Direct Marketing is Not Dead: Brian Kurtz

Summary

In this episode of the Profitable Creative Podcast, host Christian Brim speaks with marketing expert Brian Kurtz about his journey in the marketing world, the evolution of direct marketing, and the importance of customer retention and lifetime value. They discuss the significance of lists in marketing, the engagement and trust required to build lasting customer relationships, and how to leverage existing customers for greater profitability. Brian shares insights from his extensive experience and emphasizes that while marketing techniques may evolve, the fundamental principles remain unchanged.

Takeaways

• Lists are not just names; they represent real people with needs and preferences.
• Direct mail is experiencing a resurgence and is far from dead.
• Onboarding new customers is a continuous process, not just a one-time event.
• Understanding customer lifetime value is crucial for effective marketing strategies.
• The glamour of acquiring new customers often overshadows the value of retaining existing ones.
• Engagement with customers is key to building trust and loyalty.
• Assessing your assets, especially your customer lists, is vital for business success.
• The principles of direct marketing remain relevant despite technological advancements.
• Creating meaningful content for customers can enhance engagement and retention. 

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Transcript

Christian Brim (00:01.41)
Welcome to another episode of the profitable creative the only place on the internet where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Pittsburgh, California, not Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, California. No idea where that is. Maybe somebody got lost going west and named the town after Pittsburgh and Durham. Anyway, joining me today.

Brian Kurtz of Titan Media. Brian, welcome to the show.

Brian (00:34.455)
Yes, it's Titan's marketing, but I do do media. That's okay, but I do media. I'll be anything you want me to be, Christian. I'm really pleased to be here.

Christian Brim (00:36.27)
Titan's marketing. Okay, sorry.

I love that. I'm glad to have you. I got to start out with now this is a podcast audio only. But for the listeners, he is wearing a Yale football t shirt, which I find fascinating, mainly because I'm a Sooners fan. And Oklahoma actually ripped off Yale's fight song to create their own. I don't know if you knew that. Yeah. Boomer Sooner, which

Brian (01:06.243)
You did not know that.

Christian Brim (01:09.922)
you know, all of our adversaries hate that song. And there's a reason, I mean, it's awful. But it had its origin story at Yale, so.

Brian (01:21.677)
Well, I would say Yale football is not as proficient or excellent as Oklahoma football. My son happens to be the director of recruiting for Yale football. And what I find interesting, it might tie into this podcast actually, because we're talking about, you know, special talents and creative and doing what you love. And you know, when he goes out recruiting, I'm gonna try to twist this and see if I can do it. Let me see, I'm gonna do it on the fly.

Christian Brim (01:35.64)
Nice.

Okay, let's hear it.

Christian Brim (01:50.19)
Let's do it.

Brian (01:52.31)
But when he goes out to find a player to play for Yale, Yale's a one double A, so it's just below division one, but it's not division two. It's a decent level of football. It's Ivy League. He's got to find a really special kid because he's got to get a kid, first of all, that can play football, that can not only read and write, but have at least a 3.7 GPA to even look at him.

Christian Brim (01:56.216)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Okay. Right.

Christian Brim (02:10.189)
All

Christian Brim (02:17.793)
can get into Yale, right? Yeah.

Brian (02:19.618)
mean, and you can't get into Yale with a 3.7. You can get into Yale with a 3.7 if you play football. And then he has to figure out, is this kid, is he gonna get a scholarship to Oklahoma or to Florida or to Arkansas where he might be able to go to the NFL one day? Or is he really good? He knows he's never gonna be in the NFL. His parents are saying, you can go to Yale and.

Christian Brim (02:25.612)
Okay.

Christian Brim (02:33.261)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (02:48.17)
and get financial aid, they don't give scholarships at Yale, but get financial aid and be part of the old boy network of Yale? There are parents that push their kid to my son and then he has to figure out is the kid good enough to play at Yale even? And once he's good enough to play at Yale, you figure, okay, how am gonna get this kid? And it's a challenging recruiting. Whereas Oklahoma, you go out, you look for the four and five star players.

Christian Brim (02:56.95)
Right?

Brian (03:17.782)
They might, I mean, they have to be able to have a basic knowledge of reading and writing, but they don't have to go to classes all the time. They don't have to be the same kind of student. And I'm not saying that in a derogatory way. Everybody's got their talents, which is what you talk about on this podcast, I think, and doing what you love. And I find it fascinating that he finds it very rewarding looking for these, they're not needles in a haystack. They're sort of like, they're like,

Christian Brim (03:31.926)
No.

Brian (03:46.696)
intellectuals inside the brawn kind of

Christian Brim (03:51.02)
Yeah, there there are actually I mean, you've seen some of them even in the NFL where they've, you know, gone to Stanford or something like that. Yeah.

Brian (03:58.817)
Yeah, become Rhodes Scholars, they become doctors, get PhDs after they play. there are. There are. No, no. And if you have to recruit, you know, to play college football, you know, it's an interesting profile that he's looking for. And yeah, I find it fascinating anyway.

Christian Brim (04:03.755)
Yeah, there are smart athletes. There are. It's just not what you normally see, that's for sure.

Christian Brim (04:22.593)
Yeah, I'm not going to go down the road of talking about the demise of college athletics because I'm not going to do that. Although it is very passionate. I will say that I was a 30 year season ticket holder and this year I chose not to renew because of the state of college athletics. I'm fed up with it. I'm done with it.

Brian (04:28.942)
Yeah, the NIL and all that. Yeah, yeah. That could be its own podcast that no one will be interested in me and you.

Brian (04:46.452)
Interesting. I'd like to have that conversation with you off camera one day, because I'm passionate about that too.

Christian Brim (04:51.147)
Yes. So for those in the audience that don't know who Brian Kurtz is, why don't you give us the short bio.

Brian (05:01.506)
Yeah, without saying I was born a poor child on a farm in 1923 or something like that, no, no. I wasn't born with a silver spoon, but I was born lower middle class in a suburb of New York City. And I had a childhood that was kind of normal. I went to Rutgers State University of New Jersey.

