Using DRTV To Build Billion-Dollar Brands With Rick Cesari

Intro: 00:02

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

Hello, I’m Rick Rappe, host of the Response Drivers podcast. Here we dive deep with marketing executives, experts and innovators to uncover 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. This episode is brought to you by RPM Direct Marketing. RPM helps companies develop hard hitting, direct mail creative and utilize advanced testing and targeting methodologies so you can fully optimize your marketing performance to drive more sales and exceed growth expectations.

With a proven track record, RPM delivers smarter, more profitable direct mail solutions so you can turn your direct mail programs into a predictable, efficient sales channel. Visit rpmdm.com to learn more. Well, I’m really looking forward to learning from my guests today, but first, I want to give a quick thank you to Dr. Jeremy Weisz of Rise25, who introduced me to this gentleman. If you’re interested in podcasting for business, Jeremy and his partner, John Corcoran are the experts you need. Rise25.Com for more info. Rick is a high level direct to consumer B2C marketing strategist and consultant. He has also used direct response strategies plus video marketing to help build many iconic brands products like the Juiceman Sonicare, The George Foreman Grill, Oxiclean, their Sonic Rug Doctor, the GoPro Dormeo, Thera Dome Epsomite, and many others. His strategies have helped grow for companies from startups to over $1 billion in sales. These case studies are outlined in his book Building Billion Dollar Brands, and his latest book, The Wellness Business Blueprint, is for anyone in the wellness business that wants to build their business or grow their practice. 

Thank you so much for joining me today, Rick.

Rick Cesari: 02:18

Hey, Rick. Thank you. Thank you for the nice introduction. I’m really excited to be here. I love talking to people that are in the direct response business.

Rick Rappe: 02:27

Well, thanks for coming up. I have some questions for you. Based on your background, I thought it was very interesting as I was doing some research on how you got your start, that you, you started out studying pre-med and you transitioned to becoming a marketing strategist. Can you tell me a little bit more about how that happened?

Rick Cesari: 02:48

You did do your research. A lot of people don’t know that I was actually living. My family was living in Daytona Beach, Florida, and my thought process was I was going to either be a marine biologist or a dentist because my best friend in high school wanted to be a dentist. So that’s why I was taking biology, and I actually have a degree in biology. But after graduating from college, I didn’t feel like going on to graduate school, which I would have had to do with either one of those things.

And so I went back down to Florida. My college was in Pennsylvania. I went back down to Florida, and much to my mother’s horror, I became a bartender and a lifeguard. And so she thought, oh my God, he just wasted his college education. And I did that for a year. 

But it really turned out interesting because it helped me in my career, because part of my lifeguarding duties, I had to sell suntan lotion, and I actually learned how to sell to people one on one and overcome objections. And, I talk about this in some of my books where I learned about how to increase an average order value instead of selling them one bottle of suntan lotion, you’d sell them a whole suntan lotion system. So instead of an $8 sale, it would grow to like an $80 sale. And really techniques that you would use sales wise or, you know, still being used today in digital marketing and, and everything. So one thing is I definitely was able to learn from that experience, but it was kind of a, you know, fun job, but a dead end job. 

And so I started reading a lot of books about how people made money. And at the time, a lot of people became millionaires by investing in real estate. So I decided I was going to take a real estate seminar, and there was one down in Florida that was teaching how to buy distressed property or foreclosed property. I took the seminar, went out, did exactly what they said, bought a house, turned around and sold it in two weeks and made $12,000. And back then this is like 1980, 86. 

That was just out of college from someone that was a bartender in life. It was like $1 million to me. And so I said, wow, I’m going to do this. And I and I started doing it a little bit more. But I also, for whatever reason, the guy that taught the seminar, I, I called up a business magazine in Florida called Florida Trend and told them about this story of this guy. 

