Advertising that is a Waste of Time AND Money

 

ADVERTISING THAT IS
A WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY
By Jim “Gymbeaux” Brown, October 1, 2026

Every household, regardless of how many people reside in the home, have the same “needs” and “wants.” What is a “need?”  It is something, someone, or some service that the homeowner/tenant absolutely MUST HAVE! They cannot do without it! What is a “want?”  That is something that a person would simply “like” to have but does not necessary must have it. 

Homeowners may eventually need the services and/or products from the list of people. The “want” may eventually become a “need,” a MUST HAVE over time. It is important to understand that a person does not currently have a MUST HAVE requirement for them at this very moment but will eventually need them. If you were to ask them TODAY to name a person that could provide what they need, they could not. Keep that in mind as you review the list: 

Primary Care Doctor

Medical Specialist (orthopedic, pediatric, neurology, etc.)

Electrician

Plumber

Handyman

Lawn Treatment

Lawn Care

Pest Control

Real Estate Agent

Home Insurance Agent

Car Insurance Agent

Car Mechanic

Politician (running for office)

Barber

Beautician

Attorneys (family, business, accident, injury, etc.) 

The list is endless; the above list identifies the various people who would be the most often needed. It has been my experience that most of the people representing these categories have attempted to ADVERTISE to the public using the shotgun approach. By shotgun, I mean that they send out mail, create radio and/or television commercials and more recently, insert commercials on the various social media sites. Facebook inserts a small “ad” at the top of such commercials because a great many appear as stories where people identify a program that most of us experience and then explain their solution by promoting a product or a service. These commercials aim at no one in particular. You are aiming the advertising piece at everyone hoping that the message noticed by that one person who needs the product or service being promoted. Marketing is more a form of advertising, but you market your product and service to specific people such as friends, family or people in your contact database list or family phone directories. Marketing enjoys a greater degree of success than advertising to the public does. Advertising is more of a “hit or miss” activity. 

Some of the people representing the services listed above spend a great deal of money creating full color very slick mail pieces of ADVERTISING that they mail to the general public hoping that someone who receives it has a need at that very moment for what they are attempting to sell to you, the general public. As the graphic would suggest, most of these slick advertising pieces cost a lot of money to produce yet most and I do mean most, go directly “from the mailbox to the trashcan!”  That one very short comment was the best advice I had ever received, and it was from a successful real estate agent. 

He said, and this is the primary lesson to be taken from this Nugget, he said, you want to recipient of your advertising and even your marketing pieces, to identify who sent or published the material, what do they do that they are selling, how to contact them, and if the law requires, the name of the company they represent. 

This agent did not spend a lot of money on his advertising pieces. In fact, he made them on his desktop computer and printer; it is hard to believe that something you create at your desk would be so inexpensive, easy to create, yet work better than anything he had ever tried. Here you go! 

1. Create a 4-up post card on a normal 8x11 sheet of card stock, no paper, harder card stock.
2. Keep the message as simple as possible (see below).
3. Use a paper cutter and cut one 4-up sheet of four post cards into four individual post cards.
4. If necessary, reverse the card stock before you cut them into fours, so you can print your required information on the reverse side of the postcard if necessary. 

You have just created an advertising piece that is cheap, easy to create and one that you can easily change on your desktop should you need to change them in the future because you saved the setup and information as a file on your computer. Now for the important part. Keeping in mind the above comments, this is what appears on the “meat” side of the post card: 

THINK REAL ESTATE
THINK JIM BROWN
(PHONE NUMBER/WEB ADDRESS)
(In real estate, the name of the company would also be required) 

That is it. Put yourself in the position of a homeowner going to the mailbox. What is the first thing you do? You look to see who the mail is addressed to and who it is from. Most people would have already put the mail into two or three piles. Pile number one! Mail destined for the trash can. That would include this agent’s postcard. Mail addressed to a member in the home. If there were more than one person in the home, there would be a stack for each member, and this would all be done before the person picking up the mail gets back to the front door! 

