[RTB:E17] "How To Overdeliver Every Day” (w/ Brian Kurtz)" -The Road to a Billion with Stefan Georgi

Hey, you're listening to the Road to a Billion podcast. I'm your host, Stefan Georgi, and I'm glad to have you with me here today. The Road to a Billion is a call in radio shy. I can't talk. But it's a call in radio show style podcast where you can ask me questions about freelancing, copywriting, entrepreneurship, mindset scaling, funnels, relationships, money and more. And the reason for the name is because my copy will have generated a billion dollars in sales this year, both for my own products and for those of my clients. And my goal is to make a direct impact in the life of a billion people in the next 10 years. And so when we say kind of a direct impact, what does that look like? It looks like helping them significantly improve their emotional, financial, mental well being is really a simple way to put it. Like when I get messages, I got one today from a Italian copywriter who's 16 who told me how he's now making $10,000 a month, which is more than both of his parents combined. He had a bunch of mindset issues like earlier on. And he's on this call. I might be on this one actually. Indeed. He actually just started go to work less than 19 hours a day like he was. So hearing stories like that just are literally what fuel me. And so that's kind of the impact I'm trying to have with more people as well. So we'll start taking calls in about five minutes from now. And the way that works, I say calls, is you have a question, pop it into the Q and A section here in Zoom, and then Ed Ray will go through select questions, give us a summary about what the question is, and we'll actually bring you on live. You'll be able to ask your question, provide context. And then myself and my amazing guest, who I'm going to introduce in A second here, Mr. Brian Kurtz, will be able to answer and kind of provide insights and feedback and things like that. So before we get to Brian, Ed, do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself and let everybody know you, who you are and what you do?

Well, you know, the best thing about this, first of all, it's like you got six questions already. You know, my mastermind, who are, who are, you know, the core people that I hang out with? You know, getting questions from them is like pulling teeth. So I know we're going to have a good time because there's an audience here that's asking questions before I even said anything. Yeah, again, that's, I mean, I Not that I'm going to answer them, of course, but, you know, I just wanted to know that there were questions. So I'm Brian Kurtz. If you haven't heard of me, it's okay because I assume, I go into every conversation not assuming anybody knows who I am. The story on that is when I wanted to do a full day with Perry Marshall in 2013. I'd never met Perry, so I called him up and I said, perry Marshall, this is Brian Kurtz. You don't know me, but I want to do a, I want to do a session with you. And when he said, of course I know you, you know, one of those, I realized that it's, it's that that was the good news. But then there are times when, you know, you've been reading your own press clippings your whole career and you say, oh, I'm Brian Kurtz. And you wait for them to say, holy shit, you're Brian Kurtz. Never happens anymore because I. And that, and that's a basic. It's one of my seven characteristics of what a great copywriter is, and one of the number six. And it's humility. And you know, you've gotta, you know, you, you can't assume that you're a legend in your own mind all the time, because you're not. And you're not to a lot of people. So that's how I, that's why I start this introduction. Because I don't want to brag, but I will say that I've done a lot of good stuff in my career. It's not bragging if you did it so I could tell you what I did, but I won't brag about it. I worked at Boardroom Inc. Kind of a legendary direct marketing company for 34 years. Started as the, as the list manager in 1981. The in house list manager. I was doing invoices on a trash radio shack trash 80. I assume there are people on this call that have no idea what I'm talking about when I say a radio shack trash 80. It was one of the early little microcomputers. And then from, you know, so. And then I graduated to doing all the marketing at Boardroom. I became a partner in the business to Marty Edelston, who was the founder. And then six years ago, I went out on my own after doing a landmark event, the Titans of Direct Response, which was a tribute event to Marty. Marty died in 2013. I did the event in 2014. Had the best people that I could find from the last 50 years in marketing, they all said yes to speak. Dan Kennedy and Joe Sugarman and Jay Abraham and Perry Marshall and Gary Bensevenga and on and on. And so. And I'm not just name dropping. They were just speakers at the event. And then after that I decided to leave Boardroom and turn my business into where Paris Lampropolis says the boardroom business was doing a couple of billion dollars worth of business. $39 at a time, which is what it was. Newsletters and books. We didn't have memberships. We had, we had, we had continuity in our newsletters, of course, because you have renewals. But there was, there was, it was all basically $39 and $39 and $39. We didn't know about Ascension. If we did know about Ascension, we didn't do it. And yet we were pretty legendary company doing $39 at a time. So now in the last six years, I run Titans Marketing. Stefan is one of the great members of my Titans Mastermind. So he came as a guest speaker and there was a love grip in the room. It was like, Stefan, could you join? Could you join? And you joined like that. And it was wonderful. I've been in a love grip too and other masterminds. So I know what it's like. And because you just, you're a dynamite speaker and you really know what you're doing doing at a very young age.

Thank you.

I'm always marvel at what you do. And so, so I have Titans Mastermind. I have a Titans Accelerator program. I'm Xcel, not acc, so I'm not competing with you. But you're Copy Accelerator. I'm Titans Accelerator. And that's a virtual Mastermind with about 250 people and it's a fantastic group. There probably are some members on this, on this call. And so, you know, it's a very simple business. And then I have, I have educational products. I have the exclusive rights to Breakthrough Advertising by Gene Schwartz. Gene was a mentor and a friend of mine. The deal is with his wife. She and I are, you know, have the rights to Breakthrough Advertising and the brilliance Breakthrough, both books. And that's been a blessing in itself, you know, to, to have the exclusive rights to that puts me on Gene's shoulders and he was, he was a giant of a man too. So I'm very high up being on his shoulders. And it was, you know, it's, it, it's been, it's been a great, it's been a great ride and it's still going. So that's basically me in a nutshell.

Yeah. That's awesome, Brian. That's a, that's a great. It's hard. I mean, you've had such a storied career because you've been at this for such a long time that I know that there's obviously a million other things that we could put into there as well, including that your love of umpiring and baseball, which, you know, it's always good. I mean, I know you're still umpy now, right?

I am. In fact, Sunday I'll be umpiring the state championship game of 12 year olds. 12 year old little League in Connecticut. There's no World Series this year. There's no Little League World Series, so. And there's no regional tournaments either. So the state championship is the best you can do at this point. I'm still waiting to get to Williamsport, which is where the Little League World Series is. Yeah. And I've been to another World Series for 16, 18 year olds in South Carolina and I do varsity high school baseball. Didn't do much of that this year. The high school season was. There was a pandemic or something. I heard something. They decided, decided not to play baseball. But the late, late fall I've been doing, you know, literally tournaments. Of course, the, the weird thing is that we're, we're umpiring the home plate umpire. Umpires from umpires from behind the mound, which is really not good. I mean if you've been. I've been umpiring, you know, for 30, 35 years, you know, behind the plate and you go behind the mound and anybody who argues a ball or strike with me from behind the mound, I'm like shut up. I mean, you're going to call the outside corner from there. I'm calling it the best I can. And then. And it's interesting because you have to have three umpires because you can't call the foul lines. If you have two umpires, you have one on the first baseline, one behind the mound.

Right.

Third baseline. I'm guessing if it's fair or foul. So it's a three man system. I think I'll be on first or third on Sunday, so I'm looking forward to that.

Yeah, that's really cool. By the way, Ed Ray. I do want to give Ed Ray love to. Ed is our moderator and my co host as well. And Ed. And we're happy. Do you want to take a second to share your background before I jump back into Brian here?

