One of my favorite shows on TV of late is Shark Tank.

The show cen­ters on aspir­ing, brave, and some­times down­right idi­otic inven­tors and entre­pre­neurs who pitch their ideas in front of a group of mer­ci­less, seem­ingly heart­less mul­ti­mil­lion­aires, beg­ging for invest­ment capital.

Some of the advice that come from these “sharks” are pretty obvi­ous and com­mon­sen­si­cal, espe­cially to peo­ple who’s been in busi­ness for as long as I have.

But a lot of it is bril­liant. Bril­liant, but also brazen, unabashed, and bru­tally hon­est. It’s not for the faint of heart. If you don’t like see­ing peo­ple, along with their hopes, dreams, and busi­ness ideas being shred to pieces on TV, then this show is cer­tainly not for you.

The more I watch that show, the more I learn. It’s not just a fas­ci­nat­ing pro­gram, it’s a million-​​dollar edu­ca­tion in just one hour a week. And for free to boot. If you ever get a chance to watch that show, do it. You’re going to learn so much. It’s an amaz­ing show.

If an idea or busi­ness is dumb, dead, or down­right dread­ful, they will say it. Often, in no uncer­tain terms. They have to. After all, their money is on the line.

But then again, so should it be with you.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

A cou­ple of new things to tell you about today.

First off, I’m try­ing a new exper­i­ment. I’ve decided to close and remove com­ments on this blog. Just to see what hap­pens. Why? Here’s the thing…

When I post a new blog post, it will be cross­posted to a few social net­works. Some, by design with the help of a few tools and plu­g­ins. Oth­ers, by sub­scribers and read­ers who retweet, reblog, or track­back to my posts.

What I’ve noticed is, on these social net­works — Twit­ter, Face­book, Friend­Feed, Digg, and now with the new Google Buzz — my posts seem to incite dis­cus­sions on these loca­tions. Dis­cus­sions I love to par­tic­i­pate in, too, when I have a chance.

I want to har­ness that social media power and divest myself of the con­stant mod­er­a­tion of this blog. I feel that, since there are so many dis­cus­sions tak­ing place else­where, why not take advan­tage of social media and bring the dis­cus­sions to the pub­lic instead?

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Is the Inter­net mar­ket­ing indus­try implod­ing? I think it is. But if not, it sure seems like it. In fact, it seems to be a sign of the times.

For exam­ple, we see it with the FTC crack­ing down on mis­lead­ing adver­tis­ers, Visa and Mas­ter­Card clos­ing down mer­chant accounts for forced con­ti­nu­ity billings, and Google per­ma­nently ban­ning adver­tis­ers for rea­sons still unclear but some­how related to the lat­est crackdown.

Harsh? Per­haps. But we can’t say we didn’t see it coming.

Remem­ber, it was about three years ago — wow, has it been three years already? — when my wife, Sylvie Fortin, put out her scathing report, called “Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Sins.”

It was highly con­tro­ver­sial at the time because peo­ple didn’t expect it. How­ever, since then many mar­keters, blog­gers, jour­nal­ists, dis­grun­tled clients, unpaid affil­i­ates, even social media experts have joined in the cho­rus. Some, qui­etly. Oth­ers, not so quietly.

For instance, copy­writer Ryan Healy ruf­fled a few feath­ers recently by post­ing a scathing report, enti­tled “Inter­net Mar­ket­ing on Life Sup­port,” in which he sin­gled out a few mar­keters for their ques­tion­able, uneth­i­cal, or allegedly ille­gal practices.

One com­menter praised Ryan for his will­ing­ness to name names, and by the same token crit­i­cized my wife for not doing so in her Sins report. In fact, since it was pub­lished, we received a lot of flak for not nam­ing names. I cer­tainly under­stand their cynicism.

So I’m tak­ing this oppor­tu­nity to elab­o­rate on why we chose not to name names.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

The new year is around the cor­ner. It’s a time for res­o­lu­tions. A time for change. And some­times, those changes need to be drastic.

On Decem­ber 16, 2009, while we con­duct our reg­u­lar weekly webi­nar for our Suc­cess Chef stu­dents, we will be mak­ing a major announce­ment about rad­i­cal changes we’re mak­ing to our cur­rent busi­ness model…

… Changes that not only affect our stu­dents but also might affect the Inter­net mar­ket­ing train­ing indus­try as a whole.

