Matt Manero – Zero to $100M and beyond

Jos Aguiar
Hey guys, so I am live with Mr. Brian Kurtz. Many of you may already know him, I’m sure. Most people might already know him. As the guy used to run boardroom and now runs Titans and, and recently released his book with Craig Simpson, you may remember from my interview a couple weeks back. Anyways, I’m really looking forward to the interview. And let’s just jump straight into it. Abraham,

Brian Kurtz
how you doing? I’m good. You know, it’s like, I’ve never done back. I did an interview I told you last night at like, 11pm Eastern time in the States with another good guy from Australia. So I don’t know, I think maybe it’s time to move to Australia. I mean, there’s a lot of people that are moving out of the country here in the United States. So not that I’m not, I’m not going to

Jos Aguiar
get into that.

Brian Kurtz
Yeah, we’re not doing any politics. Although I, I just say one quick thing. Because I’ve seen a lot of posts. I never posted anything about politics. I’m not going to tell you who I voted for. And I know a lot of your audience is probably not American. But you know, they’re probably a mix. But the thing I will tell you. Yeah, I mean, well, I just love teaching in Europe, I love teaching all over the world. And, you know, I’m not I’m not the the American that thinks we’re better than everybody. But I am the American that believes that marketing is, you know, kind of originates in the US for the most part, or at least a state of the art stuff. And then, you know, so many great people all over the world are adapting stuff that we do in the US. But the point I wanted to make, which I think is really fascinating, and it kind of can lead into some questions if you want about copywriting and marketing, following Donald Trump, his campaign, his copy, let’s forget, this is not a political conversation, looking at his messaging, looking at his copy. You know, Gary Halbert was one of the legends that I profiled in my book with Craig, you know, always said, you know, it’s not about, you know, you want to start in crowd. I mean, he understood that better than anybody, you know, building a brilliant burger has nothing to do with whether you’re going to, you know, sell a lot of burgers, it’s really what’s, you know, what does the audience want? And so, the other thing was the languaging. You know, Jean Schwartz, another legend, in my book used to say, you know, you’ve got your market, you’ve got the language of that market, speak to that market in that language. Now, he did he have a message that went to everybody that maybe not, but I will tell you this his message, appeal to everybody. And Gary Halbert, he used to say, right to, I guess, a fifth grade level. And when you’re above a seventh grade level, you’re going to lose a lot of your audience. And you have to use the language that they understand during the primary period, if you studied Donald Trump’s speeches, more so than in the in the general campaign, that there’s not one speech I ever saw him make, that a fifth grader couldn’t understand. And not only that, it was like stuff that you listen to it, whether you agree or disagree, you get exactly what he’s saying, you know, who doesn’t understand I’m going to build a wall, and I’m going to put a door in it. You know, I mean, everybody then gets an image. And I don’t think he’s studied Gary Halbert. I mean, you know, mind you, but he understood human nature, he understood a certain element. And so studying the copywriting of Donald Trump is really an interesting exercise. And I’ll bet a lot of copywriters I know are already doing it, because in my mastermind groups, we’ve had this discussion, but you want to look all around you all the time for clues as to how people are communicating to specific audiences. And that’s kind of one of my big things, you know, messaging and copy to list, you know, it’s an every list should be should be talked to you differently, and got Donald Trump talked to a very big list in a very powerful

Jos Aguiar
one of the biggest direct response campaigns every time every four years, you can observe direct response when he’s spending millions upon millions upon millions of dollars in ad spend PR everything exactly responsibly. If you’re looking, as you were saying, then he had a limited budget, which he stretched way further than its competitors. plastic on it?

Brian Kurtz
Oh, yeah. And he knew that he had the pulpit. You know, when, you know, there wasn’t once I mean, yeah, I mean, that was a nice thing that he that he would say controversial stuff. So that every every news organisation would put him on in prime time. You can’t pay for that. And he knew that. But then the message and again, this is not about whether I agree or disagree and anybody here Yeah, anybody who comments on my politics, you know, you’re wrong. Whatever you’re thinking you’re wrong. I mean, whether you think I’m former again, against him, you’re wrong. I can tell you for a fact So, this this is really there’s, um, there’s a marketing case study in this particular election that every copywriter should study and adapt.

Jos Aguiar
I’ve just got a friend come in here 768 million ad spend $5.38 per vote from my affiliate.

Brian Kurtz
Oh, that’s pretty funny. The ROI per vote. I love it. I love it. I love it.

Jos Aguiar
Cool. Um, let’s talk a bit about your background. Because, as I said, most of my audience knows who you are. But I think there’s quite a few that still don’t. Can you tell us? Where you start? What do you do? And where are you now?

