Direct Response Marketing Secrets#
This is a pretty cool and definitely valuable interview:
Perry Marshall interviews Brian Kurtz on the three most guarded (direct) marketing secrets.
Brian is a serial direct marketer for over 35 years and arguably one of the best direct response marketers of our time.
He's the author or The Advertising Solution and Overdeliver.
Perry Marshall is the author of 80/20 Marketing And Sales.
You can easy listen to it in your browser right on this page, or download it here.
Enjoy the interview!
Transcription#
Perry Marshall
This is Perry Marshall. I'm here with Brian Kurtz. Brian is the Director of Marketing at boardroom report. And bottom line publications, which is a deeply respected, very successful direct marketing publishing company and board room marries the very best of the traditional corporate world, which, you know, some publishers are very large with the gorilla street smart world of copywriting, and direct mail and web marketing. And, you know, like, every, every tool, every trick in the book, if you become familiar with the world of professional copywriters, the best writers will always brag that they've written controls for boardroom. And I'm here interviewing Brian today. So Brian, welcome. Really glad you're here.
Brian Kurtz
It was total pleasure I, I followed your career and you asking me to do an interview with you was as as flattering as anything, so thank you.
Perry Marshall
So, Brian, what I wanted to talk to you about today was, I wanted you to talk about three of the most surprising things that you've ever learned in your 32 years of marketing history. And Brian, you know, you've meticulously tracked the results of all kinds of things. You know, the stuff that ends up in your wastepaper basket is better than what, you know, most people flagship promotion. So, so like this really is criminally cramming in. And so you said, Well, alright, so I will have three interesting case studies and stories for you. So Brian, is there anything you want to say about just to let everybody gets to know you a little bit better before we dive into the material here?
Brian Kurtz
Sure. I'll make it brief. I mean, I'm, I just love direct marketing. I love I love the fact that, you know, being I'm not a dinosaur, I'm a threat of source racks. And I'm not. And I just love that fact. Because what I'm finding, you know, hanging out with the best online marketers in the world? A, I tell them, you know, you know, why do you want to? If you call yourself an internet marketer, then then I think you're being silly, because why do you want to define yourself by your channel? Yeah. And my first case histories about the ultimate multi channel marketing effort that I ever did in my career, because I'm just not a direct mail guy, either. So, you know, for me, people, like describe my career, and they say, Wow, man, you've crushed it in, in all media, you've crushed it in direct mail, and you've crushed the crushed a word that I never used. crushed it in direct mail, and you've crushed it in, in TV, and you've crushed it in online marketing. And my response is, yeah, buy crushed it. And all three at the same time, my whole career, I'd be on an island, probably in Fiji or something. Although I probably wouldn't, because I love direct marketing too much. And I still want to do stuff or else or whatever. But, you know, the idea that that, you know, it's not just old is new again. And it's not like, I want to be grandpa at every single conference I go to. I do have one slide that I use a lot, which is, you know, my career. I have a slide. It's a picture it says, Mike, this is Mike. I think the slide says something like my childhood in direct marketing. And it has a picture of a guy walking like in the snow with a briefcase and a suit, like uphill. And I said, you know, in the early days of direct marketing, I walked in, I walked up, and I walked to work every day uphill in the snow barefoot. And Boy, was I working hard. And then then I then I click, and I says, and I pay postage. And the reason why I say that. On the one hand, it's funny, and on the other hand, it's like, that's what made me such a great marketer. You know, the fact that I had I understood that if I'm paying 200 300 400 $500 1000 for direct mail that I paid 10s of 1000s of dollars for a plus copywriters, and I got, you know, design and I'm paying for paper and all that postage. In fact, there was one year I remember I was lobbying for postal reform in DC. And I was with a bunch of huge companies like AARP and and National Geographic, and they know who this was just a little company. wardroom from Connecticut. And I said, Well, you know, we're not that big, but our our postal bill last year was $22 million. I got their attention anyway.
Perry Marshall
And to date, you guys have mailed 1.3 billion pieces of mail, in the last
Brian Kurtz
20 years, we've mailed 1.3 billion pieces of direct mail. That's a lot of letters. Yeah. And I looked every stamp is very versatile. So the point there was that, you know, by because I learned, you know, again, I don't want to sound like the dinosaur or grandpa. But because I learned the disciplines of direct marketing, under the cost constraints of direct mail, everything has to be perfect. Everything has to be, you know, every piece of mail that I sent out, had to be not just a cheap, something it had to like, usually have to sell something, and had to do it elegantly. Because I couldn't afford to send love gifts, I couldn't afford to just, you know, do direct mail and say, Hi, how are you? You know, here's a free stuff report for the hell of it. And so coming full circle, when I look at the online world, you know, I think that there are too many marketers that don't understand that every email they send, even if it doesn't sell something better achieve something. Yeah, the people that do launches the best. And the people that do online marketing with all of this in mind are the ones I respect the most. And they're the ones that really understand long term value of of your database, understanding your customer and how you segment your list and how you don't send everything the same to every person. And, and you can you can do more and more of that these days on email than you couldn't have some time ago. And we were doing that in direct mail even before in I'm saying the 1960s when I was in grade school, you know, Reader's Digest understood regression modeling in the 1960s. And that you don't mail the same thing to everybody. So, you know, without getting I don't want to talk about my my credentials, or my career in that respect. What I really just loved is that, you know, I am like, I am like the most welcomed dinosaur at every place. I've gone in the last two or three years. Yeah, I just love being that person I love. I just love sharing what I've done. And people think that they're getting the better end of the deal, because they're getting all my knowledge. And Little do they know that I'm always getting the veterans of the deal, because I don't even ask them to share and they're sharing stuff that I never could learn on my own. And so it's one of those perfect situations of, of just, it's not even quid pro quo. It's, it's just, you know, total masterminding at the highest level. And I'd say right now, as fulfilled in what I'm doing in my career, as I've ever been, despite, you know, whatever failures, we have day to day, and things that are struggle because of the economy or whatever. Direct Mail is tougher only because there are fewer great list universes out there. But direct mail still works, direct mail still scales. And I've got the attention of a lot of internet marketers postal address lists that they can understand when they get when they get wind of what, how much empty, or the mailboxes are. And if they do killer direct mail, how they could get there, the edge on everybody else, if they start thinking themselves about multi multi channel marketers, and not as internet marketers. Well, the world's their oyster, those are the guys I really want to spend time with. Oh, that's
Perry Marshall
where the scale is happening. And I like what you say about mastermind. I wouldn't be caught dead not being in a great mastermind. I'm actually in a couple of my right. Yeah. So So. Yeah. So So Brian, you got three interesting stories to tell today.
