Why Timeless Marketing Principles Still Win in a Digital World With Brian Kurtz

Intro: 00:00  

Welcome back to the Response Drivers podcast, where we feature top marketing minds and dig into their inspiring stories. Learn how these leaders think and find big ideas to push your results and sales to the next level. Now let’s get started.

Rick Rappe: 00:19  

Hey, I’m Rick Rappe, host of the Response Drivers podcast. Here I dive deep with marketing experts and innovators to learn how they approach targeted marketing and use data driven strategies to acquire and retain customers. We’ll talk about what’s working, what’s changing, and how we can stay ahead in an evolving marketing landscape. Response Drivers is brought to you by RPM Direct Marketing. RPM helps companies develop hard hitting direct mail creative and utilize advanced testing and targeting methodologies to reach customers and prospects.

Our goal is to fully optimize your performance so you can drive more sales and exceed growth expectations. RPM delivers smarter, more profitable direct mail solutions, so you can turn your direct mail programs into a predictable, efficient sales channel. Check out rpmdm.com to learn more. Well, today’s guest is a giant in direct response marketing, Mr. Brian Kurtz. With over four decades in the industry, Brian helped build Boardroom Inc. into a $150 million direct marketing juggernaut. 

Starting as a list manager and rising to executive vice president and partner along the way, he worked closely with legends like Gene Schwartz, Dan Kennedy, and Gary Bencivenga learning and later teaching the timeless fundamentals of direct marketing. Since 2015, he’s run Titan’s Marketing and launched Titan’s Accelerator, a thriving community of over 250 marketers and entrepreneurs offering mentorship grounded in experience, not hype. He’s also the author of Overdeliver, a must read on list building, copywriting and customer lifetime value, and Co-author of The Advertising Solution profiling six of the most influential marketers of the 20th century. Brian calls himself a non extinct dinosaur, a bridge between old school direct mail and today’s digital landscape, and his work proves that great marketing isn’t about channels, it’s about connection, commitment and delivering real value. Let’s get into it with the one and only Mr. Brian Kurtz.

Brian Kurtz: 02:27

Oh, thank you so much for having me, Rick. I was really excited about this podcast just because of your background, you know, in, in direct mail in and I hate calling it old school marketing because, you know, I’m, you know, I take it as a badge of honor when someone calls me an OG, like an original gangster. Sure. But the thing when I talk, when you talked about in my bio about the bridge that connects the old with the new, Basically I I’m on the I’m on the lookout every day for any new gangsters. And you know, the guys who are doing copywriting using AI at the highest level or, you know, the people that are not just copycats and they’re you.

But what happens is everything comes down to the fundamentals. And you know, and you know this because, you know, we’re cut from the same cloth coming out of direct mail that I’m just, you know, I feel like not that we’re we’re not better than anybody, but I think we, you know, chapter three of my book Overdeliver the title of chapter three is How Paying Postage Made Me a Better Marketer. And it’s not because that direct mail is the be all, end all. But, you know, in a good chunk of my career and yours, it was basically the medium of choice before the internet and email. Right? 

And so it’s just the, you know, the discipline and the you know what you needed to do before you hit send. Literally not literally hit send, but mail out a million pieces of direct mail that you’re printing and postage for. It’s a whole different mindset. And that mindset carries over even when the media is cheaper and it’s cheaper to market today than it was. So I just think.

Rick Rappe: 04:16

It should carry over. I mean, I think I wonder sometimes if digital marketers, you know, the digital medium sort of is easier to create. There’s not a lot of cost to it. You can fire something out and it just disappears. If you make a mistake, it disappears.

Like all of these things weren’t true with direct mail. So, you know, we had to take these campaigns very seriously.

Brian Kurtz: 04:42

That it doesn’t disappear. Because what happens is that if you make a mistake or you send out an email and it’s inappropriate. You say I didn’t get any orders. No big deal, because it didn’t cost me anything. It costs you.

It costs you in reputation. It could cost you in unsubscribes. It could cost you in the next email you send that people remember. And it’s much harder to track that. But I believe it, I believe it. 

So to to not.

Rick Rappe: 05:09

Impact not.

Brian Kurtz: 05:10

Do email with the same discipline as we did. Direct mail is not a bad piece of advice to give to marketers.

Rick Rappe: 05:19

Interesting. Well, I want to dig into more about how you’ve bridged the gap between traditional print media like direct mail and other digital channels and things like that. But first, let me back up a little bit. Rewind to your roots and your early influence. Tell us a little bit more about how an English major from Rutgers ended up stamping envelopes, and later running a $150 million business at Boardroom.

Brian Kurtz: 05:51

You know, I’m not going to say it was luck, but, you know, I. I forged my way early on into a situation where, you know, it was basically I took advantage of the opportunity that was laid before me. And it started with, you know, I was an English major. I, you know, my parents were unhappy about that, figuring I should be an accountant or a lawyer. I didn’t want to be either.

I said, I’m going to go to college and I’ll learn how to read and write. How’s that? And so that’s what I did. I thought I was going to be a writer. I thought I was going to be a film critic. 

Who knows what I was going to be? And so I started off like doing amateur leasing for plays, you know, for, you know, amateur shows and sending scripts to high schools and theaters. And that was my first job out of college. But there was this one headhunter who I give a lot of credit to who like me, you know. And he was supplying a lot of people to this upstart little publishing company called Boardroom. 

And the first time he met me, he said, Marty Edelston will love you. Marty Edelston was the founder of Boardroom. And he said, you’re Marty’s kind of guy. You know, you’re young, you’re dynamic, you just — you have a thirst for knowledge. Marty will love you. 

And if an opportunity comes up at Boardroom, I’m going to send you there. And, you know, hopefully you’ll get hired there. But hang tight at your play publishing job. And so a job opened up in-house list management. Meaning that, you know, Boardroom was a newsletter publisher, a book publisher. 

We had lists of subscribers and buyers. And usually when you had a list in those days and you were in direct mail, you would just give it give the list to a list manager and they would represent your list in the marketplace. It so happened that Marty had was kept, the company closely held. And he felt that he wanted to manage the lists in house. And so there was a job called in-house list manager at Boardroom. 

And it was the only way to get to the audience because it was newsletters and books. There was no advertising. So the only way to get to that audience of and they were affluent executives, the subscribers and book buyers were affluent. They bought through direct mail. And, you know, you know, direct mail buyers, direct mail buyers, direct mail buyer. 

So you want people who are direct mail buyers if you’re selling in direct mail, just like if you’re selling an email, you want people who buy through email. And so it’s similar, but direct mail. It was powerful direct mail affluent, you know, and they bought through, you know, creative and direct mail packages that were impulsive. And they and they got people’s they titillated the audience. So I just felt that this was an interesting little business, this in house list, I didn’t know what I was doing, you know, in-house list management. 

What’s that? And so I was working there, you know, doing, you know, doing list orders for all the different list brokers and mailers. And everybody used the Boardroom lists.

Rick Rappe: 08:56

I remember I did. I remember using it myself. I think it was a perfect program.

