Resources in this Episode

Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hi Gorgeous. This is episode number 108 with a direct marketing titan, Brian Kurtz

Brian Kurtz [0:09]
Hi, this is Brian Kurtz, you’re listening to Heart Sells! Podcast with Christine Schlonski.

Christine Schlonski [0:16]
I’m so super excited to have the conversation with Brian Kurtz today, he has been a successful serial direct marketer for over 40 years now. His mission today is to be the bridge between the eternal truth of the direct response marketing and all that is considered state of the art direct response marketing today. He has just written a book that came out this year, Overdeliver, which he over-delivers. We’re going to dive into that, and especially into the message that marketing is not evil if you are doing it right. Before we dive in, make sure you subscribe to Heart Sells! Podcast, you leave a rating and a review you to, recommended to a couple of your friends when you enjoy it and share the love for Heart Sells Podcast. You find all the transcripts, show notes, resources we are talking about today at https://christineschlonski.com/ under the podcast tab. Let’s dive in into the episode with Brian Kurtz, Marketing is Not Evil and really have a good time. Get some inspiration out of this one. Hi, Brian, welcome to Heart Sells! Podcast.

Brian Kurtz [1:33]
I’m so happy to be here. The idea of heart selling and heart-centered entrepreneurs is something that I spent a lot of time in my career on. I have a lot to say about it and I hope I can share a lot with you today.

Christine Schlonski [1:49]
I’m quite sure. So welcome.

Brian Kurtz [1:52]
Thank you.

Christine Schlonski [1:53]
Just you know, we’ve been connected through a mutual friend, and I was so happy to learn you spend so much, well basically like all of your life in marketing.

Brian Kurtz [2:03]
Yes.

Christine Schlonski [2:04]
When did you know that marketing was your thing?

Brian Kurtz [2:08]
You know, I always knew because I’m an extrovert. I always knew that selling and marketing was something that I thought I I liked, and I wanted to do. But then when I was in college, I was a film critic from my school newspaper. I started thinking, “Oh, you know what, I maybe I’ll just be a writer.” When I got out of college, I look for jobs in New York, I just went to different companies that were publishers and ask for editorial jobs. It so happened that the job I got wasn’t an editorial job. It was a job doing royalty rights for plays and it wasn’t anything related, but it was a publisher. Then I got this interview with, Boardroom, this kind of sleepy little company that was growing. It was run by an entrepreneur who was an incredible guy, Marty Elston. When I got there, I wanted an editorial job, of course,I wanted to write, and Marty said and, the job I got was in list management. Now, I didn’t know what list management was, I didn’t know what a list broker wife or a list broker worked on Wall Street. But the idea of a list manager managing the names and addresses of all of your subscribers and book buyers. I didn’t know what what this was, but it was a job that was better than my other job, so I took it. I started doing it and I excelled at it. It was back to what was in me in the at the beginning. Then about a year-end, a job opened up on the editorial side, on the writing side at Boardroom. I went to Marty and I said, “Hey, that jobs available, I’d like to take it”, I’ve always wanted an editorial job. This was the turning point early in my career. I was like 24 years old. Marty said to me, “You know, you have a nose for marketing”, and like when you’re 24, and the president of the company says you have a nose for marketing, stay where you are, it’s hard to say, “No, I want to go to the editorial side.” So I didn’t know he knew. I kind of knew it, but I didn’t want to admit it. Then it was like, I took off from there and I became the best list manager in the country. Then I became the marketing director at Boardroom, Vice President, an Executive Vice President and learn direct marketing from the ground up. It was the best decision I ever made. That’s the quick snapshot story. But it definitely shows that and if you don’t know, what kind of think what your aptitude is, but you don’t know exactly and sometimes you need a little guidance. One of the things that I that I’ve been very, very dedicated to in my career is mentors. When I was 20, and 30 years old, all of my mentors was 60 and 70. People used to make fun of me, “Why do you hang out with the old people?” I mean, I knew they all have the wisdom. I mean, they had the experience and the wisdom. Of course, now, too many of them are dead. But what I learned from them was so valuable. I think that’s a big key to where I am now. Hopefully, I’m 61, I’m hoping that there’ll be some 20-year old, a 30-year old that will remember me. That ties into, remembering your mentors and remembering the people that got you there is just so important. In fact, I don’t know if you know the movie Coco. It’s a Pixar film, like it’s kind of a kids film, but it’s not a kids film. The movie is about Dia de los Muertos, which is a Mexican holiday, where you honor the dead, but it’s a celebration of the dead. The movie basically says that someone who dies is not really dead until they’re not remembered. That’s a very big reason why I wrote my book and why I do this. I think remembering your mentors, remembering your family, and it’s while you’re around, you have to keep remembering, and then you pass it on to the next generation. In marketing is the same thing. These great marketers who taught me so much, their lessons are still really valuable. There’s a lot of new marketing now that doesn’t directly relate, but the fundamentals don’t go away.

