#245: The 7 Critical Success Factors of All Successful Copywriters and Content Marketing Writers

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. You can find detailed show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com episode 245. Those notes include a summary of our discussion as well as links to resources we mentioned during the show. I've always been fascinated by the legendary direct mail promotions and direct response ads that generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue. We're talking about ads and promotions that we still to this day model and study. Sometimes it's hard to see how you can apply what these copywriters did so successfully and not just a sales generating copy, but also to B2B marketing content. It's easy to fall into the trap of believing that what these copywriting legends did was something that worked back in the 1950s or 1960s, back in the golden age of direct mail, of Mad Men if you will. But in today's digital world, you know, do these principles still apply? And if they do, what can we learn from them? And how can we use them to inform and persuade in today's noisy marketplace? Well, today I'm honored to be joined by legendary direct marketer Brian Kurtz. Brian is the founder of Titans Marketing and has been a pioneer in direct response marketing for nearly 40 years. As partner and executive Vice president at publishing house Boardroom Inc. Brian Brian was instrumental in growing to $150 million in revenue and becoming the state of the art direct marketing and publishing company that it is today. He's worked with and closely studied some of the most legendary copywriters of all time, including Gene Schwartz, Gary Van Zwevenga and others. And one of the things that I admire about Brian is that he does an amazing job of being the bridge, if you will, that connects the eternal truths of direct marketing to today's fast paced and continually evolving online and multichannel world. But as Brian explains, the principles these legends use are timeless and you can use them today. We truly understand them. It doesn't matter. Again, if you're writing sales, generating direct response copy, blog posts, white papers, case Studies, or even B2B web copy. Now, just a quick heads up before we get started. This discussion is a little different from most of my interviews. Brian's brain, as you'll quickly See works at about 100 miles per hour. He has so much knowledge, insights, and perspectives that he often jumps from one story or idea to the next, and he does that very quickly. But what he shares here is so good that I just decided I'm just let him lose to riff and. And to share as much knowledge and insights as he could. So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Brian, welcome aboard. So great to have you here.

Oh, it's wonderful. I don't know why I haven't been. I don't know how long you've been doing the show, but when I found out that I could be on your show, I was really excited because we have a lot of mutual friends and we overlap quite a bit. And I just think this will be a lot of fun to riff with you today.

Absolutely. Well, it's truly an honor. And you're right. It's kind of weird that we haven't crossed paths here on the show. Been doing it for seven years.

Oh, my God.

It's one of those things, right? Yeah, it's one of those things that you. First of all, I just had to do the math. It has been a while, I guess, but one of those things that you look at people like you, Brian. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know if I really. What if he said no? And I teach my coaching clients all the time. Listen, what's the worst thing that could happen? You know.

I have that I did something, like in 2013, I wanted to do a full day with someone in the industry when I was still at boardroom. And I remember I called Perry Marshall. Someone told me, you should get Perry Marshall. Everybody loves Perry Marshall. So I said, you know, I've never had any interaction with him, and I do this with everybody. I mean, I did it with you. I mean, I didn't know if you knew me. So it's always better to err on the side of, you know, a little humility, a little, you know, you may not know me, but. And so I went to Perry Marshall. I said, you may not know me, but. And, you know, and he came back and said, of course I know you, and. Which, you know, I didn't know. I just didn't know. And I think that, you know, and it's not just to be humble, it's really because that will get you more. If they were going to say no. But you introduce yourself that way and they look you up and they see, you know, you're not going to rip them off. And you're not going to, you know, steal their intellectual property. You know, I think they might say yes, and. But as you said, it's always, what's the worst case? They say no, and you move on to the next thing you know.

There you go. There you go. So I'm glad we made it happen.

Yeah. This is great.

And, you know, I'd like to explore several things with you in the realm of direct marketing. One place I'd love to start our discussion is with how you got your start, because I know that this is one of those industries where nobody ever said, you know, when they're in high school, middle school, I want to be a direct response marketer.

Right.

It's like we. It's indirect. We kind of end up here. It's an accidental path. How did you get started?

So I won't go into it for too long, but basically, I was an English major in college. I decided my senior year I was going to do one of three things. I was going to be a film critic for the New York Times, which meant I had to go to film criticism school at nyu. And I applied there. I was going to be an. Or I was going to be an English professor, and I applied to a bunch of PhD programs in English. And the third thing was, I umpire baseball since I was 17 years old, and softball. And so I was gonna. The other third was gonna be, I'm gonna be a major league umpire. How's that for three diverse things, and I didn't do any of them. In fact, I even wrote a blog post about it. And I said, you know, what I decided to do is, like, I got into NYU film criticism school. I got into a PhD program at Idaho State University in Pocatello, Idaho, and I got an invitation to go to the umpire school in Florida. And I didn't take anybody up on any of that. And instead, I graduated college and I walked the streets of New York city giving out 40 to 50 resumes a day. I mapped out my day. It was all publishing companies. I figured I'd be a writer. I'd start there and work my way up somewhere. And so this. I did think I was gonna be an editorial person, a writer. I didn't say copywriter. I didn't know what a copywriter was. I didn't know what direct response was. I didn't know what a list was. I mean, I didn't know anything about this industry, but I knew that I kind of wanted to write, so I just went to publishing companies. That made sense. To me. In fact, I remember going to the library each night in my library in my hometown. And I got the lmp, the Literary Marketplace. And I just mapped out in Manhattan all the publishing companies and then worked the addresses that I was able to do a lot in the same neighborhood each day. So I basically gave out hundreds and hundreds of resumes by going door to door, whether it was Random House or John Wiley or all kinds of publishers. It was a crazy thing to do, but I figured what the hey, you know, I wasn't doing anything else, so that's what I did.

