Episode 142: Redefining Direct Marketing with Brian Kurtz

Did you notice our bathrooms? The stalls are so.

They're so short, you can barely, like, your knees go past the wall.

You can't close. You cannot close the door.

Yeah.

And even if you're standing, it hits you in the ass.

Yeah, yeah, that happens to me all the time.

You get hit in the ass, you.

Stand when you use the bath. That's ridiculous. Does that happen to you, Mike?

Yeah, yeah, I get hit in the ass all the time. Happens.

Well, no, I'm talking about in the bathroom. I'm talking about in the bathroom.

Have you guys heard of a shewee, though?

What was that?

Have you heard of a she? Wee.

What's a she?

What's that?

It's like a. Like, it's for women when you go camping and things.

Oh, I haven't heard of that.

It's like a thing that you put over so you can pee like a man.

Do you know aunt's ever used. I don't even.

Yeah, I have a friend who uses it.

She loves it. Loves it.

Well, on that, husband.

Welcome to the Profit first podcast, episode 142. Yes, there we go.

As you grind, you can grunt. Oh, yeah, there we go.

Oh, there you go, Scalise. Welcome, everyone, to the Profit first podcast. I'm Christina Bulduk, the heart and soul of Profit First.

Yeah, you gotta write down those terms. I'm Mike McAllowis, the author of Profit First. Join the studio with Kelsey Ayers. Hey, everybody. And you gotta speak right to the microphone. Say it one more time.

Hey, everybody.

There you go. And then you gotta. Yeah, push Mike's face out of the way. And Mike and Kelsey, one mic is also here.

The Hawaiian Lumberjack.

Yeah, we call them the Hawaiian Lumberjack. Well, hey, we're thrilled to have you here. You know what you're listening to? It's the Profit first podcast. This is a show where we explore all elements of profitability. The alpha and the omega, I like to say.

Yeah, man. You can find us on itunes, Stitcher, Tunein Radio, Google Play, profitfirstpodcast.com and any podcaster pretty much anywhere that you listen to a podcast.

Podcaster go anywhere. Even, like, on other planets where they're still inventing podcasters. You can catch us there. Well, in a second, we're gonna interview an amazing guest. He was on our other sister show.

Yes, he was.

Gmat. And we're gonna be talking about how to do profitable direct marketing. He argues that you can. Before we do that, Kels, Christina and Kels, I wanna know what you guys been up to. So, Christina, you got the floor first.

I get caught.

Cause I can catch.

You catch. Okay. I've been enjoying this beautiful weather. I know it's still a little cold outside, but it's been a lot sunnier lately. So I'm trying to get, like, more active and get outside and not be boring.

Hold on. That sounds similar to your update last time. Weren't you Alex?

He takes our dogs on, like, a hike up the mountain, like, every day, and now I'm trying to join them.

I got it. I got it. Kelsey, what have you been up to?

Actually, pretty much the same thing you've.

Been hiking with Christina.

Yeah, it's been so wonderful. No, really, I'm super pumped for springtime, so I kind of feel like it is springtime. So I've been going out, and Sunday was incredible. It was the best walk I've had in a really long time. And there's a trail that nobody goes on. It's my favorite place. And I go to the end, and there's, like, a little bench, and it's kind of like an open marshland area. And I'll meditate for a while.

I gotta get a picture of you just talking right now. It's like you two are Siamese twins. Halaj is just stuck to you. Hallaj, by the way, is short for Hawaiian lumberjack.

Faces are stuck together.

Yeah. So.

And Halaj, is Tom's deodorant working for you?

Yeah. How's that? Tom's deodorant working?

It's fantastic.

Yeah, but you really is. You announced in our huddle that it was failing you after two hours, and you were kind of stinking like Lincoln.

Converted to Tom's recently because it has no aluminum. And bruh, basically they came out with a new scent of some sorts, and it actually lasts for a full day or at least for. For six hours versus the two that the old times was getting. So it's pretty good.

Good, good. All right, Halaj. Good. All right.

I'm happy with it.

Good, good. And for me, I'm psyched for poker night tonight. I'm taking everyone down. Probably not. Usually the person has never played before, doesn't know anything, usually dominates.

I was gonna say they win. Yeah.

So you've never played before. You're gonna own it. You're gonna own it.

Brandon never. Never played either, so.

Oh, okay.

We got some competition.

Okay, so before we actually jump into the interview, I just want to shout out to one of our listeners. His name is Andrew Malloy. He actually gave us a Huge heads up. We were having an. An issue with distributing some of our podcast episodes, and a couple of them were actually missing. And he was like, yo. He's like, I'm a big time fan. Where the hell are these episodes? We were like, oh, thank you so much, Andrew. You really helped us out.

Andrew, you rock. And we know you're listening to this, and actually, we know there's another person listening. His name is Jason Griffith. I met with Jason. I was traveling. He pulls me inside and said, I'm addicted to your podcast. He binge listens eight hours a day.

He says, wow, are there that many episodes?

Yeah, there's 130. How many episodes are there? One.

31.

38.

38.

Yeah. You're the one who produces it.

But I just mean, like, if you add it up.

