Gary Halbert, 1984
The Boron Letters
Letters from a copywriter to his son, written from federal prison, and better than that sounds.
Lorenzo Ayres / 1 min / Number 8 of ten
Every new piece I write, sent to your inbox.
Halbert wrote these to his teenage son Bond while he was serving time for mail fraud, and they got passed around as photocopies for years before anybody published them properly.
Half direct response education, half a father telling his kid how to live. He will explain how to test a mailing list and then tell you to go for a walk every morning and watch your weight, and it does not read as a detour.
The starving crowd is the thing everybody quotes. If you could have any advantage in opening a hamburger stand, he says, take the starving crowd over the best burger, the best location, the best price, any of it.
So before I get interested in anything now I run three tests. Is the problem a need to have rather than a nice to have. Can the buyer pay, and will they. Is anybody actually serving them. I have watched a mediocre offer in front of a hungry market beat an excellent offer in front of a full one enough times that I stopped arguing with it.
The newsletter. That is the whole ask.
Every new piece I write, sent to your inbox.
Build the engine
- Eugene Schwartz, 1966Breakthrough AdvertisingThe best book on persuasion ever written, and the one that taught me you cannot create demand.
- Claude Hopkins, 1923Scientific AdvertisingA hundred years old, free online, and still more useful than most of what got published last year.
- Jordan Belfort, 2017Way of the WolfThe straight line system, which is the method every closer in my business is trained on.
Deals and structure
- Ogilvy on AdvertisingDavid Ogilvy, 1983
- Secrets of Professional Turf BettingRobert L. Bacon, 1956
- You Bet: The Betfair StoryColin Cameron, 2009
- Margin of SafetySeth Klarman, 1991
- The special situations booksMaurece Schiller, 1955 to 1966
- Mosaic: Perspectives on InvestingMohnish Pabrai, 2004
- globalization: n. the irrational fear that someone in China will take your jobBruce Greenwald and Judd Kahn, 2008
- Competition DemystifiedBruce Greenwald and Judd Kahn, 2005
- Distress InvestingMartin Whitman and Fernando Diz, 2009
- Merger MastersKate Welling and Mario Gabelli, 2018
- King IcahnMark Stevens, 1993
- Dear ChairmanJeff Gramm, 2016
- Barbarians at the GateBryan Burrough and John Helyar, 1989
- Buy Then BuildWalker Deibel, 2018
- The Art of M&AAlexandra Reed Lajoux and Stanley Foster Reed, 1989
- The Strategy and Tactics of PricingThomas Nagle and Georg Müller, 1987
- Setting the TableDanny Meyer, 2006
- 100 BaggersChristopher Mayer, 2015
- World Commodities and World CurrencyBenjamin Graham, 1944
- Storage and StabilityBenjamin Graham, 1937
- Walker's Manual of Unlisted StocksHarry Eisenberg, editor, the 2000 edition
- The Takeover GameJohn Brooks, 1987
- Bankruptcy Investing: How to Profit from Distressed CompaniesBen Branch and Hugh Ray
- The Crash and Its Aftermath: Securities Markets 1929 to 1933Barrie Wigmore, 1985
- Selling America ShortRichard C. Sauer, 2010
- Outsmarting the Smart MoneyLawrence A. Cunningham, 2002
- The Inefficient Stock Market and The New FinanceRobert A. Haugen
- Distant ForceGeorge A. Roberts, 2007
- Rising To Power: Paul Desmarais and Power CorporationDave Greber, 1987
- The Joy of Achievement: Conversations with J.R.D. TataR.M. Lala
- Pleased But Not SatisfiedDavid L. Sokol
- The Story of Bank of America: Biography of a BankMarquis James and Bessie Rowland James, 1954
- Citibank: A Century in AsiaPeter Starr, 2002
- See's Famous Old Time Candies: A Sweet StoryMargaret Moos Pick, 2005
- The Farmer From MernaKarl Schriftgiesser, 1955
- Shaw Industries: A HistoryRandall L. Patton, 2002
- Iron Will: Cleveland-Cliffs and the Mining of Iron OreTerry S. Reynolds and Virginia P. Dawson, 2011
- The Little Book That Beats the MarketJoel Greenblatt, 2005