Read The Inspirational In Search Of Heroes Interview Of Michel Fortin

Ralph Zuranski: Hi, this is Ralph Zuranski.  I’m on the phone with Michel Fortin Fortin.  He’s one of the leading copywriters in the world today.  He is so successful in his writing that he’s helped a number of the Internet marketers achieve $1 million dollar days in sales.  He has been at a number of the Internet conferences that I’ve taken photos at and run the computers, and I have to say that Michel Fortin knows more about copywriting and testing copy than anybody that I’ve ever met.

Ralph Zuranski: I think that’s one of the reasons why he’s such a great teacher and also such a great copywriter is he tests every aspect of copywriting to find out what works and what doesn’t.  I know that most of the time on any of the copywriting pieces that he creates, he has like four or five tests all run simultaneously on the color, the fonts, the placement of images.  I mean it is truly amazing.  He is a scientist when it comes to developing copywriting that really works.  How are you doing today, Michel Fortin?

Michel Fortin:  I’m doing well, Ralph.  Thank you very much for asking

Ralph Zuranski:  I really appreciate you taking your busy time.  I know you get like a thousand emails a day and you’re in incredible demand.  I hope that’s not all spam.

Michel Fortin:  Oh, actually those are real emails.  I probably get two or three thousand emails that include spam.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, I remember that you’re one of the first people to help volunteer with the “In Search of Heroes” program back at the big seminar when I put the wrong name on your photo.

Michel Fortin:  Yes, that’s right.

Ralph Zuranski: I was so embarrassed.  You contacted me and said you’ve got somebody else’s name on my photo.  I think that endeared you to me immediately.  I was so embarrassed.

Michel Fortin:  Well, I didn’t mind it so much.  The other guy looked – he was a little bit better looking than me.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, let me go ahead and ask the questions, because I know I’m breaking into your productive time now.  What is your definition of heroism?

Michel Fortin:  If somebody goes out there and does one tiny little thing that makes some kind of a change in the world.  It doesn’t have to be a huge legacy-type thing. 

Michel Fortin:  It could be one tiny little thing.  You go to, for example, an orphanage and you spend just ten minutes with an orphan or you go to a seniors’ home or you see somebody who’s trying to cross the street and has difficulty and whether it’s a person who has some kind of handicap or even a person who is fearful and you help them cross the street.

Michel Fortin:  To me that means somebody who’s a hero.  To me that means somebody who has impressed in that one person’s tiny little timeframe of their life, that little grain of dust, something that means a lot to them. 

Michel Fortin:  You know, there’s an old proverb, an old story of a person who was walking along the beach and saw, you know, starfishes that were beached and takes one and throws it into the ocean and the other person said, you know, “How can you make a difference when there’s so many of these starfishes on the beach?”  He said, “Well, I made a difference with that one.” 

Michel Fortin:  And that’s the point is that you don’t have to be a huge success; you don’t have to do some tremendous thing in order to be a hero.  You can do something that is a blink in eternity that can mean something to someone.  To me, that’s a hero.

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah, and boy that’s true.  Gregory Alan Williams, a person that wrote the book about saving a man’s life in the L.A. riots, he says there’s a little bit of good in the worst of us and a little bit of bad in the best of us and when somebody just does something good for somebody else that they actually become a hero.

Michel Fortin:  Absolutely.

Ralph Zuranski: Does that fit your definition?

Michel Fortin:  Absolutely.  Oh, yeah.  You know, one thing I do, for example, when I go to a seminar, whether I’m a speaker or just somebody in the audience and somebody comes up to me and asks me one simple question. 

Michel Fortin:  Now, it could be something business-related but it also could be something in terms of the seminar.  It could be something as easy as what kind of, what do you think about the speakers, whatever.  You know, those are things of course, but the thing is that person values my opinion and whatever I say I am going to make a difference, maybe not in that person’s entire life. 

Michel Fortin:  I may make a difference in that person’s day or that person’s, you know, next hour or so but I made a difference and that’s what a hero is.  To make a difference, how big or small.

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah, that’s one of the things that really impressed me about you is that you took the time.  No matter how many people came up to you at the different conferences, you always drop what you’re doing and make sure you developed a relationship with that person and, you know, that’s pretty rare for somebody that’s attained the fame that you have in this industry.

Michel Fortin:  Well, I have had, I mean, you know this, Ralph, specifically because it actually happened with you.  There is some point where I’m about to burst.  I need to take some time out, but I can tell you that I truly believe in the Will Rogers dogma where he says that he finds a little bit of something interesting in every single person he meets, and that’s true. 

Michel Fortin:  I, you know, I meet people where that person may be to a degree, I guess, in my business, if you want to look at it that way, insignificant, but holy geez, when you spend just five minutes talking with that person now either you’ve made a difference in that person’s life and that makes you feel good, or that person might have given you one tiny little tidbit of an idea, of some information, some feedback that will make a difference in your life and to me, I don’t want to lose those opportunities so every single person I meet I will try – I cannot guarantee, but I will try – to spend some time with each and every person and that’s why I think that that’s crucial, like you just said, is that, you know, you go to a seminar. 

Michel Fortin:  You don’t want to blockade yourself because the biggest amount of learning I have made in a seminar is in the hallways, in the bars, in the restaurants, outside the seminar, outside when people are chatting and smoking or whatever the case may be. 

Michel Fortin:  Those are the opportunities for you to learn a little something that can make a dramatic difference in your business and if somebody passes you by and even if you just needed to take 30 seconds, you just miss that opportunity that could have made you either a lot of money, you know, changed your life or made you happier at least for that day.

