Episode 113 – Sales Letters & Sales Pages with Armand Morin

Armand: It's kind of interesting. I was one of those disappointments to my parents. Okay? Let me tell you why. Not that I really disappointed them because they loved me no matter what, but I originally went to school, I wanted to become a stock broker. I want to ultimately work on The Wall Street. I wanted that total lifestyle if you will. But I went to school for one year, I went to college for one year and then all of a sudden I got a job in the summer time and I read this ad in the newspaper and it said, “Ambitious people wanted. We have special college program. You can make up to $30,000 over the summer.” And I thought, “This is awesome.” My dad made $30,000 a year, so if I could make that in the summer time, it would be amazing.

So I went there to the interview and it was selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door. I went out with this girl that I was going out with and she said, “You have to go.” And I said, “I'm not going in.” Which she says, “You have to go in.” So ultimately of course I went in. I listened to the guy's pitch and I met that day the greatest salesperson I've ever met. I have met a lot of great salespeople over the years and literally some of the best in the world – but this guy was literally the best because when I walked out, he actually made me believe that I wanted to sell vacuum cleaners. And I did for the next 5 ½ years. The next 5 ½ years I sold vacuum cleaners, door-to-door. At first it was the worst experience and it turned honestly into now looking back at it, one of the best experiences in my whole life because it broke me out of my shell.

Oddly enough today, I was going through some papers that I found and I was just throwing a bunch of stuff away and I found this English paper that I wrote when I had that first year in college and it said apparently where you think you're going to be five years from now, what do you want to improve about yourself and one of the things I wrote down is this – I'm reading this word-per-word because I happen to be sitting on my desk – “I would also like to overcome some personality corks that bother me. One is shyness. I feel too shy around people. I need to be more outgoing and energetic.” It was really kind of funny because at that time in my life, I would literally cross the street if someone was walking down the same side of the street as me.

Brian: Wow!

Armand: I was actually that shy. It was really honestly quite an issue, but that helped me break out of that, it helped me talk to strangers, it helped me get over those fears. But for the next 5 ½ years like I said, I did that and then it was just time to move on honestly, and I ended up working for two vacuum cleaner companies during that 5 ½ years – one was for Electrolux for two years, the next 3 ½ years, I happen to work for Kirby in vacuum cleaners. But after those two stints, here is what happened, is I figured if I need a better job, I need to get a better newspaper. Right? So I opened up The Wall Street Journal and it said, “Ambitious people wanted to make all the money you want in the world.” And it said something about telecommunication sales reps. I had no idea what that meant or even what telecommunications was, but I figured I'd give him a call, I figured, “What do I had to lose?” Right?

Also, here is the one of the main things that you'll learn about me, is that my naivety – a word to my advantage throughout my whole life – I didn't know that you just shouldn't call some company up out of The Wall Street Journal and say, “Hey, I need a job.” So I did it. I called up this company, I said, “Hey, I read your newspaper ad.” And they asked me a question, this is the funniest thing in the world, they said, “Have you ever sold anything door-to-door?”

Brian: Oh, boy.

Armand: I said, “Actually I have and I told them exactly what I said. They said, “You're prefect. You're exactly what we're looking for.” What it was, this company oddly enough was selling long distance service door-to-door like AT&T, MCI, Sprint, that type of idea except this is their own company, it was called Cherry Communications at the time. They sent me two pieces of paper. They sent me a contract to say how much I got paid and I got paid per customer that I signed and then they sent what's called a letter of authorization. That was it. That's all the training they gave me. Now, it was my responsibility at this point to figure out how to sell this.

So I went out the next morning, I made some copies of this form that I had to have people filled out and I just start knocking on doors and making it up as I went along and trying to figure out the right pitch and eventually I got it right. But I did that and I got out to be very successful because here is what I learned in the first week, is how to leverage myself. I figure, “Okay, I could sell X number of people.” But I called up the president of the company and said, “Hey, I'm doing this by myself. Is it okay if I get other people and pay them half of what I make?” And he said, “Well, I don't see any reason why you can't.” So I started running ads. I'm now the guy running the ads that says, “Hey, ambitious people wanted. Make unlimited income” and that type of idea.