I know. And. But he listens at one speed as opposed to, like, double speed. So it's. It's 45 minutes a pop. Listens for eight hours, and he's now disappointed that we don't produce more per week.

Oh, yeah. See? Catching up.

I'll be. I like your hair like that.

Yeah, your hair.

I'll leave it like that for poker. It's, like, distracting. I'll be looking at my hand, my cards. I think I. I think I have aces in my hand. I'll look up like a. Gah.

He's got a little point from the headphones.

Yeah, his hair just went straight up.

All right.

I want to thank our corporate partners to make the show a reality.

Of course.

Do you know who. Do you know who was here today in our shop?

I do.

Who?

Receipt. Bank.

What do they do? Oh, don't tell them.

I'll tell them later. Don't tell them.

They appear. They bring us any gifts. Like, they didn't bring any food. We.

We gave them food.

That's kind of bullshit.

But we were the hosts.

We were the hosts. We had breakfast waiting for them. But they really should have brought a gift, I think.

Well, their gift is our podcast.

Yeah, their gift is their money.

Okay.

They do pay for this. Who else Besides receipt Bank.

Nextiva.

Love them. Fundera, is your next diva phone set up at home now?

It is all set.

Okay. Fundera.

Fabulous. Oh, Fun Box.

Fun Box. And Zero. And Zero is a hero.

Yes, I confirmed.

Yeah, they're still.

They're still a hero.

Past two episodes.

Well, it was just totally. Maybe it was only me because I was on uncharted territory there. Well, here's what we're gonna do. We're interview a fine person in just a moment. But at the end of the show, we will share our insights and everything we learned from the show.

So, so, so, so sorry.

Show.

Do we have any member success stories.

You want to share next week?

Okay.

Yes.

We're a little bit off kilter.

A little bit.

I think it's the Hilludge who did that. You know his name? It's Brian Kurtz.

Mm.

You know, and we. We are bowling partners.

No way.

Yeah. That's. A lot of people don't know. Now, we only had one game under our belt because we live so far apart, but every time he and I convene, he and I will take on anyone in bowling.

Wow.

The two Jewish bowlers.

Yeah. We call ourselves the two Jews. The two Jews. We dominate the boards, as we call it the planks. Yeah. Ah, yeah.

See it to believe it.

Yeah. We both got. No, I think, Brian, you may have won one of the games, if I recall.

I didn't win, but I. You know, I actually, you know, once you get over 100, it's. It's a big deal, you know, when you don't know what the hell you're doing.

That's true. That's true.

Okay.

That's true.

But, yeah, and I'll tell you, I've never. I'm really enjoying this so far because I. I got distracted. I'm trying to figure out where to find that thing where you can pee different.

It's called a shewee.

Yeah, Shewee.

Oh, my shewee.

I got. I'm already, like, all over the Internet looking for that. And then, you know, I was reminded about Tom's deodorant and the aluminum, you know, because I was. My office stinks, and. But I also don't want aluminum. So, yeah, it was like. So I've already. I'm already educated. This podcast has paid for itself from my perspective.

It's unbelievable, the hygiene that comes out of the show.

Incredible hygiene, both intellectual hygiene and physical hygiene. It's. Yes, it's. I'm impressed, Mike. I really am.

So, Brian, I'm. I'm going to read your bio in a second. I got to ask you more things since we got you. You tell me if you recognize this now. Our last show, no one could recognize this sound. Christina didn't know it. Kelsey didn't know it. I should. I told them off the air, so now they know. But I suspect you're gonna know this sound. Here it is.

It's probably. It's probably not an elephant, because it sounds like an elephant, but it's probably like a hippopotamus or something.

No, No. I don't know how much longer I'm gonna go. Maybe I'll go with one more guess.

I think it kind of sounds like a sea animal now, too. Like echoes in the ocean.

Oh, yeah, that would like a beluga whale.

Yeah.

You listen to it? Yeah.

No. So it's unbelievably wrong.

It's my son with gas on the couch.

No. Or maybe so I'll give you. I'll give you one hint. From your ears. No. From your mouth to God's ears. Is that how it goes?

Asking the wrong person?

I want to get the word God in there. Just the word God. Oh, that's the hint of God. Does that help, Brian? One more time. God.

Like, is it the burning bush from ten Commandments?

Oh, my God. All right, we'll save it for our next guest. This is going to go for, like, 50 episodes. I'm like, oh. I wanted to start off with the easiest sound of all time. Like, oh, my God.

Everyone will nail this because it's so ambiguous. It could be so many different things.

I know, I know, I know. But it's not. Okay. His name is Brian Kurtz. You heard his golden voice. But do you know what he does? He is a serial direct marketer. He's been doing it for over 35 years. He teaches small businesses, big businesses, and everyone in between how to do direct marketing. Direct marketing is where you put something in the mail people, and then those people that receive it respond to you. You can make money this way. According to Brian. Oh, by the way, he's a little league umpire, too. Brian, welcome to the show officially.