Brian Kurtz
Yeah. So the first one, I mean, it's a good segue. I love doing these in chronological order in my career, I want to do them. And they're not in any order, except that I want to talk about the multi channel one, because it's so fascinating. And it really, there's so many lessons that I learned from this. And I hope that you know, your listeners get something really good from it. And I've told it a few times, on various stages. But basically, you know, in the midnight, I'll go back to the mid 1980s, maybe late 1980s when Tony Robbins was becoming an incredible phenomenon on on infomercials on direct response television. That was like, right around. I don't know all the details, because I was very young man. But I was nine years old, by the way. So it was like, you know, late 80s maybe and basically the infomercial business exploded because all of a sudden, I guess the FTC or the FCC, it was the FCC opened up this idea that you could buy half our time and it could be you know, kind of programming flash advertising. It was like a big breakthrough at that point. I don't know the legalities. So anyway, Tony Robbins is just rocking it. I mean, I don't know if you remember those times, but he was just you know, The infomercial King. And then there were a bunch of others right after that. And at that time, we had just come off at boardroom selling the book called The Book of inside information, which was kind of the greatest hits of our bottom line personal newsletter. It was like a five 600 page book, we actually had sold 3 million copies of that one title at like 30, or $40, a copy, in direct mail only over a few year period. So this was like, you know, I don't even care about the New York Times bestseller list when you're selling 3 million copies in direct mail. And you don't even care. And you know that the margins are better than selling, you know, at Barnes and Noble. Yeah, it was just a whole, incredibly, so I remember, you know, the guys who were doing the in front of the kings of the infomercials then and they still are, I guess, we've got the rancor. And so Marty eddleston, our founder, and I had a meeting with Bill picker in New York City. And I said, you know, I'm, I'm just so enamored with what's going on with the infomercial world. And I think we have great products. You know, Tony Robbins is giving people a life, a life course on how to, you know, run their life. And I think bottom line could offer, you know, the bottom lines that are life course, and it could include a bunch of our books and our newsletters, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So one thing led to another, they you know, nothing happened from that idea. And the reason why I give that because it's the first lesson was never give up on a dream or never give up on something that you kind of believe is right. But it may not be right at that particular time, I didn't have the right product, I didn't have whatever. But the thing that I did know at the time, is that a I wanted to I wanted to get into TV in some way. And be I had a brand bottom line that was just not that well known. So selling Sports Illustrated on a two minute Sports Illustrated subscriptions on a two minute TV commercial is kind of easy to do. Because everybody knows your brand. Everybody knows it's all about price and giving away a free football phone or whatever they were giving away. Whereas if I did a two minute commercial for bottom line person or the book of information, nobody's going to be interested in that I did try some two minute TV, for booking inside information. It didn't do well at all. But what I saw in the infomercial was that now I could take my my my kind of direct mail, which was always long direct mail, you know, I was never doing, you know, two page letter direct mail, I was doing 20 page mag blogs and book blogs. And, you know, I mean, long copy is an understatement for what bottom line was doing. Because I had a great story to tell. And I had to tell that story because I was an unknown brand, in a marketplace with whatever noise was going on with known brands. So I wasn't even going to be able to compete with consumer reports or for money magazine or whoever, you know, even though our content
was was competitive in some ways I couldn't compete. So I guess my analogy was, you know, short form TV, you know, one minute, two minute TV was to known brand as infomercials were two brands that needed longer selling like they weren't like I did a direct mail. So I only give you all that background because there was some real lessons there about understanding the kind of marketing that I knew we needed to do to sell our stuff by what I did in direct mail for my first 10 years. And then how am I going to how would I get that into TV. And to me, infomercial was like the magic bullet. And yet I couldn't get in because I couldn't get enough interest from whether it was Guffey, ranker, or just like couldn't come up with the right idea. So now fast forward, and I never gave up, never gave up on the concept. I thought thinking about it for years and years and years. So now we come to like 2004 maybe 2003. And I'm up one night because I can't sleep. I'm watching you know, late night TV and I was watching some infomercials, and there's Kevin Trudeau he gets on TV, and he's selling the book what they don't want you to know. It was like a health book. I don't know if you remember the Yeah, yeah. He's you know, Kevin Trudeau was a guy that, you know, I don't like selling some of the things the way he sells them. And yet, the guy's obviously a brilliant marketer, brilliant salesman. And so he's selling this one book, and the book is 2995. And I'm looking at and I'm saying how I never would have thought that you could sell one book for 2995 and pay for 30 minute media infomercial media. So then I call the toll free number. And they proceeded to keep me on the phone for I think it was three and a half days. With with upsells. And cross sells everything that Kevin could have thought of that was related to the book and everything that he partnered with that wasn't related to the book. I'm exaggerating, of course, but obviously it was all about the back end. And that I think I think the word on the street was that Kevin's average order on the 2995 book was about 100 bucks in order. So I don't know that for a fact I'm just speculating, but I had my all of a sudden I had my I had my idea. So my failure to get into the infomercial business was I'm going to be my my jumpstart, because I knew that I could sell a single book that had incredible amount of information. And I'm not saying, you know, if Kevin Wallace has this interview, I think I would tell him to his face that I think my book is much better than the book. But not to say that his book was bad or whatever, I'm not going to make any comments on that. But my book, whether it was the book of instant information, it ended up being one of my health books and ended up being the treasury of health secrets. And that's the case history here. So I have this treasury of health secrets, the 600 page book. It's a greatest hits from all of our best health stuff of the last couple of years. The book already exists. I've been using direct mail for it. And actually, the direct mail had almost died. You know, I couldn't get a new control package for it. I was ready to kind of retire the book because I didn't have a promotion that was wedding. And so I watched Kevin Trudeau, I start calling people I don't want to go into all the little details. But I knew I knew some people in the business. I knew a producer in the infomercial world that was winding down his business, and I knew he was a genius and a direct marketing. In fact, I'll even mentioned his name, his name is Steve Dorman. And he actually wrote the book, he wrote a book about the infomercial marketing business. And he had a newsletter at the time called the infomercial marketing report. And I called Steve because we were friends. And I said, I think I know how to do this. But I need some help. I don't want to sell everything under the sun on the back end. But if I can get my average order to $60 or $70, I think I can still do this. I've been you know, I costed it out, and I figured it out. And then Steve knew everybody in the business. So I found my media buyer, I thought I did everything I would have done if I was doing direct mail. And lo and behold, long story long. I launched an infomercial wax, I did three in a row. One was Treasury health secrets, one was treasury of health secrets, Revised Edition. And then the third one was called ultimate healing, which is like a sign of treasury of health secrets. The first one might my host was Barry Farber, who was a well known radio guy. And then my second and third were with Hugh downs, the legendary newscaster. And I think I don't want to exaggerate, I know that that infomercial business in one year, took our business from a $60 million business $70 million business to 150 million. And over those three or four years, we ran that show. And then we also ran a second infomercial on another book using the same formula. And the back end was mostly other books of our own stuff that we really felt comfortable with. Like I didn't sell clubs on the back end, I didn't sell supplements. I didn't just things I didn't want to do on the back end. And I think our total tank in infomercials over a three or four year period had to be I mean, it was definitely over $200 million.
