Brian Kurtz: 19:25
Yeah, there’s a lot of opportunity there.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 19:27
So I’ll let you go to tell us about Light Bulb #2.
Brian Kurtz: 19:31
So Light Bulb #2 is, I said, what they don’t want you to know about how to make infomercials work or how watching TV at 2 a.m. led to a $300 million business, or follow the anecdotal evidence. So I put a picture up here of a book by a guy by the name of Kevin Trudeau. Natural Cures they don’t want you to know about. Unfortunately, I think Kevin is in jail at the moment. But and I put this up here because, you know, inspired ideas do come from anywhere, and I, I, and while I did not imitate Kevin’s business, I have to give credit where credit’s due in that. He gave me the the Light Bulb moment was watching Kevin on TV at two in the morning. So the background of this. And again, this case history is also outlined in that interview with Perry Marshall, which I’m going to give people access to. So I’ll probably do a little less detail here so we can get to all the Light Bulbs.
But the short version of this is that I always want it to be in the infomercial business. From the day that I saw Tony Robbins selling his incredible program in the late 1980s. And the reason why I fell in love with the infomercial business is that I had a brand, bottom line, personal, that was not well known. You know, I wasn’t Sports Illustrated. I couldn’t sell on TV with a football phone. So I needed 28.5 minutes to tell my story, just like my direct mail was longer direct mail. I didn’t do, you know, a four-page letter direct mail. I did 24-page mega logs and book logs and, you know, very, very extensive copy, copy-intensive direct mail because I have a story to tell. Nobody knows the bottom line brand. So I always knew that I wanted to be in the infomercial business. I tried to be in the two-minute TV business, short form, for years, never was able to do it.
I even met with Bill Guthy and Greg Renker, who were the kings of the infomercial business back in the late 1980s in the Tony Robbins era, and I thought maybe I had to put together 20 or 30, you know, boardroom books or DVDs or in that. Back then it was VHS, but I needed a program like The Bottom Line Better Life program or something. So I tried all kinds of stuff. I never got a Gutfreund to bite. I kind of always thought in the back of my mind I wanted to be in this business. And then circa 2004, I’m up late one night watching Kevin Trudeau, and he’s selling one book for 29.95, the book you see on this screen.
And I’m thinking, how is he doing that? I could easily put one book on screen and sell it for 30 bucks, but how do you make money on that? Infomercials are expensive. And then I called the toll-free number where I was pre-recorded. I think my joke was I was on the phone for about two and a half weeks, but basically what, what they did was it was all about the back end, obviously. And so I was on the phone for a long time. I bought every upsell they had just to see how they went through. I think at the, I think I spent a few hundred dollars, even though the book was $29.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 22:31
So what did they walk you through? So you went to buy the book. What happened next?
Brian Kurtz: 22:35
So, you know, they get me. They get your name and address quickly. They. It wasn’t like boiler room. It was, you know, good income. It was a good inbound telemarketing. But basically they said, well, you know, you’re getting the book. It’s 20.95. Would you like, you know, it’s like, would you like the would you like the premium Snuggie as opposed to the regular Snuggie? So in this case, would you like the, the, the audio version of Kevin’s book on CD? And that was another $29. And then I think there was some kind of transcript of the diet plan because it was there’s, there’s a, there’s a diet involved with this. And then by the time, you know, you got down it, it went all the way down to there was an auto club, there was a travel club, there was a discount card for Walmart.
So it had nothing to do with the original product. And now I realize where the economics were here. And then when I did some research, I found out that I think Kevin, on a $29 book, I think his average sale was well over 100 bucks. But what that meant to me, when I say follow the anecdotal evidence, what that meant to me is that I could do this now on my own terms. So what I did was we created, and I just put a bunch of pieces together. I got the best infomercial producer I knew, who was someone who I had been in touch with and stayed in touch with for years, who I always wanted to work with. He knew all the people to go to in terms of media buying, and we basically became infomercial experts overnight over three years. This is what got our company to $150 million in one year from 70 million. And that was just in year one.
In 2005 and 2006. We were told that 1 in 20 infomercials work. We got three of our first four to work, and the way we got them to work is that we did, as I said, we did them on our terms. We had shows that, and I’ll talk about that in a second. On the next slide, on Light Bulb #3 on how we use the physical product. But basically the lesson here was that I saw a way to do it. Now our average order, I only wanted to sell other Boardroom, you know, bottom line or boardroom books on the back end of our health book on the infomercial. So I didn’t want to go down to the Walmart discount cards, which would have paid for a lot of telemarketing expense. It would have, you know, covered a lot more than what we ended up covering. But I got to 65 or $70 average order. But all I did was sell more content. I sold more of our good health content, and that’s all I sold. You want to.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:00
Keep it true to the brand and keep it true to the content, and not kind of go off on tangents, even though it would mean more dollars.
Brian Kurtz: 25:09
Correct. And that’s not saying that what, what, what they, what Kevin did was wrong by any means; that would fit with what he wanted to do because his model then took the book into retail. His book and that book that you see on the screen there ended up in Barnes and Noble at, you know, 60% off eventually. And he and he moved millions of books through, through, through retail and through the trade. That wasn’t our game. Our game was to not only work in direct response TV at that higher price that remember the $39 price I told you in light bulb #1.
But then I’m going to show you in the next slide how. We then turned it into a multimedia extravaganza and brought it back to direct mail, and also brought it onto banner advertising online. So our business philosophy and how we were going to handle the back end here was more about the long view and not about blowing this out, which is a big thing in the infomercial business. A lot of it is, you know, basically they’re not one-hit wonders, but you end up being a four-hit wonder.
So you, you get you get the big hit on TV, you blow it out on TV, and then you move it to retail and then it fizzles out, and you’re done. That wasn’t our game. We were in business for the long haul because of our direct marketing business and our direct marketing heritage. In other media. And of course, that’s the lesson of multimedia and why you don’t want to just be in one medium, in my opinion.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 26:30
Yeah, yeah. And I’ll let you move on to Light Bulb #3. But just what I love. You know, what you say here is, you know, you took something, you know, it’s working. And you actually personally follow through that marketing process and marketing channel, and anyone out there, whether it’s direct mail, online, you know, an infomercial you can go to, maybe it’s a competitor, maybe it’s someone you admire, a company you admire, and just go through that sales process and see what they actually do that’s working.