Ralph Zuranski: Boy, isn’t that true?  Well, I know that you had a pretty rough childhood.  Did you ever create a secret hero in your mind that helped you deal with those difficulties?

Michel Fortin:  Well, not necessarily.  I have been, I guess, on the Internet for quite a long time and the date, the ages of pre-Internet, like Bolton board services and stuff like that, and there was some games that I used to play that were like Dungeons and Dragons and I guess one of the things that I loved about playing those kinds of games was people didn’t know who I really was so people didn’t have to disapprove of me because I had this huge fear of rejection, this huge need for approval when I was growing up because of the my, the abuse of my childhood. 

Michel Fortin:  So the people, the friends that I’ve made on those Bolton board services, even though I was lost – I really wasn’t a sociable person.  I was a quasi-agoraphobic, I guess, but those people were my heroes.

Michel Fortin:  Those people were the people who every time I logged in, and I remember having a 300 baud modem in those days on a Radio Shack color computer 64, which is comparable to the Commodore 64 with a one-line text browser where, you know, you type in one line of text, you press enter and it takes about 15 minutes for you to respond. 

Michel Fortin:  Well, those people were my heroes and then I guess later on as I grew up and I became a teenager there was a gentleman who became a mentor of mine and he was a big fan of motivational speakers, spiritual thinkers, psychologists and people who actually have made differences in the lives of other people, so I became a fanatical student of Jim Rohn.

Michel Fortin:  Jim Rohn is probably the premiere gentleman who has made changes in my life as much as in my business life, which was Dan Kennedy, who’s also a big believer in having a positive mental attitude, in making the best out of your day and so on and so forth. 

Michel Fortin:  So those were my, I guess if you want to call them secret heroes, they were my heroes.  You know, I’ll give you an example.  there is a quote that’s hanging above my desk, and I’m looking at it right now as I speak to you, Ralph, and it’s been hanging there for almost a decade and it’s from Jim Rohn and it says, “There are some things you don’t have to know how it works.  The main thing is that it works.  While some people are studying the roots, others are picking the fruit.  Life or success or whatever you want to call it, it just depends on which end of this you want to get in on.”

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah.

Michel Fortin:  And that, to me, changed my life around because I was always overanalyzing.  I was always trying to perfect.  I was always trying to figure out ways to deal with the certain problems I had when I was growing up as a child.

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah.

Michel Fortin:  And that made me realize just do what needs to be done.  Do what works and don’t question it, and that changed my life around.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, you know there’s a real controversy in these days about goodness, ethics and moral behavior.  What is your perspective?

Michel Fortin:  There is, you know, there is – I can debate about this and we can go into big philosophical arguments about what is right, what is morally right, you know, and all that stuff.  I’m a big believer in something that is very special to me.  It is that we all have a, you know, we have three minds.

Michel Fortin:  We have the conscious mind, we have the subconscious mind, but we also have the super-conscious mind with a term that was originally coined by psychologist William James, and what happens is that super-conscious mind, your intuition, your conscience, is telling you every single moment of every single day what to do and what is right, and when people feel shame or guilt or something that makes them feel that they’ve done something wrong it is not because it’s either wrong or right, it’s simply because it was not in proper alignment with their own set of values, their own intuitions, their own super-conscious mind.

Michel Fortin:  If you want, you know, if you are in the process of thinking about doing something, take some time out to think about it twice rather than just going at it. 

Michel Fortin:  Sure, sometimes you need to be expedient but look at it from the perspective of is this something that meets and matches my conscience?  Is this something that I feel is right?  And that’s the point.  You know, you can say that we can talk about, you know, the arbitrary gray area of what ethics is and what it ain’t.

Michel Fortin:  I don’t think that it’s a legal – it’s not black and white.  But everybody has a conscience.  Everybody has a consciousness.  So to me, if you really want to do what is good in the world, if you want to do something that’s “ethical”, it’s not a religious question and it’s not a moral question.  It is an inner question.  Does it meet your conscience?  Does it follow your intuition? 

Michel Fortin:  Does it feel right rather than is it just right or is it textbook right or is it, you know, according by the law right?

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah.  Well, you know, there are certain principles that people are willing to sacrifice their lives for.  Are there any principles that you’re willing to sacrifice your life for?

Michel Fortin:  I think so.  The one thing that I believe in terms of principles is, the biggest one is, humility and it’s something that I’ve learned in the process of my growing up and learning the problems, going through the problems that I went through when I was a child.

Michel Fortin:  If you look at, for example, some of, you know, people have egos and it’s normal and it’s natural and we all have things that we, you know, that are near and dear to every single person and people will fight for what their egos tell them that they need to fight for. 

Michel Fortin:  I’m a very humble person.  I always like to take the low road.  I do like the approval.  I do like the limelight but if I feel that somebody else can take it for me, if I feel that if there is something that I can do that if it takes away from me but it makes somebody else’s life better I will do that.  That’s a really hard lesson to learn in humility.

Michel Fortin:  Whenever you look at, for example, some of the discussion boards that I’m participating in, sometimes you get these really fierce discussions and there was a couple of times when people actually were against some of the things that I’ve either actually said or done and I will go into the board and I will say, you know, I so understand how you feel.  I have to look at it from the perspective of the other person and I humble myself by saying, listen, every single person in this world is a teacher.

Michel Fortin:  Everybody teaches you in some way, people who are nasty to you as much as people who are good to you.  They’re all just teachers.  They’re not good; they’re not bad.  It’s not black and white. 

Michel Fortin:  Things that happen to you or things that people tell you, it’s all teaching you something.  Your consciousness is where you come to the realization that I am ready to learn, just like the old Confucian saying that when the student is ready the teacher will appear.

