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Interviews

Gary Halbert Interview #2

In 2005, I interviewed Gary Halbert and John Carlton. In this second call with Gary Halbert before he passed away, he offers more timeless copywriting tips.

Second Call with Gary Halbert

This is the 2nd call with Gary Halbert, a few weeks after the first one. It’s about two hours long and the recording is split into 30-minute segments. You can listen to each part, download the MP3s, or read the transcripts below.

As with the other calls, keep in mind that, in the early 2000s, broadband wasn’t fully adopted yet. The call was also maxed out at capacity. So quality is less than desirable and the split was to help with downloads.

Links to other calls and resources mentioned on the calls:

Call Recordings

Part #1

Part #2

Part #3

Part #4

Transcripts

Part #1

Michel Fortin: Well, let’s just do a little quick check here. Um, Gary, are you on the line?

Gary Halbert: Listen, if you people would stop slurring my reputation.

Michel: Oh, there we go. Let me just mute this phone right now. We are in presentation mode and…

Gary: Just one second.

Michel: Sure.

Gary: Caleb, it’s on mute now. Nobody can hear you. Go ahead.

Michel: I muted the entire call because we’re expecting over 1,000 people on tonight’s phone call and I didn’t want to get too much feedback because whenever there’s so many phones going at the same time it’s just crazy. But, let me just say welcome to everyone on tonight’s call.

This is the second call with none other than the great Gary Halbert, my mentor, my friend and the king of copy, the prince of print. Gary, you know, he’s more than just a mentor and a copywriter extraordinaire because — and I don’t want to go through all the introductions that I did on the last call — but I want to give you a little bit of a heads-up.

If you didn’t listen to the first call, in Gary’s words, you’re insane. Because Gary revealed some of the most powerful copywritingstrategies on that very first call and in fact, you know, Gary and I had a chuckle on the phone the other day about that, about tonight’s teleseminar because some of the feedback we received from that very first call was pretty fascinating and some of it was pretty outrageous.

Ninety percent of the emails that I’ve got for example on that call was pretty good — mind blowing even. People were raving about it. They couldn’t believe we were giving this teleseminar out for free. But there’s a small minority — 10 plaintiff unfortunately — that were pissed off. They didn’t have a clue. They ranted about you know, Gary going on tangents and stories and such and never really getting any content.

Well, I have to tell you this right now. And I have to laugh about it, too, because people who didn’t get it — and with all due respect to everyone on this call regardless of where they’re at with their copywriting skills — they’re the people who unfortunately, will never be able to get it. They’ll never be able to write really good copy. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth.

The power of what Gary taught during that last call was not in exactly what Gary said — although he delivered a lot of great content — but the biggest lessons you could pull from it — or what I pulled from it — and I guess you can say it this way — it’s not the message — it’s not even the messenger. Like comedy — it’s all in the delivery.

Now, I’m not talking about theatre and stories and such although that was a big part of it. What I’m talking about is how Gary drove his point home. How he got his points across. And about the choice of stories. What exactly he said and why he said it to you in order to drive those points home as well as the understanding of human psychology and human nature and that’s one of the most critical points in copy and something that I see missing a lot in most of the sales letters that I see today.

Once you do get it, though, you’ll be able to understand not only how Gary writes his own copy, but you’ll be on your way to writing world class copy yourself. So, if you can — and you should — if you haven’t really heard the first call, go ahead and listen to it. But if you have, go back and listen to it again and again and again. I’ll tell you right now — and this has actually happened to me — you’ll get stuff on the second, on the third and even on the fifth time of hearing that call.

And, so, anyways, that’s enough of an introduction but before we go on, a little bit of housekeeping.

The last time that we’ve done this call and we have introduced this call to you so that you can actually go online and download and hear it yourself, we’ve gotten a few emails from people who said they couldn’t download it. Well, I got to tell you, my server was crushed. The traffic was just horrendous and because of that and because my host was just absolutely wonderful — and I’m being sarcastic here — people had a hard time downloading the call. This is gonna happen again. Please try again a little later.

You will eventually get them and I do apologize and what I plan on doing for the second call and probably for the other call, too, is to open up my mirror server so that it can take some of the load from the first one. The second one is I asked you to send me some of your questions. Some questions were pretty long-winded.

What I want you to do is to be as brief and as specific in your question as possible. Rather than giving me some long story about where you come from, where you’re at and how we can save your life. We don’t want that kind of stuff.

The second thing is tonight is about copywriting. We might talk a little bit about, for example, Internet marketingbut a lot of questions were about Internet marketing and this is not what this call is about. It’s really about copy. Um, but we do, I can introduce a few things and I’m sure Gary will introduce a few things.

The third and final thing is we don’t do critiques. People have sent in questions by actually sending me their headlines, their copy and some of them actually forward sales letters and I usually forward some of these questions to Gary and some of them I didn’t because I thought it was just too absurd of a question to ask. We are not gonna do critiques although we can give you a lot of good ideas based on some of the questions we have had.

So please be specific and you can send your question — even right now as we speak if you would like — at [email protected]. And we’ve got tons of questions already so we might not be able to go through all of them and even if you send your question now I might not have a chance to answer that and have Gary answer that but what I can ask you this is that if we do have some time we will go through a lot of these questions right now and Gary promised me he’s gonna actually answer questions tonight.

At any rate, if you have don’t know Gary, you’re going to be in for a treat and for some of you, you’re in for a heart attack. So, that’s all I can say. Without further ado, please welcome my mentor, Gary Halbert.

Welcome Gary.

Gary: Thank you, thanks Mike. Listen, I, too, received a lot of feedback from that last call. In fact, hundreds of letters and overwhelmingly they were positive and some of them were negative. Obviously written by losers and some of them were negative that pointed out some things that I really was negligent in and that I could improve.

But before I start answering questions, I am going to read one response to you that I just got today. And the subject is almost arrested. Gary, I was listening to your call recorded with Michael Fortin while driving to a client from Tampa Bay to a recently discovered distant planet of at best questionable value named Winterhaven.

I was pulled over by an unmarked little car with it’s light pretending to be a big car. Anyway, I quickly concluded it was indeed the state police and wondered what the hell I had been doing. The officer told me he noticed I was laughing uncontrollably and talking in my vehicle but he couldn’t see anyone else in my SUV so he was thinking I had some people — probably Cuban immigrants — in the back of my truck.

The facts are I was simply listening to your recording that I transferred to my IPod. I was laughing my ass off and making notes into my cassette tape recorder since I have not developed the talent for driving at 80 miles an hour and writing at the same time. True story. No ticket. Policeman verified my explanation by listening to my IPod for maybe ten seconds and while he could not understand why I was laughing so hard, he did understand that I was on my way to a client.

Thank you for the great information and entertainment on that program. Your remarks about Gary Bensavanga, Jay Abraham and John Carlton should be memorialized. All the best to you and those you love. And that was from a guy named Steve Polit. But, that put a nice, I enjoyed that, thinking about that letter.

But, I want to start right off by clearing away three or four questions and a very valid criticism of something I did on the last call. One of the things that I, there are two things that I said and then because of my advanced age and dementia I started rambling and didn’t clean them up.

And one of them is what would I do if I had to make a million dollars in a year or I would be shot. And the other question was what is the thing that you have to do to prove that you are worthy of being a copywriter?

To answer those questions in, well the first part of the question in a fell swoop, it’s necessary for me to read you something and then I’m gonna explain something to you that should light a fire under some of you. And I’ll just start reading, I’ll read this and then I’m gonna explain the really significant things about it. Free book reveals… how to win at online poker especially Texas Hold’em almost every time you play.

Do you like to play online poker? Would you like to discover how professional card sharks are able consistently to win hundreds and often thousands of dollars almost every time they choose to play? Would you like to be so good at online poker that you never had to work at a regular job again? If so, this will be the most important message you will ever read.

Here’s why:

A small, privately owned publishing company — O’Dowd Publishing — has just released a brand new book that blows the lid off and reveals the little known but lethal techniques pro players use. Sub head — To sucker amateur players out of almost all their money.

Here’s just a few of the incredible secrets you will learn when you read this free book.

When are the three best days to play online poker. These are the three days most people have a lot of fog in their minds which makes it easier, much easier, to take their money away from them. When are the best hours of the day to play online poker. Believe it or not, there are three hours out of each day when beating the other players is as easy as falling off a log.

What days and what hours should you never play online poker. These are the days and hours the real card sharks come out. Why not just make sure they are not playing before you begin. How to win even when you have weak hands. Most serious poker players would sell their souls for this piece of information.

A certain way to bluff which will fool even very smart players. How to scare amateur players — the only kind you want to play — so badly they will fold even super strong hands. Three secret tips which make winning at Texas Hold’em almost a sure thing. A step-by-step formula developed by two Swiss poker players for winning at Texas Hold’em. By the way, they have both made more than half a million dollars by using this unique system.

How to set a betting trap which will cause every other player to lose their money and lose it to you. How to sniff out scared players and bully them into losing all their money. How to double dip — play in two games at the same time and double your winnings. The very best way for a low limit player — someone who doesn’t have much money to start with — to build a huge bank roll by playing online poker.

How to fake out all the other players and make them believe you have a stronger or weaker hand than you really do. How to develop almost X-ray vision to see through instantly and how to cultivate a canine sense of smell for sniffing out any player who is trying to bluff. How to remove the luck factor from online poker.

When you play online poker properly, it is no longer a game. It’s a business and a very profitable business. There’s a lot more you will learn from this book and it’s easy to get your free copy. All you have to do is call my voice mail and leave your name and address. As soon as you do that, I’ll send your copy of my book, How to Win at Online Poker Almost Every Time You Play, and I’ll send it to you immediately by first class mail.

Remember, when you call you will not get a live person. You will get my voice mail and you will hear me, Caleb O’Dowd, saying, “Hi. This is Caleb O’Dowd. Thank you for calling to get a free copy of my book that reveals how to win at online poker. Just leave your name and address after the beep and I’ll send the book to you immediately. Be sure to speak slowly and clearly and please spell out for me any unusual words in your name and address. Okay, here’s the beep and thanks again for calling.”