Thanks. You know, the terminology is interesting because it's like, unfortunately, when I grew up, you know, back in the olden days, direct marketing was any medium. It could be direct marketing, tv, it could be direct marketing in radio. It could be direct marketing in the mail. And I think what's happened, because this Internet thing, which is definitely going to catch on, by the way, I'm just predicting that now that I believe that email and that stuff's going to be big. It's really going to be big. But when we were doing almost exclusively direct mail in the 1980s and 90s, when I was selling subscriptions and books in big numbers, direct marketing was really almost any medium. And now direct marketing has been sort of put in the same category as just direct mail. And then I think it's dangerous, actually, because everything we do online today, whether it's Google AdWords or Facebook advertising or email marketing, if that has a direct marketing component, it actually has nothing to do with the mail. It has to do with measurable response. Response to anything you do in advertising that is measurable and that has a return on investment from what you do. And the guys that you've told me that most of the people who listen to this show, besides guessing ridiculously weird animal noises, we didn't even know if it's an animal. Maybe it's Charlton Heston in the table.

It is. You win.

But I think that it's really important for these small business owners. You said most of the people who listen to, you know, our smaller businesses, that they should understand that any advertising they do, whether they do Valpak, you know, in their. If they're a local store or if they do, they're an accountant that wants to, you know, we did an accountant's podcast for you, for you guys. And if you, Anything you do, if you're going to pay for it, if you're going to pay for some kind of media that's going to get your message out there, figure out how it pays you back. And there are a lot of different ways to get paid back. It doesn't have to be an order right away. It can be a lot of different things.

And.

And so I just want to make sure that, you know, if we want to call direct marketing direct mail, I'm cool with that. And I think a lot of people do. But I think if we could get into a discussion as well about measurable, accountable advertising for whatever you do, I think that's also a very important conversation for small business owners.

Oh, I'm with you. And I mislabeled it there. That was my assumption.

That's okay. No, I think a lot of people go that way because online marketing people don't think about it as direct marketing because they think direct marketing is direct mail. And yet, if everybody who advertises online had the same sort of standards and kind of this making sure that everything that they did paid out, you'd have much better advertising online. Whereas people think that because email is cheap, we should just throw it out there and see what sticks. And I think that's a really dangerous way to look at advertising of any kind. And using that as an example, someone who sends out a lot of emails for their business and says, okay, I'll just keep sending them out until I get a couple of orders. You don't realize because it's so cheap that what the damage you might do to an audience that gets Sick of your messaging or that your messaging isn't congruent with who you are and what you're trying to sell. And you may get people to stop opening those emails. And that's just as bad as not getting an order, because then you have no chance of selling to them if they're not opening the email. And I think the interesting thing about direct mail, the area that I grew up in, that because it was so expensive and it still is, that I always used to say how paying postage made me a better marketer. I had to pay attention in such detail what I was sending out that I couldn't afford to have anything that went out that didn't sell something, achieve something, do something positive. Otherwise I was, I was losing a lot of money, just in addition to losing my audience. Now we don't lose as much money online because everything's so cheap, but you definitely can lose your audience. And I think that's just as devastating to your business as, as losing money.

So how do you know that the direct marketing is working? How do you measure it? What's the technique?

So indirect mail. What we, what we would always do is we would always have to make sure that every list that went out in direct mail or every ad that we ran in a magazine had a special, what we call key code. And it's as simple as that. It's as simple. And of course we have much more sophisticated as time went on. But for example, even if you were doing a space ad in a magazine and there was a coupon and it was in magazine A versus magazine B, the coupon in magazine A would have a different code at the bottom than the one in magazine B. So you would know if the coupon came back where it came from and that you could attribute that order to that particular magazine. And the same was true in direct mail. Direct mail. You know, we had mailings in my company that we would mail, you know, millions and millions of names, but every single name came from a specific list. And so every single list was key coded. So I knew if I mailed out a million names, I knew which responses came from the Money magazine list which I mailed, or it came from the Consumer Reports list which I mailed, or it came from some political fundraising list that I mailed. And that was because on the response device it was key coded to the individual list. So everything that you do, even on a small scale in advertising and marketing today, can be key coded. I'm using a term that's old fashioned when I say key coding. But you want to basically make sure that everything is sourced so that if the message going out in a medium, whether it's. It could be anything, it could be direct mail, it could be space, it could be email, it could be Facebook, it could be anything. Know that when it comes back that you know where it came from, so that then you can read what you spend against what you make.

Yeah, but you're talking big, big, you know, millions on your list. These are small companies. Maybe my list is 2000 people. Does it become ineffective if it's a small set of.

No, no, no, no. All of these techniques. I always used to say that, you know, database marketing, which sounds like this ridiculously complicated term, that database marketing to 9 million names is the same as it is to 90 names or 9 names. And what I mean by that is that, like, I have a list. I have a small list of people that I promote my personal brand to because I write books. Not as many as you, of course. You know, one day I'll.

I'm sorry. I heard that. I was struggling to look for the button. Okay, yeah, yeah. Enough about me. Let's talk more about me. What's your favorite book I ever wrote?

I like the toilet paper book, of course.

Of course. Continuing.

