Saturday, 2:24am
Reno, NV
“If you see my little red rooster, please send him home…” (Howlin’ Wolf)

Howdy…

Just a quick dispatch here to let you know all is well, and I’ll be getting back to regular blogging soon.

I got waylaid by some things, including my first serious sports injury ever: A major boo-boo in my rotator cuff. Which is a marvel of biological engineering, but nevertheless prone to problems in people who insist on abusing it over a long lifetime.

So, while it doesn’t really qualify as a Shakespearean tragedy (yet), it has still consumed a lot of my time with MRIs, x-rays, doc visits, and now long painful (“Ow! Ow! Hey, that hurts, mofo! Ow, you did it again!“) physical therapy sessions.

Stuff like that can take over your brain for a few weeks. I’m not complaining — I have too many friends with more dire health problems (and I’ve been through other surgery dramas with people close to me many, many times) that puts this in perspective.

In fact, tonight — after another round with that sadistic physical therapist (the bastard) — I’m relatively pain-free, and able to type without problem.

And I’ve got several blog posts mapped out in draft form, waiting for my attentions. (With titles like “The Sociopaths Who Are Eating Your Lunch”, and “Learning How To Brag”… really fun, and essential stuff for anyone looking to live a better life and make more moolah without guilt.)

But it’s already Superbowl weekend, so you’re gonna have to wait a little longer for a real post. I’ve got an old, cherished college pal and his son (to whom I’m kinda like an uncle) coming up for what is now our rock-solid tradition: We find the sleaziest sportsbook in downtown Reno, settle in, and enjoy the chaos and pompous nonsense of the grand game amongst the weirdest set of characters this side of a Fellini movie.

God, it’s fun. And I expect Madonna’s halftime show to rile up the geezers in the crowd (and we can only hope for a few wrestling matches between blowhards and bums as people take the game personally).

This is our seventh year doing this. It’s a tradition. A day of futility, bowing to the corporate overlords on TV, sharing an American rite of bacchanalia unrivaled in other countries. For one glorious day, we get to let our classless Freak Flags fly among our fellow citizens, and stare at the same show for several hours.

It’s a little like when the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan. (That was a still-not-broken record crowd of 73 million, back when the nation’s population was HALF the current size. Boggles the brain.)

And I don’t even have a dog in the race. G-men, Pats, whatever. I lost interest when the 49ers got bumped. But I’ll work up a lusty howl for one of the teams anyway, and get my game on.

WARNING: Though I advise against it, I may (key word: may) post on Facebook during the melee. My rule is Don’t Drink And Post, of course… but it’s the Superbowl! C’mon, man. Loosen up a little. Life’s short.

If you’re not a “friend” on my Facebook page, then first: Shame on you.

And second: Go here to see why a few thousand people make it a regular pitstop in their day: www.facebook.com/john.carlton

I bounce between insightful business advice (the stuff you never hear about elsewhere, like the psych tricks behind great salesmanship) and casting a jaded (but usually amusing) eye on the culture at large.

I expect any posts this weekend to be in the latter category. But you never know! I might have a money-making epiphany while watching Madonna bellow at halftime.

So, okay… I’m outa here for now.

Again — I’m fine. I’ve got multiple hot posts coming up… and also some great news for entrepreneurs.

Meantime, stay frosty.

John

Wednesday, 12:36pm
Reno, NV
“Sittin’ on the dock of the bay, watchin’ the tide roll away…” (Otis Redding)

Howdy…

Mark, a lifelong pal of mine, lived with a girlfriend many years ago who taught us both a very devastating lesson.

At the time, Mark and I were hard-core slackers — lamely cruising through our late twenties, we took jobs without ambition to pay the rent and keep the fridge stocked with beer, and were pretty much maintaining the same lifestyles we’d had in college.

Care-free losers, if you need a label.

Susie, on the other hand, was roiling with ambition. Had a good job, with a plan to either rise quickly in that biz or seek better positions elsewhere. Her friends talked about the future a lot, and openly competed with each other over acquisitions like new cars, new clothes, expensive wine and all the grown-up Yuppie shit that sent shivers down my spine.

Cuz I was still going to clubs to see bands (and who can blame me, since it was that primo era when the Pretenders, the Police, Elvis Costello, the Jam, and Talking Heads were on their first west-coast tours)… still driving a 10-year-old decrepit Datsun truck… still dressing like I’d been shopping drunk at the Goodwill store… and still loathing the idea of “growing up”.

I knew something was wrong, of course. I was just floating on the surface of life, at the mercy of other people’s ambitions and without any goals or dreams or sense of purpose.

And I absorbed a lot of harsh criticism, both from others and from myself, for not doing anything constructive with my life.

However, looking back, I see things very differently now.

Yes, I was a slacker. But, while I was admittedly not doing a single goddamned thing to prepare myself for living out the American “dream” (house, career, family, etc)…

… I was, nevertheless, honing a particular strange skill that has served me extremely well over the ensuing years.

I was becoming an expert at ruminating. Pondering shit. Noodling over difficult thoughts.

I wasn’t smarter than the evil Yuppies around me. Far from it.

And, eventually, I too would learn to lust after material things that made my heart happy.

Just not the same things those smug elitists lusted after.

Because what I craved most of all… was time.

Time to read more books, listen to more music, indulge in more pleasure…

… and time to stare at the wall and go deep inside my own head. Ruminating on shit.

Silly me.

Here’s the cruel lesson Susie delivered: One evening, she admitted she despised me…

… because I helped Mark feel like he wasn’t alone with his own wall-staring.

And it was high time that he moved beyond that “thinking crap”, and got busy building a life worthy of her Yupped-out aspirations.

I was stunned. Not because she wanted to morph my pal into her own Ken doll — that goal of hers had been obvious for a long time.

No. I was stunned… because I truly believed that thinking deeply about things… even random things like how Power Pop had sprung from the ashes of punk rock, and how it all connected seamlessly back to mid-60s garage bands and the Beatnik philosophies that survived the hippie holocaust and…

Okay, you get the idea. I also thought a lot about “what’s it all mean” mind-expansion stuff, and where American literature was headed and how the endless Cold War was affecting local politics, and all the blossoming parallels between the post-WWI nihilistic Da-Da movement and the impending technology revolution (that would not be televised) and on and on.

So, yeah, I was a lazy, good-for-nothing slacker, restlessly pillaging the edges of the culture and irritating the Yuppies…

… but really? “Thinking” was now a bad thing?

It was with Susie. She was whip-smart, and full of energy and life-force…

… but for her (and her ilk), the definition of “success” had nothing to do with having more “time” to spend staring at walls, ruminating.

I’d just assumed that was everybody’s wild-ass dream.

And it scared the shit out of me to abruptly realize that most of the folks around me considered it a profound waste of time. And even highly distasteful, cuz it ruined the vibe when they wanted to discuss wine or stock market tips or country club memberships.

Yep. I was the shallow one.

How dare I suggest that living life using only the outer edges of your cerebral cortex was a hollow way to exist.

Older, maybe wiser, certainly more experienced now…

… I still get royally pissed-off remembering how much Susie’s “set me straight” lecture harshed my mellow for the next few years.

Of course, I also have to thank her, from the bottom of my heart, for shaking me up like that.

Because I struggled with that potential lesson for a very long time. Was ruminating on stuff really a waste for anyone wanting to get ahead? Was it really better to just get jiggy with the accepted lifestyle and Zeitgeist of the time… which, heading into the Go-Go Eighties, was quickly evolving into Gordon Gecko’s “greed is good” ethos.

I liked staring at the wall (or at the waves, or the clouds, or a blank piece of paper), disappearing into my head and… ruminating on things.

And being able to do more of it seemed an excellent element of a “successful” life. You know, maybe like what Aristotle (or was it Socrates) said about “the examined life.”

Today, I’m more convinced than ever that it is THE main reason to succeed.

I never saw Susie again (she soon left Mark for a hedge fund manager), but I did eventually became a hard-core capitalist-oriented entrepreneur, got my shit together, and started being aggressively proactive about setting and achieving goals. A true American rags-to-riches tale, and I’m proud of it.

But I never had the notion that simply “being” successful was part of a successful life.

In my view, you don’t need money to be successful. Money just solves the problems that not having money creates… so having “enough” money, in this culture, can help you stay clear of the time-consuming bullshit of scrambling to keep a roof over your head and food in your gut.

Massive wealth has the capacity to really screw you up. Of course, it’s more fun to discover that on your own, rather than taking anyone else’s word for it…

… but it’s still true.

The reason for this is kinda mystical, but easy to fathom: If you aren’t clear on WHY you want to get rich…

… then, once you get there, you’re gonna be one lost little puppy.

It’s like mobilizing your life to move somewhere you think will make you happy. You can do it, and you can wind up in a gorgeous penthouse in the best part of town… but if your next thought is “now what?”, then you may be left wondering what it all means. With no answer forthcoming.

The reason I connected so easily with early mentors like Gary Halbert was because we shared a fundamental desire: We loved to work hard, and we loved to be rewarded for that hard work with piles of moolah…

… however, the REAL reward was always the sheer luxury of “buying time”. Using money to hire assistants, job-out the grunt work, grease palms, skip lines and generally shortcut our way around the time-sucking parts of life.

Not so we’d have more time to work. No way.

So we’d have more time to indulge in the one thing a busy, harried life refuses to allow: Rumination.

There are tons of books and coaching programs and seminars available that claim to make planning out your life easy. They’ll help you with the “here’s what I want to do“, and “here’s how I can get that done” processes…

… but every single one I’ve seen is woefully deficient in helping you understand “WHY I want to do that in the first place.”

