That’s an extremely nice thing to say, Drayton, thank you.

The point of putting this video up is not about butteringup my ego, rather to bring to your attention that there is a monumental opportunity here for entrepreneurs to tap into the mind and vast experience of a man who has helped shaped not only the way businesses market themselves over the past 50 years, but also our culture (anyone buy a Bullworker? That was Drayton).

Compared to the plethora of marketing gurus out there (many of which have only ever run one business: the marketing guru business), this is a diamond in the rough.

The fact that this man wants to share and help people when most other people would have long hung up their boots is too good to miss. It’s one thing buying and reading his extraordinary books, but entirely another to engage with the man himself. He’s currently in test mode with his “Drayton Bird Learning” programme. You could do worse than take a look at it here: Drayton Bird Learning

There’s nothing in it for me apart from the hope that you get something out of being exposed to this man’s brain. Enjoy!

Drayton brings up a very important point here, one close to my heart..

I have met an extraordinary amount of people that focus on the latest trick or fad whilst ignoring the fundamentals of their business: find a hungry market and sell to it.

It’s that simple.

Here is Drayton on the recession, and how it breeds mistrust in business…

Here is Drayton sharing his thoughts on the perils of believing your own success is all down to you, and what that can do to your ego…

It’s more than a valid point. The longer you go on in business, the more people you meet who are at various stages of success. Some are on the way up, some are there, others are on the way down. In business, as in life, you’re never aware of being in a peak or a trough until you’ve passed the event – you are usually somewhere in between either point. Business is truly a roller-coaster ride. It’s also entirely amoral.

Success brings it’s own demons, such as jealousy from competitors or colleagues. The biggest problem though, is yourself.

I know. I was one of the people that Drayton talks about (and I suspect he was one himself once).

In his masterwork “Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing” he points out in Chapter Two:

“..I was most interested to read that an eminent Japanese businessman, when asked why he was in business, replied: ‘To ensure the survival of my company’. I suspect this reply would not be unusual in Japan. For many years Japanese industry tended to invest a higher percentage of its profits in building for the future than the UK did. It did not feel obliged to squeeze very yen out of the annual turnover and hand it over to the shareholders.

Clearly, if you are intent upon survival rather than a fast buck, you are going to plan more for the long term. No doubt this attitude explains why the Japansese did better than us for a good 40 years, and still do in many areas. But whatever your aim, it will colour all you do: the way you structure your organisation, manage your staff and set their targets, everything, right down to the smallest marketing decision.”

If you haven’t got this book, I highly recommend it:

Attitude is clearly king.

I’ve lost count of the number of show-off entrepreneurs I’ve met with pictures of million dollar boats on the wall of their office, Rolexes dripping off their wrists, and all the other gubbins that seems to motivate them. When I first started making money, it did go to my head a bit. I’m from a council house background, so it was bound to :-)

In recent months I’ve become much more focused on building for the future. I’ve experienced massive highs and massive lows, especially in the past two years. One piece of literature that I find hugely leveling and inspiring whenever I feel the need for a lift (or realise my ego is running away with me) is the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling, which I shall reproduce for you here:

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

In relation to Drayon’s point in the video, I think the lines..

“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;”

…are particularly relevant.

I hope you find it useful too, and wish you a fantastic 2010.

Turkey was not the only Bird I had at Christmas this year.

I was also honoured to have Drayton Bird over as a guest. We’re cooking up a few very exciting things in the New Year together, which I will soon be sharing with you. In the meantime, I got a few snippets on tape from the Grand Master himself for you to enjoy. Here’s a funny story about Christmas and a certain David Ogilvy….

Look out for the next one in a few days.

How does one review this book?

If you are in business, my message is simply this: take your finger out of your backside, buy this book, read it, implement what you learn as fast as you can.

Drayton is the dog’s bollocks. He’s erudite, funny, brilliant.

David Ogilvy said Drayton knows more about DM than anyone else on Earth.

Ogilvy knew his onions (literally, as he used to peel them for a living in a Parisian Restaurant in the 1930s before he became the “King of Madison Avenue”).

This book is about as definitive as you can get on the subject of direct marketing. You know, the kind of marketing where results and profits are actually measured. The kind of marketing that does not get taught at Universities. The principles of which form the basis of all successful internet marketing.

I first met Drayton when we both spoke at The System Intensive in London in 2008. We met again in 2009 and regularly exchange jokes and advice by email. You can see how good the old goat is here (in fact, that’s my developing bald spot you can see in the foreground):

So, go and get “Commonsense”, then whilst you’re at it, get this as well:

Then follow one of the best blogs on the whole t’internet here:

At my recent blogging/SEO seminar I went to great pains to explain what I called “the dark side of blogging”.