Brian Kurtz
Yeah, so, you know, it’s funny, because I’m on a lot of podcasts that are based on that the avatars are mostly entrepreneurs and young entrepreneurs. And while I am an entrepreneur, at my core, the interesting thing is that, you know, the, the privilege part of my, of my upbringing, as it were, not that I was, you know, born with a silver spoon in my mouth. And, you know, I came from a working class family, it was, you know, not, you know, not it wasn’t hard, but it wasn’t super easy. It just, I had a had kind of a boring trial to it in that respect. However, the thing that that was interesting is that I always felt like, you know, if I wasn’t going to be a teacher, like all of my family were, that I was, I wanted to go into business. So I wanted to write, I wanted to do something that was different. And I definitely had this entrepreneurial gene in me, but it wasn’t the norm. It wasn’t like, I couldn’t work for anybody. It wasn’t like I saw myself as unemployable. Because I was a team player. I like people, I didn’t need to be on my own and make all the decisions. But what was interesting is that, you know, the privilege part of my background, as I said, was, you know, getting a job at a boardroom, when I was 23, you know, a company that was a $3 million business at the time, growing, you know, run by an entrepreneur that the typical kitchen table, startup entrepreneur, Marty eddleston. And, you know, to have somebody who then saw in me what he saw himself, without me having to take the risk of starting the thing from scratch. Yeah, it’s a pretty privileged thing. And I’ve written about it, you know, I’m not apologising for it, it is what it is. But the thing that I did do, and the thing that I think I’d want to talk to your folks about, especially if they’re not on their own yet, but they want to be on their own, is that you, if you’re not entrepreneurial, you always have to be intrapreneurial. And that word gets spellcheck. So it’s not really a word. But intrapreneurial with an eye is a very, very important concept, especially if you’re working for working for the man, so to speak. And even if you’re in a big corporate environment, there are way it’s harder, but the fact that if you can work in an entrepreneurial environment, and have your ideas heard, report directly to the entrepreneur, not get discouraged when your ideas are nixed, because a lot of entrepreneurs always think that their ideas are better than yours anyway. But stick with that. And always have a voice and always think about being a rainmaker. Even though you’re not primary Rainmaker initially, that is a mindset of intrapreneurial ism, that I say to people, if you can figure out a road, I was again, I was lucky in a lot of ways, but I made the most of it. And then, you know, within 10 years of being a boardroom, I was I was an owner, I was, you know, I, Marty gave me a lot of responsibility to kind of run the marketing of the company. And then the journey, you know, those of you those who don’t know my background, not that, you know, throwing numbers around, I’m uncomfortable with everybody seems to want to do it. But the company did go from 3 million in 1981, three to five, and then we hit our peak in 2005 2006. And we were about 157 million. And a lot of that was just being a great multi channel, direct marketer, we, we did direct our that’s what we cut our teeth, we learned what to do on the internet, not as well as I would have liked, I would have liked to have done more. But we definitely learned e newsletters. We definitely learned an advertising model and an affiliate model to some degree. But then we also learned how to do TV. We learned how to do print advertising and space. We learned how to do inserts we as I said never met a medium I didn’t like and we would just test everything. So being a intrapreneur always thinking of new ideas having an entrepreneur who would support me so that I can become the entrepreneur within the organisation which is what the entrepreneur is. And then when Marty started phasing out, you know, I was the number one Rainmaker after being the number two Rainmaker and I had a lot of training and I was in a good position. And then, you know, Lee, I did the big Titans event in 2014, which was a big Tribute Event to Marty after he passed away. And it was an epic event, kind of like one of the things I wanted to do before I left because I, I didn’t see the company, you know, I was working closely with Marty’s family and I thought that if I wasn’t gonna buy the company, you know, from the family and not in a hostile way, I thought it was just better for them to do what they want to do with the business. And then it was time for me to go out and become an educator. And so the after 34 years at boardroom building that I decided I went out, I went out with a bang, you know, this Titans event. Those of your listeners who were not at the event, just to give you a sense, it was a it was pretty epic. It was the speakers were dead. It was Dan Kennedy, Gary Bencivenga best copywriter alive, that all the great copywriters who work for boardroom Parasara propolis, David Deutsch, Eric Bedwell, and Arthur Johnson who were responsible for, I think, 650 million pieces of successful direct mail over 20 years at boardroom then I had

Ken McCarthy who was one of the pioneers on the internet. That was day one, then I had Perry Marshall Jay Abraham, Joe Sugarman, Greg rancour of gothy rancour, whose infomercial guy, Fred Katona, who just passed is the probably the king of direct response radio. And then I brought together some of my contemporaries Jim quick Michael Fishman and Ryan Lee, who are kind of the people who are trailblazing today, both online and offline. So it was it was one of those events. And then after the event, it was like, okay, I can kind of launch an education, direct marketing education business from this. And then from that I developed to mastermind groups, I wrote the book with Craig. I’ve got a bunch of ideas for courses, the course I really want to do is direct mail for internet marketers. This it’s a funny thing. You know, what goes around comes around, and I’ve got more internet marketers writing to me saying, What’s this direct mail thing I hear? It’s like a new medium that I could kind of work on. Oh, yeah, not one day? Well, they say I’m being a little sarcastic, but they are basically saying direct mail. I’m hearing something about it. I, you know, and, like, you know, do you realise that? Everything? And that’s what that’s what the book is about that? You know, the average tising solution, Craig and I wrote that the book is about, you know, the fundamentals. You know, Perry Marshall talks about Perry Marshall, with a guy who’s the Google that was the Google AdWords guy, Facebook, were the first Facebook guys, one of the best direct marketers around. Almost all online, talks about the fundamentals. And, and he and I just did an interview about source about, you know, when you go back to the original source, it’s everything. I told a story recently to a couple of people that I did another podcast where the interviewer was wanting to take a deep dive on modelling and direct mail regression, modelling, modelling and segmentation. And I talked about the statistics behind it, not that I’m a statistician, but I understood it. And we took this deep dive and it got a little granular, but it was a good discussion. And then at the end of the discussion, you know, he was just, you know, he was so into talking about he posted the interview on Facebook. And then someone in the thread on Facebook said, Oh, this interview with Brian Kurtz is amazing. Not that I care. He said this interview that Brian Kurtz was amazing. He talks all about these modelling. And here, I thought Facebook invented look alike models. And I’m thinking to myself, whoa, and then he goes mind blown. And I’m thinking to myself, this is unbelievable, didn’t you? I remember you. Yeah, I didn’t post it. Yeah, I did. And the guy and it’s funny, the guys who, who posted that, you know, mind blown, the guys are really good marketer. So this is not a clip down of him at all. It’s just that he would never have known the extent to which we modelled and segmented our lists, in direct mail in, in my in my world in the 1980s and 90s. But even before that, and how that was a precursor to everything that’s being done with modelling on Facebook today. Everything that’s being done in Google AdWords, I mean, if you follow the work of Ryan Levesque, for example, and his acid survey through, yeah, it’s all but it’s all about list segmentation. It’s all about In fact, my blurb for his book, was something about, you know, Ryan, it’s one of the most important books as it asked book about, you know, since breaker advertising, which was James Schwartz’s classic, and it because it’s basically monitoring human behaviour, and then how we message to the different segments, you know, the idea of what Ryan does in terms of creating buckets, and then how we communicate to those buckets. It’s brilliant. It’s just, you know, total brilliance. And so, you know, it’s not just what goes around comes around. It’s not just taking a stroll down memory lane. It’s bigger than that. If you understand the sources just to use that other example about Facebook, if you understood what it was like to do regression modelling and direct mail in the 1880s and 90s. Think about the kinds of questions you might ask your media broker or buyer on Facebook. When you’re doing the look alike model you will have a whole different mindset. When you’re asking questions about what demographics and psychographics to go after, and be more