And then so here's where and here's where it just got totally cool. And this is when I was like Mr. multichannel marketer, I took the the the number I said my direct mail piece was dead, I couldn't get into control. I had my copywriter take all the footage from the infomercial, which had all these doctors in it. It had Gary bencivenga would say, you know, proof elements up the wazoo. I had Dr. pods I had, you know, I had so much stuff in there credibility was off the charts. I mean, Steve Dorman just did a brilliant job. And we then did a tabloid direct mail piece, a 20 page or 24, page tabloid that had all the scenes from the infomercial with all the doctors in it. And it was a completely new control package. And lo and behold, the direct mail went through the roof. I had a completely revised direct now program for a book that I was ready to retire in direct mail. Of course, at the time, I was running anywhere from $200,000 a week to $500,000 a week and TV media. And anybody who says all boats to all boats don't rise doesn't know what they're talking about. On the other hand, I don't want to just throw stuff at PR and publicity. When you can't read it. I was actually reading response rates because I'm a direct marketer. Then all of a sudden, I was able to do display ads on the internet, with Hugh downs, his picture and it was like, you know, Hugh downs reports. And I had, you know, lower your cholesterol, and you click and there's the landing page is all the stuff from the tabloid from the direct mail, but it's online. And I was actually able to sell another million books online million plus. And I actually did it with a filmy offer. I didn't even ask for credit card. And I was getting over 50% payout, which is unheard of online, that eventually fizzled out when the pay up went below 50%. But for a period of time of like three years, we were basically just cranking it on all three channels. And it was one of the most exhilarating periods of marketing in my entire career. And so I was, you know, surprises, not the exact word I would use for it. But it was, you know, all things come to those who wait, personified and all thing you know, if you believe in something and you've got your gut in it, knowing that infomercials was going to be I knew I was going to get it to work at some point because it made sense. Then, I'd say this was probably from a boardroom perspective, certainly, the crowning achievement of my career. So that case is three, one.
Perry Marshall
Well, so so several things I see in that story. First of all, you're dealing in numbers that are orders of magnitude greater than most people who are listening. And it's, it might be easy for a lot of people to overlook the fact that you're not operating on any, you're probably not operating on any separate set of principles than they are. Right? You're just doing a better job of executing the details, and probably dealing with a wider picture of what you're really about.
Brian Kurtz
Exactly. I think that it's really well put. You know, and I guess, not not an analogy, but just sort of a an image. You know, I always say that it costs us the same at boardroom to do a million piece mailing has to do 100,000 piece mailing. But I think cost the same I mean, in terms of labor in terms of, you know, real
Perry Marshall
work, like engineering cost, product development, right.
Brian Kurtz
So, you know, given that, you know, if you're always thinking in terms of multichannel, I mean, I had this epiphany when I was speaking at an internet marketing conference, first telling all them not to define themselves by channel. So I said, This is not an inbound marketing conference, it's a multi channel marketing conference, I renamed it in front of them,
Perry Marshall
it's good to redefine the conference, you're speaking at exactly that goal.
Brian Kurtz
So I did that first. And then I said, Look, you know, you guys are sitting on postal address list, because you have all these postal addresses, you already are making a lot per customer if you're calculating lifetime value per customer. And you're probably have thought about products that need a lot more selling than you can do with a subject line and an email. And so, you know, to overlook a channel, like direct mail where, you know, people get 5% response rates still, in 2013, we just did a mountain for a newsletter, I got 5% response rates. You know, you just want to think about other things, besides, you know, bombarding people with emails all day. So, to deal with size and scope, that has to do with taking care of your audience, understanding your audience, you know, working your database. And the thing the internet guys really know well, is that they can give away a lot of free content, because they're not paying postage. So you know, you've got the world's your oyster. Now, TV is a much tougher nut, obviously, you know, you don't want to try it. It's like making sushi. I don't know, if I want to try TV all the time. And it's, it's just tough, you know, because the investment is high. You know, if you got to fail, you're very quickly, and you don't recoup much, you know, like direct mail, if I do it, if it cost me a couple 100,000 bucks to launch a direct mail campaign for a book, and it's a disaster, my first mailing will probably get $100,000 back. In TV, you could spend $200,000, on creative, you're going to spend 20,000 or $15,000 on a media test that will tell you what the market thinks that your your infomercial, if it bombs, you're kind of done. You know, so it is more of a one hit wonder mentality. So I don't recommend TV. But, boy, you know, I think the other lesson I can't repeat enough, which I said at the beginning is that I just believe that the story of one of our big encyclopedic books, whether it was held for consumer information was just perfect for the medium called infomercial. And I never stopped believing it. Not in a stubborn way. But because I really trust my marketing instincts on it.
Perry Marshall
Yeah, I really like what you're saying about, keep making sure that those great ideas stay on the shelf, and you're still incubating them, rather than abandoning them. I think a lot of times, human beings, we try something, we got this fantastic thing. We really believe in it. We put it out there in bonds, and then we resent it, or we we resent ourselves for it. And in doing that we don't we don't even realize that we have consigned it to the graveyard when it really wasn't ready to be born yet.
Brian Kurtz
That's right. Right. That's a great analogy to put it on the shelf. You know, if you believe that, it's going to, you know, and I would say, you know, Marty, Marty, Mike, our founder was not a big computer guy because he you know, by the time the internet became popular, he was a lot older, but he always said, you know, he always looked at his brain as a computer. And even though he wasn't into computers, he said, I'm just storing that one away. And I don't know, if you're a smart marketer, which everybody on this call, I'm assuming is Yeah, you know, give yourself some credit at the beginning. And don't don't question your gut. But that doesn't mean you have to spend a lot of money chasing the stuff in your gut every day all
Perry Marshall
day. Yeah, totally. You know what else he said that that sparked? synapse was, you went to this conference and you said, you know, this is not an internet conference. This is a multichannel conference, you know, at Ken McCarthy's first seminar, which was April 2002. He got up and he said, we are not internet marketers. We are direct marketers who use the internet as a medium. That's fantastic. That's how he began the first 30 minutes. It might have been the first five minutes. That's awesome. Okay. And of course, you know, about the system seminar kind of really gave birth to half of what all is going on today.
Brian Kurtz
Absolutely.
Perry Marshall
And, and I know, I understood exactly what he meant, and you kind of have to remember that this is he, this was, this was post.com crash, where, you know, half the people in the world are like, Well, you know, I'm, I'm pretty sure this Internet's gonna take off. It was kind of like your idea on the shelf thing, like, yeah, you know, just give it a little more incubation time. It's gonna come roaring Yeah. Right. And, and, and, and then there was also a part of it, like, like, Oh, you know, good grief, this might all just be bunch of smoke and mirrors. Right. And that, you know, it was like, it was the the rightest possible time in it for him. You know, he had totally seen the light and everything in probably 9495 96. And he's sitting there waiting for the giant stupidity spasm to subside. Right? I love and in it, he was doing that seminar. It's the perfect time. Yes.