Brian Kurtz: 09:02

It had everything going for it. Right. So Money Magazine used it. The Wall Street Journal used it, but so did Hammacher Schlemmer and and and Land’s End catalogs, and so did the National Republican Senatorial Committee. And so did, you know, disabled American veterans.

So it was like a list, just a list of great names of people who bought through the mail who love to buy and read.

Rick Rappe: 09:28

Yeah. And this is before sort of the the days of these massive list compilers.

Brian Kurtz 09:35

Oh, yeah.

Rick Rappe: 09:36

So these types of lists were really powerful in direct mail marketing.

Brian Kurtz: 09:42

Absolutely.

Rick Rappe: 09:44

Before that, you know.

Brian Kurtz: 09:45

Exactly. And so, you know, I, I just came in, I, I, I worked hard on the list. It’s funny, two years after I was there, a job opened up in the editorial side at Boardroom, like, you know, as an editor or something. And I went to Marty, the founder. I said, Marty, you know, I think I’d like that job. And this is another one of those turning points in your career, right?

This is how the Rutgers English major ended up, you know, a direct marketing guy. Marty said to me, he said, you know, Brian, and I’m 23 years old. The president of the company is saying this to me. He said, you have a nose for marketing, was the quote. And I said, really? 

You think so? And I, I kind of was digging it. I was really enjoying what I was doing. And he said, yeah, don’t waste your time in the editorial side. Stay in the marketing side with me. 

And I did, and that was like a turning point and my career kind of took off from there. I became executive vice president, became the marketing director, you know, and marketing director first, then the executive vice president. I got an equity. He made me a partner. I was an equity partner in the business after I was there for about ten years. 

And, you know, we built an amazing you said juggernaut, you know, it was it was basically a great learning organization. It was just like we work with only the best of the best copywriters, the best of the best list brokers. Marty was such a — he was an entrepreneur, classic.

Brian Kurtz: 11:16

You know. He just did everything the best he could do. He had stationery. He sent notes to everybody, handwritten notes. He had this big stationery that folded out. And on the bottom it said good, better, best never let it rest until the good is better and the better best.

And he would sign the notes and that’s who he was. You know, he was all about, not perfection. He wasn’t a perfectionist per se, although he did everything to the nines. But he was very just industrious. And he was just such a stickler for excellence. 

And I learned from the best, you know. And as you said in my introduction, we hired the best. So I had Jean Schwartz, one of the greatest copywriters of all time. He was, you know, writing copy for us. And he became a mentor to me. 

You know, so a lot of it is right place, right time. How I be answering your question.

Rick Rappe: 12:12

Yeah, but that would be downplaying your role in, well, capitalizing on the opportunities and then delivering what you needed to deliver.

Brian Kurtz: 12:21

Yes, absolutely. But there was something here. Here’s a lesson for your listeners that I think and I’ve taught this in my groups, that I always say, your mentors don’t you don’t you don’t choose your mentors. They choose you. And what I mean by that is that in the case of Jean Schwartz, in the case of Dick Benson, who was the top direct mail guy in our era, Gordon Grossman, who helped build the Reader’s Digest and became a consultant for Boardroom. How did those guys become mentors to me?

It’s because I looked at what they might need, and I helped them with no, with no with no promise of quid pro quo, with no promise of anything. And that’s what I talk about in my book Overdeliver 100 zero concept like just give and give and give. And, you know, Jean Schwartz was a great example of someone who had his own little book publishing company, great copywriter, wrote copy for us. And but he had this little publishing company for health books. And, you know, he had a list broker who was terrible. 

And I knew all the lists for health for health books, because we at Borden, we had health books. So I remember telling Jean, let me redo your list plan for you. You know your list broker is not doing a good, good job for you. I can give you better selections on the list that you’re doing. I mean, I wasn’t going to charge them or anything, of course, and I did that for him. 

And, you know, he didn’t have to befriend me, but he did. And, you know, I had regular lunches at his penthouse apartment on Park Avenue, learning at the feet of one of the greatest copywriters of all time. Now, I never became a great copywriter. I don’t consider myself a copywriter, but I write copy. I write a blog. 

I’m — I like writing, but just learning how his mind worked. And it was those things you can’t put in a bottle and you can’t put in a book. You know, it was — so it was such an amazing ride. And then all the copywriters we work with and the list brokers and the consultants, every one of them I learn so much from. 

And I just stood on the shoulders of so many giants. But the giants were available to me and I connected with them every chance I got.

Rick Rappe: 14:36

Yeah, well, that sounds like you made the most of an amazing opportunity. So congratulations.

Brian Kurtz: 14:42

Had a good ride.

Rick Rappe: 14:43

That’s awesome. Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s how I feel about my time spent working with Bob hacker, Bob Hacker and Joanne Hacker at the hacker group.

And I had the weird opportunity to we started a little program for AT&T in the southwest region, and then it became the AT&T National Direct Marketing Program. And in my 20s, I found myself as a VP managing $100 million a year direct mail program.

Brian Kurtz: 15:10

That’s yeah, it’s like, how did I get here? Right?

Rick Rappe: 15:12

Yeah. It was a good ride from project manager up the ranks in in account services to in charge of the biggest, you know the biggest account that the company has. Yeah. So but a great opportunity also to test and learn and figure out what are my what are the guiding principles that all these gurus.

Brian Kurtz: 15:32

On the battlefield like in. Yeah, you know, you’re on the field of play. You’re not know, practice, you know.

Rick Rappe: 15:38

Right.

Brian Kurtz: 15:39

You know.

Rick Rappe: 15:39

Yeah. As a young man sometimes I felt that I was, you know, out of place and didn’t really know what I was doing. And Joanne Hacker told me many times, hey, Rick, in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. Yeah, exactly, exactly. It’s kind of a funny way to look at things, but it worked for me, so.

Hey, what can I say?

Brian Kurtz: 15:59

Obviously worked for you.

Rick Rappe: 16:00

Yes, absolutely. Well, I want to dig in a little bit more to your direct mail experience before we move into some of these other channels. But because you were managing a huge direct mail program at the time back then, am I, am I correct?

Brian Kurtz: 16:13

Yeah, we were mailing at our height, probably 130, 140 million pieces a year or an individual mailing. The biggest individual mailing we did. I didn’t lick every stamp.

Rick Rappe: 16:30

Good. That’s good.

Brian Kurtz: 16:31

Good thing. But the biggest single mailing we did was about 9 million pieces. It was a hot book that we rolled out over time. And boy what, what a what a like, you know, it wasn’t a sweatshop, but it was like a direct marketing factory at Boardroom. You know, we just we had to do everything.

And we had all the vendors, the letter shops and the —

Rick Rappe: 16:56

Sure.

Brian Kurtz: 16:56

All the things. But it was like it was such an exciting time. I mean, it was so, you know, I, I.

Rick Rappe: 17:06

What were some of the guiding principles? Do you remember some of the guiding principles that you manage the program based on?

Brian Kurtz: 17:14

Yeah. So as far as testing went, you know, we were great testers. Over time we learned, you know, to not make tiny tests. That was from Gordon Grossman. He said, don’t make tiny tests.