So I hired two group of people. Now it turns out that I end up opening about three different offices for that company without ever meeting anyone from the company and without any training whatsoever. But I also figured out during that time frame that the company was making all the money. Now, this is where we come to what I started doing on the internet, is that what happened was I discovered that you could get paid residual income for each account that you signed up. A company might be making $0.10 or $0.12 per minute per customer that they had each and every month. So I thought, “Man, I would like to do that because right now, I only get this flat fee of a couple of bucks here and there.”

So I went and I found out that you could get this and then I said, “Well, maybe I should start my own company and start doing this.” Again, being absolutely naïve. Before, we didn't have the internet at this time. We're talking at 1995 at this particular point in time. We didn't have the internet or at least I didn't have access to the internet. I didn't have a lot of money and we didn't have a computer or anything like that, but something pretty strange happened. What I did is I opened up the phone book. This is how I got started and most people would just die knowing this. I opened up the phone book and in the beginning of the yellow pages, I just started dialing numbers. I said, “Hi, my name is Armand Morin and I'm looking to find out who I could talk to about becoming a reseller for AT&T.” The first person has no idea, “Well, you should call the business services.” I called business services and I said, “My name is Armand Morin. I want to become a reseller for AT&T.” “Oh, you need to talk to so and so.”

Then after about 50, 60, 70, 80, 100 different phone calls, I get this one guy somewhere in the middle of nowhere and he says, “You know what? We've been thinking about putting together what's called the “carriage program” where you could resell AT&T services.” I said, “Well, that's what I'm looking for. That's exactly what I want.” I ended up signing a contract and I sitting in an apartment with no furniture with a desk that I had from the salvation army, my girlfriend and my son – my girlfriend just left me and took my son with her at the time – I'm flat-busted broke, literally with $1.83 in my pocket. I now am ready to start this company and they gave me this carriage contract. Not just a carriage contract to resell AT&T services, the first ever carriage contract in the history of AT&T. I am the guy that they gave it to.

Crazy, absolutely crazy, but something amazing happened. Along the way, people started asking me what I was doing and I started advertising looking for sales reps even before I even launched the company and spending really every dollar that I had. And in that first two weeks, I actually brought in over $100,000 of business. The second week I brought in $100,000. That company ended up doing $1.8 million over the course of next 10 months, actually. That was where I started my very first company.

Brian: That's amazing. That is crazy. The funny thing about this, too, is I used to work at AT&T in their video editing department, so it's like wow!

Armand: That's funny.

Brian: It's a small world, isn't it?

From that point, now you've evolved into The Man, The Myth, The Legend, you are the guru at least in my mind and maybe I've got this wrong because I'm just getting it from the outside, but you're the guru of salesletter and sales pages and helping people use the internet to grow their businesses.

One of the questions that I asked you when we were on a Blab together was I said what was the “aha” moment that finally you just got it and it made sense? Maybe you can kind of dig into that a little bit.

Armand: Yes, and I believe my answer was in writing my first salesletter. Everyone already knows that at this particular point, I had a history of direct sales with that account. I got over my shyness, I got used to totally talking to people, I realized that there was actually a conversation and not just a conversation, but a dialog happening between you and the consumer that you're trying to get to purchase whatever it is that you have – whether you do it face-to-face or whether you do it over the internet.

So when I was getting ready to put my first what I would call internet marketing product, an ebook a very long time ago, I was struggling. I couldn't figure out what do I say, “What do I say? How do I say this?” This internet thing just made me dumbfounded. The reason why it made me dumbfounded is because I looked at it as being something new, something different and obviously, I had to do something different in order to make it work. That wasn't the answer.