Christian Brim (05:08.523)
Were you? No, you're not that old.

Brian (05:30.124)
When I graduated college, and I was an English major, and I wanted to learn how to read and write. My parents were unhappy. And speaking of accounting, I know you're in accounting, and you have accounting firms. My parents said, you're going to be an accountant or a lawyer. And I said, no, I'm going to be an English major. And they said WTF in their own vernacular, circa 1980. And I said, you know, I just want to learn how to read and write and see where it goes.

Christian Brim (05:46.221)
Hmm.

Right, right.

Brian (05:58.755)
I don't wanna be a lawyer, I don't wanna be an accountant, I don't wanna get an MBA, not interested. I just wanna see where this takes me. And where it took me in my second job was to this little company called Boardroom Inc. And Boardroom Inc. in 1981 was probably like a five, six million dollar company. We published newsletters and books. And for consumers basically. So it was...

Christian Brim (06:11.692)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (06:27.222)
And newsletter is important. It's not a magazine. Newsletter means no advertising, subscription-based. You have to make money in circulation. And then was direct marketing because direct response marketing is that everything you do needs to be measurable. So I didn't know what I was getting into. I just wanted to go to a publishing company and see what happened. Right. So I get there and I see this whole direct marketing thing before my eyes. And I'm like, wow, this is interesting. And

Christian Brim (06:48.685)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (06:56.128)
I didn't, so I kind of fell into it, but it was an incredible fit. I still thought I was gonna work in the editorial department. We had a newsletter called Bottom Line Personal, which ended up being the largest consumer print newsletter in the country at one point in the late 1980s. We got over a million paid subscribers to a print consumer newsletter.

Christian Brim (07:03.062)
You

Christian Brim (07:18.357)
Was this was that before after Kiplinger? Because that's the one I remember. Okay.

Brian (07:21.718)
It was at the same time, same time. Kiplinger, I knew the people at Kiplinger. They had a tax letter, they had the Washington letter. We used to exchange names in direct mail all the time. So yeah, you're old enough to remember. see, those of you who aren't on video, he's got gray in his beard. So yes, he's got wisdom. 55, I'm a lot older than you, but that's okay. But you've got a lot of wisdom in that beard and in your mind, so that's good. Yeah, no, you got it.

Christian Brim (07:37.069)
Yes. I'm 55 for the record.

Christian Brim (07:45.921)
That's what I'm going for with the look. People think that anyway.

Brian (07:49.837)
Well, you fooled me, Christian, so that's okay. So I really felt like, okay, this is interesting, but I thought, okay, at some point I'll be in the editorial department. I'll write or I'll edit. And a couple of years in, Marty Edelstein, who was the founder of Boardroom, ended up, he was a genius marketer, well known in direct marketing circles as a genius.

I went to him and a job opened up in the editorial department and I said, know, and this ties into this podcast. It's about doing what you love, right? And I thought what I was gonna love was writing. Because I remember I went to college to learn how to read and write. And so I said, and I said, Marty, I'd like to have that editorial job that just opened up. And he just looked at me. And this is like one of those moments where you know in your life was where, you know, the.

Christian Brim (08:26.121)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (08:31.405)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (08:47.766)
the horizon is like just ahead of you and it's everything opened up. He says, Brian, you have a nose for marketing. Now I'm 23 years old, this is the president of a company, the CEO, the founder, he's taking an interest in me, who the hell am I gonna decide what I have a nose for when I just didn't know what I was doing? I was 23 years old. And I guess one of the best things I did was sort of I trusted the process, I trusted.

Christian Brim (09:11.383)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (09:16.738)
someone smarter than me, wiser than me, someone who had experience to tell me that I had a nose for marketing. Now have a big nose, you can't see it on camera, but I do have a nose for marketing. And I did, I didn't know what marketing was, I mean, I was learning it and I was learning it from the list side. So I was creating, we managed our list in-house. So boardroom,

Bottom line, all of our newsletters and our books, we had all the buyers and subscribers and we didn't take advertising because it was a newsletter and books, but we rented our list to people like Kiplinger and Money Magazine and Disabled American Veterans and Consumer Reports. They all used the boardroom list because they were affluent executives who bought through direct mail. And people who buy through direct mail continue to buy through direct mail. And you can tell just by me telling this story, I was hooked.

Christian Brim (10:04.119)
Right?

Brian (10:12.086)
I was hooked on everything about this direct marketing thing, this measurable marketing, this return on investment marketing. And so that's the origin story. And from there, I'm saying the rest is history. was like, it's 44 years since then, but I created just an amazing, I carved out a career by being the list guy initially.

Christian Brim (10:12.278)
Yes.

Brian (10:41.472)
And being a list guy, who said, is that a passion, being a list guy? It can be, because you're looking at the people. I always say lists are people too. It's not just a bunch of names on a piece of paper or in a computer. Every person is a living, breathing human, believe it or not. And I just was so fascinated with that concept, and that when I learned...

Christian Brim (10:45.965)
You

Brian (11:08.261)
the concepts behind list segmentation and learning how to slice and dice a mailing list to be able to, and I do it today. mean, fast forward 2025, slicing and dicing a list so that you can mail one message to one piece of the list and another message to another piece of the list. It's all the same principles. It's just on steroids with the technology and AI and everything that's happening today, but the principles are all the same.

Christian Brim (11:30.018)
Yes.

Brian (11:36.833)
And the interesting thing is that over 44 years in the business, I've been able to stay relevant, which surprises me some days. It really does. Because I'm an OG from, you I'm an original gangster to a lot of people, but I'm looking for the NGs, the new gangsters. And I bring them into my mastermind to speak and they come in and they are just state of the art with AI and with media buying and YouTube and reels on Instagram and how they're making it pay out and.