Brian Kurtz
Actually, Gary bencivenga, probably the best greatest living copywriter gave me a quote just last night, I'm going to unveil it underground in a couple of weeks. And it's white, why being channel when you can be a solution? packed up?
Perry Marshall
What do you what do you mean by that?
Brian Kurtz
Okay, so basically, what what I mean, it's kind of like, you know, don't define yourself by channel. But the idea that if you start thinking yourself as a solution to somebody's problems, your business, again, you know, john Carlton has a great quote, a promotion is not a business, Carol has a great quote, a product is not a business, you know, direct marketing, you know, is on page, you know, right at the beginning of the Bible of direct marketing, which is written by Bob stone, successful direct marketing methods, I think the quote is, you know, no direct marketing business can, can succeed without repeat business. And so we've known that forever, the internet, marketers know that, but when you start looking at your, your, whatever you're selling, as a solution, you're not going to be in one product, you're not going to be in one promotion, you're not going to be in one channel, you're going to be like solving problems for people, you're going to be actually trying to change the world in some way. And what you're teaching people, you know, in the info world, you know, how to be a better marketer, which is a lot of what goes on. But there's a lot of people that are teaching people how to be better dog trainers and better, you know, razors, you know, raising horses, and, and, you know, better ways to use herbs and cooking. And, you know, how great is it when you're working in your passion. So when I, when Gary said, the word solution, to me anyway, said, you know, go work in your passion, you know, because ultimately, that's going to fuel you, then then you then making the back end product isn't going to be a chore. It's going to be part of your DNA. And then you've got a real direct marketing business.
Perry Marshall
Amen. You mentioned something you said pay up offers, and don't kill me offers bill me Sorry, no me offers now. I don't think most people have ever even contemplated such a thing. Can you explain?
Brian Kurtz
Yeah, it's dangerous on the internet, of course, because you can credit screen in direct mail. I mean, get this. So you know, when we have 1.3 billion pieces of direct mail in the last 20 years, almost all of that direct mail that went out when in the original solicitation piece. We never asked for cash or credit card. We basically said you can try this newsletter for six months for free. And we will build you or you can take this book as a free trial for 30 days and then We send you a bill. And we send you a series of bills if you don't pay us. Now, the bill the model and direct mail, obviously, you do have so many better controls with before you go out with a direct mail campaign, we do what we call merge purge, which is we take all of our lists, we merge them together, we take out the duplicates, we identify the multi buyers, we do all that kind of, you know, segmentation and, and at the same time, you can actually run credit screens and by credit screen, you might know because of data you could buy on the outside, how many people on that list that you're ready to go out in the mail with and pay posted. Remember, I'm looking, I'm looking at stamps, and you're going out I posted. And all of a sudden you realize there's people on that list that have have a bad credit rating, they've actually stiffed six other book people, and they never paid. And so you have a criteria that says I'm not going to mail those names. But everybody else I'm going to mail. And then the people I do mail, I can offer a bill me offer a free trial. And so just, you know, for argument's sake, you know, and then I've got my house file people who've already bought from me. So I already have their payment history. I know that they liked my brand, because they bought from me already. And I can trust them to buy on a building. So interestingly, so let's go back to the the multi channel. So on the infomercial, everything was kept. If you call on a toll free number, you have to give a credit card, I'm not doing any Bellamy's on an infomercial, you just can't afford to do it, you're paying way too much for the media. And again, you can't credit screen on an infomercial. However, at the same time, when I was doing the number academics that I ramped up the direct mail using the creative from the infomercial, and in that direct mail, you know, one of my selling points was, I guess you can guess cuz I know you're a copy guy was, you know, for you special person that's on my list for direct mail, whether you're a house customer or not, I'm going to give you a free trial of the book, which wasn't available on TV, you couldn't get the book for free on TV. So now I've got another selling point that says, because you're on my special direct mail list, I'm going to give you a free trial. And those people pay off at 70, maybe 70 to 80%. The people that don't pay a lot of them return the book, and the book is still usable, when we can go back out with it. And then there's you know, 10% of the people who just live here, and you put that as a cost of doing business. But net net, when you're doing a build the offer, your response rates could be double. Imagine if I'm letting you see a free trial of a book as opposed to having to put your credit card in, you could imagine I'm going to get double the response. Now the interesting thing that I found as I'm dealing with all these online marketers is that in the in the subscription area in the in the in the newsletter, business, and magazine business, I mean, you subscribe, everybody on this call is probably subscribed to a magazine where there's a bill me later option, because, you know, it's very hard to get an offer for money magazine or Vanity Fair. And they usually not going to make you pay upfront. So you get a free issue or you get three free issues, and then they send you a bill. And if you think about it, they're doing that they have a benefit to do that, because they have advertising in those magazines. So it's called rate base advertising. So far, the three months that you're on their list, and you haven't paid yet, they can still count that as eyeballs for their advertising in their magazine. So there's a benefit there. Oh, okay. And in addition to that, think about the launch people that are doing the best online, what are they doing? Are they giving away content until they decide to sell you something?
What were magazine people doing in the 1950s and 60s, they can use six free issues. You've tried it before you buy it. And then hopefully at the end of six months, you love it so much that you're eating out of their hand by the time you send them a bill. Well, that's the concept anyway. So, you know, the the idea of a building is such an incredible concept, the problem with the Internet, and the reason why it was so amazing that we could sell books on display ads on the internet on a building offer. I was shocked. I mean, I don't I think that it's something I wouldn't try so quickly unless it was a digital product that you could download. But even there you know then you know getting paid is going to be tough. So you know build these not the perfect thing for the internet. I got that. But I guess I use that for a fact because because all boats were rising in this multi channel approach. There was a period of time where I was doing bill me in direct mail. I was doing cash with water on TV, and I was actually able to do bill me online, which was amazing. And eventually I had to go to cash with water online as well. But just an interesting phenomenon. You know when your product is that hot, and people have such desire for it. There's a lot of things you can do and again, Bill me offers are going to increase your response rate. And there's an acceptable payoff that's going to make it worthwhile if it pays for the bad debt?
