Igor: Hi, my name is Igor Kheifets and this is the List Building Lifestyle, the only podcast
which delivers cutting edge conversion strategies from the online trenches straight to
your earbuds. Download the transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at
listbuilidnglifestylesshow.com. I also invite you to grab a free copy of “The Wealthy
List Builder’s Survival Guide” at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com/survival and now
once again it’s time to claim your List Building Lifestyle.

Welcome back to another edition of The List Building Lifestyle with your host, Igor Kheifets.
One of the biggest benefits of running a list building podcast is that you get to pick the
brains of some of the smartest marketers on the planet, people whose time is too expensive
to be wasted on chit chat. This is a privilege that civilians pay thousands of dollars per hour
to get. My next guest is a widely accomplished internet marketer, speaker, author, and is
considered a mentor to many people you and I refer to as gurus. He operates beyond
the cutting edge. He makes forward thinking marketers look like they're stuck in the
Stone Age. I call him The Fast Forward Thinking Man for his knack to dictate the future
of internet marketing while still remaining incognito to the public eye. His name is
Armand Morin and for the last 20 years, he's been highly influential on the success of
entire generations of internet marketers. Today, I'm going to pick Armand's brain about
escaping the nine to five rat race and building a thriving home based business. Armand,
thank you so much for being here.

Armand Morin: Igor, thank you so much for having me. I think we're going to have a
lot of fun today.

Igor Kheifets: Oh, yeah. Sure. Having you on the show is quite a benchmark for me
personally because I've admired your work for many, many years. I've heard your
name so many times, but was never able to connect, so this is freaking awesome.
I'm sure that the List Builders listening are literally peeing their pants right
now because we're going to talk about the one thing that I know every single
person in my audience thinks about that is quitting their job or perhaps escaping
from Social Security, whatever that is, but it is about making more money, having
more freedom, traveling the world, and living a life of purpose and meaning. My
first question is, how is escaping the nine to five is different today compared to
when you started?

Armand Morin: Sure. I mean when you're thinking about this, the average person out
there actually has some sort of job in order to sustain their living. Let's put it
that way. They have to make money in some way, shape, or form. When I started, you
have to think about this, I started in 1996. The internet was barely in existence.
Google didn't exist. Facebook didn't exist. In fact, the word social media didn't
exist in any way, shape, or form. There was literally AOL. There was Yahoo and few
other websites out there. You were kind of on your own if you wanted to figure out
anything. Today, though, today is a whole different story. It's actually easier
today to get to where you want to be than ever before because there is a whole
slew of people that have actually gone ahead and actually proved that you can
actually make money on the internet. It's not a fad anymore. It's here. It's here
to stay. It's also ever evolving, which is also a good thing. Many people think
that because it changes so much, that it's difficult or it's hard in order to make
money online, where the basic principle that was working back in 1996 as opposed
to what is working today, it's still the same. You craft a product that people
want. You get that product, that sales letter, in front of people that could be
interested. Again, be it email or whether it be advertising online or social
media, whatever it may be. Then if you get the right audience in order to see that
product or service, then some of those people are actually going to buy. The
concept is pretty basic. Now, what's unique about today is that there's not only
just the idea of sending people to a website. You can now take a product or buy a
product, upload it to Amazon or you can buy physical products and upload it to
Amazon. You can utilize services like Amazon or other places where you can
piggyback off their traffic as well too. I think there's a wider range of
opportunity that's out there today, but also more importantly is that no matter
what think about that you want to do, whether it be writing an ebook or creating a
video course or sharing your information somehow with the rest of the world, that
other people have already done that. That's a good thing because they've already
paved the way and more importantly, is they've already proven what doesn't work. I
think that's the biggest advantage that people have today is that when I first
started online, I had to figure out what worked and what didn't work. I had to
spend a lot of money. I had to waste a lot of time only to find out that something
didn't work. Now, people will tell you, "This doesn't work. Don't do that. That
doesn't work. Don't do that." The path to success can be much faster. I mean I've
heard stories recently. I met someone not too long ago. Within the first 60 days
of actually getting started online, they had generated over six figures. I
thought, "That's pretty impressive."