Michel Fortin:  To me teachers are people or events or things that happen and as a humbled person, my guiding principle is to always look at every single thing as some kind of a lesson and that’s the principle I would sacrifice for, yes, absolutely.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, you know, everybody has low points in their life.  I know you’ve had a fair number of those events in your life.  What was the lowest point in your life and how did you change your path to have victory over the obstacles at that time?

Michel Fortin:  I recently wrote – that’s actually not true.  I wrote a book over ten years ago that I just recently put to the Internet for free, and it was a book that I’d written as a way to teach my own self how to go through some of the hardships that I was going at that time. 

Michel Fortin:  I was a go-getting, goal-achieving, goal-oriented, Type A personality, do as much as you possibly can-type person and I realized that I was achieving a lot.

Michel Fortin:  I was making a lot of money.  I was a salesperson working on commission and I was doing very well until I realized that I was neglecting and ignoring other things, and especially my own self, the quality of my life.  I was focusing too much on quantity of time rather than quality of life.

Michel Fortin:  Well, lo and behold, in what seemed like a matter of hours I lost everything in my life    my home, my car, my furniture, my wife.  I lost everything and then I went into bankruptcy and I even had to look at sleeping at the YMCA for shelter and then I started writing that book and I realized there are far more important things out there than, you know – first of all, people are more important and second of all is time.

Michel Fortin:  Time is a commodity, a scarce commodity and what you don’t do in this moment is something you will never be able to do, in that moment anyways.  When that moment’s gone, it’s gone.  Do you want to spend it working like, you know, on your business? 

Michel Fortin:  Sure, if it gives you some kind of feeling that I’m doing something that I absolutely love to do or do you want to work in a job dreading those years until you retire? 

Michel Fortin:  Or are you going to work so much that you neglect the people that you love or the people who you love?  So the point, I’m saying, is that low of the low that I have gone through was the most precious and beautiful gift that I have ever received.  It was the biggest lesson that I had to learn and that’s what I – that pretty much encompasses everything I just said up until this point.

Ralph Zuranski: You know, people, you know, they fear to do anything because they fear they’re gonna fail and when catastrophic events like that occur to some people, they never recover.  Would you say that it’s those events that change the course of our life for the better?

Michel Fortin:  Those events are those that do change your life but you have to – there’s, like, you know, like death.  There’s a grieving process to go through.  When you’re in the thick of things at that moment in your life you’ll probably be depressed.  You’ll probably have a hard time trying to see the lesson for what it is.

Michel Fortin:  But when you have a chance to go through the grieving process, this pseudo-grieving process I guess is a better way to call it, take a step back and look at your – I mean, that’s why I’m a big believer in writing in journals.  In fact, the book that I just mentioned just not too long ago was a book that was actually a way to write to my own self on how to deal with the things that I was going through in my life but it was like writing in my own journal because that way you can teach yourself to be better.

Michel Fortin:  You can teach yourself to accept things better.  You can teach yourself to get out of that rut.  You can teach yourself – you know, Jim Rohn said it best.

Michel Fortin:  If you are in a low point in your life, go help out somebody else who’s in a low point and the same low point as you because by teaching others you, you know, or by helping others, you are actually helping your own self because then you can take a step back and say well, gosh, I’m telling this person how to get out of this situation and I’m in the situation myself and then you realize, because what happens is you let this intuition flow, this consciousness flow and you realize that you will get out of that rut by doing that so at that, yeah, to answer your question, to me that’s what I would do.

Michel Fortin:  actually writing in a journal but most often when you have an opportunity to, you know, go through the grieving process, do, be depressed, be – those are things, you know, if you’re unhappy because something really bad happened to you that’s perfectly fine, but then when that’s done take a step back and then you’ll learn, you’ll see the lesson for what it is and you’ll grow from it.

Michel Fortin:  Some people, they don’t step back, so what they do is they keep themselves in that depression mode.  Some people have bad things happen to them in their lives and they stay there for a very, very long time simply because they want to stay in there.  Wayne Dyer said it best, your body has a natural ability to heal itself.  If you have a cut on your arm are you going to force it to stay open so that you – because you want the world to see hey, look, I have an open wound here.  I’m hurting, I’m hurting, take care of me.

Michel Fortin:  Or even yourself, because it gives you some feeling of grandeur, the fact that you are hurting, the fact that you are, you know, because it means something to you.   No, your body’s natural process is to heal its own self.  The same way if something bad happens to you emotionally or psychically as well as physiologically.

Michel Fortin:  Your body has a natural tendency to heal itself.  Let the healing do its own job.  It takes time.  You don’t heal overnight of a cut wound just as you won’t heal overnight of a bad situation or a bad event that happened in your life, but once you heal now is the chance – that scar, you know what scar tissue is.  That tissue is your body’s process to strengthen that one area that was broken.

Michel Fortin:  You know bones that are broken, when they heal become even stronger than they were before.  That’s the process of even a bad event that happens in your life.  Something bad happens to you and once you’ve healed yes, you will have scars, but you can turn your scars into stars because those scars are like shields that will protect you in case this stuff happens again and it will make you stronger and I believe in that totally.

Ralph Zuranski: You know, it’s funny that you talk about journaling.  Lori Morgan Forall, who’s another copywriter, I did her interview and she had suffered sexual abuse as a young person and she’s not creating a course using journaling to help other women overcome just the trauma of that situation in growing up.  So it’s fascinating that you would talk about journaling.  It really helped you also.