The “why’s” of life are mostly ignored. It’s taken for granted that big houses, fancy sports cars, better looking spouses, bigger/better/nicer/more expensive everything is of COURSE the preferred goal.

And maybe that’s true for you.

I will tell you it is NOT true for the majority of friends and colleagues I’m closest to. I’m closest to them because we are simpatico about what really matters in life.

And you don’t automatically figure out what matters, for you…

… unless you spend some serious time thinking about it. Pondering. Brooding. Daydreaming. Cogitating.

Ruminating.

Staring at the wall and diving into the cerebral gray matter.

Halbert was a great ruminator. I knew I’d found a lasting friend when we first took a long drive together, and after talking for a while, we both just got quiet and thought about things. Total silence in the car, as I drove us around Los Angeles and up the coast a bit.

And when we started talking again, it was rife with substance.

One of my pet peeves is meeting people who lived through something exciting…

… and don’t have a good story to tell about it.

They’ll grin and say “you had to be there“, because it was all so experiential and amazing and kinesthetic.

And I say “Bullshit“. I lived through similar adventures, and I can burn your ears with detailed stories about it… stories that have a point, that are interesting and thought-provoking and give the listener an almost visceral sense of what it was like.

But you can’t build these kinds of stories without thinking about it first. Without sitting back, going over the facts and emotions and unknown pieces, and finding the theme and plot and punch line. It doesn’t happen automatically, just because you were “there”.

Sitting back in a comfy chair — well-fed, content, undisturbed and undistracted — and letting your mind wander and explore and organize your thoughts, experiences and dreams…

… is, for me, a wondrous thing.

For the most part, our ancestors had few such pleasures, always needing to tend the fire, hunt for food, repair essentials, repel danger, and stay alert and focused for as long as possible before dropping into an exhausted slumber.

Success can buy you the time, free of want or disruption.

Don’t have anything to ruminate about?

Dude, you’re living through the most awesome times humans have ever encountered. There are endless options for adventure and fulfillment and legacy…

… and really freakin’ easy ways to attain whatever you desire, once you get your shit together.

You can set, plan for, and attain goals that your ancestors couldn’t even conceive of.

You can get what you want.

The thing is…

… WHY do you want it?

Refusing to consider this is a recipe for disaster. Wealth, fame and acquisitions can kill you just as quickly as saber-tooth tigers, Viking raids and a rumble for the crown.

Getting something doesn’t mean you’ll know what to do with it when you have it.

This all takes rumination.

Think about it.

Stay frosty,

John

Monday, 8:28pm
Reno, NV
“Just take those old records off the shelf, I’ll sit n’ listen to ‘em by myself…” (Bob Seger)

Howdy…

At the end of this post, I’ll explain how you can win a bitchin’ prize that will make you the envy of all your friends forever.

First, though — let’s learn something about marketing to humans, whadya say?

Here’s two quick “how to deal with the screaming chaos” tips for everyone in business today who’s just a tad freaked-out at the way things seem to changing so damned FAST:

Screaming Chaos-Dealing Tip #1: If you’re older, you need to cultivate solid relationships with younger folks who can help you understand the Zeitgeist of the dominant culture out there.  (Yes, even if you hate it.  Especially if you hate it, actually.)

And I’m not talking about having your nephew program your TV remote while you mow the lawn.

Nope.  I’m talking about entrepreneur-minded young adults, who just happen to be totally wired into the Grid…

… and can translate current trends while offering you some solid, smart perspective.

And…

Screaming Chaos-Dealing Tip #2: If you’re a young entrepreneur, you need to cultivate relationships with geezers who can give you some perspective on how we GOT to this current state of affairs.

Key thing to remember: You must limit your cross-generational relationships to smart, aware, and open-minded people.

Which means you’re fishing in a VERY tiny pool.

For the most part, the generations despise each other.  Partly because of the tendency for folks to stay within their peer group both socially and economically… and partly because most old farts get grumpy, and most young studs develop an intolerable arrogance right after their first flush of pubescence.

I was an arrogant little punk when I was young.  And I remember meeting some girl’s father at a party, who took me aside twice during the evening.  The first time to admonish me (with finger waggling in my face) for having long hair and a bad attitude (and I did), which he insisted was gonna ruin my chances for living a good life (and also negate any chance I had with dating his daughter)…

… and the second time — after he’d drained a bottle of Scotch — he took me aside to tearfully explain how much he wished he was young again (sob, choke) and how us kids had it right about life while his generation was a pack of fools…

… and could I maybe move in with him and his wife and daughter, cuz I was such a wonderful, awesome dude?  (I respectfully declined.)

That pretty much summed up my youthful insight toward the elder generation: Conflicted, embarrassingly creepy when they tried to “rap” with us, and kinda sloppy with the booze.

And I hoped I died before I got old.

Then, one day I was in a big business meeting… and realized I was ten years older than the next oldest entrepreneur in the room.  I had, in what seemed like a freakin’ blink, gone from the young hotshot kid in the room, to the grizzled veteran guy.  Twenty years had passed.

Lemme tell you, I now have some solid respect for the weirdness that is growing older in American culture.

My saving grace is that I’ve never been an “ageist” — defined as someone who discriminates against others on the basis of age.  It’s a stupid concept… but the culture kind of ensures it happens, because there are precious few chances for the generations to legitimately interact and fairly judge each other.

I lucked out.  Back in college, my anthropology prof forced us to get out into the community, find people in the very late stages of life… and record their stories.  (Or flunk her course.  She was an early mentor, and knew how to get stuff done, tell you what.)

THAT was a genuine wake-up call for me. The older generation wasn’t much for trying to communicate with the younger one, and vice versa… (our motto:  ”Don’t trust anyone over 30″)…

… and yet, once all the bullshit labels were yanked away, and real listening occurred…

… well, hell.  These were fascinating people, brimming with life experience I could only hope to encounter myself.  And they had fallen in love, suffered tragedy, made mistakes, lucked into a few good things, and had adventures that made the sci-fi stuff I was devouring look shallow and dull.

It’s not across the board, of course.  Some people never do anything worth telling a story about, and others are just plain boring zombies mad at the world.

But then, this applies equally to many of your peer group, no matter what age you are, or what segment of the socio-economic-ethnic culture you’re from.

So it’s important to always be on the lookout for people of all stripes and thinking that can add value to your life.  Regardless of anything else that defines them.  The real wealth in this all-too-short ride is to enjoy the full gamut of what’s on the menu.

And this brings us to the subject of this post.

Which is very much NOT earth-shaking…

… but is, rather, one of those interesting “little pieces of psychology” that nevertheless work their way into the top of your Bag Of Tricks as a salesman.

The lesson here will help any marketer trying to reach across the generational divide… and give you a hint as to how people have changed in the actual ways they measure each other up.

Here’s the story: Michele’s nephew David is (and I can back this up) among the savviest and most intensely-geared-toward-success entrepreneurs of his generation.  And he’s in his mid-twenties, for cryin’ out loud.

He’s my go-to dude whenever I have questions about how the younger generation thinks and acts.  (His biz is Next Big Sound, a company he started while still at Northwestern that is working with all the big music companies.  It’s basically a focal point online to measure how hot new bands spread their music far and wide.  Very hip, very ultra-modern, very cutting-edge… and taking complete advantage of the Web.)

And yeah, David has helped me program much of the various computerized and mechanical crap I’ve stuffed into my office.  (He’s been a life-saver, especially when I switched from PC to Mac.)

He is as deeply grounded in his generation’s psyche and habits as anyone you’ll meet.

And I’m a glutton for observing the cerebral changes constantly happening in our culture. I like to find sneaky shortcuts to understanding how people in my target markets THINK and ACT.

So… while the following may seem trivial to some readers…

… let me assure you that the underlying psychology is profound for any marketer looking to connect with an audience.

Here’s the exchange David and I had a short time ago:

Yo, David…

In my time (last century), you could walk into someone’s living quarters, spend 5 minutes perusing their record collection and the books on their shelves…

… and pretty much know what you needed to know about them.  Straight, square, hip, cool, interesting, or boring.  (Or how much dough they had, based on the number of new albums vs. used record store buys.) (And how obsessive they were, by how well they treated their collections, and what kind of stereo/turntable/components they had.)

For example: A single Carpenter’s record (or a Yanni cassette) was like 3 straight strikes, if you were dating.  And more than one Yes album (or not owning Dark Side of the Moon) was a sure clue you were dealing with a nerd.

So…

… is there an equivalent for YOUR generation?  Do you hop on Facebook and check out anything specific, say, the way my gen studied albums and bookshelves?

Seems like most iTunes libraries are too large, and too casual, to get much info.  But maybe I’m wrong.

See, my generation didn’t spend money easily.  If you bought an album, you agonized over it.  It meant something.  Same with books.

Now, at 99cents per tune, your Iggy Pop and Queens of the Stone Age mixes don’t necessarily mean you even like the music.  Does it?

Or would you look for more general things, like emo, or trance, or hip hop vs rock, or something like that?

Thanks.  This might be a great blog post (for my generation, and for the marketers in yours).

John

David’s reply (and I’ve left his random capitalization and slang intact… another clue to his gen’s writing style, which reflects their agile thinking processes):

Hi John.