Christian Brim (11:43.436)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (12:06.72)
making it profitable, and I'm like, I'm a kid in a candy store. I am just absorbing everything. And one of my mentors is Jay Abraham. I think we talked about this before we turned the recording on. And Jay Abraham, who wrote the foreword to my book, Over Deliver, told me from the day I met him in 1983, I met him really early in my career, and he's been a mentor ever since. He said, once you learn it, once you know it, once you've done it,

you have a moral responsibility to teach it. And I'm in the teaching phase of my career. That doesn't mean I'm not still learning. I learn every day, but I'm trying to teach what I did and then bring in anything new that I don't know. Because I'm not gonna sit there and be stagnant and say, what I've got in my knowledge base is satisfactory. It's not, especially today when it's changing every 15 minutes.

Christian Brim (12:42.957)
Sure.

Christian Brim (13:02.327)
Yeah, I mean, I think you actually, you know, the the the axiom of those who don't know teach, I think is exactly backwards. I think that you actually learn best and at your highest level when you're teaching. And I'm curious. So we got connected by Perry Marshall and in one of his recent newsletters. Yes, he still sends a print newsletter.

Brian (13:18.721)
Yes.

Brian (13:30.422)
Yes he does.

Christian Brim (13:32.877)
And he talks about the death of direct marketing. I don't know if you read that in the newsletter, but I'm

Brian (13:40.694)
You know, but he's been on that for over 10 years. So, yeah.

Christian Brim (13:45.069)
So the news of direct marketing's demise is a little overstated. I guess that's what I was gonna get your opinion on. What your thoughts on that comment is.

Brian (13:57.271)
Yeah, mean, there's a lot of layers to it and Perry goes into it and anything Perry says. Once Perry makes an argument, usually I end up agreeing with it even if I disagree with it initially. So I won't disagree or agree with Perry because disagreeing with Perry is a perilous place to be. On the other hand, on the other hand, I will say that the news, Mark Twain called the news of my death has been greatly exaggerated. And I'd say that about direct mail. mean, direct mail, people say direct mail is dead.

Christian Brim (14:06.188)
Right.

Christian Brim (14:11.341)
You

Christian Brim (14:23.126)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (14:26.004)
It is so far from dead that it's crazy that it's actually it has a resurgence now. Now, is it the same as it was? Of course not. You know, to do prospecting in direct mail with print, paying print and postage, when email is basically free, you'd be a crazy to do prospecting. But using direct mail on the backend of a digital business is genius. Having physical product and tactile

Christian Brim (14:50.743)
Yes.

Brian (14:54.21)
product on the back end is it's just it's a differentiator more than anything else and then once you differentiate you innovate and you invent even and so I Don't think direct marketing is dead the old way of direct marketing the old way of mailing millions and millions of names and getting you know 2 % response rates at on a $39 product that's pretty dead it's dead but

Christian Brim (14:58.913)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (15:20.001)
Yeah.

Brian (15:22.102)
direct mail, direct marketing, direct response marketing, measuring your response, getting, I don't think any of that is dead. Now I think Perry likes to make the headline and then he goes and it's layered, you it's a layered thing. But so I don't agree with the statement that it's dead. I do agree that there are elements of old school direct response marketing that are dead. More in the techniques and more in the tactics, not in the philosophy. The bedrock philosophy,

Christian Brim (15:35.639)
Yes.

Brian (15:52.491)
It's as sound as it's ever been. In fact, there's a book written by Gene Schwartz, who's one of the greatest copywriters of all time. He was a friend and mentor of mine. I'm so proud to be able to say that. He wrote a book called Breakthrough Advertising in 1966. I have the exclusive rights to it today. And the book is 100 % relevant to everything that's being done in marketing today. You cannot go into that book

Christian Brim (16:12.449)
Nice.

Brian (16:22.112)
Now you'll see, I added some ads from the 1960s that he has in there, and they're dated in a way, but the principles are, they'll live on forever. Things like the levels of sophistication of your audience, and how the level of sophistication will determine how you market to them. The level of awareness of you, your product, your service, all of that is so universal.

Christian Brim (16:28.908)
Right.

Christian Brim (16:50.743)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (16:51.618)
And that was all direct marketing. Now I will say that when I talk about breakthrough advertising as a book about copywriting, I'm doing it a disservice because it's about marketing too, but it's also about human behavior. And that's the key. know, marketing is human behavior. And so if a book is about human behavior, I mean, look at Cialdini's book, Influence, one of the greatest books ever written. And every copywriter I've ever met says it's one of the top

three or four books in their library that they read constantly. It wasn't written as a copywriting book. It was written about, you know, how to influence people, how to communicate properly, how to not just get under their skin, but really relate to them. And to me, that is part of direct response marketing. So how could that ever be dead? I'm, I'm sure Perry would come back to me and give his argument and we get into it a little bit, but I don't think he can disagree with what I've just said.

Christian Brim (17:27.54)
Right.

Christian Brim (17:50.23)
No, think what I took away from his article was that the attribution of a leader of sale is much more convoluted than it was.

Brian (18:04.33)
It's been convoluted forever and it's more convoluted than ever because the multi-channel approach. In fact, I hosted a Titans of Direct Response event, I told you about it before we turned the camera on, in 2014, which Perry spoke at. And in fact, I think he said it was a direct marketing is dead kind of thing. Yeah, I think when they started it. And it's interesting because it was an interesting conference because it was all about

Christian Brim (18:09.677)
Correct.

Christian Brim (18:14.029)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (18:22.701)
That's where he started this, this nonsense.

Brian (18:33.856)
like the historical significance of so much of the direct marketing that came before and what was coming ahead. And they were so related. They were so intertwined. It was, it was unbelievable. So I, I, I, just think that it's a mistake to dismiss the past. However, to not acknowledge that everything is

Everything is on steroids now. It really is. To put it, I hate to use that, it's kind of an overused phrase, but everything is super-duper. Everything is high-tech. Everything is, and yet, the principles still live on, and I don't think anyone can argue with that.

