Armand Morin - The Past, Present, and Future of Internet Marketing
16 Jul 2023 · 84 min
Armand Morin built his first internet marketing business in 1996, selling $20 links on AOL pages and scaling a $110 membership to $4.2M in processed sales. He shares his core tactics: recruiting 178 affiliates through manual outreach, using conditional email flows (morning/afternoon/evening sends), and a webinar presale hack that captures 70% of sales before the event even starts.
Chapters
I know a lot of people talk about a marketing funnel as an example. I never believed in the concept of a funnel, and I still really don't believe in the concept of a funnel where you. Because people think that you have to start with something maybe low cost, free, and then it goes a higher price. A higher price, a higher price and a higher price. Well, that doesn't make sense because you're putting conditions on. You know, you have to go through this part to this, to this, to this, to this. Well, what if I want to just market a $2,000 item? Does that mean I've got to go through six steps before I get there? Boom, boom, boom, boom. Bo.
What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear. Welcome back.
We're here. We're here with a legend.
We are. This is a true legend who started in this industry in 1996. Dude, were you even born yet in 1996?
Barely. Just barely.
Barely.
I was actually thinking about that. I was like, wow. Little did I know, like, this stuff was happening while I was. I don't know what I was doing.
You would have been, what, 11 years.
Old or something like that? Yeah, right around there. Thanks for giving away my age.
Yeah, well, I was in ninth grade, eighth or ninth grade, somewhere like that.
Yeah. I mean, but you had no clue, like, I mean, you were probably messing around with computer. I mean, we both were, but not like this. We weren't figuring out, like, oh, okay, this person's selling this. And like, with the business kind of acumen to back it up.
Yeah. So, I mean, this episode is amazing for multiple reasons. One, you're gonna get this, like, history lesson on digital Internet marketing and what it was like to try to be a digital marketer in 96 from like.
Day one of the Internet. Yeah.
Like insane. Like history. But it's also an ultra tactical episode.
Right.
We talk about a bunch of email sequences and email strategies you can use. We talk about webinar strategies and this killer technique that he's using that I'm not really seeing anybody else do.
It's a new model and it's leveraging a lot of the tech that's out there now in a new way.
And his webinars are just killing it for him right now.
And the follow up sequence on that webinar, you gotta stick and listen to that because he's. Or not even the follow up, the little hack that happens before the webinar where he makes a Bulk of his sales.
Yeah. So definitely listen in for that part. And then the third tactical thing that he breaks down is how to be a famous country singer.
You can probably replicate this in other genres.
Yeah, let's just leave that loop open. He will explain how you can be a successful country singer if that's what you desire to do.
And we'll just say he's beat out Bruce Springsteen on the Billboard charts for weeks. Yeah. All right, we'll leave you hanging on that note. Yeah.
So grab the notes on this one because it is a tactical episode, and you're going to want the breakdown of those tactics. So the action guide, you're going to want that.
Dang. Right@flowchartgroup.com so pause everything. Go to flowchartgroup.com and you'll be prompted. Actually, it's going to redirect you to. Our Facebook group prompt is going to ask you to put your email address in there. You have two weeks of getting these notes for free. So when you do that, hit send or whatever it is. We'll email you the notes to this episode. But be quick. So pause right now. Flowchart group.com.
Yep. And then one last thing before we jump to Armand. Let's talk about Ahrefs real quick.
Our friends.
Let's do that right now. Hey, I want to tell you about something.
What's that, dude?
Ahrefs. You know, the tool we've talked about forever because we use it a lot in our business. They have a free version now.
No way. They do?
Yes. It's called Ahrefs Webmaster Tools.
Wait, wait, wait.
It's legit.
Okay, hold on. Let me.
Nice fake typing.
Oh, I went to ahrefs.comawt that was. I went to ahrefs.com, and you should, too. Ahrefs.comawt there's an A before a H.
R E F S.comawt.
Yeah, so we said it about, you know, a hundred times. So now it's subconsciously in your brain. So I went there, and this is blowing my mind, Matt. This is crazy. I'm looking at the page right now. It monitors the SEO health. I mean, tell me more, Matt. Why is this important? Why should I?
Well, it monitors the SEO health. It monitors all the backlinks and all the domain and page level SEO metrics and all of your search traffic and keywords and what keywords you're showing up for, and it does it for free. And, like, we use the paid Ahrefs. But this is awesome.
You know, I was just kidding over here. I was just having fun. No, I wasn't really real typing. Right. You don't. No, I don't really type.
Yeah. I can also see you.
Yeah. Dang it. Okay. In all reality, this is a freaking cool tool. We were nerding out about it when we heard that Ahrefs was coming back for a sponsorship because it's a free tool, no credit card required. And yeah, you get a lot of key things that the bigger Ahrefs tool has in it that this one basically has, like all the key things that every person with a website should have. This. So that is you.
That is you listening. So, yes, improve your website's SEO performance for free. Just go to ahrefs.com awt.
All right, we are finally hitting record. We've been having a great chat for a little while. Armin, thanks for joining us today.
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Yeah, man. So we attempted to do this yesterday. Had some storms out your way, but I'm so stoked that we were able to pull this off again fast. And shout out to Sharon Worsley as well for making this happen. Got to give her some love here. There's so many. Your history is just phenomenal. And it's just fun to finally connect with you because.
You'Re not someone that we've ever actually met or, you know, came across cross paths and you're in the east coast, we're west. But there's so many mutual friends I feel like we have over the years.
You made it sound like there's an east coast, west coast riff.
Maybe there is.
It's like the rapper.
We're going to have to, like, have.
A rap contest, signs and all that. But yeah, I mean, I'm actually scared of you because you got the taekwondo. You know, you're world ranked and all that. So. But it's just, it's an honor to have you here because you've been a mentor to the greats that a lot of us have been mentored by, you know, people like Russell Brunson. And I mean, I'm just thinking of. There's a lot of friends that have come through the show and they refer to you all the time.
And I was saying yesterday when we, when we were chatting for a few minutes that I googled your name and the first thing that popped up for me was Russell Brunson saying that you're essentially the reason for his success. So.
We gotta keep saying that. If I keep saying that enough, then everyone's going to Believe it. I probably made that website and put it up there on purpose.
It's what, 96, I think, right? 1996. Yeah.
I mean, I started way back in 1996 and it was kind of a different thing back then. And the way it happened was I had started a company previously to that 10 months earlier. And I started a telecom company, believe it or not, that was to compete with AT&T, MCI and sprint way back then. And so we did that and we got a certain number of customers. It was pretty good. And we ended up selling it to another company within 10 months.
It was kind of great. But that was one of my first lessons in business. And the one was don't sell your company for stock.
You never know when you get paid, if at all.
Right, exactly. Because there is a two year reserve. And at the end I actually have a certificate that I have hanging up on the wall with the total value of that transaction being at $0.01.
Oh boy, look at all that work I put into this.
Yeah, yeah. So I was sitting there at that time again in 1996, and what happened was everyone was talking about the Internet. No one knew too much about it, but Bill Gates said this one thing and that is, if your business isn't on the Internet, then your business is going to be out of business. And I'll never forget that. And I'm like, okay, well I got to get on this. And so I jumped online and I did like anyone else did back then. You had this little AOL disc that you put in and you got an account. And then someone told me that day that, well, that's not really the Internet. So I grabbed another disk and I put that, and that was earthlink. And that got me on the Internet and another one. And I had like four Internet accounts because I had no idea what was.
Going on Internet accounts.
But the funny part is this was all within the first two hours of being on the Internet.
You're a fast mover. I like it.
But that morning I started searching for everything, right? You know, it's like, what do you do? I finally called someone that I knew and like, what do you do? What are you supposed to do on this Internet thing? And they said, well, you get online and you search for stuff. And I'm like, who is going to sit there and search for things all day long? And I'm like, this is never going to work. But throughout that morning, as I started searching for things, after I searched for Is Elvis alive? Or Are aliens real? And all the important things. Yeah, Then I found one company that was a competitor of mine in the telecom world, and I noticed that they were selling stuff online. And that's like, oh, you can actually sell stuff online. And then that same morning, again, we're about three hours into my whole Internet career, I find this website, and it says, if you give me $20, I will put a link on my site that will link to your site. And because I'm advertising so much, you're going to get a lot of traffic to your site. And I thought, oh, man, that's brilliant. And then I. Then I found this program on AOL that was called AOL Press.
And it said it promised me within three to four hours I would have a website if I simply followed its instructions. And one of the things back then, especially back then, I was extremely naive. I grew up in a really, really small town, and I believed everything that everyone told me. So I'm like, okay, these guys got to be right. So I. I followed the instructions, and sure enough, after three or four hours, I had a website. And my website address was something like members.aol.com some name, some name, some names.
There's a squiggly line in there somewhere.
Yeah, yeah, there was a squiggly line, definitely.