That’s all there is to it.

Make the call. Leave your name and address and you’ll get the book almost immediately. So, call now while it’s fresh in your mind. 1-305-whatever number.

All right. Now. I’m going to tell you this is the first part of what I would do if I had to make a million dollars in a year or one of my children would die and I’m gonna explain the reasons why. All the copy that I just read to you fits very, very legibly with a very prominent headline in a quarter page space of a newspaper — a quarter page.

Now, a quarter page is known as an SAU which is a standard advertising unit which means that you can buy it at remnant or stand-by space which is 90 percent off what you would normally pay. Now, what that means is that I can buy a thousand circulation for this quarter page ad for $4.00. In other words, I can put it in papers or a single paper with 100 circulation for $400.00.

Now, the second thing is I tell them that they are not going to get a live person when they call. They’re going to get a recorded message. That is very important; because people are much more comfortable calling to get a recorded message than they are to get a live person because they’re afraid if they get a live person they are going to get a high pressure sales job.

The second thing I do, I don’t know where I’m at now, the third thing or whatever, is that I tell them what they are going to hear when they call. Hi, this is Caleb O’Dowd. Thank you for calling to get a free copy of my book, etc., etc. so by the fact that I tell them this is what you’re going to hear and that is in fact what they do hear increases their comfort level.

Now, all of this is a process of taking the fear out of a sale and if you have something to sell that people want and have enough money to buy what you have to do to sell it among other things is take the fear out of the transaction.

Finally, you’ll notice that I said to call 1-305 whatever and that’s known as a POTS number which is plain old telephone service which means I can buy that for $7.00 a month and it will take up to 35 calls at the same time without anybody getting a busy signal and this is not like a television commercial where, you know, 5,000 people call at the same time. This would be running in different newspapers and so the calls will be scattered out.

Now, this is a lead generating ad and if you’ll notice it’s a very hard-working compelling lead generating ad. And I believe that it will generate good prospects at as cheaply as you can develop them. Now, what’s going to happen after they make that telephone call is that they are immediately going to get a free book but it’s really going to be a 20 or 30 page book that gives them really, really good information and then segues into a sale, a sales letter of why if this is of interest to you, then you should have my course.

Now, I haven’t priced it out yet but, you know, it’s going to be a minimum of $97.00 and probably considerably more. Now, once you have that name there is no name in all of direct marketing that is more valuable than a gambling system name. That is the single most valuable list of names you can get. They’re more valuable than any other type of names. And you just about can’t rent them at all.

If you ever find a list of gambling system buyers that you can rent, you can almost be certain that they are only up for rent because they are ten years old and the owner of the list has sucked every last cent that he could out of them because he’s mailed them 300 pitches.

So, that is, that is the formula, the most foolproof formula that I know and the truth is at $4.00 per thousand you can test that in a circulation of paper of say 50,000 will give you the answer and that’s $200.00 and you’re just not gonna get much cheaper than that. If you don’t have $200.00 you need to take a second job until you do.

Now, another thing about this is that when you do this what you do is you count up the responses you get and that will tell you, that will go a long way in telling you how to design your product.

First of all, if you get three, four, five, six, seven replies, what you want to do is abandon the project. And it’s important that you fail fast and that you fail cheaply. However, if you get 400 or 500 replies, you divide that, those replies, into how much money you spent to get them.

Let’s say you got 400 replies and you spent $400.00 to get this in front of 100,000 people then you’re buying leads at a buck a piece and that means for sure you have a gold mine because if the first offer you make doesn’t work then the, you’ll just keep going after it and after it until it does work. That is, I hope answers a question and the next thing I want to tell you is that that ad was 50 percent written by me.

The other 50 percent of it was written by a young man I’m mentoring named Caleb O’Dowd who comes from the Town of Limerick, Ireland. And I had him do the research on this and write the bullets and I worked him like a dog for about three weeks and he furnished me with everything I needed to polish that off and I think Caleb O’Dowd when he came over here from Ireland to work with me — and believe me, I charge a lot and he had to pay a very dear price to do it — this guy had never — he’s listening to this call right now in the next room — he had never even seen a direct mail letter.

They don’t have them in Ireland. There is no direct response industry in Ireland. He had never pulled a direct mail letter out of an envelope but he is on his way to becoming a world class copywriter. I can guarantee you that and he has the number one prerequisite for becoming a world class copywriter and that is he is obsessed with it.

You know he works so hard that I have to slap him upside the head every once in a while and say, “Hey, Caleb, it’s time for us to get a cup of coffee or something.” But if you want to ever get in touch with a future star or you ever want to inquire what it’s like to be mentored by me — and I’m not soliciting people to mentor because I hardly ever do it.

This is only the second time I’m doing it. I’m gonna give your email to the people and what he’s gonna write you back is he’s going to tell you that, “Well, I learned a lot from Gary Halbert but he is a bastard to work with. He just tortured me.”

Anyhow, he’s always bitching about it. He really does. He just constantly bitches about you know, I mean not about the work — he’s a hard worker but the way he perceives me as mistreating him and I just perceive it as teaching him.

But here’s his email. It’s [email protected]. I’ll repeat that. [email protected] and I will tell you this guy is going to be for hire and he is good enough that I am actually doing this project with him and spending my money on it and his brother is coming over to help us and his brother’s name is John and he, guess who he was? He was Michael Dell’s right-hand man. And so this is really a good guy that you’re gonna want to know.

Now, I have only mentored personally one other person and I got a letter from him. And I have to read that to you, too. And it says, Gary, will you let the world or on your teleseminaron Thursday know that your first officially trained student a/k/a Dave Allard has written and is currently enjoying a 31 percent response rate on a self-marketing letter. It is very original and he appreciates your ideas a lot more than Carlton ever will.

I don’t know where he got that. You don’t have to tell him I said that. Also, a podiatry client David is working with is enjoying a 6 percent response rate and 100 percent conversion to appointments.

Lifetime value of these lost patients is over $168,000.00 in three short weeks from a non-sales oriented newsletter. Two really hot lists being worked by really one hot newsletter. I’m gonna give you his email address, too.

He is up and doing work right now. I’ve read his portfolio. He’s worked for 13 clients and I just think that in this business it’s important to know the good people and his [email protected]. That’s [email protected].

I would like to recommend that the people on this call understand that it is important to dialogue with other like-minded people because basically if you’re a copywriter or a direct marketer it is a lonely, small world out there.

And I want to say something more, a little bit more, about that. When I did this first teleseminar, Mike, I had no idea who you were. And I have since read the sales letters that you have written for people and they blew me away. I mean I thought I knew every killer copywriter in the world and I didn’t. I didn’t know you and I can tell you this I’m gonna steal a lot of your ideas and letters. I mean because they are truly that good.

Michel: Thank you.

Gary: Now, and I mean that sincerely. I, you must know I don’t pay compliments easily.

Now, I’m gonna clean up another thing that a question that was asked and I rambled on and I’m gonna try and stay focused. I’ll lose it about 20 minutes from now I want you all to know that. The drugs will start kicking in, you know, and then but uh, but I said how do you tell if you’re a real copywriter worthy of the name and I’m gonna tell you exactly how.

You have to get the SRDS book. I think everybody here — the SRDS mailing list book. I think everybody on the call knows what that is. That tells you about the mailing lists and you have to go through and pick the market you’re going to work yourself. You pick it. Then you order 5,000 names from a list broker. Okay, now let’s suppose that you have picked golf.

Part #2

Gary: Then you go out to a library or a bookstore and get ten books on golf and outline a product based on the ideas you got from those books. I remember one book I really liked had a simple title said, “The Secrets of Perfect Putting”, but anyway you outline your book then you write a direct mail letter as though your product actually existed.

Then you mail 1000 letters out of that, you have to rent 5,000, but I often rent 5,000 and test only 1,000, and if you get enough money back that the arithmetic says that you have made a profit doing this and you did it with your own money then you are entitled to call yourself a copywriter.

If you cannot do that you are defrauding people when you hold out your shingle as a copywriter who knows what he is doing and can work for other people. It is because; just think about this, everything was under your control.

From the selection of the list, to the creation of the product, to the sales letter, to price, everything, and if you can not do it when everything is under your control how are you going to do it when a client dictates to you what you have to say? So that is the real acid test of whether you are a copywriter or not.

Okay?

Now. I am going to do something that I really find offensive and that is I am going to answer these questions. This first question asked all three of those so I answered all three of those in and says. Okay, now here is the next question that I have in my hand.

Is there an update on the old AIDA formula? AIDA for many of you that might not know stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action, and if so what is it? The answer is no, there is no update that I know out of that. I do not know of a better formula than that. There probably are a few other things, I mean, I think you could put proof in there or something but the answer is no, there is not an update on that formula.

Okay, now this guy, I am not going to mention his name, because he offends me. I want to tell you what he has said, “You are asking me to give you time out of my life, why? When I or any other person is dying we cannot recall to get back the hours of our life. You have not shown why anyone should listen and give up any time out their life to another online marketer’s call.

Are you going to pay them for their call? The current trend of online calls is not showing any value at all and yes, there are sometimes recorded and offered or sold subsequent to the calls, big deal. In fact, the time I have spent typing this email maybe just another waste of my time. The payback is you have to read it.”

Well, you know, I think this guy is frankly despicable. Here we are offering something completely free and offering something valuable and he is still bitching.

I want to tell you something, and I want all you people out there to listen to this. I can tell who is a great marketer when I visit in their home. You know what I do? As soon as we get comfortable I ask them if I can see their library, and I was talking to Michael Fortin the other day, and he was telling me, you know, he spent half a million dollars for his direct marketing education, and you know, I spent probably more than that.

I would buy books when I couldn’t afford to pay the electricity or they were turning off my water, and whenever you hear somebody whining about buying information just get them out of your life because if they are whining because “Oh I had to buy something” you know what? You should buy something.

If you pay $500.00 and get two good ideas out of it you have got your money’s worth, and stop being such a pussy, and such a crybaby, and stop whining. You know, if you want to get this done and you want to do it you have got to pay the price and that is all there is to it. I was talking to Mike, Mike how much, I will ask you, how much have you spent for your direct marketing education? Mike: Oh half a million dollars.