Brian Kurtz: 26:59
Yeah. No, and it’s also, you know, speaks to the value of, of swipe files. I mean, in direct mail, we’ve been talking about, you know, we, we live with swipe files, meaning we look at what everybody else is doing all the time. And just so, just for the record, though, there’s a big difference between stealing and stealing smart. And so I’m not recommending you take somebody and you rip off what they do, but there’s a lot to be learned.
I mean, I saw Kevin Trudeau sitting at a desk, and then I saw him sitting on two stools being interviewed. And then I saw a Charlie Rose interview on, on, on a different channel, which was not an infomercial. And we put all of that together. And that’s how we came up with our format with Hugh Downs, which I’ll talk about now in Light Bulb #3.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:43
Right.
Brian Kurtz: 27:44
So Light Bulb #3 is, I said the day two years ago, an internet marketer told me the deep, dark secret of selling physical products. Actually, I heard that one for the first time in 1981. So the story behind this was that I was sitting in an internet marketing seminar, and the speaker was actually going to talk about this is two years ago, the deep, dark secret about selling physical products to an Im audience, to an internet marketing audience. And it just, you know, I almost I was sitting next to another dinosaur, a friend of mine, and we almost fell off our chairs. And by the way, when I use the term dinosaur, I’m using it in a really, really positive way.
So if people think that I’m ever going to go extinct, they’re crazy. But the knowledge that I had about what physical product can do, especially on the back end, even for digital product things that start digitally, I think is a huge thing. That’s an oversight when it comes to what people are doing online today. And I’m not saying that leading, I think leading with digital product is sweet. I mean, you know, the profit margins are better.
The, you know, the engagement can be better. The cross-sell upsell can be easier with one click. All of that. I don’t, you know, if I sat here and told you, you know, go do hardcover books and forget digital content, you might as well take me off this interview now. That’s not where I’m going. Where I’m going is, and it’s an interview. I just did an interview with Joe Polish, my good friend, about. I said, everybody’s going right. Time to go left. And it was really about direct mail. And I wasn’t saying, get into the $39 book, direct mail business.
What I was saying is get into the business of treating your customer in a way that deserves that. Sometimes they actually deserve physical product. And there are tons of examples online today that you see situations where people give away the digital content and where they make their first bit of money is when they sell either the either the DVDs of that content, or at least they sell some version of that content as opposed to giving the first they give it away free and then they sell it. And I know a particular situation that was a $1 million launch online that gave away a free documentary screening online for two weeks.
And the bulk of the million dollars that got sold was a DVD of the movie. Wow. People were able to watch for free online for a period of time, so I just don’t want people to forget about physical product. I was glad that a 100% internet marketer was telling me that deep, dark secret two years ago, but the light bulb for me went off, you know, very early on in 1981. Now, the screenshot here just, I just, you know, kind of feeds off of Light Bulb #2. First, you have Hugh Downs, who was our spokesperson. So the credibility factor made a huge difference in our infomercial. We were able to then sell the physical product, which is the book The World’s Greatest Treasury of Health Secrets. We had direct mail; it wasn’t all that great for The World’s Greatest Treasury of Health Secrets at the time. And after the infomercial, the third piece there, it says urgent health news.
It says, meet the greatest medical team ever assembled. We basically took the infomercial and created a direct mail piece around it. And a direct mail program that was dead ended up being one of the best mailings we had done in many, many years. And we ended up selling not only, you know, 3 million books on TV. We probably sold another after the TV; we sold another million five in direct mail. And then on the far right, which you can’t see well, is. Is the, the, the banner ads that we did for the book. And we started- I think the bottom one is a picture of Hugh Downs, says Hugh Downs, special reports. I mean, for a while we were on the Weather Channel, and we were in all the places that you’d never expect, you know, dinosaur marketer, bottom line boardroom to be selling a hardcover book.
And we were selling a hardcover book, and we sold another million-plus books online through banner advertising and all, all the stuff that we did there. So I just, I just think this is an interesting case history again, the whole case history of how we got into the infomercial business is, is detailed even more in that interview with Perry. But I think you get the sense of how this became a multichannel extravaganza. And my joke is always, if I was able to be as multichannel in my career, with everything I’ve done that we did here with the Treasury of Health Secrets, you wouldn’t be talking to me because I’d probably be retired on some island somewhere.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:25
Maybe for a month, but then you’d get bored, and you’d want to talk about what you did.
Brian Kurtz: 32:29
You’re absolutely right. Actually, you know, you have the, you have the, you have the, the distinct pleasure of knowing me way too well. And I have no intention; in fact, my next 30-year career is going to be better than the first 30-year career.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:42
So in that case, you know, anyone can do it. You did the multi-channel approach, which is from, you know, infomercial, direct mail, and then the online component. So incorporating all of it. And also a lot of people forget that physical aspect because we’re so used to this digital age. But that is like you were saying, everyone’s going left, you go right, they get something in their hands, and it’s sort of like a wow factor because they’re not used to getting it.
Brian Kurtz: 33:04
Totally. And there’s, there’s an interview on my site, which I think you can also have your folks, they can download for free, which is exactly that everyone’s going right time to go left, which is a, the interview I did with Joe Polish about, you know, using direct mail more on the back end of infomercial of even, you know, for online marketers.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:25
Yeah.
Brian Kurtz: 33:28
So Light Bulb #4.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:30
Light Bulb #4.
Brian Kurtz: 33:31
Persistent aggressive marketing is not stubborn or bullheaded, or how we went from loser mailing to loser mailing to mailing over 20 million pieces of direct mail for the same book. So what’s on the left side here? 1726 Best Kept Secrets in America is a mailing package for a book that we called The Great Book of Inside Knowledge. Before we mailed that, which would have been to the left of this, which I didn’t have and couldn’t find in the archives, was actually a book that was called The Book of Checklists, and The Book of Checklists was something that Martin, whose picture is in the middle, which I’ll explain in a minute. Martin is the master of secrets, Martin.
When we positioned him in our direct mail, we always positioned him as the Bloodhound. He was the guy that was going to get you the information that no one wanted you to know. So he also was so obsessed with checklists. And we know today that people live with checklists. They live with to-do lists. It’s still, you know, there’s all these I have, I have a couple of great apps that I’ve gotten online to kind of track my, my, my wins per what wins I have per day and all my different things. So Martin instinctively knew that he wanted to do a book of checklists. So he did the book of checklists. It was a disaster in direct mail. For whatever reason, people didn’t want to hear about checklists. Probably they thought it was too much work.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:48
They have enough checklists.