The real estate agent would use the occasion of the season and change the color of the card stock to represent the season. Red or Green for Christmas. Purple for Easter. Orange for Halloween and Thanksgiving. Red for the 4^th of July. Red for use around Valentine’s Day. Otherwise, the cardstock would be white paper. Putting the color of the paper aside, THE MESSAGE WAS ALWAYS THE SAME! NO MORE, NO LESS! 

Why did he use the same message with each mailing? It becomes very familiar! When things are the same, they are much easier to remember and that is what he was his objective. When a person needed a real estate agent or a friend or neighbor needed a real estate agent, whose name would they think of first even thought they had never met him? 

To put an exclamation mark on this thought, think of your own life. Can you instantly recall the name of a plumber? An electrician? A family lawyer? An injury attorney? Anyone from the list provided above. For most people, they could not. In my geographic area the ONE exception would be for an injury attorney. Why is that so? If you listened to the 12:00 noon news on any channel, you see one commercial after another for injury attorneys. I counted them for one 30-minute news broadcast, there were ELEVEN injury attorney commercials – ELEVEN! They all say the same thing, “I can get you the most money!”  As a side note, what the commercials DO NOT say is that these attorneys get to keep 30 to 40 percent of any settlement that they get for their clients. I personally find that outrageous and explain why car insurance is so high in my state and city. That can work against injury attorneys because the number AND content of so many injury attorney commercials turn the view off rather than creating a favorable memory of the attorney(s). 

Some real estate agents send out full color shinny large and small postcards to show a property owner that they either listed a home for sale in their area or they recently sold a home in their area and the card is loaded with colorful photographs; very professionally done! If a homeowner does NOT have an immediate NEED for a realtor, the slick postcard goes from the mailbox to the trashcan. As a real estate agent with over thirty-three years in the real estate business, whenever I think of such cards going from the mailbox to the trashcan, I envision the recipient taking dollar bills (more like twenty-dollar bills) being removed from their mailbox and going directly into their trashcan. Then multiply that by the number of pieces mailed. It is overwhelming. 

Compare that cost to the cost of mailing out a small postcard created on your own desktop and printer. The cost of postage remains the same. The cost of materials and production are miles apart! 

The key to making this process successful is NOT sending out one postcard and thinking that it is going to be dollar productive. It may generate a call from a person who needs a real estate professional at the very moment the card is removed from the mailbox but the chances of that happening are zero. The key is repetition. How would YOU feel if you received such a card one? Twice a year? Four times a year? Six times a year? I can guarantee that you could send out multiple cards every year and still not spend as much as it would cost to send out a two-sided full-colored postcard just once! 

Ensuring that that you cover all the legal aspects, here is a fictious sample of a card that I would send out: 

THINK REAL ESTATE
THINK JIM “GYMBEAUX” BROWN

(phone number, smaller than your name but large enough to see)
(website address, it should be simple and easily remembered, same size as phone)
REAL ESTATE PROFESSIONALS
Each Office Independently Owned and Operated 

NOTE: The legal requirements such as my company name and the office disclaimer can be as small as you want, but it must appear. 

NOTE:   The less information required means you can make your name and what you do as large as possible, so large it could and should use the entire space on the card! 

What would I put on the reverse side? You may not be required but you could insert the full name and mailing address of the company in the upper left-hand corner where it would typically be located. Is that necessary? Not really, inserting additional information on the back costs very little but it does take twice the time to create the card. Personally, I do not think it is necessary. 

Addressing the post cards. You do NOT want to address the cards by hand, foolish and time consuming. Remember, your main objective is to simply get the card INTO the desired mailboxes. You do NOT even need to address the postcard to a name; in fact, I would avoid a name unless there is a local requirement that it be included. Why address it to just a street number and name, city, state, and zip code? Because you do not want to insult the homeowner by addressing it to “Homeowner.” You do not know if the homeowner on your database still lives there but someone does. When you address it just to the street name and number, whoever lives in the home will receive it and that is your objective. 

