Goldmine Marketing

Here’s what I’m up to…

  • are you still on the hunt,?

    1:12pm
    Saint PAul

    I was rewriting a recent promo (due to client schedule changes) when a curious email landed.

    “are you still on the hunt,?” it asked.

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  • ⚠️ Storage Full

    10:52am
    Saint Paul

    Computer storage is full.

    iPhone storage is full.

    iCloud storage is full.

    And Google storage is full… for four different accounts!

    And after 15 years of IT work, shuffling storage around doesn’t sound as fun as it once did.

    So I keep putting it off.

    But like everything, the longer I put it off, the more work it seems, and the more problems it causes.

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  • The 80/20 Rule of Writing

    8:39am
    Saint Paul

    Effective marketing can’t target everyone.

    Even things that are commodities—like food—shows ads with a mother (or occasionally a bumbling father—which only exists in the ad to sell to the mother).

    Which is why the “Five Question Words” you learned in grade school are still important.

    (I remember my grade school classroom with these 5 words, each in a speech bubble, laminated and taped to the classroom wall.

    I don’t remember the grade. I don’t remember the teacher.

    But I remember those words… and being frustrated that there are more than just 5!)

    So before writing your sales letter or ad, make sure you answer these:

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  • Speak In Their Skibbidy

    9:47am
    Saint Paul

    Saw a brainrot video today:

    This school brings in a polyglot—someone who speaks many languages—to tell students why its important to learn other languages.

    And this rizzler low-key gives the presentation in Gen Alpha slang. No cap, chat.

    Lucky for us, the video has subtitles in English.

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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

    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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