And they wrote a magazine story in a, in a popular business magazine about him, and it helped his seminar business. So he called me up and asked me if I wanted to help him with marketing. And that’s how my marketing career got started. I started promoting real estate seminars.

Rick Rappe: 05:36

Wow, that’s super interesting. Yeah, that’s so crazy because in the late 80s, I also got a job and I was doing door to door sales in college, and I think that was a great training ground for direct marketing. It was wonderful because you just get an attempt after an attempt to, you know, figure out how do I connect and sell this product with people? So I learned a lot by sticking my foot in people’s door and giving my spiel.

Rick Cesari: 06:03

Learn to say well, overcome objections, solve problems, problem solving, what to say to get the people interested. I mean, there’s a lot of things that definitely correlate to the work we do now.

Rick Rappe: 06:17

Yeah.

Rick Cesari: 06:18

So what’s really interesting is just taking it a step further. The way we were promoting the real estate seminars, which I’m telling this because it impacts what I do today. We started placing newspaper ads to get people to come to these free seminars, where then we would do a, you know, a sales pitch to for them to sign up for a paid course. And basically the newspaper ads, I’m going to make up the number, but you’d spend $1,000 on an ad, and if you could get 100 people to show up, we used to say, well, well, that cost us $10 a head to get people in the room, and then you would have to do a certain, you know, closing percentage. And it’s all the same.

Basically arithmetic and formulas that you use in digital marketing, you probably use them in direct mail, similar formulas, but absolutely.

Rick Rappe: 07:09

Yeah.

Rick Cesari: 07:09

Direct sales platform. Right. Yeah.

Rick Rappe: 07:14

Cost per sale. That’s how I’d be able to figure out your cost per sale.

Rick Cesari: 07:18

Yeah, absolutely. And that’s how I cut my teeth on direct response marketing was promoting these real estate seminars all over the country using newspaper ads and amazing. Yeah, this was the late 80s and the most successful real estate seminars. There was one in the country called Nothing Down by a guy named Robert Allen, and he was one of the first ones that started to use TV to promote the real estate seminars. And so TV ended up being like ten times more effective than running a newspaper ad.

And so we transitioned what we were doing into TV. And that’s how I learned to make my very first direct response ads or infomercials back in the day, was through that.

Rick Rappe: 08:05

Yeah, I bet I watched a hundred or thousands, probably of your TV ads back then in the day. I remember those, I remember.

Rick Cesari: 08:13

Yeah, they were running all the time.

Rick Rappe: 08:15

They were running it. Yeah. For sure. Well, the next thing that I found on your, on your biography was that you co-founded Trillium Health, and I think that was perhaps with your brother. Does that sound right?

Rick Cesari: 08:28

Yeah. So actually I was yeah, I was in that was true. I was into health because my dad passed away. We had eight kids growing up in our family. My dad passed away when he was 46.

I was only 12 years old, and he died of a heart attack. And it was mostly from lifestyle, you know, ate a lot of red meat, smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. High stress, all those things. So I was always very aware of health. And one of the things I did was drink a lot of freshly made juices, and I basically would be making it all the time. 

And I forget the juicer at the time was something called a Norwalk. It weighed like 100 pounds and very expensive, hard to use. And I said, boy, there’s got to be an easier way to do this. And I was out there again. I went to another seminar. 

I read about it in the newspaper. There was this guy doing a lecture called called Jay Kordich The Juice Man, and I couldn’t make it to the seminar, but it turned out he was doing a home show in Seattle, Washington, and I went down to the home show that weekend, and and it wasn’t very crowded, but one booth had like 100 people around it. It was like the busiest booth there. And there was Jay Kordich, who was known as the Juiceman at the time, Pitching as juicers. And I said, wow, I’m going to have to do something on TV with this guy because he’s mesmerizing. 

And so you mentioned Trillium Health Products. That company actually started out. We were talking about branding earlier. That company started out as JM marketing Juiceman marketing, and then Trillium Health Products as a better brand. But anyway, we that company just had amazing growth. 