Perry Marshall
Well, I got to think that a sizable percentage of people could find a way for that to be very advantageous for whatever they're doing. So that's
Brian Kurtz
his goals. And here's a dream of mine, a dream of mine is, and we're not far from it, because I know companies that are working on this, imagine, someone goes to a display ad on the internet clicks on an ad, you go to a book offer. And it's not it's not digital, it's a physical book. And then they go to buy the book. And in real time, there's a database of that email address that's sitting on an idea database somewhere, this is sort of the credit screen that you can do in direct mail that you can do in online. So as long as the offer initially says something to the effect of, you know, here's a free offer for a free trial for the book, subject to subject to approval, I think is the wording you use. So the person clicks, and they're a horrible bad data, right, there's someone who never paid for anything. What happens is, as soon as they say free trial, they actually then in real time, go to a page where they have to put their credit card in, because they're not credit worthy enough to give a building offer to. And then there are people that go to this in real time, their credit screen, that they pass whatever criteria that you set, you could set that criteria, you know, if they have three bad debts on their file, I'm not giving them more credit, or whatever the criteria is, and you test that, then those people are given the build the offer, because the chances of them paying at that 60 70% clip are much higher than the technology is available to do this. We tried it. It didn't work well enough, the cost of the credit screen defeated. The the the advantages of offering the building offer. Okay, but that's that's 2000. So that's 2012. What do you think's gonna happen this year or next year? Right? It's gonna get better.
Perry Marshall
You're You're right. Um, you know, I don't know if you know, Ben Morris.
Brian Kurtz
I do and I know, he's working on a lot of that kind of stuff. Yeah, you know,
Perry Marshall
we do something a little bit similar to that, which is when somebody opts into our website, we, we go to den Ben's database in real time, and we append all this information. And we know that there are certain clusters of people that are much better buyers for us than others. And we segment that stuff in real time. And when we do direct mail, you know, most of our leads have come to us on the internet, somehow, we we do some of that kind of screening. So, you know, I think this is really something for people to bookmark that, you know, we're we might only be a year away from being able to do that affordably, like you're describing. And
Brian Kurtz
it's a, it's a major, it could be a major breakthrough. If you could get qualified buyers in cold traffic off the internet without having to put their credit card in right away.
Perry Marshall
It's good. Yeah. So tell me, tell me your second. Interesting.
Brian Kurtz
Okay, I'll I'll make these a lot shorter. That was a pretty long case history. So I apologize. But so here's this two quickies not not cookies. But just these are really interesting. So, one of my one of my mentors in the 80s was a guy by the name of Gordon Grossman. And Gordon was one of the architects at Reader's Digest 1960s I won't say he invented sweepstakes, but he was like one of the first people that really understood how powerful sweepstakes and contests could be in direct mail. And, you know, fast forward to Groupon and livingsocial. You know, there are things like that were invented a long time ago just for the record. And so, Gordon, again, one of my mentors, tremendous, tremendous direct mail guy. In fact, we published his memoirs called Confessions of a direct mail guy. And Gordon was consulting with us and most of our best selling books. Remember, I told you about the book of inside information? And basically, we were that we were great reporting, like Marty understood how to repurpose content way before most people did. I even think he invented hypertext before the internet. So he, this book of insider information we sold I told you, we sold 3 million copies in direct mail, that treasury of health secrets that died and then was reversed after the infomercial that sold over a million copies in direct mail. And but all of them were Greatest Hits of our newsletters, like all that was our own content. And so Gordon says to me, Gordon has this gruff voice and Gordon looks at me one day, and he goes, What makes you think that all your content has to be your own? And I said, Wow, that's an epiphany, right? And I'm thinking, Okay, what content would I want to do? And so I mean, this was based on this is based on like, at that point, maybe 10 years training, in database marketing in segments in our list, knowing the categories that work best, knowing all of the outside lists that work best. And I literally went with my marketing guy. And we went to Barnes, I always say, I think the slide when I talk about this case, history says something like, I went to Barnes and Noble and use one of their hand trucks. And what I did was, I went into every category and Barnes and Noble. That was a category that is was obviously a category that appealed to my audience. So for example, I take the AI and the diet that was noble, let me use a hand truck. And I went to the health segment, of course, and I bought put a bunch of health books on my hand truck that look really good books that looked like they had tons of tidbits, information, useful information, as close to what we would do on our own. If it was our content. I really didn't know if it was good or not, because I wasn't going to read the books at Barnes and Noble. Back then there was no coffee shop and Barnes and Noble. So I didn't want to stay there very long. I just wanted to get my hand truck and get out, right. So I went to the health I went to the tax area, I went to the investment area, I went to the car area travel area. And I remember we bought I don't know three $400 worth of books that night. And I loaded them into my car, brought them to the office the next day. And then actually had my book editor started going through them and the ones that she thought had some potential for being able to write great copy from for direct mail. They we sent those to a couple of our a copywriters and said, Do you think you could do direct mail for one of these books? Now remember these a lot of these books, you know, what's the best seller at that point in Barnes and Noble, you know, an author does a book, he gets an advance in every season, he never sees another dime, because they're only selling 3000 books in its history, or 4000 or 5000. You know, if you sell 8000 books, you think, you know, you're like a best selling author. And so, we started taking a look at these books. And it was it was amazing. So this maybe was the surprise that when I found a book, I think the first one was a book by a naturopathic guy named Gary no and you ll pretty well known he was on PBS and kind of some wacky health stuff but not you know, in very interested in you know, nutrition and he had some woowoo stuff in his books too. But generally, you know,
a guy that that has good stuff to say, I saw on the binding and so one of my copywriters said there's a lot of good stuff in here. I think I could write a direct mail piece for this. And lo and behold, I call the publisher, so happened the woman at the trade publisher now this is like, typical New York City. They weren't big. It wasn't john Wiley and it wasn't, you know, HarperCollins or Penguin, but it was, it was a company I think called Kensington. So it was a midsize publisher. There was a woman there who actually knew from the direct marketing world who went into the trade book business, when met with her said, well I want to do is buy the direct mail rights to this book, I'll pay you a royalty. And we'll see where it goes. And I did not think it was going to be that easy. And it was, it was like simple because the book was, you know, like it was a good book, it was collecting dust on the shelf at Barnes and Noble when I got it, I think maybe my criteria with that hand truck was like which books are in my best categories that have the most dust on them. But then, knowing that I had a copywriter interested already. Basically what I did is I went through the book was actually that book in particular, which was called The Encyclopedia of natural healing. It was it was too big. For direct mail, like, I don't know, 900 pages or something. We had our editors cut it down to five or 600 pages, we then created a couple of premiums, like some little booklets that we created with our own content. So I didn't, I violated Gordon Grossman a little bit that I still wanted to throw in some of our own content, knowing that our house file would like that. And I created a package called the Encyclopedia of natural healing by Gary now, with three or four little booklets of special premiums on special topics. And even though the book was still sitting on the shelf in the bookstore, I just created this apples to oranges, selling proposition. So I had this brand new product. And I think at the time, the book in the bookstore was probably discounted, like 1995, I don't know. And my book was bottom line books on the on the spine. And these extra premiums I was selling at 2995. And I was selling it as a bill me because I knew the credit rating of my house customers. And long story short, I think I think we hit the million mark in terms of sales of that book over maybe a four or five year period. I know we sold at least 800,000 books. So I don't know what Gary has sold for in Kensington had sold as a trade book, but talk about the power of direct mail. And you know, I'm very proud of this story only because I kind of invented our book business based on taking the stodgy trade publishers and going to them and saying you're never gonna do direct mail. I know how to do direct mail, give me the rights. And we've had dozens of books that I bought the right just to direct marketing rights to. In some cases, I've worked direct marketing, right? It's not just direct mail, right. So that gave me the opportunity to go on the internet if I chose. And basically, our book business became, instead of, you know, three or four books, it became, you know, 20 books, 22 books. And we had an annual one of our books was a book that you got on an annual basis, like I was like the old yearbooks, but it was called the bottom line yearbook, which was all our content. And I said, I really want to do a healthier book. And in that particular case, I knew I couldn't create enough content to create a book every year. So I found a company that was sort of like a Reuters for health information, like they were like a health news service. And I partnered with them to give me enough content, which they producing every day. So I can produce an annual book every year. And we still have a health annual, we've had the bottom line, annual since 1992. I think we want the health annual in thinking in 2001 I have a bottle of wine here. And I don't drink so it's still sitting on my shelf 10 year anniversary with our partner 2011 we've done that annual book for 10 years. So anyway, you know, here is an example of, you know, I know what my core strength was, it was really it was repurposing content and direct mail. And all it took was one of the one of my great mentors of all time reaming me basically reading the the riot act that how are you going to expand this business unless you'd think more creatively, and then realizing that this was going to be a lot easier that the trade publishers were so happy with a four and a half or 5% royalty? They made more money on my royalty than they did on the original deals,
Perry Marshall
then that's, that's great. Well, you know, this makes me want to ask you a question which is so the, the whole world of publishing of information marketing of the books, and everything is in turmoil because of let's just call it the, the Amazon Kindle phenomena. Okay. Okay. Just to put a simple label on it. All right. Well, you know, everything is 995 and some days it's free and some days it's 99 cents and, you know, the bottom is falling out of all this. What is your perspective on that sentiment?