In a nutshell, I tried to explain my own personal experiences of how when writing and publishing under your own name can have huge benefits, it can also attract the attention of people with a lower IQ who can not only misinterpret your innocent and honest ramblings but also use the personal information you provide to attack you.

This is most serious, and one of the reasons I toned down my initial enthusiasm to talk about my family on here. It was used against me in the vilest of fashions by what I can only refer to a “scum”.

On top of that, I’ve also had to put up with online attacks from other SEO “professionals” hiding behind twitter anonymity. (If you are reading this: I know who you are. All the negative energy you are throwing out is coming right back ‘atcha, you fool).

It’s a real shame, because most of the people who read this are wonderful, caring and often brilliant. If you’re one of them I can only apologise for the fact that I’ve had to censor myself.

This morning, I had the joy of reading yet another brilliant and hilarious post from the mind of Drayton Bird. Take a look at it here.

Read it yet?

The funny thing about that post is that the author of the blog in question was at my seminar.

I did warn you :-)

P.S. To find Drayton’s blog, I googled him and found an amusing lesson in SEO. Does Drayton realise he has optimised one of his pages for the phrase “Drayton Bird Ass“, I wonder?

I know it’s probably short for “associates” dear reader (or maybe there’s a whole other side to Drayon I’ve not seen yet?), but it does also bring up another point: don’t have too many characters in your page title. When you see the “…” at the end of a page title in google results, that means that page is not optimised (which is often a great indicator of how easy a market is to break into).

Followers of this blog know that the people I follow are only the best of the best. Drayton Bird is one of those. Described by David Ogilvy (The King of Madison Avenue) as “Drayton Bird knows more about direct marketing than anyone else in the World” and author of at least two of the very best books on marketing you could ever read, Drayton posted a blog posted today I couldn’t help but comment on.

He said “I got a tweety message from a guy who wants me to follow him. His description of himself read: “ISMA founding member. Certified Social Media Specialist”.

Two thoughts occurred to me. 1. Start worrying when they start an Institute. It means six guys got together and thought, “Let’s start an Institute. That’ll make it look respectable enough to start taking serious money off people”.

And when something that’s been around for about ten minutes starts having “Certified Specialists” you’re in real trouble. Who certifies these specialists? Another six guys who think, “Hmmm. If you’re “certified” – well, that sounds great, doesn’t it? Up go the fees, right.”

You can read the full post here.

It got me thinking about a meeting I had with someone who runs an SEO company who asked me about whether I thought there should be an SEO Association – something to set standards in the industry. He then went on to prise information out of me about how I do SEO (to which I answered with a load of misinformation because I could smell a rat as soon as I walked through the door) and then went on some sort of personal vendetta against me. And I was really nice to him! There’s nowt queer as folk though, is there?

My initial reaction was the same as Drayton’s. If someone is going to teach you something, coach you, or do something for your business (or life), make sure they can actually walk the walk.

It’s also why I do not ever want to have a “Google Qualified Blah-Blah-Blah” badge. What are they for, anyway? To me, these badges are for inadequate little boys that have bedrooms full of certificates and old cub scout uniforms covered in little badges (with a few notable exceptions). It’s the way most of society works. They are approbations from “authority” organisations to prove that you are “better” than everyone else. Back to my old friend Leonardo:

“Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.”

In the case of Google, a company I love in many ways, their training courses are designed for one purpose only: to make them more money by teaching you to sell their services in the way that suits them, not the client. And why not? They’re a publicly listed company designed to make a profit. But the idea of all these little Google soldiers running around impressing people with their badges just makes me laugh.

Which brings me to the world of teaching internet marketing. I entered this world full of a naive desire to help people. To give people the benefit of my experience. To learn from my mistakes (I’ve made plenty) and victories.

It’s been amazing in many ways. I’ve had some fantastic experiences, not least this week in Oxford helping people with businesses as diverse as chocolate fountain hire, luxury African safaris and selling flying lessons.

But I’ve also been interested to see the massive backlash that is happening with some of the bigger, louder noises on the internet in recent years. I mean, take a look at some of the horror stories unfolding on Salty Droid.

One of the guys being slaughtered on there is James Arthur Ray: someone I first watched in “The Secret” DVD a couple of years ago. Another is a guy who was sending me Twitter messages just a few months ago, Harlan Kilstein. I don’t know either of these people from Adam, but I was aware of their presence on the internet. I also don’t know what is true anymore, but the content on Salty Droid is truly frightening stuff that brings into question the whole “cult of personality” thing.

I made a decision back in February to use my personal domain name to start blogging. It’s been a real journey. I’ve made some incredible, probably lifelong, friends via this blog. I’ve also had the contents of this blog used against me in some of the most vile and horrific ways (which is why I don’t mention my children on here any more).