Michel Fortin:  Oh, absolutely.  I hurt in my journals so much, especially in those, those dark times in my life, you know, and it’s also a great reference tool because it makes you more resilient that next time something happens in the future if it happens again, or whenever you do have a chance to go back and reflect and review entries in your journal you realize how far you’ve grown and that in itself is a strengthening process because then you can see wow, I really went through that.  I really felt that way?  Oh my goodness, how far I’ve grown and that in itself makes you grow even more, even in good times.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, you know, what is the dream or vision that sets the course of your life?

Michel Fortin:  The dream or vision that sets the course of my life.  There is – I live by one motto and one motto alone.  I don’t believe in goals.  I don’t believe in an end result specifically in my life.  You know, there’s two types of people in this world.

Michel Fortin:  There are the people who always will live in the future where they always have something that they want to look for, a vision or a dream or whatever, like you just said.  Then there are people who are in the rapture of the moment, people like artists, you know. 

Michel Fortin:  They’re, I think it was, I can’t remember exactly who but I believe it was Dr. Tony Alessandra who said that you’ve got rowers and you’ve got drifters and then there’s nothing bad with either one of them.

Michel Fortin:  People who row, going toward a destination, will row.  People who drift will enjoy the scenery along the way as they drift in that river going towards the ocean.  Me, that’s what it is and the point is this.  If you want me to say that I do have a dream or a vision it is this, to always do what I love.  Joseph Campbell said it best, follow your bliss.  Do what you love.  The money will follow; the business will follow; the success will follow.

Michel Fortin:  Even if those things don’t, the fact that once you go through your life and you end up looking back on your life and you say I really enjoyed my life.  I’ve really done something that I totally love, so do what you love or love what you do.  That’s the ultimate vision and it’s my vision

Ralph Zuranski: Well, in everybody’s life, you know, there’s positive – I mean, there’s setbacks, there’s misfortunes and mistakes that we make.  How important is it to be an optimist and take a positive view of things?

Michel Fortin:  Well, optimism has a lot of sometimes bad connotations as much as good connotations.

Ralph Zuranski: Really?

Michel Fortin:  You know, optimism is not motivation and people misinterpret that, you know, optimism with for example a positive mental attitude.  The one thing that you need the most and that’s beyond being an optimist is not just being a realist but being a student. 

Michel Fortin:  If you have a bad situation, try to learn as much as you can and try to learn – and that’s why journaling is so important – and try to learn as much as you can in terms of looking at the positive aspect of what happened.

Michel Fortin:  You know, there’s a technique called the best and better technique.  Look what – what’s the best you can pull from every situation and how you can be better next time – how you can better your own self from the event.  Is that an optimist?  Not necessarily.  People will take optimism and look at it as some form of motivation.

Michel Fortin:  Jim Rohn said it best.  You know, if somebody’s going down the wrong road they don’t need motivation to speed them up, they need education to turn them around.  You know?  So being an optimist is not some Pollyanna, bang your head against the wall and hey it hurts but hey, I’m happy about it and I’ll keep, you know, bumping myself against the way.

Michel Fortin:  No, I think if you want to look at optimism in the best way is to look at it as an educational process.  Learn, and drilling is part of it, sitting down with people, talking with them, spending time with them, reading books, you know, spending your time on learning as much as you possibly can.

Michel Fortin:  You will be able to go down the right road.  Fast or slow doesn’t matter and that’s not optimism.  That’s just being, you know, that’s just following your conscience.  That’s just being a realist, I guess.  It’s not being pessimist.  It’s not being optimist.  It’s probably an optimal point of looking at it, an optimal point or way to look at things but it’s not necessarily optimistic.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, do you think it takes courage to pursue new ideas?

Michel Fortin:  It absolutely takes courage.  I mean, you know, courage is not the absence of fear.  Courage is the ability to take risks when there is fear, you know.  As the old saying goes for people who, like speakers when they speak onstage, they say you’ll never be able to get rid of those butterflies.  Your job is to make those butterflies dance in formation and courage is that.

Michel Fortin:  You know, if I pray to any one God or any one Spirit or any one process in this world, I pray for three major things    strength, courage and wisdom. 

Michel Fortin:  And the strength to be able to do what is necessary, the courage to be able to go ahead and do it, the courage to be able to also accept defeat when you need to accept defeat, and the wisdom, exactly, that’s the prayer of serenity that they use for example in Alcoholics’ Anonymous, and it’s – that’s the most beautiful prayer in the world because then you have, you know, the wisdom to know the difference, the wisdom to know what to do, when to do it, how to do it, who to say it to, at what time, and when not to do things, when to shut up, when to stop yourself from doing things that you shouldn’t be doing, stuff like that, so to me courage, yeah, absolutely.

Michel Fortin:  If you have a new idea, you know, you’re always pushing the envelope in every day of your life because you’re always growing and evolving. 

Michel Fortin:  The problem is are you going to be pushing it by a millimeter today or are you going to be pushing it by a yard and that takes courage and it also takes courage to realize that in the first place, not just courage to do it.  That takes strength but to me courage is absolutely necessary, absolutely.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, do you think that in the process of pursuing new ideas and using that courage that you’re gonna experience discomfort in the pursuit of your dreams?

Michel Fortin:  Well, absolutely.  I mean, that’s, you know, it’s like, you know, going through life, you know.  If you’re ever going to do something you have to take the goods and the bads with it.  The good will outweigh the bad, of course, but there will always be bad.  There’s always gonna be a discomfort.

Michel Fortin:  We, you know, if – but here’s the point and coming back and tying it to what I was saying earlier.  If you do what you love, if you do something that you have zest and passion and you’re so fully absorbed in the process you tend to not even think of the discomfort even though you are actually feeling it, your body is feeling it.  If I’m doing something that I love, and I’m just gonna finish this because it’s important.