But when you got there, my website said, if you give me $20, I will put a link on my site to your site, because I'm going to advertise this site. You should get a lot of traffic. And that's. I just duped the other GU site. Right. But again, I asked for $20. And there was only one thing I kept from my previous company. It was a software program that if someone gave you their checking and routing numbers, you could print a check that was. That had no signature. And it was actually legal and everything else. And so it was really kind of cool. But again, I asked people for the checking their routing number on AOL.com with no security, nothing else unsecured form, the whole works. It would never work today.
No.
But back then, within the first week, we had $8,000 in sales.
Oh, my God. People trusted it enough. Something novel, probably.
Yeah, it was something slightly different. And I used all the classified ads and did it. And I had to actually bring one of the people that worked for me back in to type up all these checks. Because, remember, that $8,000 was broken up into $20 increments. So I had to go to the bank with a stack of checks that had no signatures on it and say, please cash these.
If that didn't look Shady.
You had a shady upbringing on the Internet. I like it. Okay. It's a good start.
Yeah. But I knew that that wasn't going to last. And that's when I kind of what I call the second phase of my Internet, or the first phase of my Internet, really, where when I got online, I became addicted really quick. I was a junkie, an information junkie, right from the very start. I would spend days and hours, no sleep, just searching and searching and searching for different things. And one thing led to another, led to another, led to another. But as I found different things on the Internet, I bookmarked them. Right. Just makes sense. So I bookmarked them. And then one day I had this idea. I said, man, you know, I've got all these bookmarks, and there's probably, you know, five, six hundred different bookmarks. And I like, if I think these things are cool, I bet you other people might think they're cool too. So I put them onto a really crude, crude, crude membership site. And I remember writing the sales letter. It had two paragraphs. One said, literally, the problem, and then the second one said, the solution.
And then there was a button. At this point, I had a merchant account. And so at this point, they clicked the button to buy. And I charged $110 in order to access my bookmarks that I got for free, obviously. But, you know, everything categorized in free calendars, free magazines, free. Free Internet access, free this and free that. And so it was just a collection of things. And I started advertising just like I did the other thing that I had. And all of a sudden it went crazy. It was like those commercials on TV where, you know, they got one or two orders, and then they got, you know, started going faster. And started going faster. Well, the first day I got 10 orders, and so I'm. I'm. I'm pretty happy with this. Ten orders, you know, a hundred bucks, a thousand dollars. The. The next day, literally the next day, I had over.
Within the next seven days, I had 1,000 orders that had come in. So I made over $100,000 in the first seven days of this. Over the course of the next 12 weeks. And I know it's exactly 12 weeks for a reason, but over the next 12 weeks, I had over 35,000 orders again to this membership site for free. Stuff that I just kind of categorized and put into a very crude membership site.
You were curating. I was curating, yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I looked at it this way. People would always ask me, the question is, why would you buy? Why Would people buy things that are free that they get on the Internet? And my answer would be, why did people buy encyclopedias? Everything in encyclopedia you could get for free. You could learn for free, but it was the one stop shop, the convenience of having it all in one place. But at that 12th week, here's where it really came into play here and where everything kind of ties together, is that I get a phone call from my merchant account company. And I had already called my merchant account company, told them that, hey, we're getting a lot of orders. I just want to let you know that this is happening. So I did warn them ahead of time, but I get that last call, and they said, Mr. Moore? And I said, yes. They said, you processed a lot of money over the course of the last 12 weeks. And I was so proud. And I'm like, why? Yes, I did. And they said, well, we have to shut you down.
We don't believe in this.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like, first of all, we think. Basically, they said they thought I was a scam. So they sent a private investigator down to my office. So that was the first thing. Second thing is, they told me was that they went into my bank account and took half the money out.
Oh, my gosh.
So we processed about $4.2 million at that point. And they went in. Now, remember this? I just did something really, that the Internet and the world had never really seen before. We were literally on Track to do $155 million that year.
So half of that money, though, I had affiliates. Half went to affiliates. And they went ahead and went in and they took the other half. And so I'm left with basically nothing at this point, with a private investigator in front of me. That's awesome. Yeah. So they sent this private investigator down to my office, and he looks around, he's like, where's your inventory? I'm like, there is none. It's digital. They get access to the sign. I had to explain that to him first. And then when I explained to them, he said, well, how much would it take to get me access to that? And so he ended up buying it before he left.
You're like, I'm not going to give it to you for free. You just took all my money.
Yeah, I'm not giving it to you for you. They already shut me down. I mean, I need your cash.
But that was the greatest thing, oddly enough, at the time, it was horrible. They shut down my merchant account. And when they shut down your merchant account, you get on this blacklist. So you can't get another merchant account for a period of time. And so now I knew that you could sell stuff on the Internet. I knew kind of how to do it in a very rough way. But now it's like, what do I do now? So I started researching and I found out. I wanted to find out how do you process credit cards without having to get a merchant account? Is there a way to do this? Now? This is before PayPal. This was before all these different companies, before ClickBank and many of these other companies that exist now. But even back then, I found that there was about 70 to 80 companies that did this that allowed you to use their merchant account. They charged you a much, much higher fee, of course, but you could use one of their merchant accounts and then you could start selling again. And so what I did was I put all this down into an ebook.
When I was putting this. Now, ebooks at that time were a lot different than today. Ebooks back then were like a compilation of HTML pages wrapped in a program. And you would open up this piece of software on your computer and you would kind of scan through it, and that's basically what an ebook was. So it wasn't like a simple PDF like today. In fact, back then, you kind of look down on a PDF, really.
That's true. So it's like a throwaway kind of thing that's not valuable.
Yeah, just like, that's PDF, you know, get rid of it. But this was like a piece of software and everything else, it looked pretty slick, but the problem is you had to get the piece of software. So I found one piece of software I used to make this ebook. And it did everything I wanted to, but not quite. So I bought a second ebook software, a third one. And then I had that thought. I think a lot of people have throughout their life that if someone could take all the bad things away from this stuff and make one that had all the good things, they could probably make a million dollars. And so I said, well, I guess I could do that. I mean, why not? Let's just give it a shot. Because again, I'm naive and I believe that you could probably do this because I know nothing about programming, but let's make a piece of software.
Well, I know your upbringing in. I think that was your mom's doing, right? Like, she kind of gave you a lot of that input of like, yeah, you could do this if you worked hard enough and your dad had that kind of opportunity.
You know, my, you know, my mom and dad didn't grow up with money. My mom was from the Philippines, my dad is from the US and you know, she said, you know, she basically told me, you know, you can do anything as long as you want it bad enough and obviously as long as you put in the work behind it. So. And I believe that, you know, and so I said, well, let's give it a shot. Let's, let's try it out, you know. And so I found this company in Yugoslavia. I paid them the last money that I had, $5,000, made this piece of softw. And now I had this ebook. I had this piece of software. I sold the ebook and I sold it for $19.97. Now the interesting part about that ebook is that when I sold.
Sold about $30,000, not quite $30,000, but a little bit less than $30,000 a year for the next 10 years.
That's pretty nice.
Yeah, that one ebook, and that was great. But that software though, the software was the key because after I put out the E book, I then started marketing the software and I was kind of, I kind of did this a little bit differently. I said, I don't have a list. That was the first thing I realized. I don't have a list of people. I need someone to market this software. So I did a search online of all these people with newsletters and I contacted everyone with newsletter. I figure they got a newsletter, they have, you know, 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, maybe more people on their list. And I said, I wrote them all a message, very simple message. I said, hi, my name's Armin Moore and you probably don't know me. I wrote an ebook called Take Online Payments, but I just made this brand new ebook software. Here's a free copy of it if you like it. I'd appreciate it if you would promote it to your list. And here's even a link where you can get paid as an affiliate for it. And I just sent it out and I sent it out to 500 people.
Wow.
And again, this is all manually done. It wasn't like in bulk. There wasn't really a bulk way to do it.
They don't have that.
Yeah. So we didn't have that option. So out of that 500 people, 178 of those actually signed up to be an affiliate and promoted that ebook, that ebook software, I should say.
How did that go with affiliates? Because I know most affiliates don't do too well.
Yeah, it actually went individually, they made some money. Right. But collectively, I think within the first two to three weeks, we made about $50,000.
Okay.
That's what we netted out of that first two week period. But then those affiliates kept promoting these after the fact that and we started generating more and more affiliates. And then people start asking me questions though. Customers ask me questions. They said, man, you've got this really cool graphic at the head of your website.
How did you make that? I'm like, well I made it by hand. I use this program. I tell them what software I did. Then I thought, man, if someone could make a piece of software that made that graphic that went at the top of the website, I think they'd make a lot of money.
So now I went back to these guys that made me the other software and I said, hey, I want the software. And what we did is basically we made a bunch of templates for the backgrounds and then made a piece of software that would basically just put text on top of a graphic. That's all it was. And we called it header generator. And so the first book was called ebook Generator, second one was called header generator. And then every software after that was called a generator product. But one of the coolest softwares that we made was what most people know as an E cover graphic today. Well, that E cover, the term ecover graphic was just a term that actually late night, me and you guys probably know know of him at least a guy named John Reese came up with. Yeah, we were talking late at night and he's like, man, what are you gonna call him?