Christine Schlonski [6:59]
The fundamentals is connection, right?

Brian Kurtz [7:01]
It is.

Christine Schlonski [7:02]
A human talking to another human in different forms can be email, it can be Facebook live today.

Brian Kurtz [7:12]
Podcast.

Christine Schlonski [7:13]
Yeah, podcast, exactly. I just love what you said, about mentors. For me, that was quite a learning curve to accept that I needed help. That I needed support. That I, figuring out that it’s not a weakness to ask for help. Well, I would say, a milestone in my life.

Brian Kurtz [7:38]
Yeah, you know it’s an interesting thing. I say I did a video that was something like, you don’t choose your mentors, your mentors choose you. What I mean by that is, the best mentors I ever had are people that I wanted them to be my mentor, I wanted them to teach me stuff. But I wasn’t just going to ask them. I think it’s too easy to say, “Oh, will you be my mentor?” I get that a lot now from people. I’m not saying you have to earn it, but you gotta do something to show that you’re, I hate to use the word but worthy of that. Because when you’re experienced person, you’ve got so much on your plate, and there’s so much going on that you don’t know who you’re going to be able to help. I think, when I, I had an interesting thing with me, I have a weekly blog. I was talking about a great copywriter, and I want it and I had it all with his work. I was going to, I said, I really want to do a product. That is the work of Jim Roche, who was the copywriter, and three copywriters on my list, wrote back to me, and said, they were Jim Roche fans, and they said, “I want to work on that product”, no payment, no, nothing, nothing in return. I have to tell you that the product just is almost finished now. Those three copywriters, they’re like my mentees for life. They stepped up and wasn’t because they did me a favor. It was bigger than that. They wanted and talk about Heart Sells! They took their heart and put it into something like that. That meant the world to me. It happens all the time. When people out of nowhere, you know, “Can I help you with this? Can I do this for you?” Sometimes they’re not, it’s not applicable, but your mentors choose you if you play it right. I tell you, when I looked for mentors, like Dick Benson, who was a direct mail guru, and Gene Schwartz, who was a copywriting guru. What I did was I, I knew I was really good in the list management area, and they had companies that were ordering lists, and I basically stepped up and said, “You want some help, I know the lists really well”, and I was able to check on their lists. Once I did that, whether they reciprocate it or not, it didn’t matter. But the fact is, they did reciprocate, and they became my mentors. It’s a very important lesson in finding mentors. You got to be out there looking. Then the other piece that you said, about the pain of not knowing where to go for help. I always say, “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” So the idea of being in mastermind groups, of being in groups where, I mean, look, in my mastermind group, I’m not the smartest guy in the room, but I’m pretty smart. But then when I go to other mastermind groups that I pay to be in, I am, in some of them, I feel like I’m the dumbest guy in the room, because I’m learning. So being a teacher and a student all the time, and going back and forth between those two things are so important. It was a good lesson for us.

Christine Schlonski [11:17]
I totally agree. I think I’m a lifelong learner and the person who isn’t. What I learned from one of my early bosses was like, we are lifelong learners. As soon as you stop, if you don’t grow, you die.

Brian Kurtz [11:34]
Yes.

Christine Schlonski [11:35]
And that was something that I really took to heart, especially in sales, high ticket sales over the phone, where it’s not always comfortable.