Along the way as I would sit in there staring at a blank screen like probably many people have done, I realized. I said, “What would I say if someone was sitting across the table from me and I have this product that I know very, very well, what would I say to them in order to try to get them to purchase this product? What would I tell them about this product? How would I describe it to them? What would I say to tell them that they need this product and ultimately, why do they need this product?” When I made that connection, that it was simply a conversation that I was having with someone, an individual rather than a group of people, that's when it all clicked. Honestly, when I wrote that first salesletter for that very first product, I had that salesletter up, it was about 12 years or so and I never changed it. Every single year, that one product, that ebook that I sold for $19.97, we made about $30,000 a year from that one ebook and that one salesletter and it was that same very first salesletter that I ever wrote. That was it. That was the biggest piece of the puzzle. Does that make sense, Brian?

Brian: That totally makes sense, man. The fact that you were able to use this for that long and it still work, just blows me away.

The next question I have is with all the noise and stuff that we have on the internet right now, I mean emails and everything else, what makes a good email or salesletter stand out to people?

Armand: It's a good question. What makes a good salesletter stand out? Let's think about this: you come to a website in some way, shape or form. Now, it doesn't really matter how you got there, but something spoke to you. Let's just think about the initial context because I think this does actually make sense. You might have received an email, you might saw an ad, you might have read a Facebook post and you clicked on a link, you actually went to a webpage and you saw this particular salesletter. The question now boils down to what is going to make that salesletter work for you in some way, shape or form?

Well, first of all the question is does it speak to you? Now, what do I mean by does the salesletter actually speak to you? Meaning in your what I call “primal essence” as far as what you are interested, your primal interest – now there's a reason why I use primal interest, because a lot of times, people try to dress something up to make it sound like it does more than what it does. What we want to think about is the primal essence, the primal interest of that particular individual, what is it they actually want? So for example, if I talk about this revolutionary new software, allows you to put your message in front of thousands of visitors, well that may sound good in a bunch of hype, but in reality, what does the end consumer really want?

Well, the primal essence of that particular consumer in this particular case would be that they want to get more traffic. I would probably actually even change my mind on that. They want traffic, yes, but they actually want more sales. When we break it down to the root as far as what does that consumer want ultimately from your product, what do they want it to achieve, then that's going to make it easy. It's going to make it very, very simple for people to understand. Again, it's that primal essence. Again, what makes us stand out? Number one, is it hard-hitting?

One of the things about the internet is people don't have time anymore. They don't have time to try to sit there and figure it out. I love video salesletters. I really do and I love creating them, I love using them and in most cases, I use them a lot. But at the same time, I hate them because if people utilize a video salesletter, a lot of times they take too long to get to the point. Imagine this, imagine changing things up a little bit whether it be a written salesletter or a video salesletter because I think the ultimate salesletter on the internet today is a hybrid. Now what do I mean by hybrid? It mean it has video salesletter at the top and a long form salesletter underneath it because you hit both people – the people who like to watch a video and you also hit the people that actually like to read.

Now the most important part is that are you getting to the point fast? How fast are you getting to what they ultimately want? I will start off my salesletters with one of the basic question and I will actually say, “Hi, my name is Armand Morin. Thank you very much for visiting our website. Let me ask you a question, how would you like to be able to do this?” Actually that is the structure of typically almost every one of my salesletters, “How would you like to be able to do this?” And I'll simply insert whatever it is that I want, “How would you like to be able to drive a 100,000 visitors to your website in the next 24 hours? If the answer is yes, then pay close attention to what I'm about to say.” Do you see what I mean? Or, “How would you like to be able to lose 30 lbs in the next 30 days eating all your favorite foods? If that sounds like you, then listen very closely to what I'm about to say.”

And if you use something basic like that, you don't have to be extremely creative, but that first initial headline where you kind of smack someone between the eyes with your headline, that's what's going to make your salesletter stand out because you're going to want to grab their attention in that first five – I would say normally five to 10 seconds, but it's probably more like five – seconds that you're going to have in order to just let that person decide if they're going to stay or if they're going to go. A long time ago I read the statistic and I think it's right, that women make a decision to stay on a website in five seconds, men make a decision to stay on the website in 10 seconds. Men are a little slower but I think it's probably right. I've never challenged it, but I believe that's about right – but it's that headline, if you will, that makes the most sense, but again the way I think about it is that primal aspect, get straight to the point as fast as you possibly can and let that person make a decision if they're going to stay or if they're going to go.