That's true shoe leather, by the way.

Right? That was true shoe leather. So one of the guys I met was a headhunter. This guy about Bob Reamer. Reamer Ribollo. I don't even know if he's still alive, but he liked me. He just like. He said, you know, I have this company called Boardroom that I Young company. They're always looking for young people like you. I don't have anything there right now, but, you know, keep in touch. That was one of the people I met then as I'm walking around to companies, not just headhunters, of course, I came across Samuel French, which is the largest play publisher, you know, plays for. They actually, they do some agent work too, but they basically handle the royalties for all shows. So whether you're an amateur show, like you're doing the Odd Couple in a high school in Texas, you would have to pay the royalties to Samuel French, and then they ship you the scripts. And it just so happened when I got to Samuel French's office, I. And as soon as I said, I'm looking for a job, I'm looking for just about anything. And the guy brought me into his office and he hired me on the spot. Now that sounds miraculous, but it really wasn't because it was $150 a week before taxes. So it wasn't a lot of money. It was like 9,000 something a year.

In New York City.

And it was amateur leasing. So I was handling the royalty rights for all the high schools and, you know, theaters around the country who were doing plays, who needed scripts, who were, you know, basically I would billing agency for royalties is what it was. And then I worked there for six months. And then the headhunter came and called me and said, I have a job at Boardroom. And the job was. Happened to be in. In house list management. Now, I didn't know what list management was. I didn't know if it could be in house or outside. I know Anything. Well, of course I said, I'll take the interview because I'm making $150 a week. I wasn't hating it, but I, you know, I needed to make more money so I could move out of my parents house. So I went to boardroom and it was a job for an in house list manager. And the joke at the time is that I was voted most likely in my high school yearbook to be a list manager when I didn't know what it was. And then I learned all about the list business, so I got the job and it was like for 12,500 a year. And believe it or not, that enabled me to move out of my house. And so, and I started learning the list business. Now most companies have a list. Now, your audience may not know this, but in direct mail, in 1981 or 82, the average company, like if you're Money magazine and you have your list of subscribers and you're renting it out to other direct mail people, your list is with an outside list manager that handles a lot of lists. Boardroom, because it was a newsletter and book publisher, had these amazing lists. They were affluent executives. They all bought through direct mail, no other sources except direct mail. So these were like mail order junkies who were affluent. And so what I had with me, I had this gold mine of a list that was managed in house by boardroom because they didn't have advertising. So there was no way to reach the boardroom audience of newsletter subscribers and book buyers except through me, through the list manager. And I was working for someone initially, and then I became the list manager. So that's how I got into the business per se. And in fact, a year or two after I was at boardroom, a job opened up in editorial at Bottom Line Personal, which was our consumer newsletter. And I went to Marty Edelston, who was the founder of the company. I said, you know, I'd like to take that editorial job. And Marty just looked at me and shook his head and he said, look, you have a nose for marketing and for you to leave marketing would be a crime. And you know, I'm 23, 24 years old, and the president of the company, who's a, you know, I didn't even know what an icon he really was. He was behind the scenes, but he was a true icon in direct marketing. He said, so when a guy like that says to you, I think you have a nose for marketing, you keep your nose back in marketing and you don't go to editorial. So, and that was like the moment where I realized what I was going to do with the rest of my life. Because I loved it. I really did love it because I was renting lists to outside mailers. But the boardroom list was so vast that everybody in the list business knew who I was, whether it was Money magazine or whether it was a fundraiser, a cataloger. Sharper Image back then used our list. Paralyzed veterans used our list in the fundraising area, the Republican National Committee used our list. Every magazine and other newsletter used our list. So it was a list that put me in the centerpiece of direct marketing. But the best thing is that I learned direct marketing from the audience perspective, from, you know, the demographics of an audience. We were just talking before we started this interview that, you know, you have a demographic that you serve, I have a demographic that I serve. Even I'm 40 years past this point where I was at boardroom, you know, renting their list, and I'm still always going back to the list as the most important thing in any marketing campaign. In fact, one of the principles that I learned early on in direct marketing and direct marketing means measurable marketing other than other types of marketing and advertising, which may not be measurable and may not lead to an ROI on what media you're buying. But direct marketing is all measurable. And my thought was that I realized that the list, I mean, the thing I Learned was the 40, 40, 20 rule is that every direct marketing campaign, the Success depends on 40% on the list, 40% on the offer, and 20% on the creative and messaging. And what I decided to do in my new book over deliver is I change that to the 41, 39, 20 rule. I made the 41% the list, the 39% the offer, and the 20% the creative. Just to emphasize that if you have a list that's so perfect for your offer, you can throw any creative at that. Not that you should, but you can throw any creative at that list and you will make some sales. And that's what a lot of online marketers do. I mean, they have a widget, they find the audience for the widget, but they don't do a lot of. They have a flashing red box with a flashing red arrow as their creative