You know, the marketing was one of the reasons, you know, television marketing back in the late 80s, early 90s, it was like, you know, Facebook and Meta was when they first came out, it just you got fantastic returns on the dollar you spent. Anyway, the company grew from 0 to 75 million in about three and a half years, and we ended up selling it in 1993. But we created the Juiceman juicer and the Breadman bread machine. And the company that bought us Sultan Housewares was a housewares company in Chicago and they bought those two brands. Was the main value there.

Rick Rappe: 10:54

Wow. Wow. Well, as I was mentioning a little bit before we started recording today, I have an original Juiceman juicer in my cupboard from 1989. I think my mom had it before I had it and she gifted it to me. And so it’s a hand-me-down, but we still use it and we love it.

So the only thing I, I think we need to figure out how to get spare parts for it because it might have a couple of cracks, but it still is heavily in use, I promise.

Rick Cesari: 11:24

You have to. You’ll have to bring that when we get together for lunch, because that’s like a collector’s item that one of those in a long time. Yeah.

Rick Rappe: 11:33

Okay. All right. Well, it’s for sale for a small fortune. If you want to buy it.

Rick Cesari: 11:38

I’ll take you up on that.

Rick Rappe: 11:40

Now, it’s a collector’s item. It’s worth its value. Is going way back up. Maybe. Well, you’ve built other iconic brands besides the Juiceman and The Bread Man.

You’ve built brands like Sonicare and GoPro. What are some of the key elements that contribute to transforming a startup into $1 billion brand? I mean, that’s kind of a big question, but maybe you can get into some of the basics for us.

Rick Cesari: 12:08

Yeah, I’m going to continue with the story. So.

Rick Rappe: 12:11

Oh, sorry.

Rick Cesari: 12:12

Yeah. No, no. But it’ll answer your question too.

Rick Rappe: 12:15

Okay.

Rick Cesari: 12:16

So Salt and Housewares purchased our company, Trillium Health Products, and then my former partner at Trillium Health Products called me and said, hey, there’s this small company over in Bellevue. They need some help marketing. Would you mind speaking with them? And I went over and met with them, and it turned out it was Optiva Corporation, and that is the makers of the sonic toothbrush. And they had this new newfangled invention that really, really worked well.

But they didn’t know how to market it. They couldn’t get it out in the marketplace because normal toothbrushes at the time cost, you know, $2 for a toothbrush. And I think there was an electric one out there that cost like $25. And here was a $150 toothbrush. And the reason it was expensive was because it had sonic technology, but people didn’t understand what that was. 

So why would I spend $150 so they couldn’t do any retail distribution? Well, it turns out a television 30 minute television infomercial was the perfect vehicle for them. And because we were used that time to educate the consumer. So when you talk about one of the ways where we take products that are kind of unknown, as long as they’re good products, we spend a lot of time through our advertising, educating the consumer about the benefits to them and the problems that those products will solve or problem that the product will solve. Well, with the Sonicare toothbrush, basically, you know, anyone suffering from periodontal disease or wanting whiter, this was a better product to do it. 

We just had to explain to people why. And through our advertising we were able to do that. And again, that was another company that had phenomenal growth. I think Oprah — it was one of Oprah’s favorite products. She talked about it. 

And then they were number one on the Inc. list of five, you know, fastest growing 500 fastest growing companies. And yeah. And so basically what I try to do to go back and answer the question you asked, what I try to do in my advertising is you’ve always you heard the terms features, tale and benefits sell. And so I always a lot of people, when they try to market products, they talk about features. Oh, look at the size of the motor and look at this. 

And I always take that and turn around and do the and do the benefits. And a really good example of that is going back to the juicer, where the competition to our Juiceman juice machine at the time was Krupps and Braun’s two big German engineering companies, big budgets. But they were selling it as a kitchen appliance and they said, look how sharp our blades are. You know, German stainless steel, German motor, very powerful. And we took our juice machine and said, well, if you drink this juice, you can lower your cholesterol and you drink this juice and it’ll help relieve arthritis pain. 