Brian Kurtz
You know, I think that there there is some truth there. I mean, content is ubiquitous. People online are used to getting everything for free. But I think it's it's really about, I think it's getting more and more about niche. So that maybe a general health book launch today won't be as good. But we launched the book on women's health book only a year ago or two years ago. And that was a big success. We have a diabetes book, which was a big success. We have a book called The healing kitchen, which is a big success. And is all of that content live, technically available online? Of course it is. But and online for free. Of course it is. But I think I learned from Morty in the 1980s, that bottom line personal was more about packaging, as much as it was about, you know, blue, blue chip content, I mean, it's great content. But you have to have the combination of the blue chip content, and the packaging, that makes it so that this is just going to be too hard to compile on my own. And because direct now you can tell such a good story, you not only can tell a story enough to sell enough books to have a profitable business, you can also charge a higher price, because the story enriches everything, then something just sitting on the internet is sort of like loose content. But I also think the packaging is so important. So that the idea of creating additional premiums with a book, so that it becomes almost like a kit for a program or a plan. Something people can follow. So it's changing what people are going to pay for I think, but the concept that you can you can sell content, and people won't pay for content. I mean, I might as well pack up my bags now. You know, why do I want to believe that now? Do I think that giving away a lot of free content to eventually get them to pay for content is a great model? Yeah, I mean, the best guys who do launches online, are killing it doing that. But eventually they got to get paid. So, you know, as it pertains to direct mail, I think there's still light there. I worry about the shrinking universes outside lists for outside lists, because everybody's, you know, following the shiny object of how and how to monetize on Kindle or on in the iTunes Store or on Google. And, you know, I think actually by saying that the contrary, an argument would be, let them all go. Let them all abandon this. And let's figure out how to create an incredible opportunity. Because, you know, I think I made a joke that one of the conferences I was at, I said, I don't know what to do, you probably know this better than I do. But there's some number of people, someone who's on a page on online with their finger with their hand on the mouse, you know, you probably have 1.6 seconds or something. They're gonna click off. Right, right. So my joke was, well, you have points, I think I use the term point six, if I'm from I'm sure I'm accurate, within a half a second. And so point six seconds. And with direct mail, yes, they might be sorting their mail over a garbage can. But I bet you have at least 1.8 seconds. So you got three times more time. And so I was making it a job to kind of illustrate the point that, you know, engaging direct now is going to be a whole, it's a whole different game, you're playing in a different world. And if you're going to do that half assed, it's not going to work. So forget it. If you're not committed to it, then don't do it. If you're not going to read the books, and you're not going to take the training and you're not going to learn how to do it. So I don't know if I answered the question. I don't want, I don't want to throw my arms up and give up because content is free everywhere. I think, to me, that's so easy to say that, and there is a lot of truth in it. But damn, I just see response rates in direct mail that are as good today as they weren't 20 years ago. For the right product with the right creative to the right list. Its goal.
Perry Marshall
You know, I had a Congress, I was at a TED conference. And I bumped into the director of marketing for Playboy. The playboy is not like my cup of tea really. Right. But I was really curious to talk to him. He had been hired not terribly long before that. And so they'd gone on this headhunting mission, and he had done several other companies and had various exploits. And so, so he's having the job interview, and they were saying to him, you know, the thing is, is going in the wrong direction. And you know, we're hoping that we can, you know, reverse it and all that and he goes, are you kidding? He goes every every media company every internet centric media, He accompany this, you know, in all these other fields is killing it. Like what's the matter with you? Right. And one of the things that he told me was that he they had figured out that the demographic for their customers was pretty much identical to gamers. And that their company was now a front end for gaming. And they had basically all these affiliate relationships for people paying to do gaming. Now, playing games is paying for content. Yes, it's, it's not the same as books
Brian Kurtz
is a guy that just sold like a gain app for like, No, I mean, 10s of millions of dollars.
Perry Marshall
Yeah. So, you know, there's, there's a lot of directions the person could go. But, you know, deciding that you're, you're obsolete. You know, I think what this really illustrates is that you need to have something that's more interesting than the simple obvious thing that everybody else has always done. Correct. Right. That's what you're describing. So
Brian Kurtz
great product, great list. You know, great product, great list, great promotion, the world's your oyster. And every channel is open to you. You know, I own the URL dinosaurs and cowboys calm. And that's kind of what I'm living into at this point. You know, and as I said, I'm T Rex. So I may be, I may, I may be an extinct dinosaur. But the fact that I'm actually I'm not a non extinct Tyrannosaurus Rex, I can tell you apart.
Perry Marshall
So tell me your third story.