than just likes. It’ll be more you’ll ask questions that you never thought you would ever ask. So I’m such a believer in the fundamental truths. And I know, this is not just me. That’s why for the book, if you notice, the blurbs I got was that to write a blurb, I got Jeff Walker, write a blurb. I got Yannick silver to write a blurb. I mean, you know, I got people who are considered some of the best online marketers in the world to basically write a blurb for me not because I twisted their arm. But because they understand that fundamentals of direct response marketing never go away.

Jos Aguiar
Anyone is really gonna tops has studied the classics at the turn of the century, guys are the ones who pretty much submitted what we know. Now we all that’s changed is the method or the medium, but it still comes down to the same principles.

Brian Kurtz
It does, you know, you look at Scientific Advertising, which I have a illustrated annotated version that I’m giving away as a bonus for people who buy the book. And, and, you know, that book was written in 1923, Claude Hopkins died in 1937, the author of the book, that book is 100% relevant. I mean, there are people today that say, I mean, a copywriter comes to me and says, What books would you recommend? One, breakthrough advertising, although it’s more advanced, written in 1966, by Jean Schwartz, not one word is changed. I’m reprinting it right now. And I’m not changing one word of the text, I might add a few ads, and an appendix and an afterword. But I’m not changing one word of the text, and it’s 100% relevant, and the same Scientific Advertising. And and the thing is, it’s like human nature doesn’t change. You know, I mean, it’s funny, my, I have an email address, that’s t rex, you know, like the dinosaur. And I’m making fun in a way. But it’s sort of like, I do it, because I it’s like, I’m not poking fun of myself. It’s, it’s that, oh, it’s the non extinct dinosaurs, that will definitely still still roam the earth. And it’s not because we’re preaching, it’s not because, you know, the other stuff was better than what’s today, that’s, I, it’s the exact opposite. What’s going on today in marketing is the best time in the world ever, ever to be a marketer. And so, I am just having a blast, being able to I always talk about my golden ticket, you know, you don’t know me that well, and you’re a lot younger than me. And yet, you want to interview me? Why? I don’t know. But I’m excited about it. And so now I have a golden ticket to talk to your audience who I never would have gotten to talk to about this stuff. And you know, what, I’ll bet out of this interview, at some point, whether it’s tomorrow, or next week, a year from now, I’ll be at a conference, or I’ll be on someone else’s thing. And they’ll say, I heard you on, on, on on doses interview. And, and they’re gonna say, I, you know, I love what you maybe say, I hate what you’re talking about. I love what you talk about. And you know what, I’ll find out? What do you do? And they’re gonna tell me that they’re working on some, you know, whiz bang technology as it adapts, you know, demographic data to to YouTube, and I’m gonna be like, can I know more about that? Because I want to bring that to my clients. I want to bring that to my mastermind. Maybe you want to be on a phone call with my high end direct response marketer or mastermind group and teach them something that I definitely don’t know. So what a great opportunity, right?

Jos Aguiar
You mentioned this before, just the fact. Last night, you lost out for you talking, right?

Brian Kurtz
Should I turn that off, but I didn’t sorry.

Jos Aguiar
That’s good, loving teasmade made, we get experience.

Brian Kurtz
You know, it’s, it’s early in the morning, I said, No one’s gonna call me but God’s

Jos Aguiar
beautiful age we’re living in now. And we’re more connected, there’s more data available. So you can use those direct response principles that you spoke about before and that worse, so well taught. With so much more data available to us now. It’s a goldmine for someone who it is.