Spoke with a friend about this yesterday and debated the various cultural things we consume that also represent us… came up with a few things:

iTunes library / iPod

What’s in someone’s iTunes library doesn’t mean anything. Our libraries have gotten so stuffed with random hard drive dumps of music over the past 10 years that browsing someone’s library is impossible (it’s too big) and determining their taste from that selection sucks. You nailed it with the ‘costs money to buy an album’ argument that used to hold true, now everything’s so free/cheap there isn’t enough scarcity for it to matter. That is, until you sort someone’s library by play count. Seeing the Top 100 songs someone has listened to is totally telling. Which leads into…

last.fm scrobbling

Last.fm is a sort of popular social network around music that CBS bought for a ton of money a few years back ($280mil). It’s pretty simple – anywhere I listen to music that has the ability to ‘scrobble’ reports to last.fm what I’m listening to and then shows me all sorts of cool stats and my musical affinity with another person. It’s always a good proxy for if I’ll get along with someone.  Here’s my profile: http://www.last.fm/user/dodecasyllabic

fragmentation/long tail/top 40/the radio/the internet

After writing all that I realized two things. There’s been so much talk about the long tail and the internet fragmenting things and there never being another Johnny Carson because how the hell would all of america crowd around our TVs all the time when we have the internet now. That’s the first thing – there’s some fundamental thing that prevents massive selling albums and everyone the same age liking similar stuff. But the second thing is that I think there are really two types of people – those that still listen to the radio and know what’s on the Top 40 and those that only consume via the internet and have no idea what’s ‘popular’. There’s hybrids, of course, but that’s the bigger thing that separates people now – are they ‘internet’ people or normals? My view is probably skewed since I’m pretty much always surrounded by internet people – they find their music on Mp3 blogs and Hype Machine and started subscribing early to rdio like I did.

what blogs they follow in google reader

Seeing what someone chooses to read on a regular basis, and if they choose to read on a regular basis beyond facebook status updates and gossip sites at all, is pretty big.

who they follow on twitter

I like seeing who I follow in common with someone on twitter. That’s telling. They opt-in to these streams… and who they choose says a lot, i think..

So is there an equivalent in my generation? no, probably not. and that’s a bit unfortunate… but you figure it out pretty quickly by putting some music on and seeing how they react. lucky for me I always have an excuse to talk about music because of NBS and that helps figure it out quickly…

David

All right… so is this a huge wake-up call for marketers?

Perhaps… if you’ve been cross-marketing to generations and you hadn’t yet realized how differently each one “measures up” new people.  Or communicates with their peers.

The main lesson: You’re never gonna be totally hip to someone in a different generation.

I mean, I still think the current crop of pop stars are embarrassingly untalented twits… and I will never, ever understand how rap became a cultural mainstay.  (Though I like hip-hop.)

And this comes from a guy who — in my own youth — worshipped garage bands who could barely play their instruments (the Seeds, the Stones, the Ramones, etc)…

… and who remained oblivious of my father’s discontent with “that damn racket“, which was so awfully different than the smooth swing jazz he grew up with in the 40s.

Still… you should try to at least know the fundamentals of how current market segments communicate (or fail to communicate) with each other.  And how peer groups spread the message on anything (your old-school “word of mouth”).

Just don’t be that old guy with a comb-over trying to be hip around the kids, getting all your slang wrong.  (“Hey, kiddo’s, I’m a hip jivester, too, gimme some skin, man…”)

And please — if you’re a kid — don’t tell me your favorite Beatle’s song is “Yellow Submarine” and expect that to start any kind of bonding process.  I was Kinks’ kinda dude, anyway…

PRIZE!

Okay, time for the game.

Here’s the task, and reward: The first person to name all the albums in the photo up top, in the comments section (don’t try to trump anyone by going to Facebook, now)…

… wins a free copy of my book “Kick-Ass Copywriting Secrets of a Marketing Rebel“… personally signed by me.  You’ll be the coolest kid on your block.

This is easily the toughest task I’ve ever had in this blog.  Some of those albums are freakin’ obscure… and there are a couple where all you can see are small bits of the cover.  (If I have to start dropping hints, I’ll start in a day or so.)

I imagine some Boomer who lived a life parallel to mine will scoop this one quickly.  Or some kid who grew up surrounded by Daddy’s tattered album collections…

Anyway, the comment section is open for any thread you wanna start, besides the contest.

Got any good stories or tactics to share on quickly evaluating someone?

Stay frosty,

John

P.S. I might be a big slow to respond in the comments — next week is Golf Week with my old pal and partner Stan Dahl.  Five days of scurrying around the finest links we can locate, with no distractions.

We’ve done this every year for around 15 years now.  Done it in Key West, Los Angeles, San Diego, Orlando, Phoenix, the California coast near Big Sur, Tahoe, Las Vegas…

… all over the freakin’ map.  It’s killer fun.  And I knew we were on to a good tradition when I noticed that other golfers we mentioned Golf Week to always got this misty-eyed look, obviously wishing they could come along.  Or have their own tradition going.

Ah, the stories Stan and I have.  Can’t share ‘em here, of course.

Still, I’ll be checking in through the wonders of the World Wide Web.  So, carry on.

Saturday, 8:44pm
Reno, NV
“They’ve all gone to look for America…” (Simon & Garfunkel)

Howdy.

I want to wish the country a happy birthday on this fine July 4th.

She’s looking not too shabby for 235 years old.  I’ve been here for a lot of those b-days, too… and here are a couple of random thoughts (before I get drowned out by fireworks):

Random Thought #1: I’m not gonna discuss politics, and I hope you have the presence of mind not to start in on it yourself in the comments.  However… as far apart as we seem today on the multitude of problems faced… I can tell you it has ever been thus.

At our very best, the country has always been like a dysfunctional family forced to co-exist at a perpetual holiday dinner.  My own family shows signs of it occasionally — somebody gets hot about some subject, voices rise, someone gets called an idiot, feelings are hurt…

… and then, minutes later, all is well and we’re laughing about some story from the family archives.  (I had uncles who couldn’t get through a game of gin rummy without throwing cards across the room and giving us kids an excellent lesson in swearing like a sailor before the aunts corralled them back into some semblance of civilized behavior again.  I miss those old farts, and a whiff of beer and cigars can take me back instantly…)

I was doing “Duck and Cover” drills under my desk in grade school, back when we were pretty sure the Commies were about to rain nuclear bombs on us.  My first notice of politics was when Kennedy was shot, and I was stunned to learn the first congressman I met (in a high school event) was a total brain-dead tool.

We’ll never get along completely as a country.  One man’s sensible solution is another man’s call-to-arms, and it will never change.

I realized this permanent division of political thought early on… and it’s helped (a bit) to alleviate the frustration.  I’m a political junkie, but I stay out of the public cat-fights that so many others love to start and never seem able to finish.

Like that dysfunctional family, you just gotta hope that — at the end of the day — we can put our differences aside and remember that we’re all in this crazy experiment in self-governance together.

Random Thought #2: Probably because I don’t wear my politics on my sleeve, I’ve got friends all over the political map.  Right-wing nutballs, liberal chickenhawks, dudes with loaded guns in every room, feminists on edge, Bible thumpers with an eye on the school board, deniers, accusers and nervous paranoids…

… you name it, I’ve got a pal somewhere walking the walk.

And I never discuss politics with most of them.  And we remain friends by ignoring the occasional outburst, and never, ever trying to change anyone’s mind directly.

It’s my experience that no one’s mind has ever been changed (I suspect in the history of the world) from an argument.  Facts won’t do it, personal experience won’t sway anyone… and you sure as hell won’t accomplish anything by insulting your opponent.

Alexander Hamilton — one of the Founders — was killed in a duel by Aaron Burr over… politics.  Nice work, guys.  Both were hugely influential (Secretary of the Treasury, and Vice freakin’ Prez), and both careers ended instantly — one dead, one done forever as a politico.

I know what it’s like to get so mad… so full of rage and so damned sure that I was on the side of the angels (while the other guy was obviously in league with pure evil)… that violence seemed like a dandy next step.

But long ago, I also learned how easy it is to let that rage go… and let the steam just dissipate, while rational thought returns.

You ain’t gonna change his mind.  And he aint’ gonna change yours.  And guess what?

That’s why this whole experiment in self-governance got rolling in the first place.  There was never gonna be any unanimous decisions, on anything.  So you vote for a representative, who does the job or gets voted out.  Three separate branches will hash it out, legislatively, legally, and (hopefully) leadership-ly.

The one constant I’ve seen over my decades of being addicted to watching politics (best reality show on the planet, BTW)… is that the loudest and meanest voices belong to folks who haven’t got a fucking clue how the government actually runs, or why the machinations of the beast works as it does.

There are no simple answers, just like there’s no simple way to shut up your dumb-ass brother-in-law with all his weird “fix the world” solutions.

Yes, it’s frustrating.  But it has ALWAYS been frustrating.  We had a civil war over it.  Assassinations.  One long, chaotic and maddening intellectual (and too often, physical) brawl that will never end.

Still…

Random Thought #3: As infuriating as it can be to try to coexist with so many fellow obviously-bonkers countrymen…

… I have a secret weapon against sinking into a funk about it.

And that secret weapon is nothing more than this realization: It’s a safe bet that — at most — maybe a few of my ancestors ever felt free to speak their minds.  At any point in their lives.

I come from solid working-class stock, as far back as the meager family tree has been tracked.  And I can easily imagine some distant Carlton… wracked with the same anti-authoritarian tendencies I have… spending his entire existence biting his tongue to avoid the gallows.

And wondering, desperately, why his thoughts and beliefs weren’t just as valid… and just as worthy of being aired… as the jerk-wads in charge.

It would blow his mind to know that I can pretty much write about whatever subject I like… and spout whatever nonsense pops into my head… whenever I feel like it.

Blow.  His.  Freakin’.  Mind.

Yeah, sure, there still are lines you can’t cross publicly.  Sedition, yelling “fire” in a theater, provable slander… the First Amendment is still a work in progress.  Not too long ago, they threw comics in jail for saying what you can now hear on regular cable stations 24/7.  And it kinda twists your gut when fanatics get a pass to offend people at funerals.