So we were really communicating the benefit health product.

Rick Rappe: 15:34

Really.

Rick Cesari: 15:35

Yeah. Exactly. And so people would buy the juice machine. Same thing with the Sonicare toothbrush. You know, you can reverse gum disease.

Why? Why go to the dentist and have a real expensive dental bill? And. And bad teeth when the Sonicare can fix that problem for you. And we explained how the technology would do that. 

You know, and so that’s something kind of a theme I’ve done throughout my career with many of these different products, is really focusing on what problem the product solved and what was the benefit to the end consumer, and then trying to create that message in the advertising that we did.

Rick Rappe: 16:17

Yeah, that’s so interesting. I mean, we were comparing and contrasting sometimes, our direct mail programs against digital programs and or digital marketing these days. And so much of digital marketing seems to be just very short, bite sized little, you know, almost billboards or headlines. And our, you know, one of the things we love about direct mail is that we can go longer form and tell a story and talk to someone one on one, and have built in emotions and and, but also rational justifications and things like that. So it’s longer form marketing is great, but it seems like it’s kind of a lost art.

Rick Cesari: 17:00

Yeah. And you know, the longer — and you’ve experienced this with your direct mail, the longer at least what I found in my, the longer you have to talk with somebody the the better conversion return on investment. You can get with that information. And so people always ask me like we still do TV for some clients, you mentioned a few at the end that aren’t national brands yet, like Dormeo and Ipsanet. Those are, those are.

I threw those in there because they’re kind of new clients that you’ll hear about soon. And yeah, and that we’re still doing TV. I’ll, you know, talk about where TV fits in the marketing program for people. It used to be you could lead with that. Now it’s more of a phase two type of thing. 

But anyway. Yeah. And TV, it’s like you can have do a 30-second ad, a one minute ad, a two minute ad, a five minute ad, or a 30 minute ad. And the longer you have to tell the story, the better the conversion rates usually are. But sometimes you have to adapt the product, the advertising to the platform you’re on so your hands are tied a little bit.

Rick Rappe: 18:14

Yeah, I feel like there’s been a few products in my long career that needed a 30 minute ad to explain to people and educate people on what the benefit was and what the, you know, but they never wanted to, you know, do that. And so it became hard to sell on a short form because people just didn’t get it right off the bat, you know.

Rick Cesari: 18:35

Yeah. And the thing is people say, well, it has to be really quick and people don’t have the attention span. I think you have to have a little bit of a hook to catch their attention, but if it’s a person that has a problem that your product is going to solve, that one person, maybe it’s one person out of ten, one person out of 100. They’re going to stay and learn as much as they can. If, if, if it’s interesting and it’s solving their problem.

And so while longer format 100% isn’t going to appeal to everybody, no product is going to appeal to everybody. But for the people that are interested in you’re solving their problem. They’ll stay and read the longer copy or watch the longer video to get the answer to their problems.

Rick Rappe: 19:27

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And boy, I sure just in my mind I remember all those pitchmen from the home shows. Oh yeah. I used to go to.

Rick Cesari: 19:38

The Develop.

Rick Rappe: 19:38

Fair, Puyallup Fair. Those types of people, they could suck you in and make you watch a 30 minute presentation about pots and pans and you’re like, well, why am I standing here? I have no idea, but I want to buy this. It’s insane. But.

Let’s see. Can you share another story from your career? I’m interested in your experience with George Foreman and the George Foreman Grill. I mean, I know that was one of the early, early products that you worked on and what an iconic brand that became. Yeah.

Rick Cesari: 20:13

Which it’s April 14th, 2025, I think George passed away a little over two weeks ago. I don’t know if you had heard that.