Yeah, for sure. So hi, I'm Ed Ray, I'm the Facebook compliance guy. I help people scale rapidly on Facebook without getting shut down, banned, or.

Hit.

By the ban hammer.

So wait a minute. So if you. So if you get banned, you can't act, then you wouldn't be able to advertise. So that would be bad, right?

Yeah, horrible. And people. People never know when it's gonna happen. So, yeah, it's like this lingering fear. It's like, oh, what? Am I gonna get banned?

So true. Yeah. You know, and I'll add on to that, you know, and I'm sure you've talked about it in your groups and probably other speakers have talked about it, but, you know, it's that the most dangerous number in business is one. And in terms of media, you know, if. If you're just on Facebook, that's. That's even worse because if you know, your whole. I mean, I knew a guy had a supplement business completely on Amazon and about a $30 million business, and one day, Mr. Amazon, not Jeff Bezos, but some Mr. Amazon or Ms. Amazon, said, we don't like your copy, and you're banned from Amazon. Well, that's a $30 million business that's gone in a day. And so one thing I'd like to just share, because a lot of people probably don't know. I don't know if people are Perry Marshall fans here, but I'm a big fan of Perry Marshall and he's a good friend, and he has something that just blew my mind. And I think we discussed it at times. Mastermind, when he spoke, and it's what he calls Maze 2.0. And what Mace 2.0 is, is a. It's a grid. And I. The way I interpret it, it's like you have a grid like this, and on the. On the horizontal axis, it's. It's live and recorded. And then on the other act, on the vertical axis, it's. It's online, offline. So if you. You could take any medium and put it in one of those four boxes. So this is Facebook Live. So it's online and live, whereas if it's just a podcast, it's recorded and online. And the beauty of that, doing that. And if you can, obviously nobody on this call is going to be in one medium, hopefully. And so deciding what media to be in is one of the crucial aspects of your business. Whatever you are, if you're a copywriter and selling your own stuff, if you're a copywriter for a client, make sure your client is multidimensional and in more than one medium. And the way what Maze 2.0 visualizes is that if you. And Perry has this map out, he found, like, I don't know, 300 different mediums from Pinterest to SEO to whatever. And he maps them out. And his theory is that you don't have to be in everything. But he says if you're in one thing in each of those quadrants, that's going to make you. It's going to make. It's going to seem like you're everywhere if you do it right. And so that is a different take on it. Now, I think if you have a developed business, you probably should be maybe in two or three in each quadrant. But, you know, don't be in one in one quadrant is the first lesson. And the second lesson is that it's not the. This is. In my book, Bill Bernbach was a quote. And it's. Don't let the technique, you know, come before the idea. You got to have the idea first. It's like, you know, get the idea and then adapt the technique. Never adapt the technique to an idea. Adapt your idea to the technique. Because, you know, so many folks, they're thinking about something and they go, well, I just want to be on Facebook. I want to be on Facebook. Well, what are you going to sell on Facebook? And it's crazy because, you know, the idea you might have, and I had one the other day. I never recommend direct mail. I'm a direct mail savant, sort of. I mean, because. Because I did it for so long. Not that that puts me on the map, but I did it. So I never recommend direct mail, usually as a first medium for somebody, because it's expensive. You got to learn a lot. It's. There's a discipline. It. I always say it's like making sushi, you know, if, you know, you can do it. But why, you know, and so you have to get all kinds of specialized vendors and list brokers and different kind of copywriters sometimes, and all of that. So what I, you know, what I like to do is say, you know, if you're gonna. If you're gonna move towards. So. And this was somebody who, you know, figuring, oh, I want to launch this business on Facebook. And as he went through his business, it was a high ticket. It was physical product. I'm thinking you could definitely launch this on direct mail because you don't have to sell that many. It's very high ticket. You don't, you know, it's. You can. That. That'll. That'll help with the cost of direct mail. And so, you know, we kind of did some evil planning in terms of maybe you could do direct mail initially or you could do an email campaign that would mirror what you're going to try to do in direct mail. And as a test, because obviously it's a lot cheaper, so. But it wasn't like I want to be in email. It wasn't like I want to be in direct mail. This is my idea. You go through all the aspects of it and then you decide which medium makes sense. And hopefully you'll be in at least one in each quadrant as well.

Yeah, I love that. I mean, I think that that's something that I've learned as a marketer over time is. Yeah. Not being like one dimensional and that there are all these additional channels. Even when I scaled my first health supplement offer. And then we didn't do like hardcore direct mail, but we would like, with like, even the inserts that then had like links like the E. Comm Store, which then had like, you know, like social media. And I was like, yeah, it may sell through funnels, but there's actually always other touch points that are able to. They're incredible. And Justin Goffney, I think, you know, he got a lot of that from you. And being in Titans is really good at doing direct. Me, like, we've done, you know, physical sales letters for our events and things like that.

When I was like, I was crying with, with glee when, when Justin sent, you know, for his first event. The box with the hundred dollar bill.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, that, that had Gary Halbert on it. It had, it had Justin Goff on it. And I actually gave him some input on it. I. I thought, I mean, it obviously worked and it kind of helped launch a lot of what, you know, you guys are doing now. But you know what? And even with my. So this is a good example too. You know, in my book, I talk about O2O2O online to offline to online. And it's not. I mean, anybody. I think one of my blogs once was like, you know, why would anybody want to be called an online marketer? I mean, why do you want to be defined by a channel or why do I want to be defined as a Facebook marketer? Why do I want to. Why do I want to be defined as an Instagram marketer or an SEO marketer? Why not be a direct response marketer that mainly uses Facebook, but I also use other stuff? Or I'm a direct response marketer that uses Boom, boom, boom. Because, you know, defining yourself by a channel, the channel, the list is the most important. You know, I, how I feel about the list, the audience, because you got to have that and the offer before you can even get the world class creative that you're going to train the next generation, you personally are going to train the next generation of world class copywriters. But, and I always say creative is the least important element of your marketing campaign until it's not right. What I mean by that is that you got to get the list right, meaning the audience, you got to get the offer right. And then you go hire a kick ass copywriter to take it to the moon. Because the other way around, it doesn't work. You get a world class copywriter, write the best copy, send it to the wrong list, you get zero orders, like literally zero orders. Whereas if you get the list right, get a great offer and you have, you have creative, that's a red box with a flashing red arrow, you'll still make some money because you'll get orders because you've got the right list and the offer. Now that's where creative becomes the most important thing. And so I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth intentionally, but that's been my experience over 40 years. In terms of every major breakthrough at Boardroom, and we had some major breakthroughs was because we had a product, we had a control package. And the biggest breakthroughs were when I went to an outside copywriter, a new writer, and they wrote a new package. That's when I got 100% lifts on my stuff. I was able to get minor lifts by tweaks. You know, you have a control and you change the price or you change the premiums or the bonuses, or you do certain things in the offer and that'll get you lifts, usually not 100%. Now online, it's different. I'm talking about direct mail here. But it's relative. It's relative because to me, when you have your, I mean, I always knew I had the, I mean I was a list. I really was. I was, I, I obsessed about list selections, list segmentation. It was the most important thing at Boardroom. And you know, Marty, just drum that into me and it's still in my blood today. And so I knew that when I got a new copywriter who was world class, they're going to want to see the list history. They're going to want to see the selections on every list. In fact, the copywriter that wouldn't ask me for a list history I usually wouldn't hire them. So they're going to get the most in depth start kit from me when I would give it to them. And so they understood the audience so well and, and that's how they could write. And then if they had RNBC back then, then they could take everything that you teach and you know, but they, I mean these are like the best copywriters so they might not need rnbc, but it would help them. But you know, this is, it's just, it's just basics. You know, this. I'm gonna do a launch for Titans accelerator. I'm gonna do three, three pre launch videos and it's basically chapters four, five and six of my book. Chapter four is lists and rfm. Chapter five is offers and chapter six is creative and copy. I don't teach people how to write copy. I'm not a copywriter, but I kind of understand, I understand copy at least. And I can write, I can write stuff, so I write copy. But the idea is like that it's sort of like all of marketing is basically a three legged stool, you know, to me, I mean I simply, I want to simplify it to, I simplify it to complicated, of course. But you know, it's, it's list, offer, creative and then I'm gonna go deep in each of those and you know, it's, it. I just love talking about it, I love thinking about it, I love jabbering about it with whoever wants to jabber with me. That's why I never turned down a podcast. And when you, when you invited me to this one, it's like, like, you know, I didn't want to like jump out and say, you know, like, give me something not to do. You know, it's like I wasn't gonna ever say no to you because I just, I just love this stuff. I've lived it for 40 years and I'm gonna live it for another 40.