Because what I want to do is ultimately, I want to weed out those people that are not interested in what I have to offer. That's the way I go about it. Does that make sense?

Brian: Yes. So Armand, my next question is what do you consider to be the key parts to the most awesome salesletter you have ever seen or ever done?

Armand: The key elements. What are the key parts to the most awesome salesletter that I've ever done? Well, I would probably say this, there's about 10-11 steps actually when you think about it. If you break down a salesletter, it works like this. Number one is your headline, that's step one. Again, those of you that are listening, you should really write this down because this is not just steps, but this is the actual formula that I use each and every time.

Number one is going to be our headline. Again, a hard-hitting headline that's going to smack them between the eyes, our primal essence, that's going to be the first piece of the puzzle. That's step one. Number two is our introductory paragraph. Now, the introductory paragraph, the way I typically do it is I create a shocking statement underneath the headline, “So how would you like to be able to do this? If I could show you a simple way in order to lose 30 lbs in 30 days, would you be interested? If the answer is yes, then continue on so.” I may repeat basically the headline in the actual first paragraph, but that first introductory paragraph, I'm going to start talking about the actual problem that people have. Again, the intro if you will, and in the intro is going to be your problem. Establishing what that problem actually is.

Let's think about this. We've got the problem that people have and it's not just enough to expose a problem because sometimes it's very obvious what the problem is depending what your product or service is. But on the other end of the spectrum, what you also have is you have this skill that you need to acquire and the skill is very easy, is to expose a problem that they might not yet have. We need to let them know that this is a problem that exist and then we need to prove to them that this problem is also a problem that they have. And then step number three is we need to agitate that problem.

If you notice, these steps are not revolutionary in nature, but most salesletters follow a very similar pattern. Again, it's very simple, but I follow these same steps every single time. Number three is to agitate that problem and make them realize what they are missing or what they are losing if this problem continues to persist. Again, we want to make them angry and some people call it putting salt on the wound, but you can call it any way you want. It's again making them angry that this problem exist. Get them mad, bring up the emotions, but then when they're almost ready to explode, we want to give them a solution. What we do is we introduce a solution. Step number four is a solution.

Now again, we have the headline, we have the intro and intro to the problem, then we agitate the problem and then we introduce the solution; step number four is we introduce a solution. Again, we're bringing them down emotionally, we're taking them on a ride, “How would you like to be able to do this?” So we make this big promise in the headline, then we talk about a problem that persist and exist in their lives and we make them realize they have this problem, and then we make it even worse, “Did you know because you have that problem, you're missing out on this, and that, and everything else?” And they're getting angry and just when they're about to explode we say, “But don't worry, I have something that will make your life a whole lot easier and let me introduce it to you.”

Now at this particular point, if we introduce this problem or the solution – imagine this for a moment because this is something I want everyone to write down, it's called the law of contrast. What we're doing is we're bringing them down emotionally and we want to bring them down very, very, very low. The reason why is because when we introduce the solution, we're going in the exact opposite direction where we want them to feel like the skies are parting, the sun is shining in a ray of light and it's shining down on your product and angels start singing. That is what we want to achieve at this particular point.

So now we have the solution, we introduce the product to them, we introduce exactly what your product they should say as far as the solution and then we describe the solution. Again, headline, intro to the problem, you agitate the problem, intro to the solution, describe the solution; and number six at this particular point is going to be the features and benefits. If I would have to say the lost art, if there was such a lost art, if there was a lost art of the internet, if there was a lost art of copywriting, the lost art would be the art of bullets, features and benefits. We've seen them from time to time, but lately – and I say lately, over the past three, four or five years – and you've seen fewer and fewer of them where people are actually utilizing features and benefits to their advantage.

