April 23, 2008

What Mainstream Marketers Miss

There’s a growing marketing underworld that you are probably only peripherally aware of. Born from the direct marketing gurus like Dan Kennedy and Gary Halbert, the new breed has taken the game to a whole new level, and it’s very likely that you’re missing it.

That’s too bad, cause these kids are on the very cutting edge of what’s possible in social engineering, and they’re learning - and sharing - more every day.

I just spent the weekend with a bunch of internet marketing weirdos.  It was in San Diego at the Hard Rock Hotel.  Our host was Frank Kern.

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April 09, 2008

The Disciplined Marketer

As some of you may know, my first ‘real’ career was as a securities trader on Wall Street.

At age 25, before the dot-com bubble began, I could feel that something big was afoot. I’d read about the ‘soaring’ Cisco stock price in the SF Chronicle… and Yahoo, which had just gone through IPO. I hadn’t been ‘online’ yet (apart from BBS’s when i was a kid - remember those?), and didn’t yet have an email address. But I remember feeling that a renaissance was beginning and that I wanted to be a part of it.

Unfortunately for me, I had no MBA. I didn’t even graduate from college. I’d been more interested in traveling the world with my beautiful new girlfriend.

But I needed a way to get involved in what I was reading about each day. Soon, my dad discovered what would soon become known as ‘day trading’. Over the next couple months, I did my research and packed my bags. I moved to New York and got a seat at Broadway Trading.

At that time, Broadway was tiny. I was probably the 20th trader there. But this was Wall Street (actually Broad Street, around the corner) and I knew that this was the center of the action. Guys were making money - sometimes $1000 a day or more. It seemed incredible.

The way it works is that you watch from the sidelines for awhile. Then you get an account and trade small lots, 100 shares at a time.  Usually, a beginniner would spend a good two to four weeks watching.

During my watching time, a young Russian kid named Serge made $4000 in one day. On the same day, Yahoo! traded up to $12. I thought these lofty numbers had to be the froth at the end of a crazy run. I was late to the party, I figured.

It turned out, of course, to be just the beginning…

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