Brian Kurtz: 34:49
Exactly. It was like not positioned. So then the 1726 Best Kept Secrets in America was the same book retitled. And the title of the book is The Best. It was the book, The Book of Privileged Information, but it was still the same direct mail package. And that was a little bit better than The Book of Checklist, but it was pretty bad. So then Martin and I looked at each other and said, you know, the book is great. You know, the content is fantastic just because it’s a bunch of checklists. The actual checklists in the book are basically a life manual. And Martin just looked at me, and he goes, it is just an amazing book of secrets.
And so then we said, you know what, let’s not just retitle the book, The Book of Secrets, but let’s go out to our best copywriter. And that was a guy by the name of Mel Martin at the time who was our secret weapon. There’s an article online somewhere that the, the, the most, the most famous copywriter that no one ever knew. And it was Mel Martin because he was the guy that Martin and I just used exclusively for boardroom and what’s on the right there, which says how to refund airlines’ non-refundable tickets, how to make your car very, very hard to steal. Vitamins never to buy at a health food store. Never. And. And to know how to know when a slot machine is ready to pay off.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:07
Could I have a quick question on that? So why do you include that one as the last one? I would think if you include that as the first one, everyone’s like, wow, how do I know when a slot machine is ready to pay off?
Brian Kurtz: 36:16
Well
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:17
I didn’t decide the order on that.
Brian Kurtz: 36:19
Oh, the order. Oh, that’s interesting. You can test. We tested it. I don’t know if we’ve ever tested slot machine first, but we found that airline fascinations. We had a famous one. What? Never to eat on an airplane, which is a famous bottom line headline. And we knew instinctively at the time that airline stuff about air travel was really big with our audience at the time. So I think these are actually in the order that we felt were the best. We had another one on there for a while. That was how to outwit a mugger in a self-service elevator, which is one of my personal favorites. But anyway, the point is that that piece on the right that I just read to you ended up mailing over 20 million pieces of direct mail. We changed the name of the book to The Book of Secrets from The Book of Privileged Information, which was originally The Book of Checklist.
The book did not change at all. It’s the book you see in the picture in the middle with Martin, who was a black belt in karate. He’s smashing a board in between two stacks of The Book of Secrets. And actually, there’s a picture. That picture I just got out of his house recently from his wife, who gave it to me as a cherished possession that I will now have on my wall forever. Because that’s Martin and his prime as a black belt in karate, slicing a board, and over the book that he and I together mailed 20 million pieces of direct mail for. And basically, the lesson is that we knew we had a winner. The question is, it had you know, Gary Halbert has had a great line, which was every, every, every marketing problem can be solved, can be solved with a great sales letter. And so going to Mel Martin and I think also the whole what we call the fascination approach, which is on this envelope to the right, is something that we live by from this point. And we did it. We did it. And if you look in the 1726 Best Kept Secrets in America, if you open that up, the actual copy inside is very what we call fascination-oriented.
It’s got a lot of stuff that’s sitting on that envelope on the right, but putting it not just on the envelope, but then really going after the hard-hitting fascinations on the inside of the envelope and repositioning the book as a book of secrets was the difference between a book we would have given up on and one of the best-selling books we ever did. So I think there’s a lot of lessons about, you know, just because it’s not if you don’t succeed, try, try again. It’s you got to do it intelligently. You gotta, you gotta, you got to have world-class copy. You got to marry, you got to marry all of all of what you got. You got, you know, you got to take all of your resources and put them to use if you really believe. And Martin was just he wasn’t bullheaded. He was just an amazing, just an amazing, amazing marketing person. And so you asked me a question about Martin. I’ve got tons of stories like this. That’s why I have to do a two-day event about it.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 39:08
Right?
Brian Kurtz: 39:09
I’m doing it with Dan Kennedy, by the way.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 39:11
Who was going to be exciting.
Brian Kurtz: 39:13
Yeah, he was a big admirer of Martin as well. And we’re going to do a whole day just on basically the future of what we think the future of direct marketing is based on, and it’s going to be based on the lessons of Martin Edelston.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 39:26
Yeah, that’s going to be amazing.
Brian Kurtz: 39:29
So I’m going to go to light bulb five.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 39:30
Light Bulb #5.
Brian Kurtz: 39:32
Your database of customers are real people. The breakthrough thinking about multiple control packages. And there’s an asterisk, and it says different people need to be talked to differently. So maybe everybody on this call right now is saying a big duh. You know, Brian, tell me something I don’t know. And you would be amazed, because now I’ve gotten under the covers of a bunch of different online marketing businesses of how many people, big list, small list, that doesn’t matter, that they speak with one voice, one promotion, one language. When they have subgroups in their list that they don’t even know about, this particular story. I said the story of paranoid versus optimistic controls came about because on the left is the paranoid, the World Crisis of 1986.
That’s a sales letter for Bottom Line Personal. And on the right is free how to do everything right, which is also a sales letter for Bottom Line Personal. And that’s the premium that we gave away. It’s a booklet called How to Do Everything Right that you get free with your subscription. What we found in the list universe that we were mailing for Bottom Line Personal that there were different people from different buckets coming in, and we found two very distinct buckets. One was people who were coming from more mainstream lists. I’ll call it the Money magazine, Consumer Reports. You know, fundraiser lists, catalog lists. And then all of a sudden we started, we started mailing a few lists that were what I call opportunity seeker lists. They were, you know, small lists, but people who were incredibly responsive to direct mail people, but they weren’t resonating with the how to do everything right message. And we had this one package, the World Crisis of 1986, that we tested against how to do everything right.
And those opportunity seeker lists went through the roof, the World Crisis, and yet they were dead on how to do everything right. So I use this as a very granular example of how we found out the marriage of the copy with the list. And then we were able to have basically two controls. Control package, meaning the package that goes out- that’s your best package. And we actually had a whole new universe of opportunity seeker lists that only got mailed, the World Crisis package, and then everybody else got the how to do everything right package. The other little piece that we found out, which was incredible, was that the Opportunity seekers, because they’re opportunity seekers, didn’t pay their bill. We sold bottom line on a bill me offer where you got you got you got the free trial issue. And then we sent you a bill for 29.95 or $39, whatever the price point was. And we’d get, you know, 30, 40, you know, some percentage of people to pay. So we were finding that the world.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 42:15
You send it for free, and they have to pay after they get it.
Brian Kurtz: 42:18
That’s correct. And that’s how we sold a lot of our books, you know, by the way, and this, this is the this is in the full story of the infomercial. We sold those books on banner ads the same way, which is amazing to say that we could sell a book on a free trial without getting a credit card up front and be profitable, tells you the power of the marketing. It fizzled out after a while, but we were able to do Bill Me’s What We Call Bill Me’s. But the thing that we found out here is that the opportunity seeker guys weren’t paying up at a high enough rate.