Gary: How long did it take you get as good as you are?

Mike: Twenty-five years.

Gary: Okay, where there is a lot of people in this hall who want to get it for $2.50 and get it in three hours. Guess what? You people all suck.

Okay, now, and I am going to answer his questions anyway. Is there a huge difference in mail order verses direct mail assuming you use a targeted audience? I do not even know what that question means but all I know is that if you mail order, I guess if he means newspaper advertising or magazine advertising, newspaper advertising is difficult because there is so much waste circulation because such a small fraction will be in the market for any such other thing. Magazines can be very targeted and direct mail is very targeted.

So, no, there is no difference, at least no difference in copy.

Now here is another question. How is this for a headline to an ad looking for people who are fed up with their job? Are you suffering from job dissatisfaction? Actually that is a headline that sucks and I will tell you why it sucks. Because it is cute, because it is tricky, you know, this guy is really proud that he has come up with job dissatisfaction.

Okay, here is another question, now we are starting to go into other people’s questions so I am going to be kinder and gentler here. Another person: Oh, what a surprise. Original speaker: Everybody will hang up as soon as I do. At one of our entrepreneur boot camps I had you speak at many moons ago you had everyone get out a couple of blank pages and you dictated the sample letter, complete with lots of blah, blah, blahs.

For some reason, I do not have that in my files anymore, and it might be a good thing to do on your live seminar, and that is from Mark Stallard, an old and dear friend of mine. Mark, if you are listening, I think what you are talking about is the dollar bill letter and if all else fails write a dollar bill letter and here is the copy again.

Dear Friend: As you can see I have attached a nice crisp one dollar bill to the top of this letter. Why have I done this? Actually there are two reasons.

One, I needed some way to make sure this letter would catch your attention. Two, and secondly, and since what I am writing to you about can help you make a lot of money or help you save a lot of money I thought using a dollar bill as an eye catcher was a good idea.

Anyway, here is what it is all about; and then we go into all the blah, blah, blahs of what it is all about. Now the rest of the formula for that is after you send that dollar bill you wait a few days until they have had time to get it and then you call them, and you say hi, this is Mark Stallard, I am just calling.

I sent you a piece of mail and I just wanted to make sure you got it. You will remember it if you did because there was a dollar bill attached to the front page of the letter; and at that point something very important is going to happen.

You are going to get your first yes nod. You won’t be able to see it on the phone, of course, but somebody will say yeah I got that I got the dollar; and then you are going to say well I wanted to check because, you know, you can not be too careful when you are sending money in the mail. Is not that right; and he’s going to go yeah, you could not be too careful; and then you are going to say “Well, you did get the letter, the dollar was intact and you have had a chance to read it?”, and then you will get your third yes, nod; and if you cannot take it from there you should get out of marketing. You know.

So first I want to say Mark was glad to hear from you again but I think that is the answer to your question. By the way, Mark reminded me of a quote of mine, which is one of my favorite quotes, especially since it is mine, “Nothing is impossible for a person who refuses to listen to reason.” Okay. This is Gary, looking forward to the call tonight.

Question: We are doing split gate, I do not know what that is, but the radio station they run spots and we show up and do training and split the total revenue. I guess that is what it is. We are shooting for 500 people at $59.00 each. Not sure how to make the spot stand out in the glut of other average commercials. It is talk radio.

They volunteered to create the spot but I know radio stations are awful at the creative and I thought you could add some spice to it. Could you address this tonight?

Yes I will. The best thing you can do to make your spot stand out is avoid all bells and whistles, all music, all trickery, and everything, and it just should be a voice, probably a male voice, talking, explaining what it is all about, and the main thing is you do not want to detract from your message, and the trickery, and the music, and all that stuff detracts.

If you are not going to use, something that is equally as good as a male voice is a female voice from the south, a southern accent.

Now I am going to tell you all a secret that almost nobody knows and it is this. If you run a full-page ad in a newspaper you should budget, at least some of the time, $3.00 per thousand. Like if the circulation of the newspaper is 100,000 then allow $3.00 for each thousand so $300.00 and on the day the newspaper comes out you should pay $300.00, these are rough figures and not exact, to a radio station, and by the way when you buy radio commercials there is only two kind of stations you want.

Country music and talk radio; and that reason for that is that is the only radio that people are actually listening to. All the rest of them, they might be bouncing along to the music, but they are paying attention to this, and what you should do with that is you should advertise you advertisingand say, “Are you interested in losing weight, if so read the Miami Herald today, look for the page that says NASA Scientist Invents New Way to Lose Weight.”

Now, by the way, you can do that on television and if you are buying a 10 seconds spot on TV, which is about all you can afford these days, when the day your newspaper comes out somebody should be standing there with the ad, in front of the camera, showing them the ad and say, “Are you interested in losing weight, look for this page in today’s Miami Herald. A NASA Scientist Reveals a New Way to Lose Weight.” That is called advertising the advertising; and while I am on that I will tell you another trick.

Newspapers are so huge today that I have ran ads that came out in newspapers where to find my own ad I personally had to go through it seven times looking for my own ad, and as a general rule, if you are running in newspapers, if you can manage it, always run on a Tuesday because you want to run in the skinniest paper there is.

Now here is a big trick when you are running in fat papers. Advertise the advertising with little one-inch ads in other sections of the paper; and you say, “What to know a new way to lose weight invented by a rocket scientist? See page 74 in the C section.” Sprinkle those ads throughout the newspaper that will get people to go to a section that they would not have gone to normally.

Okay? Let us see what else we have got here. One, do you Gary Albert know when to write short copy and when to write long copy? Are there objective criteria for making the determination? Anything you can describe? Any source material to read or listen to or is it all a matter of guts, guts, and experiment?

You know, what you really should do and all of you are suffering from this, is I suspect most of these people here do not know what a world class swipe file is. I would guess that you, Michel Fortin, have thousands of examples in your swipe file, as I do. Michel: Oh yeah.

Gary: And you should look at small ads, and you should at long ads, and you should be writing them out in your own handwriting till it is embedded on a neuro basis.

Second question. What do you do to make sure you write good copy about something you consider disgusting? For example, I hate gangster rap but if a guy wants to me to sell a gangster rap training course how can I (a) quickly get up to speed on the subject and (b) get in the frame of mind that lets me write copy so good that I might even change my own feelings about the subject?

First, I think you should avoid, unless the wolf is at your door, writing about things that disgust you. It is hard enough to make all of this work by writing things that you are passionate about.

But if you have to write about gangster rap, which I hate too, then what you want to do, is you want to read hip hop magazines, you want to talk to the people who play it, you want to talk the people who listen to it, what the biggest thing that people fail to do, I saw a great picture on the Internet the other day that somebody had been able to capture a complete picture of an iceberg, the part above and below the water, the conditions were just right.

But David Oglebee was asked one time, what was his long suit in advertising, and he said it is research, and I will tell you something, everybody that is good in advertising, that is their long suit, research, and you just got to do the research and that is all the way there is to it.

Three, is there a quick way to find the starving crowd you often talk about when a customer who does not yet have customers of his own? Well, first of all, if you can you should avoid working for people who do not have customers of their own. But I do not know how, you know, this question indicates that you and your client are going for it backwards.

In other words, a product or service has been created and you are going out to find the market. That is absolutely backwards. What you want to do is find the market and then create a product or serviced to service that market.

Briefly, the primary features and functionality of the Stack Tee are one, the capability to stack multiple tees together, which make it easy to adjust the height of a golf ball for any kind of tee shot.

Two, it interlocks making it easier to carry a stock of tees in your shirt or pocket.

Three, it is made out of a polymer material with a lower surface hardness than did hard birch wood tees and it will not damage, scratch, or leave paint marks on expensive thin face drivers.

Four, it is designed to minimize the kinetic energy lost from a club tee interaction weighted only a third of the standard wood tee.

Five, it functions as a standard tee holder and can be used to adjust the height of wood tees.

Five, it is golf course friendly made from a biodegradable polymer material that can easily cut or vacuum by lawnmower.

I am not a marketing guru but what some people consider a technical geek PhD. engineer. By the way for you that do not know PHD stands for Piled Higher and Deeper, but I try to keep my head out of the clouds and I have common sense.

I plan to send out a flyer discovering feature, functionality, and samples of the Stacked Tee to all the U.S. dealer/distributors of golf equipment and the golf courses. According to my research approximately 500 billion golf tees are consumed annually. My question for you is what is the best way to market this new product? Am I barking up the wrong tree? Thanks for the invitation I look forward to your feedback.

This guy has really put some effort into trying. So the first thing I am going to say, although it sounds discouraging, I am going to follow up with something not so discouraging. This does not have any sex appeal or sales appeal for golfers whatsoever.

John Carlton is the master at marketing to golfers and here is what they want. They want to hit longer, straighter, drives off the tee. You know, tee shot. That is the number one appeal. This is a very weak appeal.

But having said that, I think if you find people who distribute products to places that sell golf equipment that this is going to be an excellent adjunct to the line that they carry and that you should maybe put that in their line. But you are never, I should not say never because who I am to say? I said when I saw Star Wars, the movie, that it would fail, but you are not going to sell that at a profit via direct marketing. But I think you maybe can sell it as a distributorship and I wish you the best of luck on it.

Okay, here is another question. I would like to hear your insights on the differences in writing fascinations, by the way a fascinations is a word some people use for bullets, for an information product, such as a book, report, or newsletter, verses a physical product such a vitamin, gadget, etc.

The answer is there is no difference whatsoever. For the information product it is much more direct than some unique knowledge will be revealed verses the physical product, which has specific benefits but they are not teased the same way.

I would also like to hear your thoughts in the difference in creating magalogs verses other types of direct mail. First of all, he is on the wrong track in thinking that the creation of bullets differ from how you should go about it differently from a physical product than you should an information product. That is not true, and the best way to learn to how to bullets is go to the Gary Albert Newsletter.

You all know it, it is www.thegaryalbertletter.com click on view newsletter archives, and find the envelope that says Let’s do the Twist, and you will get a free education on how to write bullets.

