2005 - 11-29-05

"Honey, it's
going to be okay. We're going to be okay."
All the while I was promising her that,
her apartment and the entire building was literally shaking
apart.

Eventually, the shaking stopped. At least
momentarily. We got out of bed and crawled to the living
room. Everything was smashed. Her computer was destroyed.
All her artwork from the walls was on the floor. The
furniture was now kindling. In her kitchen, the
refrigerator had fallen forward and the doors to the
refrigerator and freezer were ajar. All kinds of food and
various liquids like orange juice and milk had spilled out onto the
kitchen floor.

For some reason I stumbled into the kitchen
and then turned around and crawled back into the living
room. At that moment, my girlfriend raised her voice and
started screaming,

"Gary, Gary! Look what you're doing!"

"What,"
I said,

"What am I doing?"

To which she replied,

"You're tracking
stuff all over my living room rug!"

It took both us a moment to realize the
absurdity of her concern. But I think it's indicative of the
human condition. We can be faced with a calamity of enormous
proportion but focus our attention on some mundane everyday
detail. I think it's a part of our survival mechanism which
allows us to cope with monstrous events beyond our control.

Now I'm going to tell you something: My
readers know a lot about me. But in truth, I have only
revealed the tip of the iceberg of what I know about
marketing.

What I'm about to say to you is going to be
shocking. But it's true. And I can prove it.

On
January 16, 1994 I, Sir Gary of Halbert,

Invented Email
And Internet Marketing!

I swear to God that's true.

Here's how it happened: I conducted a
brainstorming session at Universal City in California. It
was called "Gary Halbert's Electronic Marketing
Brainstorming Session". What I did is invite the top
computer experts in the United States to attend a free
brainstorming session with me and to see, with me guiding
the brainstorm, if it was possible to monetize and
financially exploit this new thing called the Internet. (By
the way, at that time, there were approximately 15-Million
people worldwide who had access to the Internet. However,
the people at my brainstorming session assured me in the
future there would be many more Internet users. You think
maybe they had that part right?)