I am a student of copywriting. I read all kinds of sales copy and I will save copy just because it's great. I was going through some papers the other day and remember that I was telling you guys earlier that I was throwing away some stuff. I have a copy of this ad from a newspaper in USA Today from over 10 years ago that it was the shortest copy ever in the world, but it's for the tempurpedic mattress and it was this ad by Dick Clark. I kept it because the copy was the most brilliant copy I've ever read in the world. Again, utilize features and benefits, and the features and benefits are going to be the key – and the feature, let's just break this down really quick, the feature is what the product does. It does this. Now, the benefit is, well, what does that mean to the consumer? “Here is what it does, here is what it means to you. Here is what it does, here is what it means to you. Here is what it does, here is what it means to you.”

Again, it's typically listed out in a set of bullet points. Again, relatively simple, relatively easy in order to do. Not too complicated in any way, shape or form. But there should be probably – if I have to guess – 10-12 different ones. Number six is again your features and benefits. Somewhere between 10-12 features and benefits of that, but also at the end of the features and benefits, step number seven, is to summarize, summarize the features and benefits. Now you may be thinking, “Why would I summarize these features and benefits because it just doesn't make sense since I just listed them all out.” Well, good question.

The reason why you want to summarize them is for the people that are scanning your salesletter. Remember, not everyone reads. I don't read every line of a salesletter. I'll pull out the parts that I think are good and the parts that appeal to me, the parts that stand out to me. I'm not going to read every line, but some people will scan for that summary. So after all my features and benefits, I then have a summary. So step number seven is the summary of the features and benefits. Next, number eight is why should they buy today? This is the immortal question when it comes to the internet. If you're selling a digital product, you can't say, “Well, there's only three left. You have to do something more than that.” Right? What we need to do is we need to come up with a reason why they should buy that and why should they wait.

Now the number one reason that you should, and again I'm going to use that phrase there, you should be using is simply the reason of the longer they wait to remove this problem that we've established, the more pain that they're going to experience. That could be one aspect and that should be the primary reason why a person should buy, is to remove pain, to remove inconvenience, to remove an issue that persist. The reason why I say that is because you don't want to sell them on the world, “If you don't buy today, the price is going to go up.” Because that's not going to work. That's like a numbing shot. It doesn't stay and last a long time. You may experience a lot of refunds if you sell on price point. So you don't really want to do that too much. Sometimes it's appropriate but sometimes more often than not, it's not. You want to sell them on removing the aspect of that pain, it feels so bad that they need to spend money in order to remove that pain from them that they're experiencing right now. Again, why should they buy today? That's step number eight.

Next is a summary of all the things that they're going to receive. What is it that they're going to receive today? Number nine is a summary of all the things they're going to receive today. In fact let's push number nine to number 10. Number 10 would be the summary, number nine would be any kind of bonuses that you add. Now, here is a big misconception. Everyone on the internet says, “You need to have bonuses. You need to have bonuses and you need to have bonuses.” I didn't really have bonuses. If I had to look at all those different salesletters that I have currently, I think only one salesletter actually has bonuses and it just makes sense to add it to that one, but I don't feel that every salesletter requires me to bribe someone in order to buy it. Sometimes people get carried away because they have – I'll tell you guys a story a while back. This is probably six or seven years ago.

A person was pushing an ebook. They are like, “Buy my ebook today.” They sent us to a page and on that page, there was, “If you buy my ebook today, you're going to receive…” I'm not lying. This is exactly the number, “…over $50,000 in bonuses.” Again, you want me to buy this ebook for $19 and you're going to give me $50,000 in bonuses from all these different people if I should buy your ebook today? Now, there comes a time where things get pushed over the top and that was one of the cases and that's when I just realized, “That's crazy.” That is crazy. That's number nine in this particular case, as add bonuses if necessary. Makes sense?

Number 10 would be to summarize everything if they're going to receive and itemize it. What do I mean by itemize it is list them out, “Here is what you're going to receive. You'll receive access to my course. You're going to receive this product and here is step one, module one, module two, module three.” If there is modules, but list out what they're going to receive, plus any kind of bonuses and totaled up the total value to it, and then introduce the price, “This is the price point in what they're going to receive and how they can buy it today.”