I made this decision because I reasoned that no-one else could be me. When you are offering yourself out to teach or sell people stuff, should you use a “brand”, or should you just be yourself?

I chose to be myself, but now I’m wondering if this was the right decision and whether or not I should even carry on?

(Don’t worry, the blogging and adwords seminars are still going ahead. I’m not letting any of you guys down :-).

I’m speaking live at Ken McCarthy’s “The System” UK Intensive!

Here are some shots.

This is me getting everyone to shout “We Love The System”. Twice, in fact.

This is Ken addressing the audience.

I got mobbed at lunchtime with questions from some really bright entrepreneurs from all around the world: mainly UK, but lots of US, Danish, Irish, Hungarian, French. A truly international event.

At 1.30pm there was a great surprise when the unadvertised Drayton Bird turned up to do an hour’s presentation. Great value info from the Daddy of the UK DM industry.

Just watching Karl and Ben doing their conversion stuff, although I’m flagging from the combination of being adrenalin burnt from talking this morning and sleeping in a terrible bed. That’s the problem with airport hotels – they’re designed for people “passing through” so the level of care (i.e. a pillow that you can actually sleep on) is way down the scale.

Had a lovely dinner (because of the company, not the food) in a Heathrow Chinese with super web designers Ben and Lizzie Hunt. It was Lizzies birthday n’all!

Day Two:

Enjoying Ben Moskel’s talk on affiliate marketing. Some great insights. Every internet marketer should have a go at affiliate marketing. It’s a lot of fun.

Here’s Ben in action:

NEWS: We got a lot of people in the bar last night asking us how we get such great results with Face Book advertising, so in the spirit of DM we’ve decided to put a guide together. We’re calling it the FaceBook Marketing System. Sign up for priority notification of when we put this together over the next few weeks here. This will help you build demographically targeted lists fast and very low cost compared to PPC or seo:

Here’s Steve and Vince at the Show. Make sure you say hello to Steve, and avoid Vince at all costs. He’ll meet you, then assume he owns part of your business and then try to ruin your reputation when you tell him what a deluded, egotistical, fantasist he is:

Here’s Robert McDemus, he’s a thermo spray expert:

Here’s the legendary Derek Dearden (he’s been to almost every System Seminar):

Now we’ve got the Super Affiliate Rockstar Greg Davis up on stage. This is mean, kick-ass keyword stuff:

Greg has set up a CPA network all of his own called eliteclicksmedia.com. He just gave an amazing talk – a real affiliate rock star.

UPDATE: After a fantastic curry with the System Faculty and guests, we then proceeded to deprive the over-lit bar in the Sheraton of some of it’s single malt, delivered with less than no joy by a really bored Polish barman. I had to do this simply to enable me to get at least some sleep in the hotel’s unbelievably shite bed.

We all needed to get back home, so had to get on the road as soon as we could. We did hit a 5 mile tailback on the M6 but it was an otherwise uneventful journey.

I had lots of memories spinning in my head – all the new friends we have made, the brilliant minds we engaged with, th fun of being on the stage in front of such a vaired and lovely group of people (some of whom are doing AMAZING things online). If you were there: thank you so much for such a great weekend immersed in my favourite subject: internet marketing :-)

I’ll upload a few more pics here:

Some networking action:
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Wealth Master Paul Avins:

Here’s a load of pictures posted by Steve on his Picassa account. See if you can spot yourself.

You can get full MP3 recordings of my talks at the even inside my Inner Circle.

Great news! Ken McCarthy is coming back to Blighty to do another System Intensive following last years’ mega-successful event.

The System 2009 London UK Intensive is a fantastic event to go to if you have any interest at all in Internet Marketing.

Ken has been a teacher of mine for over 4 years. I’m a massive fan, and a lot of my internet marketing success was down to visiting his System Seminars in Chicago. It was there that I met the likes of Perry Marshall, Dave Bullock, Dave Taylor, Howie Jacobson, Glenn Livingstone, David Rothwell, and a bunch of other people that are all right up there in the field.

Last year’s intensive was one I went to as a visitor, but Ken got me up to introduce him without warning me beforehand. I was hungover and a bit nervous, but I did the job okay. Later in the day he got me to join in with a live workshop ripping into websites of people in the audience. It was amazing (and my favourite sport) especially as I was sharing the stage with some other highly distinguished people like the legendary Drayton Bird (who I now quote in all my talks), the conversion rate squirrels Karl Blanks and Ben Jesson, wordtracker founder Mike Mindel and Ben Hunt, the web design genius.

If you’ve not heard of Ken, he’s the guy who first realised that the internet is a direct response medium when he held the first Internet Marketing seminar way back in 1994 in San Fransisco. Check it out:

I don’t know how much longer he’s going to be running events like this. I suggest you get yourself booked onto the System UK Intensive as soon as you can – I might even be there to meet you!