Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Only two days left to get 18 free (real and genuine) gifts and take your free test-drive of this month’s issue of Seductive Selling!  Here’s what Mitch Dominguez, from New York City has to say about Seductive Selling: “Craig, your Seductive Selling Newsletter is my absolute fave of the sales/mktg. material that comes into my…

To be honest, I didn’t have a particularly exciting, or even mildly interesting weekend.  Anne was out of town with our daughter who competed in two national cheerleading championships (and won both of them!).  The weather on Saturday was beautiful, but I was outside doing chores all day long.  And Sunday it rained cats and…

This story was adapted from an e-mail I received from my friend Christian Godefroy, that he sent out to his French members.  if you like stories like this, visit his website here. One day, an opening appeared in a cocoon.  A man sat and watched the struggling butterfly trying to emerge for hours.  During this…

I am capping the membership of my Mastermind Group at ten members. This gives everyone a fair amount of time to work with me, especially during the two day in-person meetings we have. Our next in-person meeting will take place here in Tampa on Wednesday and Thursday, June 23rd and 24th. This group will be…

Unfortunately, writing is the easy part of marketing and advertising.  I don’t care whether you’re writing a sales letter, a space ad, a web page, or anything else.  For the most part, your time’s going to be spent something like this: Research 20 – 30% Actual writing 30% Editing 40 – 50% And sometimes, if…

Once in a while you open up your mail and there’s a nice and unexpected surprise waiting inside for you. I stumbled across this letter, and a DVD that contained the following video: And here’s the video that was on the DVD: If you want to get “in” on this, then get “How To Make…

First, let me tell you there is very little easy money out there.  I realize this might not be a very popular thing to say nowadays, as well as being very un-guru like, but it’s the truth. I make a really good living, but not one of those dollars comes to me easily.  Oh sure,…

I’ve been spending lots of time helping people with conversions lately.  Initially, people tend to focus on response rates.  But after a while, once you know your marketing creates a response, your ego settles down and you realize you need more than just warm bodies that can fog a mirror. At a certain point in…

Today is my younger son’s 18th birthday and in honor of this, I’m going to re-publish an article that I ran in my offline Seductive Selling newsletter.  This article comes from a column called “Tales From The Back-End,” which is a two-page editorial column that starts on the last page of the newsletter.  Here goes:…

One of the people I learned so much about marketing and about writing copy from, is Claude C. Hopkins.  Hopkins was one of the pioneers of direct-marketing in the early 1900’s, and was earning $185,000 a year in 1915, which is over $4,205,284 adjusted for inflation in today’s dollars. Hopkins’s success was attributable to a…

Just got this month’s issue of Seductive Selling back from the printer and I wanted to give you a sneak peek of what you’ll find inside! First of all, the issue is called, Booty-licious? but not for the reasons you’re probably thinking.  Here’s what you’re missing out on: *  A little-known problem marketing new products,…

There’s an old expression that goes something like, “The fastest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”  For me, that’s not particularly true, but I do know the fastest way to a buyers wallet, and that is, through his heart. And the fastest way to his heart is to share a story with…

In the beginning, it was kind of cute, like a surprise birthday party almost.  You found yourself in the middle of an event and you didn’t even know how you got there. You saw all these nice things going on, you started receiving business gifts and presents, and it seemed so “nice” of the person…

Here’s a little piece I wrote for my daughter a few years ago.  It’s her 10th birthday today, and I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Let me know what you think: I love putting my daughter to bed.  It’s one of the few times I get to  disconnect and…

In general I’m more of a creative than anything else.  If I didn’t have to work, I’d spend my time pursuing my creative hobbies full time.  I’d be playing guitar, drawing (in pencil) and taking pictures. And those are just the creative things I’d be doing.  While I’m dreaming here, I can add reading, bass…

For most of today, I’ll be on the phone with the members of my Mastermind group on our one-on-one monthly calls, so I’ll be quick. This message is ONLY for those folks who have been considering this group as a resource.  If this doesn’t describe you, then hit delete and come back tomorrow. If it…

There is one thing in particular people who come to me for help — or who send in copy and marketing pieces to be reviewed — consistently struggle with.  And that is ‘positioning.’ And although there are loads of ways to create the positioning you need, one of the most important one is to make…

Unless you just crawled out from under a rock this morning, you already know no one’s going to pay attention to anything you say unless it’s compelling. Meaning, it has to, in a sense, draw your readers in.  This is absolutely mandatory if you want to get ANYBODY to just listen to you, let alone…

On Wednesday and Thursday, March 24th and 25th, I am hosting an opportunity for a small group of people to get together and create huge profits for themselves, by working directly with me, in a one-off workshop I am running. This workshop was created based on the responses of a recent survey I ran. At…

Here’s a  really common mistake people make when they are writing copy. Most people know you need to write your sales copy in a conversational style.  So basically, you want to write like you’re sitting down and having a chat with someone.  In my book, I call this “cut of coffee” copy.  The thought process…