Yeah, that's, that's amazing. And I'm just listening and I'm taking notes. I've got some questions for you, but also observations and thoughts. Yeah, that stuff with Perry Marshall is so cool. And I reread 8020 sales and marketing every like two years or something. Like, but that book to me, even though, because then I think as a going back to humility, right? I can be like, well, I've had these different successes. I have, you know, I'm doing all these cool things, so I know this stuff. But then when I reread a book like that that just has a bunch of like real principles and truths in it. And then think you're like, oh, you know, we forget the basics going back to that, that stool. It's like we kind of feel like we build the stool once or we kind of understand the stool and then we go to trying to create like a, like a, like a lounge, like a lazy boy that can. Right, right, right into the space.

And you're like, it's an easy button.

Yeah, right. Yeah. Maybe just keep looking at the stool.

You know what? I'll add to that in that my book over deliver the second chapter is the importance of original source, which is something that Perry and I in particular have gotten into on numerous occasions. We did a, we did an interview on it. We. And the one I had, I recently looked at my five one star reviews of the hundred and whatever I got and one of the guys, you know, said I was very repetitive in that chapter, which he was right, I was, but I think I was repetitive because I wanted to make sure I drummed into people that. I'm not saying, saying it was better back then. The original source. It's not, you know, it's not that direct marketing and direct response marketing isn't. Now today is the best time to be in marketing and tomorrow will be the best time. And in the future, however, there are fundamentals and you know, that have to be laid out that if you have those fundamentals, you'll just be so much better at what you're doing today. And it's very hard for me. I had another one star review that said, oh, grandpa telling his kids what to do. And I'm very sensitive to that because one, I'm not a grandpa yet, and two, I can't. I try to apologize. It's like I'm not lecturing to anybody. I'm not saying, you know, get off of my lawn. You know, it's like, I'm not. That's not me. But I want people to get the value of me, which is I have 40 years experience. I've actually seen the, the. I've seen the horse and buggy. I've seen the car. I've seen the airplane. I've seen the jet engine. I've seen electric cars and then take that into direct marketing. I've seen direct mail, I've seen, I've seen email, you know, all the way, all the way through to funnels or whatever you want to take it to. And so I just, I think having that history is just important to share. And then chapter three of my book is, is Titled how paying postage made me a better Marketer. And I'm not. Again, I'm not saying you should do direct mail. But the thing that I think really prepared me for marketing today, and I'm not, I consider myself a student in direct marketing today. I mean, I'm in Masterminds where I'm the close to the dumbest guy in the room, but I'm just learning and learning and then I bring whatever expertise I have to the room and, and everybody gets smarter. And that's what I like to do. But you know why paying postage made me a better marketer is the discipline that we had to have in direct mail, you know, before we hit send. Because when you hit send in direct mail, you've got $500, a thousand in costs on a million piece mailing. So it's real money. Email is not real money. And so I try to stress to email marketers that every email you send doesn't have to sell something like we had to do in direct mail, but it has to achieve something. It's got to have a purpose. And so when you hear email marketers say, oh, I sent out this email, I got no response. But it's no big deal. Don't be so sure. You could have turned off half your audience. You know, watch your open rates for the next. It's sort of like Covid, you know, watch a spreader event and then see if you get a lot of deaths, you know, eight weeks later. And it's the same thing. I hate to do Covid analogies because the thing is crazy, but I just, it's, it's so important to understand that if you have the discipline that we had sending out a, you know, in some cases a 3,4 million piece direct mail campaign that you had for doing a launch for, for doing email marketing. And many people do. Many people do. And again, I'm not lecturing, I'm not saying we did it better. That's not, that's not my game. But my game is definitely, think about it. Go deep in what you're, in what you're doing. And don't assume that just because it's cheap you can send it out to anybody anytime, and it's not going to hurt you. It's not going to hurt your reputation. What about affiliates? You know, you have a big list and you're doing stuff and you, and you, you partner with the wrong affiliate. I mean, it could have, your list will unsubscribe if you're endorsing something that they don't see as a fit or they see as just a way for you to make money when you haven't done that before. Now, if you have a list where you're making shitloads of money every day on it and you'll sell anything and everything, they're not going to unsubscribe. The people who didn't like it already unsubscribe.

Right.

But you have to be aware of that. And you. So it's all about congruence, basically, and consistency. Whatever you do, do it congruently, do it consistently and don't waver. And if you want to be, you know, sell it. And I'm not saying you don't. People who have a list and want to sell everything under the sun, go ahead, have at it. But make sure that you're consistent in that and your messaging is consistent in that. And that's. You know, I had one ad on Facebook recently, my. I'm gearing up for this launch for accelerator and they put it, they've taken my blogs and putting them up, and I couldn't believe there was one blog I wrote that was, it was. I think originally it was Grammar is Overrated, which was about the brilliance, breakthrough and Gene Schwartz and how he. You choose the right word. You know, choosing the right word for all of your. Your copy. And I think the title on the one that they put on Facebook, it said use smaller words. And it's amazing. People are coming out of the woodwork like, you know, bombarding me. I mean, really blasting me on. What are you talking about? Least common denominator. What do you want to do that for? Blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, obviously they don't know the Hemingway scale. They don't know that you have to write to the audience. They don't understand, you know, what did Gary Halbert say? You know, fifth grade level. Maybe it's a seventh grade level. It's not. Least common denominator. Yeah, it's about who's your. Now, if your audiences are astrophysicists. No, you write to astrophysicists and you, you know, you use the right words and just by saying use smaller words, because that was the thing they had to click on. They were basically killing me. And, you know, but it was an interesting thing to read that because I think, you know, in marketing, it's message to list. It's always message to list. And it's, it's, it's such a basic, that's a very basic thing. I didn't invent any of this shit. You Know, I've just been doing it for a long time and I've seen what works and what doesn't work.

Yeah, no, a hundred percent. That is fascinating. It's like one of those. Yeah. I don't know, but I kind of love it as a direct response marketer knowing things like on a video sales letter, not playing the button until like 30 minutes into it. And then people get all mad and, and then you'll have affiliates who come in or people are promoting and they're like, hey, like, we're getting comments from people saying that the video is too long. Can you do a shorter video? And you're like, nope. Because like, here's the thing. Tested it a million times and you know, like, overwhelmingly we want the button to, you know, not be revealed until we actually reveal the true price and have the call to action. And. But just knowing those little things will continue to give you a competitive advantage.

