Monday, 7:55pm
Reno, NV
“But it’s all right… in fact it’s a gas…” (The Stones, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash“)

Howdy…

Nobody’s ever asked me to give the commencement speech for a graduating class.

That’s probably a good thing.  I’m pretty pissed off at the education system these days, and I might cause a small riot with the rant I’d surely deliver.

See, I have a university “education”.  A BA in psychology.  (The BA stands for, I believe, “bullshit amassed”.)  I earned it several decades ago…

… and while I had a good time in college (height of the sex revolution, you know, with a soundtrack that is now called “classic rock”), made some lifelong friends, and got a good look at higher learning from the inside…

… that degree provided zilch preparation for the real world.  Didn’t beef me up for any job, didn’t give me insight to how things worked, didn’t do squat for me as an adult.

I waltzed off-campus and straight into the teeth of the worst recession since the Depression (Nixon’s post-Vietnam wage-freeze, record unemployment, gas-lines, near-total economic turmoil)…

… so, hey, I should have a little empathy for today’s grads, right?

Naw.

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Thursday, 8:06pm
Reno, NV
“Here come Johnny Yen again…” (Iggy Pop, “Lust For Life”)

Howdy…

Oh, my God!

They killed the sales letter again!

Will this horror never stop?

Actually, you can relax.  Just like Kenny in South Park, the traditional sales letter is on some kind of perverse “Permanent Hit List”…

… where every marketer trying to claim he just invented a new fad stands astride the image of a quaking letter…

… and slays it.

Huzzah! Death to you, vile long-copy sales letter!  Take that… and that…

… and that.

This latest round is clever as hell, too.  The new trend is putting your sales letter in a video, and reading along with it.

The irony:  The dude selling you the “Magic Box” product that kills the sales letter forever…

… uses a sales letter to do the killing.

Hey — don’t get me wrong.  I love video.  Been using it in marketing since… well, since it was actual videotape on reels.  (Yeah, shocking, I know.  We were so backward in the last century.)

In fact, the “Magic Box” product I’m talking about is, I’m guessing, an excellent solution for many marketers who can’t figure out how to make a video sales letter work.

And all’s fair in love, war and advertising.  So all the dudes out there telling you the sales letter is dead, and you can sell without selling, and the Web has changed everything…

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Thursday, 7:41pm
Reno, NV
“Please allow me to introduce myself…” (Stones, Sympathy For The Devil)

Howdy…

This is one of those lessons that arrived accidentally…

… and I had to stop and ruminate about it for a while before it made sense.

I’m lucky I learned it early, too.

It’s provided me with a home base of sanity when the chaos has reached shuddering crescendos and it was hard to think straight (let alone make snap decisions when crisis loomed).

You may find it obvious.

That’s fine.  Just don’t go thinking it’s obvious to the rest of the mean ol’ world out there… cuz it ain’t.

Here’s the story: One of my first jobs working for Gary Halbert was to fly to Detroit… and interview a guy who’d just lost 750 pounds.

Yeah, you read that right.

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Monday, 2:33pm
San Diego, CA
“If you see my little red rooster, please send him home…” (Howling Wolf, master of innuendo)

Howdy…

I’m actually starting this blog in longhand, sitting in the Southwest terminal in San Diego…

… finally dragging my exhausted butt homeward after logging a full week here putting on the now-fabled Action Seminar.

It was a spectacular success, if you’re keeping score.

We directly challenged every seminar model out there… and delivered two frighteningly-on-target days of specific advice, techniques and life-transforming revelations.

Both the roomful of attendees, and the small army of Big Dog experts we assembled, loved the experience.  If you’re following the social media threads of folks like James “Schrak” Schramko, Mary Ellen Tribby, Big Jason Henderson, the Halbert boys, Harlan Kilstein, Brian Johnson, Kevin Rogers, Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero, and the other stellar names who participated…

… then you’re already hip to how the event went.

Excellent buzz.

Shame on you for missing it.

Anyway…

I haven’t got a lot of time here, so I need to focus on what I wanted to share with you here in this post.

There was a ton of practical info for everyone’s “To Do List” at the seminar…

… but there was also a very intriguing element of spirituality, too.

I wasn’t planning to go down that road.

However…

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Saturday, 8:53pm
Reno, NV
“It’s the end of the world as we know, and I feel fine…” (REM)

Howdy…

Nice big glob of seemingly-nasty news hit the grid this week.

The FTC (brrr, even the name causes Halloween-style chills, doesn’t it) fired a shot across the bow of the good ship Capitalism with their “final guidelines governing endorsements and testimonials”.

In case you’ve been in a coma or something, here’s the Fed-sponsored link:

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm

What immediately followed was a lot of hair-on-fire screaming and rending of clothes by both online and offline business owners who use testimonials or endorsements in their marketing.

It was kinda fun to watch, actually.

A lot of entrepreneurs, I’ve noticed over the decades, are skittish enough already about the whole “provide a product to customers in exchange for money” model of doing business.

They’re like “Are you sure we can do this?  Actually accept moolah just for giving people this thing of value we created?”

It’s understandable to be a little paranoid.  Business is part of the grown-up world, all full of consequences and responsibilities and risks…

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