Brian Kurtz [11:45]
Yes.

Christine Schlonski [11:46]
If you don’t grow, you die. That was like the truth for me. I always say like, “It’s not a comfort zone, it’s a desk zone”, and so you might hurry to get out of it.

Brian Kurtz [11:58]
Absolutely,

Christine Schlonski [11:59]
Love it. Did you know all, well, when when you started that list building, and you got familiar, and you got really good with that, was it always the way that you were pretty confident and what you did or was the process?

Brian Kurtz [12:16]
Yeah, I think, I started realizing that the, if you fast forward to my book and stuff that I ended up writing about. I think the list, when you’re talking about marketing, there’s basically, to simplify it a little bit, there are basically three elements that are the key to every campaign or every promotion. Now, I was, this is like I was in direct mail, but it applies to the internet, too. It was list-offer-copy. There was something that I read early on that said, “The success of the campaign is 40% list, 40% offer, 20% creative or copy. I thought about and I said, “Wow, that means that copy is half as important”, and then as I got involved in marketing, and I realized, and so I did have some confidence in trying to figure this out. But I wasn’t, it wasn’t like, I wasn’t in a dark forest. But I was like just examining, and I was on an inquiry that was very, very important. What I realized that 40-40-20 formula says is not that the creative is half as important. But if you have the best creative, but your list is not targeted enough and your offer is mediocre, you’re not going to make any sales, that’s a zero. But the opposite. If you have a perfect list, like people who are absolutely wedded to your product, or people are doing an affiliate deal, and that you know that those people can buy, and you have a decent offer and your copy is just mundane or not great, you’re going to make some money, you’re going to make, you’re going to get orders. Now the key is, so it’s not half as important, but it’s the last thing to worry about. But then worry about it, make sure that you give the best creative approach, once you have your list in, your offer dialed in. That’s how you get big, big breakthroughs. I actually changed the 40-40-20 rule to the 41-39-20 rule, so that the 41% was the list. Because every copywriter that on the creative side that I talked to, they know it’s the list too. They know that they can’t write to an audience that’s not interested in the product. I’m oversimplifying a little bit to make my point. But the list is the most important thing. But not at the expense of creative and not at the expense of a killer offer. But you’ve got to get the list style, then you’ve got to get it segmented, you’ve got to get it so that you can write copy to that list and to the segments of the different list. I think, as I went, I was early in my career, I didn’t have, I had confidence that I could learn this, but I was kind of like looking at it and like, “Where is this going?”, and fast forward to some time in the last few years, I went on the internet, and I looked up the 40-40-20 rule because I was writing about it in the blog. I found something that said, “The 40-40-20 rule is dead and the new rule is 25-25-25-25”, and I’m thinking, “Whoah, that doesn’t make sense.” I looked at it, so they said, “25% list 25% offer, 25% copy or creative, and 25% technology”, and I’m like, “No, that’s not right.” Technology is a means of working everything. But it’s not equal to the list and the offer and the copy. I then I found the quote from Bill Bernbach who is one of the original madmen of the 1960s in advertising. I think I have the quote in my book. It’s something like, never adapt your technique, never adapt your idea to the technique, adapt your adapted technique to the idea. So get an idea, get a concept, get what you want to do, and then work the technology and work all the the the whiz-bang to get it out there. Is it Facebook? Is it direct mail? Is it TV? Is it a radio? That’s the medium, but you got to get the message and you got to get the list. But the list was the most important. When I realized that I was now in the list part of the business, and that was the most important, again, I was not objective at that point, I was really showing that this is the area I was an expert in, but it really is the most important. Starting from the audience is so important. That’s really how you connect. I mean, Heart Sells!, if you don’t connect with your audience, no creative and no offer is going to help you and you got to really connect.

Christine Schlonski [17:26]
I totally agree. What advice could you maybe give for people listening that might be soloprenuers, coaches, healers, and having the idea that, first of all, a list is like, that’s the asset, right? That’s what they need to collect. It’s not enough to just show up on Facebook and make an offer because they don’t own that traffic. They’ll have to be on your list.

Brian Kurtz [17:53]
Getting an email list is key at this point.