Igor Kheifets: Yeah. That's not uncommon at this point. In fact, I am recording
this episode out of a friend's house who quite literally, as soon as he found the
right mentor, made, I think, 17 grand in 90 days.

Armand Morin: Yeah. There was probably successes back in the early days of the
internet, but you didn't hear about them as much because there wasn't as much
social interaction. You know what I mean? I was one of the lucky people. I really
was. I was one of the lucky people in my, I wouldn't say the first 12 weeks, but
very shortly after I got online, I generated $4.2 million over the course of 12
weeks. That was way back when. That was 1996 when the idea of a product launch or
anything like that didn't exist. I had no JV partners. We did have affiliates, but
we were just in the right place at the right time back then.

Igor Kheifets: This is incredible. 4.2 million in such a short time span is
impressive even today when people have made a million in 24 hours.

Armand Morin: But you know the funny part is, is that what I sold was I actually
sold my bookmarks.

Igor Kheifets: What? The bookmarks?

Armand Morin: Yeah. Obviously in your browser you have bookmarks, right?

Igor Kheifets: Yeah, yeah.

Armand Morin: Well, when I got online in 1996, I bookmarked everything and more
importantly, I categorized everything. It came to my realization one day that if I
thought my bookmarks were valuable because of the length of time. Because when I
get online the first time, when I first connected to the internet, I was an
information junkie. I was addicted. I would literally stay up for two, three days
on end just looking and searching and trying to figure out this whole thing
because I didn't understand everything that there was. But as I found things, I
was smart enough to bookmark everything and to categorize those bookmarks, whether
it be free internet access, or free graphics software, or free calendars, or
whatever it may be at the time. I collected about 600 to 700 different bookmarks
of cool things that I thought were kind of interesting. I had the idea that if I
thought these things were cool, why not sell them? I charged people $110 in order
to access my bookmarks. I put them into a very, very crude membership site. Back
then, it wasn't as nice as it is today, most membership sites. I put this up into
a membership site where people could access these links. Then I created a very
basic sales letter. In fact, my sales letter had two paragraphs. Literally, the
title of one paragraph was The Problem and the second title was The Solution and
then there was a button for people to buy. That was it. Off of that, we sold $4.2
million. Crazy.

Igor Kheifets: This sounds too good to be true.

Armand Morin: It does, but it was. It was there. I'll tell you what. My company at
that particular point was on track to do $155 million in sales that first year.
What happened was I got a phone call from my merchant account company and my
merchant account company said, "Mr. Morin, you processed too much money in too
short a period of time. We're going to have to shut down your merchant account.
Oh, by the way. We actually went into your bank account and took out half the
money." They took out $2.1 million out of my bank account because first of all,
they never seen anything like this before. That was the one thing. They were
scared. Their point was, if everyone refunded, if I was doing something wrong ...
They actually assigned a private investigator to my office at the time and had
them ask me all kinds of questions and all these other things. But their point
was, if all these people refunded, then they would be out $2.1 million or $4.2
million technically. So they took half of it as security. Now, they held that
money for six months and then they ultimately gave it back to me. But still, at
that particular point, remember I said I had affiliates as well, right?

Igor Kheifets: Oh, wow. So you couldn't pay them?

Armand Morin: Well, no. I did. I took the money that I had and I paid my
affiliates. I was out this $2.1 million. Here I was, I just did something that no
one in the world had ever done before. I made $4.2 million on the internet in 12
weeks. I was now flat busted broke again. Imagine how frustrating that is. I had
to figure out a solution. That's what actually led me to marketing a product on
the internet is my problem that I had was I needed to process credit cards. I knew
the internet worked now. I needed a way to process credit cards without having a
merchant account because when you get your merchant account taken away, they put
on a blacklist basically.

Igor Kheifets: Oh, yeah.