Michel Fortin:  If I do something that I love the discomfort level will be on the back burner in my mind, although it will always be there.  You know, Yanni, very famous composer who writes New Age-type music, he’s, you know, he’s like me in a certain way.  Whenever he writes a whole CD or a new song or even a new kind of, a better word for it is symphony, he locks himself in his room for two, three weeks at a time and he forgets to bathe, he forgets to eat, he forgets to sleep, because he is so engrossed in the moment.

Michel Fortin:  Discomfort, yes, but are you actually, you know, are you focused on your discomfort?  No, if you do something, you know, you love.  In fact, here’s another way and a final way and I’ll finish it with this is if you do what you love, then you’ll have a chance to look at all the things that are uncomfortable, drudgery, perfunctory or even painful, as things that are important to you because they’re part of something that gives you purpose.  You will turn the important into the urgent.

Michel Fortin:  You will turn the discomfort into comfort.  It’s like a natural, I guess, physical knee-jerk reaction.  I can’t really express it well enough in words but essentially you’ll be able to turn the uncomfortable into the comfort or you’ll be able to accept or have a tolerance level higher if you were doing something you absolutely love because that purpose drives you and everything that happens to you that may be bad or may make you uncomfortable is so in the back of your mind and you just trudge along and you will be going wherever you want to go.

Ralph Zuranski: How important is belief that your dreams will actually become reality?

Michel Fortin:  How important is the belief that your dreams will become reality?  There is, first of all it is extremely important but it’s not important to the degree that you might think.  I don’t believe that people should believe that their dreams become reality because belief is something that almost, you can’t change on a whim.  How can you believe something that you don’t believe?

Michel Fortin:  Can you force yourself to believe into something?  Can you believe in your dream?  No, you can’t.  It’s not something you can change on a whim, you know.  If I don’t like asparagus today, do I have to force myself to like asparagus? 

Michel Fortin:  No, I mean, I can’t change the way I feel.  If I don’t believe in my dreams today I can’t switch it just like with one flick of a switch and say I’m believing in my dream, but here’s the difference.

Michel Fortin:  If I have dreams and I do tiny little things that will make me consciously purposeful every single day as I head towards my dreams, the more and more this internal switch will flick on for you not only to believe in your dreams but to know that your dreams will become reality.  And there’s big difference between belief and knowing.

Ralph Zuranski: That’s a profound point when you know in the process of trying to achieve your dreams there’s a tremendous amount of doubts and fears and a lot of people in your life will try to crush your dream because they don’t want you to change for fear of having to change themselves.  How did you overcome your doubts and fears?

Michel Fortin:  By journaling is the one.  The other point is to always constantly listen to yourself and to be true to your own self.  You know, to thine own self be true, in Shakespeare Hamlet, you know?  And the one thing that you have to understand is, you know, this is absolutely so true.

Michel Fortin:  We are like, you know, and I don’t mean to proselytize for any religion and I don’t mean to sound religious, but we are all like Jesus where we’re crucified between two thieves, tomorrow and yesterday’s, or in other words, fear and guilt.

Michel Fortin:  The fear of what’s going to happen tomorrow and the guilt of what happened in the past, and there’s always gonna be that but, you know, like Jesus, he was true to himself. 

Michel Fortin:  He did what he needed to do.  Well, like yourself, if you have fears and you have doubts, that’s perfectly fine as long as you realize that the more focused you are on yourself the more you let the inner you tell you what to do, guide you in what you’re doing, the more you, like, you know, writing to yourself as much as even talking to other people about how you feel about certain things, that is learning process that will give you the ammunition to destroy lack and limitation.

Michel Fortin:  There’s also another thing.  I know, I think it’s the most important.  The greatest creator of fear is a low self esteem.  Any lack and limitation in your life that are there, you know.  Don’t just, you know, they’re not just lack and limitations because they exist.  They’re lack and limitations because you believe they are lack and limitation.

Michel Fortin:  The only way to circum that, to overcome that, to destroy those fears, at least to reduce it, is to increase the belief that you have in your own self.  The more you work on your own self esteem, the more you have confidence in yourself or the more you work on having confidence in yourself, all the other fears and all the things that are destroying or attempting to destroy the things that are good to you in your life or the things that you want to do in your life will almost dissipate by themselves because you’ve become a bigger believer in the best thing that ever happened in this world, and that’s you.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, is there anybody that helped give you the willpower to change things in your lives for the better?

Michel Fortin:  Well, like I said whenever I grew up I had a mentor, and I’ll tell you one thing that really has the most profound impact in my life.  He kept telling me every single day something very, and it may not sound profound, but he said “turn off the tape recorder”.  Okay?  Now, let me explain what that means.  I was a salesman and as I grew up and I was trying to make sales I had fears and doubts but a lot of times it’s because I was saying that to my own self.

Michel Fortin:  There was a tape recorder in my mind that kept telling me I’m stupid, I’m a failure, I don’t, I’ll never amount to much, I will always, I’m gonna fail or this is not for me of this is too lofty of an ambition for me or this is impossible for me to reach, blah, blah, blah.  My mentor kept telling me – he was a, you know, sometimes he would just look at me and I wouldn’t even say a word and he would look at me and he will say, “turn the tape recorder off, Mike”.

Michel Fortin:  And that is the most profound thing that I’ve ever, ever been taught because we all have tape recorders in our minds.  We do become what we think about.  We, you know, you reap what you sow.  If you think you’re a failure, if you think that you will fail, if you think that, you know, you’re not good enough or whatever, then you are. 

