Day 10 Bonus - Golden Nuggets - Mmmmm | Mike Mindel

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Day 10 Bonus - Golden Nuggets - Mmmmm

By Mike Mindel | August 13, 2007

I’ve broken out the Golden Nuggets content from day 10 and spliced in some good observations from Ed Dale in Golden Nuggets - The Directors Cut.

This post is all about…

Gary Halbert’s Golden Nuggets Strategy

Here’s Gary Halbert’s Golden Nuggets Strategy in pdf form. Also see Ed’s video at Golden Nuggets - The Directors Cut.

Here’s the summary (but no substitute for reading the pdf ok?):

The Boron Letters

Read Gary Halbert’s fantastic Boron letters.

This is the best education in direct marketing I’ve ever read.

Best of all it’s completely free!

Golden Nuggets - Mmmm

Gary came up with this strategy for writing direct mail letters.

But the technique applies to anytime you want to create content, whether for interview, recording a video, writing a blog post.

People ask me (Ed) ‘how do you continuously talk about this stuff?’ It’s because of the study elements. I’ve already showed you my Bloglines secret.

Effectively what I’m doing every day is Golden Nugget theory.

Anytime I see something wow, or interesting I record the note. I still use a moleskin notepad.

When we started with this strategy we used good old fashioned 3 x 5 index cards. This was before web 2.0 tools like Google Notepad.

Your brain is amazing. It will take in everything.

But the problem is whether you can access it.

By using Google Nuggets you are filling your mind with everything to do with this keyword.

As you chuck all this stuff in there, your brain will start to work through and sort it. If you take a break from that material and come back to it, all of a sudden it just flows. And you can write.

People wonder where ideas for story comes. The best writers like Stephen King, Hemingway often start with just a simple idea.

What if cars ate people? What if a dog went bad? What if you spill pigbloog on a sophmore.

The hook, the catch, anything important about a piece of content will magically appear.

Reading Is Not Enough

If you just sit there passively reading bloglines without taking notes, it won’t go in!

Imagine there are two piles in your brain.

In one pile there is just stuff thrown on it. You can find some stuff here but it will take a lot of time.

The act of taking notes activates the part of your brain that puts the notes in a filing cabinet for you.

If you’re going to read it, take the extra thee seconds to note it, and make the information much more useful. It will pay dividends later.

The Steps

1. Google It

Type your keyword (phrase) into Google and look at the top 10 sites! (20 is better).

Take heaps of notes. One idea per 3 x 5 or use Google notebook.

The reason people have such problems with reports and writing sales letters is they don’t have the information to hand. Writers block is caused by lack of information (see Robert McKee’s Story).

Adopt a state of curiousness. If you approach this from a state of being editorial - we’re taught to sort!

In the distant past when the sabre-toothed tiger was bounding down the track, we needed to edit quickly. Fortunately there are times when that’s very useful.

But as I speak, we’re not confronted by many sabre-toothed tigers each day and editing all the time is not that help. In fact often we edit at the wrong times and it doesn’t help us at all.

Write down anything (non pornographic) that makes you go WOW, hmm, aah and mmmmm.

2. Join Mailing Lists

Set up a GMail (or Yahoo) account and join the mailing lists. This way you won’t get bombarded with mail.

3. Feed It

Make sure you have your Bloglines setup. Subscribe to the feeds I showed you in Day 10 - And Then There Were Two.

Read them & note them!

4. Join It

Make sure you do a search on Facebook, Google Groups, Myspace, Yahoo for the keyword e.g. ’speed reading’.

Join the groups. Actively read. Then take notes!

Again, use your throwaway email address to avoid being inundated with spam.

In Summary

Look at the top 10 sites (20 is better)
Take heaps of notes - one idea per 3 x 5
Or use Googe Notebook
Note anything that makes you go hmmmm or wow
Join mailing lists (separate email address so you don’t get bombarded. Use Yahoo mail or Gmail or some other free service)
Make sure you have Bloglines setup
Subscribe to the blog feeds I showed you (above)
Read them
Take notes
Look for groups on Facebook, Google Groups, MySpace, Yahoo and join them!
Take notes!
Reading is not enough. You MUST take notes.