So what we did on the world crisis package is that we turned it into a cash-with-order. They had to give us their credit card, and it still worked better than doing everything right. As a bill-me offer, a free offer to the same list. Now, finding out all those things were all done through extensive testing. But it was also the big lesson, of course, is that there are different segments on your list that need to be talked to differently.
And I don’t care if your list is 9 million names, like it is like ours is, or your list is 2 million, like our email list is, or your list is 900 people who bought, you know, a $10,000 product. Within that list, there might be some subgroups. And, you know, I always, I have a lot of different examples of this, but there are certain people that deserve to be talked to in a completely different way. And certainly there are some that you want to invest a lot more money in if they’ve bought a lot more from you, which is probably a different topic for a different light bulb. But the light bulb here was specifically about different, different messages to different universes of lists.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 43:50
Yeah. And I want you to, I’ll have you go to the next level. But I do want to ask a little bit about how you first discovered that and what the messaging was going to be, because how did you know it was paranoid versus optimistic? I mean.
Brian Kurtz: 44:02
You know, we had always done a bit of paranoia. I mean, you saw it in that other package with the fascinations on the front. So paranoia, you know, we used to say paranoia is not a psychosis. It’s survival. And we kind of knew instinctively that our folks were generally paranoid because remember, Martin was the watchdog who was going to tend the bloodhound, who was going to tell them about all the different people, their lawyer, their accountant, all these different people that are trying to. Yeah, the secrets of people like trying to rip you off. And we’re going to give you the inside information. In fact, we sold 3 million copies of a book called The Book of Inside Information.
So we knew instinctively that was it. So we. In this particular case, we did stumble a little into it because we hired a copywriter who specialized in writing very paranoid copy to write a package for Bottom Line Personal. That was the world crisis of 1986. However, we knew that when we. When we did the the list breakout for the list, we do end of the different control the different test packages. And we knew that we had this these lists of opportunity seekers that were not responding as well to how to do everything right. But they were they were responding at a very high rate for the Bill me offer, but they weren’t paying up enough, so they weren’t making money.
So we were thinking, let’s send a group of those lists, the World Crisis package. We might even get a higher front-end response. And even if they don’t pay up, well, we’re still going to be able to have a positive profit profit on on the list. And that’s exactly what happened. Of course, the pay-up was still not great, and that’s when we went then to the cash offer. So all of that got tested into. But it really started with knowing our list universe, knowing our copywriters, knowing how our audience behaved somewhat, but then trying to look for pockets of our database that will respond differently to different kinds of messaging.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 45:52
Yeah, yeah. I’ll oftentimes we do use the same messaging. So that is powerful.
Brian Kurtz: 45:56
Yeah. An email. It’s so easy to change it. This was expensive to do. I had to do this in direct mail. I had to pay postage and printing, you know, an email. There’s no excuse. It’s cheap. Last time I checked, they’re not charging for postage and email.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 46:12
And Light Bulb #6 kind of gets into how you sell and get that response.
Brian Kurtz: 46:16
Yeah. So this one I really want. This is very interesting. So how you sell is how they will respond. So this is the story about the survey package and the book log. Sounds like a fairy tale, right? The survey package in the book log went into the woods together or something, I don’t know. And the huge direct marketing lessons we learned by mailing both in the millions. So basically the. And I want to move through quickly because I know that we. I set my timer. So I know that we want to make sure we have time for Q&A. So on the left side here, both the envelope and the. And the piece that you can’t read that well, but I’ll tell you what that is. Basically, the envelope says confidential survey and gift certificate and close for, and it was actually personalized, you know, we call it inkjet. You know, we laser printed the name onto the envelope in a closed envelope. So it’s very, very personalized. You can see it’s a live stamp, even though it’s sent as a bulk rate. And then inside it said gift certificate.
And the first line said, I want your, I want your honest opinion. And basically it was a survey that, that the certificate, they sent the certificate back with this. And there’s some survey questions, and the survey questions and the certificate started their subscription. So it was a little gimmicky. They knew they were getting into a subscription. All the disclaimer copy was there about that. You’re starting a free subscription to Bottom Line Personal. And the front-end response to this was huge. I mean, we’re talking five and 6% response rates. Written by one of the best copywriters who ever lived and who’s still alive. And his name is Gary Bencivenga. And Gary wrote this package. He just thought it was a great hook to get more people to try. Bottom Line Personal, the idea is to get as many people a free issue of
Bottom Line as possible, and then they’ll get hooked on the newsletter because it’s so great.
And then the payout will, even if it’s going to be low, it’ll be high enough to pay out. Well, what we found with this package was it worked, and it was our control package for quite a while, but we got these five, 6% front-end responses, but we’d get 15 to 20% of the people to pay us. And so we just didn’t; it just didn’t feel great being in a business where only 15 or 20% are paying because we’re basically casting this incredibly wide net. So on the right, Gary came back to us and said, I’m going to now do a package that’s a book, a blog. That package on the right is 64 pages thick. It mails as a self-mail, or the addressing is on the other side of the Little Black Book of Secrets. And basically it’s a 64-page book, a long-selling bottom line, personal in long copy with a letter and fascinations and all the things that we know how to do in direct mail.
Now, this package mailed against the survey did probably, instead of doing maybe a 5% front-end response, maybe did only a 2 or 2.5% front-end response. But instead of getting pay up of 15 to 20%, we got pay up of 40%. 40% of the people who took a free issue after reading through the Little Black Book of Secrets paid us. And so what happened was not only did it pay out better because we didn’t have to give out as many free issues, right? We only did 2.5% front end instead of five. So I’m not giving away all those wasted issues. But now I’ve got a P and L that’s positive that I want where I want it to be. And then the biggest kicker was that the person who read this book, a log who then subscribed at the 40% clip, renewed at another 5 or 10% higher than the people after we tracked over a year who came in from the survey package.
So in year two, the lifetime value and the value of a customer who came in from a package that they had to read 64 pages, as opposed to filling out a survey and sending in a gift certificate. We got much better people on our list. And what does that mean? Well, that means the higher renewal rate, but then it also means they’re going to buy more books from us when we sell them other books, because they’re more engaged with our kind of content. They’re more our kind of person, as it were. I put that in quotes. And so basically this is where the, you know, the, the basically how you sell is how they will respond and then how they will behave on your list forever. And so this concept has been with me my whole career in everything I do in terms of how I think about front end and back end response, how I think about lifetime value of a customer, how I think about how long a customer I’d want to be with me.