And what the heck is up with cash now equaling free speech in elections?  I wish more of the budding plutocrats out there would remember that Ben Franklin (among others) mostly distrusted the common dude’s intellect… but figured the vote was still the best of all paths to take for self-governance.

Every Fourth, I take a deep breath and give serious thanks that no one’s boot is on my neck censoring the crap that flows through my brain… as it was for just about everyone else in history.  What we’ve got is imperfect, it’s a legal mess getting messier all the time, and even constant vigilance is no guarantee it won’t be snatched away tomorrow by The Man.

But right now… for at least this 235th birthday… the rickety allowances of free speech is (as far as I’m concerned) still the crowning glory of my homeland.

Last Random Thought: We’re pretty spoiled.

Back when I was dead broke and living out of my car… I still enjoyed privileges and cool shit that past kings would have eaten their own arms for.  Plenty of inexpensive nourishment for body and soul, and even as a edge-walker in the economy, the means to enjoy life on a level unimaginable to my ancestors.

In that beat-to-shit ’81 Celica fast-back — both the ugliest and the most fun car I’ve ever owned — I had shelter, enough comfort to occasionally have sex in, a vast range of travel, free radio, piles of tapes, books, newspapers, a guitar, clothes, food, even my old typewriter and reams of paper.  And well-kept roads under the wheels.

One night, sitting on the hood watching the stars as the ocean boomed on the rocks directly below me… well-fed, guitar in my lap, a snug night’s sleep in the car ahead of me… I remember thinking I wouldn’t trade my life for any of the most privileged existences I knew about in history.

Drafty castles, Huns swarming, a mouthful of rotting teeth, no pizza or cold beer, lucky to make it past 30, a world teeming with ghosts and superstition, no TV or radio or media entertainment of any kind (except for poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio…)…

Screw that.

We live in interesting times.  And we have a catbird seat for monitoring the action (if you’re paying attention).

As annoyed as I am sometimes with the old broad, I’m tipping my hat to her on her birthday and wishing her many, many more.

And my love for her is genuine.

Stay frosty,

John

P.S. Have at it in the comments… but no political bullshit, all right?  You’ve got ample other places to do that to your heart’s content.

Tell you what.  Just for today… let’s celebrate what we have in common, all right?

Sunday, 7:36pm
Reno, NV
“A thief believes everybody steals.” (E.W. Howe)

Howdy…

For those of you bugging me about the next Quiz…

… it’s coming, it’s coming.

Soon.

Tonight, though, I’ve gotta get something off my chest.

And so, a Rant.  By little Johnny Carlton:

Ahem.

There seems to be a parasite bug infecting the brains of many marketers out there.

Let’s call this bug… “Theft“.

It’s not going away anytime soon.

In fact, the very word has been mutating for a long time now… so that what would have easily been labeled “stealing” in the bad-old pre-Web days…

… is now considered smart and brave and even ethical.

Which means that the word “ethical” has also required some definition surgery, as well.

Okay, I gotta take part of all that back, right off the top.  (Note:  Rants often take sudden swerving turns like this.  Just relax and go with it.  You’ll be rewarded for your patience soon…)

This attitude — that taking something of value from someone else is not necessarily “wrong”, and may even be completely cool – has shown its ugly head before in my lifetime.

Remember Woodstock?

Forget about all the feelings brought up by that festival.  Boomer hippies assign the event iconic holiness, while later generations mock what they see as hypocritical bullshit from their elders.

Me? Still love the movie.  In fact, every year or so I line up “Monterey”, “Don’t Look Back” — Dylan’s ’64 tour of England — “Woodstock”, “Isle of Wight Festival” — the ’70 edition — and “Gimme Shelter”.

It’s a mini-film festival covering exactly 6 years — 1964 to 1970 — where things changed oh-so-dramatically in the world.  Innocence to grim chaos, told through the soundtrack of the time.  Lovely unintended documentary, these films…

It would have been great if the “spirit” of peace and love really had taken over the universe, and we all evolved into a groovy mind-meld of far-out angelic transmogrification.

Didn’t happen, of course.

The uncritical idealism of the time turned me, for example, away from the entire philosophy of idealism.  I loathe idealism now.  It’s counter-productive and rots minds.

And, as an older-and-maybe-wiser business owner, the most striking part of all these movies for me — aside from the music, which still astounds — is the way the “average” person saw no reason why everything shouldn’t be “free”.

Woodstock became a free concert because of shit-poor planning and bad fences.  They were forced to do it.

The bands were not consulted.  Nor were they happy about it.

And if you know the story, you know that the producers of the concert refused to declare bankruptcy, and eventually paid all their bills (though it took the organization many years to accomplish this task).

That’s old school.  Take your lumps, clean up your mess, and fulfill your obligations.

One year later, at the first Isle of Wight festival, a mob of angry socialist counter-culture types harshed everyone’s mellow by demanding that this concert be “free”, too.

Through a slo-mo riot.

It’s free, or we’ll kill you.

By the time the Stones offered a free concert at Altamont (documented in “Gimme Shelter”), things just got completely out of hand.

While the music still shines, the Isle of Wight film captures the chaos and confusion from the bands’ perspective: What?  Somebody’s gotta pay for putting this thing on, getting us here, and providing electricity for my gee-tar and Keith’s Bee-Three.

You think this shit all happens by magic?

I find this unresolved battle between clueless people waning a free lunch… and the practical folks who understand how lunches actually get made… fascinating.

Folks (including many biz owners) have been getting confused about capitalism since the first trade of something-for-something between cave men, lo, those many eons ago.

It’s particularly gnarly when prosperity collides with reality.

For example: I was a vandal as a kid.  Not proud of it, just saying.

I had no idea who erected the streetlights, or who ran the trains chugging along the tracks behind our house.  Stuff just happened, because that’s the way the post-war world operated.

So, when we took out the streetlight bulbs with BB guns, or derailed the noon Southern Pacific with a pile of railroad ties… there was no connection in our feeble brains about what consequences we were igniting.

We were bulls in the china shop.

Education was provided “free” to me, growing up.  Water came out of the tap, magically.  And, as far I could think it through, free.  Same with the radio, the TV, the mail, all all the other stuff that contributed to this “free” life for me.

It was a rude awakening to discover that, to buy a car and keep the tank full so I could take Suzie to the Who concert, I needed to generate “money” from a “job” to grease the machine of capitalism.

“Free” was so much more fun.

The World Wide Web was created by an unholy alliance of the Armed Forces and elite academia… both of which operated largely outside the demands of capitalism.   (Grants and Congressional budgets are not equal to a paycheck from a job.)

So the concept of “free” took root easily.

If you were among the early adopters of Web marketing, you must remember the snarling resistance to capitalism among the Web-heads dominating the landscape back then.

All software should be open source.  Selling stuff — any stuff at all — “polluted” the promise of a New Way Of Doing Things Online, where everything should be free (as God and Al Gore surely intended).

When non-techie-type people — your neighbors, for example — started flooding online, and finally got over the fear of using their credit card on a Web site, that “free” ethos collapsed in earnest.

Except for the really cool stuff… like music and intellectual property.

Hey — I don’t like the Big Music Moguls any more than you do.  They raped artists and kept a corrupt house since the first needle hit vinyl.

And the Grateful Dead/Coldplay model of allowing rips (and making their real money through touring) is a great tactic… except when it isn’t.

Okay, time out again.  I’m not gonna enter the fray of whether all movies and music should be available free on bit torrent sites.

No.

I wanna get more specific.

I wanna discuss the notion that ripping off another marketer’s ADS is somehow cool and hip and righteous.

This is where I was heading the entire time here.  A slight detour through Woodstock, down the side alley of my vandal past, across the lawn of the Internet, and finally into the parking lot of Marketing And Advertising.

When I was coming up through the freelance ranks, there was not another copywriter alive who thought it was okay to directly rip another writer’s stuff.

Seriously.

It was a sin to copy someone else’s stuff word for word.

You just didn’t do it.

There was theft, of course.  Thieving bastards who thought they wouldn’t get caught would be so brazen as to clip ads from newspapers, white-out the address in the coupon, type in their own address…

… and then submit the altered ad, as is, to their local paper for publication.

This happened to clients of mine.  A lot.  Ads I wrote were nicked in Australia — where US law couldn’t touch them, at the time — and run exactly that way.

These were not copywriters doing the deed.

These were thieves.  The lowest form of life in the food chain.

No one pretended it was otherwise.

As business on the Web progressed through the early years of this century, however…

… a curious thing happened.

Suddenly, it was okay to rip off another writer’s copy.  Word for word.

My fellow “old school” writers were appalled.  But powerless to change this re-definition of the word “ethical”.

I even decided to help the rippers out.  I gave a now-infamous workshop called the “License To Steal Seminar”… where I taught people how to rip 5 of my most successful ads.

Why did I do this?

Because everyone was ripping my ads incorrectly.

It pissed me off.

And so, I took it upon myself to teach budding writers what the swipe-file process actually entailed.

The key: Don’t blindly copy.

Instead, figure out the essence of how the sales pitch has been constructed in a good ad…

… and adopt what you learn when you write your own ad.

When I started out, I stalked Gary Bencivenga’s direct mail pieces because his writing “spoke” to me.

I would literally tear his packages apart, and mark them up with notes as I dissected his bullets, his word choices, and the way he guided his reader through the pitch.

But I never copied any of his bullets, or headlines, or even “close the sale” wording.

It was like studying Eric Clapton’s solo in “Crossroads”.  Sure, learn how he constructed it.  Learn how to emulate it.

But don’t go out and play it, note for note, in one of your own songs.  That would be rightly ridiculed.