I used that exact concept when we got, when boardroom got into the infomercial business that we didn't. We did an infomercial. And I think it's on my, it's on my, on my website. It's a blog that says how insomnia led to a $300 million business. And basically it's a story of how we got into the infomercial business. And our infomercials were like, you had Hugh Downs, legendary newscaster who just passed away, unfortunately, interviewing Arthur Johnson, legendary copywriter. But also we labeled him as medical writer and editor. And I never had, I never second guessed that at all. He knew more about the stuff in the health book than any doctor would. So it was Hugh Downs interviewing him. And, you know, we had all Dr. Pods, you know, people, the actual doctors who wrote the article in front of the Harvard Medical School in of front for, you know, where they, where they worked or Mayo Clinic. And they're giving what they, you know. I found a gene that helps with healing Alzheimer's. Read page 56 and treasury of Health Secrets. So we did direct mail on an infomercial, basically using Fascinations and. But the interesting thing was we did not do the call to action. It's a 28 and a half minute infomercial. We did not do the call to action. I think it was like 23 minutes in, similar to a VSL that holds the offer for a long time now. It was the same reason why we had to. It wasn't because the rule of thumb in infomercials at the time is that you have. It was a formula. It was Seven minutes, Call to action. Seven minutes, call to action. You know, eight or nine minutes and then, you know, the great crescendo. And. But you had to get all the bonuses. You had to get everything in. And each of those calls to action, we were lapping on the bonuses as we were going on. And you know, it was a lot of, you know, but. But wait, there's more. But it was done in a very almost academic fashion. You know, we have more stuff from more doctors and, you know, and so, you know, everybody said, oh, you have to, you have to put the call to action earlier. You're losing too many people. No, it was not the way to go for that infomercial. And so what was interesting, though, we had to really. One of the things we had to do is really bulk up the telemarketing, the inbound telemarketing. Because what happened was we used to map the show and it would be like trickles of orders, you know, they got the website or something, but. And then all of a sudden at 25 minutes, it was like this explosion of, you know, thousands of orders. And you had to have the phones ready because they were all coming in at once as opposed to coming in throughout the show. And so that's where I found a company called LiveOps at the time, which were home based. And I'm sure they have them all over the place now. Home based inbound telemarketing, like housewives sitting in their home. And the calls were just, you know, feeded out and you could do as many as you want. And that was critical for that type of a show.

Right.

So, but, but the point is that, you know, there's no one size fits all offer. There's no one size fits all when you do it. And you know, who says that you have to do you have to do PowerPoint or you have to do B Roll or you have to do a combination. Depends what you're selling on a VSL, obviously, you know, and I've seen PowerPoint still work. I've seen B Roll still work. I've seen both not work, you know. You know that. I mean, anybody on this call would know that.

Yeah, pretty much. And by the way, for everyone on the call, we're gonna get to questions in just a couple minutes here. So we will rifle through many of them. But yeah, I think whenever anybody says that XYZ is dead, I usually, you know, I get it if they're trying to be sensational from a marketing standpoint, but if they like really, truly believe it, I Usually kind of judge them. And I'm like, that's a very dumb statement.

Yeah. I've never said anything is dead, even myself. I had a stroke a year and a half ago and I didn't, I didn't call myself dead.

Yeah, look at that. Yeah. Good thing, because here you are kicking away.

Yeah.

One thing I wanted to point out, who's our co host and a boy wonder here? Like, you know, Ed, it's interesting. Scott Roic was my guest last week. I don't know if you know Scott, but he's the co founder of Native Path and they, you know, he's generating something like $300 million in online sales. Been doing it since like the 90s, so, you know, not quite as long as you, but, you know, a good amount of time. And one thing he pointed out to Ed was with the Facebook compliance stuff was like, he's like, I wouldn't really be the Facebook compliance guy. I'd be like the compliance guy. And you know, because he's like, cause what happens if, you know, things change with Facebook? And he made that point. And then hearing you talking about same thing with like, right. Like, I'm not like a Facebook copywriter or a Facebook marketer. I'm not. Right. And again, being broader, like, I'm a direct response marketer who specializes in that. Like, for me, I'm a direct response copywriter who focuses primarily on health copy. But that doesn't mean, like, I don't even want to pigeonhole myself into that because if I want to write some biz op thing or copy for myself or whatever, then I don't like, want to be like. But I wanted to point that out to Ed as well, because now you've heard two very smart and accomplished marketers and business people and just mine say the same thing in like a seven day period. So I wanted to make sure that that point didn't get lost because I think it's a very valuable one too.

What Stefan's saying, Ed, is just ignore both. Ignore both of us.

Yeah. They don't know what they're talking about.

We don't know.

Yeah, I wasn't gonna listen anyway.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, yeah. You're, you're, you're, you're playing, you're playing Wordscapes or something.

Yeah, he's the one who left the one star review. He's like, all right, grandpa, you know.

He'S yeah, yeah, yeah, Grandpa, shut up.

What are you gonna do about it?

No, but it's really, it's, it's really, it's, it's very important because I think that, you know, while we always talk about being. There's a difference between being pigeonholed and niched and niched.

Right?

And being niched is the be all end all for a new copywriter. Because you have to master this before you can master that, in my opinion anyway. And most of the great copywriters mastered one specific area. You know, Paris and Propolis, you know, he can write about anything today, but, you know, he'll, you know, he just went so deep. You know, the idea of going a mile deep versus a mile wide, it's on steroids. In terms of copywriting and marketing, however, you know, I don't want to be pigeonholed as the direct mail guy.

Right.

Even though if someone asked me a question about direct mail, I think I can answer almost anything in maybe not. I mean, I'm always willing to learn, but when it comes to anything, I'm willing to learn. But it's, it's like, I think real mastery comes with, you know, I don't know if it's 10,000 hours. According to Malcolm Gladwell, it's certainly not 15 minutes. And so, you know, you've got to go deep before you can go wide. Generally, I think today, you know, when you have a brain like yours, Stefan, you know, you don't need 10,000 hours to master. And that's why you've gotten so far so quickly, which is great. But not everybody's you. And so I always recommend, you know, find something that you're passionate about. Find something that, you know, you have a hunger for. Find something that, you know, you know that there's a market for it, but that you feel really good about. You feel really good about making a contribution to the world by helping people sell whatever it is. I mean, and you can make a case for anything. You know, you can make a case for multi level marketing if you want. I mean, but, you know, you do what you do and, but if, you know, it's, it's a, it's an interesting, it's an interesting conundrum whether, you know, to say, but to not at least when you define yourself, go beyond the medium. That's the most important thing. Like I would even say in Ed's case, he's mostly in Facebook, which is a good thing. He's like, he's vertical in that. If I want to go to somebody with compliance on Instagram, I might not go to Ed today, but he might be able to do it for me. But if you're, if you, if you just focus and say, you know, I'm a compliance expert in online medium with an emphasis on Facebook, you get people come to you for just the Facebook. And if you can do Instagram, you'll get that business anyway. But. And if you do it, if you end up becoming an expert in Instagram, you could put both of those in your tagline with an emphasis on Facebook and Instagram. Or you could have two different sales messages. There's a Facebook sales message and an Instagram message. Copywriters do this all the time. You know, you have a resume sort of for writing health copy. You have a resume sort of for writing financial copy. I don't. If you've done both and you're sent and I have a financial offer and you're sending me all your health copy, I still might think you got chops. Sure. I mean, that shows me something. But show me what's the most applicable.