Christian Brim (19:25.291)
Yeah, and and I'm a consumer of marketing services, as opposed to a deliverer. And so my perspective is different. But I have I have crossed that gap of marketing pre digital and post digital. And you know, my I don't know if this is correct. But you know, for me that that was, you know, 25 years ago, and the advent or the

not the invention, but the the ubiquity of the internet. And you're exactly right. There are some things that don't change. I'll tell you two things that don't change that just fascinate me that they don't change. The first is my costs. My costs, you'd think with digital would go down. Now, we're in a very high trust business. And so

Brian (20:21.207)
Yes.

Christian Brim (20:23.617)
But our costs have stayed the same relative to the client revenue before and after for 28 years. And that fascinates me because that tells me that there's something driving that more fundamental than the method or the channel or the strategy. The other thing that hasn't changed is

Brian (20:49.441)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (20:53.165)
our conversion percentage. So it bounces around, but we close about one in three, maybe 40 % on the high end of our quotes, which again also fascinates me because it would seem to me the better you got at identifying your target market and your

messaging and your offer that that close percentage would go up, right? Eventually you'd close a higher percentage, but

Brian (21:31.643)
Have you looked at another metric which could tell you, I think even more, which would be renewal and lifetime value? So in other words, the conversion is one thing, but I would venture to say, and I get the sense that you are doing things at a more sophisticated level today than you've ever done them, you're doing them with more skill and empathy and all of the things that go into

Christian Brim (21:40.077)
Hmm.

Brian (22:00.948)
a good marketing message and all of that. I would say that if you're doing it right, your renewal rates are probably not the same. They would probably go, that's where, and that's where profit goes up. So I know your book is called Profit First for Creatives, and I know that that's the bottom line. Are you making more profit? And if you are, I would dig in a little more and say you're probably doing

Christian Brim (22:16.716)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (22:30.338)
Because I think there's a fundamental of direct response marketing that says, it's easier to keep a customer than get a new one. I think the notion that the top marketers today, online and offline, they understand that the really good ones and the ones like you, I'm gonna put you in that category. And people say they're not marketers, but everybody's a marketer, so it's okay. You can admit it.

Christian Brim (22:37.216)
Yes. Yes.

Christian Brim (22:57.398)
Yes. Daniel Pink wrote a book about that like everybody's in sales, right? So yeah, yeah.

Brian (23:00.734)
Exactly. Everybody's a salesman, right, right. But I think that it's interesting because, in fact, there was someone that once said to me, this woman had a really interesting business. She sold to coaches and she sold memberships and all of that. And she had a quote, she said, on boarding is not housekeeping. On boarding is not housekeeping. So what's on boarding in marketing? It's when you get a new customer, you bring them on, you...

Christian Brim (23:23.606)
Hmm.

Brian (23:30.486)
you know, treat them like gold, you do everything you can to make them feel welcome, all of that. But onboarding is not housekeeping. It's onboarding, and I went on and said onboarding is forever. You're always onboarding, you're always re-onboarding. And if that's your marketing philosophy, you can see that it's not always about the new shiny customer. It's the old customer that's been paying you for the last six years.

And so I'm obsessed with that because in my business at Boardroom back in the 80s and 90s, our big newsletter was bottom line personal. We got to a million subscribers and we didn't make money on the first year subscriptions. We used to lose money intentionally to make it back in year two based on the renewal rates that we would expect. We called it the bogey. was something that my direct mail guru, Dick Benson,

invented, everybody had an acceptable value calculation. He called it the bogey and he didn't copyright it, but it was his thing. And so I knew how much I could lose in year one to make it back in year two. As we got bigger and we started accumulating cash because of that, I knew that I could lose money in year one and not make it back to year three. And I'd still be more profitable that way because I accumulated some cash to reinvest.

you have to really watch your numbers because if you lose track of that, you're gonna go south very quickly, you'll go in the red. And so, but I think that knowing, and I remember sitting in Marty's office one day, we're looking at some spreadsheets for the company, and we're looking at all the new promotions we're doing for books, and the new promotions we're doing for newsletters. And then we get to the column of renewal income, and it was like the lion's share of the revenue and the profit. And Marty looked at me, goes, Brian,

We're in the bottom line personal renewal business. And we were known as like this state of the art marketer using the best copywriters, the best creative promotion, state of the art formats. mean, we were known as one of the most creative direct marketers in the world. Your audience probably never heard of us, but in our circles,

Christian Brim (25:30.829)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (25:55.789)
Right.

Brian (25:57.901)
We were known as super creative, only spent for the best copywriters and the best creative. But we were in the business, but the new business, we always have to get new business to get renewal business, of course. And what happened was, fast forward 20, 30 years later, you've got a whole slew of online marketers, I'm not saying the kids.

and I'm not gonna say I'm grandpa at the picnic here, but what they do do is the glamor of cold traffic. Cold traffic is like, that's a new customer, has no relationship with you, and you get them to buy, right? That's definition of cold traffic. And I wrote a blog post once, I said, don't play in traffic. And the reason why I said that is not that you gotta go after new customers.

Christian Brim (26:49.293)
Yeah.

Brian (26:54.082)
It's whole different approach to go after someone who's new versus someone who's existing, of course. But focus on the existing first, because that's where the money is, that's where the profit is, that's where the lifetime, in fact, the subtitle of my book, Overdeliver, is build a business for a lifetime, playing the long game in direct response marketing. It says it all.

Christian Brim (27:01.975)
Yes.

Christian Brim (27:16.875)
Yeah. And you know, people don't I know creatives in general don't like to deal with numbers. And but if you're a business owner, there's a certain level of fluency in finance that you have to understand. And one of the numbers that you absolutely must understand is the lifetime value of your customer, you have to understand it. Because if you don't understand it, you have no idea what you can spend to acquire them. And I mean, it's just one on one.

Brian (27:36.79)
Absolutely.

Brian (27:43.362)
That's right.

Christian Brim (27:46.593)
Right?

Brian (27:47.927)
Dan Kennedy has a quote on that. says, the marketer that spends the most wins. Now he's not saying you spend the most indiscriminately wins, but if you can spend on marketing and make it back within a reasonable amount of time, within the parameters of your profitability and what your company needs to do, that's when you have a business. Otherwise, you have a product or you have a promotion. And a product is not a business and a promotion is not a business.

