MASTERMIND GROUP UPDATE

We had our 2nd meeting of the Internet Coast Mastermind Group (ICMG) today and I am still extremely excited about how it is evolving. Alberto Rodriguez, a recent addition to our group was referred by Steve Crass who couldn't attend as he was away for the holiday weekend. Alberto is from Ecquador and is a Web Designer and appears to be very sharp. Exactly the ideal candidate for our growing group. We all agreed to assist each other in our respective projects, each adding our individual specialties. I will contribute my writing and marketing...Carlos will add his Marketing, SEO and Web work while Alberto will add is web design/SEO skills. We will wait to determine what Steve wishes to contribute.
In the interim, Carlos agreed to build our ICMG site keeping it simple with a cover page and form for interested prospects for membership. Sounds Great!
We will meet again next Saturday and agreed to attend the I-Coast Luncheon on Friday.
Things are looking up!

DOB: 11/18/06 NAME: Internet Coast Mastermind Group

It's Official! Our Mastermind group is born this day, 11/18/06. We met at the Books-A-Million in Deerfield Beach, Carlos Ayala, Steve Crass and I (Michael Lang). It was alomost everything I had envisioned and hoped for. A nucleus made of like-minded, intelligent individuals that are serious about making this happen....and happen right! All agreed that our power and overall success is predicated on how much we contribute to the greater good and who we wish to attract beyond ourselves.
We will be meeting again this Saturday and have already invited a Web Designer which is exactly what this doctor has ordered.
Stay tuned as more will be revealed!

THE BIRTH OF A MASTERMIND GROUP

One of my mottos has always been. "lead, follow, or get the f..k out of my way!" So afer looking around for any Mastermind Groups in the South Florida region and coming up empty, I decided to start my own. My experience has taught me that any group must have a strong nucleus if it is going to flourish and have any longevity. I put a notice in the Business section of the Sun Sentinel and hoped for the best.
As the date I set for the first meeting approached and no one called I began to brainstorm on alternate ideas for recruitment. Then it happened! I received 2 calls from interested parties and will be meeting with one of them tomorrow to begin the process. His name is Carlos and he appears to be sharp and expressed a enthusiastic interest in getting involved with the group. I also spoke to Ben who works odd hours and cannot make this first exploratory meeting but asked for a report which I gladly will provide.
It dawned on me after talking with these gentlemen that I would need to define the parameters for the kind of people I ideally would want to populate the group with. My ideal group would be highly intelligent and creative individuals who have at least some experience in the utilization of Internet marketing as the primary vehicle for the promotion and selling of a product or service. It would be great if these people shared a common thirst for leading edge knowledge of marketing trends and methodologies so that we challenged each other, in a healthy way, to vie to be the alpha dog.
I beleive that the group's power and ultimately success will be contingent on our resolve and the benefits that we derive from meeting with each other. Healthy and abundant contribution is a requisite to attract quality candidates. It will probablye be necessary to work these details out with Carlos when we meet tomorrow. The only hope I have is that he posesses those traits described above.
More will be revealed!
Stay tuned....MLL

DEATH AND REBIRTH

I just finished reading Mike Filsaime's new ebook, "The Death of Internet Marketing" which is causing quite a stir on the Net and within the Internet Marketing (IM) community. It describes the present condition of IM, what it has evolved into and where it is heading.
Ironically, the entire premise of the ebook is eerily similar to the things I have been coming to realize, believe and write about in MyAtlasShrugged.com. It is also one of the reasons that have given me pause in initiating some of the strategies I have formulated for my businesses.
As a result of "transparency and reverse engineering" coupled with IM's explosive growth and its incestuous nature, the whole industry had been transformed. Filsaime writes about "product launch overdose" and more specifically, "The October Effect" which describes that over abundance product launches and the effect it is having on the industry as a whole. Without going into all of the details, the gist of the message is that there are now "too many chiefs and not enough Indians". More plainly stated, if everybody wants to be a seller then who is going to be left to buy? If the amount of new Product Launches continues to grow where are the JVs going to be found? It appears that we have and are continuing to paint ourselves into a corner which means there will be a finite amount of opportunities.
So when students become gurus and wish only to teach and point the way then we have a very lopsided world. Wouldn't you agree?

A NEW DAY IN AMERICA!

Today Americans woke up to a new Country with another opportunity to get it right. If you've been in a cave for the past 24 hours then you might not know that Americans voted and put the Democratic Party back in the drivers seat. Now I am not expecting miracles because politicians are politicians and the political arena has a way of nullifying the greatest of intentions. But what I do feel good about is the system of "checks & balances" that our Founding Fathers instituted in the beginning, still works! I am constantly amazed about how wise and courageous those men were. Wise because they knew that the inherent nature of Man is to seek to satisfy their own special interests. That greed, ambition and power can corrupt the best of us. And courageous because they were not personally swayed by those things and designed a system to protect us from ourselves.
Unfortunately time and avarice has erroded those principles like a river's water on the rocks in its path. Still in all, we have survived and even thrived despite ourselves but I wonder how much American Democracy can bend in the ill winds of self serving interests.
There are 2 things that bother me terribly that I'll now state for the record on this momentous day. One is the failure of our voting system to accurately reflect the will of the people. I obviously speak to the disgraceful so-called "fool-proof" machines used to record and count our Votes. Not to mention the pack of lies the manufacturers of these machines continue to blab. And number 2 is the failure of our elected legislators to adopt campaign finance reform as a result of their unwillingness and inability to police themselves.
Putting this aside for the moment, which I am willing to do...for the moment. I would like to relish this win and make believe that it will truly make a difference when all of the dust settles.
Congratulations America!

BACK TO BASICS

I been told oh so many times that you don't have to get "Back to Basics" if you never gave up their implementation in the first place. In other words, you don't have to "get back" to anything you never left to begin with. It has always seemed like a simple directive and one easily followed but life, or just old habits, intervene to move me away towards more complex behaviors. Put another way, I tend to fuck up every now and then.
Why is that? Why do we not just continue to use what works for us instead of mindlessly (and sometimes with great forethought) experimenting with a winning formula. If you're waiting for an answer you're going to be waiting a long time. I decided to only ask questions tonight. You know, keep things in the interrogative?
B'de, b'de, b'that's all folks!