Now he also says, I would also like to hear your thoughts on the difference in creating magalogs verses other types of direct mail, and here is what I would like to say about this. If at all possible, avoid creating magalogs. They are used by the biggest mailers in the world.

I am working for one of the now and some of the source material is the magalog they use; and so much work goes into creating a magalog, and so much expertise, and not only the writing, and also the layout, which you just about have to have a layout artist do it, that really and truly all the great writers I know, me, Scott Haynes, I don’t know about you Mike, I do not know if you do that, John Carlton, everything, somebody has a magalog job and they insist on it being a magalog, we turn the job down, and I will tell you the truth, a tear sheet mailing or a hard hitting direct mail letter will beat the magalog everyday. But magalogs are way too much work to be worth the effort.

Okay. Hi Gary, what is the best time frame to follow up on prospects by phone after sending them postcards? Okay. Number one, really folks do not send the postcards. It is just a little bit cheaper than sending them a killer hard hitting sales letter; and I want you all to get something straight in your head.

It is not how cheaply you can do it, it is how much of a return you can get on your investment. I would bet you that this person mailing postcards to get leads, I will bet you that she would make more money if she would send FedEx Letters and follow them up.

Now, actually, but to her specific question is about the time frame. Who knows when a postcard is going to get there? I would wait about five days, I guess, if I were sending postcards, because someone had a gun to my head. But it is much more predictable if you send a Federal Express package, it is much more impactful, and it is going to be much more profitable if it is well written, and if you send a first class letter you are going to make a lot more money too.

You know, I mean, I do not even know what a postcard costs because I never send them. Do you know how much they cost Mike?

Michel: No I do not.

Gary: Yeah, I mean I do not think very many really top marketers would even know what they cost, but everybody wants to do this because it is cheap. You should stop thinking about cheap and stop thinking about return on investment. I remember in the early days of the Internet guys crowing that they were able to make a telephone call for free on the Internet. Took them 18 hours to do it. Well, if you think 18 hours is free then you do not have the right mindset to even be in kind of business.

Another example of that is, I went to the Rolling Stones Steal Wheels concert and I took a bunch of people with me, and I paid about $300.00 for each of the tickets, and we sat in the second row center. I mean I could reach out and touch Mick Jagger. The people in front of me were bragging how they had got their tickets for $35.00 but they had also had to camp out for a day and a half.

Well, I guess I was the fool because I thought my time was worth more than three or four bucks an hour of laying in a sleeping bag in the rain.

So, that leads me to an extraneous comment. There are a lot of people, a lot of ways to beat people at direct marketing, competition that are not thought of. One way is to outwork them. Another very easy way is to out spend them. There is a lot of time you will find a real cheapskate person with a scarcity mentality that will be moving so slow, you know the biggest difference between winners and losers? Losers focus on the perils of defeat. Winners focus on the rewards of winning. So if you focus on, gee what could go wrong here, and all that, probably something is going to go wrong.

Okay, here is another one.

Another person: I just want to add one little thing Gary.

Gary: No, no, this is my call I do not want anybody interrupting me. You **** out here Pee-Pee. Gary Albert, what a creep, you know realize how many people you have on this call with no sense of humor whatsoever? These people should be working at McDonald’s and maybe made to eat dog food. Go ahead Mike.

Michel: I should not recite the first response you ever given me after I had written to you. But I just wanted to add that the only exception I have found, and the reason why I know this, is because I have actually written copy for Michael Kimble and Michael is the big shot in the postcard industry, and the only postcard that I have ever worked with that had worked really well are oversized, wall-to-wall, dense copy size postcards.

Gary: Yeah, but Mike.

Michel: And with an offer and with an actual call to action, and a response devise attached to it but not the tiny weenie postcards. I am talking about an oversized either letter or even legal size postcard and it is dense copy, it is like a whole sales letter on one postcard or on both sides.

Gary: It is worth a try, anything is worth a test, you know; and that sounds like it could be made to work you got it.

Here is one. I have an opportunity to do direct mail with another company sharing all expenses. Our customer demographics mirror each other. Same age, income, sex, education, occupation, etc., comprise the same material niche identical. Different products. One product hearing aids cost between $2,000.00 and $8,000.00 with a huge markup. While the other, bone density testing cost only $50.95 with a $30.00 markup. Two letters will be sent within the same envelope. Questions, how effective…

Part #3

Gary: When a 2 for 1 be. Well if you are talking about two letters in the same envelope like these two it’s, it is actually you are going to be very disappointed as a result of that.

Should we even attempt that the answer is yes but you, you should attempt, do I, do I know of a case where it has been attempted successfully. Ah, no I don’t but I bet it has and yes I think you should attempt it, but the way you should attempt it I believe is you should try and sell them the bone density testing first, and with the markup and then go from there to the high price thing.

What I would actually do is tell people they could take a free hearing test over the telephone and I think you’d have a much better chance on that. But I think you could make some money at this, but for sure you only sell, want to sell one thing at a time.

Okay. Gary, I sell $197.00 home study course online. When someone exits from my order page, what strategy do you suggest: (1) down sell; (2) special discounts; (3) survey of why leaving; (4) other. I need to know, I know I need to test but which one would you suggest I start with.

People are going to do tests that prove what I am about to say is wrong in some cases, but in most cases I think I’m, what I’m about to say, most cases will be right, and what this guy should do is get rid of his order page and say it’s easy to order. All you have to do is call 1-800 whatever. And, they, you, you should just get rid of the order page.

Okay, here’s another one. What is an example of a three-step sequence on the web? Well, that would be a website properly designed, and if it is properly designed it is a sales letter and then it would offer them to make a telephone call to get a free book or free report/sales letter and then that would offer them the opportunity to buy something and you could continue it into step after step.

And then the other step should be follow ups to the people that rose their hand and actually I know that a lot of you people on here are only interested in online marketing and I’d like to say something about that.

You should not think of yourself as an online marketer or a direct mail marketer or a newspaper marketer or a television marketer or a radio marketer. You should think of yourself as a marketer and you should market wherever you can make money.

You know, if, if direct mail can make you money, maybe you should also be on the web and make money there, and maybe you should also be in magazines and newspapers and make moneythere, and maybe you should make money, you should be on television making money, but I do think that you should sequence those and I want to say one thing for you.

Another thing there are only three things that are involved in marketing. There is the product, the pitch and the delivery system. Now the product is of course whatever the product is. The pitch is the, the, the sales piece that sells it in whatever form it appears: in the form of a letter, a mail order ad, a piece of web copy; and the delivery system is the delivery system for the sales pitch.

There is an internet. The internet is really basically as far as marketing goes a delivery system. Television is a delivery system. Direct mail is a delivery system and I would like to write for you the delivery systems that will most likely give you the best ROI (Return on Investment).

Number one, you absolutely cannot beat direct mail followed by newspapers, and after direct mail and newspapers, I don’t know where it would go from there but I actually think other than maybe matchbook covers; the internet is the weakest delivery system in the world.

Ah, you know I was recently working with a guy who is making a lot of money because he was mailing 30 million letters a day, emails a day, to generate leads and he would get about 3,000 responses which were worth about $10.00 a piece for him.

Now that game is pretty much over unless you want to go to jail, but do you know how out of 30 million what percentage or response to the 3,000 is, and if somebody could figure out on the call real quick. But it is like 1/100 of 1 percent and I recently, my most recent lead generating ad was done by direct mail and we were getting a 7 percent response and you take 1/100 of 1 percent.

So if I got 1 percent and I was doing a hundred times more leads than he is for the same amount of contact and since we were getting seven it was 700 times more. Not 700 percent more; 700 times more. And, what it is, is a matter of math. And people get lost on the internet because they think it is “free or at least very, very cheap.” You want a, you want a good way to make money?

Take great internet sales letters and transfer them into print. Just steal them and transfer them into print.

Michel: That’s exactly what’s happening right now with a lot of copies that I have written is that –

Gary: It’s going to be happening more and more because I’m taking some of your copy.

Michel: Hey, yeah. Well, a lot of the guys that are actually going to, that have actually written copies for and we found out that they, they’ve worked really well, they’ve sold very well, there’s a really high conversion rate, they’re now converting those into direct mail pieces and using them in direct mail and, as I, yeah, yeah, that’s a great, great, great suggestion there Gary.

Gary: Okay. Here’s one. How do you suggest mailing businesses using direct mail? Would you use the business address or try finding the owner’s home address? Would you use an envelope or post cards for the most effective response?

I actually, on business-to-business, would absolutely use Federal Express but in line with the question, I would, I would never send post cards to business-to-business people. I would use envelopes and because people change so much, what you want to do is address it not to an individual.

The first thing I would do, unless it’s a giant mailing, is I would call the company and say who is in charge of buying widgets and then I would direct my mail to that person.

Now, if you’re mailing like a million people and that’s an impractical thing to, I would write to, um, you know, ah, the widget buyer for ABC Company, probably. And, our, you know, or the advertising department or something. But don’t send post cards. And don’t sent an envelope and try sending Federal Express at least if it’s worth anything at all.

Okay, let me see what else I got here.

What do you consider the most important factors in creating packaging and marketingE-books online via sales letter websites? Ah, and, ah, he said he’s a business partner of Timothy Brumlick. He told me to tell you hello. Timothy Brumlick is also a good friend of mind so I’d appreciate it if you would say hello back to Timothy Brumlick.

Timothy Brumlick has more stamps on his passport than Kissinger. I think he’s in an average of three different countries a week. Ah, but to get back to the question. Ah, creating packaging and marketing E-books, I think E-books should be 8 « by 11 typed letters with a kind of a nice cover on them. Um, you know, a typeset that you might know more about that than I would Mike, I mean, you know?

Michel: Um, the format that has been the winning format for E-books is in Adobe.pdf format and the reason why is because Adobe.pdf which means portable document format is downloadable or useable or readable on pretty much every PC out there, on every computer out there, on every MAC computer out there.

Most of my E-books are on Adobe.pdf format and, and I, and basically what you usually do, and can very easily do is you buy, first of all, and, and, and every **** infopreneur on the internet has this is either a pdf converter software or have bought Adobe.pdf software and you, you can actually type out your book in any, you know, just like a regular, normal book, and then you would convert it into a pdf format. Um, that is the best way to do it .