Like, I don't know.
He's like, well why don't we call it ecover graphic? I'm like, oh yeah, that sounds good enough. Let's just use that. So, so we just made up the term E cover in the middle of the night. And that's what we labeled it as. And that was the first E cover software that ever was created back then.
We probably use that to be honest. Guaranteed.
Well, this is so cool because ecover design was my very first. So we started about what, 14 years ago, 2007.
Ish.
Oh yeah, that's when we started dabbling and then finally moved into this. But E cover design was like my thing at first. And I did, I didn't do the software stuff, but it got me into this design and then ended up doing sales videos for big promos and you know, a lot of these launches. But ecover specifically was like the thing that got my brain going too.
So you remember like, you probably remember a guy named like was his name Vaughn Davidson? I think his name was.
That sounds very familiar. Yeah.
Yeah, Killer. I think he made like killer covers.com or something like that.
Yeah, I remember killer. Yeah. Covers or ecovers. Yeah.
And he made these. The amazing graphics, they were just. The perspective on them was just perfect. Well, it was just kind of a funny story. He actually made a bunch of covers for Someone. He had 100 covers. And so he contacted me, right. And he said, hey, can you do these for me? Because I can't.
So a lot of the early covers that people had seen that they bought from him were actually designed by me.
I believe was just kind of weird.
It's just kind of cool that way.
Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. So there you go. So you were part of my journey too, and I didn't even know it. Through ecommerce. Yeah, yeah.
It was just kind of crazy. But we made a bunch of software over the years. One of the most popular ones was we made one called Pop up Generator that even if, I think if you still look today, I haven't looked in a while, but it was still like on 375,000 websites that people were still utilizing that to this very day. Because it's a pop up. I mean, it's gonna work.
So we made like all these different softwares and then one of the one that we created with, I did a partnership with guy named Rick Raditz and Alex Mondozian and we created a program called Audio Generator that allowed you to put audio on a website that you could pick up a phone, leave a message and basically take that audio code and now put it on a website. And, you know, and that changed a lot of things for a lot of different people. So. And then from there, you know, I get sick of software after a while, honestly.
Do you?
It seems like, well, you're not, you're just coming up with the ideas and marketing. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I love software, but it was, you know, when I started speaking, like back in 2002, I guess. 2001, 2002, I started speaking and I started speaking on software development because. And it was very strategic. It was very strategic. And this is something definitely, you know, anyone that's listening definitely needs to understand is that I specifically chose that market because no one else spoke on it. And so I specifically said that if I speak on this topic, no one can compete with me on it and therefore everyone's going to want me to speak at their events. And that's exactly what happened. And it just kind of worked out. So I started speaking about. Yeah, I started speaking software, software, software. Here's how you do it, here's how you make it, here's how you outsource it, and here's how you develop it and all this other good stuff. And a lot of people made software from it. Russell, Russell Brunson made one of his first softwares utilizing what I taught as far as making software. And just a lot of other people. Ryan Dice had utilized and made some software in the early days utilizing the techniques that I taught and stuff like that. So it was just really kind of interesting. But I got kind of sick and tired of talking about software. So I gradually, every time someone asked me about it, I would switch the conversation into, well, let me tell you how I market the software, and let me tell you how I did it. Let me tell you how I wrote the copy. Let me tell you how you did this. And I just gradually kind of migrated a little bit towards the teaching of marketing strategy rather than software development. I still do software development today. I still have plenty of big projects that I'm working on and things of that nature right now as far as software goes, much more advanced levels now, but still it's still software, and I really, really enjoy it. But now a lot of my time is spent teaching people what I learned or figured out how to market the software or market their programs, market their courses in just different ways, or a lot of it is me helping people now speak from the stage.
Yeah, and I know. Yeah. And something I saw is like your greatest. You know, the thing that's brought you the most success is sharing what you've learned or how you do things with others. And, you know, that led to. I'm assuming, you know, you ran what big seminar it was called back in the day. And that seemed like that was like the big. I think this was before we actually came around, but that seemed like maybe it was like the traffic and conversion of the time, you know.
Yeah, it was.
It was.
I mean, you know, at that. At that first big seminar, it was just kind of interesting. It was my very first big semi I did was in 2000. I think it was 2001 or 2002. But the first two people, first guy that was in there at the time was. And then we'd known each other, but first time we met each other was right there, and it was in Texas, in Dallas, and it was Frank Kern. And so I walked in, and me and Frank was the first time we talked. And then the second person that came in was John Reese. And then at that event was Alex Mondozian. Joe Vitale was There classic.
You know, couple. I can't think of some of the other people. There's. Oh, Jeff Walker was still working a job back then. He was still in the stock. Jeff Walker, Jeff Johnson was there as well too. There's just so many people that were just there at that, at the very first event and then that kind of grew from there. And then, you know, I had different people speak that I got to know better. One of a friend, good friend of mine now his name's Jim Edwards and Jim Edwards turned me down to speak at that event. He's like, he said, this is what he said. And he said, hey, no one's ever going to buy a course, a high priced course from a stage like that. I mean people just aren't going to do it.
He always kicks himself.
Now looking back at it, times have changed. Yeah, well, marketing, what was it? Marketinguniversity.com is also another thing. And that's, I mean that's the longest running online coaching program for Internet marketing.
Yeah, we started originally it was called AM2 way back in the day. I started it back in 2000, oddly enough 2002. And it was with Alex Mondozian. So it was AM2 is because Armin Morin. Alex Mondozian squared.
I gotta tell him that we just had Alex on the show pretty recently and he's such a cool guy.
Oh, that's funny.
Yeah, yeah, bring him up.
Yeah. So Alex was one of the. Actually I hired Alex in the beginning to write some copy for me because I was starting a hosting company way back when and that's how we met each other. I contacted someone who said, call this guy. And then I connected with Alex and we just started talking and we got to be good friends and we had several different companies together including again back then AM2. And then eventually Alex wanted to go one way, I wanted to go another. I said, okay, well let me buy you out. And so what happened is I said, well let's change this up, let's change this a little bit. And I always had this name, Marketing University and I'm like, how am I going to use this? And it's like one of those domains you just buy and hold on to and hopefully someday I'm like, yeah, let's just change everything over to it. And so I did a complete rebranding and we had Marketing University. But yeah, everything that we do now is through this one type of program called Marketing University and where we teach everything that I learn on a day to day basis. So if I Learn something brand new. I teach it inside of there. So it's this big, massive library of all these trainings and courses and. And also it's chance where people can come to my house and things of that nature as well too.
Now I'm really curious. Before, you know, before Facebook ads, before Google Ads, before YouTube, before all the stuff that we have today to drive traffic, what, what were you doing? I mean, I know you did affiliate marketing eventually, but before you even got into the affiliate marketing stuff, how were you growing this, this curation platform and these, these things that you were doing? Because 1996 Internet, when I think back then, to me that was like CompuServe and bulletin boards and it was. And that was about it. Like video didn't even exist yet, really.
Yeah, you're absolutely right. It was the bulletin boards. It was, you know, the various places. AOL had several different bulletin boards. In fact, you guys have heard of like the Warriors Warrior Forum? Oh, yeah, yeah, Warrior Forum. Well, the Warrior Forum wasn't actually the Warrior Forum way back when. It was actually a place for spammers could get together and buy spamming software to spam. The message boards inside of AOL had no clue. That was the very first. In fact, my original ID was actually 92. That was.
The 92nd person. But yeah, back then we would post the forms, message boards, any kind of classified ad sites that you would have. And then if you were smart enough, you would, would have an affiliate program in order to get this, and you would invest a lot into your affiliate program to get other people to help you promote because that was money that you just didn't have to spend. And, you know, and I think a lot of people kind of gotten away from that now. They don't push it as enough where they make it into something I think some people do, you know, with, you know, with clickfunnels, I mean, they do a pretty good job as far as promoting. They get a lot of people promoting through it. But typically in most of the time back then, it was like 25 to 30% of our total sales was all through affiliates.
Wow. Okay.
Yeah, so it was a pretty good chunk of it. And then the rest of it obviously was us. But also it was a matter of diving in and making sure that the people knew all of your different products. Where I know a lot of people talk about a marketing funnel as an example, I never believed in the concept of a funnel, and I still really don't believe in the concept of a funnel where you. Because people think that you have to start with something maybe low cost, free, and then it goes into a higher price, a higher price, a higher price and a higher price. Well, that doesn't make sense because you're putting, you're putting conditions on, you know, you have to go through this part, to this, to this, to this, to this. Well, what if I want to just market a $2,000 item? Does that mean I've got to go through six steps before I get there? So I always looked at it like a pipeline and meaning that as people come through, consider like a pipe with like holes in the top of it. So as people come through, you can just drop an offer in, in front of them. No matter what it is. It doesn't matter if it's a 37 or $27 offer, a free offer, or a 2000 or $3000 offer. It just didn't matter because you already pre qualified them because they purchased something from you already.