And frankly, the one thing we have not done well at Bottom Line, and I’m almost embarrassed to say this, is that we really haven’t gotten into very high-ticket products. People who’ve had Bottom Line subscriptions for 20 years always tell me, Brian, I can’t believe you’ve never sold me a higher-priced product. The fact is, I’ve been doing pretty well selling a lot of $39 products in big quantities because I have a lot of people on my list, like the people who responded to the Little Black Book of Secrets. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t make a big mistake in trying to get to higher-priced products, which we’re working very hard to do that right now. But that wasn’t my specialty. My specialty was getting to getting quality people onto our list and creating incredible lifetime value with the people on my list.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 51:23
Yeah. And so the one on the left is something they had to physically fill out a survey and then mail it back to you.
Brian Kurtz: 51:30
It was a very, very simple survey. In fact, I think it was like one question or two questions. So the survey was almost like a little I have to tell you, we didn’t like it when it was the control because we felt it was a gimmick. And the actual survey question was actually a, it was attached to the gift certificate that you see on the right. So basically, you know, they’re, you know, they’re, they’re answering the question and putting in their subscription. So it’s, it’s not like they’re filling out a ten page survey or even a five question survey.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 52:08
I say that because I feel like when I look at that, I could see like a small business using that, you know, some whatever mom and pop, whatever an auto shop or something or whatever it is kind of using that kind of gift certificate and then, you know, copy. But were you worried about sending that little black book of secrets because it’s expensive to mail that?
Brian Kurtz: 52:30
You’re always worried. I mean, the cost of, you know, the nice thing about that versus a big tabloid, we have these, you know, magalog and tabloids, which are, you know, magazine and tabloid size promotions. And you pay even more postage. But you know what, in the quantities I mean, back then, I mean, we were doing mailings of two and 3 million pieces at a time. And I’m not saying it was cheap, but it really did pay out. I mean, it really was a science in direct mail. The problem is, and in fact, you know, just today there’s a markup of a bill in the in the United States Senate regarding postal reform. And as you know, postage went up earlier this week. And, you know, the Postal Service is making it harder and harder for us to figure out ways to use this stuff successfully. And they don’t get it. And don’t get me started on the Postal Service. That’s not a light bulb. That’s just a rant. And so, I’ve been very involved in that. I’ve lobbied on Capitol Hill for postal reform, and I will continue to do that.
But to answer your question, I believe in this kind of stuff. And so the Postal Service is putting this kind of stuff out of business. The printing, you know, the printers have gotten very efficient in printing these things. You’d be surprised, you know, the printing costs that we used to get on these, even though it was 64 pages, although we have gone down to smaller book logs and smaller logs. And the good thing about the book log is it mails at a lower postage rate than the tabloids and mag logs, which I mentioned, but worried. Yes, but you know what, Dick Benson, who’s one of my mentors in direct mail, had an expression which, again, everybody will say is a big duh. But he used to say the best package is the best package. And, you know, to scrimp and save when, you know, you can put out incredible packaging and content. And all of that, I think, is just a big mistake. Penny wise and pound foolish.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 54:25
Yeah. And also kind of go what you said in the in a previous light bulb is, you know, the back end. So you’re, you’re more comfortable, you know, your lifetime value, you know, your back end. When someone, someone goes in, what does that process look like? Someone goes in, they fill out the subscription. How does that work? What do they get from you?
Brian Kurtz: 54:44
In this offer? This is an older offer, but it’s similar now. I mean, back then we probably gave them a free trial issue of Bottom Line. And then they probably got an invoice for the full subscription sometime right around when they got their first issue. And then we would probably, what they call, grace them. Actually, as a matter of fact, this was I’m looking at it now up close. This was a six-issue subscription. So basically it’s like a trial; we kind of position it as a trial subscription that’s free for six free issues. And if they pay us. So basically it’s six free. And then if they pay us, they get 18 in total because they get, you know, the full year. In this case, we give them a full year in addition to what they would have gotten for free. If they don’t pay us and we go through the billing cycle, they’ll get the six free issues, and then we cut them off.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 55:44
I mean, when they when you say issues, what does it look like? Or what are they?
Brian Kurtz: 55:47
Oh, it’s our newsletter. It’s our it’s our 16 page bottom line personal newsletter, which still, believe it or not, at that time, we probably had close to a million subscribers. We’re probably at about 400 000 subscribers. It’s a print newsletter. It was amazing. It’s a print newsletter. We still have 400,000 subscribers to a print newsletter.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 56:05
Wow. All right. That’s great.
Brian Kurtz: 56:10
I probably have to breeze through Light Bulb.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 56:12
Light Bulb #7.
Brian Kurtz: 56:14
So I said learning the hard way, trying to sell prevention. So I, I was bragging, you know, all that stuff I heard that I thought it was John Wayne, but someone told me it’s Dizzy Dean. That said, it ain’t bragging if you did it. So I wasn’t really trying to brag about the infomercial business. It’s something I’m really proud of. But now I’m going to tell you about a total disaster on TV. So that it shows you that I’m not. I’m not. Everything I’ve done has turned to gold. I am very human, very human. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. So I think I had said before that, you know, we were told that 1 in 20 infomercials were had were going to work, and we had three out of our first four work. We had the Treasury of Health Secrets. We had another; we had the Treasury of Health Secrets.
Two, we went from Barry Farber as a host to Hugh Downs. Then we went to the Book of Ultimate Healing, which was again Hugh Downs with a live audience. And then we did a Secret Food Cure show with Carnie Wilson and the Wilson sisters, who are authors. So we had these these, you know, three out of 4 or 4 out of five successes. And then we started getting like very feeling our oats. Right. We said, oh, we can do anything in TV. Came up with came up with this idea that I thought was just incredible. And it’s what you see on the screen here. It was a book called Health, Harm or Rip Off. We partnered with a guy named Tod Cooperman, who had a company called Consumerlab.com. And Consumerlab basically is an awesome company.
They they test supplements. I mean, the supplement business is not regulated like prescription drugs, as we all know. And so, you know, a lot of times you go to GNC and you go, whatever, you don’t know what you’re getting. And what Consumerlab does is that they test everything and they give you ratings on the, the supplements that are, you know, that have the most of the ingredients they say they’re supposed to have. They also, you know, tell you the ones that there was there was a thing in this infomercial that talked about that there was supplements that were found when they tested that had rat poison in them. So this was like an incredible show. And and the woman on the screen there, I guess her name didn’t show up on my slide here. But that’s Erin Brockovich. That’s not Julia Roberts. That’s Erin Brockovich.