If you want to try this process, do not do it once or twice and then decide it does not work. It must be something that becomes routine, habitual, and non-stop! Real Estate agents could also insert one additional line when appropriate such as “ADDRESS – JUST LISTED!”  Or “ADDRESS – JUST SOLD” Now you are demonstrating WHO you are, WHAT you do, and example of WHAT you do, your phone number, your website address, and any other required information. KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID is one of the best rules to follow – ALWAYS!

What Can We Learn From A Kelpie?

 

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM A KELPIE?
By Jim “Gymbeaux” Brown, September 25, 2026

According to ChatGPT: A well-trained sheepdog can typically control 50–100 sheep by itself, and sometimes considerably more.

For large flocks, an experienced Border Collie, or a Kelpie (an Australian version of the Sheep Dog or Border Collie) may work several hundred sheep, especially in open pasture. That is worth repeating, ONE dog for SEVERAL HUNDRED SHEEP. For exceptionally large groups—500 to 1,000+ sheep—shepherds commonly use two or more dogs WORKING TOGETHER!

Why would I ever write a Nugget for the Noggin about an Australian Dog that most people would be unable to identify? I am SO glad you asked. Let me tell you.

Before I do, understand that it was NOT that many years ago, you could never get me to talk to anyone about political issues; I just did not care, and I said that every chance I got. That was then, this is now! Unlike today’s youth, I KNOW WHAT COMMUNISM IS! I KNOW WHAT MARXISM IS! More importantly, I KNOW WHAT CAPITALISM IS! I ALSO KNOW THE DAMAGE AND DEATHS CAUSED BY BOTH MARXISM AND COMMUNISM! I believe that today’s youth have not a clue to the damage and death caused by countries ruled by Marxist or Communist leaders if it was not taught in our schools. We certainly do not see it taught through documentaries on our television sets. If they were shown on our televisions, how many children would watch a documentary about historical events? In fact, the destruction and death created on 9/11 is not broadcast on television except on the anniversary each year. I doubt that it is taught as well. How else can you explain away that the very man elected to be the Mayor of New York City has the same beliefs of the men who “supposedly” flew the planes into the Twin Towers. In just twenty-five years, it appears that the people of New York City, at least the people who voted in the last Mayor’s election, did not seem to care or worse, did not even make the relationship between the two. Given the choice I would choose CAPITALISM, EVERY TIME!

That is NOT the case for so many American citizens in 2026 if what we see and hear on our television sets and on our electronic devices is true, which it is. People are going to vote for Democrat Socialists (DSA) in the mid-term elections in 2026. A vote for a DSA candidate IS a vote for Communism, Socialism, or some combination of the two. I DO NOT WANT TO SEE THAT HAPPEN. Since you are reading this and have gotten this far, I am assuming that you do not as well.

Let us get into the weeds! I had never heard of Operation Mockingbird before the 1990s. That is when I read the book titled The Naked Communist, which is when everything changed for me. I could no longer sit idly by and say nothing about the significant changes I saw happening throughout America. I began to see them very differently than most Americans did. The changes I saw did not originate from the grass roots, meaning that they just grew on their own. No, the changes I saw happening were farmed! By farming, I mean people, real people, planted seeds, watered them, fertilized them, made sure they received plenty of sunshine and weather conducive to help them grow strong and sturdy.  While the seeds were growing, most people, like me but certainly not you, just did not care. I did not want to talk about them. Politics to me was a dirty word. The Naked Communist changed all of that!

If you owned one hundred sheep and needed to move them about your property, how would you go about it? You would purchase a Kelpie or the more popular Sheep Dog. I chose a Kelpie for this Nugget hoping that just the unusual word would be enough to trigger your interest enough for you to read this Nugget as compared to using a Sheep Dog.  You buy the Kelpie; it is well trained. If it is not well trained, you ensure it gets the training it needs. You then decide that 100 sheep is insufficient, so you buy 100 more. You discover that the ONE Kelpie is having a tough time controlling the sheep you have so you purchase a second Kelpie and then it becomes case of rinse and repeat. The more sheep you add to your herd, the more Kelpies you purchase.