Brian Kurtz
That’s well put, it’s sort of like, let’s take what we knew, and then, you know, put it on steroids in a way and that is super exciting. And, and the interesting thing is that, you know, when Perry Marshall said our book, Craig, the book that we Craig and I wrote, you know, should sit next on the desk of, of marketers Today as a checklist, so you don’t miss anything, that’s a pretty good use, you know of stuff, right? You know, that’s a pretty good use that you have a list of everything that you’re going to headline, everything that should go into sales letter tips to doing the right kind of research. I mean, those are things that are just so powerful. And they don’t go away. They just don’t go away. And And it’s funny, I did a post in a Facebook, a big Facebook group. And I basically said, I wasn’t doing it for people to feel sorry for me, and some people were like, coming to my defence, I didn’t need that. But they posted post was something like, you know, I’m being hammered a little bit by not that many people, but a couple of people saying, you know, why do I want to like, you know, learn about six dead guys who, you know, none of them marketed, you know, in the on the internet for the most part. I mean, the most recent guy that we cover in the book is Gary Halbert. And Halbert knew, you know, was definitely alive when the internet was here. But he was still a direct mail guy for the most part in the print guy. So, you know, when when when people you know, when I said, so I said, I’m being hammered by people saying, you know, why do I need to follow six dead guys who never worked on the internet? And I said that, it seems to me that they’re missing out. And then the thread got really long. You know, there are a few people that say, oh, Brian, don’t worry about it. I said, I’m not worried. But I’m not worried. I just want you to know that you’re, there’s a mindset out there that says if it’s old news, it’s bad news. And you know what I know, because I hang out with people like Jay Abraham, I hang out with people like Kirk Marshall. And they’re, they’re very different, right? Jay is older than me Perry’s younger than me. But they both respect the past in a way so that they can adapt the best of the past into the present and into the future. That to me is a goldmine. And there’s a goldmine of information in these classic pioneers and their books that I think a lot of online marketers today are missing out on. And they’re already making money, easy to make money on the internet, much harder to sustain yourself for the long haul. So the idea of having a business for the long haul is what they’re missing. I’ll get two quotes quick quotes. Chris Farrell, great online marketer says a product is not a business. So how many online marketers come up with a great product and they think they have a business? What they have is a product that sells well, with affiliates. What’s the back end? And what’s you know, what’s your funnel, right? And if you don’t have that you don’t have a business. The second thing is a promotion is not a business that John Carlton who’s a longtime copywriter. So Carlton is saying like, you know, here’s these people that have this great promotion, a video sales letter, that’s killing it on Clickbank or it’s the number one wherever affiliate, but there’s no business behind it. There’s no infrastructure. So you do a couple of launches. Maybe you even put a million bucks in the bank? I don’t know. But is that what you want to do for the long haul? And without the fundamentals, especially on copy creative, how it relates to list selection, how it relates to your offer, and then how it relates to creating back end products? You’re lost? I think for the long haul. In the short term, you’ll do fine because the barrier to entry online is so low.

Jos Aguiar
Come in here. Okay. Do you know do you deal much with political writing? And copywriters? Have you dealt in that space?

Brian Kurtz
Political copywriting? Is it? Yeah, I mean, I know. I follow. I mean, yeah, the answer is it’s not a core area for me at all. I’m much more in health and finance with a few areas of boardroom. But I know, I know, the political fundraisers and there’s an art to political fundraising. What’s the question?

Jos Aguiar
She said tortoise couldn’t pronounce his last name? Say which direct response fronto or teen should have had kept one?

Brian Kurtz
Eye It’s way bigger loaded question. Yeah, Wrong question. However, I understand the question, what what was missing was the messaging. I don’t know what copywriter would have done it. Right. In fact, I’ve written a bunch of blog posts recently, about copywriting even though I’m not one although I’ve worked with every great one. And the thing that I found in my career is that the great copywriters have certain things in common I wrote a blog post once called, you may not know it when you see it, and I kind of made the analogy to pornography. You know, pornography, you’ll know when you see it. You might not know when you when you stumble across a great copywriter, whether they’re a great copywriter to us certain questions, and so, but then even if they’re a great copywriter, or they’re going to be a right copywriter in your niche, and do they have the passion to go deep, as opposed to go wide. And so yes, I mean, I think what Hillary missed was The audience I mean, if someone in her in her in her group had read breakthrough advertising, and talked about that, you know, you can’t create the market, you got to see what the market is and then write to it. You know, that’s what she missed, which copywriter? That’s not the issue. The issue is the messaging and understanding what you know what the audience wanted. What what did that starving crowd one. And, you know, it’s funny in the last election in the United States. When I follow that one, one of the one of my takeaways was that Romney lost the social media battle to Obama, Obama’s team, understood not only the messaging was good, but they also understood that the medium had changed that the media was not just about TV, it was much more about, you know, Twitter and Facebook and, and email and what they did online in terms of what what Romney did. And there were people who were, who were telling the Romney campaign, basically saying, Look, you’re missing the boat here. You’ve got to get somebody on your team to understand social media. This was only four years ago. I mean, four years ago. So now you look and you got the candidate on the right. Trump, who was living on Twitter. So that was another thing that I mean, nobody’s I mean, he talks about it, but everybody.

Jos Aguiar
Trump, he’s been monitoring social media for a long time, and especially when he went through the whole apprentice phase he went did

Brian Kurtz
yeah, no, you got to give him credit for a 70 year old guy, where Romney kind of I know somebody who was working indirectly with the Romney campaign, and they were totally stubborn. They said we don’t need we don’t need the millennials. We don’t need this. We don’t need that. You know, go look at the results have the

Jos Aguiar
same in Australia a few years ago, we had our Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at the time, but he won purely because he had the social media presence he got on TV he did all that outrage that Dabigatran I know we’re politicians were too proper for that. But he won’t vote for that reason.

Brian Kurtz
No, you got to know where the audience is gonna see you know, the Wayne Gretzky quote, you don’t go where the puck is you go where the pucks going. But that’s what all the great copywriting books are about. You know, it’s funny, I went through the six legends in our book and accumulated all of these quotes from them. And they’re all like copywriters, at least to some degree like Jean Schwartz wrote copy, Halbert real copy David Ogilvy wrote copy Hopkins real copy capables real copy and collio Copy all six of them they weren’t all copywriters full time but they all wrote copy. Not one of them didn’t mention when they were talking about House why they were successful as copywriters then none of them stopped talking about the market. You know, it was almost like, you know, you if you don’t like, you know, Jean Schwartz, his favourite magazine was National Enquirer, you know, understanding what people wanted needed. What was the conversation going on in their head, which is, a quote might be a halberd. Quote. So the the idea that list selection and an audience analysis was really as important as the actual writing on writing down the copy is really what one of the big things I took away from the book I told Craig, you know, his big take one of his biggest take, boys was how they all like we’re obsessed with research, which I think is another key thing, you know, that gets lost because online marketing is you can get online so quickly, you kind of take shortcuts, and you don’t do research, both in terms of your audience, your copy your product. So the research thing is something that all six had in common, but the other was understanding audience.