And, and, what I usually do is, ah, we have, ah, what I do also when I write sales letters for example, is I create covers for the book even if it’s an intangible product. I sort of try to get people a sort of an idea or a feeling of what it is as if it was tangible and then they would easily access that book that way and when you print it out, it also prints out exactly the way it looks. When you look at that on your computer, it’s 8.5 x 11 and it looks like a normal standard book.

Gary: Um, you better sit down for what I’m about to say but I’m going to blow your mind. If you send me something in pdf I can download it. I can actually do that. Can you imagine that?

Michel: ****. I am totally blown away.

Gary: It says, hi, guys, what do you specifically do to get into the mind of your prospect. You know what you do is you just do a lot of work. You read the books that they read, you magazines that they read, if possible you go out and talk to those people.

Ah, it’s just work. I mean, you have to find out what they’re all about and, ah, and you go on the internet and research them and look at the other appeals that are being made to them and, um, it, it’s just work. The answer to many of these questions is just work. Ah –

Michel: Well, here’s my little shortcut. I, I do copy sometimes for people like, you know, ah, not that I have written copy for you Gary, but people who are like you who are not really people who, who type out all these answers to my big long questionnaire.

They prefer to do it on the phone and what they do is they record the call and get it transcribed and, but that’s not where you stop. What you do is when you interview them, you try to get them to open up the floodgates of passion about their product and what I do often is when I get into a phone call, I three-way the call with another service called idictate.com, I-D-I-C-T-A-T-E dot COM at a 1-800 number that you call. It’s free, toll free.

Ah, of course, they charge you a penny a word but they, they have a real live transcriptionist. You know, a lot of these speaking software that, that actually converts your speech into text, if they all goof it up, you have to train it and all that stuff, well, idictate is actually done by real people. And they send it back to you within an email attachment within a few hours but, and what I do is I, I three-way the call with that service.

What I do is when I speak with the client, I ask a few questions and get the ball rolling. Sometimes it’s a little slow until I get them to become really passionate about their product and I, they, they’re actually selling me on the product. And you can actually sense the, the enthusiasm they have for their product.

And, you know, copywriting is like what Zig Ziglar said, ah, you know, it’s selling and it’s selling in print and he said, it’s transferring the enthusiasm you have for your product into the minds and hearts of your prospects. Well, when I do that, I get this transcription, you know, this transcript in my email which is basically half of my copy written right there.

Gary: That’s brilliant. Ah, um, you know a year from now I will giving, I will be giving people that same type of advice and taking credit for it?

Michel: I know you Gary.

Gary: Okay. All right.

Michel: Hopefully I’ll be retired and they won’t **** there.

Gary: Ah, you mentioned in your, listen, I, this, this question, before I read it to you. I, I gotta, I gotta tell you, I had something happen that, you talk about making your day. This made my year. There is a guy named Eric Weinstein. He used to be my listings broker.

And he had files of hundreds of control pieces, ads, direct mail and everything, and he, he’d gone on to do something else. And he was about to throw them away. These are all winning sales pieces. And he said, I thought you’d, I’d give you a call and see if you’d want them before I threw them away.

Michel: Oh, yeah.

Gary: And I immediately sent somebody up to get them and it’s two giant files of proven winning things, the best swiped file you can humanly imagine.

And here’s the guy’s question. Hi Gary. That was a fantastic teleconference a couple weeks ago. I wanted to thank you for your complete no BS, tell it like it is style. You mentioned in your talk the list broker who had given you all those folders of tested letters and copy.

My question: How can I get my hands on them? Could I fly down from Indianapolis, bring a copy machine and copy them myself? Seems to me there might be gold to be panned in them there folders. Thanks and regard. A new Sir Gary fan.

The guy’s name is Mark Roselus. Mark, you can come down and copy them as long as you make a copy for me because I intend to sell this swiped file and **** swiped file and I am never going to get around to the time to do it myself. You know, I actually hire people to go to the bathroom for me now because I have so little time.

Michel: ****.

Gary: So, the answer is yes, you can do that. Ah, let’s see the next question. Ah, they may not be world-class, but the letters I write or at least average or better. However, the response rates are always less than profitable. Where can I get more responsive lists?

I’m gonna delete that guy. I’m not gonna mention that guy’s name, but, um, ****, I, I, I, I think, ah, the letters you write are not at least average or better. Um, if the response rates are always less than profitable, ah, I think you might want to go back to the grindstone and as far as getting more responsive lists, what you need to do is dialogue with a good list broker and, and let them guide you on the list. Um, but, ah, ****, they, ah, I’m not going to make any further comments on that.

Michel: ****.

Gary: Um, Michel and Gary, what exercises would you all suggest for a novice copywriter to practice getting into the head of a reader, and getting to know the target audience, and that.

I think I’ve already asked, ah, answered that. It’s just a matter of work.

Um, this one. How can I raise my prices significantly for a high-ticket service without losing too many customers?

Um, the first thing you need to do is you need to make your product or service more valuable. And, by the way, if some of you would like to have a relationship with me, a business relationship and get on the good side of me, I’m looking for people to help me do some of this. I want to create a, hm, course on how to win in online poker. And I would love somebody that plays online poker to, I don’t know, you know, you’ll know what I’m talking about, Mike.

I know what I want but I don’t know how to describe it. I would like to capture what’s happening on the screen so I could put it on a DVD or video and advertise you will see actual hands being played, do you understand what I’m talking about?

Michel: Gary, you’re, you’re, what you’re talking about is a screen-capturing program. I use it when I do critiques for copy and I deliver it online. It’s a program called cantasia and that program is actually available, is at a website called techsmith.com.

You download it, you, and when you load up the program you click on the one that says record and it actually records what’s going on on your screen at that point.

Gary: And, and, and, not just frame by frame, but like in, like the movement and everything.

Michel: Yeah, yeah, yeah, everything. It’s, it’s, it’s actually the movements, the clicks, um, ah, and most of the courses that you see now, the infoproducts that you see online like John Reese’s, Mike Kern and Ed Dale are all done with cantasia. It’s, it’s an absolutely wonderful, I use it all the time.

Gary: Listen. I have my, the, the young man I’m mentoring on the phone and I want to make sure he got that, so would you give that website again?

Michel: Absolutely. Techsmith. T as in Tom, E, C as in Catherine, H, S as in Sam, M as in Mike, I, T as in Thomas, H dot com. Techsmith.com. The software is called camtasia and I’ll, I’ll give you an example.

My website, I have a website called thecopydoctor.com and that website is a membership site where you pay 30 bucks a month and you actually watch me live going through a sales letter or a website and you actually see my mouth movements, you actually see me write the copy but I also have a microphone and I record what I say and I critique the copy and I tell it, I, I, I actually tear the copy apart but the beauty is that you actually understand what’s going through my mind and what I see. It’s like if you were looking over my shoulder as I’m actually going through the sales letter so that is the software, cantasia.

Gary: Ah, listen, Mike, that is great information and this guy, Caleb, I’m working with, he’s really not the sharpest knife in the drawer so could you possibly give him that website again? I’m teasing him obviously, cause.

Michel: How about if I just email it?

Gary: Oh, okay. Just, just email it to me and, or to him, or both of us. Okay?

Michel: I will ****.

Gary: All right. Will you talk about the first sentence, paragraph of a letter, not that it’s important, that’s obvious; but your approach to writing it. Maybe some extemporaneous examples for some fictitious products or services.

You know, there is one opening line that is so good. I almost always use it. And it, it’s, you know, it, it’s, I’m getting bored with it, but you know, there’s an old advertising truth, is that you will get bored with your campaign before the readers do and here it is. If you are interested in getting rid of your arthritis pain, this will be the most important message you will ever read.

Here’s why. If you are interested in making money in online poker, this is the most important message you will ever read. Here is why. If you are interested in how to make money online without having a computer, this will be the most important message you will ever read. Here is why. I can’t improve on that one. And, um, that’s, that’s a good one. It, it, then, ah –

Michel: Well, what I usually do, Gary, if you don’t mind, what I usually do is I try to start a story, um, and, and the way I do that is by saying, you know, please, you know and you can say it in different ways, but it’s like, stop what you’re doing, put down whatever you’re holding in your hands and just read every single word that I am about to read because this is going to and this major bring promise that I’m, that I’m making.

Ah, whether it’s, you know, if you want to start out with, this one is the most important letter, I do use that a lot. Ah, I, I, I’ve done this form example on ****, traffic secrets for John Reese, which is I urge you to lock the door and take the phone off the hook and grab your favorite beverage and just sit down and study every single letter, word of this letter because it’s about to change your life and here’s why.

Gary: Okay. Um, the, um, I’ve listened to many of your interviews and tapes, etc., etc., etc., and read all of your newsletters and so forth, and so forth. It is obvious you have a lot of ideas, likely more than you can do any, anything with; hence, my question.

When you have say five things to work with that all seem exciting and interesting to you, how do you prioritize what to do? I tend to work on all five and get bogged down in all of that. Do you have a process that you go through to determine what to work on next?

You know, that was something that vexed me for a long time. But when I was in Los Angeles and John Carlton was working with me, we came up with what we call Operation Money Suck and, and we would just sit there and think what thing can we work on that’s gonna make us the most money in the least amount of time and that’s it. That’s what we go for. And I think that’s the best way to prioritize there is.

Okay, um, now. Here’s a guy. Gary, there’s so much stuff out there, I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. Even if my budget was $5,000.00 a month. I don’t know what’s good and what’s not. This host or that host. This auto responder or that one. This mentor or that one. The dumb webs, this dumb website or that one. The deal of the century or maybe all of the next 300 deals.

Bottom line, this is BS, so guess what? I’m not buying anything. If I do the next offer will be better. More expensive and useful bonuses will come with the third. And, but then two or three will come with promises to spill their guts and give you free all the tools they ever bought or stole for $699.00.

But if you wait three weeks they will sell you all that plus all their buddy **** for the special price of $4.00. Man, it’s like incoming fire and nowhere to hide. Maybe if I took a vacation when I returned you might send me back the money for the newsletter that I can now get for free.