Michel Fortin:  You are what you think and, you know, big philosophy that I go by is by a philosopher by the name of Rudi DeCarte is 1637 and what it means is, in Latin it means “I think, therefore I am”.  If you think you’re a failure, you are.

Michel Fortin:  If you’re thinking you’re a success, you are.  So that thing that my mentor kept telling me, “turn the tape recorder off” is just a very modern way to look at it but it’s so true and that has changed my life.

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah, that’s amazing.  You know, everybody has upsets, offenses and people that oppose you in their lifetimes.  How important is it to forgive those that upset, offend and oppose you?

Michel Fortin:  How important is to what?

Ralph Zuranski: How important is it to forgive others who upset, offend or oppose you?

Michel Fortin:  Ralph Zuranski, did you now that forgiveness is a very selfish thing?  Did you know that actually forgiving is not because you’re doing it for the other person. 

Michel Fortin:  You, you know, forgiveness is probably the most selfish act you could ever do and it’s a good selfish act because when you forgive you are releasing all the tension, all the bad stuff that you’re holding onto that’s gonna cause you great problems, great turmoil.

Michel Fortin:  If you forgive and you let go, it’s unbelievable the release that you get in your life.  I, you know, I used to be stubborn.  I would look eat a person and the person who would do me wrong and I would be stubborn enough to say I hate that person and I’ll never talk to that person again.  But who’s really being hurt here?

Michel Fortin:  Now, I’m doing it because I’m thinking that I don’t want to give the person either the pleasure of my forgiveness or I just don’t want, I want to show the person I’m really mad at that person. 

Michel Fortin:  Once you forgive you let go and guess whose life is going to be more enriched?  Both of yours, of course, but the most important person is you.  So forgiveness is extremely important because the more you forgive the more you can let go of all the nasty stuff and start working on the good stuff in your life.

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah.  Well, how important is service to others as a source of joy?  Do you find joy in serving others?

Michel Fortin:  Well, it’s the same idea, you know.  Jim Rohn said don’t become wealthy at the expense of others; become wealthy at the service of others.  Every single person who has made, for example, a lot of money in this world or even every single person who is happiest in this world is a people who are at the service of others.

Michel Fortin:  Whether you’ve built wealth because you produce a product or provided a service that was at the service of others or you gave value to other people’s lives or you gave your life to charity serving others, to me that is so important because by doing that it is like forgiveness in a sense, where you can get out of that this huge feeling in yourself that you’ve accomplished something that is true to you, not something that is going to be a goal that you reach in the future, not something that is going to be true to the other people around you who you’re serving and you’re thinking that you’re just doing this for other people.

Michel Fortin:  No, you’re doing it for yourself.  Gosh, you know, it’s so important for you to understand and I’m speaking to the people listening to this call.  It’s so important for you to understand that when you give of yourself, you know, the law of karma is there. 

Michel Fortin:  You get back, and sometimes ten times more, what you give out and it’s the same thing in a bad way.  If you are bad to the world, if you don’t serve others, if you withhold the goodness that you can put out in the world it will come back and bite you in the butt.  So yeah, I believe in being at the service of others, absolutely.

Ralph Zuranski: How important is it to maintain a sense of humor in the face of adversity?

Michel Fortin:  The greatest cure for pretty much all disease that has actually been scientifically proven, although there’s still, you know, it’s premature now, but there are more and more tests being proven that laughter, you know, laughter is the greatest immune system kicker.

Michel Fortin:  They found out, and I don’t know where these tests are, this is anecdotal so I can’t back this up.  I read so much about it, but there are tests that have proven in the moment of laughter that your endorphins get kicked in.  The dopamine in your brain and your body gets kicked in.

Michel Fortin:  Your hormone levels get, you know, kicked up a notch and those things in turn increase the immune system and those things help to fight off disease.  I’m not saying that that’s true in every case.  I mean, I don’t want to say a person who has cancer should laugh their way, you know, until they’re healthy again.

Michel Fortin:  That’s not my point, but maybe if they’re hurting while they have cancer laughter is a good way to take their mind off of it as the most basic and fundamental, to also even being able to help cure you because laughter is the source of goodness in the world but it is also the source of goodness in your own self, body-wise as much as mind-wise.

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah.  Other than Jim Rohn, who are the other heroes in your life?

Michel Fortin:  Oh, my goodness, do you have a couple of hours?

Ralph Zuranski: Sure.

Michel Fortin:  I have, I have a lot of mentors in my life but I think there’s quite a few of them.  I’m not a religious person.  I am a very spiritual person and I read a lot on spiritual leaders because I believe they have a lot to teach us, whether it’s Jesus or the person actually I’m really referring to is the Buddha.

Michel Fortin:  I’m not a Buddhist but I enjoy reading a lot about the Buddha.  I’ve read the Darma Potta, the Bagabagita, for example, and other books of other spiritual leaders and they’re mentors to me because they show, you know, they lead by example.

Michel Fortin:  They’re the perfect example of love and goodness in this world and what they teach is more important than, you know, I’m not going to say that you should believe in the virgin birth and the crucifixion and all that stuff in Jesus’ life but did you actually take the chance to stop and just read the words that Jesus uttered, for example, on the Mount?

Michel Fortin:  The lives that they led, whether, and I don’t mean to say that from a religious perspective, of course.  I’m just saying just listen to what people teach you.  Listen.  Don’t, you know, don’t hear.  Yes, I hear what you’re saying.