Christian Brim (27:54.517)
guess.

Christian Brim (28:10.796)
Yes.

Yes.

Christian Brim (28:17.098)
Yes, and I...

I think there's this fundamental disconnect and it's not new and maybe it existed pre digital. I don't know. I was not aware enough to observe but right now I know that digital agencies are totally fine with a 50 % churn per year and I like that's normal. That's just the way the way things are but I keep telling them

that means there's something fundamentally broken. Like you're

Brian (28:53.396)
Absolutely. could be a and if it's your product, that's the worst.

Christian Brim (28:58.399)
Right something something is is not in line if 50 of your people are leaving within the first year and and I think the the disconnect is that there's not a understanding of what the value that they're delivering and the problem that they're solving right and so

Brian (29:05.676)
Exactly.

Christian Brim (29:24.381)
What I see this all the time in my experience and in watching people in the space is that it's it's so much chasing the wrong things, you know, I think there's one of the things that you know, you said that really intrigued me was was this list and You know I can envision You know

old school where, you know, the list was uber valuable, right? But it hasn't changed. Like the list is your customers and it is the most valuable thing that you have. And the, the

Brian (30:07.188)
Absolutely.

Christian Brim (30:14.326)
tendency to go chasing new, rather than the focusing on the the old is is real. And it's probably amplified now with with technology. And there's, and there's a lot of things that you can do that don't have any cost. Nothing is free. But like, like email is a great example, like, but but I, I shit you not, I had a client

Brian (30:25.536)
Absolutely.

Brian (30:32.865)
Right.

Right.

Christian Brim (30:40.876)
who probably doesn't know me personally because I don't do client facing work anymore. So I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. I had sent him an email about our upcoming live event in October here in Oklahoma City and I just said, hey, Jack, that's not his real name. I know you've probably heard from somebody else in our organization about this, but I wanted to email you, let you know.

and I gave him my spiel. He emails me back, which was surprising because most of the people that I emailed didn't email me back. And he said, yeah, I think I'm fine. Can you take me off this list? I literally responded with a rolling laughing emoji. And I'm like, there's no list. I'm just trying to tell you about this kick-ass event. But the thing is is that

The tendency for me was, email's easy, I'll just send it out. But what's happening is they're ignoring it. And if they do perchance respond, it's like, take me off your list. I'm like, there's something wrong there, right? Like, yeah.

Brian (31:51.821)
Yeah. Yeah, there is. Yeah. In my book, I talk about the 41-39-20 rule, which I didn't invent, but I kind of changed it from the 40-40-20 rule. And there's a rule in basically direct response marketing that says the 40-40-20 rule says that any promotion or any campaign

depends on its success depends 40 % on the list or the media or the audience 40 % on the offer and 20 % on the creative and the messaging now I kind of put I turn that on its ear a little bit so I made it the 41 39 20 roll with 41 being the list because I think that if you have your list dialed in first that's the key to the success because and I proved it time and again in

Christian Brim (32:30.988)
Mmm.

Brian (32:49.14)
on the battlefield in marketing because we had, if you have like the perfect list with a mediocre offer and mediocre creative, but the product is to that audience, you'll make some sales. The opposite is not true. You can have the best offer and the best creative if it goes to the wrong audience, you get zero orders. So that's step one. Step two, and I took this, this wasn't in my book because I figured it out afterwards,

Christian Brim (33:04.096)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (33:11.56)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Brian (33:18.4)
was that, because people said, 20 % creative, it's like half as important as the, everybody says creative, that's the, that's the bright shiny star, I wanna do great creative to a new audience, I'm gonna just blow them away with this new creative and messaging. And I said, it's not half as important, it's only half as important until it isn't. And what I meant by that was that once you have the list dialed in, and then the offer,

Christian Brim (33:25.515)
Right, right.

Brian (33:48.355)
The creative is the most important because remember I said that if you have the list dialed in, mediocre offer, mediocre creative, you make some sales. Now, if you have the list dialed in and you have a good offer and world class creative, that's direct marketing nirvana. That's everything. And I prove that also on the battlefield because every promotion, I did thousands of promotions at boardroom.

Christian Brim (34:07.53)
Right.

Brian (34:18.018)
Every promotion that had the biggest lift was based on new creative. And you'd say, well, I you were a list guy. I had the list dialed in. had, my list segmentation was so advanced. We did regression modeling. We had our list so dialed in. And the outside lists, I researched outside lists even, like new lists to the T. I had a whole system for it. I'm not gonna go into it in this podcast. But I was so, because I was a list guy. I remember when started this.

Christian Brim (34:24.235)
Mm hmm.

Brian (34:47.802)
That was the purpose of me giving you my origin story. I was a list guy. And so the lists were given. I used to tell my best co- I have copywriters who are some of the best who've ever lived, including Gene Schwartz, but many others. And I used to make the joke. said, you guys are only as good because of my list segmentation. Now there's some truth to that. However, when one of those copywriters gets me a hundred percent lift to the existing control,

Christian Brim (34:50.262)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (35:08.841)
Right.

Christian Brim (35:17.79)
No, it's more like the accelerant, right? But if you don't have the fuel underneath it, the accelerant just...

Brian (35:20.894)
Exactly, exactly.

Brian (35:26.562)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's just it's like, you know, it's like making a fire without sticks and without matches and without gas It's like yeah, but and you but we have the best copywriter This is the best copywriter. Well, you know, what do you what's he working with? What's she working with? Exactly, exactly. It's so it's interesting and those are again. These are basic fundamentals. They don't go away Like they don't go away into

Christian Brim (35:40.684)
putting lipstick on a pig.

