Lean in so I can tell you a story I myself only heard today:
This story features a cowboy named Gary Halbert, who, as you might know, was one of the legendariest direct marketers to ever terrorize the Wild West.
The story actually takes place before Gary got into direct marketing and copywriting. I’m guessing it happened in the 1960s, in Gary’s home state of Ohio.
In those ancient days, Gary was a salesman, selling postage machines.
The company Gary worked for, Pitney Bowes, divvied up the sales area so that each salesman got to handle a certain number of zip codes.
Whenever the company hired an additional salesman, they would shrink the area of sales that each existing salesman had, in order to give the new guy a few zip codes, and to keep everyone balanced.
Each time this happened, four or five separate times, the existing salesmen bitched and moaned and felt like they’ve lost something in having their area of sales reduced.
In reality, says Gary, each time the salesmen had one of their zip codes taken away, the salesmen actually did BETTER, not worse. They made more sales BECAUSE their area of sales was reduced.
How is this possible?
Stuff like… The salesmen spent less driving and more time selling. They gained better knowledge of local conditions. They developed better relationships with prospects there. They followed up more instead of reaching out to new leads. And so on.
The lesson is clear enough, except… it could never apply to you and what you’re doing, right?
In my Daily Email House community, I heard tell of different folks who are looking to start credible-sounding new businesses:
A direct mail agency. New shopping cart software. A personal trainer business.
Each of those is credible-sounding in the sense that it can succeed, as evidenced by many other such businesses on the market.
At the same time, each of those is much more likely to succeed, or at least to survive the first year, if you narrow down and get more specific about the market you will be working in.
You can slice and dice your market in lots of ways. You might wonder how and which tiny and specific segment to choose?
My answer is to go all the way down to a single prospect. Pick somebody you feel sure you can help… and who you are therefore most likely to sell because of your conviction.
After all, if you cannot sell a specific customer on your proposed solution, and if you cannot solve a particular and definite problem that customer has, then with all due respect, what hope do you have of selling and solving problems for a bigger, more complex, more nebulous group?
I’ll have more to say about this because in 2026, in fact in January, I will be helping folks create and sell their first $1k+ offer.
For now, lemme just tell you I heard that Gary Halbert story earlier today, in a podcast by Dean Jackson and Joe Polish.
As you might know, Joe runs the biggest and (according to him) most successful mastermind for direct response entrepreneurs. (He heard the story above from Gary Halbert directly.)
As for Dean, he’s a legend in the direct marketing space, particularly online.
If you’re doing Internet marketing today in any form, odds are you are using ideas and techniques Dean invented, which have been percolating down through a series of gurus who learned from Dean or from people that Dean taught.
In the podcast I listened to today, Dean and Joe talk about 8 “Profit Activators” that all successful DR businesses are ultimately built on. (The topic of today’s email is Profit Activator #1).
Highly recommended listening: