­ues that gov­erns a person’s actions and a per­son can never ignore his core val­ues. When con­fronted with emer­gen­cies, pres­sure, impor­tant deci­sions, or chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tions, the actions he invari­ably takes will directly stem from his per­sonal set of values.

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“The secret of suc­cess is con­stancy of pur­pose.“
–Anony­mous

I agree that, if one wants to achieve more, the most impor­tant tool for doing so in today’s world is time man­age­ment. The chal­lenge in deal­ing with an inces­santly increas­ing demand on this scarcer com­mod­ity that we call time is preva­lent in our soci­ety. Peo­ple are busier than ever before and seem to never have enough time to do what they really want.

How­ever, if you study truly suc­cess­ful men and women, you will rec­og­nize that they always seem to have lots of time. They live in the moment, are happy and love what they do, and are intrin­si­cally very pro­duc­tive. More­over, they have intense focused con­cen­tra­tion on the task at hand and seem to man­age their time almost instinc­tively. And they do so with pas­sion, zest and fervor.

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