Okay, so they're in the pipeline, but they already purchased what, a piece of your software, maybe in your coaching program or something?
Could be anything, whatever. But the idea is, is that they purchased something from you already. They had some interaction. So now what you're doing is you're making sure that every one of those people, because here's the problem, even today's day and age, let's say I had product A and I got a bunch of people to buy product A from me. Okay? So I get product A and then all of a sudden I promote product B and I get a bunch of people to buy product B. And now the idea should be to get people from product A to see product B, which is easy. But the problem is that people that purchase product B from a different source, they don't know about product A.
So what happens is now that's okay for like one or two products, but what if you have 10 or 15 different products? How many people didn't hear about all of your different products that you had? So what happens is you're missing out on that. And so there's got to be a system in your email marketing, your follow up system, to introduce the products that you've done previously to the people that have purchased the current products. Does that make sense?
Oh yeah.
Yep.
So you instantly, without actually having to market anymore, you turn that $100 customer into a $500 customer. $1,000 custom higher for that matter.
Yeah. So how would you implement a strategy like that now? Like would you, would you lean on your email marketing strategy and follow ups and triggers and stuff like that?
Yeah, we have a really, really, it's a really complex system that we use. We use, we basically use ActiveCampaign for all of our systems just because I think it's one of the easiest to use.
Agreed.
As far as setting up. Yeah, setting up these different pieces. But you know, in this particular case we have to figure out, so this person's here, bought this particular product and then we kind of hand design the funnel, or I don't want to say funnel. Right. Pipeline, hand design, the marketing method in order to reach those people going backwards. So we always kind of think about, okay, this person here, did they purchase this? And then we put the condition on. Is the person on this list, in other words, the buyer's list of this product, if they're not on the buyers list of that product, then send them this message. And so we're putting these conditions kind of like down the decision tree as we go. Did they purchase this product? If they did purchase this product, skip this message, go to this message. And then so we're putting all these conditions in on every person that actually comes into our system as to what the follow up system is going to be as they go through. Just like in our email marketing. And here's a great strategy for email marketing. We started doing it about, probably about 10 months ago. So I noticed that when we send an email out to our list, you'll get X number of people. So let's just say as an example that you send an email to your list. Again, we're not talking about new people, we're talking about your list and all of a sudden you send it out and maybe, I don't know, let's just say you got a 5% open rate, so it's okay. Right. So most people again will just send another message and then another message and another message and yeah, you'll get a few more people open it up and maybe you'll get up to 10% or so.
And we're talking like broadcast, even emails in this sense.
Just a broadcast email. Right. Well what we did is instead of just repeating that process and just kind of hammering them, hammering them, hammering them. What we did is we started sending out messages and first message, we use what's called the May system. The May system is called morning, afternoon, evening. And so we send out the first message in the morning and then we wait and we wait till one o' clock and at one o' clock we say okay, did, did these first people actually read the first message that we sent out in the morning? If they did, you know, don't send them any more message. If they didn't, then send the message out again. And then we wait another till the end of the day and it happens, and we just automate this whole thing. So then we carry it through throughout the rest of the day. And then if they didn't again pick up by the end of the day, then we start the next day. But in this particular case, if they. On the next day, we go back and we start thinking, okay, did they open up the first message before we send the second message? So if they didn't open up the first message, we think about the angle that we used on day one, and then we try a different angle on day two to try to get them to open again. And we go through that three times. And then we're trying to get them from stage one to stage two. Stage two is basically, if they open this already, then we start the second part of the sequence.
Okay.
And then we change where we're. Now we're focusing. They opened it, but the question now is, did they click on the link?
So before you focused on subject line, of course, optimizing the angle there to get the open first.
Well, we already know those people. If they went to stage two, we know they opened it. So we don't need to focus on the subject line. We just. Now we just need to focus on the body.
Got it?
Yep.
Yep.
So this focuses our attention now on the body. And we can say, okay, how can we get them to click this? Do we need to put a button? Do we need to put a link? Do we. How can we emphasize to click on that link more in order to get them to that next phase and then stage three. So stage one is, did they open? Stage two is, did they click? And we will keep them stage two until they click. And then if they move on to stage three, which is they went to our website, now it's focusing on the actual message in the actual body of the sales letter itself. Did we sell it the right way? Do we have different angle? And so stage three, we start changing up why they should buy and the reasons why they should buy, this versus something else. And then we'll continue that through until we can get them to click the buy button on the sales letter. And then we start going through the next phase. Did they click? They click the buy button and. But did they buy?
Yeah. Yeah.
Does that make sense?
Yeah. No. I think that puts like a nice little framework around, like, how often should I mail in a day? Right. That's a common question is, should I mail once a day or more? But if somebody doesn't pay attention to the first emails, then they're not really paying attention. Why are you worried about mailing them more?
Right.
Well, you know, here's the thing, is that if it's like, well, aren't you spamming your list? That's what someone asked me. I'm like, well, no, because they didn't see the first one to begin with.
Right.
So to them, this is the only message that I've sent them that day.
That's right. And also, let's be honest, they opted in. So it's not spam. You're okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You're doing right by them anyway, so it's all good.
And if they unsubscribe, and first of all, if they unsubscribe and you notice, then your email list isn't big enough.
Very good point.
Yeah, that's true.
They're leaving. It's probably not a bad thing, you know.
Exactly.
Hanging around, so.
So I want to shift away a little bit and talk about webinars, because I know you have a system that's working really, really well for webinars right now, so I'm curious if you can break that down for us.
Yeah. So obviously, everyone's probably attended a boatload of webinars over the years, and they're pretty much the same for the most part. You opt in, you go to the webinar, and probably the only difference today is that there's variation. So, and what I mean is there's the traditional webinar, which is just a PowerPoint, and that still works to this very day. Then you have kind of like a hybrid, meaning that you have the PowerPoint, and with like a zoom, where you have the little image to the right of it or to the left of it, and you have the little tiny image of the person. But then you have the third phase. And the third phase, I think, is the more important phase where I think webinars have come to maturity, where you're literally switching like you would a movie, where here's your PowerPoint, here's me live, here's the PowerPoint, here's me live, and you're just kind of taking over that whole screen type of idea, and whether it be showing the PowerPoint or whether it be showing you or showing something on your screen, either way. But it's more of a movie type of idea, more of like a documentary, if you will. But that's one part. So I think that that's the one thing that's changed. And we do more video like this than anything else. And oddly enough, a lot of my webinars actually aren't even utilizing PowerPoint now. What I use is I use Google Docs and I just outline what I'm teaching them for their notes. And so I'm just talking and having a conversation with them, just like I'm having with you guys right now. Except what we're doing is we're outlining what it is and then combining that with actually demonstrating to them online what I'm actually referencing so they can actually see it a little bit better. So that works really well. But you have to be pretty good at knowing what you're talking about, right? Biggest change that we did was an experiment that I did a few months ago that was a total game changer. And that's it. So typically a person does a webinar and let's say they do a webinar on Wednesday. So now if I want to do a webinar next Wednesday, I have to build my opt in page, of course, and then wait till next Wednesday in order to see if my webinar is going to work or not. We changed it. What we did is we said, okay, here's our opt in page. I said, hi, my name is Armin Warren. I'm doing this webinar next week, blah, blah, blah, you should be on it. And go ahead, fill in your name and email address. And then what happened happens is they, they opt in, of course. Right. Well, on the next page after they opt in, I have another video. And the video says, hi, my name is Armand. Thank you so much for registering for the webinar. Next Wednesday you're going to get an email with all the details, but while you're here, I have something special that I want to share with you right now. And you probably already guessed that at the end of the presentation, next Wednesday, I'm going to make an offer. And you know, it's no big secret. You know, I don't try to hide it at all, but let me just tell you what that offer is right now. And so what I do is I make the offer and then I give them a 25% discount if they buy right now as opposed to waiting till next Wednesday.
Oh, I love that.
And how much different is the sales pitch on that video versus what you do on the webinar?
It's a very much shortened version. So this pitch is about a 15 minute version where on the webinar it Might be slightly longer, 20, 25 minutes maybe.
But this is just a really straightforward. Here's the pitch.
Gotcha. And there's always a percentage of people ready to buy right then and there that just have this nagging feeling. They're like, I don't want to wait a week for this. He's right here. Exactly.
Now what happens though is instead of having to wait to actually make money via your webinar, technically you could actually start making money via the first visitor that visits and ops in.
So that's kind of a good part. So you start getting paid early. But what happened is when we first did this, 70% of all of our sales that we made on that webinar were actually made on the pre sale.
Oh wow.
Now think about this for one second. I mentioned earlier, a friend of mine, Jim Edwards, I explained his strategy to him a few weeks back and he got it immediately. And here's the whole point. So typically, let's just use an easy number. Let's say you had a thousand people that went to your website to look at your offer. Let's say we'll give everyone the benefit of the doubt. 30% of them opt in to watch your webinar. Right. But Again, of the 30% that opt in to watch your webinar, only 30% of those are actually going to show up. Those are pretty standard numbers across the board. In most cases, this strategy, we actually get them at the moment they opt in. So we've already had three times the amount of people seeing the offer than we would in a normal webinar case because we'd have to wait till next Wednesday in order for that to happen. You see what I mean?