Armand Morin: What I did was I started researching all these places. Now, today we
have things like Stripe and PayPal and various other programs that we can use
their merchant account basically and process credit cards. Well back then, there
was companies, but they weren't widely known. I went on this search. I started
searching day and night and I found 80 companies that you could actually utilize
their merchant account as a third party merchant. They would charge you a huge
fee. Some of them 20%, 30% of whatever you sold.

Igor Kheifets: Oh my god.

Armand Morin: Yeah. It was crazy, but if you had no choice, this was what you had
to do. I compiled all these things into an ebook and I started selling this ebook
online. I sold it for $19.95. People started buying it because there's a bunch of
people just like me that couldn't get a merchant account or didn't want a merchant
account. That book, for the next, I think it was 12 years I sold that, made about
$30,000 a year for the next 12 years.

Igor Kheifets: Oh. That's like you going to McDonald's and working full-time.

Armand Morin: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Actually I think it's better than McDonald's.

Igor Kheifets: A little bit. Yeah. I think McDonald's is like $24,000 a year.

Armand Morin: Right, right. But that also led me to create my first software
because back then, an ebook wasn't a PDF file as we know today. Back then, an
ebook was a compiled set of HTML files. What you would do, it's kind of like ...
If I had to compare it to something, it was like looking at a website in a EXE
wrapper on a PC computer.

Igor Kheifets: Yeah.

Armand Morin: That was the form of an ebook back then. I went ahead and I found a
company in the Ukraine to actually develop me my own ebook software. Then I
started marketing that software. I said, "Well, let's look at all the ebook
software out there." There was only like five of them or six of them out there at
the time. I stared marketing that software because I had a problem. I didn't like
the software that I was using because it didn't fulfill all the different things
that I needed it to do. I had a company make it. I took the last bit of money that
I had, paid this company to develop that software, and that software went on to do
a couple million dollars in sales over the course of the next 10 years. Then the
next thing, my customers started asking me questions like, "How do you make those
graphics for your website?" I made a software that created these header graphics
that people utilize today. Then I made the very first eCover graphic software.
Then I made a pop up software. Then I made a PDF software. At one time, I had like
35 different pieces of software that I was selling.

Igor Kheifets: Wow.

Armand Morin: But it all stemmed from that one idea that I had, to sell my
bookmarks, and then everything kind of spawned off from there. Every one of the
pieces of software that I sold though, was solving a problem that I had. For the
people listening, back to your original question, is how is it different today?
Well, it's not any different today. The point is, is that all of us have had these
ideas in our head. Well, if someone could solve this problem, they would probably
make a million dollars. The only addition that I added to that conversation was I
said, "Well, why not me?" Then I figured out how to build it.

Igor Kheifets: That made all the difference.

Armand Morin: Exactly. I've just figured out how to solve the problem. I realized
that it wasn't me necessarily, that I could find someone else to solve the problem
and then charge people for that solution.

Igor Kheifets: Wow. So the formula to making money online to quitting the day job
is quite literally solving a problem. At first, you did not know what these
problems were. As you were encountering them, you said, "I'll just solve them for
the marketplace," and the marketplace followed. The marketplace rewarded you with
money for solving all these extra problems.

Armand Morin: Exactly. The bigger the problem, the more money you make. I mean you
can look at any marketer that's out there in existence today. They're solving some
kind of problem for their particular niche.

Igor Kheifets: Yeah. Again, in many ways, what happens is we encounter that
problem and we end up solving that for ourselves and then all of a sudden, we see
it everywhere. You know how sometimes if you got a hammer, everything's a nail?

Armand Morin: Right.

Igor Kheifets: So when you solve this problem for yourself, all of a sudden you
see it everywhere.

Armand Morin: Exactly.

Igor Kheifets: And you want to solve it for other people.

Armand Morin: Right.

Igor Kheifets: I want to go back, step back.

Armand Morin: Sure.

Igor Kheifets: You said the only thing I've done different if I asked, "Why not
me?"

Armand Morin: Sure.

Igor Kheifets: It's a mindset question. I understand. It may be a combination of
your upbringing and your genetics and whatever else. I mean depending on the
school of thought about it, but I have to ask, what allowed you to ask that
question?