Erin Brockovich, the investigative reporter that Julia Roberts played in the movie, Erin Brockovich. And, and her hair looks really good here. I remember she was like, fussing about her hair the whole time during the shoot. And Erin was awesome. I mean, she was a great and she basically hosted the show with Tod Cooperman. And I mean, as I’m talking about this again, I’m excited about the idea all over again that we got. We got interviews with people from the, you know, health departments about how supplements need to be regulated, but that since they’re not that this book is the thing you have to have blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it was like a 28 minute, 28.5 minute. To me, it was like a documentary. And I said, man, people are just going to be they can’t wait to buy this book at the end of this. And this was a total flop.
And so why was it a total flop? I thought I had the proof elements. You know, like I had with Hugh Downs, I had Erin Brockovich. I had, you know, the uncovering of secrets, as it were, that the Treasury of Health Secrets did with Hugh Downs. But what I did here is that I think we ended up selling prevention. You know, people didn’t see their supplements as life and death as they did. If there was a way that they could help their parents with Alzheimer’s, which are treasury of health secrets, had some very interesting information on that. And using that as one example, and time and time again in direct mail, anytime we sold prevention or things that weren’t solutions to problems, they just didn’t do as well. Or in a lot of times they just flopped.
And so this was a very expensive mistake to learn about selling prevention. And I think the light bulb to hear that I didn’t put on the slide was, you know, I just fell in love with my idea here, you know, and it was my idea with with my producer and we fell in love with it together. And it’s funny as I just did this slide, I hadn’t told this story in a very long time because it’s painful because it was, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of, of losses here. But it’s a really great lesson to, you know, not fall in love with your best ideas because they may not be your best ideas. You know, the, the, the audience is going to tell you what your best ideas are.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:00:40
That’s very true. What I’m going to do is so Brian, I really appreciate all the stories and all these light bulb moments you sharing, where can people connect with you? I’m going to go to the questions in a second, but where can people connect with you find more information? Yeah.
Brian Kurtz: 1:00:57
So, you know, I put an email is my slide show up the yep. Yeah. So basically if you can email me [email protected]. You know, if you have any thoughts or things I don’t. I may not check it right away. I do respond to everything. So eventually I love getting feedback. I love knowing how my message is resonating with people. I think that I’m in a unique position going forward. As you know, I one of the URLs I own, which I’m not using yet, is dinosaursandcowboy.com. And I just think that there’s this melding of the old and the new, and that’s part of what I want to do with Dan Kennedy in my live event. So, you know, you have a lot of people. This is a digital domination summit. I figure there are people on this, this, this interview that are listening to this interview that are either saying, I don’t resonate at all or I do resonate, or I could rework some stuff to resonate more. And I’d love to get that feedback. So I know it’s dangerous to put an email address up, but I am because I’m that kind of guy and.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:02:02
Generous of you.
Brian Kurtz: 1:02:02
Well, and I want to, because I have a feeling that people who would be in your tribe on on this, on this, on this digital on on the summit. I think that they are people I need to hear from. And then at w w w dot dot me, the there’s a bunch of content there. It’s all free. There’s. The main squeeze though, is a the interview I did with Perry Marshall and I tell the full story of the of the. Hand truck and Barnes and Noble. I tell the full story of the infomercial soup to nuts. And then there’s a third story in there about how I became the best list manager and why lists are so important to everything we do, and Perry just extracted so much out of me. Anybody on your on this know who knows Perry Marshall. He’s one of my heroes. And it’s one of the one of the things I’m most proud of, that he would interview me and actually send it out to his his tribe. And I got tremendous feedback on it. So that’s the main squeeze that Brian Kirk’s dot me and everybody is welcome to go grab it. I encourage them to be on my list so they’ll hear about the Dan Kennedy event, which I think is going to be huge. And that’s me.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:03:17
All right. What I’m going to do, Brian, is I’m going to everyone put in what questions they have in the live chat. I’m going to pull them up. And Brian, you can go ahead and get out of your presentation and come back in as you and I will just sum up some of the light bulb moments until Brian, you come back in.
Brian Kurtz: 1:03:39
So I’m going to have a tech moment here. I’m going out. I’m going back to the original link.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:03:44
Exactly.
Brian Kurtz: 1:03:44
Okay.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:03:46
And so as Brian’s going out and coming in, there’s a few questions here. And so let me just direct make sure Brian, you can get to the the Google Hangouts and then hit the.
Brian Kurtz: 1:04:02
Yeah, I hit the link already. So I should be coming on.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:04:04
And then yeah. And then you can hit the. You have to end this call to get back in, though. Oh yeah. You’ll have to end it and then come back in with the link first. So but everyone put their questions in the live chat. And I’m going to just sum up, I know Irene, you have a good question. I wrote that one down and just a few things to to wrap up and wait for Brian while you put your questions in also is just to go over some of those light bulb moments. Number one, just remember that hand truck story. Whereas you can, you know, you don’t have to produce all the content yourself. You can go to other people, other avenues to produce great content and then market it or repurpose it with them. Light Bulb #2, follow people’s funnel. You know, he, when he saw that 2 a.m. TV show with
Kevin Trudeau, he followed that funnel to see what they were doing and what was working. And light bulb three was that deep, dark secret, which is if everyone’s zigging, you zag. And you know a lot of people right now in the digital age, they’re just sending out digital books. What kind of physical content can you produce? Or maybe everyone’s doing audio. What can you do? Video? What can you do differently to make yourself stand out, and also to increase the value of what you’re doing in light bulb for is that persistent, aggressive marketing? If you, you know, they saw something and they kind of they did one headline and they knew they had amazing content. And so they had the headline, they changed it until it worked. And also just look on that one, on that one page and that one slide, if you review this video, you’ll see it. There’s so many factors that go into this that is just remarkable, like the fact that they have the headline on the envelope. You know, Brian didn’t even point that out. They just do that stuff naturally because they’re marketers.
But just to put that the colors and how they they arrange it on the envelope is remarkable. Light bulb five, that database just sending different messaging to your database and light bulb six how you sell is how they respond, how you know they respond. So if you have a higher end package or higher end value, you’re scared to put out, you have this amazing video course and you’ve been, you know, selling it, maybe some of that you give away because it’s just, you know, going to create more of a pull for you. And last is, don’t you know, learning maybe just watch out if you’re selling prevention and Brian’s back. I have a few questions here, Brian. And the first question is obviously you’re an expert, one of the experts at this because you have you’ve had millions of people sending out newsletters. And this person asked, how do you make a really effective newsletter?