Rick Rappe: 20:22

Anyway, yeah. Rest in peace, George.

Rick Cesari: 20:25

Sad, sad thing. I did that whole week. I posted some really interesting stories of working with him over the years on LinkedIn, and they got a lot of, a lot of good response. But anyway, we that company that bought our Trillium Health products, salt and housewares, they came to me. Part of the reason they bought our company was not only to buy the brand juice Juiceman and Bread Man, but also they wanted to learn how to do the marketing that we were doing the television marketing, because they saw the effect that the television had on retail sales.

So they came to me and said, we have two products. One was a homemade bagel maker, and this other one was this this grill, this slanted grill. And basically we made show. We made commercials for both of them. But the bagel maker didn’t work. 

But the slanted grill turned out to be the George Foreman Grill. And just a quick story about that that originally was called the Fajita Express. And the reason that it was slanted was that the idea was you’d cook ground meat on it, and then you’d put your at the edge of the table, and you’d scrape the meat off the grill into your taco shell. Needless to say, that product didn’t sell. So this is back in 1995, I think. 

And George had just won the heavyweight championship for the second time. He was the oldest person ever to do that, 46 years old. And he was looking his agent was they were looking for products to market. And somehow there was a connection between the agent and the head of Salton. And he remembered about this grill they had. 

And back in the at this time, George was kind of pretty heavy, and he was famous for eating hamburgers and things. So they said, well, why don’t we try to George up with this grill? And yeah, I know we were talking before the podcast started. We shot his very first infomercial in 1996 at a production studio in Seattle, Washington, and George flew up here. He had one person with him at. 

Nicest guy in the world, really quiet, you know, in his last ten years before doing this infomercial, every Friday, he would teach a sermon in. He was a preacher down in Houston and a family man. And aside from being a boxer. So he’s had really good value, really nice, nice person. And he came up onto the set and we had him all fixed up in a boxing robe and boxing gloves, and we wanted to try to leverage his fame from, from boxing. 

And we even reached out to HBO and bought like 15 seconds of footage from them, of him knocking out Michael Moore, who he won the heavyweight championship. So we put together this really nice infomercial with the boxing footage in the front, and it was a total disaster. No sales. And now we go back and we’re thinking like, what happened? And it turns out a little bit later, he was at a gourmet show in San Francisco, and the response was amazing. 

And everybody, it was primarily like 85, 90% women would come up and they’d want to see about the grill. So it turns out, if you think about it, most women don’t like boxing. And we were starting our commercial with boxing footage. So immediately if they’re watching TV, they’re going to tune out of that. So we went back to the edit room, removed the boxing footage, and basically made it more about cooking and, and that type of thing. 

And then the show turned around and it turned out to be over the years, we did many variations and but one of the most successful infomercial campaigns of all time. And to this date, they sold 120 million George Foreman grills.

Rick Rappe: 24:33

Wow. Yeah, I think I’ve had several in my household alone. I mean, we yeah, I still have. We tend to go through them and once they break, we have to go out and buy another one because there’s such a it’s a standard item now in my household and my kitchen. I mean I wouldn’t know what to do without it.

Yeah.

Rick Cesari: 24:51

Another funny story about that is George was on QVC and the host would be cooking. They had like five grills set up and George would the host would be talking about the grill and all and the slanted. And it can cook for hamburgers. And as he was talking, George would start eating. And it turned out that every time George would take a bite of food, the phones would start ringing off the hook.

And so that was like consistently something that happened. So then in every future commercial that we made, we always tried to show George eating as much as possible. For whatever reason. People responded to that. And, you know, you talk about doing focus group studies and things like that. 

This was getting results in real time, you know, through direct response type of thing.

Rick Rappe: 25:35

So that’s interesting. I was going to ask you a couple process questions because I was curious about a B testing. Did you guys do a lot of a B testing of like version A versus version B, or was it more like you would try something and see if it worked and then if it didn’t you would go back to the drawing board.