So, you know, I have a lot of different products and a lot of different brands. So what happens is every. And I have a list of maybe, I don't know, six, seven thousand people. Not a big list. But when anybody on my list responds to me to one of my blog posts or they buy one of my products that I sell for $195 or even $95, I basically, what we call tick the file. So of those that. That person now on my list, I know that they've spent money with me. I know that they did more than just someone who opened my email and more than someone who never opened my email. So the idea of tracking. When I say key coding before, the idea of tracking everything, whether your list is hundreds of people or millions of people, it's the same principle, and that's direct marketing. And frankly, the people that buy one $95 product from me about direct marketing education, they're going to be my best prospects when I have a $2,000 product. And then the people who buy the $2,000 product, because now I know who they are, I'm gonna mail just to those people. When I wanna develop a group of people that are gonna spend 10 or $15,000 with me in a consulting, what we call a mastermind group, you and I are in a group together, Mike. I don't know if your guys know about what a mastermind group is, but you basically bring people together to exchange ideas and you pay a fee to be in that.

We have a clip from our last group. I'm sorry, we have a clip from when we were together. Here it is. This is, this was. Okay, I'm sorry. Continue on, continue on.

I'm sorry, that was after the, we went to the lounge.

Continue on.

Can this ever kind of. Because this to me, I mean, I don't personally, if I owned a business, I don't know how I would even start marketing or what platform I would use. But can this kind of be looked at as overkill? Too much. Like, is there such thing as tracking too much? Is that too time consuming?

I don't think. No, I don't think you can track too much. You can, you can overthink yourself. So for example, I'll use an example. So let's say I start. Or any, any piece of information about your list and about what their behavior is, is, is good information to have, whether you use it or not. But for example, let's say I go out, I want to go out to my list now with a $95 book and I have people on my list who spent $95, but I also have people who spent, you know, thousands with me. Chances are for a $95 offer, I'm going to mail it to everybody. So I don't really have to use that information that I've accumulated. But then again, if I'm going to only sell a very high priced product, I might only want to go to a certain segment of my list so that you're not beating up your entire list with every single offer and every single email because then they'll stop opening. But if you, if you mail to the people that are most likely to buy or to respond, you're going to be able to be much more selective and you're going to get people to open at a higher level. And then you're not wasting what we call wasted circulation. You're not wasting your messaging on people that are just not going to be interested in that message. So I hear what you're saying. I mean, I think you can overdo it in terms of the data. I mean, you can become like, what is it? You know, paralysis by analysis. You know, too much data is not necessarily a great thing. But having the data, so when you're ready to use it, you can use it intelligently. I don't think it is overkill to have it. And the other piece of this is you really, when you're going out to someone else's list or someone else's media, whether it's a newspaper, a local newspaper, or a Valpak, which is a lot of local businesses use, I'd want to make sure that if I'm paying some fee to put an ad in there or to put a brochure for my business into this big envelope with 20 other businesses, I want to know if any of those come back or if people call an 800 number that I know that it came from that source. I mean, a lot of people use an 800 service and they just change the number based on the different source that they use so that when the call comes in, they know exactly where it came from. Now, some of these things are too sophisticated for a very, very small business to use. But the concept is really what I want folks to get on this call, that if you can just figure out a way to make sure that everything you send out and everything you do, you can measure it. Because what gets measured is what you're going to be able to react on. Whereas throwing spaghetti against the wall and hoping that something sticks is really not the kind of marketing that I would recommend, especially for small companies with limited.

Budgets, at least in the beginning. Do you recommend kind of throwing the spaghetti on the wall just to figure out at first what method works for that specific small business?

Well, as long as you know what your budget is and what you're willing to spend. Because I think what happens with small businesses sometimes is that they're throwing spaghetti against the wall and something, one thing good comes back, like, I'll make it up. You know, we're a law firm and we're throwing out all these different advertisements and different local media and we get this one, you know, whale client. The kind of the noise that you made at the beginning of the show, that was a beluga. Well, no, no, no. All right. I'm trying to like convince you that.

It'S a 70s reference. It's a 70s reference, just so you know. All right, keep going.

So, so, so in that, in that particular case, you know what, what local small businesses, they fall into a trap and they say, I'll keep doing what I'm doing since I got that one big whale of a client. And so whatever I'm doing, another whale is going to come along. And to me, I don't think that's a really good long term prescription for having a budget for advertising. So to answer Your question? I could see doing some spaghetti against the wall kind of stuff, but kind of, you know, try as best you can to not keep throwing good money after bad and try to read as much as you can from what you're doing so that you can get rid of the stuff that doesn't seem to be bringing you anything. And then if you could find out wheel that you know, for instance, once you get that one big client, find out where they found out about you because that at least will tell you that the media that you use to find that client might be a media worth pursuing more. I mean, so no matter how much spaghetti you want to be able to see what you know or gefelta fish, either one. What's that?

Or I said you can throw spaghetti or gefelta fish against the wall.

Filter fish. You could, you know, any kind of even gluten free pasta.

Gluten free. But, but where do you suggest someone gets started in regards to the first technique to use? I. There's tons of small businesses listening. We have a small business. We've never done any. Well, maybe we've done some, but we haven't done a variety of things that we could do. How do you pick the first one to choose?