Armand Morin: Being naïve. That was what allowed me to ask that question. There's
a couple different things. Let's just talk a little bit about my background. I
grew up in a really, really poor family. We lived in a house that my mom and dad
bought for $2,800 at auction. Literally, that was the house that I lived in until
the time that I left home at 18. We didn't have a lot of money. We barely made it
by. I didn't grow up with a mentality that I could achieve anything there was in
the world, but I did grow up with this optimistic outlook on life. My mom told me
one thing growing up and you're going to see how this ties in in just a moment.
She said that you can do anything you want in life as long as you put in the work
and do your best to try to do that. I was actually, I don't know if you want to
say stupid enough to believe her. I never-

Igor Kheifets: Let's say wise enough to believe her.

Armand Morin: Well, you know. Let's put it this way. Stupid enough to believe, but
smart enough to follow through with it. Because when you look at this, when I
looked at how I could do something or what I could do, I never believed that I
couldn't do anything. In fact, even to this very day if you tell me I can't do
something, I'm going to prove you wrong because I think anyone can do anything if
they want as long as they want it bad enough and as long as they put in the hard
work to do it. At that particular time when I said, "Why not me?" Well, I knew for
a fact that there was certain things that couldn't happen. Number one, I wasn't at
that time going to program it myself. I couldn't wrap my head around programming
at the time and I couldn't do it myself. Now, I figured I can get other people to
do this. Well, I had heard of this concept of outsourcing. Back then, you have to
remember, back then in 1996 when we're talking about outsourcing and things of
that nature, it wasn't a widespread idea. I ran into by accident. I actually
manually, I didn't utilize a service, I didn't utilize a website in order to find
someone to develop a software program for me. I actually manually searched for it
online. I actually searched for someone that had ebook software. I said, "Out of
all the different websites in the world, someone's got to be able to do that. Let
me just find them." Then I was just relentless. I think part of it is having the
idea, again, being open enough that you could possibly do this. Then the other
part of it is having the follow through to it, meaning that you have to chase down
that idea. You have to put the hard work behind it in order to make it work for
you. For example, if I'm looking for something and just to this very day, if I'm
looking for something and I know for a fact it exists, but I just don't know the
words to search on in order to find it, I may not find it in that first 10 search
results. I may not find it in the first 20, but maybe it's on page 45 of the
Google search that I find that one listing that says exactly what I'm looking for.
That's the kind of follow through you have to have in order to succeed in any kind
of business for that matter. Does that make sense?

Igor Kheifets: Yeah. Absolutely. That relentless drive and whether you're
motivated by something positive, the carrot or the stick. For me, it's the stick.
For me, the biggest motivation of them all is figuring out who am I accountable
to? For example, is it my wife or my family? Is it my team or my customer? Then
imagining the outcome if I fail to take action, like if life stays exactly the
same.

Armand Morin: Right.

Igor Kheifets: If that outcome is scary enough, I'm going to be as relentless as
you just described.

Armand Morin: Yeah. I think that's the whole idea, is what drives you from behind?
Like you said, your family. For me, family's a big motivation as well. This is
just one of those things where I'm sure you want the same thing is I want my kids
to have a better life than I did.

Igor Kheifets: Yup.

Armand Morin: I don't want them to go through the problems that I had in my life.
Not that they were major problems. I mean I had some sketchy times in my life
where I lived out of my car for a while. I don't want them to ever even think that
in that direction or even think that they have to go in that direction. I want to
provide them, not only provide for them, but I want to teach them how they never
have to go into that type of situation.

Igor Kheifets: Yeah. What I feel is absolutely critical to anyone's success is
what you just said about believing that you can do it.

Armand Morin: Yes.

Igor Kheifets: Not having this low self esteem belief that says, "Who am I to do
it?"

Armand Morin: Right.

Igor Kheifets: Instead of asking, "Why can't I do it? Why not me?" That is
incredible because I think it's John Kennedy who said, "The only prerequisite for
success is not the skillset or IQ, but it's the audacity to believe that you can."