and they make some sales, you know, they make some money. The reverse is not true. You could take the world class creative. You know, the 40, 40, 20 rule doesn't mean that creative is half as important. I always say the creative is the least important in your marketing mix until it's not. Why I say that is that if you have world class creative from the best copywriter of all time and you send it to list that's totally not interested in that copy or that offer, you're going to make no sales. There's no way that an audience that's totally wrong for that product is going to work. However, if you have the list dialed in and the offer dialed in, then you take the creative and you put all of your effort into the creative because that'll be the single most impactful thing you can do in your marketing campaign. Because now you're taking world class creative to a perfect list, to a perfect offer. And that's direct marketing nirvana. So it's an interesting thing. And that's why in my chapter, chapter four and over deliver is, you know, it's about lists and RFM and the basics of list segmentation. But I start with, you know, the 40, 40, 20 rule being the 41, 39, 20 rule. So going back to my roots, it wasn't because I got into the list business that I made list the most important. That's not what it is. I realized knowing seeing all these mailers use the boardroom list that I saw great creative, I saw mediocre creative and the better the creative to the list that was already super targeted and I could segment it. I saw all this coming to my it just like it was like a kaleidoscope of what direct marketing was all about. It was, I was like in wonder of this industry and I fell in love with it from there. I mean, I, you know, if you want feedback on what you're doing, direct marketing is for you because, you know, you can say this is going to work, that's going to work, but it's the audience and it's the marketplace that's going to tell you whether it worked or not with their wallets. And then how we tested and how I learned, you know, single variable testing and the idea of a true AB split and all of that became so wonderful. And of course that was all direct mail. Fast forward to today. It's all applicable. Everything you know, I mean, AB splits that are really demographically similar is critical to determine which creative is the winner. What's the control? How do you beat the control? You know, chapter two of my book is about original source and I talk about, you know, the greats of marketing and the basic tenets of direct marketing. And I say to myself in the book, I'm just kind of thinking out loud and I'm saying, look, I'm not doing this to walk down memory lane. I'm not doing this for nostalgia, but if you have the fundamentals, the rock solid fundamentals, you can take that to the bank today in email marketing, in launches, in everything that you do in Facebook models, all of that. But the fundamentals are all basically the same. And then chapter three was how paying postage made me a better marketer. And again, I wasn't justifying direct mail. What I was justifying was that the discipline that it took to do direct mail, when you're paying $500, 1000 in the mail with postage and printing, which, you know, you're paying a fraction of that when you're looking at email marketing. But the fundamentals still apply. You know, before I did a mailing of a million or 2 million or 3 million names, that's like hitting send on an email. It's the same thing. And so anything you do in direct mail is going to lose you a bundle if it's not targeted, if it's not done well in email. The problem is that a lot of folks think that if they send out an email and it's not targeted and they get, I don't know, no responses, they think they haven't done any harm. They've done a lot of harm. They've sent out an offer that was so not targeted to that list that the next time you go out, your list isn't going to trust you, because lists are people, too. And so, you know, getting those out of the way in my book, getting the original source and how paying postage made me a better marketer, then got me into listoffer Creative in the next three chapters, which really kind of did it in the context of all that. So I could be that bridge, because there aren't that many people who were doing this at the level I was doing it in 1981. A lot of them are dead, and a lot of them gave up. So, you know, I feel like it's almost. Jay Abraham tells me it's my moral responsibility to teach this stuff because there's no one around or not too many people around that are doing it. So I feel like, you know, Jay beats me up all the time to say, you know, it's your moral responsibility.

And he probably used some really big words.

A lot of adjectives.

You're paraphrasing. Yes.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. The rest of the interview could just be adjectives.

So it's funny that you touch on that because one of the things that I learned early on in my copywriting career was just that it's List, offer and creative. And I'm not in that world very much anymore, but I just don't hear that very often. Especially today where the obsession has become other things. You know, the channel, the latest trick, the latest shiny object, the platform. And I keep coming back to, I just talked to a client the other day, I said, listen, it's going to be and I gave this to them and they had never heard that. I find that almost everyone that I explained that to has never heard it. So I'm curious about your take on whether this is just my view or whether it's something you're seeing as well. We have so many again, marketing channels today. There's so many businesses using them. The copywriting and let's just not even say copywriting. Direct response is marketing is not as well respected today as it was, let's just say 30, 40 years ago. Meaning I'm seeing too many newish copywriters and marketers and business owners believe that they can do great work that produces excellent results by just copying the strategies, the approaches, the offers that others are using. Without truly understanding the principles, they don't feel like they need to go there and study and put in the work and to really understand. So I don't know if it's just me, but I'd love to get your thoughts on whether you're seeing the same and if not, what are you seeing?

