Goldmine Marketing

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  • Doberman Dan: Win the Long Game (Persuasion Play Podcast #015)

    10:05am
    Saint Paul

    Serious students of direct response copywriting know the name Doberman Dan.

    Dan started selling bodybuilding guides and supplements in the 1990s as a way to find freedom from his J-O-B as a police officer.

    That financial freedom didn’t come quickly, though.

    It took Dan some 9 failed businesses before he asked himself,

    “Why did I buy THAT thang?”

    …and then used the answer to build his own successful business.

    Doberman Dan was gracious enough to sit with me and share his story—and a few secrets—for this episode of the Persuasion Play Podcast.

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  • “Life sure is bUsY!” —someone from 1889 (request for help!)

    2:10pm
    Ice-covered Wisconsin

    Heya, it’s “Spring Break”—but you’d never know it after the 2 inches of ice and 4 inches of snow we got here at my in-laws’ home.


    Internet is spotty, requiring a hotspot.

    Power is spotty, too, requiring a propane generator.

    But I can still type and work and check in with you!

    Hey two things today.

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  • no good, very bad day

    2:05pm
    Saint Paul

    *|FNAME|*.

    I woke up grumpy.

    I don’t know why.

    After some coffee, I tried to pay my water bill. The “new” account setup forced me to stop getting paper invoices.

    Sent an email asking them to fix this: I want real, paper bills in the real postal mail please!

    They responded that I hadn’t set up my account correctly so they couldn’t change anything… yet I was able to pay the bill?

    Next—from someone else—I got an email asking me to confirm my schedule. But it contained no link to said schedule. Sure, let me dig.

    Then I logged into work… and got grumpier still:

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  • Would they break bread with me?

    12:25pm
    Saint Paul

    Should I take that gig?

    The decision had been weighing on my mind for a week.

    So over this past weekend, I put some energy into making homemade bread, occupying my body while I let my brain work.

    Baking bread was a welcome return after a cold winter with a broken wrist.

    I rolled out the dough and formed it and left it to rise again while I started the naan and let my thoughts churn.

    Just a few hours every week, I thought. Good pay. In the financial world, one of the Holy Grail markets for a copywriter!

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  • Brand-Ego lessons from the White House

    11:48am Saturday
    Saint Paul, Minn

    Recently there have been memes* floating around the web of Vice President J.D. Vance’s face superimposed on all kinds of popular images.

    (*when I used “meme” as a Scrabble word some 15 years ago, having read it in Howard Bloom’s The Lucifer Principle, other players were unfamiliar with the concept of self-spreading ideas. They disqualified the word, and ended my turn. Anyways…)

    Maybe you’ve seen these Vance memes. Vance as George Washington. Vance as a character from Game of Thrones. And more.

    Both his supporters and detractors have been posting the images.

    J.D. Vance himself says the memes don’t bother him, and I read somewhere that because he was once a Marine, he can take some good-natured ribbing.

    This is great anti-branding and has a valuable lesson for direct response marketing, if you ask me.

    Let me explain.

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  • This ONE Word Sold Me

    2:13pm
    Saint Paul

    Heading to my parents’ for Sunday dinner last night when just ONE WORD made me pull a u-turn and whip out my wallet.

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  • Unwelcome Guest

    7:40am
    Saint Paul

    Bang bang bang!

    Bark bark bark!

    “What kind of dog is that?” the rooftop solar salesman asked through the door.

    Bark bark bark!

    Sigh.

    “Hi, good evening,” I said. “We’ve discussed solar panels. We’re not interested.” (Bark bark bark!) “Can’t talk, I’m in the middle of my kids’ bedtime…”

    Bark bark bark!

    “What kind of dog is that?”

    Bark bark bark!

    Sigh…

    Dan Kennedy–marketer extraordinaire–has this story of him working, head down, getting things done…

    When there’s a loud banging on his door that just won’t quit.

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  • Beware: Mark Twain’s Spider LOVES A Quiet Business

    7:02pm
    Saint Paul

    Business Owner, beware of the lesson in this quote from author and advertiser-for-hire, Mark Twain:

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  • Uber, Elon, and Branding Bad Ideas

    10:15pm
    Saint Paul

    Ever been hoodwinked by Uber?

    Thought you were getting a BMW… but a Honda showed up?

    Yep, that happened to my friend Chuck (who really exists, guys, I promise!)

    But I have as different experience, and one that ties into marketing.

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  • This Dog Ate My Brain

    2:34pm
    Saint Paul

    When I was 12 the neighbor’s dog bit my brother.

    We never had a dog of our own.

    Goldfish, yes. A cat. A parakeet. A skink. A snake. Even a “grow a frog” that escaped its water tank… and a week later, hopped across the kitchen floor.

    So I was never much of a dog person.

    In fact I told myself I was afraid of them. The dog bite and all, you understand.

    And any time I saw a dog, this fear consumed my brain.

    But years ago I decided that was silly.

    So I simply reprogrammed my brain.

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