Then the next step which would be step number 11 would actually be an order area. Now what do I mean by an order area? If you look at many salesletters, there is a yellow box, a blue box. Some people use a green box. I like yellow just because it's traditional and that's what we typically use in the past. But a yellow box at the bottom of the page, with the dotted line around it typically that has credit card symbols. You should be using credit card symbols. If you accept PayPal, make sure you have a PayPal symbol there, but there's a button in order for them to buy. Now when they click that button, they would go to your payment processor, but that is known as the order area. It's like an official area on that page where a person would click a button to place the order.

And then step number 12 would be the PS. If we go back through and we look at this, we have a headline, we have an introductory and then problem, then we agitated the problem which is step number three, and then we introduce the solution, and then we told them about the solution, and then we have the features and benefits which is steps number six and again that should be somewhere between 10-12 features and benefits; we summarize the features and benefits which was step number seven, and then after we summarize the features and benefits, why they should buy today and again we introduce the pain aspect, they're wanting to remove that pain. Number nine, we include any kind of bonuses that we could have had, number 10, we summarize and itemized everything that they're going to receive, number 11 is the order area and number 12 is the PS, “Again, thank you very much for ordering today and blah, blah, blah.” Sometimes a PS is necessary, but typically most people would actually have it there. But those are all the steps.

Now the one thing that I didn't mention was throughout the sales copy, after you introduce the product, what you want to do is you want to ask the person to buy multiple times. Don't rely just on the order button at the bottom of the page, but you should ask between the features and benefits, and in between each one of these segments and sessions, that segments that we talked about, there should be an order button. But my biggest pet peeve is people asking to buy the same way, “Click here to order now. Click here to order now. Click here to order now.” You don't want to say it in a different way each and every time. Makes sense?

Those are again my 12 steps and again those are what I'd recommend anyone does and that's exactly the process that I use each and every time.

Brian: Dude, that's incredible. Way to lay it out and I really appreciate it. It's a really great step-by-step system.

Now Armand, you speak and teach to people all over the world and this I know is a tough question, but what is the most common or biggest mistake you see people making all the time?

Armand: The most common mistake that I see people making around the world is doing things out of order. Now you may be thinking, “What is out of order?” It's not focusing at the right place at the right time. There is a process, it's a sequence. I believe that nature in human beings in the whole world revolves around a certain set of sequences. When I say that, I don't mean this in a woo woo type of mentality. What I mean is it's a sequence. Everything has a sequence to it. The way I put my pants on in the morning, I have to do it in a certain order to make it work. The way I get into my car, I have to do in a certain order, the way I drive my car, I have to do things in a certain order – everything has an order to it as well as running a business, and creating a business, and doing things. What happens is a lot of people try to jump the order.

So one of the most common things that I do when I'm speaking in front of a crowd of people is I'll ask them a question, something like, “How many people in this room would like to generate 100,000 visitors to their website by tomorrow morning? Raise your hand if you'd like to be able to do that.” Almost everyone in the room will raise their hand. Then I'll ask the next question. The next question will be, “Raise your hand if you do not have a website.” And half the room will raise their hand. Again, think about what just happened. I asked everyone if they'd like to drive a 100,000 visitors to their website, but only half the people in the room actually have a website. So the other half of the people that don't have a website are looking for information that they actually don't need or at least don't need yet – and that's my point.

Think about where you are. There's a phrase that I use each and everytime with every one of my students and they're probably sick of it, but I say it again and again. In fact I have it actually in a sign at the back of my desk and that is, “What is the next logical step?” The reason why I say that – I didn't say emotional step, I said logical step. If you write down in a chronological order the things that you should be doing in order to get where to where you wanted to go, then there's a step to it. You have to do step one before you do step two. You have step two before step three. So if you have these things written down in a sequence, then you should follow it step-by-step, don't try to do multiples at the same and don't try to jump. People try to leapfrog and jump over steps. Well, you don't need to learn step number seven till you do the other six steps before.