Well, I see some of the same. I don't want to paint a broad brush because I'm dealing with, you know, in my mastermind groups and the people that I speak to at conferences and things like that, you know, I'm not always preaching to the converted, but I'm preaching to the interested for sure. When I bring this stuff up, when I preach to the interested, I basically say to them that, you know, if they're working, say in an affiliate and the affiliate is so perfect for the offer that, you know, they don't have to do world class creative, they can just give some swipe copy and you know it's going to work to some degree, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't work better with, you know, a deeper dive into the creative and doing the research and looking, looking at the list and looking at the segments on the list and all of that, I think that the problem becomes that, you know, I always say, even back in the 80s, you know, in the 90s, you know, I always said stealing is a felony, but stealing smart is an art. And that's why swipe files are so important. And you can rework a lot of things. But then, you know, when I say stealing is a felony, that, you know, that's plagiarism. Stealing smart is taking a concept, a strategy, and reworking it. You can take the word sometime or the lead, you know, what so and so didn't tell you can be used in so many different ways. It can be what your accountant never told you, what your milkman never told you, what your whatever never told you. So that's stealing smart to some degree, but it's also a little lazy. And that's not, you know, true copywriting per se. But the problem is that you can get away with it and still make money. That's why it happens out there. So when I get in front of a crowd, in fact, I, you know, we both mentioned awai. I've spoken at AWAI as a keynote, I think three times. And I'm kind of repetitive there a little bit because I basically say to them, look, you know, and Dan Kennedy has done this too, at awai, you know, you can write for food if you want, but that's not a way to make a lot of money in copywriting. The way to make a lot of money in copywriting is to constantly revive your copy with tweaks and revisions and be a trusted advisor. And the key to being a trusted advisor as a copywriter is not just look at the copy. I have these seven characteristics that every great copywriter who I ever work with had. I kind of looked at all the great copy. I've worked with the best copywriters in the world. I'm not bragging. I just did it because I've been around for 40 years. So I've worked with Gene Schwartz, I've worked with Jim Rutz, I've worked with Gary Bensivenga, worked with the current guys like, you know, Clayton Makepeace, who just passed away, and Paris Lampropolis and David Deutch. So I've worked with the best of the best. And the seven characteristics, you know, I mean, I'm not going to go through them in detail, but, you know, it's hunger, it's insatiable curiosity, it's getting great feedback loops. It's passion going deep as opposed to wide. A mile deep in terms of mile wide. And those are the first four. But the fifth is knowledge of direct marketing response. Direct response marketing. And I don't even want to say direct marketing, because today a lot of people equate direct marketing, the term with direct mail, which is not true, but it's true to a Lot of people. So that's why I always say direct response marketing. So they. I'm talking about multimedia. I mean, I'm not talking about just direct mail, I'm talking about email, I'm talking about Facebook, I'm talking about search. You know, I'm also talking about, you know, print, I'm talking about display advertising online, I'm talking about everything. And the difference was that in the 80s and 90s, marketing opportunities were sort of finite. You know, you had direct mail, you had print, you had maybe package inserts, and you had TV and radio, but there wasn't that many choices. So you could have a group of media that you want to go after and you know, you can create the creative, I guess, the constructs for that media pretty easily. Now today, you know, advertising opportunities are infinite. You know, I mean, I'll say the guy who can do Facebook might not be able to do Instagram. A lot of them do. I will say that anybody who comes to you, if you're a marketer and anybody comes to you and says I can handle all your online marketing easily, run away, run away. Because that is impossible. You can't be, you know, and the thing is you want to get the expert in each area, even if they can try to do everything. I want a search expert to do my search. I want an Instagram expert to do Instagram. I want a YouTube expert to do YouTube, I want a Facebook expert to do Facebook. And so that is a big difference. Now the creative attached to that is completely different in each medium. However, the concepts are the same. You know, Facebook, obviously you're not going to do a 24 page Magalog like you would do in direct mail or a 12 page sales letter, but you're going to do something that feeds into that from a PDF that gives you the key aspects that you can write in an amazing headline to get people to click to get the free PDF to get them into a funnel of some sort. The, you know, people, human beings haven't changed. You know, if I look at a book like Breakthrough Advertising by Gene Schwartz, which is considered the ultimate bible on they say in copywriting and creative. It's a bible about human behavior, how people behave and what the states of awareness are in the marketplace. You can use and it was written in 1966, I happen to have the exclusive rights and I'm not saying that everybody should have one because I have the exclusive rights. I'm saying you should have one because it's the most amazing book that I've ever seen in direct response marketing. And it's not even about that completely. Gene Schwartz was a copywriter, but he was a purveyor of the universe. He was the most well read person I know. He knew everything of current culture. And so that's what you need to know when you're doing copywriting. But it's about human behavior. And frankly, human behavior hasn't changed since 1966. It hasn't changed since I wrote my forward, my afterword to the book. It hasn't changed since 1066. You know, it is. But you have to go after them in the different media differently, obviously.