And.

And if you've got both, you know, again, it's gear. It's like when you write copy, you got to gear your copy to the list, gear your copy to the client you're going after.

Yeah, a hundred percent.

And I know you teach this already.

No, no, no, it's great. You know, I mean, I do again, the. The people are talking about kind of like an idea of humility or being a student or learning. And I do really try to practice that as well, even as a direct response copywriter specializing in health. Like, even if with. And I've talked about this recently with somebody, but basically every year or two, I'll go back to being a student where I really recommit, and I'll start looking at everything that's working. I'll get it all transcribed and I'll be reading through it and I'll be making notes and marking it up. And just like, really every time I do that and kind of like recommit myself, like, my copy gets exponentially better. Like, and I'm enjoying myself more. There's more passion. And I just wanted to point out, because I know you're good friends with Joe Polish, who I met for the first time on Tuesday. I'm in Scottsdale for the week, and Amber Spears is like a mutual friend. So she introduced us, and he was by my office. One of our. Joe Polish just hung out at the office for like an hour, hour and a half, and he was, you know, really gracious of his time. We just chatted to give me a tour of his office, but it was incredible. But the first thing. One of the first things he did, he gave me a tour. First of all, you notice all of the books. He has this crazy library just filled with books as a crazy. Yeah. And then he's talking.

I have a crazy library. I haven't read, you know, everything on these shows.

Oh, God, I love that, though. That gives me that.

But I. It's a mess, too. But I will say, probably on the marketing books, I probably read at least a chapter or something from everyone, which is always my thing. It's like, you don't have to read a book cover to cover to get some of the best stuff out of it. That's also important. So you're in Joe's office.

No, no. Yeah, totally. And, yeah, I love. I told him I'm a bibliophile, too, but right away he's like, oh, what's your favorite book? And I kind of was like, well, that's a really tough question. I told him what I'm reading. Now he's got his phone out, he's writing it down. Then I told him a couple of books. He wrote every single book down. He's having his assistant order the books so he can read them. And then I told him about our virtual event with copy accelerator, how we use cameo to get celebrities like, oh, that's really good idea. Writing it down. And so this is like Joe Polish, who's, you know, just another legend in our space. An incredible guy, super connected, and. But I was immediately impressed by how he was, like, wanting to learn. So when I mentioned books, he wrote down the books so he could read them. And. Yeah, you know, I think it's a lifelong skill. Right. Like that. That's something that it should be.

A lifelong learner is the best way to be.

It has to be right.

It has to be right. And, you know, things are changing so quickly now. I mean, now I sound like grandpa, but, you know, think, you know, every 15 minutes there's something new. I mean, I was. I was. I was looking at the. I was looking at some of the chat. I was just peeking. So somebody said, oh, Instagram and Facebook are the same thing. And then someone says, no, they're not. You know, it's the same, you know, basics, but different platform. You got to know different things.

Yeah.

And so that's why the segmentation of what? That's again, the expertise, the narrow before wide. There are a lot of overlaps in direct mail and email. That's fine. They're clearly different. You know, SEO and display advertising, they're different, but they're the same in some. You know, I think that specialization and differentiation always beats, you know, commodity and sameness because that's what makes life. That's what makes life interesting. We all have to differentiate ourselves. And, you know, I've had an advantage by being still alive at 62 and still doing this at a high level, that I have a differentiator that said I'm still alive, doing this at 62, and I was. Was a player in 1985. That's one of my, you know, one of my strengths, just by being alive because I was paying attention also during the 40 years. I mean, I could have not paid attention for 40 years, and then I wouldn't be on this podcast and. And I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing, obviously. But, you know, it. It's. It's basically, you got to have an edge. You got to have an angle. And because I tell you, I've said this many, many times, I did. I haven't invented a thing. What I have been able to do is take concepts, take. Connect the dots on various things. That's one of. If I have to say, that's one of my superpowers, to be able to take things, things and bring them together. But there's stuff, I mean, you know, there's stuff that hasn't been invented yet. But, you know, when I see online marketers in particular taking credit for something that they invented, you know, I pause a little bit because I know where it came from. I know where babies came from, and I'm not saying it. You know, all they have to do is say it's based on this, and then it becomes so much better, because why not? You know, to me, giving credit where credit's due makes you look so much better than taking credit for something that you didn't invent or didn't initiate. And you know that. And I. And I was. I relearned this after I had my stroke. April of 2019. My book came out 4-9-20, 4-10, I had a. I had a massive stroke. I almost died. I went. I. At the time, my whole right side was paralyzed. I couldn't lift my arm. But, you know, thank goodness I got to the hospital quickly. You know, the neurological. The surgeon got the clot out that caused the stroke, and I was pretty much good as new. Although, if you think this is good as new, I don't know, but this is good as new or as good as I'm going to get. And I. And I had to spend some time Thinking, like, okay, if I had died, what would have been my footprint? And, you know, not. I don't like the word legacy. Legacy just says you're dead. But what would have been my footprint is what I. How I looked at it. And I said, well, I had the book, and that would be something.

But when.

And it wasn't giving me satisfaction about my footprint.

And.

And the thing that got me more satisfaction was the people remembering, like, the Titans of Direct response event in 2014. And the page where I sell my book, which is overdeliverbook.com, which is an amazing bonus page where I've got PDFs of books by Dick Benson and Gordon Grossman, which people on this call probably never heard of. I mean, all my mentors, and they were alive and dead at the time. But, you know, I have. I have a swipe book from Dan Kennedy that was exclusive to the event. I have Gary bensivenga's Bullets as one of the. One of the bonuses I have. I have swipe files going back to 1900. And I haven't met every copywriter going back that far. I'm not that old, but I've met a lot of copywriters of the last, you know, 30, 40, 50 years. And so what I realized that that was my footprint because I stand on the shoulders of Dan Kennedy. Not that he taught me everything I know, but he's a key mentor. I stand on the shoulders of Jay abraham. And on overdeliverbook.com I've got 19 keynotes that Jay did and a course that he created. So it's like it became, you know, it's not just a mentor discussion. It's a lifelong commitment to learning from the best. Being a student in the presence of the best. Never asking any of those guys to be my mentor. I mean, that's the worst way to do it. You know, you send an email. Would you be my mentor? I'm sure you get them all the time.

I do.