Yeah, you know, I do think that direct mail is kind of expensive and if you don't know what you're doing, you'll end up probably not. It is the most powerful for small business because you don't have to mail big numbers to get really high response rates. But if you don't know what you're doing, it'll be hard to do that as your first thing. So my, my recommendation to most small businesses that I coach and that I have in my, I have a smaller mastermind group of smaller businesses and it really starts with building up your own list. So the thing that I recommend the most is that if you're out there a personality or a business to try in some way to build a list. Because once you have a list, you can do so many more things. And so the first step to building a list is to be able to offer something as what we call an ethical bribe to someone to give you their email address. So for example, if you ran an ad, I'm trying to think of the kind. Are there a lot of service businesses that are in the show?

Yes.

Okay, so let's use accountants since we talked about accountants before. So if I have an accounting practice in a local area and I run an ad in a local newspaper for my accounting services, instead of saying you know, call 1-800-I'll get you out of jail during your audit, you know, whatever. Instead of that, do something like, you know, I've been, you know, sell your credibility. You know, I've been an accountant, you know, in. And I've been a cpa, and I've. I specialize in the state of Connecticut. I specialize in your needs. And I've been in this town forever. And I have an incredible client base. And I have this special report that I wrote on the five things you need to do if you ever get audited. And it's something that you should get from me, that you should keep on your shelf, you know, so that you'll always have it. All you need to do is go to this site and what you do is you set up. It's very easy. There are a lot of companies that will do this for you where you can set up with a company to set up what they call a landing page or a squeeze page. And on that page, when they get there is they have to put in their name and their email address. And in exchange for that, they get to download your special report. So you're basically giving them, and you're not selling them anything yet. You're just list building. And I think for anybody in a small business, once you start list building like that, then you could start blogging to that list. You could start showing them that you're an expert in the area. And it's funny that if you need an accountant on, after you've been on someone's list for a while and you really start trusting them because you read about them, because they have credibility, because they've supplied you with valuable information, that's the person you might call first when you need an accountant for something. Same is true for lawyers. Same is true for almost any kind of service business. So you can't expect, when you're a service business, for example, to get the order right away. I mean, lawyers think that if they, even if they are like personal injury attorneys, that if they throw something out there and says, you know, been in an accident, call 1-800- you know, get out of jail free. It's just not the best way to do it. The best way to do it is to get people on your list who might need you someday because it's an episodic thing. They don't need you right that minute. They might. And then you're just getting lucky by getting somebody who needed you at that moment and by building a list first and then figuring out who on your list are the best people to sell what kinds of services? That's a much better approach and it's not that expensive to do. And you got to be a little more patient. You're not making the sale right away. So that would be the first thing I would do. And I would say that anything you run as an ad would be giving out information in addition to talking about your services is always a good thing.

But you also said that you gotta be watch out for damaging your audience with too much email. And now I hear you saying, you know, email is the way to go to get started. And, but you start sending them regular communications to educate them. But doesn't also, doesn't your list start abandoning you? Because it's like, do I have to hear one more video about xyz or is this something it could, it could.

I mean, that's why you have to monitor very closely on how many people are unsubscribing. You got to, you got to monitor how many people are opening your emails. But my experience and the experience of my clients is that if you're, if you get people onto your list who are interested in what you have to offer and it's relevant, that if you keep giving them relevant information, they will continue to open. And that's how you develop a relationship. I mean, there's a, there's an expression I use all the time with anybody selling anything, any service, any product. It's that everything that you do in business from a marketing standpoint is not a revenue event, but everything that you do in marketing is a relationship event. And if you're enhancing the relationship, it's very rare that people will abandon you. If, you know, I mean, if you're being a jerk and you're banging them over the head every day with another offer, I mean, look at what the retail people do in like the big brands. Like, you know, I remember getting on a list for Banana Republic or the Gap or whatever it was. And once I was on their list, it was like, I got an email every single day about a 20% off or this sale or that sale. And it was like, okay, so if you send me the same email seven days in a row, on the seventh day, all of a sudden I'm going to be a convert to this kind of marketing. To me, if Banana Republic had people on their list who were interested in outdoor clothing, hiking shoes, and they were able to send you articles from experts on those things and on the, for a couple of times a week, and then sometimes every other week they come up with a sale. That's a much better way of selling where people aren't going to run away from you because you're banging them over the head too much.

So I agree with that. But I also think I'm a small business. I see Banana Republic doing this kind of marketing. It seems like it's working for them. Maybe I should be offering discounts and sales every day.

You know what, working is relative. So they're not. Look, who am I to say Banana Republic's a way bigger business than anything I'll ever do in my lifetime? However, there are diminishing returns. I don't think they're looking at their email marketing in a direct marketing context at all. I think they're looking at their email marketing as a way to support store traffic, a way to just send traffic to their website. And they're not. If they tracked how much it's costing them in time and money to send out that many emails for how much it actually directly creates orders, I'm not so sure they would do it the same way. They might. They might. And I'm not gonna, you know, I don't want to do their, their direct marketing for them. But I would, I would venture to guess that there are diminishing returns to some of the stuff that they do because it's not in a direct marketing context. It's in a. It's in a flood the market context. And if we just have so many messages out there in all different media and we have a budget for a gazillion dollars, it doesn't matter. We'll just allot this much to email and this much to AdWords and this much to Facebook and this much to retargeting and this much to. If they do direct mail, which might be. They do to probably their credit card holders. I bet they do direct mail. In fact, I used to get some from Banana Republic. So they just have like this marketing budget and I don't know that they're looking at each source to make sure each one pays out. Overall, the company is doing great. So if their earnings are good and the stockholders are happy, no one cares about direct marketing. Yeah, but for a small business, the kinds of businesses we're talking to today, you can't afford to do that.

