18. Who do you look up to in the adult industry? Down on?
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I have respect for the people in this industry who created new and innovative ways to make it work for them. Ron and Dave Levine back in the earliest moments of this industry built affiliate programs that laid the foundation for how the largest segments of this industry now operate. Yishai and Fred Warner broke new ground in marketing tricks and mechanisms that, again, became common practice in online marketing. There are others who broke new ground who are very impressive for their innovation.
The others who've impressed me are the ones who took existing models and substantially improved upon them. Marc deForest for example... I remember looking at ARS at the New Orleans show a few years ago and marvelling at how they took the basic affiliate program model at the time and pumped it up to kick the asses of the larger programs in a matter of months. That required brilliance, an immense amount of hard work and some very innovative ideas...
SilverCash did a similar thing... very impressive.
What doesn't impress me at all is the type of 'webmaster' or other business owner who is basically just lucky. One trick ponies (if that) who make loads of money because they happened to be in the right place at the right time. Good for them. That's great... but I'm not particularily impressed.
I also look up to people who are honest, intelligent and have good manners, no matter what they've accomplished business-wise. I dislike people who are arrogant, self-righteous and rude.
I try to live my life by the Golden Rule. When I encounter others who don't I just kind of turn them into 'chatter' that I either deal with politely (most of the time!) or ignore.
I also have a lot of respect for the independent free-thinkers that I've met in this industry: Fred, Halcyon, IrishPimp... and a few others. There are far too many people in this business who jump on bandwagons and trends and spend very little time thinking for themselves. That's very unimpressive.