So you're getting them right up front. You're getting the 30% of people all seeing that page and plus they're on your email follow ups, which I'm assuming you're probably reminding them.
Exactly, exactly.
Good.
So we tell them now, again, we tell them that, hey, if you still want more details, I'm going to explain this whole offer again on Wednesday and I'm going to go over the strategy that I promised you that I was going to go over on Wednesday. So I still want you to watch the webinar. And so now that webinar now is our second chance to actually get them to buy. And if they show up at the webinar at that point, the likelihood of them buying is very, very high. But then after that we do an eight day follow up right after. And the eight day follow up for us goes like this is immediately after the day after the webinar. We send them a message and we say, hey, did you miss it? Here's the replay link. Easy enough. The second day we send another message saying, hey, did you miss the email that we sent yesterday? Here it is again. And go and watch the replay. Day three, we don't send them anything. Day four, we send them an informational piece about something particular about that strategy. Something like, did you know this? Like did you know? And so day four would be like an informational piece and of course go watch the replay. But day five is where everything kind of ties in and this is where it makes everything work. Day five, we say 72 hours left and 72 hours left and go watch the replay. Next day, 48 hours left. Next day, 24 hours left. Last day. This ends at midnight. And then we send another email that same day saying, last chance. Typically the majority of our sales will actually come in that last 24 hour period after the fact. And in many cases, whatever we got prior to that point, we will double. That's the minimum that we'll do. So if we get 100 sales by that point, we're going to double our sales in that next 24 hour period. But in many cases we'll multiply it much higher. I typically average between four to five times what I got originally before that point.
Okay.
And my best I've ever done, I got 10 times the amount of sales.
Is this including upsells or is this just the front end offer you're talking about here?
Just the front end offer. We're not even talking about upsells.
Right on. That's cool. Okay, so you said that was an eight day follow up. I think there was one day missing there. So technically seven emails or days of emailing.
Actually it's eight days because you had day one where we send them. Day two, did you see it? Day three, we did nothing. Day four, did you know day five was 72 hours and then 48 hours and then 24 hours and then the last day was the eighth day. We sent two emails on that last eighth day.
That's it. Yeah. Is there a day of the week that you find best? I know you used Wednesday as that example for the webinar.
Yeah, I just threw that out.
Yeah, webinars I would typically do on Tuesdays or Thursdays. That's my preference.
Are you a fan of doing the webinars live or do you just. Are the webinars automated?
Yeah, I prefer an automated webinar because you can just set it up and feed the beast just with traffic. And I think it's great. I'm not opposed to live webinars. I love live webinars.
No, I totally agree. I was just curious if you were every week jumping on live webinars or. I mean, we're fans of automation as well.
It's not my preference because if you. I always think about this. I guess a lot of it is what I still think as a speaker. Right. It's like I'm going to be gone, I'm leaving Friday, I'm going to be back Sunday or Monday. So those days aren't good for me anywhere in there. So Tuesday is going to be the first day that's available and that's going to be good. But also Tuesday and Thursday is going to be your best days. Wednesdays and this is kind of old school thinking. I live in North. I live in North Carolina in the South. And in the south, typically on Wednesdays is a big church night for a lot of people. So I've always just kind of avoided doing things on Wednesday. And I also do my webinars at night. I like doing my webinars at night as opposed to during the day. Some people like that 3 o' clock spot. I think it's the worst time ever. I think that if you want to do a webinar, you're going to do 8 o' clock or 9 o' clock in the evening, east coast time.
Yeah.
Well, it makes sense too because if you do have people that have day jobs that are coming to you because they're trying to break free from their day job, that's the time to get them.
They're hustling.
Well, speaking of Armin, thanks for sharing that. I know you mentioned earlier, I think it was prior to recording your schedule is kind of crazy, but you have a great handle of it and you have a productivity system I think we'll direct to. There's a specific video about your postcards. I think it's part of your YouTube challenge. That was super, super cool. So we'll just direct them there. But I'm kind of curious of how you look at your schedule because it seems like you're super hands on with all of your business and you love it.
Yeah, I mean, I mean I'm kind of one of those. Well, I'm different in a good way. But the reason I say I'm different is because unlike maybe a lot of marketers, I actually do write my own copy. I actually do design my own graphics. I do probably 80 to 90% of my own programming, I design my own websites, I do everything regarding that. So my team that I have is primarily meant for support, to support me. And so but and the reason I do these things is a lot of times am I the best one to do it? I think most of the time I am because I can do it faster than other people can. And so that's one of the things I always think about. Can I do this faster than other people and can I get it done or is it going to take me longer to explain it to somebody than it is for me to actually do it?
Sure.
So there's that aspect of it as well too. But there's a lot of other things that are just maintenance things that I have other people on my team actually do that doesn't really involved me. But my schedule is different than most people because I don't adhere to a normal schedule for me. My day starts typically, let's just take today. This morning I Woke up at 6:30 and I went to taekwondo practice. I go to taekwondo practice at 7:15. It's typically there about an hour and a half roughly. Then I come home.
Eat, maybe eat doesn't, depends. Then I immediately go upstairs and I start the morning is my day from like say 9 o' clock to about 11:30. That's my time to kind of decompress and kind of get a handle on my day. Meaning I'm going to check my news at that time. I'm going to check, you know, the things that I just need to check on a daily basis that I enjoy. So I'm going to do those things and then I'm going to start working on some of the projects that I might be working on myself from the day before that aren't finished yet. So then at 11:30 this is where we handle our customer service and the way we do our customer service is a little bit different. I have a lot of coaching clients and I allow most of my coaching clients, especially my high end clients, to send me an unlimited number of emails. They can ask me any question they want. They can ask as many questions they want every single day. And I have a lot of coaching clients. So how do I handle all that? That it's very simple. Every day at 11:30 they send all their emails in prior and then during our call with my team they send me a list of them and I read them back the answers and I just kind of dictate the answers back to them as to what's saying. Then they Send them out. So that takes us about usually 30 to 45 minutes or so. So then after that I can now start my day for the most part that's when I kind of consider it started. And so after that at 12:30, maybe one o' clock I'll, I'll just continue working my things. Most of my calls are around 3 o' clock to 4 o'.
Clock.
If it's a training call or if it's a coaching call or something of that nature, it's going to be around there. So between 12:30 and that time I'm going to do my, you know, work on my projects. If I'm working or programming or designing a new website or researching something, a lot of it is research, you know, finding out, sometimes me figuring out how to do something.
So that's part of my research or it's figuring out okay, price points or you know, something new maybe that we're figuring out or just plain just building something during that timeframe. So, so then at 4 o' clock I typically will do my, let's just say my, my coaching will be at 4 o' clock most of the times either call ins with, in group calls that we'll do or what we'll do is I'll do live trainings. You know, typically once, one to two times a week I'll do a live training for my team and everything I do is always record. So it all goes into my members area. So that makes it easy for me to have this archive, this massive archive of all the different things I've said over the years. But then at that particular point I have at five o'. Clock. So five to six is where I kind of relax a little bit. Usually I eat dinner about 6:30 after dinner, let's say roughly 7, 7:30, then I'll kind of hang out with my family a little bit. They go to bed early fortunately, so they go to bed at let's say around 9, 9:30. Then I start shift.
Here's the crazy part and this is.
The shift number two is where you get, I get all my stuff done. So the day is like just you know, whatever I do during the day it's like I get done, that's fine, I'm okay with that. But starting about 9:30, 10:00 clock is when I actually get all my things done. So around that time I get to work. No one's bothering me, of course, no one's talking to me. And then I'll typically work till 3, 4 o' clock in the morning.
Okay.
So a lot of times I might have only maybe 2, 3 hours sleep at night, but during the. Before dinner, I might take a nap, or sometimes in the afternoon, if I'm tired, I'll lie down for 30 minutes, just take a power nap. And so I'm not one to think that I have to have my eight hours all in one shot. I just figured that I have a very simple philosophy, is that you sleep when you're tired and you wake up when you're not.
That. That's good. I love the philosophy. Do you have any, Any. Any key, I guess, stimulants or ways to keep attention throughout the day, like with that? Yeah, that kind of. Yeah.
So, you know. So, you know, one thing I learned a long time ago is that now I am. I am adhd. I am ocd. Right. So those are facts. Now the question is, how do you work with that?
Yeah.