Yeah, those are the specifics. Right. Those are the specialties are going to apply there.

Exactly.

Versus, you know, Google versus email marketing. But it's really the fundamentals that are important.

And you know, but the thing is that that fifth category for copywriters is the direct marketing knowledge. They should know about the 41, 39, 20 rule, as I call it, which means that a copywriter should, whoever their client is, should be looking at, or even a content writer. They should be looking at the list that have worked. The list that haven't worked, meaning that if it's not cold list, it might be an affiliate. Which affiliates work best and with what copy did it work best? They should know the lifetime value of a new customer based on the medium. They should know that if the medium is a certain affiliate, that what does the second order say to those people that come on that way as opposed to a Facebook person that comes on buys and do they buy a second time? And then what's the lifetime value of those? That is critical stuff. They should know about the customer service and fulfillment issues. Because I have a chapter in my book that's customer service and fulfillment. And basically I start the chapter with customer service and fulfillment are marketing functions. You know, the idea that it's easier to keep a customer than to get a new one is not just a direct marketing rule of thumb. It's a way to keep a customer, you know, retain customers is way more important than, you know, attracting new customers. Now you have to get new blood into your list, obviously, and getting people into your online family that way. And content writers know this more than anybody because once you have them on a list, you make them your online family, you romance them, you go deep with them before you might even sell them anything because that's the way that you get them to stay longer and be more loyal to what you're doing. And so I'm just a big, big believer in Retention, marketing, it's not as sexy. The sexy part of marketing is you hear about all the copywriters teaching acquisition, getting new customers from cold traffic or what I would call outside lists in my day. But it's getting new acquisition customers through cold traffic, well, that's important, but it's sexy. It's exciting. You have to get people who you've never marketed to before to get them to click and then move through a funnel and get through your, whatever you're doing to get them to buy more and more. But I find the sexy part of marketing to have a customer and then get them to move up the ladder into the higher priced products through more content, give them more value, always, you know, do that first so that they become embedded with you. And then, you know, I hate to say it, but you can almost sell them anything once you understand them better. So those are the kinds of things that I like to talk about when I'm on stage with copywriters, when I'm talking to content people who are writers as well. Because I'll tell you, I am not a copywriter, but what I am is, you know, it was funny. I was asked to do a workshop with a copywriting course. They got all these people to do sort of two sessions with these students. And the first session you had to take your own stuff that you've written, copy and you know, break it apart and go through it and you know, really give them why you did what you did. And the second would be critiquing their stuff. The second session is they send their stuff in, you critique it. And I told these guys that I'd like to do it, I'd like to be one of the instructors, but I can't do the first because I don't have copy that I've ever written before that sold stuff. But I could look at their copy and critique it. And then I thought for a second, I said, wait a minute, I've been blogging for six years and every one of my blogs, while it doesn't sell, it sells because I'm selling myself or I'm selling a concept or I'm selling something. That led to selling breakthrough advertising by Gene Schwartz, or it led to selling some DVDs that I was offering all my own stuff, no affiliates. And I basically said I can do both sessions. And the first session, my own stuff were sample blogs. And I showed them how I gave full value. I gave them more than they ever would have wanted in the blog. And if I had something that was related, I was Able to sell it, you know, without high pressure, without anything like that. And it's sort of like, you know, it's like Dean Jackson says, it's fishing without bait. No, I wasn't putting a hook in the water. I was hoping the fish would jump in the boat after they read what I had to offer. And because I gave them so much value upfront. And it works. It's another way to sell, basically. Yeah, it's the way that content writes. And so I know you have a lot of content writers on this might be listening. Content writing is content marketing. And so that's what I did for my session with these young copywriters. And they appreciated it. It's another way to do it. It's not. The only. The only way is not, you know, selling hard. And the only way is not the way I do it. Everything is viable. And I like the attitude because I think having a customer for the long haul. And by the way, you know, the subtitle of my book over deliver is, you know, build a business for a lifetime. Playing the long game in direct response marketing, if you're looking for the quick hit and then leave and then get another quick hit with a new product, that's not the kind of marketing that I specialize in. It's marketing. People make a lot of money doing that, but I'm in it for the long haul. And so that's what I do. I don't know if I answered your question.