Rick Rappe: 17:28

Don’t test whispers.

Brian Kurtz: 17:30

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because we would do I mean, we would do some silly testing. And so that was a guiding principle that we learned over time, you know, go. So we used to go to our creative meetings and we had a big whiteboard and we’d put all the ideas on there. And the guiding principle was like, can this idea we’re not going to it’s a brainstorming meeting. So we’re not going to like say, that’s a bad idea.

Although, as we know in most brainstorming meetings, there are tons of horrible ideas. But you have to make every idea sound good. And oh, don’t discourage anybody.

Rick Rappe: 18:01

You don’t want to. You don’t want to kill the brainstorm right away.

Brian Kurtz: 18:04

I ever heard in my life. Right? But it was like the guy. One of the guiding principles was like. Can this test panel give us at least a 30% lift?

How we decided at 30. It’s because usually when we rolled out, we sometimes lost half of the lift in response and a 15% lift was sort of like the minimum that we really wanted. So we had this 30% rule. Doesn’t mean that we were going to hit 30% lift on every single test that we decided to do, but having that guiding principle, it made you think, you know, it made you not think in whispers, right? It made you think bigger. 

Rick Rappe: 18:47

One of the very first things I do when I get to evaluate a direct mail program, a bigger direct mail program is I look at the look at how they test, and I try to break it down into kind of a framework and put all the testing that they’re doing into different compartments. And I always find that people are doing a lot of small whisper testing and small tweak testing, and they’re really afraid of like doing the wild and wacky sort of like, let’s swing for the fences testing. Yes, it’s pretty interesting that.

Brian Kurtz: 19:14

Yeah. We won. One of the things that we did also was we, we, we kind of looked at. So I have this expression. I said the, the list is the least the creative and the copy and for for something is the least important element until it’s not. And what I mean by that is that, you know, there’s a rule in direct marketing back then, the 40, 40, 20 rule, which was that every the success of a direct mail campaign or direct marketing campaign, it depended 40% on the list, 40% on the offer and 20% on the creative.

So that would say on percentages, that would say the creative is half as important as the offer or the list. So what I did in my book, Overdeliver, I talked about it in terms of the 41, 3920 rule and the 40. The 41 is the list, the audience, the media. Because I learned very quickly and I came out of the list business. One of the advantages of coming out of the list business in circulation and direct mail was that I didn’t come out of the numbers crunching side of it. 

Not a bad place to come out of it from the numbers crunching side, but coming from the audience, the list, I saw that if and the reason why, I could prove that the 41 should be the list, the 39 should be the offer, and the 20 should be the creative. And I’m just using those numbers to illustrate a point.

Brian Kurtz: 20:43

A rank ordering is that if you. Have like the perfect list and you have a mediocre offer and mediocre creative, you’ll get some orders. It’s true today online.

As well, right? However, the opposite is not true. You could have the world-class creative with a killer offer. Send it to the wrong audience. You get zero orders.

So that was my premise then. What I learned, though, is working with the top copywriters in the world that once you have your list dialed in and once you have your offer dialed in, Then you go for world class creative. Then the creative becomes the most important thing because the creative is only 20% when you’re starting.

But if you have the other two dialed in the creative, what it does is that the. And I prove this to you because the biggest lifts in response rate and profit from my career is when we took the big swings, as you said.

We went to a new copywriter with a completely new approach, and you either index a 50 of the of the response of the control or you index 150 a 50% lift.

And and so yeah, that’s when you really understand and then you know that it’s not the list and it’s not the offer that’s not your problem. Then you know it’s all in the creative. Also one of the other guiding principles is single variable testing.

Rick Rappe: 22:09

Yeah.

Brian Kurtz: 22:10

That’s something that gets lost in online marketing today because you want to know what you’re testing is, whether it worked or it didn’t. And if you’re so when you’re doing a full blown creative from a new copywriter, you can throw anything at it. You don’t. You’re looking at a new package, new promotion. Everything can change.

That’s variable testing.

Rick Rappe: 22:31

But the entire variable is the whole package.

Brian Kurtz: 22:36

No, no, no single variable is only one item in the package. So the single variable, right. Like just the price right. Or just the headline.

Rick Rappe: 22:46

But if you’re testing a whole new package, it’s like you have to worry A/B. It’s an A/B test. It’s exactly either this package or that package. Not exactly. And you’re not trying to learn about copy points or anything. You’re not tweaking.

Brian Kurtz: 22:59

You’re as you said, you’re not tweaking, you’re doing, you know, you’re doing major testing. But I think that when you’re tweaking and you’re doing little things, not not whispers, but things. Look, if you’re testing like a price versus a for-pay price. That’s a significant test because it could change the whole we our books were like, you know, generally $29 or $39, but we would constantly be testing three installments at $9.99, three installments at $14.99. And sometimes you get the total price up through an installment price.

That could be big bucks to the bottom line, but you have to test that, and everything else has to stay the same. That single variable testing. But the biggest lifts were always from new creative, from a new copywriter. And that’s what I mean by, you know, the creative is the least important until it’s not. And using this 49 3920 rule as a guide was probably one of the single most important guiding principles. 

Another one which is guiding everything that we do in marketing today is the concept of lifetime value. You know, you have to have you know, we did Dick Benson, who was our direct mail guru. He was like, he had this. He had the bogie concept. And all the bogie is, is how much you can afford to lose on your first order to make it back in some time in the future. 

That coincides with your cash flow, with how you can, what you can afford, and you have to really know your numbers, right? In fact, I have something on my wall right now which is from the war room at Boardroom, and I brought it to my office here at home because it says you have to believe your numbers, Dick Benson. So you need to believe, like what your numbers are telling you. And so, you know, some we had a one-year bogie. So basically if we would lose enough in the first year subscription. 

And we knew everything about our renewal rates, we knew everything about how much we cross-sell and upsell those new subscribers, that we knew that we’d make back the money in one year. Plus we had enough cash to support that so we could keep mailing the new people while we’re watching the renewals and watching the back end. And that was the guiding principle of our subscription and book business, so.

Rick Rappe: 25:23

That translates to a cost per acquisition or cost per sale number. Correct. That that you use as your.

Brian Kurtz: 25:30

Sale in the third sale.

Rick Rappe: 25:32

Well, yeah. Beyond that of course, then you got into profitability. But you’re saying you even went beyond the first sale. The value of the first sale. And you were willing to spend more than that to acquire a customer?

Brian Kurtz: 25:46

I think that’s the measure of a successful direct marketing business. It’s when you can when you because the thing is it’s so hard especially I mean postage just went up again. So in direct mail postage was always going up. We always had paper costs to try to make money on a $29 book or $39 book in direct mail in the first year. Gear was virtually impossible. We tried to break even on books, but newsletters had had renewals involved.

So once we had a track record of renewal numbers, we knew across the board what the average renewal rate was. So there I don’t want to get too in the weeds here, but it’s a basic concept. How much can we lose on the first subscription to make it back by the end of year two? And we were happy with that because what happens is the cash starts to build over time. Now, the big mistake a lot of marketers made at the time is that they just went crazy and they said, oh, we’ll make it back eventually. 