Jos Aguiar
That’s actually a question I’ll come back to around research. One thing he told me this, I can’t help but draw a parallel between you and guys at agora. Mr. Ford, Mark Ford, mark that blank in his last set master.

Brian Kurtz
Well, Mark for Mike, Michael MASTERSON. And then and then there’s Bill Bonner, who started the company. Yeah. Well, gore and boardroom where they weren’t sister companies by any means, but we actually once had a conversation. I mean, it was never gonna happen. But Marty and I once met with Bill and talk about, you know, what, for gore and boardroom combined forces because we were very different in that they did a lot of deeper investment stuff than we did you know, more technical investment stuff. And on the health front, they did a much better job in the supplement area than we did. But we did a I think a better job in the broad based consumer markets than they did. And we used all the same copywriters. They were you know, we exchange 10s, if not hundreds of millions of things. with them over the years. So, you know, at the time in the 1980s, there were three, the three big kahuna is in. There are a few others to actually I shouldn’t say what the three, but the three biggest government is in newsletter publishing were a Gora boardroom and Philips publishing. And at the time Phillips was about a maybe a $200 million business boardroom was about 100 million in the quarter was about 40 and a gore right now it’s probably well over 500 million with all their divisions, I would think. But the interesting thing is that we did the thing we had in common the thread that we all have in common was our commitment to working with the best copywriters and the best copywriters who understood markets way better than you know, we’re all a list copywriters as opposed to be copywriters. We paid them. We paid them royalties, we treated them like partners. You know, we knew that if they made a million dollars a year, we were making a lot more than that. There was a abundant mindset. In marketing. That was not prevalent. There were other companies too. There was KCI communications, run by a guy named Bob cap Hart, who, when he sold that when he got out of that business, he ended up consulting with agora. And there was some others Weiss research, which is still around Clayton make these rights for them. There’s a bunch of great posters, but Agora and agora are still a hero company of mine. I mean, in fact that my mastermind coming up on mark four is going to be a guest. And I’ve got a member. I’ve got a member

Jos Aguiar
person to reach, like, Well,

Brian Kurtz
yeah, I mean, he’s, he’s been a friend for I’m a big admirer of Mark. And, in fact, I knew mark before we got to agora, he ran a company in Florida called newsletter management with a guy by the name of John Adel. And they were cutting edge. I mean, some people thought that they were, you know, there was something shady in some of their marketing, but they were brilliant marketers. In fact, I think I read the quick Wikipedia page about them. They were they were the Attorney General went after them in New York State. And the whole thing was thrown out eventually. But I remember meeting Mark back then. And I said, this guy is one of the most brilliant marketers slash copyrights because he’s not just a copywriter, he, you know, really understood all the things I’m talking about. That’s what that’s what the world class is

Jos Aguiar
what you said from beginning on since you said intrapreneur? Mike, Brian, Mark, very similar. And same with your relationship with Marty and him with Bill muck. That is eerily similar. How you both had that same sort of personalities in relationship? Yeah, I

Brian Kurtz
I’m honoured you would put me in the same category as Mark Ford. I, he I can’t hold a candle to him. When it comes to, you know, the areas that he’s an expert in. I mean, he is somebody I really look up to. So yeah, um, I, but I do think that his relationship to bill in mind with Marty, there might be some similarities. Mark is much more. You know, he’s so diverse, you know, he’s, he’s a real estate investor. He, he’s just a, he’s, you know, I, there’s a lot of things where I really feel like, I can’t hold a candle to him, but we’re, we’re really, there’s a lot of mutual admiration there.

Jos Aguiar
Yeah, that’s awesome. I think you kind of mentioned it, we want to get to these with Kevin as well, talking about copywriting and how you’re more scratches, what is it? What is your real difference between you and Mark, in terms of how you guys were part of your companies?

Brian Kurtz
Yeah, Mark, actually, with his background, writing copy, which I didn’t, you know, I didn’t write packages soup to nuts. Mark was could work as an internal copy chief, where what that means is if even an alias copywriter sends in copy to a Gora, that mark would get Mark could actually go through it page by page, edit it. And the copywriter would actually make changes based on what Barack recommended, whereas on the other side, I didn’t play that role with boardroom because I I mean, I came up with ideas for headlines, I came up with ideas for overall platform so maybe that’s where I might have said strategist versus you know, copy Chief Mark is both I mean, Mark was able to do both. I could really only do one not because I wasn’t didn’t have the ability it just I felt that there were people better than me who could do the real copy cheating. I had people on staff who would do the proofreading who would do the nitty gritty. I spent a lot of time with my copywriters before they started writing. I’m the one that would sit down with them and talk about the list universe, what we’ve mailed what we you know, who what lists work, what list in what the what the selection criteria You were basically defining the avatar in a very specific way. So I was able to kind of be their partner as a marketer. And it’s interesting, the role that I’m playing now whether it’s in Kevin Rogers copy chief group or at Awai, where I just spoke, which is also a copywriters group. The role that I’ve kind of play is kind of the marketer, who oversaw a lot of great copywriters, and copy. But I did not, you know, copy chief in the way that a mark Ford or Bill Bonner does. And there was a guy at Phillips named Richard Stan Jones, same kind of thing. He was like, they had skill sets, they have skill sets, I don’t. So I wanted to differentiate that I’m not putting myself down. I just know what I do well, and that what what I what I do is the prep. And then also, I was really good with the copywriters when we were doing post mortems, like, post mortems, meaning after the mailing went out, what worked? What didn’t? What should we test next? Those were the discussions where I was really the most effective, and with my clients now, my consulting clients, it’s exactly like that, like, they’ll come to me and say, I tested this, I did that. Let’s put everything up on a whiteboard, figure out what would be next. That’s where I have my strength like I so it is more bigger picture. But it is about offers. It is about, you know, messaging overall. But it’s not the nitty gritty, I just headlines, I do subject lines, I do all of that. I named premiums, I’m very good at that. But I don’t I don’t do like the the what I call the real package, the puppy

Jos Aguiar
companion stuff. C OM is very technical, in which you’re able to do like lists, all that kind of stuff. Whereas I guess they’re more nitty gritty as well. And this difference?