Stefan, would you be my mentor? Doesn't work like that. Mentors choose you. You don't choose your mentor. And so when I say your mentors choose you, you gotta be out there doing shit for them. I mean, with Gene Schwartz, you know, Gene Schwartz had a small publishing company, a health book publishing company, and he did mailings for it. He did well with it, and he wrote copy on the side, you know, and so when he did copy for us at Boardroom and at Rodale Press, which was probably the biggest health list of book buyers and newsletters in the world, and we weren't too shabby either. We had a very, very big health list because we sold a ton of health books. And Gene wouldn't get paid to do copy for us. He would write a package and what would he ask for? 750,000 names with segmentation, everything that we could give him. And so I don't have time now. If I had a whiteboard, I would map out the math. 750,000 names. Or say a package for us, a package for Rodale. That's what a million and a half names, right? And what a million and a half names means at 3% response with a 60% pay up, with everybody buying one and a half to two books, you can do it yourself. It's a lot more than what he would make, probably at 25 or $30,000 for the package and a 5, $50 per thousand royalty. And he knew that because he was a copywriter beyond belief, which every copywriter should strive to be, you know, and that's why every copy. Every great copywriter I ever met understood lists, understood direct marketing principles. I saw something in the chat. I think they said, what does he mean by rfb? It's not rfb, it's rfm. And RFM is, you know, if a copywriter doesn't understand what RFM is, I think they're at a huge disadvantage if they don't understand what lifetime value is and how you can basically calculate it either. Six months after the first purchase a year. I mean, lifetime is relative, of course, but if you can't calculate that and do that sort of thing, all you are is somebody writing for food. Dan Kennedy used to go to await. He used to get in front of them and he'd have a cartoon every year. And it was this guy. It was like a hobo sitting on the side of the. On the road, and he's holding up a sign. Will. Will write for food. And so he basically. And you know, Dan's authority. You know, Jay has preeminence, and Jay Abraham has preeminence, and Dan Kennedy has authority. And the idea is to be a trusted advisor who's writing copy for you, not being a copywriter. And if you're a trusted advice, it's so much different. It's so. I mean, our mount. I'll go back to the Mount Rushmores. We probably take some questions. I see we have 22 of them, but I'm just going. I'm going. Diarrhea of the mouth. Because I'm.

I mean, it's all gold. So well, you know, it's brown gold, so it's perfect brown gold.

So. Oh, I lost my train of thought because that was really funny. No, no, that was really funny. What was I saying? Oh, authority, right. So Dan would say, you know, like, oh, my Mount Rushmores, my two Mount Rushmores. I'll end with that and then you can go to questions. So, you know, my first Mount Rushmore were Jim Schwartz, Gary Bensivenga, Jim Rutz, and Mel Martin. Mel Martin was our in house guy who was tremendous. You should probably, you've studied his copy and anybody you get ahold of some of his stuff and, and all four of those guys in one way or another, was not just a copywriter, they were advisors to our company. In fact, Gene Schwartz, I used to go to his house for lunch, he'd advise me on modern art, which I couldn't afford, you know, so that was the first. The second Mount Rushmore is even more interesting. It's Eric Betwell, Arthur Johnson, Paris Lampropolis, and David Deutsch. Those four guys are responsible for 650 million pieces of direct mail over a 20 year period. And it's not 650 million pieces that didn't work. They worked. And whatever working is, you know, we got acceptable response rate. They made a shitload of money because they got royalties on everything we mailed. And the point is that all four of those guys, you know, I brag about them all the time, you know, I mean, Paris and David I'm a little closer with even now. I mean, I'm very close with Paris and David. But, you know, they were just, you know, it's more than just being a detective. I mean, they, they were just, I think I tell the story in my book about like when I got prostate cancer in 2008, my urologist was the first call. Second call was Paris because he had done more research. And the R of rnbc, I believe stands for research Stefan. It does. And it's the first thing. Right?

Yeah.

And so I knew that Paris knew more about alternative treatments for prostate cancer than any doctor I could talk to. You know, he plays a doctor in direct mail. Right. And so, but, but he's legitimate because he just researched. And, and so that. All I'm trying to say is that. And you stressed this in all of your groups, which I. That's why I admire you so much, because you're doing what I would do if I was teaching copywriting, which I can. But you're doing it at the level that it needs to be done, because it's, you know, you have to. You gotta be the expert on everything in that. So you can also get the counter arguments to what you're selling. You can get all the. The downsides of what you're selling and, you know, get the objections into your copy before your prospect tells you what the objection is and clicks off, you know, and so all of that. And so, you know, that, that is, that was a big lesson for me from Dan and all those copywriters that you got to know a lot more than just how to write.

Yeah, that's so huge. I just really everything back to myself. But I'm a human, so that's what I do. But. But even being a offer owner and having my own supplement company definitely made me a way better copy and also, by the way, enabled me to then charge way higher fees. Because when I was talking to people, it's like, yeah, like, well, like, I'm running copy that's gonna help with, like, you know, get you the maximum average order value. But we also need to minimize refunds because if we make, like, outlandish claims and the product doesn't back it up and your refunds are high. So, like, let's make sure we think about that. Like, you know, all these little things I could do and like, what does your funnel look like? And to your point, becoming an advisor versus just a hired gun who's like, please give me money to write something, you know, and then like, that's not very valuable.

Well, you know what it was. And also in the online space, you know, in direct mail, you write up, you write a package. I mean, it was horse and buggy, right? Horse and buggy. You write a package. It takes. It takes. You know, with us, we had bill me offers, so it took like 12 weeks to get, you know, really good results with pay up. And then, you know, the next mailing couldn't be for another six. You know, from the first mail date to the next mail day was six months. If you had the control, you'd be guaranteed that control for at least two mailings.

Right.

Because we're not testing against it. So then if the interesting thing is that one of the, one of the incentives for these writers was, I'll give you the control for a year without testing against you with another copywriter. If you keep refreshing it and you get the control and it's doing well, that was an incentive for them. So I didn't have to pay them more to write another version. But because we paid them big time for the first version, we're paying them royalties up the wazoo. It's in their best interest to do that. Now fast forward to today. I mean, what, you know, a control lasts 15 minutes online. So how are you going to make a living writing the best thing they ever had when they're going to beat it with something else a half hour later or two days later or even a month later? So you have to build in your value. And the way you do that is, you know, talk about, I'm going to help you with the back end, as you said, I mean, customer service. In chapter seven of my book, it's. Customer service is a marketing function. It's a marketing function. You know, if you, if, you know, when I was at Boardroom, you know, Marty and I used to look at the financials for the company and we'd sit next to each other doing it. And I remember on numerous occasions, we looked at all the financials and we were mailing, you know, 100 million pieces a year, and we're getting all these new subscribers, you know, and this would be what we would call cold traffic today. I know you specialize in marketing to cold traffic or to me. It was outside lists, right? And then we started looking at where the money was coming from. And it was incredible because it was. The lion's share of the revenue was renewals. It was renewals of the subscriptions, which talks to your original promotion needs to be consistent with the product that you're selling. If it's not, you're going to have huge refunds or bad pays. And if that happens, then you don't have a lifetime value to calculate. But if you do that, I mean, the example I always give is like when Gary Bensivenga wrote us a book along, which was like 64 pages of direct mail. And we tested that against what we called a survey package, which was like one sheet where you filled out this one question survey, which was like, would you help us with something? I don't know. It was a gimmick. And by filling up the survey, you got your first three issues of Bottom Line Personal, which is what we were selling. In Gary's, you had to go through a book, a log, and you subscribed after that. So obviously the front end respond is a bill me offer. The front end response to the survey offer could be like 4 or 5, 6% response. The Benson Vanguard Bookalog offer, you know, a solid 2% response, 2 and a half percent, maybe 3 because it was so good. Written by Gary.

Right.