That’s not what I’m talking about. You have to be so disciplined with the numbers. But it’s an important premise because I think that enables you to be aggressive with your marketing within some parameters that are based on real numbers.

Rick Rappe: 27:02

Yeah, I’m not sure who said this, but I heard it not too long ago and someone said, whoever, whoever can.

Brian Kurtz: 27:09

Whoever spends the most.

Rick Rappe: 27:11

Who can afford to spend the most to acquire a new customer wins.

Brian Kurtz: 27:14

Wins. That’s Dan Kennedy. He’s known for that. And I think he’s not saying.

Rick Rappe: 27:19

I think it’s been picked up now by Gary Vaynerchuk. I think that’s who I hear.

Brian Kurtz: 27:23

A lot of people pick up on it.

Rick Rappe: 27:24

But yeah, yeah.

Brian Kurtz: 27:25

Yeah, but it’s true. In fact, Rich Schefren, a great marketer, said he has a great quote. He says, when you when you are, you know, because a lot of online marketers got into affiliate deals and they felt they didn’t  they weren’t paying for their media. Their media was free, basically. But it’s not because you’re going out on someone else’s dime or someone else’s list, and you have to give them half of the sale.

So that’s not free media, just you’re paying for it differently. And what Rich Schefren said is that when you can pay for media not not not not, you know, organic search and not, you know, you know, free media. But if you can pay for media and make back that money at an acceptable rate in a, in a, in a reasonable amount of time, that fits with your, your profit and loss and your return on investment ROI. Yeah. And you have a business. 

You have a business as opposed to a product or a promotion. A product is not a business and a promotion is not a business. And the thing is, a lot of people think they have a big winning. We have this promotion and it’s crushing it. It’s killing it. 

Well, what are you doing for an encore? What’s your second product and your third product and your third promotion, and your second promotion and your third promotion? You have to think ahead to look in terms of the lifetime, and that’s when you have a business and not a product. It happens on Shark Tank. You know, people have a product and the sharks will say, what are you going to do on the back end? 

What are you going to do for, you know, the renewal? Is it renewable when it’s renewable. That adds a whole that’s like the renewals on subscriptions. If there’s a renewability in it, then you got a built in way to add profit and revenue and profit on the, on the back end. And that’s that. 

That’s when you have a business as opposed to a product or a promotion.

Rick Rappe: 29:25

Well, in your you’re making me realize of course, you have the direct marketing mindset, which I think is that you were always thinking about creating marketing that was kind of evergreen and that you were able to repeat it with predictable results and scale it up.

Brian Kurtz: 29:43

And everything has to be measurable.

Rick Rappe: 29:45

And it wasn’t about like, let’s do let’s do something this week and then let’s change it next week and like, let’s just go with the flow. It was never about like I mean, it’s that that advertising mindset of like, it always has to be new and different versus the direct marketing mindset of like, no, this works, man. We’re going to repeat this until we beat it, you know?

Brian Kurtz: 30:05

Right. But you have to beat it. So Gary Bencivenga, the copywriter you mentioned. Yeah. He used to say, you know, when he wrote a package for us and he was one of the best copywriters in the world, and he would write a package for he used to get an 80% success rate on the packages he wrote for us.

Interestingly, as soon as he got a control, like he wrote a package that became the winner for us as soon as he became the control, he would try to beat it immediately. And so that’s the concept of the king is dead. Long live the king. Right. You have. 

You have a winner. And the time you want to beat the winner. As soon as. As soon as it becomes a winner. Yeah, because a lot of people will rest on their laurels, especially in the online world, because, you know, like with Clickbank and affiliates, you have a winning, you have a winning video sales letter or something, and it’s crushing it. 

I’m putting that in quotes. And there’s no reason to test against it. Because I’m just going to collect my money now forever. Doesn’t work that way. Doesn’t work that way.

Rick Rappe: 31:05

Well, it doesn’t work very long that way. It can work in the short term. We used to call that strategy taking a payday, when we were just going to ride the control and take a payday. But then you need to keep testing because market fatigue can happen and you’ll run into like, declining, declining performance.

Brian Kurtz: 31:24

Exactly. Exactly.

Rick Rappe: 31:27

Well, can you think of any really memorable tests that you did where you learned something that was surprising, that dramatically changed your results?

Brian Kurtz: 31:36

Oh, I’ve got so many. They’re all in my book, but I’m trying to. Okay, I should share with your audience. There was one that was just sort of interesting because it told us that, you know, one thing you don’t want to do is fall in love with a concept and keep banging your head against the wall until it works. But we did do that and it eventually worked.

So we had this idea. Marty had just. Marty had an instinct. Amazing gut feeling and instinct. And one of the instincts he had is that people love checklists. 

Like everybody has a checklist — that to-do list. So he decided our books were like our books were like greatest hits from our newsletters. They were like bullets and and and to do’s and like just actionable stuff. He said, let’s do a book in a narrow format, like a checklist, and we’ll call it the Book of Checklists. And he was so excited about this idea. 

And he, we produced it and it just totally bombed. And then we said, okay, let’s change the concept. It’s still checklist and it’s still the same kind of content, but we’ll call it the Great Book of Inside Knowledge. College like. Talk about it as, like, you know, just amazing stuff. 

And that did even worse. And then we took it to a, a world class copywriter that worked for us then has his name was Mel Martin, and Mel Martin was the king of fascinations. In fact, Bob Hacker’s partner in crime, Denny Hatch, did an article about Mel Martin in direct marketing press at the time, the master of fascinations. Fascinations were bullet points, and the bullet points would have a page number. And it was. 

It was a concept that was made famous by Ralph Ginsberg in the 1960s. And Jean Schwartz and a lot of the great copywriters. Mel Martin just perfected it. And Mel Martin looked at this book, this book of checklist. Now, the great book of inside knowledge. 

And he said, your problem is that you’re promoting it as that, as either knowledge or, or or checklists. And these are secrets. And he changed that. But he also rewrote the package he wrote, rewrote the best fascinations out of the book. You know, it’s like, you know, Jean Schwartz used to say, copy is not written. 

It’s assembled. And, you know, and he used to, like, take a book and pull stuff out of the book and then create fascinations from them. And that’s what Mel was a master at. And so he had all these amazing fascinations. The book was originally the book, a checklist, then the great Book of Knowledge. 

He revamped the creative. Remember, the creative is the least important until it’s not. Our lists were good, our offer was good. We didn’t have the right creative. And so he created a package that was the book that mailed 9 million pieces in one mailing. 

Overall, it mailed 25 million over its lifetime. And yes, as The Book of Secrets written by Mel Martin, it became our biggest blockbuster of one of the biggest blockbusters of all time. We had one later on because we borrowed again from the great book of Inside knowledge. We created a book called The Book of Inside Information, which was close to the secrets than knowledge, right? Knowledge was a bad word. 