I was going to add a brief explanation of Operation Mockingbird or provide you with a link where you could check for yourself, but I realized that most people would not click on the link and the term would be lost and never explained. Therefore, here is the ChatGPT explanation of Operation Mockingbird, IT IS IMPORTANT TO KNOW AND UNDERST AND HOW EASY IT HAS BEEN TO CONVERT CLEAR THINKING INDIVIDUIALS INTO THE SHEEP WE HAVE BECOME.

From ChatGPT, words in parenthesis are my words: “Operation Mockingbird is a name commonly used for the CIA’s Cold War-era relationships with journalists and news organizations. The basic idea is real, but the popular version often combines several different CIA activities under one label.

During the early Cold War, the CIA considered newspapers, magazines, radio, publishing houses, and individual journalists (and television) useful for intelligence and for influencing opinion abroad. The Senate’s Church Committee, which investigated intelligence abuses in 1975–76, documented secret CIA relationships with members of the American media. Contemporary accounts of the committee’s findings reported that 50 American journalists had covert relationships with the CIA, ranging from freelancers and foreign correspondents to people associated with publishing organizations.

Those relationships were not all the same. Some journalists supplied information they encountered overseas; some provided cover or assistance to intelligence officers; and CIA covert-action programs also planted or encouraged propaganda abroad (the word propaganda is a kind way of telling LIES). Material placed in foreign media could sometimes make its way back into American reporting. This is the historical basis for the broader claim that the CIA sought to use media as an instrument in the Cold War. (Since the information, propaganda, came from a foreign newspaper, it must be true, right! It is like the exercise we all did as kids. One kid would tell a story and say pass it on. Each time it was passed on, it was embellished and by the time it got to the last kid in line, the story was completely different.)

There is an important distinction concerning the name “Mockingbird.” Declassified CIA records definitely identify Project MOCKINGBIRD, but that particular operation was a 1963 surveillance operation, not the name in those records for the entire CIA-media network. The CIA secretly wiretapped two Washington-based syndicated journalists, Robert S. Allen and Paul Scott, from March 12 to June 15, 1963, because they were publishing classified information. The CIA's own historical account confirms this.

The much broader meaning of “Operation Mockingbird”—a coordinated CIA program for influencing the press—is associated heavily with later writers and journalists. In 1977, investigative journalist Carl Bernstein reported that hundreds of American journalists had performed services for the CIA over the preceding decades. Author Deborah Davis subsequently used “Operation Mockingbird” to describe an extensive CIA-media influence network. Historians continue to debate whether there was actually one centrally organized program formally called Operation Mockingbird matching that popular description.

What is not seriously disputed is the underlying conduct: the CIA maintained covert relationships with journalists and media-related people during the Cold War. The controversy became substantial enough that in February 1976 CIA Director George H. W. Bush announced a new policy prohibiting the CIA from entering into paid or contractual relationships with accredited American news correspondents, while still allowing journalists voluntarily to provide information. (Like so many government activities, the simple statement that something has stopped does not mean it has really stopped. Many people, me included, believe that the program still exists to this day.)”

If you only watch ONE mainstream news outlet, there would be nothing to compare their broadcast to, and you would accept what you have been watching as being the truth. But…if you watched more than one mainstream outlet, you would think that you might get a different story on the same subject matter, that is what I thought! What I discovered was that it did not matter which outlet I watched, I not only got related stories, BUT I ALSO GOT EXACTLY THE SAME STORY ON EVERY CHANNEL USING THE SAME WORDS, PHRASES AND LANGUAGE. I EVEN NOTICED THAT THEY ALL HAD ALMOST IDENTICAL BODY LANGUAGE WHEN DISCUSSING THE SAME STORIES NO MATTER WHICH CHANNEL I WATCHED! That is impossible UNLESS…all the stations received their news articles from the SAME PLACE!