Of course not. But so. So now I got my email list building. Let's say that we have that. It sounds like we shouldn't stick with email forever. Where do you go next? Do you go to the envelopes? Do you do a valve pack? How do you know what to do?

Yeah, I mean I like, I like testing, you know, inexpensive stuff once you have a message that you think is resonating. And again, you know, the, the copy is very important, like how you write the copy. I would study, you know, if I was going to go into Valpak, I would study everybody else that's in the Valpak in my area and try to differentiate myself in some way. I'd certainly look for other people who are selling similar services and do something way different. Differentiation is everything. But as far as what media to use, there's just so many opportunities. I mean, I think there's a lot of opportunity on Facebook. You know, you can target geographically if you want it or not, depending on how big your business is. There's a lot of things you can do in terms of demographics and psychographics and it's not that expensive. So I think Facebook is one, I think AdWords is another. I mean, you need somebody to help you with this. I don't expect the people who are listening here to be experts in any of these things, but finding a good agency that does these types of things and I think, you know, the idea of, look, there's a guy, the co author of my book, Craig Simpson, has an agency that basically helps small businesses do direct mail. So he's a great resource, you know, but it's a little more expensive to do direct mail. But he's done a lot of small local businesses and how to get them into direct mail. So it's not that far fetched to be able to do that.

You know, what would be your sense, Brian? So many of our listeners get their business through word of mouth, you know, oh, so and so talk me up. And my greatest referral source is word of mouth. Right. People love saying that, but means they're not actively marketing, you know, is this really a profitable venture? I mean this show is the profit first podcast.

My attitude is if you're relying 100% on word of mouth and referrals, it makes my skin crawl because it really does. Because I think, you know, you think about, I look in my town, you know, how many restaurants can't last and I. And good ones too. And because they just assume that, oh, we have really good food and we're really good restaurant and therefore once everybody hears about us, we'll be back on Saturday night. Life doesn't work that way for the most part. Yes, you need to have referral programs. You need to have customers who get you other customers, giving them some incentive, whether It's a discount on their next service. I mean, all of those programs are really good marketing programs, but even that word of mouth and referral programs in and of themselves can be a marketing program. I mean, I have a perfect example. I wrote about this in a blog recently. I had a client who sold a product that it was something that you installed into your business, and it cost $24,000 to install this product. And then they would use it in their practice and they would bill out time on it. And to get the $24,000 back, you know, didn't take that long if they knew what they were doing in terms of their product. Now what I told my client is that while they were looking for other people to buy the $24,000 product for their practice, I said, why don't you go to the 60 installations that you already have of the $24,000 product and start figuring out how they can give you information on how they're using the $24,000 product. And you use that in your marketing material. So now you're actually using. And you have to, like, do this at a very high level. If someone paid me $24,000, I can afford to send them something in the mail, like a gift to say, I would love to talk to you on the phone and talk to you how you're using my product. And so I could use that information in future marketing efforts. So even if you're looking for a referral or word of mouth effort, there's marketing involved there too. And then, of course, making offers. When people look, I mean, the good restaurants, they come in and say, you know, not restaurants, but let's say, you know, a dental practice, you know, if you bring a new customer to a dental practice, to not offer the customer that brought you the referral 20% off on their next cleaning or a free set of teeth, maybe a free toothbrush at least, you know. Yeah. Or, yeah, like some, you know, you know, have. Have like, you know, a massage and floss thing going on.

Are you suggesting someone else floss glossing your teeth? That's horrible, man.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what? You know, I don't want to. Yeah, I don't want to suggest what the thing might be. Right. But you get the idea that. So to answer your question, to rely on your business being 100% word of mouth and referral, I think that's a. Look, some company, some people have had nice businesses, they're very happy with their lives. And it's. They all say it's all word of mouth and, and referral to me to live like that, you know, shoot me now. Oh, that's awesome.

That's the final sentence we're hearing from you, Brian, because we got it going. That's awesome. But before we do leave, you tell us, where can people learn more about you and maybe engaging your services?