Information and secrets were good words. But you still have to have the package to back it up. So it was a lot. There were a lot more details in this, in this evolution. But  it was a lesson in testing. 

It was a lesson in the creative is the least important until it’s not. It was a lesson in, you know, going with your gut is good to a point. But at some point you got the rubber hits the road and you test it and it sucks. Then your gut’s not so good anymore. And so, you know, and so it’s a humbling business being in direct marketing and direct response. 

But man, you can solve the problem by just putting your head down, figuring out what the element that you need to change is. And then I mean, again, there’s a lot more to this and I outlined it in even more detail in my book. But that was the concept, and that was one that, you know, after the great Book of Inside Knowledge, after the Book of Checklist, we could have just thrown it out and said, let’s move on to the next thing. But we had something that we thought was good at the beginning. It just needed a whole different positioning and needed a way to look.

Rick Rappe: 36:09

At a facelift and repositioning a little.

Brian Kurtz: 36:12

Bit and a great copywriter.

Rick Rappe: 36:13

Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah. Well, that’s interesting because it makes me think of something that I’ve, I’ve definitely focused on in my career, and that is making sure that we get lots of ideas flowing from everyone that’s involved with the program. Really that free, free flowing brainstorming of new ideas and new concepts. And then we try to. We try to not judge them, but put them into test and see if they can if they get traction and we try not to.

Yeah. Pre pre-judge things until they’re you know if it’s a wild and wacky idea. Hey let’s put it out there. I mean not every idea makes it to.

Brian Kurtz: 36:55

No, no. There are some really bad tests. Yeah, but bad ideas. Right.

Rick Rappe: 36:59

Yeah.

Brian Kurtz: 37:00

But I do think that, you know, it’s important. It’s a really important point, Rick. It’s something that, you know, you really need. You need to have the audiences who’s going to determine it. It’s, you know, people people move with their wallets, not with what you think.

I had something on my mastermind call today. Someone was saying that, you know, it’s not about what you want to give your audience. It’s what they want and what they need.

Rick Rappe: 37:28

Yeah.

Brian Kurtz: 37:29

You know, you start getting that if your ego takes over and you say, I know what’s good for them, you’re gonna you’re going to you’re going to lose eventually.

Rick Rappe: 37:36

Yeah. Right. Right. We’ve talked a lot. I’ve talked a lot with other people on this podcast about jobs to be done.

And, you know, you have to keep in mind what does the consumer need? What’s their problem? What are they trying to solve?

Brian Kurtz: 37:49

Transformation you can make for them, you know.

Rick Rappe: 37:52

And then if we stay focused on benefits, consumer benefits and serving the consumers need, then it’ll resonate with them. And you know.

Brian Kurtz: 38:04

Yeah, it’s not magic. It’s not a it’s not a it’s we’re not we’re not sorcerers. It’s basically you know, it’s there is there is some cooking up in, in a big stew. But you have to be really diligent and strategic about it.

Rick Rappe: 38:18

Well, I think some of the copywriters that you’re mentioning and some of those things that they used to do, the the fascinations and the old school direct marketing tricks, I mean, or I don’t know if I want to call them tricks, but tactics, tactics and, and things, little things that people figured out. I mean, I feel like some of those things are slowly being lost on the new generation.

Brian Kurtz: 38:41

The them though. You see you see it in like, video sales letters, people doing bullet points and and.

Rick Rappe: 38:47

Yeah.

Brian Kurtz: 38:48

Yeah, I mean it’s it is it is deluded I, I agree.

Rick Rappe: 38:52

Yeah. I just don’t think there’s as many people that are really studying what they know.

Brian Kurtz: 38:57

They have.

Rick Rappe: 38:58

To.

Brian Kurtz: 38:59

Study it. Right.

Rick Rappe: 39:00

Yeah. We can just say write it in the style of Dan Kennedy. Yeah, yeah.

Brian Kurtz: 39:04

That was like I learned a big lesson about that just recently because someone I, I, that someone said, you know, they said, oh they wrote a package and they said, write it in the style of Jean Schwartz. And it was like, it was so sloppy, like it had some Jean Schwartz elements in it. Yeah. Because now what’s happening now with AI, which is amazing, is that you can load up so much data into a bot, and now you can actually beat a control using something in the style of a writer, but to get the style of a writer is not just pulling it in from Google. You know, you really need to input so much more.

And that’s what I’m learning a lot about AI now is that, you know, you can there’s so much availability of inputting. And the more you input into it, the better the results are going to be. And then you can really write in the style of a writer.

Rick Rappe: 40:04

Yeah, we definitely use AI in our creative process, but we don’t use it like to completely write anything. We sort of are using it to assemble things. Yeah. So it’s the combination of human plus AI interaction and collaboration that is really powerful. I think right now, maybe in the future it’s going to become — we can leave the human out.

But for now, you definitely have to have human involvement. Yeah.

Brian Kurtz: 40:29

And I also think there’s just a lot, you know, like someone said, I’ve seen this quote floating around. It’s like AI is not going to replace your job, but someone who understands AI at the deepest level will. Understand it and apply it. And then add the human touch. You know, one of the copywriting coaches, Kevin Rogers, had a blog post, and it’s like, do you want to be the best or a bot?

You know. And it was. And he went into the fact that, you know, you can get a good draft out of ChatGPT, but to really still be, you know, to really create a unique piece of copy and a unique selling proposition requires the human touch still. Now, again, as you say it may it it it’s changing by the minute. And it’s getting more sophisticated by the minute, by the day, by the week. 

So it’s I don’t want to say we’re I don’t want to say we’re here and it’s always going to be this way. That’s dangerous. But I think staying one step ahead and knowing that the human touch is still very, very important is something that I’m going to stick by until I die anyway.

Rick Rappe: 41:42

Well, you described yourself as the bridge between old and new media. What direct marketing principles have surprised you by thriving in the digital channels?

Brian Kurtz: 41:57

I gotta tell you, almost every single one.

Rick Rappe: 42:00

Okay?

Brian Kurtz: 42:01

Almost every. I can’t think of one off the top of my head that hasn’t survived in some form. Yeah. Lifetime value. Whether it’s the 41, 39, 20 rule, whether it’s RFM, recency, frequency, monetary value, those are they’re not just principles.

They’re not just rules of thumb. It’s the way people behave. You know, Eugene Schwartz wrote Breakthrough Advertising the book in 1966. I have the exclusive rights to it with Jean’s wife. We’ve sold 15,000 copies at $125 each in 75 countries. 

Since I started Titans Marketing in 2015. And those principles that book, written in 1966, is 100% relevant to everything in marketing and copywriting today. Why? Because it’s based on human behavior. Human behavior hasn’t changed. 

In fact, in the afterword I wrote for the book in my edition for Titans Marketing, I think the first sentence is something like human behavior hasn’t changed since Gene wrote this book in 1966. Actually, I don’t think human behavior has changed since 1066. You know, humans are humans. Technology is here. Everything. 

Everything changes. But there are base human desires, whether it’s greed, whether it’s scarcity, whether it’s all the principles apply now. They apply in different directions. I’m not saying everything is the same. That’s not what I’m saying. 