Brian Kurtz
So that this will be as fast as I think so. I was a list guy, my first 10 years. I mean, I was lucky me. I mean, I got to boardroom in 1981. And my first job was actually marketing and selling or renting the bottom line boardroom mailing lists, which were, you know, because we didn't take advertising in our newsletters. So the only way to reach the audience was through our list. So that's how I met everybody in direct response, because the bottom of our list was so good. I don't have to sell you on it. But I could, I could sell you a list now if you ask me to but but the bottom line list because we have these newsletters of very apple and people, we have a lot of executives on the list. They were mail order buyers, they were buying books, they were buying newsletter subscriptions. So they had so many things going for him both in demographics psychographics. So I basically could sell our list everybody I was selling to, you know, the money magazines, I just consult playboy I could sell to they sell, I mean, you rented list of that, then you still doing direct mail, you rent them for one time. Yes. People weren't nailing for you. Although you could do endorse mailings, which is how the affiliate business got invented any affiliate who doesn't think their business wasn't invented in the 1960s by people doing endorsed mailings, or anything. But the mailing list business was very, very big business for direct mail. And we exchanged a lot of names. And lucky in the boardroom, most companies gave their list to an outside list manager. And board in boardrooms case, we managed it in house because we didn't have advertising. And Marty was a sales guy in his previous life before he started boardroom. And he kind of wanted to keep the sales opportunity close to the close to the vest. And I became this great sales guy. I mean, I just I was like, I was a real store in the list business. I mean, I'm really proud to say just some people say I didn't ever want to admit that they worked in no mailing list business. I am so proud of it. Because I learned marketing from the audience perspective, I learned you know, what, what makes what makes what how you get response from a list and how you segment a list and what attributes of a list are most important. So the story quickly is that the the language of the list business were what they call data cards, and they still exist. I mean, they're all online now. But there were actual physical cards, usually six by nine. And you'd have the name of the list on it, you'd have how many names were available. The language of the list business was always called RFM. R stands for recency. F stands for frequency M stands for monetary value. So reasons and that you know a name that bought in the last three months was worth more than name that bought six months ago which was worth more than a name that bought 12 months ago.
Perry Marshall
You know, Brian, I have customers who think I had said
Brian Kurtz
that okay. I liked you enough, Terry that I'll go along with that. So that's any call them hotline. So that was the recency frequency was if they bought twice in the last three months or six months, they were better because That's a multi bar, that's what we call the multivitamin. And then monetary value, you know, what they spent on the product could make a difference if they spent, you know, $100 for a product versus 20. You know, depending on the offer, the $100 might have been a better name, not always, by the way, and I have a lot of exceptions of why when that's not true, actually, where the higher monetary value is not the key focus for that particular offer. thing that that I started doing research. And then when I got into marketing after being selling lists for so long, and then I was buying lists for boardroom to, when I started on that 1.3 billion name quest to be a big network. I would read data cards, and other other lists. And I cannot use any profanity in this call. If you want most data cards with disfellowship.
Perry Marshall
Big surprise,
Brian Kurtz
I started doing tons of research on figuring out, like, what was really behind the list or what what was the list manager who the people that were selling the list, what were they hiding in that data card. And then I wrote this article, which I still have, and it's one of my favorite things that I ever did. And I probably wrote, it must have been in the late 80s. And it was published in one of the trade magazines, and it's been re quoted and republished in a bunch of places. And the title was data cards, colon, guilty until proven innocent. And my concept was that, you know, you're spending all this money on printing, and postage and, and all the things that we go go into a direct mail campaign, and the list might be the most important thing. And because if you send a great package to the wrong list, it's never going to respond. Yeah. And basically, list managers were just trying to sell volume that was a volume business. And some of them were stupid. And they didn't realize that if the list didn't work after they sold you the wrong names. I mean, that Yeah, but they didn't get that. And but I said, I'm gonna protect my company. And I developed this worksheet. I mean, this was all kind of like, a surprise to me, because having sold lists with incredible integrity for so long. Like if I let me give you an obvious example. So I'm my book buyer list and say, my book of incentive formation was my big selling book. So I've got this list, and I've got a 30,000 name, three month hotline, and they've all bought book of inside information. I've made sure that the person I'm selling that list to knew that, so they know the type of book it was. And the next three months, I get a new hot book called the treasury of health secrets. Now look at this information is not just health, it's more consumer. So now in the in the next three months, my hotline is 30,000 names, but 90% of it is treasury of health secrets, not because it's an information, and the company that took a test, nailing of the 5000 look of inside information names last quarter comes back and says I want your hotline. And if I don't tell them that my product in exchange, I think he gets screwed on the rollout, though. Yeah. And that's what happened in the list business a lot, you know, and the cost was horrendous, right? I mean, it's not, we're not talking about 70 cents 1000 for email, $500 1000 in direct mail, or $300 1000. So I just became this flu, and I was known in the industry is the guy that wouldn't mail your list, unless you can prove to me that the names I took in my test look like the same names I'm taking in my rollout. Also, one of the things I learned and all of that sleuthing, if that's a word was that the promotion that the the type of promotion, sometimes was the most important thing. So for example, if I was renting a list from Rodale Press, a health book list, and I knew that Gary bencivenga wrote the package for the Rodale book that dominated that list. And Gary bencivenga had the control for my book, do you, would you? Would you believe me when I said that that was one of my best lists? That's a big surprise. Yeah, no, I wasn't, I knew I was going to prove this out. But the majority of the business didn't understand that the source goes beyond just whether it was direct now or space or TV. The source could be a copywriter that wrote the package that got the name, or maybe the type of promotion that got the name, whether it was a number 10 envelope, or a mag log or a book log or something like that. And then if I have that same format in direct mail, lo and behold, those were some of my death lists. And that was sometimes a situation where it didn't even matter what the cost of the product was, that was always more powerful than the fact that the product costs $10 $20 or $50.
Perry Marshall
That I have found that to be immensely true. What like when I do work with affiliates, how close my personality is to be affiliate. Exactly, you know, if if they send an email in their language and their style is like a complete mismatch. As the mind, you know, I might even need to rewrite the sales page to be more in their voice instead of mine, even if it's supposedly me speaking backwards.
Brian Kurtz
So, you know, again, where am I gonna put the surprise? Yeah, I guess the surprise was that when I sort of like started writing about this, in the trades and everything, I was a celebrity for it. You know, which was good. That was a surprise, because I'm saying, why wouldn't everybody want to do this to protect themselves against, you know, bad rollouts from tests, which was always a big complaint in the direct mail business. And in fact, I've always so proud one of the one of the great journalists in direct mail at the time was a guy by the name of Danny hatch. Oh, yeah, yeah, anybody who's ever get a hold, and Danny's written a bunch of books about, you know, tips and tricks of direct marketing and all that. And he has a book of like, quotes from great direct mail guys. And I mean, legends are in this book. And the fact that I'm in this book with the, quote, data cards are guilty until proven innocent. One of the highlights of my career, and, you know, I pay it was just, I was thinking about it this morning, because I know you wanted three stories, and I had the first two. And this one was sort of obvious, and I hadn't thought of it. And I said, You know what, it was a crowning achievement. It was early in my career. But I got to tell you all of those skills about as you just said, you just gave a great example, how applicable that is today for doing affiliate marketing online.