Instead, “channel” Eric’s style if you must… but be original.

There are only a handful of notes (plus quarter and half-note bends) in the classic blues scale.  That “Crossroads” solo (correct me if I’m wrong) uses just A, C, D and E, up and down the neck, with bends.

Think about that.  A smattering of notes, arranged to send chills and thrills through a Clapton fan.  He has no legal or moral right to claim those notes as his, and no one else’s.  All musicians share the same scales.

And yet what he did was original, and easily identified.

Same with copy, people.  No writer can claim to “own” words like “how to”, or “absolutely free”, or “here’s what I have for you”, or anything else.

But an entire piece of copy…

… a successful ad really can become a work of art.  Worthy of emulation and inspiration.

However, you are CHEATING yourself if you rip mindlessly.

Look, I advocate swipe files.  They’re a great tool.  I include extensive swipe files — of my own stuff — in the packages I offer.

And, as I said, I offer insight to using these swipe files to help spur your own original creation of a good sales conversation.

Just plain old copying, though… it’s like taking your sister to the prom.

It may have all the appearances of a “real” date, but it’s not legit.  It is not a foundation to build anything on.

And this kind of mis-wired thinking produces a lot of hokey “They laughed when I sat down at the piano… but then I started to play…” kind of knock-off marketing.

It will look and sound silly if you don’t understand WHY that John Caples headline and copy worked.  (For the record: It’s a before-and-after type of head.  The key words are not “laughed” or “sat down”, but the juxtaposition of being put down with the “and then I started to play” tease, promising a story of redemption and new-found respect.)

I am now calm but still rueful about being perhaps the most ripped-off writer in the game these days.

It is not — as some might say — the highest form of flattery.  It is, in most cases, intellectual theft.

And it’s become accepted, without apology.

I’ve had books sent to me by folks who should be ashamed that they’ve copied large sections of my stuff… and pawned it off as their own.  And they are not ashamed at all.

I’ve witnessed speakers go on before me at an event… and tell my stories as their own (which sends me scrambling to adjust my own talk to get around the infraction).

This kind of shit leaves me baffled.

The real professionals in marketing never copy directly.  They may quote other writers, but they are lavish in praise while doing so, to ensure there is no confusion.

And they strive to be original at all times.

There are only so many commonly-used words in the English language.  The rich body of slang is refreshed constantly as we toy with phrases and cultural definitions.

If you can hold a conversation with someone, you can write what you need written for your biz.

You don’t need to steal blindly.

You can have a real date for the prom — all you need to do is get hip to the simple, easy process of doing what needs to be done to attain what you want.

Understanding why a good ad IS good gives you insight to what you must do in your own writing.

It’s not rocket science.  It’s actually easy to get into the groove of being original, once you’ve had just a touch of mentoring.

And when it finally clicks, you are off to the races.  You are no longer a slave to your swipe file, because you know how to have a sales conversation that gets results.

And that kind of knowledge just automatically fuels original thinking.

If you’re hot to embrace the freedom, independence, and wealth-generating mojo of knowing how to write everything you need written to make your biz rock…

… you can check out the Simple Writing System package I’ve made available.

I’m not gonna pitch you on it here.  You can decide for yourself if it’s what you need by going here to kick the tires: http://www.simplewritingsystem.com

It truly is a fun ride.

I’m also in the process of interviewing an astonishing array of marketing wizards — including a number of movers-and-shakers you may not have heard of yet (offering you an obvious advantage by learning their secrets before your competition).

These interviews will be released in just a few weeks from now.

And they will be free. No theft is required to access them.

So I’m just saying… you may want to keep your eyes peeled for the announcements of these free content-stuffed interviews.

It’s all part of my devious plan to help you get past your sticking-points and problems with writing your own fast, easy sales conversations that bring in the moolah.

Thanks for letting get all this off my chest here.

Especially the Woodstock stuff.  Been 40 years now.  Still a hell of a party, regardless of whatever else you might think about the event…

Stay frosty,

John

P.S. Really… what IS so funny about peace, love and understanding?

Thursday, 10:06pm
Reno, NV
“There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.” (Ansel Adams)

Howdy…

I grew up in a photo-loving family.

Pop still has his trusty Kodak folding camera — a true antique now — and I cannot yet bring myself to dig through that box in the garage with all my old cameras (cuz I know it’s time to start assigning them new fates somewhere else).

I swear to you I still have a box of Polaroid film in the butter drawer of the fridge. Might even be the last batch they ever made (and R.I.P. Polaroid, dear departed friend).

Mom was the photo archivist of the family, and even as other families gravitated toward 16mm film, I retained a purist’s preference for the snapshot over the home movie.

(Side note: I remember meeting someone 20 years ago who mentioned that they were on video from the moment of their birth, and it was unsettling.

Now, it’s rare to meet anyone under the age of 30 who isn’t cataloged on film through their entire childhood. I can’t even imagine watching myself being born. I have a hard time watching old seminar footage of me from ten years ago, for cryin’ out loud.

Anyone out there hauling around a library of self-referenced film with them? What’s it like?)

I believe I fell in love with photography the moment I saw my first photograph… and realized it was actually a moment in time captured forever.

And I formed some very intense ideas about what makes a “good” photograph as a third-grader thumbing through the still-amazing stack of Nazi photos Pop brought home from his stint as a rifleman during WWII.

(There’s no way to tell for sure, but those two dozen shots seem to be a German officer’s front-line cache of “Here’s what I did during the War” snapshots. Fascinating subject material that forced us to imagine what the story actually was behind those uniformed men… especially the one with the open bullet wound in the dorsal lat.)

As I grew up, I would become captivated by very few photos in the piles coming back from the drugstore of family and friends and pets and outings.

I never questioned why I found those few snapshots so iconic.

Later, one of my first jobs in advertising was overseeing the photography for a computer supply catalog every quarter.

That job meant gathering all the equipment (cables, monitors, furniture, floppies, etc) and spending a week or so with a professional photographer in Palo Alto trying to make plastic crap look good.

(I won’t bore you with the hassle that pre-digital photography presented — the need to refrigerate film, manually load it, and nurture it like a fragile duck egg until it could be color-separated and made “camera-ready”, which means ready for the printer to fuss with during the offset process of applying wave after wave of ink until the correct color was achieved.)

(Okay, sorry, I think I just bored you there.)

Anyway… I learned a lot about the technical aspects of photography (like using mashed potatoes as a substitute for ice cream, cuz the real treat wouldn’t survive under the required hot lights for a good shot).

Pro photographers in the ad field earned big bucks. They knew the voodoo.

But you know what?

I always thought they took shitty photographs.

Technically stunning. Yet somehow boring as hell.

It’s one of the reasons I turned my back on a fortune writing for the huge mailers… and wandered off with the scurrilous Gary Halbert to go slumming with entrepreneurs.

The corporations insisted on boring copy and boring photos. Cuz they didn’t (and still don’t) want to “offend” anyone with too much fun.

Can’t have that.

The cooler entrepreneurs, on the other hand (the ones we preferred to deal with), always looked like kids who snuck into the candy store after-hours whenever it came to hooks and photography.

Mostly, they played it safe… but sometimes, we’d talk them into saying “fuck it”, and we’d run outrageous stuff in print ads and direct mail campaigns.

God, that was fun.

Yet, I still parted company with most of my comrades when it came around to snapping photos. If you look at most of my colleagues’ “stock” photo of themselves, it’s one suit-and-tie-with-make-up shot after another.

What’s up with that?

For me, the best shots have always been like a stolen moment in time. No one is looking at the camera, no one is posing, no one is grinning like they think they’re “supposed to” when a camera is brought out.

Good copywriting is like a real conversation.

And a good photo is like a real visual memory — what you see between blinks in real life.

I love “great” photos. I’ve got two Ansel Adams reproductions (Yosemite and a Big Sur beach shot) on the wall across from my desk right now.

But my favorite shots — the ones that I’ve looked at so often, they’ve been burned into my neurons — are mostly casual shots of people I know.

Some are posed, sure (Mom made everyone stand in the same spot by the fireplace for their pre-high-school-graduation photo).

But others were hastily snapped on the fly… and if anyone’s looking at the lens, they haven’t yet mustered their “camera smile”.

I don’t expect anyone to agree with me on this matter. I’m outnumbered 40-million to one — most folks are terrified of being “caught” on film in their natural slack-jawed state… because, I dunno, it might reveal something they’re desperate to keep tamped down.

Like a personality.

Okay, I’m being harsh. That happens when you’re such a reviled minority about something like this.

I cared about how I look on film for around six days back when I was 18. My self-esteem was still traumatized from high school, and photos seemed to amplify every confidence-scaring blemish to Mad magazine-sized proportions.

I soon learned not to care at all. At this point in my career, there is easily two solid years worth of film of me floating around the ether from seminars alone.

I find it hard to watch, because the disconnect of watching and hearing myself makes my head hurt. Do I really sound like that? Do I really look like that?

The photos, however… I still find ones (of me, and of my friends, and of places I love) that immediately retell a great story, complete with emotional nuance and side chapters and intriguing details that have yet to be explored thoroughly.

And I’m telling you right now — loud and clear — that the camera matters as little as the kind of pen you use to write your brilliant notes down.

Here — for your enjoyment and critical dismemberment of — are a few shots I just downloaded from my trusty iPhone. No Zeiss lens, no zoom, no adjustment for light…

… just an instrument for capturing a moment in time.

A crisp, pro-level shot of something boring… remains boring.

But even the fuzziest, most obscure-looking shot of something important to you… remains a treasure worthy of the Smithsonian forever.

So, in this spirit…

… here is a peek at some of the shots I’ve taken over the last few months with my iPhone.

