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Think about this: Years ago, Ray Kroc walked into a restaurant
called "McDonald's" in a small city in California. He was
impressed with the cleanliness of the restaurant and the
efficiency of how it was run. The guys who owned it (I think
they were two brothers named McDonald) were happy to sell
him the rights to franchise their…

Get this:
Often the client to whom you are giving your
precious advertising copy is going to be more like one of
those McDonald brothers... than... he or she is going to be more
like Ray Kroc.

Let's say you decide not to write
for clients and only write for yourself. There are a few
people like Joe Sugarman…

You Don't Have A Clue

Of The Obstacles You Are

Going To Have To Overcome!

First of all, you're not going to have time
to write any more copy for any more projects. Nope.
Someone's going to have to man the phones to take the
orders. Your time will be spent either taking those orders
yourself or…

And the same thing will happen with the mail
orders. Either you have to pick up the mail yourself or have
an employee do it and someone has to deposit all those
checks.

And someone has to fill all those orders.
Again, it's either you, your employees you're having to
supervise, or some fulfillment agency you're watching…

Of course, you'll also have to have a merchant
account to process your credit card orders. And that, my
friend, is when
you will find how delicate that particular link in your
chain of success is. There's a very good possibility your
merchant account (even if you've had it for 20-years) will be canceled... without any…

Or, your merchant account might be canceled, believe it or not, for no
rational reason whatsoever. Maybe
some underpaid clerk at the bank was having a bad hair day
and resented the idea you were taking in
a lot of money.

Most of you think if you run your
business in an ethical and upright manner you'll never have
to worry about customer complaints. You couldn't be more
wrong. Customers (and even non-customers) will complain about
anything imaginable. Once, I mailed one of my semi-famous
dollar bill letters to a lot of people and the first line…

As you can see, I've attached a nice, crisp
$1 bill to the top of this letter.

And you know what? One
guy sent me a very hostile complaint letter because the $1
bill I sent him was a little wrinkled and not crisp and
neat. This is a true story. Can you imagine that? Here's a
guy…

Most likely, if you decide to run a business
for yourself, what you really will have done is... have created
a JOB for yourself. And, not only that, you will be driven
crazy and end up...

Having A Madman For A Boss!

Well, what should you do?

I've given this an
enormous amount of thought.

I was blessed when I had my
first direct marketing success by hooking up with a partner,
Dennis Haslinger (now deceased), who ran the business with
the precision of a Swiss watch... and... cheerfully paid me my half of the profits. It was a
dream situation…

Dennis died in the 1990's and I
have been looking for someone I could hook up with
like him ever since. But a guy like Dennis is borderline
impossible to find. Let me tell you some of the
characteristics that type of person needs to possess:

First, he or she needs to be honest and
ethical. The most important aspect of that honesty and
ethicalness is the person will pay YOU the share of the
money you personally deserve.

Second, the
person must possess the ability to intelligently run very
rapidly with a good idea. He or she needs to be a person
that, when presented…

Third, the person needs to be savvy. He or
she needs to know the things you must avoid doing to incur
the wrath of alphabet agencies, an unnecessarily high refund
rate, and the toxic venom of people in general towards
financially successful people.

Fourth, the person must have
one or more extremely solid merchant accounts to process credit card orders. It's been my experience most people who have an existing merchant account have no
idea whatsoever how fast it is likely to
disappear once they become involved in a direct marketing
endeavor.

Fifth, the person must have a lot of money. If you really want to go balls-to-the-wall
as far as making money is concerned, you must hook up with
somebody who is financially solid enough to exploit your
marketing endeavors with the speed of light... and... do so without financial fear.

Sixth, the last characteristic I'm going to
talk about is, the person has to be likable. And, by
"likable" I mean compatible with you. What does it matter
how much money you make if you have to interact every day
with some anal uptight shitweasel you can barely tolerate?

There's more, but that's all I can think of
off the cuff right now. And, believe me, those
characteristics are enough to eliminate 99.999% of all
people you might want to team up with.

Okay, now let's get down to business: Over
the last few years (since I first began putting my
newsletters online) my readership…

"What
Would Gary Think?"

This is all great for the ego, but
it's also insanity. Mostly, when people are wondering "What
would Gary think?"... all I am really thinking about is
the overwhelming difficult problems (at least difficult
for me) of how to get my laundry done and one of my shirts
ironed.

But, the larger point is, somehow I have
become possibly the most "connected" person in the direct
marketing universe. And, more importantly, I have found a
very tiny handful of people who have all (and sometimes
more) of the characteristics I described earlier above.

Let's talk
about a vision: Let's envision you have written a great
sales letter, newspaper ad or some other type of advertising
copy, and you send it to me.

And, let's suppose I read it and make a
judgment that, if tested, there's a good chance what
you have written will become a success.