But the way you phrase the question, every principle that is part of. In fact, I was looking at, you know, just to do one for direct mail to online when I we, we developed we were one of the pioneers in the magalog, which was a format in direct mail that was long form, like 24 to 32 page promotion that looked like a magazine or a tabloid magazine. That was a lot of sizzle, but a lot of steak. It would actually, you know, in the early days of direct mail, when I started, you know, in 1923, you know, everything was sizzle, right? It was all it was all like, you don’t give away anything. 

You just sizzle, sizzle, sizzle. They have to buy to get the steak. And then the magalog, especially if you’re selling a product that’s not known to the public like ours were. I mean, we had a newsletter that had a million subscribers at one point. Bottom line. 

Personal. It’s the most unknown million circulation publication that’s ever existed. And the reason why we got to a million subscribers is the way we promoted it. Because you need to. You’re promoting a product that the audience doesn’t know about. 

It’s not on the newsstands, it’s not on TV. It’s not in front of their face. So how do you sell that? You have to sell it with a lot of sizzle, but a lot of steak. Like we would have articles in there. 

You know, the five things to know if the car you just bought is a lemon and you give them three of them, and for the other two they have to get the premium that’s in the package. Very traditional techniques that were used in direct marketing. The thing the reason why I brought this up in terms of the digital world, when I started looking at. Like, I don’t know if your audience if you’re familiar with product launch formula, but it’s a way to sell digital product online. It was invented by a good friend of mine, Jeff Walker. 

Probably close to $1 billion worth of product have been sold online using product launch formula. Product launch formula. What it is is like you have a usually it’s a digital product, like a course, a digital course.

A digital coaching program or a mastermind or something like that, and you sell it with three videos and then a webinar, and then you open the cart on the offer, and then a week later you close the cart on the offer. And it’s like it’s a confined promotion time. But what do you do in those videos? It’s called pre-launch content. But what is it?

It’s content. It has value. It has like real stake. Like even if you don’t buy the original, the course or the product that it’s selling, You’ll get value from going through the launch of the three videos and the webinar. You’ll learn something. 

You’ll get something of value. And I made the case that I’m in a mastermind with Jeff Walker, all people who do these online launches. And I explain this concept that man, the online launch, the Magalog was like a precursor. And there was no online marketing when the Magalog was invented that it’s a precursor to the pre-launch content and product launch formula. And one of the other principles that it exposes is that in direct mail and and and and offline. 

Offline promotion before the internet, it was hard because you’re paying postage and printing to give away everything. You couldn’t give away everything because, you know, it was just more difficult. You couldn’t, you know, you need to save some stuff.

Rick Rappe: 47:26

Right?

Brian Kurtz: 47:27

You have to save a goddamn thing. Basically you can. I always say that, you know, people say I gotta save my. I got this is the content I want people to pay for, and this is the free content. And I got to make sure I don’t charge them for the stuff that I can charge them for later.

How about this? How about turn it on? It’s on. It’s on its head and say give away everything for free up front. Because it’s what? 

What? How do you know what your best content is? How do you know what the best value is? The audience is going to tell you. And so if you have the confidence that what you’re teaching and what you’re selling, if you have, you give away some of the best content in the free videos using Product Launch Formula as an example. 

Give away. You give away the free stuff as much as you want at no charge. The best stuff at no charge, because you’re going to have more best stuff that you’re going to create later. But you know, the thing is like holding back on your best stuff. That’s an old, but it’s still based on an old concept in direct mail that said, you have to hold back because otherwise if you give it to them, then they’re not going to buy it, right? 

Online, it’s not the case because if you can keep creating new content that’s just as good. It’s all digital. It’s all in the ether, right? It’s not like in print. I just think that’s a sophisticated concept of how an old concept became a new concept. 

But they’re so related now they’re different. Obviously a magalog is very different from a product launch, a digital product launch. But I’m trying to draw what the similarities are and how something was derived from something else. You know, I have something in my book, overdeliver, where I say, I have a line in there, I say I’ve never invented anything, and I’m proud of it because I don’t need to invent anything. I need to innovate on a regular basis. 

And I said one of the biggest, the most satisfaction I get in my work today is if I explain something, if I explain even on this, on this podcast, if one of your listeners got something out of the 41, 39, 20 rule that they hadn’t heard before, I didn’t invent it. Well, I did. It was a variation of the 40, 40, 20 rule. So I could say I invented the 41, 39, 20. I didn’t invent it. 

I innovated on it. And if I become the messenger for that, for someone in your audience, that’s a satisfying to me as anything. But the problem is in marketing today, everybody wants to invent the new whiz bang thing. And the pressure to do that, it gets in the way of really delivering value all the time. And so it was a lesson. 

It’s a lesson for your audience and for it was a lesson for me that you don’t have to author everything. I always give credit. I hope you’ve seen in a lot of the stuff I’ve talked about today. I give credit where credit’s due. I’m not looking to take credit for anything. 

I’m not looking to say I invented anything. However, you know, if I explain, I remember in my book I have a whole chapter on RFM recency, frequency, monetary value, and list building. And it was not just about direct mail. And I had a couple of people come to me afterwards. He goes, they said, you know, I’ve heard of RFM. 

I knew about RFM. The way you explained it, Brian was got me to understand it. And I said, clearly, I said, you made my day by saying that because that was my purpose to have a few more people understand these core principles, eternal truths, fundamentals of direct response marketing, and how consumers and businesses behave in the marketplace. If I can do that, my work is done here.

Rick Rappe: 51:23

That’s a part of the book Overdeliver.

Brian Kurtz: 51:27

Oh, yeah. It’s a chapter in Overdeliver.

Rick Rappe: 51:30

Perfect. I’m going to check that out. No it’s.

Brian Kurtz: 51:34

No, it’s just and it’s not something that hasn’t been written about before, but I put my own case histories on it. I mean, that’s what everybody does, right? You know, nothing’s new under the sun. And yet it’s new coming from a new messenger.

Rick Rappe: 51:50

Yeah. I mean, some of the most successful things I’ve ever done, beating control packages in a big way were actually looking at something that else that was successful and saying, look at that worked over there. It should work over here as well. Let’s try that. And just making the link up between like, oh, you can do that over here.

But you know, you’ll have to change it and tweak it this way.

Brian Kurtz: 52:14

Either it’s you know.

Rick Rappe: 52:15

Yeah, you have to make it your own. But obviously there’s not a lot of new ideas out there.

Brian Kurtz: 52:20

I remember.

Rick Rappe: 52:21

Danny.

Brian Kurtz: 52:21

Hatch used to say in who’s making what he used to say. You know, he got it from Dorothy Kerr, who was the circulation director at US News and World Report. I’m going back into the 80s now. And he had a phrase he said steal smart.

Rick Rappe: 52:36

Yeah.

Brian Kurtz: 52:37

That was Denny Hatch. And I took it to another level. I said stealing is a felony. Stealing smart is an art.

Rick Rappe: 52:45

Yeah. Well, Danny started. Who’s nailing what? Right. Which is now.