Armand Morin: Right. Then follow through with that. Let me give you an example. We
met. We met in person. I'm not an extremely tall individual, but a few years ago,
I actually started ... Actually, it was four years ago now. Four years ago now, I
actually started practicing taekwondo. Again, kind of a young person's sport when
you really think about it. I did it because my daughter was taking it and my wife
convinced me to take it. When I was young, I used to actively compete in martial
arts. Again, when I say young, from the time I was 13 to maybe 20. I was in my 40s
when I started taking this on, but then I had this idea. There's no reason for me
not to get fairly good at this. Then I started competing. I started competing
actively all over the country. I've gone to Korea to compete. I've gone all over
the place. Now, currently, I'm in the top 10 ranking in the U.S. for my age in
taekwondo. I was ranked actually ... Yeah, I was actually ranked number third in
the U.S. for my category.

Igor Kheifets: That's incredible. You're in your 40s?

Armand Morin: I just turned 48 years old. I mean, think about that. It's really
kind of cool especially seeing your name on the Olympic website as being an older
person. Trust me, hey, I'm not great, but I'm going to tell you this. It's kind of
cool having that accolade, but also at the same time overcoming that diversity.
Because now I'm going into a world where, maybe in the world of marketing I can
have a lot of wins, but in this whole other world where you have someone punching
you and trying to kick you in the head, you face some defeats. You get humbled a
little bit, but that also is a driving factor for me. For me, it's that challenge.
Just like it is in business, it's the challenge. It's the same thing there where I
can't do that, but my mental state is that if I do this and I do this or this, I
could possibly do that. So it's just a matter of me working at it again and again.
It's all mental. I think you're absolutely right. It's that mental game of
believing that you can and then following that up and trying to make it happen.
For example, I just got home two hours ago. I just worked out for an hour and a
half this morning already at taekwondo of training.

Igor Kheifets: That's the freedom that you get with The List Building Lifestyle.
Right? That's one of the reasons why you build a business where you're not a slave
to it.

Armand Morin: Right.

Igor Kheifets: I mean that's awesome. Having the ability to go into an absolutely
new area of expertise and become a professional, meaning that you're competing
professionally. I mean that is, in my book, that is just admirable. It's just
impressive.

Armand Morin: I think one of the highlights was that two years ago, I got invited
to actually try out for the U.S. team. Again, at my age, getting an invitation to
try out for the U.S. Taekwondo Olympic Team, is pretty awesome. I was extremely
excited about and pretty proud of that moment. But it's always something that
you're trying to go forward with. It's just like in business, many people
listening to this right now may be thinking, "Okay, I'm just getting started. I
don't know where to get started," or, "I don't know if I could possibly do this,"
or maybe here's another possibility. People think that the internet's been around
for quite a long time, maybe the opportunity is all gone. I'm going to tell you
right now that the opportunity now is probably bigger than ever before. I mean in
so many different categories. Let's put it this way, Igor, is that with your
business, like for example, with solo ads as an example. Let's just use that one
piece of your business. That didn't exist when I got started. It didn't even exist
10 years into my career. It probably didn't even exist 12 or 13 years into my
career. You have to think about that. I was already doing this business maybe 13,
14 years before the idea of doing a solo ad in this fashion was never even heard
of. Now all of a sudden, this particular category comes out and people are making
a tremendous living by providing it. I mean it's amazing.

Igor Kheifets: Yeah, and there's new opportunities like that sprouting every day,
which may create a different challenge. The shiny object syndrome, you know?

Armand Morin: Yes.

Igor Kheifets: Too many shiny opportunities looking at you. Did you ever have that
happen to you back then?

Armand Morin: Yeah.

Igor Kheifets: If you did, how did you deal with it?