And how do you know what that looks like? And how do you progress knowing that your brain is going super fast and your attention span may span out? Well, I know that my attention span will span for about 45 minutes to maybe an hour, roughly, depending, Depending on the subject. But then it's not that I'm tired. I'm not physically tired. I'm not mentally tired. I'm just tired of that one subject. So then what I do is I start on the next piece. And so you mentioned my card system that I have. So I write down everything I have to do on a project, and I put them in order, chronological order, as far as I want to get done. So I'll work on this one card for this one project as long as I can again, 30, 45 minutes, whatever it may be. And then when I'm done that particular project, that card either goes to the side and then I throw it away, or this card goes to the back of the list, and then I just go to the next card. So now I'm working on a different subject. So for me, that's stimulating, and I'm still progressing in all the things I have to do, because everything in this stack of cards are things that I have to do regardless. So I'm just focusing my energies in different ways. And then when I'm done with that, I put that to the back, and then I come back to the front again.
I like it.
And so I just. It just kind of keeps on rotating around, if you will.
That's really smart.
I like that a lot. And I believe what you said. Everything's in priority order. So for each card, you can't go to step two unless that first part's done. So it keeps you totally focused. But yeah, I love the whole switching thing because, yeah, it's easy to have that seep throughout your day and if you're just not feeling it for whatever reason, it's going to affect your work, you know, and yourself. Yeah, yeah.
And then when you switch it up, it focus, it causes your brain really to reset. You know, you might be blown out and you might be frustrated even on that one subject. But then when you switch it up to thinking about another angle. So, for example, if I'm thinking about, if this is cards about programming and I'm stuck on this one particular issue that I just can't get my head around, then I push that to the back and maybe this one is to make, make, make a logo for something.
Sure.
Which causes a different part of your brain to work where it's more creative. And now you can kind of let go of that other part and you're, you're kind of resting that portion of your brain and then you're allowing yourself to move forward. So it's, you're just kind of, I think, maximizing your time and doing it that way. And then, you know, at some points, yeah, you need to get up and walk away and you need to, you know, go outside or do whatever you do. Jump in the pool or something like that.
Oh, man, that's fun.
Have that option.
Yeah. Maybe slip a card in there sometime. Like pool time. All right, got it. Put it randomly in the deck there. I love it. Well, Arvind, this is fascinating and I feel like there's so much more we can go down the rabbit hole if.
You'Re open to it. I would love to do a round two at some point because I think we've talked about a third of what we wanted to talk about today. We had so many notes front and.
Back, we didn't really look at it.
Well, Armin, what's the best place to direct? I know marketinguniversity.com seems to be your hub, but where should folks go? Dive deeper with you?
Yeah, I mean, you can go either markinguniversity.com or you can go to armandmorin.com and you can find out usually what we're doing there as well too, which is a little bit of a redesign right now. But yeah, you can typically find out what's happening there as well.
And do you have a cool little project or something coming up that you want to tease out or something excited about?
Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you something that we're working on. I've been working on it for almost a year and a half, and we're just about ready to release it fairly soon. And it's a brand new, different kind of webinar software.
It's the easiest to use webinar software ever. I've taken all the features that any webinar software could possibly do. We put it into one. But one of the things that we're focusing on is not just the idea of selling on webinars. We're looking at it more like a communication platform where you can do the traditional, let's call it, marketing, webinar stuff that many people do. But then you're going to have that second piece also where you have that multiple person kind of like zoom aspect as well too, where you can choose to do a webinar, you can choose to do zoom, or you can choose to do a hybrid type of model. That's a kind of a little bit of either one. And then it will do live webinars, it will do prerecorded webinars, it will do hybrid webinars where you can do part of it live and part of it prerecorded. So there's just so many different features that we put into this. But it's taken us a year to really put it all together. And hopefully in the next, I don't know, and hopefully 30 days to maybe 60 days, we'll finally, finally get it out there.
Ooh, right. Cool, Cool. We'll keep a look at ourselves too, because we're always definitely stay with the new and new and new or these things that are relevant. Man.
Shout out. You've got a book called Success Leaves Traces Too. So I want to make sure you shout that out. You can find that on Amazon. Is there a better place to get it than Amazon or is Amazon the best?
No, Amazon's probably the best place to get it. And what that book is really about is a conversation late one night with, actually, John Reese. And John and I used to talk a lot late at night because we were the only people left in the middle of the night. So we talked to each other. And he said, man, you got to break down how you think because you think a little bit differently. And so, so I took what goes through my head in a couple seconds when I'm looking at an idea or a project and I broke it down into steps and how I reverse engineer anything for that matter, whether it be, for example, when I first learned how to program, I put Myself into a situation where I promised a class that I would have a membership site WordPress theme in the next 48 hours for them. The problem is I didn't know to how, how to program.
That promise out.
There and figure it out. Yeah.
So, so I forced myself how to learn to learn PHP programming in order to make a membership site theme and make that all work for them within 48 hours. And now, you know, now I can program, you know, a lot of different things, but, you know, but learning things really fast is just how I think about it. But it's all about reverse. It's not about, it's not about how smart you are are. What it is is about knowing the steps. And so you know things like you observe everything that's actually gone on first and then what you do is reverse engineer it. You can see the steps. I always think about when I first went water skiing when I was a kid. I wouldn't say I was a kid. I was about 15, 16 years old. I was dating this girl and her dad says, you know how to water ski? I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, I definitely know how to water ski. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't. But I love it. But. So I get into the water though, I get into the water and he thinks, I know how to water ski. I don't want to embarrass myself, but I always remembered when I was about 9 or 10 years old, I watched this guy water ski when we went camping with my grandparents. And I always watched what he did. He sat into the water, he made sure the rope was tight and he made your skis, tips of the skis are up. And he always kind of pulled on the rope whenever the boat started going. So I'm like, I just have to do that. That sounds pretty simple. And so I did that. And now the interesting part about this, now this is my first time water skiing. This guy has no idea that I don't know what I'm. And I don't want to let him down.
Right.
So he thinks I'm a pro. He thinks I know exactly what I'm doing. I've done this hundreds of times. So he takes me out close to this power dam right now, I don't know if you've ever been by a power dam, but in a power dam they shoot water straight down out of the dam. And then what happens is it causes these massive giant whirlpools on the other side. So he takes me water skiing through that place between the massive water shooting down and these giant whirlpools. So if I fall, I'm going into the giant whirlpool over here, where who knows what happens.
You're turning into energy power somehow.
Yeah, I'm lighting up New York City at that point.
But the point is, luckily I stayed up. That was the good part. But it was the point of I observed everything that was going on and then executed it in a certain order, a chronological order, in order to get it done. And what this book, Successive Traces does is that anything that you want to do, you can reverse engineer it, you can see what people have done, you can then take the steps. And if you do it in the right order, in the right steps, you can replicate their results without ever having to know exactly how to do it, the actual ability to do it. And I lived my whole life, we talked about Taekwondo as an example. Well, with Taekwondo, I did the same thing in seven years, you know. You know, I trained, I did all the different things. I went and I studied, you know, YouTube videos. I studied again and again and again to see exactly how they do it. The problem is, is that when, you know, if you're 12 years old taking Taekwondo, your body is very flexible. If you're 44 years old, your body's not so flexible anymore.
But you figured it out. Dang it.
I did figure it out. What's your rank?
I mean, I don't have it written in front of me, but I know you just got, you're pretty high ranked now in Taekwondo, know.
Yeah, I mean, right now I'm currently a third degree black belt. I'll be a fourth degree black belt in October and then, and I just became the US national champion. So for my age group, just to clarify, for my, for my age group, 46 and up, heavyweight. But there's also something funny that they don't tell you, you know, you ever noticed, like, it's like marketing, you know, it's like the brochure says one thing and then the reality is another.
Of course.
Well, what they didn't tell me was that that Taekwondo matches, they go by rank. And so you're fighting against someone of equal rank and you're fighting against someone of equal weight. Except weight can vary according to height.
Now I'm only 5, 7. The average person that I fight is typically 6, 5 to 6, 5 to 6, 9.
That doesn't seem fair at all.
It's not fair. It's not. I mean, when you see the pictures, it's like this drastic difference. It's like this little tiny Kid fighting this giant. And it's just. It's just crazy.
But.
But you know what? There's a method and strategy in order to. To beat someone that big.
Of course.
And that just makes what you've accomplished so much more impressive too.
So, yeah, it's kind of.
It's. It's fun. It's fun. We have a great time.
Well, I mean, you're. I did find a video of you. I don't think it was taekwondo, but it was some other form. But you were doing some moves and it was just random on YouTube. I was like, there he is, there he is doing it. So, yeah, you do what you preach, man. It's really cool. And it's cool to see you doing it at a high level for so long too. It's impressive, man. And you're doing it differently than most in business too.
Yeah. I look at it this way. I always consider myself into three different categories. I always say it's the businessman, the warrior, and the artist.
So the business is easy. The warrior, obviously that's a taekwondo aspect. It gets my aggression out, things of that nature. And then the last part we didn't really talk about was the artist. And back in. I forget the years exactly now, 2006, maybe 2006, I put out a country music album and we were the seventh best selling CD in the world.
Oh, what?
Yeah, seventh bestselling CD in the world. We beat out Bruce Springsteen, we beat out Rascoe Flatts, Toby Keith, Tim McGraw, all these country music artists. But yeah, and on Amazon, we were. We held the number one, number one spot on Amazon for four straight days.