Brian Kurtz: 52:49

That’s correct.

Rick Rappe: 52:49

That’s evolved and changed.

Brian Kurtz: 52:50

An archive of all the direct mail packages.

Rick Rappe: 52:53

Yeah.

Brian Kurtz: 52:53

Then it got expanded eventually to email as well.

Rick Rappe: 52:57

Yeah. Right, right.

Brian Kurtz: 52:58

Basically the ultimate swipe file.

Rick Rappe: 53:01

Exactly. There’s a term that younger marketers probably don’t ever hear, but that’s what.

Brian Kurtz: 53:06

Yeah. The ones who study the greats.

Rick Rappe: 53:11

Yeah.

Brian Kurtz: 53:12

They get they know what a swipe file is. But yeah, you’re right. It’s a lost art.

Rick Rappe: 53:16

Yeah. You said that you never met a medium you didn’t like. What was your first moment when you were working with an unusual medium, like ATM receipts or yogurt lids?

Brian Kurtz: 53:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when I say I never met a medium, I think, like, if I saw something that I thought could create a direct response like response result, revenue, profit, I would test it. Sure. And the examples I give of, you know. Two things I really tested the back of ATM receipts from the bank were available at one point, and the back of yogurt lids, and those were only good ideas at the time.

Neither one. They were both disasters. But you know what? If you test. That’s my other thing here from the war room. 

At Boardroom, I took the thing. You have to believe your numbers from Dick Benson. The other thing that’s up here in my office is from Gordon Grossman. And its first, find out if you have a business. And what that one means to me is that what is the minimum you need to do to get a statistically significant result that tells you that gives you a go no go decision. 

And that’s basically, you know what direct response marketing and testing is all about. Now you know what happens when I got into launches and online marketing, what I found is that when I heard other people who were doing testing online, they would test like 17 different things in the first test of the product. That’s crazy. You know, find out if you have a business first. What are the things that you need to test, because you can always test the other 16 things later. 

But what do you need to test to say this? Is this viable? Is this. And that’s just basic business.

Rick Rappe: 55:13

But yeah.

Brian Kurtz: 55:14

In direct response, it’s even more critical and even more obvious because you’re going for a measurable response, you know, like, why wouldn’t you want to find out what the minimum you need to do as opposed to spend all that money on all that extra testing and everything else and developing extra videos or developing extra promotion or whatever, until you know that you’ve got something. Now, of course, you need to figure out a starting point. You need to figure out what your initial premise is going to be, but that’s where you have to go with your gut. Yeah, leave it forever, right? You’re going to you’re going to do, you know, so there’s a lot there’s a lot of gut, but there’s also a lot of common sense and a lot of not throwing good money after bad.

Rick Rappe: 56:01

We’ve seen a lot of I’ve seen a lot of clients or companies that where we’ve studied their direct mail program, where they tried direct mail or direct response marketing in kind of a limited way where they weren’t really testing enough.

Brian Kurtz: 56:17

And then they said, they said it doesn’t work right.

Rick Rappe: 56:18

And they say it doesn’t work. And that’s that’s the risk of not testing enough. I mean, we in it’s it’s great when we have a large client with large budgets because then we can test lots of things all at the same time and really figure out what the perfect optimization is. Quickly, quickly. But, you know, sometimes that’s not possible if clients are smaller and they have limited budgets.

Brian Kurtz: 56:41

Your thing about don’t test whispers, you know.

Rick Rappe: 56:44

Yeah. Well, we definitely don’t want to start testing whispers. I think on a mature program down the road you can definitely test and really optimize it.

Brian Kurtz: 56:54

Yes, absolutely.

Rick Rappe: 56:55

But. In Titans the mastermind group that you’re running, what are some of the unexpected breakthroughs that happened in developing that kind of a group.

Brian Kurtz: 57:11

Oh, it’s been amazing. It’s been going on. I had a live mastermind for eight years and that was with 30 companies, CEOs and founders. It was 20 or $25,000 to join. And from there I wanted to reach a bigger audience of less experienced marketers.

These were really seasoned direct response marketers. And so when I went down to like 20,000 to 2,000 a year, which is what people pay for. Titans accelerator I got I had 200, I have 250 members right now. And what we do is it’s I think the most when we do hot seats with members. That’s where all the stuff bubbles up like people, and they have to fill out a form to do a hot seat. 

And it’s either a problem or an opportunity in their business. And they have to like, answer certain questions. I have it structured, and I got to tell you, when you have, we get anywhere from, you know, 40 to 70 people on a call. And when you have an orderly, it’s sort of like a brainstorming on someone’s business in a way.

Rick Rappe: 58:31

Sure.

Brian Kurtz: 58:32

You have that going on with not some people are very seasoned in the group, a lot of experience. Some people don’t have a lot of experience, but they have really good instincts. When they hear someone, everybody has an opinion on someone else’s business, right? But the hot seats are just so and the results have been amazing. I mean, we’ve had people.

Rick Rappe: 58:52

That gives members the direct sort of brainstorming of the group and feedback from the rest of the group on their experiences and what they’ve learned.

Brian Kurtz: 59:03

Yes, exactly. That’s exactly what it is.

Rick Rappe: 59:05

And that’s amazing.

Brian Kurtz: 59:06

Yeah. And it’s a hot I mean, the hot seat has been around for a while. Gary Halbert, the copywriter in the 70s and 80s. He kind of perfected it at it back then. But it’s been morphed and it’s been in different forms now.

But I do a pretty good hot seat format. I took it from a lot of different masterminds that I’ve been in, and I made it my own again, didn’t invent it, haven’t invented anything, but I innovated for what I like to do with my group. And, you know, in 15 minutes of rapid fire ideas from season and it’s like, it’s like having a, like a de facto board of advisors. And the thing is, one of the rules, when you’re on a hot seat and people are giving you ideas, is that you don’t want to like, as they say, what they what the idea is you don’t want to say, oh, we tried that. We did that. 

It didn’t work. You got to like, just shut up, take it in. And what I say to them is like, I say, if someone comes up with an idea that you don’t like, you have the rest of your life to reject it. You don’t have to reject it immediately.

Rick Rappe: 1:00:21

Yeah. And you don’t have to change their mind about their idea either.

Brian Kurtz: 1:00:25

Yeah. 15 minutes with these, with these rock stars of marketing and copywriting, like, take it in because, you know, and you may take it in and your initial reaction is it’s a bad idea. Yeah, but it may be the other idea, someone’s going to build on it. And all of a sudden, a variation of that bad idea of what you thought was a bad idea becomes a good idea. And we’ve had one. One woman sent me an email today.

She was on a hot seat like 3 or 4 weeks ago, and she basically sent me an email with like 12 bullets of all of the people that volunteered in the group to talk to her about her idea. And each and she followed up with every one of them. And each one had a different angle, a specific thing that she could do. I mean, she’s rocking it now. She’s got a whole new business model, and she didn’t take them all. 

She didn’t, you know, but the ones she took, and now she’s building her business and she’s rocking it. And that’s not the exception. That’s the rule.