That's kind of the biggest problem that I see people making, is that they lack the focus in some cases. I almost say everyone does that, but sometimes people lack the focus by not being able to focus in these smaller things because maybe they're mundane tasks, maybe they're not exciting. Hey, I get it. I get it as much as everyone does. I have a person on my team right now going through every single blog post that we have and replacing all the images and/or adding images if we don't have them. That's mundane, that's boring. This is a person that does a lot of programming for me, but a lot of people on my team, they do multiple jobs. So we kind of pick up the pieces and even I'll go in and replace images if necessary, but it's just something that has to be done in order for us to get to where we want to go, in order to set us up for the next following years and things of that nature.

Again, the biggest problem I see that most people making is the fact that they just do things out of sequence and they don't have a chronological order to the things that they want to accomplish. For me, I don't believe and I know I kind of make a lot of people mad by saying this, I don't believe in the idea of mind maps. I just don't. I don't think they're useful in any way, shape or form. That's not how a human being actually thinks. Yes, we do think in a scattered way, but the purpose of writing something down is to get you organized. I don't want to know all my different thoughts in a bunch of different places. What I want to do is I want to make a list. So I on the other hands, if I don't like mind maps, what do I do? I make lists. In fact my best and biggest tool that I use in order to get me to where I want to go is an index card.

Right now in front of me to my left-hand side is a set of index cards and these are little bigger ones than normal. I think maybe they're 3×5? Maybe they're bigger than that, but the 3×5 set index cards – and I have them on the left-hand side of my desk. I have a stack just sitting here and I grab one card. When I need to do something, I grab a card, I pull it in front of my and you can hear it, that's the actual card and then what happens is I write down at the top of it what it is that I want to achieve? What is it that I want to accomplish? Then I write down the steps, “Okay, in order for me to do that, what do I need to do in order? Step one, step two, step three, step four.” Now I have a list of the things I need to achieve.

Now on the right-hand side, I have basically – I don't know what the word for this is – but I have an index card holder and I have all these index cards facing up and I put this one in that holder and I might have six or seven of this. When I want to do something and when I'm working, I grab the first card and I work on item number one. I'll keep on working it until it's done or almost done and then I cross it off. I literally cross it up. Then I can keep on working on this list, or I move that list to the back of the list of index cards and then I work on the next card. Because here is what a lot of people don't understand, when you have a lot of things to do in your business, you can't work on the same thing all day, you get burned out. You hate it after a while. What I do is I keep on progressing because I have a list of different things that I need to accomplish, each one on a different index card.

The first index card, I take out and I move it to the back and then I work on the next one. So now I'm working on an entirely new idea, a different part of my business that needs work on, but I'm still progressing and moving forward overall except my mind is now thinking an entirely different way. So it makes me work more efficiently. It makes me work better. It makes me fresh every hour or every 90 minutes depending on how long you can focus and everyone is a little bit different, but these index cards, when I finish it off, after I cross off everything on that one index card, then it goes over to the garbage and I toss it out and then we repeat the process. Everytime that I want to achieve something, I write it down on an index card no matter how big or how small it may be. I write it down and a lot of times writing it down, just makes you think about it a little bit better, it solidifies it and make steps.

I'm going to tell you right now, and when I'm writing down these steps that I need to achieve, I don't think of everything. I wish I could think of everything in one shot, but I leave myself open, meaning that I'll add to it or I'll change it, or I'll modify. In some cases, it means me rewriting that list and that's okay. Now you may be thinking, “But don't you use a computer?” Well yes, I do use a computer, but I found out that there's not a single program that I can find that will allow me to keep things in front of me all the time. I have all kinds of programs running. I have journals, I have this and I do have some things for list and notes on a computer and I value them a lot. But in order for me to achieve the most, it's easier for me to use these simple index cards and that's what makes me the most productive as I possibly can. Makes sense?

Brian: Yes, I totally love that. I've got posted notes all over my office kind of the same way. I use those like you use your index cards.

Armand, you've got a system that's going to help people better understand how to write this great copy and make the most out of their online marketing. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Armand: Here is the thing. We over the years have developed a lot of different ideas, different scenarios as far as teaching people. We've created courses, we've created training programs, we've created coaching programs and we do all of that to this very day. But several years ago, about two years ago, I had an idea. Now let me explain something to everybody. I have all kinds of requests and some of them are crazy, crazy request. Inevitably, someone will say, “Well, if you make so much money, why don't you just teach us for free and then I'll pay you later for it?”