Enjoy… or revile them, as you please.

I don’t care what anyone says… this shot of Reno one wintry evening is nice. Notice the pinpoints of light — a detail none of my old analog cameras could have managed this late in the evening.

North Beach, dusk, from the top floor of the Hilton where we shot the Simple Writing System DVDs. A little Chinatown, a little of the old Beat hangouts, a lot of San Francisco, the prettiest city in the world. (Okay, maybe tied with Paris…)

My good pal (and A-List Copywriter, with 6 controls for Boardroom right now) David Deutsch on the balcony of some gorgeous penthouse we were corralled into in Chicago last year by Tellman Knudsen…

My cherished colleague and Hall Of Fame marketer Joe Sugarman, just last month in Vegas. (He insisted we shake hands and look at least remotely professional, after I’d mugged a little too enthusiastically in the first shot.)

Launch King Jeff Walker and me, being serious for a second at the back of the room while Tony Robbins and Paula Abdul took turns on stage for the SANG event. (In the subsequent shot, I insisted Jeff “stop being taller than me”, and he obliged by stooping. Unfortunately, that shot got murdered by trolls in the iPhone…) (Damn.)

Crushing Paula Abdul with my fingers. I’ll never grow up. (Almost made Jeff spit water through his nose, though.)

On the balcony of Frank Kern’s luxurious penthouse suite at the Hard Rock, just before Mass Control. Andy Jenkins took the shot with my iPhone. (Kern had thrashed the room within hours of checking in…)

My biz partner Stan being clever in Dubai just before I went onstage. That’s Mike Filsaime and Mike Koenigs sitting next to us. We still haven’t told the story of that trip, have we? Whatever you’ve heard is a lie… (And yes, I’m holding the iPhone up and shooting myself like an idiot.  What’s it to ya?)

Okay, so I’m posing. It’s a famous painting. I’m a fan of famous paintings. I get all weird and loony (like an adolescent Beatles fan from those early days) around classic art. I will adore this photo the rest of my days…

And finally, our old pal and golfing nemesis Dean Jackson, freshly settled in his Trump Tower suite in Chitown.

That’s a taste of what I found in the little phone.

For anyone wondering what it’s like on the inside of the Web marketing world, here at least is photographic evidence of something. Not sure what.

If this column goes over all right, I might — might, mind you — share my photos from Australia when I get back.

We leave for Sydney on Tuesday. Virgin Air. I’m gonna start snapping shots on the runway, and not quit until I’ve maxed out the iStorage capacity.

None of us take enough pictures. We just don’t.

And much of the reticence is the hassle of posing and looking good and worrying about composition and all that crap.

My advice: Keep your phone or Casio locked and loaded at all times, and be merciless and unpredictable about grabbing moments in time.

For an entire year, Michele and I photographed most of the meals we ate when dining out. It was senseless, but enormous fun… and someday, I’m telling you, someone will be happy we took the 4.5 seconds to snap those shots.

What’s your take on the sate of photography? You know, the whole technology is only a bit over 150 years old. There are NO photos of anybody farther back than my grandfather on my mother’s side in my family. None.

Let the documentation of our days commence.

And let me know, in the comments, how you’re doing with your own love affair with photography…

Stay frosty,

John

Howdy,

Let me know what you think about this, will ya?

It seems, at first, to be a light-weight subject…

… yet, really, it’s one of the foundations of living a good life.

I’m talking about the people you surround yourself with.

But not the way you’re thinking.

This may even jar you a little bit. Here goes:

Early in my career, I realized that grown-up life isn’t all that much different…

… than what goes on during recess in the third grade.

There are outsiders, insiders, cliques, teams, gangs, winners and losers galore.

No matter WHAT grisly experience you had in grade school…

… you’ve got company.

It’s brutal out there.

And then you become an adult…

… and it’s the SAME SHIT all over again. Hierarchies, power-grabbing, humiliation plays, one-up-manship, and clubs you can’t belong to.

The ranks of entrepreneurs I know are filled with “recess survivors” who finally gave the finger to “The System”, and went off on their own.

As amazing as it seems, you really can get on with life without the “gotcha” games and pettiness of “Life With Bullies, Prom Queens, and BMOC’s”.

However…

… that’s not the realization I want to share with you today.

Nope.

Instead, the second part of that epiphany (that life is just a replay of third grade recess) is this:

Regardless of whether you “won” or “lost” in the social-climbing bullshit you’ve suffered through in your time…

… it can all still be a blast…

… if you have the right people around you.

In other words… it’s not whether you win, or lose.

It’s how much fun and insight to life you get during the adventure.

Let’s use me as an example.

Cuz I don’t mind telling embarrassing stories about myself:

I had a very mixed record of social “success” coming up the ranks… both in school, and in early adult life.

I was okay at sports. Just good enough to make the team and suffer the anxieties and physical/emotional debt of vicious organized games. And just under-powered enough to get cut from every attempt to make varsity. So I got to play… and I got to experience the arrid loneliness of the bench and the exit door.

But I sucked, utterly and without redemption, at most social interaction. Girls scared the bejesus out of me as a kid… flummoxed me as a teen… and toyed with me after that.

I was so unprepared, so confused, and so clueless about dealing with standard issues of dating and being a cool guy and feeling like I belonged… that, if I were a character in a novel, you’d roll your eyes and say “No way could anybody be that much of a loser!”

Yeah.

That was me.

But get this:

I still had a BLAST.

Even when Life dialed up the most humiliating, emotionally-scarring horror possible to a shy, skittish introvert like me…

… I was able to shake it off, and show up the very next day smiling and ready for more.

“That all you got, Fate? That’s your best shot, you miserable s.o.b.? Ha!”

You know how I did it? How I survived, and even thrived while being buried in sticks and stones and the arrows of misfortune?

I’ll tell you:

I had buddies to share it all with.

Not just fellow losers, either.

No.

And this is the essential point here: I had a close-knit group of guys (and a few gals) around me…

… who delighted in being alive.

There’s probably some social-math equation I could come up: Your ability to survive and thrive… is directly proportional to the time that elapses between a horrible event…

… and your ability to laugh about it.

With my friends and me, that time was often instantaneous.

We had a lot of practice.

(And I’m not talking about just dating disasters, or heartbreak, or social blunders. I’m including death, financial misery, and the near-total upheaval of normality. The kind of blows that can rock you to your knees.)

Wait.

I’m still not yet revealing the essence here.

The take-away of this tale is not “friends are good.”

Because I will attest that there was a very definable, and very rare aspect of these friends that is absolutely essential…

… and even beside the point of being able to laugh about tragedy.

You wanna guess what that aspect is?

It’s…

…

…

… energy.

This realization came rushing back to me yesterday while I chatted with my best friend from high school. Haven’t seen the dude in two years, but we stay in close touch.

And, mid-way through the call…

… I realized I ached from laughing.

Even though some of the subjects we discussed were illnesses in our families, job woes, relocation horror stories, and other tragedies.

And I was able to put a “quality” on that laughter.

It was bristling with raw energy. The “good” kind of energy.

There really are two kinds of people in the world: Those who bring energy with them to everything they do…

… and the great masses, who suck energy from you like psychic vampires. (That’s a Halbert term, by the way. Privately, we had other names for these types of buzz-killing grim reapers.)

I’ve known a lot of folks in my time. And I’ve unconsciously been putting each and every one through a little test upon meeting them.

The test is simple: Do they provide energy? Or are they leeching it from the air around us?

A party crammed with energy-gobbling vampires is a drag, through and through. Even Vegas can’t salvage a good time.

And yet, just hanging out with a single “mini-solar system” type of person in a drab coffee shop… can be pure bliss.

In business… in life… in games and in every social and quasi-social gathering…

… there is no fun, and little chance for adventure or good stories when the energy level is flat-lined.

And yet… when you are in the company of someone bursting with life-force…

… well, it’s pretty freaking magical.

The most mundane tasks become a joy. (My pal Art and I used to just drive around Cucamonga, with no goal or destination… not cruising, but rather just hanging out, laughing, basking in raw energy and verve and marvelling at the cruel and wonderful adventures Life handed out.)

Life isn’t gonna treat you better when you surround yourself with heat-source types. You’re still gonna take it on the chin, still gonna encounter monsters around every corner.

My mother — after ten months of gruesome chemo — still managed to tell a joke and make me smile… just hours before she passed away.

Believe me — there was nothing funny going on that afternoon.

But I cherish that last “don’t let the bastards get you down” shared moment with her.

If you understand what I’m talking about, you don’t need to know anything else about her to know exactly what kind of special woman she was.

That was over 15 years ago. And the lesson I learned is never far from my thoughts… especially when I’m feeling like Life has it out for me again.

Screw it.

The ride’s too short.

If you’ve got that flame in your soul, don’t let anyone or anything douse it.

We need you in the mix.

We already got enough of the damned vampires hovering…

Anyway, something to consider.

What do you think?

Stay frosty,

John Carlton

Howdy,

Have you ever been so freakin’ nervous you almost lost control of bodily functions?

Two things made me suddenly think about this unseemly subject.

First Thing: We have an Afghan hound in the house with a bark that rattles windows four blocks away… and he has come thisclose to eating the mailman, the Fed Ex guy, three neighbors, and a flock of Jehovah’s Witnesses who dared knock on the door.

And that’s just over the past month or so.

But here’s the kicker: He will break down into a sobbing lump of useless self-pity if Michele or I so much as look at him cross-eyed.

His bark is a mask for the social vulnerability he suffers.

He doesn’t really want to rip out your throat.

Deep inside, he’s just a confused, awkward puppy, trapped in an adult dog’s body. Scared shitless of the world. (Literally shitless, whenever fireworks or lightning are nearby.) (Yeah, it’s a mess.)

