Part surname of the greatest copywriter HALbert (no offence), and part roBOT.

HAL was actually in a science fiction movie…

Some people even think that a certain company are strange cos’ their initials are a letter after each in the alphabet!!! H(I)A(B)L(M)……

Anyway, I’ve had a bit too much wine and I gotta go listen (again) to some Guns n Roses and Lynyrd Skynyrd…

Keep rockin’ John, your words ‘inspire the fire within’…. (By the way, that was MY line…).

Cheers John,

Col

However your message and intent is right on as always.

John

Great post! as always.

Roy Furr “…Why’s the text on these comments so damn small? ….”

Answer: The comment text is currently set to font-size 9px(really small). To correct this, have you geek change the font-size inside the css class: .comtxt to 10px or 11px.

Stay Frosty
Wes

Technicians will always be led by strategists. That’s why CEOs make the big bucks and owners out-earn employees.

I’m young enough (and from a tech-savvy enough family) that I’ve had computers around me since the day I was born. (A month before I was born, my computer programmer mom invested in a top-of-the-line Apple IIe.)

I feel blessed and cursed by this.

Blessed because almost anything tech comes naturally to me — I’ve even leveraged this into my first copywriting job with a high tech company.

Cursed because this damn technology swallows you whole if you try to stay on the cutting edge. (Especially when you suffer from a bit of ADHD and easily find yourself knee-deep in worthless news about technology that won’t be publicly available for another three years, with a day gone by before you even notice you got off track!)

Dinobot seems to be the calm in the chaos — staying on top of technology enough to know what’s possible in the right (hire-able) hands, yet staying out of it enough to maintain some perspective. It’s a concept I’ve been settling on recently, without the $60,000 word to describe it.

Knowing this deep inside for a while now, I feel fortunate that I’ve been open to the idea of learning from the old-farts.

I’ve learned classic salesmanship.

I’ve trodded through the dusty 1920’s language of the Robert Collier Letter Book to pick up timeless sales appeals.

And I understand advanced concepts like building out AdWords systems, doing Taguchi multivariate testing, and even how to build a complete e-commerce site from the ground up in an afternoon (with the help of templating systems, of course!).

I’m working my way up to being a Dinobot to be reckoned with!

It’s nice to hear an old pro who’s been in the trenches for years saying this is the way to go. It’s validating.

Frosty as ever,

Roy Furr

P.S. — Why’s the text on these comments so damn small? I mean, I’m young and hip and haven’t lost my eyesight yet, but my love for your blog posts and reading and responding to comments is gonna push me over the edge if you don’t do something about it!

A few years ago, in what was either a moment of insanity or a misguided method of repair I did a full time (3 year!) degree in Computer Technology… this in itself is an interesting concept because technology is changing so fast that at the end of year 3 the people just starting the same degree in year 1 are learning totally different material…

Anyway, I was an ‘adult student’ and the oldest student in the class (which made me dangerously motivated as I was one of the few people who actually knew what they were giving up to be there) and I graduated top of the class (we call it dux down here). Now, here comes my point… there were kids who graduated with me who knew more about technology the day they STARTED the degree than I knew the day I finished… and I bet them all . You see I knew how to play the game, I knew how to really HEAR the question and COMMUNICATE the answer… I became so good at this that I could have in depth technical conversations with tutors and not really understand a word I was saying – I ‘SOLD’ them the answers.

And this is what I really learnt… technology is just a tool, no more, no less, a means to an end… it didn’t really matter how much I knew about the tool, all I really had to know was what it could do for me – everything else was small stuff. I DO need to know how to incorporate new software into my business, I DON’T need to know how to write it.

So yes, I imagine that I definitely qualify as a Dinobot, and a successful one at that, but you see I have had a secret weapon…. before I even started the technology degree I had already graduated from the Gary Halbert/John Carlton University of communication and marketing!

For this I am eternally grateful.

John Carlton replies:

Karen, I would NEVER bet against you, on anything. You possess too much brain power and too many fundamental skills. You’ve led an amazing life (guys, she sailed across the Atlantic in a two-crewperson sailboat!), and I would be astonished if you don’t yet have another dozen challenges in your future that you’ll pounce on with glee…

Sometimes, just staying true to the goal of insisting on an interesting life, lived with gusto, is enough to open the door to opportunities most folks cannot even dream of. I firmly believe the Dinobots will rule the world until forced by biology to yield the till…

One “thing” I would do, John, is “split” your “world of flesh and blood”:

“It’s a new life form — there is now a world of flesh and blood, and a world of virtual data.”

The virtual data world is CyberSpace of course, but how about defining the world of flesh and blood as BeingSpace (what happens in the individual’s Being) and adding the distinction RealSpace for the world outside the Being, to include relationships of course, but also anything natural, like the environment and biosphere etc.?

That’s what we do down our way )

I can honestly say that I think I have the ‘Dino’ part down. My real problem is with the ‘ultra-modern tech’ stuff.

I thank you for furthering my education!

Deb