Christian Brim (35:50.143)
No. And I think it doesn't go away because what you said is very true. You're dealing with people. And people, as much as they do change, there's a lot of ways they don't change. And buying habits, sure, buying habits have changed. The way we buy, the way we go look for things has changed. And that has driven the way we market. However,

Brian (36:04.642)
Everybody's into re-

Christian Brim (36:18.364)
their fundamentals, like in my case, it's a high trust thing. Like, I'm not just going to turn my financial information and my my my financial success over to anybody. I remember, I probably shouldn't tell this story. But I'll tell this story. I remember one of my very first clients, I went to lunch with

It was a family business and his father and son. And we went to Hooters. And because that's where they wanted to go. I just tag it along. And one of the waitresses came up and started talking to the father. And it was very apparent to me through the course of this conversation that he and she had a relationship. All right. Now he was married. And what what I what I quickly learned as being the accountant to

business owners and I would say the majority of them were men, not exclusively, but I think when it comes to the finances, there are people that are more interested and more concerned about their money than they are anything else. And I would know things about them through their finances.

that other people in their lives wouldn't know like their spouse. And that's the intimacy that I'm dealing with. And you can't, that's not gonna change. That's not gonna change. Doesn't matter what the messaging is.

Brian (37:57.965)
No, I'll give you... And there's some... It's not an exact fit, but there's some metrics that could go along with that. And one of the metrics is something in my book, which I didn't invent, of course. I have never invented anything. I've just adapted and... Exactly, exactly. And it's RFM. RFM, recency, frequency, monetary value, is... It's not even a rule of thumb.

Christian Brim (38:11.562)
You're into R &D, rip off and deploy. That's what I do, yes.

Brian (38:24.958)
in marketing, it's how people behave in the marketplace. know, Perry, talking about Perry, he added a different dimension because as we got into online marketing, it was RFT, recency, frequency, and time. How much time do people spend on your marketing and with you? And when you said trust, I'm thinking it could be recency, frequency, and trust also. But the key is, you know,

Christian Brim (38:40.332)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (38:50.252)
Hmm.

Brian (38:54.326)
It was fascinating when I got into direct marketing, I realized it didn't make sense initially because they said, you know, someone who bought from us recently is more valuable than someone who didn't buy from us recently. said, that doesn't make sense. They just bought. They have no money. can't buy again. It's the opposite, of course. That's how people behave. And frequency is if they bought from you three months ago and buy from you again today. Now they're a multi-buyer and they're recent.

Christian Brim (39:10.282)
Why are they by again? Right.

Brian (39:23.936)
That's even better. And if they spend a lot of money with you in total, that makes them even better. So all of those list segmentation things I was talking about, they were all based in RFM. Like we had a model that I had a, in fact, he he lived in Oklahoma. He went to Oklahoma state actually. He was a PhD from Oklahoma state. lived in Colorado and he basically did statistical models on my buyer list and my prospect list.

We had a list at Borden with like nine million customers, previous customers, expires, bad debt people. And we had such a big database of names, but they were all people as we've all decided that name lists are people too. And he would do these elaborate statistical regression models on these people all based on RFM. so, you know, if you, you have something like that, again, that

Christian Brim (40:08.15)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (40:17.568)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (40:23.478)
doesn't go away. The idea that someone all of a sudden is going to be less valuable because they bought from you recently doesn't happen. Human beings haven't changed. They haven't.

Christian Brim (40:36.498)
No, and it doesn't just apply to businesses that have millions of potential customers. It applies to you if you have 50 potential customers. It's all the same.

Brian (40:47.766)
Six clients. Yes, six clients recently. You know, there was this woman, I think I told the story in my book. I definitely told it in a blog post. But this woman had, she was, she did like, she did products for psychologists. And she had, think, something like 28 different products and courses. And I asked her to make a grid of like all of, cause she never did like an RFM kind of analysis.

She just went out to them and she did very well and she did a grid for me and it was like, okay, 100 % of the people bought one product. 80 % of the people had bought two products, all the way down to 28 products. And of course, the punchline of this story, I won't get into all the other details, but the punchline is that there was one person that bought all 28 products. So I said, if that's not a relative or it's not you,

You need to have dinner with that person. And what I meant by that is you go deep with your best customers and find out how do you find more best customers. And that's what regression modeling is. It's like you have buyers who have certain characteristics and you map them and then you go out to your bigger audience and say, how do I find more like them? And if you're tagging your file with all the data, which is all doable, it was doable in the 80s and 90s. It's even more doable.

Christian Brim (41:49.536)
Yes.

Christian Brim (41:53.206)
Yes. Yes.

Christian Brim (42:15.276)
With Lotus. Yes. Yes.

Brian (42:17.088)
Yeah, now it's on steroids, as we say. So it's so I'm not saying it's easy. You can you have to pay for it. It's data, but it's cheaper than it was. But to not do that, to not not look for more people like the ones that are your best customers. That's that's marketing. And, know, that and and I don't I think people look again, it's the lure of the of the cold traffic again. It's the lure of that new customer that comes in.

Christian Brim (42:36.95)
Yeah.

Brian (42:45.64)
And it's a thrill, right? You get somebody who never heard of you before and they become a customer. That's exciting, yes. I find it more exciting when I get a fifth year renewal to my mastermind. Someone who sends me money for five years as opposed to the person who sends it to me in the year one, I'll take the person over five years. Now, I take them both. I'm accepting cash from everybody, right. But it's interesting that the glamor of the new buyer

Christian Brim (43:08.342)
Sure.

Brian (43:15.294)
as you said already, mentioned this, the glamour of the new buyer seems to supersede the value of the repeat buyer.

Christian Brim (43:22.176)
Well, and I want to reemphasize what you said about that that psychologist. The you know, Perry talks about this. Perry should pay us for sponsoring his his content on this show. The idea the 80 20 Pareto principle applies also with your customers in that a and it may not line up 80 20

Brian (43:38.262)
Yeah, yeah.

Brian (43:43.862)
Yes, yes.

Christian Brim (43:51.882)
you know, but some smaller percentage of your existing customers will spend more money with you. And 4%, which is 20 % of 20 % will spend even more with you. And this idea of can you develop a service that captures the whole value of your existing clients, you're not even having to go out and find new ones.