Rick Rappe: 1:01:28

Well, and that’s a $2,000 a year commitment.

Brian Kurtz: 1:01:32

Dollars a year. We do three, 2 to 3 live calls a month. This is the best value in masterminds in the history of masterminds. Yeah.

Rick Rappe: 1:01:41

Where do I sign up? This sounds like my $2,000 value is right there.

Brian Kurtz: 1:01:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you’re welcome. You’re welcome to come. I’ll even give you a discount for putting me on your podcast.

Rick Rappe: 1:01:52

Hey, there you go.

Brian Kurtz: 1:01:53

I mean, the initial. Yeah. So it’s an amazing group. It’s like a family. It’s like the Titans Accelerator family.

And we also have a Facebook group, a private Facebook group where people can always put in a question and the members will, will, will, will ask it during the we have we have the best guest speakers we have. I said we had a call today and we had an AI guy talking about bots where you input all the data, and we had another guy who was actually he’s like one of the top roofing, like a service business and how he’s using direct response principles in his roofing business. And it was applicable to everybody in the group. Because, again, going back to what principles have you forgotten and aren’t good anymore? They’re all good.

Rick Rappe: 1:02:42

Right?

Brian Kurtz: 1:02:43

The idea of like, you know, the, the, the, the philosophies that this guy is using to get roofing business can work for subscriptions, it can work for memberships. It can work for fundraising. It’s like I’m just blown away by the variety of what we do in the group and how amazing. Everybody is so generous with their experience and what and that people will tell you what, where they screwed up, you know, and the mistakes they made, which is even more valuable. Yeah, it’s a wonderful group.

Really is.

Rick Rappe: 1:03:19

It sounds great. I’m going to definitely check it out for myself.

Brian Kurtz: 1:03:23

And oh, I’d love to have you in the group. In fact, you have to make a we’re going to we’re going to make an agreement though if you join you will need to do not. If you want to do a hot seat, you can do a hot seat, but you’re going to do a Titan spotlight. Now, a Titan spotlight is when people in the group present in their genius. So you have to promise me if you join, you will eventually do a Titan spotlight on RPM and what you’re doing for your clients in direct mail.

And we have some people in the group who are direct mail savants. I got a guy named David Foley who’s from Canada. He’s been doing direct mail his entire life. He actually has a newsletter. It’s called Direct Mail Insiders.

Rick Rappe: 1:04:05

Okay.

Brian Kurtz: 1:04:06

Direct mail is not dead, as we both know. You know, the rumors of direct mail’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

Rick Rappe: 1:04:12

Well, I’ll reach out to him and see if I can get him to be a guest on this podcast. So thank you for that.

Brian Kurtz: 1:04:17

He’ll probably want to interview you for his newsletter.

Rick Rappe: 1:04:20

There you go. Well, it is a small world of us old school direct marketing people. So we gotta stay. We gotta stick together, I think.

Brian Kurtz: 1:04:29

Together, but keep teaching like, keep.

Rick Rappe: 1:04:31

Yeah.

Brian Kurtz: 1:04:31

I’m gonna say keep preaching, Rick. You gotta keep preaching.

Rick Rappe: 1:04:35

I get on my soapbox every chance I get, you know? Excellent. I gotta get, but thank you so much. This has been wonderful to get to know you, and it’s been a real pleasure. I feel like I could talk to you for hours and hours, but I think it’s probably time that we wrap it up.

So one final question for you today is if people are interested in talking with you or learning more about your company, your books, your newsletter, your mastermind group, how should they reach out to you? How should they get in touch?

Brian Kurtz: 1:05:03

So the easiest way is. To, you know, go to my site. Brian dot net b-r-i-a-n-k-u-r-t-z dot net. There’s a lot of free content there. There’s a sign up right away where the sign up is not to sell you anything. It’s basically you down you.

It’s to download an interview that I did with Perry Marshall, who’s a wonderful marketing guy who I’m good friends with, and he did an interview with me on like the three biggest successes of my career, which are all in my book also. But it’s one of them is about my the infomercial program I developed at Boardroom. The other is how I developed a list selection process at Boardroom, and the third is. Anything with the third was oh, how we created a book division at Boardroom from other people’s content. A $45 million book division. 

So it’s a neat interview. That’s what you get. And then there’s a lot of free content on the site. You’ll automatically be signed up for my blog, which I send out every Sunday morning, every week, like clockwork at 6 a.m. eastern time. And I don’t sell in it. 

I don’t do affiliate deals in it. I, I pride myself on not. Some people say I’m the director of sales prevention, but I do, I do I do offer educational products like in the PS I’ll, I’ll talk about my mastermind and the PS, I’ll talk about like this woman who I knew from Jeff Walker’s mastermind, the mastermind. She just wrote a new book, and there was and she’s a wonderful woman on leadership, and she just wrote a new book, and there was an offer on Amazon to get her book for free in a short amount of time. So I had an offer in the WPS for people to get that book for free. 

That’s the kind of stuff I sell from the outside. I never take an affiliate commission. So that’s my basic, you know, free business. If anybody would want my book for, for a $20 book, what you get on the site, don’t go right to Amazon. Go to overdeliverbook.com, overdeliverbook.com. 

And on that site is 1311 bonuses that are worth I think they’re worth millions. A lot of them are priceless. There’s like two PDFs of two classic books on direct mail, which is our applicable today that you can get the full PDF. One is by Dick Benson, one by Gordon Grossman. There’s 19 keynotes that Jay Abraham has given. 

There’s a swipe file from Dan Kennedy. There’s some stuff from Perry Marshall. Just an amazing array of bonuses just for buying my book, which is like 20 bucks. Actually, it’s $8 on Kindle. And so you go to that site, you then hit a link to go to wherever you want to buy the book, it’s on the site. 

Then you come back to the site, put your order number in, and you get all the bonuses for free at Overdrive.com. And you know I’m not. If you want if you’re interested in my mastermind it’s briankurtz.net/xl. And that has the. But you know I’m not. I’m not trying to sell a $2,000 mastermind on this podcast.

That’s not my game. I would just like to get to know your audience.

Rick Rappe: 1:08:41

Sounds like it’s popular enough already, so I maybe.

Brian Kurtz: 1:08:44

Yeah, but, I mean, I just want your audience to, like, be my audience, you know? You know, get them into my online family. So they read my blog. I’m patient. If they want to work with me, they can.

If they don’t want to work with me, they don’t have to. That’s my game at this point. And the easiest way is BrianKurtz.net.

Rick Rappe: 1:09:06

Well, thank you so much for your time today, Brian. It’s been a real pleasure and I hope to talk to you again soon.

Brian Kurtz: 1:09:12

I hope so, Rick. This was a lot of fun.

Outro: 1:09:15

That’s a wrap for this episode of Response Drivers. Thanks for tuning in. If you found today’s insights valuable, make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left a review. Got a question or a topic you’d like us to cover?

Just drop us a message at responsedrivers@rpmdm.com. Until next time, keep driving response and making your marketing work smarter.