Second Thing: I was recently advising someone about “getting his ass out in the marketplace as an expert”… and the guy actually started shaking.

Just the thought of stepping onto the metaphorical stage of life, and performing… sent this poor guy into a stuttering implosion.

He not only had no “bark”… he had no cojones, either.

This got me thinking about my own journey from stuttering fear-meister to swaggering bluster-bomb.

It’s relevant… because, in business, my line is: If you truly have a great product that your prospect should own… then shame on you if you don’t step forward confidently and BE that guy he needs you to be… so he can feel good about buying.

You can’t sell from your heels, people.

(I love to trot out the old quote by Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones: “It’s not that I’m all that great of a guitar player, you know. It’s just that I can step out in front of ten thousand people and DO it.”)

(Talent comes in WAY behind cojones when it comes to carving out your niche.)

Anyway, back to me…

I am not an extrovert by any stretch.

In fact, I chart pretty heavily toward “total thumb-sucking, light-avoiding, cave-dwelling introvert” in basic personality tests.

You can tell an introvert from an extrovert pretty easily: When the extro is around people, like at a party, he gets energized. The introvert finds it a chore, and leaves the event drained.

It’s all about energy transference.

Now, I was lucky to grow up with a sizeable contingent of good friends — who I went all the way from kindergarten through high school with — which saved me from having to “make” new friends until I hustled off to college.

And, in college, for whatever reason, I was immediately taken in by a group of goofballs who somehow saw my potential for furthering their goofball yearnings.

However, it took me a long time to get to “know” most of these people.

Seriously. It was decades before I finally felt comfortable around most of them.

Nearly all of the people I’m close to, I’ve been close to for half my life. (I’ve known my business partner, Stan, for 25 years, and our contract writer, Mark, since we were nineteen.)

I tell you this to illustrate how ill-equiped I was to become a guru.

I stuttered as a kid… and frequently found myself getting stuck on words as an adult whenever I encountered uncomfortable situations.

Meaning, any new situation where people I didn’t know were looking at me.

In grade school — back when I was convinced that everybody else knew things they weren’t sharing with me (and that’s why life seemed like such a mystery) — I even burst into tears in class math competitions. (One little girl — Peggy The Bitch, I call her — repeatedly tripped me up with the question “What’s 5 times 0?” I nearly always said “5!” before realizing my blunder and being told to sit down while the rest of the class continued the competition.)

(Ah, childhood humiliation. What a concept.)

As a teen, a good (longtime) friend convinced me to learn guitar so we could start playing in bands. He wanted the excitement and recognition of being on stage. I just got a thrill from playing music.

So he fronted the many bands we formed, happily, from center-stage… and I happily lurked near the far edge, out of the limelight, content to concentrate on the tunes.

I was kinda like Garth, from Wayne’s World. Thrust into the action on the coattails of a raging extrovert.

Freelancing was a natural for me. It required long, lonely hours inside your head… and you were excused from looking like the regular “suits” in the agencies because, as a writer, the more outrageous you appeared, the more they believed you must possess the “goods”.

Idiots.

Halbert, of course, was THE uber-extrovert. He publicly listed his main hobby as “finding new methods of self-aggrandizement”.

I stayed behind the scenes as much as possible. My main job, in fact, during seminars was to handle everything but the actual delivery of the action onstage.

It was Halbert’s show, and I liked it that way.

I had defined myself as an introvert, and never considered it could be any other way.

I even had a “defining moment” — back in college, when I was introduced to my first “real” girlfriend’s beloved sister, I started laughing uncontrollably. Not because anything was funny… but because my body betrayed me, and just went off in an inappropriate spasm.

I was humiliated, because after lamely stuttering about why I had burst out with guffaws (I could come with nothing good to explain myself), the awkwardness just got deeper and deeper. My girlfriend forgave me (and even sorta found it endearing — I was her “bad boy” artistic-type boyfriend, so weirdness was expected).

But her sister forever thought I was an A-Number One Doofus Jerk-Off.

Rightly so, I might add.

Around uncomfortable situations, I was that guy.

However…

After, oh, around thirty gazillion private consultations and Hot Seats and meetings with clients once I became a sought-after pro… all of whom initially tried to “alpha male” me into submission, because they wanted the writer (me) to be their slave…

… I started to think that maybe I had unwisely “defined” myself.

As anyone who has gotten freelance advice from me knows, I quickly learned to walk into a new client’s life and OWN the bastard. I knew that I held all the cards — he needed copy, couldn’t produce it himself to save his life, and thus was in zero position to be dictating terms to me.

I ain’t shy, professionally.

Now, my technique may or may not help others. (I developed a “stage personality” for these consultations I called Dr. Smooth… and let this “alternative John” take over.)

(And damn, but that Doctor was good at taking control and bullying clients.)

It’s a standard tactic, adapted from acting. No big deal, nothing revelatory about it.

However…

What it did for me was immediately obliterate that old “defining moment” that I had regarded as my “fate”.

I wasn’t really a socially-retarded loser.

I just played one in life.

Cuz I thought I’d been… assigned… the role.

If you’ve ever seen me speak at seminars, you know I’m no wallflower these days. I’m totally comfy in front of any size crowd, because the “mystery” of what’s going on has been solved in my mind.

It’s not about me.

It’s about the content of what I share.

(Plus, of course, I know so much about the people in the audience nowadays… from all those decades of delving into the psychology of salesmanship… that I don’t even need to imagine anyone naked to be calm.)

(It’s just us folks in the room. Good people looking for good info, plus maybe a little entertainment along the way. And a speaker line-up of “just-plain-dudes” having fun in the limelight.)

My point: You can do what you need to do.

If your market is crying out for someone to stand up and be the go-to-guy… you really can do it.

Like Keith Richards, you can get your chops honed to a degree that gives you enough confidence to be “onstage” (however you define the stage — it can be your website, an actual stage, or infomercials or any other media)… where you will deliver what the folks paid to see.

There are vast armies of “experts” out there (especially online) with no more real skill or insight or knowledge than you have.

Often, they have less.

What they DO have, that so many others refuse to cultivate, are the cojones to step up and BE that guy the audience needs you to be.

I can tell you this with absolute certainty (because I personally know it’s true): Most of the top guru’s in the entrepreneurial world — especially online — are former dweebs, stutterers, social outcasts and semi-dangerous nutcases.

They are, essentially, gawky and lonely and scared little kids trapped inside an adult’s body.

What they have done, however…

… is to re-define WHO they are when it counts.

Everyone, at some time or another, feels the urge to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over their head. Life is tough, business tougher. Hamlet’s slings and arrows constantly rain on everyone’s parade, and NO ONE gets a pass.

However…

… the winners define themselves.

I’m still an introvert. I still have my awkward social moments. I still occasionally stutter.

But those things do not define me.

Long ago, I threw away the role “assigned” to me… and just created my own new one. Which allows me to do whatever needs doing to further my goals… including climbing up on stage alone and engaging a thousand people as a ringleader.

Life sucks when you’re crawling around under the weight of unnecessary self-loathing, self-pity and self-expectations you can never meet.

Life rocks when you re-cut the jigsaw of your personality, and make something new according to who YOU want to be.

Just food for thought.

Love to hear your experiences with self-defining moments.

It’s heartening to hear so many commenters in past blogs finally come to grips with internal battles they’ve sometimes struggled with for years.

Hey — it’s fun when this stuff starts working.

Stay frosty,

John Carlton
www.carltoncoaching.com

P.S. We are very close to finishing up a new venture here that — if you crave rollicking adventure in your business life — will absolutely light up many people’s worlds.

It’s a limited opportunity… but the folks who truly know, in your heart, that one of the spots was meant for you… will instantly understand what has to happen to get involved.

Just a few more days…

Howdy…

You got a favorite TV show?

I was a charter member of the first TV-addicted generation, and I may yet live to see the end of network television as we’ve all known and loved it all these seasons.

The Web’s already killed it for the youngest generations. Once the last of the Boomers wander off, we’ll take our fond memories of Howdy Doody and The Twilight Zone with us… and no one will much care, being too busy with fourteen incoming Twittering IMs on their ear/eye implants and a fresh scene loading up from the new Grand Theft Auto XXVII they just injected straight into their pituitary gland.

Sometimes I think about that — television, easily the most culture-shaping technology advance in the history of mankind… eclipsed before it reached seventy years old… murdered by hotter, more intensely interactive tech. (Okay — I know that television was actually viable in the 1920s, but get real. It wasn’t a cultural phenomenon until the fifties.)

But that’s not what I want to write about tonight.

Naw.

Instead, something else triggered my interest. We just watched the season-ending episode of “House”, which had everyone in the room reaching for tear-soaked tissues (including the cat, who was barely watching).

And, if you’ll give me a minute here, I’m gonna tie that show in with you making money with your ads. (VERY major lesson coming up, so pay attention.)

First, though, you gotta put up with some ranting: Television, overall, has followed the same arc that — in micro — the show Saturday Night Live has followed: Great for a couple of years… suck for several years… recover, and be great again… then quickly descend into Suckdom once more… and over and over, in a cycle that (someday) historians will probably be able to track down to the second. (“As we can clearly see, class, the show left the rails thirteen minutes into the first episode after Lorne Michaels left in season five… you can almost — chuckle – see it jumping the shark as Louise-Dreyfus sputters in yet another vapid, unfunny scene…”)

And I believe we’re currently in one of the recurring “up” bumps. Always good when you realize there are actually a couple of shows on that DESERVE to be watched. Not brain-dead watching, but active interest watching.

What do you Tivo?

