The View From Action Central

So… I’m on the phone the other day with madman genius Gary Halbert, and we’re shucking and jiving, laughing so hard we’re winded, and then so deadly serious we whisper like spies… talking about life, talking about business, talking about things so far behind the scenes they would cause rookie marketers to swoon with shock. When I finally hang up — and start scribbling notes, cuz we covered some very intriguing ground about making money on the Web — I realize the afternoon is completely blown.

Now, I don’t work very many hours a day — it’s one of the big bonuses of working at home, and knowing the shortcuts after a long career at the top of the game. But those hours I do pull are often filled with amazing adventure for a businessman.

Earlier, I also had long phone chats with Web guru John Reese, David Deutsch (a top writer with 3 current controls for Boardroom), and a couple of other “players” whose names you wouldn’t recognize (but who are movers and shakers nevertheless). I also traded email contact with Bill Glazer (Dan Kennedy’s partner), Michel Fortin (the “Success Doctor”), Gary Bencivenga (probably the most feared pro copywriter alive), and a dozen other mavens, honchos and evil geniuses of the direct response world.

Why am I sharing this? Simple. I suddenly realized that my humble little office here has become a sort of “Action Central”, one of the few connecting pieces in the marketing game where the hottest and most cutting-edge info often flows through first. This is not because I’m special. I’ve just been around a very long time, and I’ve earned the trust and respect of people. I am privy to the hidden marketing world most folks don’t even know exists.

And that’s the reason I’ve started this big damn blog. Every month, I have stuff left over that I wanted to include in my Rant newsletter, but ran out of room. By the time I start writing the next Rant, I’ve got another fresh pile of cool secrets that often bumps whatever I was gonna talk about… and that means the backlog of ideas, stories, and insight just gets bigger.