Armand Morin: Yeah. Let's just talk about that. I actually kind of gave away my
confession already. I said I had like 34, 35 products at one point. Right? I was
creating this whole slew of products. My idea and concept at the time was to
create these product lines of products that all kind of mixed in with one another.
If a person bought one of my products, they would buy another. That was kind of
soothing my shiny object syndrome for a while. Then my vision started changing. My
vision started changing and I started thinking about focus. If I could narrow down
my focus where I could focus on only one or two things, all of a sudden it would
make a difference. Let me give you a classic example of that. Steve Jobs. When
Steve Jobs came back as an interim CEO. After he was fired, he came back. The
first thing he did with Apple is he removed all their products. They were
bordering on having like 20 products in Apple. He trashed everything and narrowed
it down to only four products, two professional products and two consumer
products, and that was it. Now they're able to focus all their marketing just on
those two ideas. When I heard that and when it kind of sank into my head, I
realized very quickly that it made a lot of sense. Then I started cutting down my
products. Slowly, I went from ... Immediately, we had a meeting with me and my
team. I said, "Okay, this is what we're doing," and I wrote down all of our
products on the market that we had that we're marketing and then I wrote down how
much money we made from each product each year. Then we immediately took the ones
that weren't making enough, at least in our opinion, and I halved it. I went from
32 down to 16. Then within six months later, I went from 16 down to eight. Then
from eight down to four. Now we have maybe about three or four different products
that we're marketing and that's it, where we focus on just a few products and
that's where we want to stay. This way, we can keep our focus. The rule that we
have is that everything has to fit together, where if you buy one of our products,
you have to buy one or two of the other products as well too because it'll only
make sense.

Igor Kheifets: So it's like a graduation model.

Armand Morin: Exactly. Again, that's not including a membership or a coaching
program because in our coaching program, we have five different levels to make it
easy for people.

Igor Kheifets: Nice. Nice. I love it. I love it. Putting more focus into fewer
products is definitely one of the keys to success and I've seen it happen many
times before in my life. In fact, I'm the testament to putting all your focus in
just one thing.

Armand Morin: Sure.

Igor Kheifets: I'm famous for just one thing, solo ads, enabling my list three
times a day. That's pretty much it.

Armand Morin: Well, here's where I got really envious. I had two of my coaching
students, which you probably know who they are, they created a product called
WishList Member. Its Tracy Childers and Stu McLaren. Tracy and Stu were in my
coaching program and they developed that product inside my coaching program,
WishList Member. Everything we'd get together with my group of coaching people,
they would share exactly their results, what they were doing. I'm like, "Oh man.
They're doing tremendously well." Then I started becoming really envious of them
and I told everyone at the time. I said, "You know why I'm so jealous of what they
have? It's because when they wake up in the morning, there's no question about
what they have to do. There's only one product that they have. All they have to do
is promote that one product. They can just focus and wrap their head around, all
their creativity around one product and what different ways are they going to
promote that product." That was a really big key for me. I told them so. I really
admired them when they did that originally.

Igor Kheifets: Wow. Yeah. I've seen Stu speak at the Funnel Hacking Live last
year.

Armand Morin: Yeah.

Igor Kheifets: If you're his mentor, the only question I'm asking now is, if
anyone listening to the show wants to become your student, where do they go?

Armand Morin: Yeah. One of the ways that we allow people to see exactly what we
have, I think a trial model is probably the best way. What we have is I've been
putting all my time and energy into one single program now and that is Marketing
University. If the person goes to MarketingUniversity.com, they can see what we
have. We have 30 different courses there that they're going to gain instant access
to for literally a dollar. They can try it out. If they like what they see, they
can stay, but if they don't, they can cancel. It's really simple. Every one of our
courses, here's the difference, is I think a lot of people when they do courses,
they're too ineffective. I think they don't give the whole story. Every course
that we have is at a bare minimum of 12 hours long. Every single month, I actually
create a new course for my members, a brand new course. We stream it live.
Everyone gets access to that. We have 30 courses in there already where people can
get access, over 400 hours worth of information that they can instantly access. It
goes into detail. There's nothing left unturned. If I show them an advertising
technique on YouTube, I actually spend my own money to show it right there. We do
it live because we're streaming it live so people can see results in real time. I
want to make sure everyone always understands this so that's why we have so many
different courses on so many different topics, whether it be on speaking, on
webinars, or on opt-in pages. We even give them the actual script for what to say
and how to say it in order to increase their opt-in conversion. We go through
that. Then also at the same time they'll be able to access different trainings
that we have, like weekly trainings that we have. Also, on top of that, we
actually bring our members on to a cruise with us. I should say every year. I just
got back from it. We actually bring everyone on to a cruise, so it's actually
pretty awesome. Yeah. They can just go to MarketingUniversity.com and they can
actually try it out for a dollar.