Brian Kurtz
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that, um, I thought I coming out of the list business, which is what I did for 10 years, I think prepared me really well to be very audience centric, as opposed to be copy centric. And I always talk about in other interviews, and I talk a lot about, you know, that it may be that lists are actually a bit, I don’t want to say more important, but if you get the list selection, right, you kind of can throw almost anything at it in terms of copy, and you’ll probably make some money, you know, you won’t do as well, if you do shitty copy to a really targeted list with a good offer. However, the opposite. The opposite is not true. Like the opposite. If you if you get copy from the best copywriter in the world, but you mail it to the wrong list with a shitty offer, you’re probably not going to make any money. So you’ve wasted all your your creative dollars. So what happens, I think a lot online is that they get the list selection, right? Because with affiliates and people endorsing you, it’s not as difficult to find targeted universes. Yeah. So it’s very, it’s a lot easier to be able to find lists at work. And you can come up with offers. I mean, you know, there’s so many people do so many different offers that people can copy each other’s offers easily. And legitimately, they can steal smart, but then they don’t spend a lot of time on the creative, and they still make money and then they kind of get a little bit lazy. And I think if you talk to a lot of top notch copywriters today who are now moving from offline to online or have moved to offline online, they are finding that they can make big strides with online marketers with very little effort, because the creative has not been paid as much attention to as it could have. So there’s just a lot of opportunity for improvement on the creative side, because they already got the, to some degree, the list selection and the offers dialled in, and then you take it to another level like a Ryan Lovak. And, you know, so you start doing multiple segments. Now you could actually get it even better. But make sure you match that up with messaging that goes to the segments.

Jos Aguiar
If you were speaking to a younger president, who’s trying to build a large company, what advice would you give them? Like, if they would focus on two or three things they focus on? And just focus on that? What would you suggest?

Brian Kurtz
Yeah, I mean, first of all, it’s to focus on one or two things. You know, I think that, you know, when you’re when you have a million dollar business, and all you’re talking about is how I’m going to 10x and the 10x is about revenue, you get lost, you get lost because you think you have to do so many ideas to do that. And I think you’ve got a really, you know, I would highly recommend reading books like essentialism and the one thing and kind of really being focused on You know, what’s gonna give you the most leverage in your business? You know, my journey, I mean, I don’t see myself, you know, creating another, you know, nine figure business in my life. I mean, I might I don’t think so. But what I do want to do is be the coach to a lot of other businesses through my mastermind groups that are going to be the next 10 to $100 million businesses, and then my teachings and the speakers that I can bring, and the, the intelligence I can bring will help them grow. So I think you’ve got to be, so the thing that advice I give always is, you know, being a life on student, you got to read the classics, you’ve got, you know, want to spend all your time educating yourself, you got to spend some time doing, but you also have to learn really intelligent outsourcing, you know, you really, that’s why I bring people to my mastermind groups like ours, oh, who teaches, you know, really how to use virtual assistants properly. And, you know, really, you know, not doing stuff, you know, most entrepreneurs will spend a lot of time not doing the stuff they do the best. I mean, Dan Sullivan, talks about this in Strategic Coach all the time, that if you’re not working in your unique ability, first, you understand what your unique ability is. But you have to know what that is. And make sure that whenever you’re find yourself working outside your unique ability that you outsource it, and you’re going to have to be willing to spend some money on things that you don’t like to do, and things you don’t want to do. Even if you’re compelled to, like, you know, hit control freak, and do them yourself. So that’s like the broad, the more narrow would be, you know, as you’re kind of narrowing down the ideas, you know, make sure that the ideas that you come up with, I mean, when you when you know it, you see it usually, but it’s like, I love the idea of what I call the horizontal vertical. And the horizontal vertical is like coming up with niching down as much as you can. But still, when you niche down, there’s like that 100 There’s still a starving crowd there. So you see this, like in certain niches in the medical field. Chiropractors, for example, the guys who coached chiropractors and the guys who were in that marketplace, they understood that chiropractors were a type of doctor that really saw that it was so competitive, that marketing was going to be key to them. Whereas a normal physician in a family practice, doesn’t even want to know about marketing, even though they should. So the the marketing people who decided that caught being a chiropractor or being a coach to chiropractors was one of those niches that was a horizontal vertical, meaning that it was a really tight vertical, maybe competitive, yes. But those people were so hungry for marketing information that became a great business. So I think, you know that, and you kind of know it, when you see it, I mean, in the health field, a horizontal vertical for us at boardroom, unfortunately, was diabetes, or is diabetes. Diabetes is an epidemic in the United States. I mean, 30 million people I think, are affected in one way or another, whether it’s pre diabetic, that they don’t even know it. And so it was a big audience, and yet, you could niche it down in coffee, and talk about some specific diet and, and, and no supplementation and things that were out there in terms of, you know, health information that were niche. It wasn’t like general health, we do well, in general health info as well. But finding those horizontal verticals is just, I don’t know it’s killer.