Our supposedly unbiased mainstream news media has become our Kelpies! We all watch on different channels but come away with the same story and beliefs. That is precisely how we all began to wear medical masks and stood no closer than six feet to everyone. That is how members of a junior high school band would sit in plastic bubbles and play instruments to prevent the spread of a disease that we were all taught was real and dangerous to everyone, young and old. We all watched in disbelief how some experts and non-experts spoke out against the disease and they were all cancelled. We saw doctors whose medical licenses were being threatened by the government if they did not follow the guidelines put forth by our government and REENFORCED on every news broadcast by the mainstream media. No one was permitted to speak out against these policies or procedures and feared for their own freedom from penalties for speaking out. The exclamation mark on this practice was visible when you saw the exact same practices occurring in every city around the world. The message had to be coordinated by someone to get that result!

How did something like that happen? We all became SHEEP. The government working closely with the media and our televisions became the Kelpies who not only watched over us, but they also controlled our every movement. If we failed to obey, we would be denied medical care, some lost their jobs. The penalties were severe! What did we all do? Like the sheep being corralled by Kelpies, we did what we were directed to do, and we went were we were told to go, and we dared NOT to speak out against all of this guidance given under the guise of being protected.

There is one word that EVERYONE should understand and that word is FEED! They call it “the news FEED” for a reason. A second word that everyone should understand is “programming.”  People understand that computers are programmed to cause them to react as we want them to react. Television news and television programming work on the same principle. We are being fed the subconscious messages that the people who wield power and who want us all to hear and believe the same things. That way WE become PROGRAMMED to react the way those in power want us all to react. To most people 2 + 2 = 4. To a much smaller handful 2+2 is 44. These are the people who think “outside the box” that frighten the people in power the most because they see through the organized programming and they ask questions. They do their own research. They find their own answers or find enough information to seriously question the programming they see and hear on their television sets. That is who I have become. Where do you stand?

We have all been programmed to believe certain events in our history occurred just as we have been told that they did. During my lifetime, the BIG ones have been Vietnam, the murders of JFK, RFK, MLK but especially JFK. We believed that Iraq had and used Weapons of Mass Destruction, 9/11, COVID and now election integrity. I am only guessing but if you did your own study by asking people you know about these events, you would get the same or remarkably similar explanations from each one; the stories would not vary. That is effective programming of the mind! As an example, we were all told that we HAD to fight in Vietnam because the North Vietnamese attacked two U. S. Navy ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. We were told that we could not permit that to happen, so we entered the war. Thousands upon thousands of people on both sides were killed and many more wounded for life all based upon an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin that did not happen. But we believed it did.

The next time you watch the news, watch it as an observer would. What was said? Was it 100% the news or did the statements include news AND the commentators’ OPINIONS? You will discover as I did, there are about as many OPINIONS broadcast as there is NEWS. Then if you go further in your observation, switch channels and try to find a news outlet covering the same story and listen to the words and phrases used. YOU WILL FIND THEM, if you pay close attention.

Today’s news is fraught with examples of INSTANT PROTESTERS blocking traffic, abusing law enforcement officers, and using some of the foulest language. If you look closely, they are all wearing the same type of clothing with the same messages and same professionally prepared signage. These protests were not grass roots; they were well organized and well-funded. The protesters have become the sheep, and the organizers and money people have become the Kelpies controlling them.

If you have not figured it out, WE ALL HAVE BEEN BRAINWASHED!

Simple Steps to avoid being brainwashed:

1.      Learn to pay attention to everything.

2.      Question everything, you hear or see.

3.      Trust no one in the media.

4.      Realize that politicians lie.

5.      Just because someone else does something does not mean you have to do the same things. This is particularly true in the world of fashion, fads and social media.

You might find the following WEBSITES interesting. If the links do not work, copy and paste them to your browser:

45 Communist USA objectives described in the book The Naked Communist, a 3-minute video: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofB4hbFvhis

 

Operation Mockingbird:  https://allthatsinteresting.com/operation-mockingbird

 

The Art of Brainwashing:  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-chemistry/201803/the-art-brainwashing

How the Gulf of Tonkin incident Sparked the Vietnam War:  https://allthatsinteresting.com/gulf-of-tonkin