Yeah, yeah. This knowledge, you know, that step five or element or factor number five is huge. And the 41, 39, 20 fits there. And because you've always been so focused on starting with the list first and just seeing it for which, by the way, I mean that you were so fortunate, right? Because you saw it from a side, you came to it from a side that most copywriters don't, most marketers don't. They're always focused on the other elements. But I'm curious about. And I think it was Gary Halbert, the great Harry Halbert, who was really obsessive about the list, the audience, and really understanding those emotional triggers and what they thought about all the time. And I'm not sure if he's the one who coined the continue the conversation already going on in their heads. Right?

Yeah, that was Gary. Yes, that was Gary.

Okay. So I wonder if you could speak to that, because that kind of falls under this item. Knowledge of direct marketing, especially from the list standpoint, I don't see a lot of that today. And maybe just in the circles that I'm in. But how important is it to, I mean, like really immerse yourself in the audience you're writing for and then how.

Can you do it? I think it's the most important thing. First and foremost you can get to creative and headlines and all of that. But I will say this is interesting. My first book, the Advertising Solution, which I did with Craig Simpson, was a book that profiled six legends of advertising. But they were advertisers. They were basically direct marketers trapped in advertisers bodies because there wasn't a lot of direct marketing in from the 30s. And it really goes back to the 1930s all the way to the 70s. And when I say the 30s, I'm talking about one of the legends was Claude Hopkins who had a book called Scientific Advertising. And Scientific Advertising was a lot about the audience and the list and all of that. But it was, you know, he was more a general advertiser. And when I say the 60s, it's Gene Schwartz, he was one of the six. And you know, he was a copywriter who knew the list was the most important. And then in the 70s, you know, it was Gary Halbert and he was one of the six that we profiled. And then the other three were Robert Collier, who's like the father of the sales letter, and he was more obsessed with the list. There was John Caples who wrote Tested Advertising Methods. He was a copywriter, but he was obsessed with the audience or the list. And the sixth guy was David Ogilvie, who goes into the 70s. On my bonus site for the Advertising Solution, I have a video of him on the David Letterman show, which is a riot by the way.

I have the Advertising Solution here on my bookshelf. It's excellent.

Yes. So what we did was we took these six legends and we profiled them in the spirit of these are advertising men. These are like, I mean, even like a guy like David Ogilvy, you would say is a madman of the 1960s. But he understood direct response as much as anybody. So if they could. And I had all these quotes, I did a presentation at AWAI and it was all quotes from these six guys because the book had just come out and almost every quote was very little. I mean, Gary Halbert has quotes about writing, you know, basically write the ads over, you know, the great direct response ads and copy them in your own handwriting. So it gets ingrained in your head, which is actually a technique he used with junior writers. But the first thing he told them when they became. I used to Say that they became. Gary Halbert would have guys, young copywriters, live with him. He would charge them to live with him for like a year. I know a bunch of them are out there now, Caleb o' Dowd and Sam Markowitz, and there's a bunch of guy. I don't know if John Carlton lived with him, but they all live with him for a period of time. I used to say they were Gary's butler. And what he would do with them is he would send them out to the store to get him, you know, milk or something. But he'd say, come back with some observations about the audience there, because I'm writing cop. And he told them which store to go to. So the equivalent of Walmart back then, because it was an everyman kind of audience that he was writing to. And give me some observations of how they're buying stuff in the store and how you can profile them. I mean, he was basically doing, you know, list work by walking around. I mean, that is like base level. And it was. And Gary has a bunch of interviews that I have on an ipod somewhere that are all about, like looking for the right list broker and finding the right list. This is Gary Halbert, one of the world's greatest copywriters, talking about that. Gene Schwartz. You know, he had his own little publishing company while he was a copywriter called Instant Improvement. And just to show you how obsessed he was with the list, he used to write for us and for Rodale Press, which was a huge publisher at the time. And he would basically write a package for us, the Boardroom, on a health book, and he would actually want names in return. So Rodale and Boardroom had two of the best health lists on the market. And how is Gene with Instant Improvement going to be able to mail those lists at $100, 1000? Because he has not a lot of money in the publishing company, but his talent in copywriting, he could charge 50 to $100,000 to write a package. What he would do is because he understood the value of the list, he would write a package, a full blown package for Boardroom and we would pay him in names, any names he wanted segmented. I would custom the segmentation for him because I wasn't the list manager at the time, but I would knew how to customize the list. So he would write a package for us for 750,000 names. Those 750,000 names mailed for his Instant Improvement books were so much more valuable than getting cash and a royalty than he ever could have done. Because he was basically owning those names because once he farm them through his system of buying a book and another book, he was basically getting so much more money. I mean, I did it as a calculation once of what he made on those 750,000 names versus what he could make on a fee and royalty. And it wasn't even close. So that's Gene Schwartz, one of the best copywriters of all time, realizing that 750,000 names for a full blown package for boardroom was worth more than say $30,000. And you know, at that time, a 10 or $15 per thousand royalty, that blew me away. At the time I thought it was just a fun deal to do with him because he was just mailing. And then when I really looked into it further, it was the how Gene looked at lists similar to the way Gary Halbert looked at lists. So those were the two more recent copywriters that we profiled. An advertising solution. And I think I have those stories in there. So it's, you know, the idea of just being knowledgeable of direct marketing as opposed to being able to take that deep dive, going a mile deep in list research. You don't have to do it yourself either. You can work with a list broker to do that for you, but you should be hands on with that stuff or at least hands on with the client when they're doing the stuff. I'll tell you, I never hired a copywriter who didn't ask me for a list history. First and foremost, what names are you mailing? What you know, the fact that a catalog or the Sharper Image worked for this offer tells me that, you know, that they are a little bit more, you know, gadget oriented. Maybe I want to do a premium. I'm making this up, but it's the concept. But maybe I'll give a premium for the tax newsletter that we were asking him to write about with a calculator as opposed to more editorial content. That's just a simple example. And if Sharper Image was the best list that Tax Hotline mailed, it wasn't. But I'm giving you an example of how you could make the connection between your creative and your offer as it pertained to the list. An obvious example, but there are subtleties all over the place. If you see the best lists are opportunity seekers, you could put an opportunity seeker kind of copy platform to those lists. We actually had multiple controls to different segments of lists. We had the opportunity seeker list. Sometimes we had the catalog list, sometimes we had the other magazine and newsletter lists that are in the financial area. And we had leads and headlines on those packages that geared themselves to. To those segments if the universe was big enough. And I always say, if I could do that in direct mail, which had to be different zip code strings and was caught very costly. How can you not do that in email? How can you not have list segmentation? And it happens. I mean, a guy like Ryan Levesque with his ask funnels and quiz funnels, that's what he's doing.