Jos Aguiar
It’s really hot market is when they really got that pressing need. Put us

Brian Kurtz
on me here, it’ll find me in the Product Launch Formula community like Jeff Walker, the the people that do best are the ones that not only niche, but then they niche again, a niche again, and niche again. And it’s such a tight market, but it’s such a hungry market by the time they get to it. And and you never want to be number two, there’s a great book called The Star principle by Richard Koshi, who is one of Perry Marshalls mentors, and he wrote a book on 8020. And the star principle is brilliant. It’s a brilliant book. And he just wrote a new book called simplify but but the the star principle is all about becoming a star company. And you know, one of the big principles is you don’t want to be number two in a big market you want to be number one in a small market.

Jos Aguiar
That’s cool. From a outside the technical aspect, he talked a bit about the mental stuff that goes through building something like that. How many How long do you work what kind of what was press like? What were the hardest aspects of building the company like boardroom?

Brian Kurtz
Yeah, I I made a tonne of mistakes. You know, I you know, i i Sometimes I worked hard and not smart. I’ll tell you that. I think The biggest challenges were always, you know, the next shiny object and taking your eye off the ball on something that was a cash cow or something that was actually bringing in all the money, but you got bored with it. And that’s what most entrepreneurs go through. And I think in our journey, we did that. The biggest. The biggest thing, though, that we did constantly, was again, never met a medium we didn’t like so we tested everything. The joke I always say in one of my bios, is that, you know, I tested the back of yoghurt lids, and I tested the back of ATM receipts. And I we say those were kind of good ideas at the time. So very, very difficult to not resist new ideas, but not resisting new media. I think, you know, I think I think always looking to see if, if some medium could work for you is important, but biggest struggles. I think we’re, you know, working harder, not smarter, not outsourcing enough. Feeling like, you know, we had to do much more on our own as opposed to, you know, finding experts. One of the big keys is once we started paying, you know, incredible consults, and mentors to help us that was one of the big breakthroughs for us that we got so much further faster was sort of like our version of masterminding. Even though we didn’t attend a lot of masterminds back then we I think we understood the concept better than most. And we shared like crazy, like, I was always in groups with people that were definitely not as sophisticated as boardroom. And yet I shared everything that we were doing. Because if I gave them four ideas, and they gave me one that was okay, you know, this idea that everything’s got to be a quid pro quo. And it’s got to be equal 5050 That’s bullshit. You know, there’s no way that you’re ever going to get complete 5050 with anything, so I never worked in the book give and take by Adam Grant, he talks about everybody’s either givers, a giver, or a taker, or a matcher. And, you know, a matcher as somebody as if I give to you, you give to me, and I think we never worked that way Marty and I were always I mean, sometimes we, we cut people off if they took advantage of us or if they ripped us off or something like that. But we were just really obsessive about giving to the community giving to other companies are whatever we learned. And what we got in return was was incredible. Well, I think

Jos Aguiar
you really become the linchpin of media. That’s what makes you bigger by being at Senate, everyone else revolves around I think, so many people, I guess, in the marketing space, when you start to see them, go over this idea of I want to protect my ideas, country, everything, too. I’m going to give it all away and share everything. That’s when I started rise more. So

Brian Kurtz
when I got to the direct marketing business in the 1980s, the big kahuna in direct marketing was Reader’s Digest, there are people probably listening, this never even heard of Reader’s Digest, Reader’s Digest one of the largest direct marketing companies, magazine companies ever. And they had state of the art database marketing at the time, they had, you know, 10s of millions of names on their database, they were doing sophisticated modelling. They were doing all sorts of, you know, stuff that no one else was doing. But they never spoke at the conferences. They never shared what they were doing. And the fact was that years later, what they were doing was not as proprietary as they thought, you know, this attitude that we’re Reader’s Digest, and you’re not, what did not serve them. Well, they ended up going bankrupt a couple of different times. They, the joke was to me, and I love the company, and I looked up to the company, but you know, they had all this original artwork, like original Vincent Van Gogh’s and Monet’s in the, in the, in the, in the office, and when they sold all that artwork off for cash flow reasons, it was sort of like, you know, it was hard to feel bad for them, you know, because what, you know, they really, they really put out. They weren’t putting out bad karma. But I think it is bad karma when you think that you’re smarter than everybody else. It’s just, I think the world, the world will not, you know, it definitely rewards the givers and, you know, ultimately, they’re, you’re going to give and get taken advantage of the times. But net net, it’s going to be much better when you’re in a giving mentality. And the story of Reader’s Digest is one worth telling in terms of that, of not being a given company, thinking that you are smarter than everybody else, and then they’re the ones that didn’t stand the test of time.

Jos Aguiar
When it comes down to the full print and puzzle is when the ego starts to get too much. It’s not exactly too good. Awesome. Back to the research side. This is actually one of the points I had with Craig was like, not sure I agree, but I guess I understand why it works. But with research, do you have a process to it? Or was it more when I hear most copywriters say they just immerse themselves in the information?

Brian Kurtz
No, no, I think there is a process to it. If I’m a copywriter, you know, you got to know everything, you got to read everything. Look at all the quotes from Jean Schwartz about, you know, you have to understand what makes the country tick all the time. You know, he said, I have a great quote from him about, you know, going around not understanding what the country’s needs and desires are at your peril, at your peril. And so, so the copywriter definitely has to take such deep dives. When I had medical information that I needed on certain things, I used to go to copywriters on certain things, because if they wrote about it, they probably knew more than my doctor did. Now, now, the research side as a marketer, though, is also very important. You don’t want to, you don’t want to have paralysis from analysis. But I never launched the product, like a new book, or a new newsletter, without researching my current best buyers to see what else they might want. And so we did a lot of what we call concept testing, questionnaire testing, and there’s a real methodology to it. And I’m not, I don’t have the patience for it. You know, I’m definitely one of the guys that I have a good idea, screw it. In fact, I launched the diabetes book without really researching it. Because that one, I just do. You know, once I researched it on my own, I didn’t have to do much research to find out that if I had the right copy, I already had the starving crowd of people who needed this information. It was life saving. So and I found the same thing with with memory and Alzheimer’s and mind stuff. People were just so you know, worried about it that

Jos Aguiar
I said passionate about you saying a different design in same thing. Yeah, yeah.