So the best thing that people can do, because I think the folks who are listening would really like my book. And my book is like, I don't make any money on it. It's like $12 on Amazon. I mean, I'm not Mike Michalowicz, so I'm desperate to sell books and I wouldn't make any money on it. So I have a book, it's called the Advertising Solution. And basically what I did with my co author Craig Simpson is we created a book that took six legends of advertising, six of the greatest advertising men of all time. Anybody who watches the show Mad Men, these were some of the original Mad Men. And basically they were the forerunners of direct marketing. Even they were in general advertising that didn't always talk about measurable advertising like we talked about today. These six guys were completely committed to that. You might have heard some of them. But one of them is David Ogilvie, one is Claude Hopkins, one is Gene Schwartz. They're just amazing copywriters and marketers. So anyway, if you go to the site thelegendsbook.com it's thelegendsbook.com and if you go there, you can buy my book. It opens up a new window. You buy it wherever you want. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, you buy the book, you send your receipt back to the email at this site and you get all of. Not only get the book, but you get all these downloaded. You can download all of these ads from these greats of advertising. You can get a PDF of one of the great books of advertising of all time called Scientific Advertising. And there are some videos of these greats as well. One of them is David Ogilvie on the David Letterman show, which is a riot. So you go to that site, thelegendsbook.com and at the same time you'll be opting into my list. And then you can be on my blog list. If you don't want to spend the 12 bucks. No way, no how. I'm cool with that. And you just want to get on my list so you can get my blogs, get a lot of free content on a regular basis, which you'll get the other way too, without paying 12 bucks. Just go to briankurtz me b r I A N K U R T Z me. And you go to that page, you put your name and email in, you get another interview with me, which is just as scintillating as this one. Actually it's not because I don't have you guys interviewing me there. You can opt into my list, get my blogs on a weekly basis and there's a lot of free content on that, on that site at briankurtz. Me.

Awesome. So, Brian, we'll have all that stuff in the show. Notes, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thanks, Brian.

Thank you. Really enjoyed it.

All right, we'll see you. So in a second, we're going to share what we just learned from Brian. Everyone's taking copious notes. I see you guys scrolling around. Yeah, Fireball had to throw me a pen. I was so panicked. I was like, I was like doing smoke signals to myself to try to remember this stuff. That doesn't even make sense. No, that didn't. Not even a little. But first, I do want to thank our corporate partners who make the show a reality. Christina and Fireball. Do you know who they are? Fireball?

I do.

Do you have, you don't have the list in front of you, so just roll them off and I'll say, we'll share what they do. You say their name.

Perfect. Fundera.

Okay, who do you want to talk about, Fundera or me?

You.

I'll do the signal. Just throw that one to her. Fundera is awesome because you know amazing things. They do amazing things.

What kind of amazing things?

You know, things that are kind of amazing that you'll be amazed by. Now Fundera is a one stop shop for loans. Say you have own a business. So it's not like you can go out for like a crazy dinner and say, hey Fundera, could you hook me up? But maybe if you have clients that you take out to dinner regularly and now you have this big event coming up, you want to take them out, Fundera can source a loan for it. Now, they're not the loan provider themselves. They seek it out and then they give you the best options, educate you around it, then you pick the options right for you.

Awesome. What about Funbox? Christina?

Fundbox is one of our favorite companies. They offer services where if you have a client that is not paying you right away, but you need that money, you can call Dave Tolkien over there at Funbox, he'll give you the money like immediately. I believe they release it as soon as, like the next day you have it at your expense. And then when your client pays you, you just pay Funbox back.

Boom.

Amazing. With a little fee.

Boom. It's funny. You said you have it at your expense. Like. Like it's an expense. It's kind of funny. I'm just saying, when you hear this episode, you're like, that made no sense. It was good. That was good.

Okay.

Rude, right? That was kind of rude. I'm kind of becoming a jerk. Ever since. No, that one episode, the first one we do together, you're like Mike, you kind of try to dominate a room, and I've. I've transcended. I'm so.

It's actually. You always were. You're just aware of it.

Yes.

Cherry, what else you got for me?

Nextiva.

I'm gonna talk about them now. I don't care.

Glad you're rising above.

So, Nextiva, they are a voice over IP phone system. Do you know what VoIP stands for?

Voice over IP?

That's right. You wouldn't have cried. Do IP stands for, though? Yes, you're right. Internet.

Internet positioning.

Internet protocol. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't ask it last. So have you ever had a problem with your phone here? And if you have, don't say you have.

I actually haven't.

No. Okay. In all truth, have you?

No.

Now, we did. When we first got the system, it was cut out every so often. Yeah, that was. We were at my house on the crappiest.

That was the Internet.

Internet connection.

Yeah.

But it got better and better over time. They've improved the system so much that it can work over pure crud. And here now we do have a business connection. But what. What's the bandwidth? Like, one kilobyte. It's like a. It's like one of those old modems. One of those things. It basically connects that and everyone's cranking on these phones.

Yeah.

You know what? Their customer service is so good that if you call them and it's not even their problem, they'll try and help you figure out what it is, even though it's not their phone. That's problem.

Word is that you can literally call them and say, I'm trying to order a pizza and having trouble and they'll help. That's the word on the street.

Word up.

All right, what else you got for.

Me, Chief Alish 00 online accounting system. We don't use them anymore. We used to.

Two years. You know why we cut off with a zero?

I don't know why?

Because our bookkeeper said she can't support it due to her setup. And then it was a question. Are we more loyal to the software we use or a bookkeeper? Now, we've been working on a bookkeeper for six years, and we love her, Deborah. So it was painful to rip zero out of my cold, dead hands, but.

They are very easy to use and very helpful. I never had any problems with it.

Yeah, most of our clients, you're very excited about that. Is there anyone else?

A receipt bank?

Oh, they're here. They came, they saw. Did you meet Damien?

I did. And briefly.