Rick Cesari: 25:52

We did the latter. And I always talk about that and I know that it can A/B testing is a really valuable tool. With TV. We didn’t really do that. We basically put together.

I would say it’s like part science and part art. It’s like from all your experience, what do you think’s going to work? You do a media test, you get the results. A I think it needs to do better. You change the offer, change, you know, using your gut, using responses that you get, trying to listen to the people that called in on the phone. 

The telemarketing people, what they’re saying. And then you change it and you test it again and it’s, you know, back in the day, it’s a very expensive process because you’re re-editing TV shows, buying media time. But if you could make one that worked, got it to work it, the result was worth it. You could basically — that’s how all these brands were able to grow very quickly through that type of marketing. But no, it didn’t. 

We never really did A/B testing, but we did the I don’t know what it’s called where you test one and the next and just keep evolving till you get something that works.

Rick Rappe: 27:09

Well. It’s sort of iterative version of testing. I mean, we do both of those things in direct mail sometimes depending on the situation and the budget and what’s possible in the size of the market and all those things. Wow, that is so interesting. Let me let me ask you a couple more questions, because we’re running out of time, and I feel like I could talk to you for hours.

Probably, but.

Rick Cesari: 27:34

Part one and part two.

Rick Rappe: 27:35

Maybe. Oh, there’s an idea. I want to ask you a quick question about advice. Sort of. What advice would you give to someone today looking to break into the direct response marketing field?

I know that there’s a lot more direct marketing people out there, but.

Rick Cesari: 27:56

Yeah, no, that’s a great, great question. And you know how we were talking and you’ve experienced in your career in my career where okay, we started. With newspaper ads and direct mail and and things. If you mentioned it to people, they might think, well, those things are old fashioned ways of marketing. The point I’m trying to make is.

People have been marketing to other people for over 100 years. You can go back to the Montgomery Ward Sears catalog. Whatever.

Rick Rappe: 28:38

Sure.

Rick Cesari: 28:39

There’s been. And you know, this being a direct mail person, some of the really famous direct mail copywriters from long time ago. They’re basically there’s principles that work when it comes to marketing because they’re based on, to me, human psychology and you. And that doesn’t really change. So now the marketing vehicle changes.

Okay. Or platforms. You know, I was talking about running newspaper ads and now we run ads on meta, and now we’re doing TikTok videos instead of television videos. And but the basic things that make people respond to me haven’t changed that much. And if you can learn what those are, then you’re going to be successful. 

So how do you learn what they are? Well, I always also think that they’re very relatively new ideas. So if you go back and read some of the books from other people that have been successful at marketing and, you know, a couple of mentors of mine or Dan Kennedy, I don’t know if you know Dan Kennedy and the no BS marketing books. That was one of the books I read, Robert Downey the influence, the book influence he wrote. Anyway.

Rick Rappe: 30:04

I love that.

Rick Cesari: 30:04

Book. And then I don’t know if you ever read Breakthrough Advertising. One of the best books about copywriting. And that was back from written, I think, in the 40s or the 50s. Anyway, my point is to answer your question.

Rick Rappe: 30:17

Excellent.

Rick Cesari: 30:18

Yeah. Read as many. If you’re interested in direct marketing, read as many books as you can from people that have been successful at doing that. And I guarantee you you’ll learn a lot that will translate to whatever type of marketing that you’re doing today. So that would be my advice to somebody.

And then if you’re trying to break into the thing, I would say similar to what you and I have done, work for a company that has done direct marketing or doing direct marketing or doing direct response marketing or a response digital response agency, and learn from the people that are there. And then when you’re ready and you feel like you’re you’re that you can do it, you might want to go out and start your own agency. So that would be how I would approach it today.

