HARVEY BRODY - Long Lost Article On The King Of The VIRTUAL CORPORATION

[Dien Rice]

Hi Spyglass,

Thanks for sharing that article! It's good stuff...

Originally Posted by spyglass

Once there, all decked out in my caramel brown height of fashion 100% genuine polyester suit, I met the lady manager. She took me to a row in their warehouse where they stored their no longer used injection molds. She directed my attention to injection molds for some of the ugliest lamps made of sandstone my eyes had ever been forced to witness. No wonder she was willing to let me "take them off of her hands" for whatever money she thought I was sucker enough to buy them for. No Thank You! So I thanked her for showing me what she had and made my exit back home in my not air conditioned 1960 Ford Galaxy (given to me by my Uncle and Aunt in 1973) and prayed the radiator would not overheat on the 28 mile trip back home in a neighboring county.

Of course, not every injection mold is a good "toll position"... Just like not every book is a bestseller! You've got the good with the bad...

Sometimes it takes some digging through the dirt to find the gold...

One of the "success stories" in this area is Joe Cossman's spud gun. He didn't invent it. In fact, he bought the old tooling to make it from its earlier manufacturer, who made 100,000 of them, but only was able to sell 10,000. Cossman bought the tooling for $500, and manufactured the spud gun, and the rest is history... You can read the story here...

E.J. Cossman, 84; Ant Farm, Spud Gun Made Him Fortune
http://articles.latimes.com/2002/dec...l/me-cossman19

Harvey has acquired other products, one I can think of is a "secret formula" type of product (where it's protected, not by a patent, but by a "secret formula" and process that's difficult if not impossible to exactly replicate if you don't know the formula and process). Think of it like trying to reverse-engineer a cake... You can do a chemical breakdown of all the chemicals and substances in the cake - but can you then reproduce it exactly? It would still be very difficult, without knowing the exact ingredients, and the exact recipe of which stage to add each ingredient, how long to bake it for, etc. Sometimes a "secret formula" is the best "toll position" for a product (think of Coca-Cola, or even KFC with its "11 secret herbs and spices," or WD-40, whose formula is a trade secret)!

I allowed this non starter experience to influence and generalize my overall feelings about this approach and never made another attempt to find a winning asset that I could work with per Harvey's road map to financial success. I was in my real early twenties with less than great confidence and self esteem. So it didn't take a hell of a lot to discourage me back then.

Don't feel too bad...

Around the mid-1990s, I happened to buy a copy of the book "Making It!" by E. Joseph Cossman and William A. Cohen. (It's not as well-known as Cossman's mail order book.)

I also got inspired! At that time, I was interested in colloidal silver (as an alternative health thing)... I approached a manufacturer of colloidal silver to see if I could exclusively distribute it, as I felt I could do a better job than was being done with his product at that time. Anyway, he already had an exclusive distributor, so the answer was "no," but he tried to interest me in some of his other products, which at that time I wasn't too interested in...

Since then, I didn't approach anyone else regarding obtaining rights until a few years ago (when I've started getting interested in rights again, but with a different class of products)...

I plan to focus even more and more on this, in the near future...

Although things worked out eventually career wise, I sometimes wonder "what could have been" if I had continued undaunted to capture an asset and implement Harvey's unique, VIRTUAL CORPORATION model. If I dug up his manuals that were published before faxing, email, personal computers, scanning, Skype phone/video and the internet were born, I wonder how useful they would be now because while his model may still be useful in terms of the leverage it offers in concept and sparking out of the box thinking, the process outlined in the manuals are now hopelessly obsolete technologically.

While the technology has changed, the principles have not changed!

"Toll positions" are still around, and still as powerful as ever!

As an example, Harvey's been selling his "Zoom Spout Oiler" for at least 50 years... But, he's still selling plenty of them, and there's no competition who are even close to him! Why? Toll positions! It still works today...

Once you understand what they are, and how to use them... You can easily "adapt" the principles to any new technology.

The key is... many people don't understand this to the depth that Harvey does. You can read the absolute basics for free online...

The absolute basics are in this Dan Kennedy article, for example (where he also mentions Harvey)...

http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Money-...sition&id=3262

However, sorry to say this about Dan, but even he doesn't understand toll positions to the same depth that Harvey does. I know this for a fact. Dan Kennedy still works his a** off. Harvey doesn't, yet still makes a ton of money. That's the proof of the difference.

I spoke to Harvey a few days ago... He's in his early 80s, yet very happy and healthy. He's still expanding his business, and still looking at new business activities! Many people might ask why? The answer is - because he loves it! As he once said to me, he loves to "play the game of toll position"...

Best wishes,

Dien