But then what happens when they have to pay up because they're getting three free issues or six free issues. What do you think the survey offer is? Will say, let's say, I'll give you rough numbers. Let's say it's 4% or 5% front end and you get maybe, you know, 15% pay up or, you know, maybe even 11% pay up. Gary's thing at 3%, maybe even higher to certain lists would get like 50% payout, 45% pay up. Now what do you think happens in the next year with those people? Don't you think that the people that paid up at 45% on a Bookalog are going to renew at a much higher rate? Because the first pay up is your pay up. And people misuse the term conversion, but conversion in our world was always the conversion of the first paid subscription. That was the key number. And the 45% who paid up for Gary's bookalog would jump to like 70% or 65% conversion. Whereas the. So now you had 5% on the, on the, on the survey package to say 15% pay up. And then it would drizzle down to. It wouldn't even go up more. And you should get much higher renewals in the second year because they've had.

It for a year. Right?

And you know, so that's why you have to believe your numbers. That's what Dick Benson always taught me. And they tell you everything that you need to know about what to mail, who to mail to, which package is doing really better than another. You have to look at a lot of factors. And again, this is why paying postage made me a better marketer, because I had to do this in direct mail. That were really high stakes, unfortunately, or fortunately, the stakes are just not as high in, you know, email marketing, for instance. In fact, I remember there was an urban legend at one point that people were going to have to pay postage for email. And I don't know if you remember that. It was like, you know, it was all over the Internet, right? And I'm thinking to myself, you know, something that might be. And I didn't want to have to pay it, of course, but I. But I'm thinking to myself, wow, if that happened, people would really do better marketing. They'd have to think about it if they had to pay like a premium to mail email. So that's how I always think about email now when I send out email.

So, yeah, sorry I didn't cut you off. Brian. One interesting thing, and I do want to get to some of these questions we'll do it. I promise. Guys, one to two minutes. We'll get to questions. But one interesting thing is the one thing you do, the postage of today is kind of one of the reasons I do like affiliate marketing is because you do actually have a currency of attention. So if I'm getting affiliates, my email creatives or my swipes and they're sending my offer and it doesn't, you know, outperform all the other people who are trying to get those same affiliate, like list owners or people sending traffic, then the odds of them promoting, you know, my offer again or sending my creatives again is very low. So I kind of like that because if you run a list, you know, when you. When you write an email list and you even do that and you do drops, and then, you know, then the stakes are, yeah, you put money into it, but you can kind of bitch and moan and you can kind of get money back. And I think there's actually almost a higher financial kind of incentive slash, disincentive model on the affiliate side, because if you've got these mega affiliates who could send you a million dollars of sales, you know, per month of just one person, like one group of their email list or whatever it is, you know, you do get penalized for having crappy marketing. So that's just an interesting thought I kind of had while you were.

And the other piece about affiliate is that, you know, it's a great way to start, but it's again, it's, you know what affiliate Marketing on Perry's 2.0 maze, 2.0, it's in one of the four boxes. It's not people rely their whole business on affiliate marketing. It's just as bad as relying your whole business on Facebook, I can tell you. And they say, well, it doesn't cost me anything. Sure it does. It costs you 50% of the sale. You know, I mean, maybe a little less if you do 70, 30, but it's basically you're paying 50% of the sale. So you have a list cost per se. So don't think that everything is free. You know, it's just. I don't know. I don't do affiliates, and I think I'm fine with affiliates as a source for people. And I do it once in a while. Like, Ben Settle will sell a couple of my products, and he does very well with it because it's a good audience for me. But, you know, I'm not looking. I'm not looking for affiliates. It's just not part of my model. But I wouldn't not recommend it to people. In fact, I recommend, usually it's a great place to start when you don't have a list and you know you can. And if it's a. If it's a list owner that you feel really good about, you have, you know, you can promise them a reciprocal mailing when you have a list or something like that. That's another thing, you know, reciprocation in this world today. It's not reciprocation. It's not reciprocation. It's, you know, if you, if you read Cialdini's Influence and the first. His first principle of ethical influence, I have it right here in my wallet. I keep it with me, so I'll read it. Is reciprocation. You, then me, then you, then me. Be the first to give service information concessions. It doesn't say, be the first to give your list and then make sure that you get as much out of the other person's list as you got out of theirs. Doesn't say that. Yeah, and it shouldn't be that, but that's just. That's me on my soapbox, but I'll get off it.

That's awesome. All right, so I want to get to questions. I think Honestly, with about 20, 20 ish minutes, it may be better, Ed, if we kind of go rapid fire right out the gate versus like, letting people come on and doing. I mean, I love the interactive component, but I just want to make sure we get to as many people's questions as possible. I'm guessing some of them may have been answered through this conversation, and hopefully that's the case. So, Ed, if you want to kind of go through, pick questions, let us know who they're from, and then kind of read them to us, and then one of us will answer. I would defer to Brian as much as possible, unless it's something really specific to me. And then, Brian, let's try to. I mean, I want you to give a full answer that. But let's try to get through as many as we can as well.

Which is the translation of that is, Brian, shut up and stop going off on tangents.

No, because your tangents are so valuable. So I can't. I cannot, in good conscience.

No, I know I get diarrhea in the mouth.

It's good. I mean, honestly, I wish that we could just talk for hours, but I'm also respectful.

Well, we can. You and I can at least.

Yeah, yeah, we will.

I will always talk to you for hours.

Well, I Appreciate that, Brian. And by the way, I did put the link to the overdeliverbook.com in the chat earlier and on the Facebook Live. I know one person said they just bought it at least, but if you haven't gotten that book from Brian, I mean, people were even mentioning in the chat, like, the bonuses, as Brian alluded to.

Yeah, it's like for $17 for thousands. I mean, you know, the book's called Over Deliver. If I didn't over deliver on the bonuses, I'd be a hypocrite. So they're amazing. Just look at them. If you're not going to buy the book.

Yeah, I totally. I highly recommend it and hopefully everyone's going to grab a copy. So with that being said. Ed, you want to. Yeah, let's do it.

Sure. First question here from Christian Dixon. When going deep into a niche rather than wide, what is the best way to find out if your audience wants to go deeper on a particular subject? Are there any pointers?

I don't know. It was a little confusing.

Yeah, I'm looking at it, too. So it says. Yeah, so just when going deep into a niche rather than wide, what is the best way to find out if your audience wants to go deeper on a particular subject? Are there any pointers?

The part that threw me off is that beginning about why I'm gonna take that out. So if you're going deep into a niche, keep in mind your audience always wants more. They always want more, but you have to give them the more that they want. So how do you do that? I'll give you an example. So Paris Lampropolis was doing a package for our alternative health newsletter. He didn't want to do it because he thought the stuff was too vanilla. And I said, well, he said. And I was bothering him because I always wanted Paris to write a package for me whenever I could get a chance. And I said, okay, will you at least talk to the guru on it? He had a call with the guru, and the guru was complaining that a lot of the editors, like, nixed his stuff because it was too controversial or too state of the art or too risky or whatever. And all of a sudden, light bulb goes off in Paris head, like. And they said, let me see some of that. And it was the best stuff. It was, like the most cutting edge. And it was not like, take, take fish oil, more fish oil and more fish oil. It was like, total, you know, rock star, you know, from this doctor, however, you can't lie. You can't be deceiving. So then he went back to the editors and said, I have this thing. Can you go back and go deeper on this and either make it true or at least give me something that I could do, a fascination to that'll at least make it interesting for people to read about? I'm using that example because it's always like, what's not there that you want to go after? Gene Schwartz, when I gave him a book to write a package for, as soon as I handed him the book, he didn't even read it yet. He said, brian, what's not in the book and what the point is on that is, like, he's got lots of stuff to write about in that book. It was a general health book. It was called Healing Unlimited. It had stuff on diabetes and heart disease and blood, blood pressure, everything. But he wants to know what's not in the book. And so I would take the book back to my editors and say, can you go into each section and find something new and more cutting edge in each section? Wasn't that the book was a waste. He was going to write copy to it, and that made him go deeper and deeper and deeper. I don't know if I answered the question, but that there's no reason to net. There's no reason. I mean, you have to eventually turn the copy in to your client, but there's no reason to not keep going deeper and deeper and deeper.

