Jason was an undeniable failure in the world of marketing. Despite the fact that he was one of the most talented web developers and designers, extremely knowledgeable in copywriting, he never really succeeded in making it big with any of his projects. In fact he was almost always broke. But today something was different about him ...
And I was trying to figure out what it was that was different. It was not his green, slightly juvenile T-shirt. (One of his fruitless attempts to impress the opposite sex with a print that read: “I’m the One Your Mother Warned You About!”). And it was not his washed-out, baggy jeans. It was something about the way he walked, the way he moved and the way he started to greet his buddies. For some strange reason he seemed to exude confidence and draw attention from everybody in the room. Finally Jason took the empty seat opposite to me.
What surprised me the most was, when the pretty Japanese waitress handed him the menu, smiled at him and said, “I like you T-Shirt. It’s funny!” He looked at her and grinned “Thanks for the compliment ... You’ll get 3 brownie points for that ... At 5 points you’ll win a prize!” She giggled.
Frankly – I was in shock! This was officially the first time in history known to mankind that Jason got attention from a female (a cute one I must admit) and actually flirted with her. When it was time to order, Jason asked the waitress for her recommendations and everybody – including me - became really excited about sharing the Sushi specials she had suggested.
“Did you win the lottery or something?” I could hardly contain my curiosity.
“No,” he calmly replied, “but I have just found my Mojo”.
“I see that you’re surprised,” Jason paused and looked at me, “and it make sense, because I’m surprised myself. But I’m a changed man, I’m a different man. And it all happened in the last few hours! You know that I have come to these meeting lots of times and spent my last few dollars to have dinner with my marketing friends. And I was never able never to show off anything. Not a big check with a six-figure number on it or show up in a brand-new sports car like some of the others. Today, I’m not able to do that – I will – now it’s different.” He stood up.
“The Sushi specials are on me today!” Jason announced to the group and smiled silently at the astonishment he received from some his buddies and the other internet marketers.
“Do you know any marketer that has more talent than me?” he looked me in the eyes and then answered his own question. “No! And do you know anything in our business that I could not accomplish, if I really applied myself to it? No. Think about it. You know me now for how many – four or five years? Do you remember when I was ever hit on by a girl? No. You’ve seen it for yourself. And tomorrow my new career begins. Within 9 weeks I shall make at least $100,000. Why? Because I’ve discovered the secret of success.”
"Yeah," he continued, when I did not reply, "my fortune is made, man. I’ve found this marketing blueprint hidden inside a strange vault, and since reading it, I feel that my success is assured. It would make you successful, too. All you have to do is read it. You have no idea what it will do for you. Nothing is impossible after you know that blueprint. Everything starts to make sense. The very instant you grasp its true meaning, success is certain. This morning I felt frustrated and hopeless, aimlessly browsing the internet; tonight I wouldn't change places with all the “Rich Jerks”. That sounds foolish, but it is true. The “Rich Jerks” have spent their positive energy and enthusiasm; mine is becoming more powerful by the minute."
"You amaze me," I said, secretly wondering if he had been smoking pot. "Can you show me this blueprint?”
"Absolutely man! I want to show it to all of my friends and share it even on the forum. It is really remarkable that it exists and nobody really appreciated it until now. I mean this morning I was depressed. I had no cash in my pocket. And when I checked into three of my five merchant accounts, I found out that I made no money in the last 24 hours. I was ready to give up and quit. But then I stumble upon this website with a vault and the blueprint inside. And I read it. You can hardly imagine the size of the light bulb that went on in my head! Which is why everything changed and here we are."
"But can you show me the blueprint, Jason?"
"Wait. Let me finish. I took all my old sales pages, auto responder sequences and marketing campaigns, applied what I had learned and started to make real money right away. And that’s just the start…"
"Can this blueprint do for others what it has done for you?” I asked. “For example, would help in my projects?"
"Help you? Why not? Listen and I will write it down for you, although, really, you should read the original blueprint. Still I will draw it as best I can. It is like this: you see …"
At that moment Jason’s phone rang and interrupted us. With a word of apology, he left the table. Five minutes later, I saw how our Jason, on his way out, while settling the bill, got the phone number of the waitress; he rushed out of the restaurant and disappeared. I was stunned. Within the recollection of the marketing mastermind group, Jason had never before scored a phone number from any girl ever. That in itself was substantial proof that something had changed for Jason.
F R I D A Y 9 : 3 7 A M
Vegas Hilton and Fate
I’ve just arrived in my room at the Hilton Hotel in Vegas for an internet marketing conference. And I had almost forgotten my memorable conversation with Jason from last week. However that changed just a few hours ago, at the airport when I ran into my friend Logan, a copy writer in his thirties who likes wearing plaid shirts with always one black pen and one blue pen in its pocket.
“Hey man,” Logan greeted me with a smile “Going to the conference, huh? How’s did your last project turn out?”
“Yeah, can’t complain,” I said and frowned, “How about you? Writing a lot these days?”
“Yes man,” he replied, “requests for my services are booming ... Seriously ... And that is truly astonishing. You know Jason, right? It’s all because of him. The revenue from my commission based contracts had dried up and no new copy writing projects were on the horizon. I was even thinking about changing jobs, when I met Jason. He showed me this blueprint, and really … man it is the most remarkable marketing blueprint you’ve ever seen. It’s fundamental and changed me and the way I write and think about sales. Within twenty-four hours of using this knowledge to update the sales copy on my joint venture sales pages, orders started pouring in.”
It wasn’t what Logan said but it was his self-assured attitude that truly reminded of the day I talked with Jason a few days ago.