That's his whole thing.

Yeah, he's segmenting the list and then creating copy to the list segments. It's what we did in direct mail to a smaller degree. It's what you can do in email to a larger degree.

Yeah, yeah. We have no excuse today. In fact, that leads me, as we start wrapping up, to kind of a final question about younger direct marketers, younger copywriters. There's so many options right now. If you're trying to improve what you do, what would you advise someone in terms of where they should focus their time, their attention, their energy to improve what they do to become more valuable? I know we've talked a lot about it today, but if you had to distill some of these ideas, what would you tell them?

Yeah, I touched on a bunch of it, but I would say that the thing. I might not have used the word niche. And I think that. And that goes into the. In the seven. I'll give you the seven characters.

Oh, yeah, so we stopped at five.

Yeah, so I'll give you. So it's hunger that's like, you know you're not going to become an expert if you don't put in the hours. It's like outliers. 10,000 hours, maybe it's 7,500, but you got to put in the time and effort. Two was insatiable curiosity. Going a mile deep as opposed to a mile wide. Never stop researching. Find the stuff that's not in the book or in the newsletter that you can find and get more information on. And also with lists. Three would be having feedback loops. People that are more knowledgeable than you, that can look at your copy with an outside refreshed eye, who have experience in that category. Four was passion going a mile deep, not only on lists and research on the topic, but you have to have a passion in the. Especially when you're just starting out. I mean, if you have a passion for, let's say you're pre diabetic and you, God forbid, but you contract diabetes and you start doing a lot of Research on it. That might be a great place to start your copywriting career. I mean, I know somebody who had contracted prostate cancer that was looking for the alternative therapies, and he became a copywriter for alternative prostate cancer treatments as a specialty. And then you go. You widen that out later on. But to try to be everything to everybody initially is a huge mistake, I think. I think going really deep in an area that you have some experience in, whether personally or with a relative, in the health area, whether you have experience in the financial area that you know about options for some reason, and you want to just go deep in that. So passion was number four. Five was direct marketing knowledge, which we talked about. Six is humility. You've got to also have some humility. You can't say you can't. You got to be confident. And there's thin line between confidence and arrogance, but you have to go into it. I think I have a story in my book Over Deliver, where I talk about a young copywriter. It was definitely in a blog post. He came to me with an email and said, you know, I'm going to be the best copywriter that ever worked for Boardroom. And this is in, like, 2013 or 14. And I looked at that and I said, wow, does he know who Boardroom is? And I wasn't being, you know, I wasn't being arrogant. I was just saying, you know, if he's better than Gary Bensevenga, Gene Schwartz, Jim Rutz, you know, Clayton Makepeace, Jim Punkrey, then, boy, I missed something, right? So that's what I sent him. In my response, I said, if you're the best copywriter who's ever walked in the door at Boardroom, shame on me, because I don't know who you are. And I looked at his website, and between us, he was not the best copywriter who ever walked in the door of Boardroom. You know, that just shows a lack of. Not just humility, but he hadn't researched who Boardroom was, who has worked for Boardroom. I mean, a different approach on that could be something like, you know, I've researched Boardroom. You've had the best writers, you know, work for you over the last decades, and I'm on that track or something like that. So humility is so important because, I mean, you got to believe in yourself, but you can't be arrogant. Gary Bensevengo was the best at this. He was the best writer that probably ever worked at Boardroom, Close to it with Gene Schwartz. And he said stuff like, you know, I want to get a control, and then the person that's going to beat it is going to be me. Like, he would always beat his own controls. And, you know, he had an 85% success rate because he was interested in those other five things that I mentioned already. So six is humility. And he had humility about it. He always said, the other writers I'm going against are so good, I have to be better. But I'm not necessarily saying I'm better. And then the seventh thing is just, you know, your work, your portfolio, which is usually the first thing you show when you're showing your work. But I think it's got to be after you emphasize the other six things first. Here are my samples, and they're based on who? Hunger, insatiable curiosity, feedback loops, passion, direct marketing knowledge, and humility. I've done that speech at Awai, and it was well received by some people, like, were a little unnerved by it because they thought I was telling them they needed to do so much before they could be a copywriter. And I wasn't saying that. But you asked me the question correctly, which was, where do you start? And if you follow those seven things, I think that's a good place to start.