I've always thought about that what-if. Again, what-if is one of those I think most powerful things you could ever say. But what if you could do that? What if I did do that? So I decided to do two years ago, was starting to do these trainings. I call them web camps and if you guys go to Webcamp.cc/Bacon, what you can do is you can see all of what we're doing. Here is what it is, let me explain to you guys. First of all it's 100% free, so it doesn't matter, there's no cost to it, it's 100% free. Here is what happens. It's like attending a 3-day event. It's a 3-day live streaming seminar and most of them are three days. Sometimes we do two days, but most of them are three days. Each top time, we do a different topic. So every other month, I spend three days and I stream it. I'm fortunate enough to have my own studio in my house and I can stream in HD quality, you watch my computer as I'm doing something.

For example, let's say that I'm doing a web camp on webinars. Let's face it, some of you probably bought courses on how to do a webinar and a lot of times you find things that are incomplete. What I decided to do is I'm going to teach you everything I know about webinars in 18 hours. You may be thinking, “Can anyone really talk for 18 hours on how to do a webinar?” The answer is yes. I have and I can and I do. Or I might talk about list-building and I go into all the details that no one has ever told you about list-building and I show you step-by-step. In fact in one case, I actually built a list. I think it was 1,000 people over the course of an afternoon right in front of the audience, live, showing them exactly and then they saw me spend my money, they saw me build the opt-in pages and they do everything. I did it right in front of them.

So it's everything. I'm not holding back which is kind of contradicting to what a lot of people will do. They're like, “Well, let me just show you a little bit and then if you buy my course, I'll show you the rest.” No. What I do is I do the exact opposite. I show you everything that you need to know and I do it in front of you. If I say I'm going to show you how to do Facebook ads, not only do I take you to Facebook and I log into my own Facebook account and I show you the ads that I'm running, but I then spend my own money. I create ads right in front of you, I show you step-by-step exactly how to do it, I then go through the whole process that you need to know. Again, every other month, you're going to be able to get access to a new training session, again, absolutely free and you can watch the stream. It's in HD quality, you're going to see me. It's not just a PowerPoint, it's actually streaming me live, it's a video of me where I'm live, you can ask questions, we make it open for people to ask questions and we cover a new topic every other month. Depending on when you may be listening to this or watching this, it will be a different topic each and every time. But again if you go to Webcamp.cc/Bacon and what you're going to be able to do is again sign up. Like I said, it's free and we have a lot of great things that are happening with that and you see us in.

Here is the other part. Yes, you see me do things, but if I make a mistake you see that, too. It's live, it's real and it just happens. We're really proud of it, we've had tens of thousands of people go through that training. Everytime we do it, we have thousands of people watching us live 100% and it's something I think that is extremely valuable, but like I said, it's free and everyone can attend that. Sound good?

Brian: No, it sounds awesome. Anyways, people, go take advantage of this, check it out. I'm going to be checking it out.

Armand, if people wanted to get a hold of you, what's the best way for them to contact you directly?

Armand: Yes, if people want to know what we're up to, first of all yes you can go to and sign up on Webcamp and you'll be on our newsletter list to get information about that. You can also go to Armandmorin.com and you'll be able to see what we have going on there. There's our blog, there's the different things that we have going on, if you look at the banners you'll see what we have coming up next and all that good stuff. Again, we have a lot of things happening. We always look forward. One of the things I look forward to, I love what I do. I love the world of online marketing. I've been doing this for almost 20 years full-time which is kind of crazy when you really think about it. But I absolutely love learning something new. I'm an absolute student of the industry, I don't think I'll ever learn everything, but at the same time, I know that there's always going to be something new coming around the corner and I think that's exciting.

I guess I consider myself an information junkie. I like learning and the other part is when I learn it, I teach it to other people as well, too. It works out all in the end.

Brian: Armand, thanks so much for joining us, dude. I really appreciate it. Great stuff. It's a pleasure talking with you. Rock on, buddy.

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