Bora Bora. I was calling her Laura the whole time. Bora? Are you kidding? Oh, my God. I'm like, hey, Laura. And I even said, I have a friend also named Laura. And she didn't even correct me. I'm like, I love the name Laura. I Not only did I Coralore, I harped on it. I think that's my subconscious domination. Right? I knew it wasn't. I knew it was boring.

I'm like, oh, you want to be called Bora?

Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna dig into that, Laura. Okay, so receipt bank is a scanner system for all those receipts you get, and when you scan them and it automatically syncs with your accounting software. Now we're. Now we've cut over to QuickBooks Online or QBO, if you're in the know. QBO. And it syncs with QBO, I saw. And they were actually here today to train our team on how to use it and to set it up. That's how, like, they're hands on.

Yeah.

They came all the way from D.C. up here.

Oh, that's awesome.

Yeah, they're on a little tour. Damien and Laura are on a little bit tour. Torn around, but they stop here for a half a day, I think.

Half a day?

Yeah.

But we did have to feed them. They didn't buy us food. Let that be.

Yeah, that's a real thorn.

It really is. Sorry, Obama.

They probably had a gift. And then you're like. Like, he called me Laura.

Could you imagine? Laura's like, I brought in the finest pewter from, you know, from the ancient temples of Mexico.

Did you just call her Laura?

Yes, I'm going with.

Just going with it.

And she. So Bora looks at me, she's about to present. I'm like, oh, Laura, it's so good to see you. And she's like, right into her purse. Or maybe it was her merse.

Oh, no.

What are you calling her?

Relax. I'm just saying she plays trickery.

All right, we're off the Rails here. I know.

Let's get back on. So what'd you learn today, Christina?

I learned that. No, that losing your audience can be just as devastating as losing your money. It's so important to. To market to the demographic that you're trying to serve. But don't overkill it. You have to be smart about it, and you have to really find out what it is that they need and what they want, and then you can cater to them accordingly.

Boom. Like it would you get, Kelsey.

I agree. I really liked how he said everything is not a revenue event. Everything is a relationship event.

Yeah.

And for me, I think that's critical. It's being really thoughtful about how you reach your audience and, you know, treating them as a person and not just following what everybody else does for the sake of marketing, you know, blindly.

I saw you dive into your paper when you said that. Scrolling that down.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, that's how he said paralysis by analysis.

Yeah, that was good too. Yeah, it was kind of. You never heard that before?

No, I love it.

That's not a Brian Kurtz original. I invented that. I invented. I gave it to Brian.

Brilliant.

Mine. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. So does Laura. So my big thing was he says, you can damage your audience. You know, I. I'm a. Sometimes I. Over email, I gotta be honest. And I never really thought about the damage to the audience. But you're right. At a certain point, I. I get same email from this one marketer so much. I admire the marketer. I don't admire the message anymore. So I stopped listening. And I wonder if he or she has tried to sell to me. And I didn't take the bait because I was dissuaded. So that was a big lesson. And then I just. Concept of wasted circulation that, you know, I think we do certain things like Facebook ads or whatever. We actually tried a Facebook ad, didn't really know what we're going into. And so, yeah, it's circulating, but it's not bringing any results. That's a waste.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

So what we do now?

So I would like to tell everybody to go ahead and go to profitfirstpodcast.com. leave us a comment, tell us what you think. Ask us a question. One of us will get back to you. And it doesn't just have to be on profitfirstpodcast.com, go to iTunes, stitcher, anywhere you listen to us. Post a rating, please.

Yeah, we'd love a rating. Yeah, Any kind of rating with five star.

Anything.

Anything. Leave us comments. There's a lot of comments on the blog. I was in there yesterday. There was eight comments. I responded to all nice, but pretty much one letter. I'm like, yep, Nope. Yep. Because they were all yes, no questions, one letter. Yeah, Y N. Y N. Exactly. I did say one letter.

What about PfP?

Oh, my God. The greatest organization of all time. I mean, I think we have a lot of fun here. We are playing poker tonight and like other cool things, but we also have a collection of profit first professionals. These are accountants and bookkeepers throughout the globe who have been trained in the profit first methodology by our team. Right back there through the wall on everyone. We missed it. Everyone's out of time. Well, we're not. We're not in time. But we are having an impact. Our 100. Is it say 140 members?

43 or something?

Yeah. Ron's like fixing numbers on the board. No, it's this is that 140 plus members are out there eradicating entrepreneurial property using a profit first method. Now here's the deal. You need an accountant or bookkeeper anyway, I get it. I know it. Why not have a profit first professional taking care of you? All you have to do is go to proffersprofessionals.com, click on the find button, fill out the little form, and then we'll hook you up with a proffers professional who's suited for your industry and your needs and, you know, they'll make your business, like, really profitable. Okay. You know what's coming up next week? Hell, Tizzy's got a hair. Andy Biting. Oh, yeah. You know what Andy Biting does?

No.

He runs a magazine where he has this massive distribution, but you can buy pieces of the magazine. Like you can literally get by the COVID spot and run a magazine. Or you can even buy your own magazine.

Oh, that's awesome.

Yeah. So he didn't tell you, and then.

You can direct mail it.

You.

Yes.

You just linked it together. Yeah. Can you even see the sun's like right in your eyes? Yeah. You're blinded. Okay. So antibiting. Join us next week, guys.

Sam.