So we’re open­ing up this live class to the pub­lic for the first time. For this one time, we’re invit­ing every­one who wants to join us on this webi­nar, and not just our pay­ing students.

These changes might sur­prise you. Or shock you. They even might make some peo­ple mad. But they must be made. And together with Sylvie Fortin, author of the con­tro­ver­sial Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Sins, we will be announc­ing those changes on that spe­cial webinar.

The rea­son is sim­ple — but it’s not what you think. We’re not sell­ing any­thing new. This is not a typ­i­cal pro­mo­tional or sales pitch webi­nar. It’s a spe­cial announce­ment, one we’ve been itch­ing to make for a very long time. All I can say is, “It’s about time!”

We recorded this very brief video and wrote this open let­ter to explain.

If you ever won­dered how to out­source your work using new and cre­ative ways that get it done faster, cheaper, bet­ter, and eth­i­cally, too, then you need to watch this video.

Called “crowd­sourc­ing,” this rel­a­tively new out­sourc­ing tech­nique — I say “rel­a­tively,” as the term may be new but the tech­nique is as old as out­sourc­ing itself — enables you to cull spe­cific skills from the pub­lic at large.

Often, for lit­tle to no cost.

Whether you’re out­sourc­ing already, plan­ning on doing so, or just want to save time and money, this is for you. Crowd­sourc­ing also allows you to bypass free­lance bid­ding sites that can turn out to be expen­sive and risky, often with less than desir­able results.

This two-​​hour train­ing video is com­pletely free.

In it, Sylvie exposes some of the best-​​kept secrets to get stuff done. Some of which have never been revealed until now. It was orig­i­nally recorded from a pri­vate online webi­nar to our Suc­cess Chef stu­dents, but we’re mak­ing it avail­able for the first time.

The video might be free, but you must reg­is­ter to watch it, as we high­light Suc­cess Chef Uni­ver­sity in the back­end because that’s where the video comes from. How­ever, you get imme­di­ate access to this video on the next page. You can unsub­scribe eas­ily, anytime.

Click here to watch this amaz­ing video.

A few weeks ago, we wanted to update our fam­ily pho­tos since all our kids have grown up, and we wanted some­thing more recent.

So we had a com­plete fam­ily pho­tog­ra­phy ses­sion done by a local exec­u­tive pho­tog­ra­pher, Luc St-​​Amour.

“Isn’t our fam­ily beau­ti­ful?” Says the proud dad.

(When you com­pare these to the pho­tos from our wed­ding, you can see how much they’ve grown. Now I really feel old!)

There’s my wife, Sylvie Fortin. The blond is my daugh­ter Megan Malette (24 years old). The red­head is my daugh­ter Céleste Coley Fortin (20). The brunette is my daugh­ter Paige Coley Fortin (17). Last but not least there’s my son, Tyler Coley Fortin (16).

(By the way, did you know Sylvie’s birth­day is on Hal­loween? Don’t tell her I told you, but this year she’s turn­ing the big 4–0! But no mat­ter what age, she’s as beau­ti­ful as ever.)

Obvi­ously, I couldn’t wait to share these with the world. I hope you don’t mind this lit­tle sneak peek into the per­sonal life of “Michel Fortin.” Click the pho­tos to enlarge.

Need help with your sales copy or mar­ket­ing strat­egy? About to launch a prod­uct or pro­mo­tion, but unsure if it will work? Or sim­ply wish you could pick my brains for an hour?

(And want to pitch in for a great cause at the same time?)

Well, for a lim­ited time, you can.

As a free­lance copy­writer and con­sul­tant for the bet­ter part of 20 years, I’ve had the won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity to cri­tique, review, con­sult, and coach thou­sands of peo­ple and projects.

At first, I did it because it was my liveli­hood. But today, my wife and I own sev­eral, prof­itable busi­nesses, and so I out­source much of it to our per­son­ally trained staff.

For this rea­son, I don’t do hourly con­sults any­more. When I do coach­ing or con­sult­ing, I give pri­or­ity to my mem­bers and rarely take on new clients. If I hap­pen to work with a new client, I do it mostly for fun. (But I also charge a min­i­mum of $3,000 for it, too.)

Well, if you ever wanted to “rent my brains” for an hour, and for a frac­tion of that price on top of that, then here’s your chance. Plus, you’ll be help­ing an impor­tant cause.

One that’s par­tic­u­larly mean­ing­ful to me and my fam­ily.

Read the rest of this post or share it »