Igor Kheifets: That's incredible. I mean there's so much goodness for just a buck
coming from one of the most influential people in internet marketing today. We're
not going to name any names besides Stu of course, but there's so many more
"gurus" out there that again, they wrote books and they conduct big seminars and
they just make millions and millions and millions of dollars every year, if not
every month.

Armand Morin: Sure.

Igor Kheifets: It all comes back to you. Now, the List Builders can get access to
that, to the knowledge information tools, this incredible research for just a
dollar for two weeks. See if they like it or not and if they do, they can stay. So
guys, you heard him. It's MarketingUniversity.com and you'll be able to get
coached by the same person that brought up people such at Stu McLaren and others.
Again, you know their names. I don't have their permission to disclose it.

Man, Armand, this has been an incredible interview. The only last question before
we wrap up, if someone has been trying to make money online for say, a year and a
half, maybe two years, and they join a bunch of different programs, business
opportunities, and they're stuck and they really don't ... they can't make any
progress right now. What would be a step for them to take right now that you can
suggest right now that will help them get back on track?

Armand Morin: I think it really comes down to only a couple different things. I
think that number one, if I was working on something or working on maybe a bunch
of different things for a year, number one, I would probably remove all the
different things that weren't working or weren't working at all. That would be the
first step. Then I would evaluate the things that I was promoting that I was
creating some type of income with. Then I would evaluate those. But more
importantly, what I would evaluate is number one, is the opportunity still there?
Because if I'm promoting something over a period of time, there's only a couple
things that I can figure out from there.

Number one, is the opportunity something that people actually want or is the
product something that people want? That's step on. If the answer is yes, then
okay, we're still in the running. Then number two, well, if the product is
something that people want or the opportunity is something that people want, then
the problem is probably my landing page, meaning that I'm actually not selling it
well or maybe it's my opt-in page that I'm having. If I'm getting people to
opt-in, then we know that that's not the problem. The next step would be my sales
letter itself. Then I can focus my energy.

What we're really trying to do is we're trying to figure out where the bottle neck
is, is that many times, they may be driving traffic, they may be buying traffic,
they may be sending them to an opt-in page, a lead generation page, and maybe
those people are opting in or maybe they're not. If not, them I'm going to ask
that person one question and that is, "What are your conversion numbers?" If the
numbers aren't acceptable, then I'm going to say, "Well, we need to focus on here
before we can even progress any further." The first step is you have to know your
conversion on all different aspects. Number one is, what is your opt-in rate?

In the very beginning, I always tell people that you're minimal. Again, I have to
stress this minimal because, this is not acceptable to me, but the bare minimal
opt-in rate is 20%. Now I'm always looking for 50% plus. If I'm not getting 50%
plus, I'm a very unhappy camper. I need to have at least 50% conversion or higher
on my opt-in rate. That's what I'm looking for. If I'm not getting at least that,
then I'm going to work on my opt-in page until I get there.

Then the second step is, okay, I'm getting my opt-ins. My opt-ins are great. Now
the second step is, okay, well, I'm having x number of people now see whatever my
offer is. The question is, is there a problem in my offer? How long are people
staying on the page? This is where I'm going to use my analytics and my numbers in
order to figure this out. Are people staying on this particular page? How long are
they staying on the page? How far are they scrolling? If I have a tracking
mechanism to track how far a person scrolls down my page, which is something that
I think that most people should have in some way, shape, or form. Then what you
can do is you can track how far they're going and you can notice exactly where a
person is leaving, at least in the general vicinity.