Michel: ****.

Gary: This is the ****. You know, um, I don’t, I don’t think there is an answer to that question. Um –

Michel: I think you did answer it already before when you said that you know, that the people that actually do make it are the people that spend some money on their own self-education.

Gary: Yeah.

Michel: And, you know, whether something becomes free in the future is not an important thing because the fact is if you buy something right now, and I’m not saying for, for, for buying stuff that has been pirated. To me, people who actually buy products and then go on E-bay and then sell it and, and, and actually willfully defraud people or willfully steal stuff, that’s, that’s, that’s a whole different idea. And, and, and, and many of these suck shit by the way.

But if you actually have a product that later on becomes free, um, that’s fine, because at least you were the first one to buy the product and start putting it into use and if you’re not making enough money from that to buy the “next best thing,” then there’s something wrong someplace.

Gary: Yeah. And you know what you need to understand is that you’re living in the world you’re living in and stop being a whiner about it. You know, ah, two days ago, I, I, I have a couple of cell phones and I use prepaid cell phones. And, ah, I can usually fill them up by just using my credit card but, you know, they, Cingular bought Bell South, they made it more difficult so I found a retail location and I wanted to buy, put $100.00 in prepaid minutes on my card and they, they asked me, do you want to spend $20.00, $60.00 or $100.00. I said, I want to spend $100.00.

They said fine, that will be $110.00. I didn’t even ask them why it was $110.00. I, you know, it’s not the clerk’s fault, it’s whatever, you know. I mean, it, somebody came up with a concept I think that is a good one. Everybody has a mental limit of money they’re, they, they’re not going to think about. You know, I mean, ah, you know, if I want something.

Here’s an obvious one, an example. If I want something and it costs a dime, I’m not going to think about whether I should be paying a nickel for it. Ah, and, you know, there, there’s a certain point; you should establish your point where you’re not going to waste a lot of time and energy, some dollar amount, ah, that, um, the, ah, on that. The um, I want to, um, I’m about wrapped up with these questions. Do you have any more?

Michel: Oh, yeah, I, I, actually, I’m getting some more right now as we speak. Um, didn’t you, first of all, I can ask *** you a few more but did you want to add anything else?

Gary: Yeah, I do. I do. Um, I’d like to switch to something kind of serious for a moment. Um, a lot of people ask the question about what is the difference between writing for women and as opposed to writing for men. And it’s just a variation of my customer’s are different.

What is the difference between writing for rocket scientists and people who like to buy Rap music? Ah, what is the difference between writing to carpenters and for people who are writing to computer geeks?

The truth is there is no difference whatsoever to writing any of the group. What you need to do is to be imparting information that’s important to those people in the clearest way humanly possible.

And I’m going to give you a real good example of that. I’m going to guess that most of the people on this telephone call are not interested in knitting. So I want you to imagine that I wrote the most brilliant add you can ever imagine on the subject of knitting and you’re reading in USA Today or someplace and I offer a great price which is a fraction of where you buy it otherwise and the copy is scintillating.

Probably no matter how good that copy is, you’re not going to buy the knitting machine. In fact, you’re not even going to read the copy. Now let’s, let’s switch to another example. Let’s say that you’re a man and your wife is pregnant and she’s pretty close to being due and you have to be someplace; you just have to be. But you have your cell phone at the ready and you, you have her or someone else standing by to tell you if the, if your, your baby is being born. And lo and behold…

Part #4

Gary: Your wife has triplets. Now somebody comes up to you and explains, tells you your wife has triplets. Is there any way that that piece of information could be transmitted to you in a way that wouldn’t be of interest to you? I mean, if they use broken English, bad grammar, if they use sign language.

However it was, if it was, if your wife had unexpectedly had triplets I think you’d be interested in the message. And, and, and that, that’s a point, uh, I think it’s really important ****.

By the way, someone else asked a question uh, and I, I don’t see the letter here, but it’s is a really good question and, and I want to answer that because I think I have the answer to a question.

You know one of the things I preach and, and other good marketing people preach is sell to a starving crowd and the, the question was how do you find new starving crowds? Uhm, and uhm, I’ll tell you the best way I know is to visit a big bookstand and look at the magazines and you’re going to find out that there are magazines that you wouldn’t even believe and really.

Now I want to tell you something about magazines that people don’t know it. The, like if you’re getting mailing lists of magazines newsstands sold magazine mailing list are much more valuable than subscription sold mailing list because you might subscribe to a magazine because you, you got a free. Are you there Mike?

Michel: Yeah, yeah.

Gary: You got a free walkie talkie with it. Uh, or you might subscribe to a magazine you’re still getting three years later that you’ve lost interest but if you’re buying a magazine at the newsstand uh, you know that is because you are really interested in it and as equally important you’re interested right now. Now for example, there are several magazines on the subject of watches. Some people are just freaks about watches.

Uh, a few years ago there was a magazine phenomena, it’s died out now, called “Cigar Affectianato” for all of a sudden people came in heat about smoking cigars and couldn’t know enough about them.

The, the things that are, that are kind of surprising for example, uhm, the uhm, I don’t want to insult anybody but uh, if you got to hotels now and you watch the television programs, the paid programming 70 percent of all paid programming is adult programming. Uh, I will tell you another thing that’s kind of interesting that I didn’t know.

You know hip hop music, the kind that that person hates? Do you know that, that the sales of hip hop music is more than all other forms of music combined? More than rock and roll, folk, classical, everything. Hip hop music sells all of them put together. Here’s another kind of thing that’s kind of interesting. You know these, I don’t even know much about them, but you know these games you play with the joystick on your television or you computer?

Michel: Hm mm.

Gary: Do you know that that industry is bigger by far than the entire **** movie and, and music industry and, and the way you can find these things out is you know, any, any time there becomes a large enough group and people and I don’t think it has to be very large. Somebody puts out a magazine about it.

And that’s a very valuable tip for making money because you can jump on those magazines, probably advertise in them for chump change and if they’ve got a mailing list, you’ve got a little gold niche that you can go find. Now, before we close Mike there is something else that I do want to say but I want to have all the questions finished first. So if you’ve got more let me know.

Michel: I, I, I do. Did you want to finish first or did you want me to answer some of the questions — –

Gary: — – Well, well, no I have something to say toward the, oh, there’s one thing I do want to say now that I, uhm, I’m working on one or two newsletters that require a lot of research and those newsletters are about, I am single handedly going to reduce international, uh, intellectual theft on the Internet by a double digit percentage and I am going to reduce Internet theft, theft of my intellectual properties by a hundred percent and I know exactly how to do that and I think you’ll be happy to know that probably.

And I also am going to uh, do something, I, I’m going to end what people think they have a free right to say anything they want about anybody on an Internet forum. After I write my newsletters everybody, to be quite frankly, is gonna be scared shitless and rightfully so to do that.

And I want to tell you something and this is not what I’m wanting to say at the end but uh, you know, I’ve always been pretty visible for a long time in the field of direct marketing. But, lately, my, my visibility has gone up astronomically. Uh, and, I couldn’t figure it out because I haven’t been putting that many newsletters up or anything and uhm, I.

You know what it is? It’s because of the blogs.

And, and I type in Gary Halbert blogs or forums and like there’s a thousand groups of people out there who are devoted to talking about me. And I’ve been going on those blogs and some of the, I’ve learned some amazing stuff about myself. Uhm, it, you know, uhm, I learned that uhm, I, I think you know Frank Kern. I don’t know him. But someone said I had written a long, teamed up with him and written a long scammy letter with Frank Kern. There’s a whole big dialogue in it.

I don’t even know Frank Kern. I think I met him once at a seminar but I don’t even know him. Uhm, also, John Carlton sent me a link I should go to and this web site had a big headline that said “If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard from Gary Halbert lately it’s because he’s in prison”.

Michel: Oh yeah, I remember that.

Gary: And, and then there’s another one. There’s a big dialogue on this thing about uhm, uh. Do you know that I own the, the, the web site, radarpark.com?

Michel: No.

Gary: Now, I have no idea what that site is about. I think it’s about some kind of device you put on your car where you back up into something and if you’re about to hit it, it gives you an audio signal.

But you should have seen the dialogue between this guy who really owned the site and another guy. He doesn’t know me, the guy that owns this site, and he’s trying to explain to this other guy that he doesn’t know me and this guy won’t give up. And he says I know this is a Gary Halbert letter. Well, I’ve never heard of radarpark.com. And then there’s something else Mike.

You know, uhm, a guy was writing about how I had an idea at 9:00 in the morning one time and I had turned it into $50, $250 million profit by noon. Now you know how I’m getting old Mike?

Michel: No.

Gary: It used to be that every time I got sent to prison or made a quarter of a million dollars in three hours I would remember it. And now I don’t even remember this stuff, you know? And what’s, what’s funny is almost everything written about me is positive, some of it’s negative but it’s all tortured. It’s all convoluted. You know? And uhm, Joe Polish one time said Gary, there’s, there’s a whole uh, forum about you in Bill Meyers’ web site. Don’t you want to go read it?

And he couldn’t believe I didn’t want to go read it. And I said now. And he said why? And I said because these people don’t know anything about me. It doesn’t matter if they say anything good. You, you know, people say a lot of great things about me but you know what? I know this is hard to believe but I really didn’t make a quarter of a million dollars in three hours unless my memory has failed more than I think it has failed, you know?

And the, the, the guy that, that said I was in prison? I called him up and I said this is Gary Halbert. I’m calling from Miami and uhm. He said oh hi Gary. Good to talk to you. And I said well, don’t you wonder how I’m talking to you since I’m in prison? He says oh, yeah. I said why did you put this on your website **** prison. He said, well he had bought the franchise rights to, to some newsletter and this was a feature article of the newsletter, okay?

So I, I had a little talk with him and I gave him a picture of what the rest of his life, how, how it was gonna play out be, if I went back to his site in 60 minutes and my name was even mentioned on there, and he was just a young kid and, so I went back an hour later but it was down. But you know I can take almost any kind of sling or insult but I don’t want people saying I’m in prison or you know, I had sex with a farm animal or something like that. Or, or even that I made $250 million dollars in three hours and, and I didn’t and uh.