Brian Kurtz: 1:06:50
That’s a really good question. I do have there’s an interview on my site with I did, I did with a guy by the name of Mike Capuzzi, who’s a wonderful online guy. Actually, he’s more than an online. He’s an offline guy too. And it was all about the newsletter business. And I think that the old world of. And he actually wanted me to talk about print newsletters, the value of print newsletters. And this interview was not from 1985. This was an interview I did last year. So again, let’s go back to the perceived value of physical product. I think newsletters on the back end of a digital business could be so powerful that people get in the. In fact, I wait for Perry Marshall to send me his printed newsletter as opposed to going on the link because he sends it also with a disc that I can throw on my car. You know, don’t underestimate that. Just because we’re all digital, all digital all the time that people don’t want the the tangible called the newsletter.
As far as the content, I mean, newsletters always have the reputation of being more inside information than, say, magazines. And in fact, Martin started a newsletter at Board Room because he didn’t get the funding to start a magazine. Starting a magazine would have cost him hundreds of thousands, even back in 1972. Whereas for 20,000 bucks, he could start Boardroom reports. So the idea that it’s all about the content and that the idea is that if you want to sell the newsletter, selling a newsletter at a premium price is all about what the content is. So a newsletter is not slapping together a bunch. I mean, some people do newsletters that are just, you know, family fun. And, you know, the last what I did on my summer vacation, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about high value content. And I love the concept of putting high value content that’s even higher value on the back end of a digital product.
And that don’t underestimate the value of it being print, especially if someone’s paid you a lot of money. I mean, just think they’re going to get a, getting a nine by 12 envelope on their desk with a printed newsletter from you. I’ll tell you, Dan Kennedy still sends tons of of printed newsletters. I know that people eat that stuff up, so I don’t know if that answered the question, but there’s a lot of potential in the whole newsletter business. And the interview I did with Capuzzi, he asked me some really pointed questions. I did not think that interview was going to go well. It’s like, I’m going to talk about print newsletters with a bunch of online marketers, and I’m really I am really proud of it. It came off pretty good. So I love, I love some of your folks to check it out and then give me some feedback at my email.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:09:22
What components if someone’s okay, I, you know, from what you said, I’m going to start and do a more extensive newsletter. What components do you recommend are a must to include?
Brian Kurtz: 1:09:35
You know, I, it depends on the it really depends on the on, on the on the on the, on the sector.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:09:42
I guess just talk about one of, you know, your newsletters and what you include and why.
Brian Kurtz: 1:09:47
Yeah. So the stuff that gets read the most, I will tell you in a broad based consumer newsletter are the really short snippets, you know, the, the, you know, that’s what I think. I think our in our in our e-newsletters, the things they get open at the highest rate are the tips of the day as opposed to the long e letters. So I think online, I was just with somebody recently and they have this incredible amount of content. And you know, she said, I want to start blogging, I want to start doing this and that. I said, why don’t you drip it? You know, a tip of the day type of thing, because I open my tips of the day when I get those tip of the day newsletters from whoever they are and they’re in, they’re in an area that I’m interested in.
I jump on those. I will say, though, that they’re depending on your sector. If you’re in the investment business, for example, I think longer pieces about complicated subjects are really important. So I’m not Pooh poohing long and short. I’m not I’m not making one one blanket statement. I will say the digestible, we call them our BS, which stands for brainstorming on the back, which are on the back of our publication. And bottom line, those are by far the most read. It’s like reading the PS first, right? It’s you know, people just get that. And then our other articles, which aren’t really that long, they’re only like two pages long. But those are the longer pieces, the A pieces and the B pieces. And those are on more complex subjects. So sounds kind of simple, but if the subject’s complex, simplify it as best you can.
Don’t you know, don’t use more words than you need to. But I think newsletters do give you that opportunity to delve a bit. But I also think use the whole newsletter concept both online and offline to, to drip content on a, on a longer. I mean, that’s what that’s what the launch people have have learned, right? The best people who do online launches, they’ve understood about this is Gary Vaynerchuk again, jab jab jab. Right. People know that you can drip the content up and it’s a much, you know, much more digestible way to get your stuff out. But a good newsletter still can be packed. So I know I, I know I talked out of both sides of my mouth there, but there’s no one rule of thumb there. There really isn’t. I mean, I love the idea of using print.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:11:49
Yeah. I mean, the bottom line is you sort of have to test. And it may depend on what your market is and what your audience is kind of going back to. When your light bulbs is. The messaging depends on, you know, if you’re segmenting who you’re talking to, you know, so you just have to test it. And for some markets, it will work. In, some it may not.
Brian Kurtz: 1:12:05
I know a guy who’s a daily, like a daily tips coach, and I wouldn’t do a 30 page newsletter to those people. They’re they’re they’re tuning in to him every morning for five, you know, for three minutes. So they’re I’d want a drip content in my newsletter would all be probably all kinds of, you know, shorter tip content.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:12:21
Yeah. No, Brian, I appreciate your time. I have two more questions for you because I know I respect your time. We’re running a little bit over one is so you built up and you talk about, okay, we’ve sent to many people, millions of people. How can someone right now start to build up their list?
Brian Kurtz: 1:12:42
It’s a good question. I mean, I’m not you know, I have the luxury now of a 9 million name database. How did I get there? So, you know, and we didn’t have the internet either. But I think that one of the ways we got there was figuring out a way to sell on a bill me basis. You know, you get a lot higher response when you give away something for free than when you have to get their credit card up front. That’s a tough call for online marketers these days. How to sell how to sell either free content or content on a trial basis. But I’m seeing a lot more of that. And obviously you’re going to get a lot more names. And if you’re targeting correctly, you know they’re not going to be terrible names. They may not be as good as somebody that comes in and spends $2,000 and doesn’t return the product.
But talk to most emr’s, you know, they’ll tell you that their return rates are incredibly high for their cash with order products. But the whole idea of trying it before you buy it is a concept that’s kind of alien to a lot of online marketers. And that’s one of the reasons, you know, Martin always said that someone told him with bottom line, personal We were we didn’t have a lot of cash in the 70s and 80s, you know, cash flow was a problem for our company. So Martin had to sell with a with a credit card or a cash only you couldn’t you couldn’t get our free issue back then. And one of our list brokers said, you know, I know the list universe will respond to this publication. Why don’t you just give it away? And that was the birth of our soft offer, which most magazines do write. Magazines are not considered high value products because you can get a free issue with almost any subscription offer. So that’s one thing. And then in the B2B area, I mean, I’m doing it now.
