2005 - 11-29-05

"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?)

At the time, almost everyone marketing on
the Internet was doing so on "bulletin boards". That's
probably something a lot of young Internet users have never
even heard about.

So many computer experts came to my
brainstorming session, we had to attempt to get a larger
room to accommodate everyone.

The names of many of the people who attended
that session reads like a "Who's Who" in the annals of
online marketing. It will be fun for me as you listen to the
recording of this brainstorming session to see how many of
the names of the attendees and experts you recognize.