Christine Schlonski [17:58]
Looking back on those 40 years of experience, what could you give somebody who might be in their early days as an entrepreneur, maybe they only have like 100 or maybe only 10, like their mom, their grandmother, what’s a good way to start and to take that serious, but also to connect in such a way that when they make an offer, they will have that impact and will see that there are things sell because they have the right people?

Brian Kurtz [18:31]
I think what a lot of young entrepreneurs, they don’t have a list or they have a small less. Small list can be very mighty, they can, it’s really the quality over the quantity and yet they feel that they have to get a bigger list to, they have to scrape Facebook likes, and they have to grab as many people as possible, but you’re not going to grab people that you’re going to be able to connect with. I think, for me in a, and I’m in a B2B market now, not a B2C when I was in business to consumer. You do mailings with a free offer, and you get a lot of names. You can do that now too. But and I’ll get people on my list for a lot of free information. But I think that you have to really take your time. It’s a painstaking process. But just what we’re doing right now, we’re on a podcast, some people might have already stopped listening because they don’t want to hear what I have to say. But if they’re interested, they’re in this conversation with us. At the end of this, I’m going to give them a place to go where they can get a lot more of me if they want to go. And if they want to get a lot more of me they can go, they can get a lot of free content. And now you’ve got somebody who likes what you say, likes what you do, and it doesn’t have to be selling, it doesn’t have to be, it can be all content. And that is a, but it takes time. Going on, I’ve been on hundreds of podcasts, I mean, in the last five years, and I never turned one down. Because I know that I’ll get to an audience, that I’ll find a few people that will resonate with what I’m saying, many won’t, and that’s fine. And then they opt into my list. And then I’m going to keep delivering really good content. I’m obsessed with it, it’s one of my biggest things. I think, so podcast is one writing articles and putting your opt-in or your landing page in the article, and that’s online and offline. I think you never want to give away an opportunity to share your wisdom with the world. Because, and hopefully enable them to come to find you. I think it’s like the best way to market and you say again Heart Sells! It’s not, you know, I get a name and then as soon as I get the name, I start selling them stuff. I mean, some people can do it, and I’m a guy who’s been selling and marketing my whole life, that’s not my first step. My first step is to, get it sorted out, here’s the analogy. You’re on a lake, and you’re fishing. You can take a pole and throw it in the water with bait on the this is like the concept here is fishing without bait. You throw a pole in the water with bait, and some people will snap it up and you bring them in and you sell them. Another way to look at it as you bring, the lake is all-inclusive, as many people as you can put on your list. And then you just shine a light over the lake constantly. And the light in this analogy is content, and you shine the light, shine the light, shine the light, and when they’re ready, they will jump into the boat. So the fish jump into the boat without any bait. When they jump into the boat, they are ready, and I’m ready to serve them in some way. I’m not trying to trick them, I’m not trying to make them think that you’re going to jump into my boat, and then I got you, but I am going to sell you like educational materials, like this kind of stuff that I’ve learned in my 40 years is available in books, in swipe files, which are like promotions from the past. I know that because I have the connections and you might not. I’m going to get you access to a lot more than you’ll ever get access to. Everybody does it at their own speed and their own, and again, for me that’s congruent. I mean, I talk about congruent marketing. To me, what’s congruent for me is get, getting names on my list is very important, but not at all costs. The funny thing is, I’ve looked at my list over the last five years. I started at no nothing, or at least my email list was a couple of hundred people. Now it’s about I don’t know, maybe 12,000, which is not huge, it’s not, but it’s a good list, and I blog to them every week. Over the last like, a couple of years, when I’ve done this, this methodology of shining the light, my open rates have gone up, which tells me that I’m doing something good. Whether they buy from me or not, I don’t really care, but a lot of them do. I’m not selling like crazy. In fact, I always sell only in the PS of my blog, so that the, I’m not saying what I’m doing is the best way because certain people are selling more. You can turn it up or turn it down. What I always like to say is, marketing isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. Therefore you and you can adjust the volume on that marketing messaging, but you have to accept the fact that marketing is not evil. I said this to a bunch of, I spoke in Hungary a couple years ago with Hungarian entrepreneurs. Now that’s an oxymoron. But they’re just aren’t a lot of them but there’s enough and I had to like, get them to understand that marketing is not evil, that taking money from people is not a bad thing, if you do it congruent with who you are and what you want to share. That’s the message of my book, I’m going to teach you all the marketing and then you decide how intense you want to use the techniques.