Michel Fortin:  No, listen and those are the mentors that mean a lot to me.  Another few mentors, modern-age mentors, I’m a big fan of Brian Tracy.  I’m a big fan of Jim Rohn, of course.  Tony Alessandra and also the funny part about it is I have, I’ve learned a lot of things from current spiritual leaders and I do believe that Joseph Campbell, who is probably one of my biggest mentor in that realm, has taught me so much about the power of the inner self and Joseph Campbell is the one who uttered those famous words, “follow your bliss”, and he is one of them.

Michel Fortin:  Florence Scobelshin is another.  John Mandall Price.  Those are more of the spiritual kind of guys, but I – Luis Haye – so I read a lot about that stuff. 

Michel Fortin:  Now, you can say it’s all metaphysical mumbo-jumbo.  The point is not to believe in whether it’s metaphysical or not.  The fact is I just listened and learned to apply whatever I learned in the way I want to to my life and that’s the whole point of any religious, any philosophy, any thinking process, is not to believe in what people tell you.  It is to make use of it

Ralph Zuranski: Do you think there are any heroes in our society that aren’t getting the recognition that they deserve?

Michel Fortin:  Repeat the question again, please.

Ralph Zuranski: Do you feel that there are any real heroes in our society today that aren’t getting the recognition that they deserve?

Michel Fortin:  Absolutely, but you know, those who are the real heroes are people who don’t seek recognition in the first place.  They’re not heroes for the sake of recognition.  They’re heroes because they’re heroes.

Michel Fortin:  You know, to answer your question by very blunt answer, yes of course there are heroes out there today in today’s world that do deserve more recognition but you ask them that question, what do you think they’ll say?  I don’t care.  I do what I feel is right, point, period.  You know?  And that’s the more important thing about that.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, why are heroes so important in the lives of young people?

Michel Fortin:  Everything that will create – actually let me rephrase that.  Everything that’s going to happen in this world, even today, is molded, created, prepared by, built on by first of all people and people were once children.

Michel Fortin:  They were once kids and their lives today very, very often are molded, as much as they are molded in the world today, they are molded by the things and the people and the instances and the events and the circumstances of their childhood.  I was lucky. 

Michel Fortin:  Well, I guess I’m not lucky because I believe everybody has that capacity – it’s not luck.  But I was lucky.  I guess a better way to say it is I was fortunate to look at my lessons in my life and look at them as the most beautiful gifts in the world, and to have mentors and heroes in my life that have helped me.

Michel Fortin:  But there are so many kids out there that fail to go through this “fortunate” process that I went through so if they have an opportunity to have heroes in their lives, boy oh boy, can you imagine the goodness that we can unleash in this world?  Because they will be molded and their future will be molded so that they will be the molders of the future.

Michel Fortin:  So today the people that make differences in people’s lives today is because they had differences made to them in their own lives when they were, especially when they were young, because it is when you are young that your entire life is almost dictated.  Now, good or bad, you can have bad stuff happen to you and it dictates your life in a good way.

Michel Fortin:  You know, there’s an old story about the two sons of an alcoholic father who grew up and one became an alcoholic and one became a very successful businessman and when an interviewer asked them, you know, the question “why are you who you are today?” and they both answered the same answer, “well, I didn’t have any choice; look at my father”.  You know?

Michel Fortin:  One blamed his father for being the way he is.  The other one looked at his father and used that as a springboard for not being like he is, and so fortunately they might have had heroes in their lives that made them go that way, especially the one that’s positive, I mean, but the thing is whether it’s not or it’s true, the thing is we all need heroes but the kids need them the most because they are the molders of the future.

Ralph Zuranski: How does it feel to be recognized as an Internet hero?

Michel Fortin:  I would be very misleading if I said it didn’t feel good, because it does feel good.  I think that’s the ego part of me.  But what I feel best about, you know, I have testimonials on my website about the lives that I’ve changed and that makes me feel good, but what I put on my website, what I put out in the world as a way to prop my own self up is just the tip of the iceberg of what I get every single day.

Michel Fortin:  We talked at the beginning of this call about all these emails I get every day, a good percentage of those emails are just tiny little words from somebody who I made a difference to in their lives and it doesn’t have to be this huge thing that I can actually use as a testimonial.

Michel Fortin:  You know, it doesn’t have to be an actual business or a success or whatever.  I had people who emailed me after the big seminar and said, you know, Michel Fortin Fortin, you’re a person that I’ve been following for so many years and it was such a huge honor and pleasure to have met you, blah, blah, blah.

Michel Fortin:  That brightened up my day and to me that – I don’t need to have recognition in the other way where I actually have to put out stuff in the world to get recognized but one tiny little email made the difference in my way just as much as what we were talking at the beginning, Ralph, about spending just five minutes with somebody at a seminar somewhere, how much of a difference you made in that person’s day and that’s the kind of recognition.  I enjoy that more than the actual pats on the back that I get in the public way.  I prefer the small private little ones because they put a smile on my face.

Ralph Zuranski: How are you personally making the world a better place?

Michel Fortin:  By being me.  That’s probably the best answer I can give you.  I follow what I believe in.  I am true to myself and most important, I do what I love to do.  When you do what you love to do – you know, we were talking about giving good service or being at the service of others or whatever, if you love doing what you do how much better are you going to serve the people around you?

Michel Fortin:  How much more passion and zest you have for not only what you do but what you do expresses itself on service, about service to others.  If you had a choice to buy a product from two different service providers or two different stores or whatever, and one person hates their job and the other one absolutely loves their job, how much more that second person will be willing to help you.

Michel Fortin:  How much more in service of you will that person be?  Of course, a lot more.  So how do I expect, you know, to make a change in the world just by being me?  Just by being Michel Fortin Fortin.  Just by being the person who loves to do what he does because that will give all these byproducts of everything we just talked about on this call.