We religiously record House, 30 Rock, The Office (though I suspect the shark is in mid-air on that one), and Manchester United games on Fox Sports. (Okay, Michele won’t watch soccer with me, and I can’t stomach Brothers And Sisters with her. Trade off.)

I love the medium, but I don’t “need” it. I grew up watching all the sixties sit-com, sci-fi, drama and kitsch I could cram into an evening (The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Addams Family, Outer Limits, The Prisoner, The Avengers, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., American Bandstand, She-Bang, Soupy Sales, Phil Silvers, Ed Sullivan, Gilligan’s Island, Star Trek, The Monkees… God, I’m embarrassed to admit all that…).

But I watched, primarialy, because it was there. Mom had the kitchen radio on all day (it’s how I discovered rock and roll), and the boob tube was cranked on when Pop came home, and wasn’t turned off until beddy-bye. (Laugh-In, Red Skelton, Where The Action Is, Your Show of Shows, The Match Game…)

Once I was old enough to beg Pop for the car keys, my evening rituals changed dramatically. I didn’t even own a TV through the seventies. (Never saw a single episode of Mork & Mindy, Mary Tyler Moore, or Three’s Company, thank you very much.) (One of TV’s “down” cycles, I would say.) (Showed up, often drunk, at friends’ houses with toobs for SNL, of course.)

MTV and cable brought me back to the fold, fitfully.

Now, I’m in a groove once again.

Gotta have my “House”, and the occasional Law & Order SVU. (BTW: Why is Rooney not playing for Man U lately? Did he get hurt? Traded? What’s up? He wasn’t in the Moscow grueler…)

Okay, back to the point of all this:

The last episodes (it was a twin-hour ending show) of House were pretty riveting television. I’m ALWAYS impressed with good writing (Boston Legal, CSI: NY, the commentors on the World Series of Poker, Californication)… and I’ve learned to watch both passively (to enjoy the moment)…

… and to go back over what just hooked me, and watch critically.

I like to break down exactly what the writers did to tweak my emotions, my interest, and ESPECIALLY my resistance to being sucked into the story.

That’s right. With every show, I challenge the writing to do its job.

We have an unwritten rule in the house: Any time either of us can start predicting the dialog before the actors speak it… that show is toast.

The shark has done jumped, when the script is so weak you can burble along with the actors in real time.

So here’s the thing…

… this House final episode (WARNING: Spoiler alert!) polished off one of the major characters. That’s not unique in television… but the way the writers did it defied what any viewer would have predicted.

It was as if… the script burned down the house.

Just created all kinds of emotional havoc and brain-tickling mayhem.

It was that riveting, and satisfying.

I can’t wait for next season. Seriously.

I’m pissed I gotta wait.

I’m addicted.

Consider what the writers did, as you consider how to write compelling, riveting copy yourself.

Sometimes, you gotta burn down the house just to get your prospect’s attention.

Not literally, of course (“you idiot”, House would add).

Figuratively.

Most ad copy is like an episode of Three’s Company — at best, vaguely suggestive, but nothing you’d remember the next day (or even the next hour).

Great copy, on the other hand, is like South Park — you simply cannot snooze through it.

You gotta be prepared for the reaction, too, if you ever get ballsy with your writing. Not everyone will cheer you on. “He can’t say that, can he?” will be a common response.

“Somebody’s got to do something about that repulsive material.”

“Can’t we shoot them, or deport them, or something?”

I’ve never gone for straight outrage, but neither were my first golf ads greeted with encouragement at the big golf magazines. They swallowed hard during the first round, took the money, and pretended not to notice how much those 3-page copy-dense beasts fouled up the pretty “look” of their publications.

When my client went back for multiple insertions, it was almost too much to bear.

Fortunately, the publishers were shameless money-grubbing whores, and the ads ran despite the cries of alarm from readers. (But only from readers outside our target market. The guys we were after LOVED those ads.) (Still do.)

We, essentially, burned down the nice golf house, like vandals in a riot.

Something to think about, the next time you absolutely have to get attention for your copy. Don’t you think?

What TV shows do you remember fondly? (I’d watch MTV for hours in the first years, when it was all video, all the time… and I still consider The Larry Sanders Show to be one of the best ever written. Entourage ain’t bad, though it’s occasionally infuriatingly stupid. The Simpsons, yeah. Seinfeld, I guess. What else am I missing here?)

Stay frosty,

John Carlton

P.S. Hey — we just put another super-hot Radio Rant Coaching Club show in the can. I cannot understand why any marketer with his head screwed on straight isn’t breaking a leg to get into this club — it’s fun, it’s informative up the yin-yang, and it’s without doubt the greatest single resource for marketers available today.

Check it out. I believe we still offer a free month’s trial, with no obligation to stay when the trial’s up. (Yep — you can rip us off.) Plus, since you get access to all the current shows still posted, it’s actually like getting 2 free months. (Again, no obligation to stay, ever.)

Here’s the link:

http://www.carltoncoaching.com

Later…

Howdy,

I’m gonna be flat-out honest with you: I’m freaking exhausted.

The “17 Points” workshop is in the can, but it took a piece out of us to pull off. Three entire days, morning to evening, locked in mortal combat with Truth, Insight, and The Path To Riches & Spiritual Fulfillment.

Man, it was fun.

But grueling. In that “everything got revealed (and then some)” way.

I’ll be sharing more of what exactly was shared at this one-of-a-kind event later… but for now, I just want to gloat a bit.

I mean… NO ONE else puts on events like this. I honestly believe hosting one of these marathon teaching workshops would kill your average guru. Even the ones half my age. Just curl ‘em up and leave a singed hulk trailing wisps of bacon smoke.

You really shoulda been there, you know.

Oh, wait… you were invited. But you missed out on your spot by not gaming the auction, didn’t you.

Ah, well. I’d say “next time”, but without an act of God (like the video spontaneously combusting), there won’t BE a next time. My entire career was metaphorically aimed at this one single in-depth workshop… and I pushed myself as hard as I’ve ever pushed.

And I ain’t never giving it again.

It was just too exhausting.

Have you ever stood on your feet for three solid days, keeping your mind completely engaged, in fever-pitch mode… working without a net, in front of appropriately-greedy people who have paid big bucks for the opportunity to suck every scrap of wisdom from your skull?

I can’t say I recommend it.

Other folks put on big damn seminars with a mob in the audience, and as impressive a line-up of speakers as they can bribe or cajole into showing up. The actual host is onstage for only a short amount of time. He’s more of a ring-leader and MC.

I like that model fine. It’s a good way to present a lot of stuff to a lot of people.

But my DNA just won’t allow me to host that kind of event.

I cut my teeth, long ago, with Halbert, doing intimate and shockingly-interactive seminars with relatively small groups of people… most of whom were highly skeptical of the whole scene. We had no script, no “battle plan” for how to proceed, no clear idea of what was gonna happen from hour to hour… and it was just us on the stage, with little or no backup.

And we liked it that way.

It was theater-meets-the-barroom-brawl time. We took each attendee through their paces, and kept the entire event utterly and completely focused on real-world solutions to the actual marketing problems they brought to us.

No theory. No bullshit academics. No clever speeches. And no pitching.

Just raw, nasty, front-trenches marketing hard work.

Once you get a taste for that kind of impromptu action, “regular” seminars full of talking heads seem boring and nowhere near dangerous enough.

My seminars are always small, always unpredictable, always pumping adrenaline and endorphines… because the live, unrehearsed, uncensored interaction of host-and-attendee IS dangerous and exciting.

Hey — the action kept me going for three packed days.

Kept the attendees on their toes, too.

It was a raging success, by all metrics.

But I’m never, ever, doing it again.

Still, I’m sitting here laughing out loud, remembering some of the stories we pulled from the extended weekend. It was great having my long-time buds David Deutsch and Garf (David Garfinkel) as wingmen, watching my back from the audience. The hotel was perfectly placed between Chinatown and North Beach (where Kerouac and The Dead hung out) — fabulous food, ambience up the yin-yang (literally, if you went into Chinatown), all the energy that comes from hanging out in the nerve-center of a bitchin’ city like San Francisco.

Plus, witnessing Deutsch attempt to murder Garf with an IED of olive oil and glass was just priceless. Later, we all made up and toured Carol Doda’s old haunt for laughs, along with the new “Beat Museum” (Ginsberg’s typewriter!).

Ever had a Chinese foot massage in a room filled with top Web marketers, all half-drunk and giggling?

I’m truly sorry you missed this event, I really am.

We may have a few video snippets to share with you, soon. But we will not be releasing the DVDs of the event (like we have for the other seminars/sweatshops I’ve held).

Naw. This one was too special. For now, the hot stuff is staying in the vault.

And I’m gonna bask in the warmth of having pulled it off for a little while here.

A little creative gloating. There hasn’t been anything in any of the other marketing events you’ve heard of… that is even remotely close to what was shared in this workshop.

I wish you coulda been there.

Stay frosty,

John Carlton
http://www.carltoncoaching.com

PS: Just a note to the curious here — the schedule for the much-desired “Launching Pad” coaching option (what we call around the office “Be John’s New Best Friend For A Month”) is starting to look like the 405 during the morning commute. In other words: Packed.

Over the past months, while we’ve been on the road (to Kern’s “Mass Control” event, Eben’s “Altitude” spectacular, Schefren’s Orlando seminar, and everywhere else we’ve been traipsing around) people have aggressively cornered Stan or me and grilled us on the availability of this super-intense consulting opportunity.

If even a fraction of those folks follow up, we’ll be booked solid soon. It’s first-come, first-served, though… so, while there are spots on the schedule, you have a shot.

Check it out at http://www.carltoncoaching.com.

Mahalo.