Uhm, oh yeah and another thing I want to say because I am researching, so much research is going into this because I think, don’t you think that’s a pretty important endeavor to end intellectual theft on the Net and stop, stop slander? You know as justice learned in the hand said freedom of speech does not give you the right to yell fire in a crowded theater and I’ll tell you another thing.

When you, I’ll tell you something that most people don’t know. I can write a letter to you Mike and say any negative thing about you that I want and there, there, there won’t be any consequences to me because I haven’t injured you unless you show that letter to somebody else. However, if I write that letter to you and carbon copy three other people on that you’ve got me for slander and you can sue my ass off.

The same thing is a forum is not a private dialogue. You can email me if you don’t carbon anything, anything about somebody if you want to, to a friend but if you carbon copy it or you say it on a forum, it better be true.

And I’m gonna tell you. There’s gonna come a point very shortly in time. Anybody that says anything negative about me that’s not true I am going to sue them and ruin their life not because I, mainly because I want to teach you and everybody else how to do it. Well, in the meantime, since I’m doing that I thought I don’t want to neglect my readers. And of everything I’ve ever created that, that people have thanked me for, it’s the boron letters. And the boron letters are a collection of letters that I wrote to my son that have been turned into a book. And it’s a, it’s a 181 page book and I think it sells for $297.00.

Michel: I look at, I’m looking at my copy right now uh, Gary.

Gary: Oh, okay. And those, those, that book has become a, a cult favorite. There are guys who keep that book with them wherever they travel in the world. And anyway, I have uhm, I have a, a strange belief about something and I’ll tell you something. I wrote a health report for men that, that would improve their health a lot. I, because I’ve learned something about that and my secretary Teresa, my trusty assistant for almost 20 years was crying when she typed that and I said why are you crying? She said because there isn’t anything like that for women.

So I sold it for $197.00 and I sold a bunch of them and then I thought, you know, if this is helping so many people I said anybody who wants to can reproduce this as long as they don’t sell it and use it as a premium or disseminate if the information of that want is that valuable anything I create, I, I have a tendency of giving it away.

So you can, if you search for the Gary Halbert Health Report uhm, you will find it on the net and I actually wrote down the address where it is and I don’t have it right now. Kaleb if you can hear me and you can see, and you have that address, you can bring it over, but let me tell you what I’m getting at.

The boron letters? I forget how many letters there are but I’m gonna consider each letter a chapter and starting next Tuesday if you go to my site I am going to put up a new chapter every week, free. You can just go to my site, read the boron letters, Chapter 1, the born letters, Chapter 3.

Next week the boron letters, Chapter 3. And I hope you enjoy them and I hope you download them and so do you have, okay Caleb doesn’t have the address, but if you search around for the Gary Halbert Health Report somebody will find it and maybe they can disseminate that address to the rest of your group. And should I say my final thing before I take anymore questions?

Michel: Well I’m going to answer just two very quick questions if I may Gary.

Gary: Okay.

Michel: Two people have asked, asked, one person asked how do you find a starving crowd on the Internet and here’s some of the tools I used. First of all your very, very best tool is the Google search engine. But more specifically a tool that Google actually offers. A lot of people know about this but some people don’t.

It’s called the Google sandbox. If you actually go to Google, I don’t actually have the exact address but if you go to Google and you type in Google sandbox it will give you the page at which this is located and what you do is you can actually type in keywords and it will give you a list of not only how many times a particular keyword has been searched but it’ll give you variations of that keyword.

And that will give you also a good idea of, of different types of niche markets for that particular category or product. And sometimes the most profitable products are usually the niche market ones. And I’m a big fan of niche marketing.

In fact this is the second tool that I would suggest highly is called Niche Finder and the web site that you can actually, I think there’s a free demo but you have to buy the product, it’s a software program, it’s Nichemarketresearch.com, N-I-C-H-E marketresearch.com.

Gary: Get that Caleb and look up Boker.

Michel: Niche Finder, here’s what it does, it will scour all the major search engines for keywords. It will give you variations of those keywords. It will give you in a column format the number of times a specific keyword was searched for and it will give you a number of how many web sites actually cater to that keyword.

So the bottom line is you will not only find a supply but also demand. You want to find a niche that has some kind of supply because when there’s a keyword that’s been searched for a lot but there’s no demand, there’s no supply for it maybe that’s telling you something. Maybe it’s because nobody’s buying that particular niche.

But if you have a keywordthat’s been searched for, and you can have keywords like 10, 20, 30,000 times searched in the last let’s say day or week and there’s you know maybe 1,000, 2,000 web sites, it will actually give you a really good idea of supply and demand for a specific keyword and the variations, a whole bunch of variations of the keyword. This is a tool I use a lot. It’s called Niche Finder.

The second question, and this is the last one, is some people are asking how do you do teleseminars like you do Michel with Gary. Well, there are two ways that you can go by this.

The first one is that if you actually do a teleseminarlike the one I’m doing right now with Gary there is a wonderful lady, her name is Shannon Seek, she’s the one who actually takes care of my teleseminars. And her web site is rentabridge.com and you can actually rent a certain amount of lines from very small conferences to very larges ones like this from you know five people to sometimes 1,000 and you, you, you pay for the seminar of course but you do advertise it and they have a special code like you have pressed yourselves whenever you entered this particular conference room. And then you have people you know who are calling in from a host code number like what Gary and I have done.

And then we give the seminary. You also have maybe discussions. If you have very small seminars, I couldn’t do it tonight because we’re packed with all our lines busy and I’m actually getting emails right now with people actually begging to get on the call and they can’t get in because all the lines are taken, but you have the ability sometimes to do very smaller teleseminars and the ability to open up the lines and then ask questions and all that stuff.

The second way to do this if you’re doing it and one person actually asks more specific question as how do you post it online like you did at your web site Michel. Well, there’s a service I highly, highly recommend. One of my best friends in this business, his name is Armon Morin. And Armand has a service called Audiogenerator.com, audiogenerator.com.

It’s a monthly fee but here’s what it does. You can actually record online with a microphone or call a phone number, a 1-800 number, and you can actually record either a small even testimonials because a lot of people use testimonials under cell numbers, that’s how it’s done. Or a conference like the one that we’re doing and it will encode it and put it under server, give you a very small nip it code that you just put on your web site and there you go.

What I do for example very often is when I do very quick phone calls with people then they’re not large because you know some of these calls are really, really large. But if we do a very small phone call I have it three- wayed with Audio Generator or I record the call with the service like for example a person who is actually recording the call tonight, his name is Michael McCoy and his web site is actually you can reach him at his email, [email protected].

He will actually record like he’s doing right now for me. And what I do is I upload this file to Audiogenerator.com and it will give me a nip it a code that automatically gives me the ability to put it on a web site very, very easily. And anyway, that’s, that’s all I wanted to say Gary is just because those are questions that I’m getting a lot.

Gary: Okay, well, let me finish up what I want to say. You know I want to go back to the question of writing for different markets and I’m telling you there’s no difference. And a lot of people talk about ask well how do you write for a women’s market, is it different.

The writing is no different but you really, women are really very different creatures from men and you, you need as best you can to understand the female market if you’re working the female market. But I want to make a couple of observations about the differences between males and females at least as they pertain to marketing.

I think women have had terrible obstacles to overcome living in America compared to men and it was not long ago where if a woman worked in an office you know she would be treated sort of like a toy. You know the good old boy would be at meeting and a guy would say hey hun would you get us all some coffee and sugar and then give her a little pat on the behind and send her on her way and that’s, that’s, that was very demeaning. And that doesn’t happen much anymore.

It could cost you $1 million to do that now. And I think that’s, that is just because I don’t think any, I don’t like to see that kind of injustice or indignity perpetuated on any group of people. And, but I’m going to tell you one basic difference between men and women and I’m not trying to be salacious here at all but I’m trying to make a point. And it’s been scientifically validated that men think about sex several times a minute and women think about sex far less than that. I think most of the women I know think about it about twice a year but anyway that’s just my story.

But anyhow, and I’m going to tell you something that I think almost everything a man says to a woman, you know he says you’re into knitting, I like knitting too, can be translated as I’d like to have sex with you. Or if, if a man says gee that’s a pretty dress it can be translated into I’d like to have sex with you.

And that is, and I was talking to John Carlton and I said you know how bad it must be to be a woman and know that that’s true. And I said I’m going to tell you in a way that you can understand how painful that’s got to be. Imagine, and you imagine this Mike that after you meet new people in your life and they’re befriending you and you get interested in them and, and in every case you find out what their bottom line is is they want you to write a free sales letter for them. You know I mean that would begin to jade you would it not?

Michel: Oh yeah.

Gary: And that I think is happens to women is that men fake interest in other things and it’s basically a lie and we’re wired that way. Well I want to, I want to make a comment about that because it can go a couple of ways. You know if you are in the public figure, in the public eye at all, if you, if you’re on stage or if you are a strong personality on teleconferences like this, there is, there’s a certain type of women that are attracted to what they perceive as a man with a strong personality or the guy that’s on top of the crowd or everything.

And I’ve, I’ve had that experience at seminars that after I came off the stage that women would be very interested in me and sometimes in a very salacious way and you, what you’ve always got to remember if any of you guys are doing seminars or teleseminars is that is not indicative that you have a lot of sex appeal because what they’re not interested in you, they’re interested in something that they believe you represent which is power and intelligence and humor.

And here’s the rub with that, what they are seeing you is they’re seeing you at your best doing what you do best and if you end up with a relationship with one of those women they’re going to find out that you’re not so good once you’re home and they’re living with you for a few days.

You know they’re going to find out that maybe you shine when you’re standing up in front of an audience you know selling hardware widgets but that when you’re off that stage you know, there’s a lot of guys that became famous as movie stars and all the women swoon over them and they wonder well why are they swooning over me now and when I could walk down Ocean Avenue and nobody would even notice me yesterday.