“It must be a truly remarkable blueprint,” I said skeptically. “Jason mentioned it to me a few days ago. I haven’t talked to him since. How is he doing?”
“He was asked to partner with some top-notch marketers in the business. They want him to create their entire sales funnel including landing pages and sales copy and he’ll get a percentage of the revenue plus an upfront fee. He’s making a killing. In fact everybody who has used the blueprint has done well since. There’s Bruce and David – friends of mine – you don’t know them. One is an email marketer, the other an SEO expert, Jason showed them the blueprint and they have experienced the same results that I have ... and they are not the only ones. There’s a guy called Parson who just did a launch and made over $250,000 within the first twenty-four hours.”
“Do you have the blueprint?” I asked. “Will you try its effect on me?”
“Certainly. I think it should be turned into a big-screen video or something - so that anyone can watch it. It certainly would do a lot of good, and it's so simple, really.” He suddenly stared at this watch. “But you know what I just realized? I’m on a different airline than you and I’m late for my flight. Sorry man, but I gotta run. Let’s talk later.”
As Logan ran off to catch his plane, the certainty of this blueprint – I began to regard it as almost magical - was in the air and started to possess me. It had made already these fortunes; surely it should be capable of making mine. As I started to walk towards my gate, contemplating the certainty of my own marketing efforts, I experienced the sensation of something stealthily pursuing me, as if fate were treading along behind me, yet never overtaking, and I became conscious of being fascinated with or by this marketing blueprint. Suddenly I could feel an increasing urgency inside of me to find this and read blueprint. And as soon as I landed I called Jason, but he didn’t call me back yet. Now that I'm at the Hilton, I assume that he’s downstairs attending the conference as well. So I might just go down to the conference room and find him there.
F R I D A Y 1 1 : 1 5 A M
Hunting the Ghost of the Vault
There he was! In a far corner of the conference room, surrounded by a group of fellow marketers. He noticed me at the same I saw him, and motioned to me to join them at the table. There was no chance for getting the blueprint, however. There were half a dozen around the table, and I was the furthest removed from Jason. But I kept my eyes upon him, and bided my time, determined that, when he rose to depart, I would go with him.
A silence, suggestive of respectful awe, had fallen upon the party when I took my seat. Everyone had seemed to be thinking, and the attention of all was fixed upon Jason. The cause was apparent. He had been talking about the blueprint. I had entered the room just too late to hear about it. On my right, when I took my seat, was a psychologist; on my left a web designer. Facing me on the other side was someone I knew: Jack, the site flipper who owned over a thousand domains and websites.
"It's too bad,“ remarked Jack. "you should have come a little sooner, Jason has been telling us about the marketing blueprint; it’s quite astonishing, really. I think you will all agree with me, that it is not the blueprint itself that performs the surgical operation on the minds of those who understand it; it is the way it works. Somehow it produces a psychological effect which is indescribable. You get somewhat hypnotized. And receive a mental and moral tonic. Perhaps, you as a psychologist can give some scientific explanation of the influence exerted by the blueprint. It is a sort of elixir manufactured out of emotional states?"
From that the group entered into a general discussion of theories. Now and then slight references were made to the blueprint itself, and they were just sufficient to tantalize me – the only one present who had not heard it.
"Jason!” I said with determination. “If you care about an old friend who is going crazy by the existence of a mysterious blueprint inside a vault, which seems like a ghost that I’ll never see, you will tell me now."
Jason stared at me in wild surprise.
"All right," he said. “I believe that you have, somehow, failed to hear about the blueprint, although, as a matter of fact, I think you were the first one to whom I mentioned it at all. It seems incredible that a mere blueprint can have such a tonic effect upon the success of so many guys who are engaged in such widely different marketing businesses, but that is what it has done. It is almost like a kind of never-failing remedy. Let’s sit down here, and I’ll tell you about it. Please excuse us for a few moments, guys.”
Jason and I moved to another table. He looked at me for a moment before he started to talk.
“I found it on this strange website with a front page that looks like a golden vault. And the weird thing there isn’t anything that gives you an idea where it comes from or who created it. When I stumbled upon it, I accidentally found a virtual backdoor into this virtual vault and inside I found the blueprint. I began casually read it and realized after a few moments how powerful it was. In the next couple of hours I studied the whole thing and began realize how I could use it for myself. It affected me strangely … as if I had come in contact with some strong personality. There seems to be in the blueprint a personal element that applies to every one who understands it. Finally I left my house to go to the marketing mastermind meeting where I met you that night.”
At that instant we were interrupted by one of the conference organizers who reminded Jason that he had agreed to be on an expert panel on stage and it was about to start. So Jason had to go.
"Too bad!" said Jason, rising and flipping out his cell phone. "Tell you what I'll do. I'm going to be on stage any more than an hour. But I’m sending you a link with instructions to the site with the golden vault. And then let’s connect later.”
I found the website without difficulty. It had a quaint landing page, displaying, as Jason had said, a golden vault in a black room. Following the instructions I navigated to the bizarre backdoor page. Its purpose was apparently to allow insiders to give and gain access to the vault. The most unusual part was - almost like in a secret society - to type in a referencing sponsor before getting initiated. Something that could have originated in no other brain than that of its author.
Jason's original instructions:
- Go to: http://tinyurl.com/lbqmfl
- Enter the golden vault and you’ll see a landing page.
- IMPORTANT: Find the link 'INVITED' which is hidden within the text (about 2/3rds down). Click this link and it’ll lead you to the backdoor page.
- When you are on that page, fill in your info and use my email address (cody.j.hobbs [at] gmail [dot] com) as your sponsor (that's important).