Christine Schlonski [25:22]
How it is aligned to who you are and what —

Brian Kurtz [25:25]
That’s right, congruent marketing, that’s what I thought.

Christine Schlonski [25:27]
Wonderful. Time just flies. I feel like I have so many questions. So I’m happy I have a second episode with you, but let’s give people the opportunity to get the hands-on your amazing book. Tell them where to —

Brian Kurtz [25:40]
Yeah, so it’s called, Overdeliver: Build a Business for a Lifetime Playing the Long Game in Direct Response Marketing. I’m really proud of it. It’s not the be-all, end goal of all marketing books. It’s basically, but it does give you the basics of lists, of offers, of creative, but not from a standpoint of, I’m going to teach you how to write copy, I’m going to teach you, I teach a little bit about building lists, but it’s a real, it’s more of a strategic overview of what I’ve done in marketing. If you go to https://www.overdeliverbook.com/, you’ll go there, there’s 11 amazing bonuses. Each one is huge. I mean, there’s one that Jay Abraham, who wrote the foreword for my book, who’s a marketing icon, he supplied two of the 11. One is a course that how to get to where you want to go. It was a course that cost them like $200,000 to build. He’s not selling it, but he gave it away digitally on the site. I also have 21 keynote speeches of Jays, on the site. I did an event in 2014 called, The Titans of Direct Response. I had the best of marketers in the world at the event, and I have six of the 12 videos from that event that are really, really valuable. I’ve got a swipe file of 400 pages of fantastic mailing pieces and promotions, going back to 1900, believe it or not. It’s stuff that, it’s swipe and deploy, it’s not stealing, but you steal smarter, you look at concepts. Anybody who’s doing marketing today, having a great swipe file is really important so I wanted to do that. There are a couple of PDFs of full books, by Dick Benson and Gordon Grossman, which are books that you can’t really get. They’re only available on the site. They’re two of the greatest books ever written about direct mail, which gives you a really good insight into marketing. There’s a swipe file from Dan Kennedy. It’s just an amazing site. So https://www.overdeliverbook.com/ you go there, follow the instructions, you go buy my book, and then you get these incredible bonuses. I think the offer over-delivers. Your listeners can judge whether it does or not, but I think it does.

Christine Schlonski [28:30]
Yeah. I love the title and that’s why you are also on the show, because everything you do, you are giving first.

Brian Kurtz [28:39]
Always.

Christine Schlonski [28:39]
It’s always the content piece. For somebody who desires to have more, they can make the decision to jump into your boat.

Brian Kurtz [28:48]
That’s right.

Christine Schlonski [28:49]
Shine the light. Thank you so much for this episode and I’m so excited that I get to talk to you some more.

Brian Kurtz [28:55]
Oh, great thing.

Christine Schlonski [28:57]
Bye for now.

Brian Kurtz [28:58]
Bye.

Christine Schlonski [28:59]
I’m so excited that we have the conversation with Brian today. I’m so looking forward to our next conversation where we are talking about how to market from your heart because as you know, Heart Sells! , and I find it remarkable how Brian’s path was carved, so to speak by people putting him in certain positions and him discovering his gifts that he was able to give to the world. I really hope that you got the idea that the better your marketing, the more it comes from that heartfelt place with the right intention, then there is no thing as evil marketing and you can really, really get your gifts into the world and serve as many people as you possibly can. So that not only your business is thriving, but you support more people in this beautiful world. Thank you so much for tuning in. Please leave a review and rating for height sales podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/podcast , find the show notes, all the resources we talking about, especially Brian’s wonderful book, Overdeliver. Where he over-delivers, and really have fun, enjoy the process and give the best you’ve got to your wonderful clients. Have a wonderful day wherever you are. And I’m saying bye for now.