Rick Rappe: 31:09

Yeah, that’s what I did. I took a lot of advice from all the people, all the agency owners that I ever worked for. I would ask them how they got started and what they learned and what they would do again, and what they wouldn’t do again. And I took it all and rolled it into my own company when I started.

Rick Cesari: 31:26

A successful agency.

Rick Rappe: 31:27

Well, I hope so. I hope so. Well, boy, this has been a pleasure, and I feel like I’m going to have to cut it short, but I really like the idea of a part two. So we’re going to come back and I’m going to definitely hit you up for a part two interview.

Rick Cesari: 31:44

Tell you about the GoPro campaign and the.

Rick Rappe: 31:46

Oh my gosh.

Rick Cesari: 31:47

A great one. So we got lots to talk about still.

Rick Rappe: 31:50

Yes, absolutely. So I will let’s put a pin in it and save it for round two. I think that’s exciting. Gives gives our listeners something to look forward to. One more quick question, which is the last question I’ll ask you before I wrap up.

And that is if you could go back and give your younger self one piece of advice, what advice would that be?

Rick Cesari: 32:14

That’s a great question. I, I’m kind of stumbling around because it’s — I don’t know if it’s like there’s so many pieces of advice that would have helped me. And this was, this is going to sound really strange to you. I’ve always been really good on the creative side and, and I ignored the business side and just this is me personally. You asked one you know, about one piece of advice for myself was to do more.

You know, it’s right brain, left brain type of thing, more emphasis on the business of running businesses and not just the marketing.

Rick Rappe: 33:01

Oh, interesting.

Rick Cesari: 33:02

Like that would have really helped me personally in my career. And my focus was always on how do I get more people in the door, how do I get more people to respond, how do I do? And not really paying attention to the business side of things, which I’ve since spent a lot of time learning and understanding and the operation side of it. And so that’s I you need you need both to be if you’re going to be a successful entrepreneur, you need both of those. And for me personally, I didn’t spend enough time doing that.

So that would be my advice is to make sure you have a good focus not just on the marketing and the direct response, but the business operations side.

Rick Rappe: 33:46

That’s really great advice. I mean, I think that’s something that definitely resonates with me as well because, you know, I’m a practitioner and a marketing expert who hung a shingle and started an agency where I could work hands-on, on my clients problems and on their marketing. And I didn’t really know very much about how to run a business. And I’ve learned the hard way and and through trial and error.

Rick Cesari: 34:13

Yeah. Expensive. Hopefully not expensive mistakes, but they are expensive sometimes.

Rick Rappe: 34:20

Well, you know, I think it’s a hard way to learn. And there’s definitely got to be easier ways to learn. Alright. Well, thanks for your time. I think we’ll wrap up with this and we’ll save the rest for round two.

We’ve been talking today with Rick. Rick is a pioneer in the direct response TV industry. Since 1985, he’s an infomercial producer and a master of video persuasion. He’s an iconic brand builder, having helped grow four companies from startups to over $1 billion in sales. And he’s also an author, and you should check out his book, Building Billion Dollar Brands. 

And for anyone in the wellness business that wants to build their business or grow their practice, The Wellness Business Blueprint is his latest book. When is that book coming out, Rick?

Rick Cesari: 35:07

Oh, it’s out now and you can buy any of the books on Amazon. So if you just Google my name on Amazon or search my name on Amazon, those books will come up.

Rick Rappe: 35:19

Oh that’s wonderful. All right. And I think.

Rick Cesari: 35:21

You offer your listeners one thing, because I always do this when I’m on a podcast. If you have any questions about marketing or business, I’m happy to help out. And you can just email me. It’s rick@directbranding.com and you can probably put that in the notes or something for people.

Rick Rappe: 35:42

Sure. I certainly will. It’ll be in the transcript. And I’ll make sure that that gets out there. Well, thank you so much for this opportunity to learn from you today, Rick.

I really appreciate it.

Rick Cesari: 35:52

Thank you.

Outro: 35:54

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?

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