Can you leverage what you already have?

Brian (44:23.902)
Exactly. Jay Abraham wrote a book. I have multiple copies on my shelf because I give them out. And the title is Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got. That says it all right there. It's like when I used to go, when I started my own business, I used to go out to new clients. And the first thing we did with a new client, and I hate calling it consulting, and I never tell anybody I'm a consultant because it sounds like you're unemployed.

Christian Brim (44:33.513)
Hmm. Yeah.

Brian (44:53.762)
In my town, you know, if you say you're a consultant, you know they're unemployed. But it's basically I would go in and say we need to assess your assets. And basically, people don't even understand what their assets are sometimes. And it's usually the first number one is your list of customers or your list of prospects or the list of people who are former customers. That's one of your best assets always.

Christian Brim (45:11.403)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (45:19.563)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (45:22.062)
probably your number one asset, you already said it, so I'll repeat that. But also, could be where are your other lists? People don't understand that your Facebook account, while not always the best list, they're not all your best BFFs, they're not all your best friends. But that's a good place to start. In fact, I did something, I have some people doing some social media for me, and someone was posting an article on Facebook

Christian Brim (45:22.271)
Yes. Yes. Yes.

Brian (45:51.787)
And I remember I edited it and I didn't realize it was for Facebook. I thought it was for LinkedIn. And what I did in there is like I told people if they wanted, was a, I talked about a presentation I had given at this event with a bunch of copywriters that was just a highlight of my career. And I said, if you like a video of it, email me at brian at briankurtz.net. And.

I had quite a few people from the Facebook sending me an email and I said, wow. And one of them said, he said, that's genius. You're getting email addresses from Facebook. I said, well, why shouldn't I? Email, I don't own the platform, but I own it a lot more than Facebook. And then you can control it, right? You control the environment. And I realized what I was doing. I knew what I was doing when I did it.

Christian Brim (46:35.829)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (46:41.754)
yeah, 100%.

Brian (46:49.206)
but then I realized I didn't have the video. Now I have to go and get the video, because I have like 10 people and I wanna, and those people are engaging with me. Some of them are in my mastermind already, but some of them aren't. And so now I've got prospects doing that. And I think the idea is it's all about engagement. It's all about always encouraging engagement with your audience because Lister people too.

Christian Brim (47:08.33)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (47:14.337)
I've...

I'm going to, I just haven't yet, I'm going to start publishing a format, a tabloid. It's not going to be a newsletter. It is going to be a tabloid newspaper on a quarterly basis for our clients in our target market. because yes, it's infinitely more expensive than sending something via email, but the engagement.

based upon my experience with Perry Marshall and I read his newsletter, it's like 12 pages, I read it front to cover every time I get it, right? And the idea that I can get someone to read that and I'm gonna have great content in it, I've even thought about doing it as a subscription, like a $29 annual subscription, right? And I'm gonna send out a couple of copies, a couple of quarters for free.

Brian (47:51.104)
I do too. I do too.

Christian Brim (48:13.483)
And then I'm going to take it away. like the thought process is that if I've got good content and it's to the right people that they're going to pay $29. And what does that tell me? Well, that tells me that they've raised their hand in exchange money. There is trust. There's there's something there. Right. So now that now as you're saying this, I'm like, well, you know what the the Holy Grail is not just the email. Can you get your their physical address? Can you can you write?

Brian (48:28.693)
Exactly.

Exactly.

Brian (48:41.386)
Yes, yes. And the thing is, I did a presentation for a bunch of online marketers 10 years ago, and I said, something to the effect of you may be sitting on a gold mine and you already have it. Because, and what I said to them is that they were selling digital product and courses online, on credit card, which meant they have the postal address of every customer. And what they didn't know, because they didn't know anything about direct mail,

Christian Brim (49:01.803)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (49:05.387)
Mmm.

Brian (49:08.898)
I said, do you understand that direct mail is an opt out medium, not an opt in medium? And what that means is in online email, you have to opt in to get the email and usually it's a double opt in. Rec mail, once you have a postal address of a customer, you can mail them until the cows come home. Unless they're on the do not mail file with the direct marketing, the postal service, and you need to suppress those names. But until they say,

Christian Brim (49:13.867)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (49:30.741)
Correct.

Brian (49:37.667)
take me out of your list, you can mail them. Now of course it's expensive to just do direct mail indiscriminately, so you don't wanna try, I always say direct mail's like making sushi. You can do it, but why? There are experts for that, right? I have not, but I've used that many times in my career and there's always a person that says, I make sushi all the time. I say, all right, sorry. God bless you. Then you should do your own direct mail.

Christian Brim (49:53.619)
I have not made my own sushi, so yes, that makes sense.

Christian Brim (50:04.927)
He probably changes his own oil too, so you know.

Brian (50:06.974)
Exactly. But yeah, you should do your own direct mail also. the point is exactly what you said that, you know, there's and again, the differentiator, like how many people in your industry are doing a paper, you know, a print newsletter and you're going to put better content in because you're going to be serious about it. You're not just going to do half-assed.

Christian Brim (50:24.949)
Nobody.

Christian Brim (50:30.665)
So right, because if I want to charge for it, it's got to be good, right?

Brian (50:34.722)
Right, and you know what, I don't even think that you should even decide now whether you're gonna charge for it or not charge for it. Just producing it quarterly and then maybe even monthly, you know, your clients, you know, look, your clients are forever. So you're just doing a service for them. And yeah, it's costing you. I have a mastermind. It's a virtual mastermind, inexpensive. I had a high price mastermind. I had a $25,000 mastermind with 30 companies for...

Christian Brim (50:48.907)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (51:04.33)
eight years. And it ran its course after the pandemic and I decided to fold it. But I didn't fold it into the, now I have a virtual mastermind, which I actually launched before the pandemic. So I predicted the pandemic. I didn't, but I timed it in December of 2019 for some reason. And so I have 250 members. We do two to four live calls a month.