Brian Kurtz
I mean, you that was the exception in terms of not doing research. More times than not, I never would have known that, for example, leads regarding cholesterol, were better than just heart disease, or talking about cholesterol, in some respects was better than talking about blood pressure. Because when we were talking, we were talking about a heart product, a heart disease product, for whatever reason, the mindset of the of the audience of the of the of the, you know, once we did our research, for some reason, the idea of high cholesterol, scared more people than the idea of high blood pressure, which never, I never understood, now we use both, they’re both really good to us. But, you know, I think blood pressure is way more dangerous, high blood pressure, way more dangerous than high cholesterol, because cholesterol could be a lot of different things. And you can get cholesterol under control with diet way easier than you can blood pressure, although you can get blood pressure under control with diet as well. So learning those kinds of things were critical, so that when we did a headline that became a control for five years, called the Five the 10 cent cholesterol cure, you know, which was a you know, which was was something that, you know, the idea of getting something out of your kitchen cabinet that can reduce your cholesterol. That was killer stuff, you know, so yeah, don’t underestimate research you can you can still have to go with your gut uncertain thing I

Jos Aguiar
guess what I’m getting at Dad is more whenever asked about the research process is always I’m going to immerse myself there’s not a go through at least get these questions and then I’m myself get one of extra informations like, do the work at boardroom have a particular process they go through or is it more just following the garden? Yeah, yeah,

Brian Kurtz
I mean, yeah, no, no, no concept testing. I mean, I can’t go into all the details. But you know, that’s a step that could be its own call. We can talk about research. That’s a that’s its own subject. But yes, we had lots of processes for research for we didn’t do it. We did a lot more quantitative research than we did in qualitative meaning focus groups were okay, but it was more about mailing big chunks of our list based on the best buyers and what they would want the most. So you know, that was something that was you know, critically important for us.

Jos Aguiar
I think I’m coming to the end of their time that we scheduled for you so respectful what you’ve got to do first of the deck and get ready

Brian Kurtz
right? I’m just telling my 10 o’clock that I’m going to just be a few minutes late but yes, if we could figure out what I don’t want people asking other questions that seem to be crescent

Jos Aguiar
moon we’ve got Doug saying hello target Deanna. I think a friend of yours.

Brian Kurtz
But I guess from Yeah, a great copyright.

Jos Aguiar
Rock that would be the most pressing things you Want to tell people right now? And finally, where can they get a copy of your book that it’s still available?

Brian Kurtz
Yeah, so um, you can buy the book on Amazon but I highly recommend you don’t I highly recommend you do, but you do it through my site. Because if you go to the legends book calm to th e le je e n d s.com, the legends book.com. You go there. You choose where you want to buy the book. I think you can go to Amazon Barnes and Noble or indie books and you go, you go to that. You go opens up a new window, you buy the book, you come back to the site. There’s an email address there that you send your receipt to. And then you’re able to opt in to get a swipe file from all six legends, Ogilvy Hopkins, Collier Caples, Halbert, and Schwartz, all six legends, at least 10 ads per like their best stuff. And you can download that it’s on the site. There’s also videos you’ll have access to from Ogilvy Halbert and Schwarz. And in fact, one of the one of the Ogilvy’s is although the appearing on David Letterman, which is kind of cool. And then there’s also a PDF of Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. But it’s an illustrated and annotated version, that I got permission to give away by Bob Bly, a great copywriter. And so you get all of that, plus a couple of special reports that Craig put together, that we didn’t didn’t make it into the book from the legends he get, you get all of that. Just brilliant stuff, in terms of the giveaways, and so that’s the way you should buy the book, legends book.com. It’s readily available on all of those sites, and I just, and then, folks would also be opted in to my list. I blog almost every week, I tell a lot of good stories about the legends, a lot of the stuff we’ve talked about today, I think I probably do have to do now a blog post about why research is so important. And I think I’ve done some about that, or at least variations of that. And as far as what I want to leave your folks with is that, you know, I think that education is is a lifelong pursuit, you know, it’s not, you know, I’m 58 years old. And I feel like, I’m as much a student today as anything, even though I see myself as a teacher. And so I think on a recent podcast, my interviewer said to me, you know, this idea that you you learn by teaching couldn’t be more true. And as someone coming from a perspective of being in the business for over 35 years, and still being kind of a kid in a candy store, learning every day, you know, really coming up with just incredible ways to cope. You know, as I said, getting that golden ticket to getting into rooms with the best online marketers, sharing what I knew in the offline world and how it applies, is, I don’t see any more important thing that a marketer or entrepreneur today could be doing, than to be merging those worlds. So that’s probably the overview. And, you know, that’s a lot of what the book talks about, and why I decided to do the with Craig, I’ll do it. I’m working. I’m going to be start working on my next book, which is more about, you know, my, my story and my lessons, a lot of the questions you asked me today about, you know, the, you know, even I’ve written blog posts about my biggest mistakes and, you know, you got to make some big ones to get to somewhere. And, you know, everybody’s heard, you know, don’t be afraid to fail. I’m not going to get all cliched on everybody here. But it’s it’s it’s absolutely. It’s critical to not ignore the past.

Jos Aguiar
Right, it’s been brilliant. Thank you so much. You enjoy your next needings interviews, and I’ll speak to you soon