Harvey Brody's SECRET to success is...

[GordonJ]

THE Secret to Harvey Brody’s success really is…
In this series of posts, I’m going to reveal Harvey’s REAL secret. Probably in the third or fourth post down, have to make you wade through this other stuff first. OH, there is IMPORTANT information, and some worthwhile ideas here…but the BIG Secret will have to wait.
First, a little history for new SowPubbers and a refresher memo for old timers.
Up until my heart attack in Sep. 08, for about two years or so, I was on the phone with Harvey several times a week. I recorded all the calls with his permission and encouragement. I also took COPIOUS notes at his insistence.
About the 10th time I heard him talk about the view from the roof, I rolled my eyes and signed, “Here we go again.” Around the 20th time I heard it, it finally clicked in. It is one of the most important pieces of information I’ve ever received, in fact, it is my opinion to be the only tool from Harvey’s toolbox you need.
However, it is only one of many tools he has. As I review my notes and the dozens of hours of our phone chats, I made a list and here are a few Harvey concepts… The Classic Take Off, Chocks under the wheels of an idling plane, Going to Chicago from Akron, Magnets and Iron filings, Safe Harbor, Toll Position, Supply and Demand and I could go on and on.
And I heard about these over and over and I should note, Harvey sent me a big box of his courses from his warehouse…although I had the original course and NEWSLETTERS when I was a customer and before my Great Flood which wiped out my library.
I’ve worked with and for many successful people, and the word Genius and Brilliant are tossed around like a tennis ball at Wimbledon…yet, I’ve found very few of even the most successful men, and many of the riches to be anything but Brilliant. Amazing how average and ordinary so much of success really is, it gives us hope.
But I knew five men who were/are brilliant. I say it like that because two of them have passed and the third is the very vibrant Harvey Brody who is having as much fun as a starving Gary Halbert student has at a cheap hamburger stand in the middle of the desert.
I’ll get to Harvey’s genius and brilliance in a while…and his BIG secret in a follow up post.
The other two men were Burt Morgan and Ed Barr, both of whom I’ve written extensively about over the last decade. Burt Morgan was one of the last great industrialists/Entrepreneurs who made his fortune through manufacturing and other industrialized business ventures. But he also was a great thinker, and one of his brainchildren was Concept Development, a Venture Capital firm looking for big and small investment opportunities. I guess once you own your own bank you look for places to invest your money.

Burt Morgan is a great study if you are interested in achieving massive success…you know, the Fortune 500 kind. His book, Start at the Top, has one of the great motivational lines ever written…ït is better to get shot out of the water than to rot at the dock. Think about it.
During one of our lunch meetings he revealed a new project he was really excited about, an inflatable dome to go over sports stadiums…even had a miniature one to display. Like MOST of Burt’s outrageous ideas, nothing became of it. And he told me only one in ten ideas he has ever get to the market place…but that didn’t stop him from filling up dozens of notebooks with these gems.
He was living proof that it one took one great idea to do spectacular business and although he was as good a judge as anyone ever was on the marketability of ideas, he had a blind spot, one he readily
He also invested in scores of new businesses, some big, some small one man ideas. I loved seeing Burt get excited…and he always did when I picked up the tab for his knockwurst sandwich lunch…he saw that as an Entrepreneurial victory (once tried to charge me a 100 bux to autograph his book…always the hustler in a good sort of a way).
Burton Morgan was a money=making business building genius and he left a legacy which still funds Entrepreneur ventures. He WAS brilliant.
So was Ed Barr, whom I’ll tell you about in the next post…which leads up to my exposing Harvey Brody’s Biggest Secret…
Gordon Jay Alexander