34 years in direct marketing, and what I'm building next
I've spent 34 years in direct marketing, 20 of them as a catalog list broker. Home decor, electronics, jewelry, collectibles, apparel, investment newsletters, children's catalogs. If it showed up in a mailbox, I've probably helped someone find the people who would open it.
Along the way I learned one thing that hasn't changed in three decades: the list decides. A great offer to the wrong person is a wasted stamp. An average offer to the right person, at the right moment, pays for the whole campaign.
What has changed is everything around that truth.
Data used to arrive slowly and age quietly. By the time many files mailed, the people on them had moved on, bought elsewhere, or stopped caring. Marketers knew it and accepted it, because there wasn't a better way.
There is now.
A wrong turn
Before I moved to Naples, I pulled into the wrong parking lot. It belonged to a Thai meditation center in Redding, Connecticut, which is still active today. I walked in, didn't want to interrupt anyone, and stayed. That wrong turn became a year of study with two monks: Ajahn Da, who still leads the center today, and Nipen, who has since returned to Thailand. Both trained in the tradition of the Thai master Luang Por Teean, and both remain dear friends I still talk with every month.
What they taught was simple and hard: watch your mind. Notice a thought before it pulls you into a whole story, the hamster wheel that can ruin a day, or a month, or years. When you watch your thoughts without judgment, the mind calms. It stops running you, and starts working for you. Thinking gets clearer. What you already know starts to expand.
They had a saying:
"The mind is a poor master but a good servant."
I've come to believe the same is true of AI. Let it run unwatched and it will confidently take you somewhere you didn't mean to go. Put it to work under experienced judgment, and it becomes the best servant this industry has ever had. And like good thinking habits, the gains compound, day after day.
A lot of people see AI as a storm coming and wonder where to hide. My view: if there's a storm coming, become the storm.
AI + HI
That's what I've been building: agents that research, source, clean and match data around the clock, with people who know this business making every final call. I call it AI + HI.
The goal is simple, and it's the same goal I've chased for 34 years: the right customer, found first. That's what OIN Labs is built to do.
If you've worked with me before, thank you. Much of what I'm building comes from what you taught me. If we haven't met yet, I'd like to change that. Book a time to talk.