Christian Brim (51:18.667)
Thanks for letting us know.

Brian (51:31.831)
We've got a Facebook group, a private Facebook group. We've got, you know, we do hot seats. get guest speakers. Perry has spoken there and all that. But one thing I added to it, just like you're thinking about the add-on of a print newsletter, I was gonna do a print newsletter to the mastermind on a monthly basis. I was a little lazy about it, but what I wanted, basically, I was gonna put the transcriptions of the calls, plus like a swipe of the month, like some promotion that

Christian Brim (51:50.058)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (51:58.525)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (52:01.249)
I have in my archive that I can critique and also like something from the high price mastermind, a presentation from the eight years and put that into the newsletter. I said, I don't need a newsletter. All I need is a USB. So what I do is once a month, so actually, so we do the calls, we do the live calls and they go into a portal, a digital portal. Anybody who wants digital can have digital. But once a month, I just finished the letter for this month.

Christian Brim (52:10.975)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (52:15.659)
Mmm.

Brian (52:27.938)
Everything is on a USB in a plastic case. So it's got some it's got some F to it and I put a letter in there saying, you know describing the three calls Describing the swipe of the month describing the thing from the Titans vault, which is the presentation from a previous mastermind and Is it repetitive? Maybe because they have the digital portal with the calls but man talk about you know

Christian Brim (52:32.713)
Yeah, tangible, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Brian (52:56.658)
the value of physical product. You know, I have every, for six years I've been doing this mastermind, I have every one of those plastic cases on my shelf. Anybody who's been in my mastermind for any length of time, they're not throwing them out. They're not throwing them out. So now you have a library, and you can say my library is in my hard drive, and that's fine, but there's something about a library of physical product, there really is. Now it takes up space, some people are like allergic to that.

Christian Brim (52:59.733)
Yes.

Christian Brim (53:07.199)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (53:26.146)
all the time. Usually it's, you know, they always say that, you anybody under 30 doesn't want physical product. I say bullshit to that too. You know, oh, people under 30 are definitely checking their mailboxes. They're definitely getting packages from Amazon. They definitely love the surprise and delight of the mailbox. There's no question that to say that my audience is younger, they won't respond to anything through the mail. Bullshit. If you make it compelling, you make it meaningful,

Christian Brim (53:34.984)
I agree.

Brian (53:55.863)
You make it complimentary to your digital business. They will open the, they will love it. And the key is retention because now, I mean, and that's why I go back to your thing. Your print newsletter is a retention device more than anything else. Now it can be used to prospect new clients for sure. Anybody that you prospect gets on your list and then they get the newsletter. But your existing customers, you know, now talk about trust. You're not their accountant, no way.

Christian Brim (54:17.781)
Yes.

Brian (54:25.782)
You're their trusted advisor. And once you become a trusted advisor, and it's true for copywriters. Dan Kennedy, the great marketer, talks about this. says, you know, he goes to like the copywriting conferences and he has this cartoon he puts up of this bum sitting at the side of the road with a sign and it says, well, write for food. And he says, if you're writing copy for food, especially in the age of chap GPT, you're nuts. But.

If you're using AI and you're a trusted advisor and you're advising on their marketing while you're writing for them, now you're really valuable. That's where you come in in the accounting side. You don't want to just be their bookkeeper. You just don't want to their tax returns. I can tell, we don't know each other well, but I can tell who you are and I know you're with Perry and I know the kind of person you are just by association. I know that you're a person that wants to be a trusted advisor.

Christian Brim (55:20.075)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (55:24.34)
and not be a bookkeeper and not just be an accountant. And the newsletter fits perfectly for you. Perfectly.

Christian Brim (55:31.957)
Brian, two old men on the park bench, we could go on forever, but we have to draw this to... Yes, get off my lawn. How do people find you if they want to learn more about you and what you do?

Brian (55:35.83)
Yeah. Screaming at the wind, right? Get off of my lawn.

Brian (55:48.429)
So they can go to briankurtz.net, B-R-I-A-N-K-U-R-T-Z dot net. A lot of free content on my site. All of my blogs from the last 10 years, 11 years are on there. No charge, of course. They have to opt in. There's an interview, actually, with Perry Marshall. That's my welcome mat. It was an interview Perry did with me nine years ago.

Christian Brim (56:11.221)
nice.

Brian (56:16.074)
it's still the best thing I can give away because it's like an hour and a half of the three, like the three biggest successes from my career and they're all great stories, they really are. So that's the, so you get all of that for free. If you wanna get on, can get, and you get on my list, which means you're part of my online family and I don't say that like, you know, just throwing it away. cause lists are people too, I live it every day. So here I am, a list guy for over 40 years.

and I have trouble saying, get on my list. I say, into my online family, because I do treat my, because I engage with people, if they respond to my blogs, I respond to them, maybe not immediately, but I respond to everybody who responds to my blog, because that's the engagement piece. Without the engagement, where are you going? You know, where are you going? It's just gonna be a one-way street, and I don't want that. I want to have dialogue with my customers and my prospects.

Christian Brim (56:48.107)
you

Christian Brim (57:04.043)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brian (57:13.57)
So bryancurtz.net, if you wanna buy my book, overdeliverbook.com has an amazing bonus page. You also get on my list, my online family. And it's 11 amazing bonus, one of the bonuses is the day I did with Perry Marshall at boardroom in 2013. So the full video of that is in there. I've got 21, no 19 keynote.

presentations from Jay Abraham in there. I've got two full PDFs of two books from my direct mail gurus that I grew up with, Gordon Grossman and Dick Benson. People haven't even heard of them. These books are out of print and it's like the history of direct mail and usable too because as I said, direct mail is not dead. So overdeliverbook.com. You can also get everything that you can get at briankurtz.net plus you'll get my book and you can buy the book on Kindle or

audio and my book is, you I'm really proud of it.

Christian Brim (58:18.347)
Perfect listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you've heard, send us a message, shoot us a message and tell us what you're interested in and we'll get rid of Brian. Until then, ta ta for now.