And it’s because, it’s not because of you it is because of phenomena, a sort of cache that, that excites some women you know that’s associated with a little bit of fame. And I want to say something about that from the heart because I’m kind of a good-sized fish in a microscopic pool and some of that stuff happens to me and it never goes anywhere. I always shine it on because I know for what it is. I mean I know I am not really an attractive guy to women.

Believe me, women don’t come up to me on the street and say hi I’d like to get to know you or something.

But you have one woman on your side and I, I don’t know her full name and apparently she was attracted to how she thought I was. But when I started getting the emails and they were kind of salacious I do mind that. And I think every women on this listening to this thing will agree that you know it’s, it’s not so bad, a man isn’t just a slime ball when he asks you to go out but when you say no, no means no.

And I don’t know what it is with this woman, I don’t know who she is, one of her emails she explained to met hat she was trying to delivery a subliminal message that she was a very sexually interested woman and here’s my point, you know saying things, negative things or stuff about me in a forum is one thing but sending me emails because you want to have some kind of relationship with me or an affair with me and you know maybe the first time it’s okay but no means no.

For the record I am very much in love and very, very faithful and monogamous to my, to my girlfriend. I think she’s wonderful. And I really think that people do not have the right to send sexually oriented material even if they’re offering what they think something you would be interested to other people and I would like it to stop.

And I’m not going to identify this woman but I do, I think she’ll know who I’m talking about. And I just want to say this, I don’t want anymore emails from you, I’m not interested in any women except the one I have, I am totally faithful and no means no. Don’t send me anymore emails or I will put some pain in your brain. I’m sorry but that’s it.

I don’t want anymore of that you know and I, I think that you know I’ve welcomed banter back and forth between me and other men and me and other women and all of this stuff but there is a line and I don’t think that line should be crossed.

And that ties in with what I’m working on on, I guess sending someone an email like that couldn’t be construed the same thing as intellectual theft or slander because they’re sending it only to you but you know I, I think respect for everybody and dignity should be something that’s important. And you know some people just demean themselves by their activities and I hate to see that.

You know these calls and these forums, I’m not making any money from doing this, Mike isn’t making any money from doing this and, and you know, and, and some of the other comments you know I just shine them on but they’re comments from people like from guys that you know I got one email about a guy bitching about the way Mike asked me questions you know.

Oh they’re getting millions of dollars worth of information and me and Mike stumble for half a second and this loser doesn’t like the way Mike asked me questions or I stumble for a minute and lose my way and forget to finish a sentence and they call me on that. And you know you need to develop a mindset where you take, you just need to look at the beginning.

You know Ernest Hemmingway said something about women that I think should apply to almost everything in life. He said the best thing I’ve learned about women, the only thing I’ve learned is to remember them on the best day that you knew them and forget the rest.

And you know if there’s an author that you like you should remember those good books he read and not dwell on the fact that it turned out he was a drug addict you know. It just because that’s not a factor in your life. And I don’t know if I’m making myself clear or not but you know.huh?

Michel: Yeah you’re making yourself perfectly clear.

Gary: Yeah I just, I mean I don’t welcome, I’m not interested in sex with anybody besides you know the relationship, outside my relationship. I don’t welcome those kind of comments. I don’t think they’re funny. I don’t think that the emails are exciting or anything.

I think it’s in really bad taste and I just want to say no means no. And I, I am, I don’t think anybody else on the call’s going to know who I’m talking about and I don’t want them to but I think the person who’s doing this will know what I’m talking about and I want it to stop. That’s my peace.

Michel: Gary I want to thank you so much. You know besides this we’re ending on a bit of a somber tone and I, and I appreciate where you’re coming from because that is kind of hard to deal with but I can tell you that in the last two hours you’ve given so much great information to me anyways and I do hope that you have taken a lot of notes down because Gary has opened up a mass reservoir of million dollar ideas and strategies to me anyways. And I really hope that’s the same for you.

Gary: Hey you want to hear something that’s kind of funny?

Michel: Sure.

Gary: Listen, listen to this. Mark Joyner decided to retire from the Internet business I guess. And he went and lived for a year in New Zealand. And he came back to the States to do a consulting job for I think a guy named Mike Chin or Tommy Chin or something like that.

Michel: Mike Chin yeah.

Gary: Mike Chin. And they, he was staying at the Mandarin Hotel which is the best hotel, the best five-star hotel in Miami and you know I mean I can see it looking out my window just about. And so we met, we met over at a place called Bayside, the Latin caf‚, and we go to talking. I, I had no idea who Mark Joyner was.

I just heard his name you know. Well it turns out that he is the first real Internet guru or at least one of them and he wrote the first e-book or at least one of them. It was about search engine optimization. I guess it was downloaded over a million times. And he and I got to talking and he was so interested in what I had to say and I was so interested in what he had to say.

You know it was like a high tech guy talking to a guy that’s as old as a fossil you know. And he had, he had a satellite linked Internet connected PDA and he’s punching as fast as he can as I’m talking into his stylizes and I’m taking notes with a ballpoint pen on napkins and on the back of the notes and all the rest of this stuff. And I don’t know if we’ll ever do it but we thought I’ll bet you if we had a seminarwith me and him together I don’t think there’s any question on online or offline marketing we couldn’t answer.

You know we’d have guys like you there, guys like Carlton there and I, I don’t know if we’ll ever do that. But I think if we do it’ll be, it’ll be funny. But I want to tell you something else funny. I’m working with a guy now and he is actually a rocket scientist, an honest-to-god rocket scientist.

He’s an engineer who worked for NASA for 20 years up at Cape Caravel. And his wife lives in Miami Beach and is a producer for very expensive commercials like Coca-Cola and stuff. So after 20 years he came, he decided to come down here and get into direct marketing. And he floundered around until he met me and now we’ve kind of teamed up.

Well, then there’s another lady down here that I’ve written a promotion for if you ever want to see one of my promotions go to zapwrinkles.com. That’s appearing in newspaper ads all over the place. It’s for a great cosmetic cream called Deception. And well anyway, but I wrote it for Julie Brumlik and she lives for computers and she’s wired in you know. And so we end up going to a place called Pink on Collins Avenue down, and it’s a real popular eating spot. This is a couple weeks ago.

You know and there’s Julie on her wireless computer because you know this is a wi-fi hot spot. And there’s Mark with his new PDA you know that’s Internet connected you know and can bounce signals back from Mars and tell you what the humidity is in Paris and he’s jabbing away on this and my other friend is on a cell phone.

And I said damn you people I’m sitting here with four people and I’m alone you know. You know they’re all sitting there in these, these wireless places and all this stuff and you know I, I, I, the way the world is going it’s, you know what the biggest thing is you can buy with your credit card now, other credit cards.

You know in South Beach you can buy a parking meter credit card. You can go to public grocery department and use your credit card to buy a parking meter credit card and they got a slot for it. You know you can buy a credit card instead of giving money at a place for sunbath. I used to go to Kinko’s and hand them a bunch of papers and say make me ten copies of each of these and some pretty girl would go make it and come back and smile at me, ask me for money, I’d give it to her and go out. You go, you go to Kinko’s in Miami now, oh for your convenience you do it yourself now and so you have to go to a machine and put in your credit card that gives you a Kinko’s credit card.

Now that’s a learning curve for me. Guys like you it would be nothing. That’s a learning curve. Then to go over and make a copy you got to use the credit card in the Kinko copy machine. You got to learn how to do that and then you have to learn how to work the Kinko copier you know.

And the, and in my own building, I live in kind of a skyscraper building, now I live in a fairly big apartment but the smaller apartments don’t have washers and dryers, you can’t put money in the washer and dryers. You have to go down to the mailroom, put your credit card into a machine that lets you use your credit card that lets you work with your washer and dryer. You know and I just, I just want to bitch about this. The world is passing me by. Well no anyway.

Michel: You made a great point because whenever we were talking tonight about people who were, the very small amount of people who really didn’t get it and they were bitching and complaining about stuff, even though you might be, I consider you Gary the techno-phobic kind of guy and, and I guess Mike Joyner as a techno-file.

The fact that you were both eager to learn from each other proves what the students should be doing. Whether you know, rather than whining and complaining they should be learning. They should be taking every you know finding the one good thing, the one good idea, whether they have to pay for it, whether it’s you know even a free call.

Gary: Yeah but I’ll tell you something else by God there should be a law passed that nothing else is allowed to be invented you know. With, there was a comedian, a female comedian years ago said I’m not going to buy anymore music until they promise not to invent anything else you know.

And now they invent, and everything has, and I was in Circuit City today and I’m looking at all this stuff and it’s all great but it all has, you know I bought a little, a little tape recorder the size of, of a piece of a pack of gum. It’s just great. And I opened the manual and I just went into homage. You know do you know the first thing the manual says, how to set the clock and calendar. I don’t want this thing to be a clock and calendar. I just want to tape record stuff on it you know. I don’t want my blender to be a CD player you know. Anyway, that’s, that’s just my own personal stuff but.

Michel: On that note we passed the top of the hour so I have to close it out now. I want to say Gary thank you gosh again you’ve over-delivered and I want to thank everybody who are on this call too and, and please if you have some comments or any questions maybe I want, I don’t want to have a full drawn out question again like I said at the beginning of this call.

But you can send them to me or send them at [email protected]. I will forward Gary all the good stuff and just keep the bad stuff for myself. By the way, I did get one question and the guy said you know he’d been a loser all his life, he’s not making anything and he’d been to other gurus and he found out I was the source and his just question is he wanted to know the fastest and easiest way that he could become a multimillionaire or even a billionaire you know.

And I decided I’d defer that question to you.

Gary: Well find the most richest bank around, buy yourself a 44 magnum.

Michel: At any rate, folks thank you so much Gary, thank you and we’ll see you next time.

Gary: Okay. Goodbye folks, I hope you found it entertaining and substantial. Bye bye.

Michel: Bye.

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By Michel Fortin

Michel Fortin is a digital marketing advisor specializing in SEO, communications, and strategy. For over 30 years, he helped hundreds of thousands of clients increase their visibility and their revenue. He is also the VP of Digital Marketing at Musora, the company behind award-winning platforms Drumeo and Pianote. He is the author of the More Traffic Memo™ SEO email newsletter.