I mean, I want people to go to BrianKurtz.me so I can build my list. And I want to create a tribe of people that want my message, you know, will I sell them something someday? Yeah. You know, I’m going to sell them something that they want. You know, I’m not ready to sell them anything yet. I don’t have anything that is going to appeal to them. People who listen to me today, I don’t have a problem. Maybe I have the live event with Dan Kennedy, but I don’t have anything. But basically I just want to keep sending them more and more of my content and create a group of people around me that I want to be with. And that’s where the best mastermind groups are developed. So on the B2B side, I think it’s a it’s a real tight knot. You have to cast a little bit of a wide net.
I don’t consider, you know, for me, this interview is a wider net for me because not everybody on this call is going to resonate with my message of, you know, I’ll call it good old time direct mail, but it’s it’s really direct marketing. And the ones who do resonate with me today are people I really want to connect with and be with the rest of my life. So I think that’s the consumer and B2B. I, I, there’s probably some other things I’m not thinking of on the consumer side building list, but one of the keys to get to start getting into critical mass is the whole idea of a building offer.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:15:34
Do people still is it popular that people buy lists still or.
Brian Kurtz: 1:15:40
Oh, yeah, I mean, they rent lists. I mean, they’re rent direct mail. Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s the lists aren’t as big as they were. That’s why direct mail has shrunk so much because so many people got out of it. And the list universes that are available are smaller. This is an area where email is way behind. I mean, buying cold mailing lists. I mean, I know a few people have dabbled with it. They’ve tried it. They’ve had some success. Love to hear about some success from people on this call that if they’ve been able to go out and buy a cold email list and be able to send an offer to it and actually sell product to it, that doesn’t happen that often.
That’s why you have to drip content to them. And that’s why the launch, you know, that’s why product launch formula, you know, what Jeff Walker built is just so powerful because that’s, you know, you’re not selling them something until you create a relationship with them. Dean Graziosi, one of my friends who’s the real estate success guy on the infomercials and a great marketer, has an expression. He goes, people refund transactions. They don’t refund relationships. And I always keep that top of mind. in everything I’m doing.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:16:46
Yeah. Just provide so much value. And then, you know, they’re going to want to resonate with your message. And then when you do have something come out, it’s going to be geared towards what they want anyways.
Brian Kurtz: 1:16:56
Exactly. The answer to your question is yes. You know, list rental and list exchanges. Huge part not not what the not affiliates in direct mail. I go out and I, I actually purchase lists. I mail the consumer reports lists for bottom line personal and they rent it to me for one time use. That’s a that’s it’s own seminar on lists, which is actually there’s another interview with Joe Polish on my site called List Management Mastery, and that goes into some of the intricacies of buying and selling lists.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:17:26
You know, and Brian, last question is there’s a lot of great stuff that you talked about that includes a lot of stuff in the funnel. What is one thing someone should start doing right now in their business, that would be the most impactful.
Brian Kurtz: 1:17:48
One thing I would, I would, I guess, you know, based on my light bulbs that I shared with you today, I would basically look at, you know, do you have enough? Can you produce enough content and product to satisfy your tribe? So, you know, that would be one thing I would certainly a question I would ask. And then instead of just doing affiliate deals, are there people that I could get into much deeper partnerships with because their product resonates so well with my audience and they may not have the money or the, so who’s out there?
You know, maybe, maybe that’s not a quick thing to do. You said, what’s the first thing they can do? I mean, that’s not a quick thing to do because you have to do a lot of research to get there. But that’s, that could be huge, right? Because you could create completely new profit centers and business models by getting, you know, together with the people that resonate with you. I also think that, you know, I think just being figuring out what you can give away for free, whether online or offline, that can lead you to the sale later on. And look at there’s so many resources available. I mean, I’m not the expert on that.
I’m a student of it, you know, belong to, to Jeff Walker’s platinum group because I want to learn about PLF. I think, you know, things like that are just so powerful. And it’s, it’s another whole way to market. And, you know, I follow any guru who’s got something new to say about different funnels. And I think, I think the first thing you do is you just keep educating yourself. Anybody who’s going to listen to all the other interviews besides me is doing what they need to do. So first thing I don’t know.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:19:35
I like what you said, though. I mean, those two things are really, you know, a good starting place because you look for a synergy. You know, if you have great content, maybe look for an audience that would want that content. On the other hand, if you have an audience, look for some great content. If you know it doesn’t have to be your own and, and give it to them. And the second thing is, what is the most valuable thing you can give out for free? That’s going to be so good that your audience is going to keep wanting it. So I think those two things are great.
Brian Kurtz: 1:20:04
Starting I got I got another quick one, I think also look at your audience, look at your database of customers, prospects, whatever, and figure out what segments would make sense without going crazy. If you have a thousand names, you don’t want to split it into, you know, 15 different segments. But maybe there’s a segment, even if it’s just, you know, buyers and prospects, but then go step further. You know, here are people that came in through my launch and here are people that came in through, you know, search. And now I’m going to create messages that would appeal to both of them. And you talk to them that way.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:20:40
Yeah. You’re right. So you’re right. And I found this out because I have a health newsletter that I send out and one person unsubscribed. And I asked, oh, why did you unsubscribe? They go, I didn’t want all this health information. I just wanted what deals are available? And then another person would only want this long health information on how they can help their ailment. So it’s two completely separate. You know, some people just join because they want a special and some people join because they want actual, you know, long form health information.
Brian Kurtz: 1:21:11
Yeah. I mean, some people won’t, won’t be able, you won’t be able to find the, the, the isolated, you know, the isolated people. It’s going to be, there’s going to be a, you know, you know, outliers, but you, but you could find pockets. And if you can find those pockets and speak to them individually as a pocket, that’s going to be incredibly powerful in terms of selling product down the road.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:21:35
Yeah. Brian, I want to be the first one to thank you. And in the words of someone who just wrote Cecilia, he is a guru, an easy going person. I really appreciate what he says. I want to learn more and more. Thank you so much. That’s straight from the last comment.
Brian Kurtz: 1:21:50
So that that’s very heartwarming. Of course, I’ll get all the nasty ones on my email, but and I know we went way over. So I apologize for that.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:21:58
But no, I appreciate your time. You know, check out BrianKurtz.me and say thank you. He actually was so gracious in including his gmail email in this. So Brian, thank you so much.
Brian Kurtz: 1:22:11
Oh, thank you Jeremy. It was really an honor and a pleasure.