Now we can narrow our focus into that area. What are we saying or what is the
sales letter saying that is not appealing to these people or pissing them off
enough that they want to leave? We need to focus in and then we revamp that. Then
we send more traffic and then we redo our numbers again. Then hopefully our
numbers have been proved. Then if that still doesn't work, even though the people
may be coming all the way through, then we have to come to the conclusion that
maybe the opportunity or the product is just bad. If that's the problem, then we
just need to find something else that people actually want. Does that make sense?

Igor Kheifets: Yeah, absolutely. This is one of the trickiest parts about our
business is that oftentimes what people say they want may not be the exact same
thing that they actually will buy.

Armand Morin: Right.

Igor Kheifets: Sometimes they'll vote with their wallet for things that, when we
find out, it's like I can't believe that's what they want to buy. It's
challenging. Knowing your conversions is absolutely critical and going through
your funnel one step at a time, eliminating bottlenecks absolutely, but nothing
happens, guys. Nothing happens until you actually send some traffic to a funnel.

Armand Morin: Yeah. Your opinion doesn't matter because I have ... I've been doing
this a long time. I've seen what works. I've seen what doesn't work. I can look at
a sales letter and I can think that, "Oh, this sounds pretty good." The headline
sounds good, the sales letter sounds good, the video sounds good. Everything looks
good on it, but then at the end of the day, my opinion doesn't matter because when
I send actual traffic to it, they're going to actually tell me whether this works
actually or not. The traffic is the people that actually matter.

Igor Kheifets: Yeah. We had this happen two months ago when it just came to Canada
and it was the first product launch we did from here. I was so excited about it
because the product, it was me solving my own problem and then putting it into a
product. It was the worst product launch I've had in the last three years.

Armand Morin: Right.

Igor Kheifets: I really loved it. I loved the headline and I loved it.

Armand Morin: Well, that was the problem.

Igor Kheifets: Exactly.

Armand Morin: You said one word. You said you loved it.

Igor Kheifets: Exactly.

Armand Morin: Here's the funny part. I've told this to many people, is that
marketing is not emotional. Marketing is just facts. We don't have to love our
marketing and we don't even have to even like our headline. I mean I've shown
things to my team and they're like, "I hate that." I'm like, "I don't care because
the numbers dictate that this is right." That's how you have to look at it. I
think we've all experienced that at one time or another.

Igor Kheifets: Yeah. Numbers is all that matters. Guys, really, I mean we can go
on for hours and hours, but at this point, I think it's been good enough. If you
want to get more of Armand Morin's teachings, coaching information, if you want to
go on a cruise once a year, to get more information about that with Armand Morin
and his team, if you want to become a citizen of Planet Armand, then you need to
go to MarketingUniversity.com. There's a sign up for a dollar for two weeks for
you to test it out. Even if you live in a library right now and you're only using
public WiFi because it's free, as long as you got a credit card, you can still go
there and for two weeks, get access to Armand's information and coaching. Of
course, if that's all you're looking to do, maybe not the best idea, maybe not the
perfect time for you to go now because you will not have an opportunity to do it
later, but my take on it is you go to MarketingUniversity.com right now, sign up
for the one dollar trial for two weeks and check out Armand's coaching because
this guy has created millionaires consistently over the span of the last 20 some
years. That's a huge testament and it increases your chances of becoming
successful in this game by associating with this person. Armand, honestly,
couldn't be more grateful for you taking the time to sit down with us, to chat
about escaping the nine to five, for giving us your wisdom. Yeah. Just pumped.
Pumped to release this interview, pumped to release this episode. Thank you very
much.

Armand Morin: Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. Again, I appreciate you
thinking of actually even having me on the show. I'm excited about being here.
Again, thank you very much and I'll talk to you soon.

Igor Kheifets: Thank you. Until next time we chat, List Builders, have a good one.

Thank you for listening to The List Building Lifestyle. Make sure to subscribe on
iTunes or Google Play to never miss an episode, because who knows? Just one
conversion tactic we share on the show might double your list and double your
business. Download the transcript of today's episode and all future episodes at
listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. And don't forget to claim your complimentary copy
of The Wealthy List Builders Survival Guide at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com/survival .
This is Igor Kheifets, and until next time we talk, have a good one.