Yeah. Because what it is, is I see too many people. I fall prey to this, too. They get distracted by things that are really insignificant. That's all window dressing. And what's really going to get you far is focus on the fundamentals. And these are seven fundamentals. This will never change.

That's right.

And then it keeps you, I feel, grounded. I mean, like, this is the kind of stuff that you should have on your whiteboard, on your bulletin board, you should have.

I appreciate that. And it didn't come to me magically. I really had to dig to realize what it was that made Jim Rutz so special, what it made Gary Benson so special, what made Gene Schwartz so special, Gary Halbert, all of these guys. And they all had these seven things in spades. Yeah.

And it applies. When I look at this, this really applies to even all the content writers and content marketers in my audience, because, again, fundamentals. So I really appreciate this, Brian, because I think this is something that can ground us, can keep us focused, and not get so distracted by the latest and greatest platform or trick or hack, or.

I'm into those. You know, I. Oh, yeah. You know, I have speakers at my masterminds, and they bring everything, you know, bring everything in the kitchen sink, bring the Facebook, bring SEO, bring me copywriting, bring Me, you know everything. Amazon, you know everything. I want everything. But, you know, I don't know everything. That's why, you know, being connected lets me bring them in. I don't know everything. I don't know anywhere close to everything. Now, I say all the time, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. So you've got to go after all that stuff you do.

But without these seven things that they don't.

I agree with you 100% when you said that the seven fundamentals that they apply to copywriters, content writers, I realized when I finished those, they apply to marketers too.

Yes, yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So this great stuff, Brian. Listen, I really appreciate you coming here. And again, I mean, I can't believe it's been this long, but I'm glad you took the first step. It approached me. I really enjoyed our conversation. I know that our listeners will as well. And before we sign off, where can folks learn more about you? Where can people find out more about your books as well?

Yeah. So I think the easiest way is to go to my website, which is www.briankurtz.net B R I A N K U R T Z.net There is a first pay. I have all tabs on. You can work with me. You can buy my products. All my blogs from the last six years are there. There's a lot of custom content there, all free. And that's the best way. There's an interview there with Perry Marshall about the three biggest successes of my career. So that's the easiest way. It's free. It just you get on my list. I don't do affiliates. I blog every Sunday. You get a welcome series. It's a great way to do it. If you're interested in either of my books, there are don't go to just Amazon. Go to the resource site where the books are sold with incredible bonuses. For overdeliver, it's overdeliverbook.com and you get thousands of dollars. Some of them are priceless because they're books that are full PDFs that you can't get anywhere. 11 bonuses that will blow you away. And all you got to do is go there. You click on where you want to buy the book. You go to a separate site, buy the book, come back to the site, put your order number in, and you get access to these amazing bonuses@overdeliverbook.com that's a great site to go to. And for my first book, the advertising solution, you go to the site thelegendsbook.com T-H-E l e g e n--s b o o k.com and there you get an incredible swipe file from the six legends who are profiled in the book. You get videos, including that video of Ogilvy on Letterman. And there's actually a PDF of scientific advertising, which is an illustrated and annotated version, which is a wonderful PDF. So you get those amazing bonuses. Overdeliver has way more. Overdeliverbook.com has a swipe file going back to 1900, 400 pages. It's got 19 keynotes from Jay Abraham, and it's got a swipe file from Dan Kennedy, and it's got every Ben Savanga bullet that's appeared online, a PDF of that. It's an amazing site. So there's a lot of fun bonuses there. But if you don't want to spend, I don't know, whatever. It's $13 on advertising solution and $17 on overdeliverbook.com you can just go to.

My site@briankurtz.net and I see Breakthrough Advertising. The best place to get that would be your site.

Yeah, it's the cheapest. It's the authoritative version and you can get it right. On my site you go to the tab that says products or you can go to breakthrough advertising book.com, but it's on my site under the products tab.

Yeah, I see it here. That's great, Brian. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you sharing what you've shared here with us today.

Thanks, Ed. It was great.

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