Wow.
So we beat out, I mean, and not just country music, but in all music.
So I'm just like, you gotta tell me how you did that. I mean, this is probably a longer story.
Remember? Okay, so remember, the whole idea of success leaves traces, right? So the first thing is the way we. Where we did the album is, you know, the same guy that took my picture is the same guy that, that, you know, took Garth Brooks picture, that took all these famous people's picture. And I looked them up inside of all these CD covers and I called them up, I said, well, if you took their pictures, you know, could you take my picture? And he said, yes. So I hired him to do that. The graphic guy was the same guy that does all the top country music albums in Nashville. So I hired him. Where we published. It was the same way I did produce the. In Nashville, the whole works. So. So that was a good thing. We had decent music we had, you know, great music, music as far as that goes. But then what we did is when we get team to launch, I know it's numbers, okay? It's all about numbers. And it's when you launch, it's how you launch and everything else. So the idea of getting inside a billboard, it depends on what week it is. But if you launch at a certain time, you're going to have a better chance of actually doing it. So I calculated the launch and the first time I did it, I sold 6,000 CDs in 10 minutes. And the way I did it was at a seminar of mine. You mentioned the big seminar. Well, I came out and I said, you know, hey, everyone's got alter egos. Superman had Clark Kent, you know, Spider man has Peter Parker, you know, and all these different things. And then I said, armin Moran has Michael Lee Austin. And so that was the name Michael Lee Austin that I used. Yeah, yeah, you look it up. It's funny. And so Armin Moran has Michael Eoston. Then I said, here's the deal. I'm doing a secret seminar. And if you want to get into come to my secret seminar, you need to buy 100 CDs.
Brilliant.
So I sold 6,000 CDs in like 10 minutes. But the problem is, is that the record, you know, I owned the record company. So what happened was they didn't allow us to count all those records because they called them bulk sales. And so I didn't think it was fair, but they didn't let us do it. So I waited a few months to later and I wait till I believe it was in April, May, May, when we redid it again. So I then what I did is like, okay, I'm going to do this right? And what we're going to do is I called up all my friends, I messaged them, I sent them a simple message. Hey, you know, I've got this country music cd. I'm going to ready to promote it. If you could send an email, I'd greatly appreciate it. And I sent it to most marketers that you guys probably know today. And I said, hey, there's nothing in it for you, but if you could, that'd be great. So they sent it out, out. And within three days, three or four days actually, we were the number one best selling CD on Amazon. We held that for four days. Then that week we were the number seventh best selling CD in the world according to Billboard magazine. We hit number 36 on the country music chart with that CD. And so it Was just really kind of cool. And then everyone in Nashville wanted to know how I did it.
Yeah.
They did. They're like, we gotta hire him for every launch.
Yeah, yeah. So I got to meet a lot of great people in doing that. So it was just really fun.
And that's your artist. A part of you coming out and following your success leaves traces, mindset and how freaking powerful. You can apply it everywhere.
But even that name, we went through a process as well, too. That name, Michael Lee Austin. I did the research first to see the number one boys man's name for the last 50 years. And it came to be Michael at the.
The time.
So then we. We went through all these names that were Southern in nature, and we noticed that all of them had a second name to it. And so we use the word Lee. But also we went a little bit deeper on this one. So we started looking at different names throughout history. Obviously General Lee and, you know, things like the Dukes of Hazzard, you know, the car, the General Lee.
General Lee.
So we combined that together. And then the last piece, by using Austin, we. Everyone thinks, of course, Austin, Texas. Texas. Right. And when you put it. When you put it all together. And also then we matched it up with the total number of syllables with all of the. In the last 50 years of country music artists.
Five. Yeah.
And so we use that five syllable type of scenario. And then we also went further, and the title of the CD cover is because we launched in that time. April.
Yeah. It had been the beginning of May. So it would have been. I had a black hat on at that time.
Time.
So this black cowboy hat. And the reason is, is because what most people don't know, but only people that live in the south or people that work on farms know, is that you wear a black hat from Labor Day to. To Memorial Day.
Details. Yeah.
And so that black hat. And then if in the. In your lunch other times, then you need a white hat as well, too.
Had no clue. But.
But it's like all these tiny pieces, you know, that just kind of go together when you put them all together. And it was just like this fun psychological scenario.
Yeah. It makes you look like a pro. I mean, you're coming out strong and you have all the details met. You have a perfect name, even though you haven't been known before in the space into that alter ego name. Exactly. It doesn't matter. You have the posse around you to support you too. Yeah.
And it sounds like it. It sounds like when you hear the name, it's like, oh, I think I heard of that guy before.
Yeah, you get the nod from a couple. I'll listen to him.
I think I know him.
So I'm assuming you were the singer, or were you like the backup singer or something?
No, I did. I actually sang.
You did? Right on. Yeah.
If you look it up, like on Amazon, you'll see it's like me and I have a goatee at the time and a cowboy hat.
That's so cool.
Yeah, we'll probably link to that in the show notes so people can check that out. Who's listening, too?
Part of me wants to, like, can we get the rights to play a little bit here?
You know, it's kind of funny because I was doing some streaming and people say, well, why don't you use your own music? I'm like, well, the problem is, is that because it is through ASCAP and BMI with all the songs, Yahoo, you know, YouTube and even Facebook would catch it.
Oh, yeah.
And then I would actually have to go through this scenario to prove that it's mine.
Not worth it. Yeah. Yeah. That is crazy, huh? The powers that be now, all these platforms. But I know, Armin, you're a surprise around every corner, man. This is why you said. Yeah, there's so much. Of course. Appreciate you, man. So, yeah, let's.
I think let's shout some of these links out one last time. So we got Marketing University and we've got Success leaves traces. Armandmorin.com Armandmorin.com Everybody needs to go check those places out.
YouTube is great, too. You have a lot of great content there. Short clips, long clips. So check it. Check it out on YouTube. I'm assuming just your name. I think it is.
Yeah, yeah, just Armin Moore. And you'll find a boatload.
Pretty easy to go. Sweet, man. Well, I appreciate you so much. This is fun. Fun.
This is amazing.
Sounds good. It was great. Great to be with you guys.
All right, we'll chat soon. Man, I had to take a breath after that one.
That was a good one.
That went a while. It went a while unexpectedly, and I loved every second of it. Yeah. So damn cool, Armin.
No, I mean, just getting that. That sort of, like, history lesson of, like, what was Internet marketing like back in 96 when basically payment processors didn't really exist? YouTube wasn't around. Facebook wasn't around.
The Internet barely existed.
Might have been around. I don't even know if it was in 96.
I don't think so, because I think that was kind of the appeal of also Those bookmarks he was talking about, that launch.
Yeah, that's true.
He sold bookmarks for what was 100 and something bucks, and he made 4.2 million off it. Selling bookmarks just because it was curated content and like. Yeah, with Google. Google saw him and saw an opportunity. That's my theory. Yeah.
Yeah, they modeled Armin.
There you go.
Yeah. No, it's just. It's crazy to me that, you know, like, this is before the payment processors and like, most people were using AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, those kinds of things back then. So, you know, if you're one of Those people in 96 that got on and started to figure out Internet marketing, I mean, like, the world was yours. Cause nobody else was doing it. But there was trust issues.
Oh, yeah, massive. But, you know, there was still enough people to give him that much money and also even trust him enough with their account numbers and their routing numbers so he could print those checks. Remember that? I mean, like, there's definitely a group of people, it seemed like at the time, that was totally fine with paying them with their money or gambling maybe.
I can't even imagine walking into a bank with a stack of checks that don't have signatures on them and asking them to cash them. Like, you would think no bank would.
Cash those different days. Or just the fact of having an agent come to your place or an investigator and be like, where's your invitation inventory? Yeah. You sold $4.2 million. Of what? Of air. No, digital stuff. What's that?
Yeah, I mean, back then that was like.
Yeah.
People were still imagining or not. I mean. Yeah. Michael Lee Austin is Michael Lee Austin.
Smart dude. We didn't. Yeah, we're not gonna play any of the tracks. He told us. Why? Because the powers that be will get us. Yeah. Not him or Michael.
It's interesting, the music. Cause, yeah, the rights to the music are actually a little out of his control at this point, which is kind of crazy.
I didn't think about that, but makes sense, man. So, couple things that stood out. I think these are gonna be probably standalone clips that we make into YouTube. Snackable, whatever things are.
So if you fast forward it all the way to the end, you could find these clips on YouTube.
We strung you along this far.
I wonder if anybody listens to our podcast and just fast forwards to the end to get to this part.
Doubt it. Probably not. That's wishful. The email strategy. You know, the fact that the whole pipeline analogy he's using.
Well, yeah, the MAE framework. The morning, afternoon, evening.