Ralph Zuranski: You know, there’s a lot of problems facing societies all over the world today, like racism, child and spousal abuse and violence among young people.  Do you have any good solutions for those problems?

Michel Fortin:  Education.  Education.  If, you know, we cannot change the world by forcing it but we can change the world by educating it.  I was once a college teacher.  There’s such a great sense of fulfillment that one gets when they teach other people.

Michel Fortin:  If, you know, look at, you know, laws and rules and all that wonderful stuff.  They do exist for a purpose and I understand that.  But I also believe in education because the more you educate people the more you will change the world rather than forcing it to change so if you’re going to help out somebody in their own lives, if you’re going to help out people to realize maybe they are bad people and they’ve done hurt to others, education.

Michel Fortin:  Don’t, you know, it’s not proselytizing.  It’s not trying to argue with them.  It’s just teaching them and teaching them until they’re ready to be taught and they’re ready to change.  I’ve met a lot of people who change their lives because they’ve learned and they’ve decided to learn and that’s the key so yeah, I mean, education, that’s probably the most, you know, profoundest answer I can give to that question is just education.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, what do you think about the “In Search of Heroes” program and its impact on youth, parents and business people?

Michel Fortin:  Well, that’s the point.  This is exactly what it is.  What do you think it’s doing?  It’s educating. 

Michel Fortin:  This is exactly why I love this program and I was one of the first people to actually be fully aware of it and fully aware of my potential contribution to this program because I do believe that this program is not just a point of going out there and being heroes. 

Michel Fortin:  It is going out there to teach other people the power of being a hero and it educates them and then makes changes in their lives, who will then change the lives of the people around them, who will then just grow exponentially, and that’s, you know, this is – Ralph, you’ve seen the movie “Pay it Forward”?

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah.

Michel Fortin:  That’s my point.  You don’t necessarily have to be a hero or you don’t necessarily have to get somebody to become a hero.  All you have to do is to educate others on what, how powerful it is to become one and if they do become one then they do it to others and then they do it to others and then they do it to others.  It’s one huge multilevel marketing process

Ralph Zuranski: You know, what are the things parents can do that will help their children realize they can, they also can be heroes and make a positive impact on the lives of others?

Michel Fortin:  Well, if I had to – if I could boil it down, I think – I said two core actions or two core activities on this call.  They are teach and listen, and how parents can make changes in the lives of their kids – the first thing, of course, is to listen.

Michel Fortin:  A lot of the strife that we have in today’s world, I believe, and I’m a firm believer, that is because we are all so busy with the goings-on in our lives that we don’t stop and listen as much as to our own selves, as much as to the people around us, and more importantly to the kids in our lives.  If you just take a chance to sit down and just listen, and the second part, which is to teach, to educate.

Michel Fortin:  You know, teachers are probably the most underrated people in our society, the most underrated profession in our society.  I’m a big believer in teachers.  I mean, I used to be one and, I mean I’m a teacher right now, being a copywriting coach as much as a motivational speaker or whatever you want to call it, but it’s all teaching.  That’s all it really is.  It’s not motivation.  It’s not all that stuff.  It’s teaching.  So, yeah, that would be those two fundamental activities – listen and teach.

Ralph Zuranski: If you had three wishes for your life and the world that would instantly come true, what would they be?

Michel Fortin:  If I had three wishes for anything I want in the world, what would they be? That I would, well the first wish is that I wouldn’t have any wish because I believe in just being. 

Michel Fortin:  I’m not, I mean I know this might not necessarily sound – I mean, it might sound a little woo-woo to some people, I guess, but I don’t want any wishes because I just want to enjoy my life now.  I don’t want to wake up at 67 years old and look back on my life and say is this it?  You know?  And then those are the times that you wish.

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah.

Michel Fortin:  Because those are the times when you realize what you’ve done wrong.  No need to wish; just do.  You know, don’t wish for something now.  Just be, you know.  And then you enjoy the process and then when you are 67 you won’t need to have any wishes because you’re going to look back and say I’m happy.

Michel Fortin:  I’m satisfied.  I’m fulfilled.  I did what I needed to do and I did what I loved to do.  The second, I guess, wish would be that more people followed those two things I mentioned earlier, to listen and to teach.  And the only way that I can do that is not necessarily to wish for it but to actually do it myself.

Michel Fortin:  The more you actually listen and teach yourself, the more you’re actually teaching other people to listen and to teach.  And I guess the third one, I mean, this is a little hard for me because I don’t wish for much and I guess I wish that if people listening to this call has, you know, found some grain of something that helps them, whether it’s at that very moment they listened to that day that they’re in or their lives, it doesn’t matter.  To me that would be the one wish I have.

Ralph Zuranski: Those are wonderful wishes and I just really appreciate your time in answering these questions and just sharing your wisdom with the world and I just can’t tell you how much I appreciate you.

Michel Fortin:  Oh, same here, Ralph, same here, and I think that we are both kindred spirits.  You know, the thing is when we meet at seminars sometimes and we just discuss about some of the things that are going on in our lives like you and your parents and all that stuff, you know the fact, it’s not that I just stand there and take time to listen to you but you also do that to me. 

Michel Fortin:  You are the perfect embodiment of everything I spoke about so the whole point is I appreciate you as much and I appreciate you doing this program, Ralph, because this is a great program and I wish you the most, the best.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, I thank you for that and I also tell you that your ability to offer to help in the early part of the program really helped inspire me to keep on going.

Michel Fortin:  I understand absolutely.

Ralph Zuranski: And I just want to thank you again.

Michel Fortin:  You’re most welcome.

Ralph Zuranski: Michel Fortin, you have a great day.

Michel Fortin:  You too.