Ben Suarez 7 steps to freedom 1 & 2

My understanding is Harvey is in good health. Mine? Not so great, but anyhow.
To answer your qestions. YES, he did seminars and his students include Jay Abraham, Gary Halbert, Joe Karbo, Joe Sugarman, Ben Suarez, Jerry Buchanan and a host of others you would recognize.

Here is what he told me; He went to work one day at the height of his publishing business and one of his employees was bitching up a storm about something trivial and Harvey decided on the spot he didn't want to have employees, so he quit advertising, never fired anyone or laid them off, but they saw the writing on the wall and he shut down his publishing business.

He already had the patent and controlled the tooling and chemical for his Zoom Spout Oiler (with sales over 100 million units since the late 50s)...which he invented while in college repairing typewriters.

He worked with Joe Cossman and other marketers of the day learning his lessons about control and toll positions.

Of course distribution wasn't easy back then, but, if it were easy, we'd all be doing it. One of the advantages of getting on the Shark Tank is, if they like your product, they have ins to the distribution. At hardtofind seminars, there is a good audio about getting into Walmart, hitting the mother-lode of distribution, it would be worth anyone's time who wants to pursue product acquisition because it does no good to control a product if you don't have the marketing channel available.

You are right about a lot of phone time, but he did and does very little face to face, almost none, which is how he set up his business to begin with.

Stephen Key does have some similar concepts, but his writing is for public consumption, meaning it doesn't have the in-depth DETAILS of how to do it, but yes, all licensing is basically the same. I've posted here at WF a list of resources and books to read re: licensing.

As for being a special case, there are scores of people into licensing and it is growing daily. Harvey had one of the most expensive info products of his day, and he shut that down. Likewise Ben Suarez closed down his publishing biz...so the answer becomes...when it is more profitable to find, acquire and market other people's products, and when the cost of time spent on info products vs the ROI is minimum when compared to what is being made by specialty products and retail shelf space items, it just isn't worth their time.

However, for us small potatoes kind of guys, most certainly creating our own and acquiring other people's products to market, especially info products IS worth our time, which is why I've been doing it for over 25 years.

NOW, the copywriting part comes in handy when seeking products and getting distribution, because you are trying to influence, persuade and communicate with someone and in effect, if not actual outcome, get them to buy what you are offering.

It is just nicer to have Walmart buy 100,000 units from you than to sell 100,000 copies of your information product, see?

Harvey wrote a 64 page booklet, considered by some to be the first magalog type thing in the late 70s to sell his Toll Position course, which was a 500 dollar product...very high in those days.

gjabiz

PS. Almost everyone who attended Harvey's seminars became skilled copywriters and some are regarded as the very best at what they did (do).