There's that. But also the fact that he doesn't really believe in funnels. You know, which it's very interesting if you think of a guy that's been studying, or not studying, but teaching Internet marketing, doing Internet marketing, and also teaching some of the greats, like Russell Brunson and all these other. And a Wishlist member came out of Stu McLaren that came out of Armin's coaching. Oh, I didn't know that. I did hear that in a passing podcast.
Oh, nice.
I know. There's a million other names. I'm like, I don't know. It's just like, yeah, he doesn't really show it off too much either. On his site. I was like, okay, no, but if.
You Google him, he's referenced 4.5 million times.
Doing all right. Yeah. So. But, you know, he's basically flipped the idea of a funnel into more of a pipeline. But then we asked him about the email side of it. Like, how would you actually do that now and execute it? So he gave on that whole rant. Not rant, but that dissertation of how to do email with that whole approach. That's not a funnel. Like, but. So you could sell, like, whatever else, you know, be it a 2000 program or $500. $2, whatever. And using the May program or framework.
Yeah.
And then what? And then that whole email sequence based off of webinars, open clicks. Well, webinars was like another massive topic. That's the other snackable clip you'll probably find.
You know, what's interesting about this episode is I think we went into it thinking that we were gonna get. And we did. We got that sort of history, that backstory, and we thought that was gonna be the majority of the episode, but it actually turned out to be a much, much, much more tactical episode than I was anticipating. Cause you got webinar strategies, you got email strategies, you got how to become a country music star strategies.
It's true. Yeah. We got the inside scoop on how to launch an album and get on Billboard and beat out the likes of Bruce Springsteen. Or. No, it was. Was it Bruce? Yeah, I think he said Bruce Springsteen. I think he said Bruce Springsteen. It's pretty cool. Not sure how you can replicate that now if you wanted to, but I bet the whole idea of how he looked at things, the Success Leaves Traces. His book, definitely pick that sucker up.
And then he taught his card strategy, too, the one that he was like. You were like, we'll point people to the YouTube video. And then he's like, no, I'm Just gonna teach it to you.
He just started. Yeah. He pulled it back like, what, an hour later he's like, all right, here, now I'm gonna teach it for you.
Yeah.
Still check out the YouTube because I think he dives deeper into the details. We'll link it up, show notes.
Yeah, no, I can even. I can see the YouTube thumbnail now. That's like how to hack your way to a country music star or something like that and have, like a country singer, like, little thumbnail. And, like, maybe we can do one of these images, you know.
Michael Lee Austin or Austin Armin Morin.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Yeah, so that was good stuff. Lots of little snackable things that we're definitely gonna pull out of that one.
There's a lot. So other than that, I mean, I don't know. I just want to just. Oh, yeah. And then he kind of. This was in passing, but the whole taekwondo stuff, I mean, if you're ever curious, just look up Armin Moore. I don't know if he actually. It's kind of tough to find, but he's a national champion in black belt in his weight class and in his age class. But I mean that he came in much later into the game. But it's cool how he basically experiments in life and does these launches or tries these new things. But he's following that whole Success Leaves traces philosophy, which is all lined out in his book. Viewing other people, watching how they do things, and reverse engineering things, and you can achieve some cool stuff. Yeah, very cool.
So check out his Success leaves traces book. Marketinguniversity.com, armandmorin.com those are all the cool referenced sites that you should go check out to dive deeper into what Armin's up to.
You dang. Right? And I know we talked about webinars.
We did talk about webinars.
We actually talked about a webinar tool he was about to develop. But, you know, we are sponsored by easy webinar, so, you know, it is. It's available to you right now, and it'll do.
All of the things he said about webinars.
Armin's listening to you. Oh, no. Here, dude.
But it's not competition yet.
It's not. But we'll let them duke it out. But the fact that if you want to implement a lot of what Armin just told you about how he's running these reinvented model, I wouldn't call it a hybrid, but it's the switching model thing, I'm sure you could pull that off an easy webinar because you have full flexibility with that platform. And you can also integrate with things like activecampaign and then execute the whole follow up system that Armin was saying. Or do use your own thing. It does it all for you. It's super simple. Dashboards, landing pages, all that fun stuff.
All that stuff. And they're hooking up easywebinar.com hustle.
Why would you go there?
Well, because if you go to EasyWebinar.com, you can still buy easy webinar, but it's gonna be more expensive than if you went to easywebinar.com hustle because you know what? I heard that Casey loves people who listen to Hustle and Flowchart.
I heard the same.
And so. And if you listen to Hustle, you get a discount. But yeah, easywebinar.com hustle, fatty discount.
Go over there. And what else we got, Matt, we have Pod Hacker. Of course we mentioned that. I don't know if we mentioned that actually. But you know, go check out Pod Hacker if you're curious about the way that we structure our business, the podcast, the business behind it, but also a bunch of other folks, our friends. And we're actually probably going to get a studio tour from Armand. Yeah, we asked him because this was before we recorded the guy. Actually, if you're watching the YouTube video, the screen that was behind him was not a green screen. That was like an 80 plus inch TV.
Yeah, that was an actual TV, not a green screen.
Yeah, he was like knocking. I'm like, don't knock on your TV like that. It's gonna fall over.
I wanted to see him like push in on it so you get that little like ripple color.
It didn't do anything. I was looking for that ripple, so. But he has like four or five different stations around his house, all doing different media. His podcast as well. I don't know the name of Armin's podcast, but Google it. But we're gonna get a studio tour from him ideally pretty soon here. And we'll share that in Podhacker and.
On the Podhacker YouTube channel.
Probably in YouTube too. So check us on YouTube, subscribe, do all that fun stuff. Leave us comments.
I want to shout out a couple things that are happening. If you're going to Traffic and Conversion Summit in September. There's a couple things that I want you to know about. So Joe and I are actually gonna have a booth for Hustle and Flowchart.
Inside of the Traffic and Conversion Convention.
Yeah, in the convention area. Yeah, the expo area. We're gonna have a booth. So come, come say hi. We're gonna probably be doing some cool little contests and things where you can win some contests, probably.
No, no, no. We are. We're gonna blow this.
I was trying to make it ambiguous so they have to check it out.
Well, we're gonna do the damn contest. We're not gonna tell her.
We're going to do some contests.
We want to give. We want to. I'm just gonna say I will do these little carrots here where there's gonna be opportunities for exposure, you know, on our podcast and other channels. Channels. Potentially there's going to be a nice little challenge that we engineer. Potentially there's nice rewards we'll be giving out day of and also beyond afterwards. Potentially, potentially. To select people. It's up to you. And you got to bring your A game.
I'm just saying. Potentially on all the things that are facts.
I know. But also it's up to you. You got to bring your A game to get some of these potential winnings.
Yes.
You'll understand when you actually go to the booth. So look for us in the podcast section at tnc if you are going. That's traffic and conversion. Go get your ticket. You gotta go. At least get an expo pass because then you can see us. Yeah. Then we're in the podcast zone. So you'll see like, you know the recording studio. We're like right there.
Yeah.
Pretty easy to find. Yeah.
Just look for the beards. The beards and Thing two. Also during traffic and conversion Summit overtime. You want to come network? We're going to just throw a huge party At a brewery. You got to pay for your own beer, but it's free.
It's cheap beer.
Cheap beer. Good beer. Good beer.
Great beer. Well, let's talk about that beer. That beer was brewed by us. Not really us. It's our crew. We're the only ones with the camera. And we just like to drink beer while the other guys are doing the hard work.
They make beer and we film them make beer and then claim that we helped make the beer.
It's by association. We do it to make beer. We know how to. So what we do is we actually take over this legit cool brewery in downtown San Diego. It's called Mission Brewery, if you want to go Google it. It's really cool looking. And we've held events, hundreds of people all night long cycling through. It's like Tuesday.
It's an old Wonder bread factory.
Actually, that it is. Yeah. Some history there. It's cool. So we basically take over the joint, but two weeks prior to that, we brew the beer on their systems, and these are like massive vats and all that. We get educated on that. We create some content, and then we share that beer with you along with other beer things on their menu.
But our special beer always sells out, so make sure you kind of get to the event early because that beer will sell out.
We do a full thing like photographers. We got the freaking. We're going to have all that. We got sponsors if you want to sponsor. Actually, there's a few openings. So hit us up serious and we'll make it worth your investment. We'll get a lot of free beer in the process.
Fingers crossed that traffic and conversion doesn't get canceled because this is going to be a fun party for all of us.
It'll be great. So be there Tuesday. If you go into traffic and conversion, put that on your calendar. It's going to be in the evening after all the fun stuff's done. Cool.
I think that's plenty of calls to action.
That's enough. Yeah.
Yeah.
That's gonna be a good time. So thank you very much. It's been a long one.
Share this episode with somebody that needs to hear it, because you know somebody, you do know somebody that wants to hear this episode, and if you don't share it, you're holding them back.
You already do that.
Holding them back. And I don't like that you're holding people back.
Friend or family member, are you?
So sharing.
Share it.
I'll trust you. All right, but wait. All right.
Love you.
Thanks, everybody, for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. For taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliff's Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice, simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com find this episode that you just listened to, and give us your email address, and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.
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