Perry Marshall
You know, I think if you kind of zoom out from the story, you just told it, the lift is the real gold in the direct marketing business. I agree. And it's funny how in the way Planet Earth seems to work is a lot of times the gold is guarded by the seeds. Yeah, like really the list business in general is a really shady carpetbagger dishonest business, at the bottom level,
Brian Kurtz
a great,
Perry Marshall
it's like, it's well, you know, it's like, it's like any, any business where, you know, the bottom 40% is like, drac.
Brian Kurtz
Right. Right. And,
Perry Marshall
and, you know, they just want to sell you the list Dad, you know, but 15 bucks, or 1000, or whatever, and make their commission and they don't, they don't see any kind of big, big picture at all.
Brian Kurtz
I guess, the direct mail, there was a bit of that, I wouldn't say 40%. Okay, but it was a little bit of that. But it was it was, it was it was direct, there was definitely drag percentage, but and I think that's why I became a little bit of a celebrity for this particular angle, because it really started addressing the people who, and again, you know, a lot of people like Jeff Walker always says, you know, he just believes in karma, you know, that all of those people won't be in business very long anyway. So Well, it's true, they give you a lot, they give you a lot of hardship, and pain in the short term. And so they're a pain in the ass, but they wouldn't be nice, you know, couldn't we? Couldn't we all just get along? Right?
Perry Marshall
Probably, this has been great. I just got one last question for you. You know, it seems like the world is in this massive transition where, well, everything is shifting around, right? I mean, you name it, we wouldn't even have to be talking about marketing. So So let's say that we are talking to somebody who, you know, they, they've got their sea legs in, and they've they've had a few successes, and they seem to know what's going on. But my goodness, like, it seems like every three months, something just, you know, smacks him on the back of the head that they totally didn't see coming. And, you know, it erodes the the confidence and you're wondering like, okay, is anything that I think I know, actually true? Right. So that's our person. What do you say to that person who, you know, some mornings, they're like, Man, I'm a stud and other mornings. It's like, I don't even know if the sun is actually moving from east to west, it might have switched.
Brian Kurtz
Right? That's a great, it's a great question. Wow. I, I think, you know, and I know that you're a voracious reader of great marketing books and great things. And I think you said it to me in a previous call that I was talking about Jean Schwartz, and breakthrough advertising and that the book was written in 1966. And we haven't changed one word of it, because it's about human behavior, and that hasn't changed. So maybe it's like, then you caught your call to the breakthrough advertising affair. And you divide it exceedingly, exceedingly rare gem that is just as true 51 years later, as the day rolled off the printing press, which I thought was brilliant, but take that a step further for this, in this context, I think that, you know, trying to take a look at the key things that are going to always stand the test of time, which really probably go back to things like human behavior, buying behavior. And, you know, the people that have sort of struck gold on the internet with, you know, scarcity plays and special bonuses. And, you know, endorsed mailings, really great endorsed mailings and affiliate programs, you know, what, what's old is new, again, kind of thing. And so, again, I don't want to sound like grandpa dinosaur here. But I do think there's still gold in both books, some of the great direct marketing books, I mean, scientific advertising still has great stuff in it that could be applied today. And you just never know, with a great mind of today of a great marketer of today. And I need them all the time. It's like, I really do believe that, you know, there was a period when I was a listing manager, because the list business was pretty shady. As he said, most times, I was the smartest guy in the room. And I'm never the smartest guy in the room when I'm dealing in the masterminds I'm dealing with, which is really where I want to be. And I'm actually, you know, probably in the lower half of the room. And so, what I love is that you have these fertile minds who know how to deal with no, you know, it's like, what do you do with the technology, you're going to use it for good or evil, right. And so they have so much at their fingertips and so much dexterity in how they can manipulate. And if they manipulate in the best way possible, the, you know, the marketing message and change it on the fly and do AV testing on the fly. So those folks, if they're not, you know, the best ones I know are reading the great books of the past and looking at great techniques of the past and looking at great promotions of the past, not to copy them. But to create a one plus one equals three so that they've got talent that none of their a guy, you know, sitting in that room where jean shorts would wouldn't be in the top half of the room. Well, maybe you were Jean Schwartz was just brilliant guy because he read everything, but would have no idea how to do a lawn for no idea how to, you know, do a promotion online that works on steroids. But imagine giving all of that material to the rocket scientists of today does not feel like a one plus one equals three or nine or 20.
Perry Marshall
But it is and you know, Brian, you should never apologize. Even if you are grandpa dinosaur. No, I'm not. You know, like, like, and I know you're not. But But really, it is it's really the grandpa dinosaurs, that that are the ones that save you from this feeling of, of your feet never touching the bottom of the swimming pool. Because because they're they're the ones that actually they always know where the bottom is. Right. And, and, and so like I, I kind of have this philosophy that Yeah, you should, you should probably know what's going on in the world. And you it would be a good idea to know what's hot and what's selling now that that is important in marketing. But I also think you should be like reading stuff that's 100 years old, no question or even 500 years old, because that's the only way you develop the sense for what is permanent?
Brian Kurtz
Yeah, I would, I would quote a wise man, I think his name is Perry Marshall. innovate yourself out of any corner that you've backed yourself into, because you're too successful. You know, you've lived it right. And you just gave me that quote to submit. But, you know, it's just, it's like, stop, stop reading your press clippings and get to work, you know, and you know, I am enamored with with so called the Cowboys that I need. I want to be one and I want to be one that you know is strapped to a saddle on a really really solid four footed slug dinosaur. That'll be my eye. When I when I do the artwork, it's going to be you know, Brian in a cowboy suit on top of the dinosaur. But I don't think cowboys negative term in my, in my world and dinosaur is not a negative term in my world. Considered negative to some degree as we talk about marketing, and man, you know, I mean, you and I are simpatico and then you've got so much more experience online than I do. And that's why but I respect you so much because of how you think and there's there's a small group that that that are like that. And unfortunately Perry it's like it's on you to to be the teacher mentor on all that so, so I
Perry Marshall
got a new title for you, Brian. Okay, that's ranas Thor is writer of the Wild West.
Brian Kurtz
Like, right All righty er.
Perry Marshall
That's right. That's right. So, you know, the Wild West is like the bleeding edge of now and Tran. asaurus is like 60 million years old and you know what? He could do both. That's man, you know, that packs a wallet.
Brian Kurtz
You know what I just I don't tell anybody. I might try to get the like TT Rex writer.
Perry Marshall
Okay. register it before I send out the CD. Yeah, absolutely. I better go get it. I better go get it. Okay. Brian, thank you very much for your time today.
Brian Kurtz
Oh, thank you, Perry. And we'll talk soon. I hope you got all right. Adios.