Yeah, I love that. I totally agree. I talk about, like. Like, rabbit holes are your friends, you know, Like, I love rabbit holes and I love going down them. And some of the most interesting things you find are like, little asides. You're reading some. I use an example of like, a foot fungus thing I did back in the day, and it was realizing how basically during World War II. I may have talked about this with you before, I don't know, but. Oh, yeah, the.

The In. In Russia, what, they had the bad boots or something?

Yeah, yeah. They're in like, the South Pacific or whatever. But yeah, it was like a humid. So, like, all these troops had, like, foot fungal infections. And it was this huge issue where like, something like 10% of the troops were like, not combat ready at any given time because of their foot fungus. So it was this huge issue. People don't know. I'm just quickly recapping it and the, like, the U.S. like government, the surgeon general, like, they're like, like in this race against time to find, like, an effective, like, remedy for foot fungus because, like, otherwise, you know, our troops won't be combat ready and they did they test. They tested on, like, prisoners, like, who had, like, bad. Because there's bad fungal outbreaks and, like, prisons in America at this time and this whole thing. But it's all because I found some weird, like, footnote on, like, some other page and then read this report from, like an army commission from, like 19, you know, 43 or whatever. You're like, oh, my God, this is like, amazing.

That is like the gold of the gold, right?

Yeah.

Interesting thing, if you want to take the analogy one step further. A rabbit hole is kind of negative because you go to a rabbit hole, it's dead end. The key is you go down the rabbit hole, and then when you come back up the rabbit hole, you know, that's where you pick up all the other things because you got at the bottom of the rabbit hole. Wow, I got to this thing. What am I going to do with it? Then you start researching it, and of course you come out of the rabbit hole and you write copy. So that's how I talk about rabbit holes and copy. But that's where you get the gold. That's where you get the gold.

Yeah. I love it, man.

That's great. Great story, Stephen.

Thank you. Ed, who we got next?

That gave me a lot of insight from my Facebook compliance course on how to go deeper. Manuel Zapata asked for Stefan as a. I guess both of you as a copywriter, what do you do if a sales letter of yours flops and what do you do to prevent that?

Cool. Yeah, I think he kind of did one for me and then one for Brian. Rest on Brian's from a. From a hiring kind of client perspective, too. Right. So I'll go with. I'll answer first and then I will defer to Brian after that. But if it's deferring, but I'll pass to Brian. But yeah, I think when a sales that I write flops, I, first of all, don't really try not to freak out and think that I'm a fraud and piece of crap and that everything's going to be awful. I really just try to find the answer to why. I will look at kind of, I'll talk to the client and make sure there's not some kind of glaring technical reason for it to have flopped. Like, I use the example of when I wrote my first sales letter for the guys at V. Shred and Sculpt Nation, and I thought it was like, you know, pretty good. And they were like, yo, it's just not doing. They had a control and it was like, not really being the control at all. And I did feel that kind of anxiety. And I. But I was like, one of the questions I asked, I'm like, okay, and when are you guys showing the button? Going back to that button thing? And they're like, oh yeah, after three minutes, four minutes. And it's like a 40 minute video. And I'm like, oh my God, I got so relieved. But I'm like, you know, I'm like, hey, you guys gotta test like the button way longer. And they were a little resistant at first because they're like, no, we always have just done it early on. And I was like, guys, I promise. I was like, let's just do a test. And they did. And they tested a bunch of different points, which was really interesting. So they tested it like 20 minutes, 25 minutes, like 30 minutes, 35 minutes. And basically the one I predicted, which was right when the price reveal happens and there's the first call to action. That was the best one. And so that like, you know, whatever did it like doubled or tripled conversions, but it still wasn't like quite where we want to be even at that point. It was way better. But then I'm like, okay, now I know it's way better. I'm like, really? I should. The next most obvious thing for me to do is to test out a new lead, because I gave him one lead and I'm like, so headline lead, right? Most important thing did that. And then that's where we got it to where we hit this metric they'd never been able to hit before. And they scaled it to thousands of sales a day. And I got lucky. Honestly, it wasn't my third lead. And so then the last part I'll say before I hand over to Brian is so within there. Yeah, you are looking at if there's any technical things and like, you know, is it really bombing? Like if a client's like, oh, we sent like 500 clicks to it and we didn't get a sale. And you're like, oh, where'd the clicks come from? And they're like, well, it was like a free, like, you know, make money at home, like junk mail list. And you're like, okay, well that's not fair. But I don't blame the client. I just want to make sure that it really is legitimately copy related, which is the final thought. Then the other part of that is then when it really is a copyrighted thing, then I just work my ass off with them to, you know, to make it work. I don't charge them more money for it. I don't like, you know, give them a hard time. I, you know, I really am motivated because I do that. I'm really motivated to try to get it right the first time as much as possible. But I'm not pissed off. There's no ego. I just say like, okay, you know, cool. Like, well here I'm gonna give you some other variants and let's, you know, and then usually unless like I you maybe a point where the offer is just if it's a bad offer, then no copy is gonna save it. But, but generally I'm through experience able to kind of vet that to know that this is an offer that seems like it's gonna resound with the marketplace. I mean, you never know until it goes live. So usually it's just something like I didn't get the right pain points in the lead or I didn't quite tell the right story or whatever it is. But then, Brian, I now will hand it off to you as a, well.

I mean, plus one to everything you said from the client standpoint because I'm not looking to have them lose. I want them to win. So, but, but you know, a lot of it has to do with their hunger, their, you know, you would be, you know, some people like it didn't work and they walk away to the next client and you know, if they're not interested, then I'm not that interested either. Now the copywriters that I invest a lot in, if I, if I was paying somebody, you know, $30,000 plus a royalty, I'm not going to give up. I mean, you know, and so I wanted then, you know, you have a post mortem on the mailing. You sit down, you talk about what they could change. Obviously they should change it at their expense, which you said because they already got their money up front. But I think that, you know, it's not just try better. It's like you've got to come up with a new, a new concept or a new aspect if it really is a big loser. I mean, sometimes there are no savings even with a great copywriter. I mean, I had packages from Jim Rutz because he took such radical chances that he would index like you know, a 16, you know, versus like, you know, when he, when he won, he would index 160 against a couple control. So it was, you know, it also it does depend on the writer. You know, if they're a new writer, I still want to, would want to work with them. But you know, I'm not going to have the patience as much if they claimed something in advance. Maybe if they're not as humble, that'll, that'll play in my head too. But I'm never going to just, you know, throw it out, give it up. And I'd want to hear what they, you know, everything you said is what I would want to hear from my copywriters.

So cool. That's awesome. Yeah, man. It's really about nobody cares. Nobody's expecting perfection. Like the first time we were hoping for it, but we're never like expecting it. And nobody's mad about a lack of perfection. It's really like it's not again going back to responsibility. Right. It's not. What happens is how you respond to it. And I think that's so crucial. Right, let's go hit some more of these here.

Marcus Ortiz asks what are some easy, low hanging fruit ways to incorporate direct mail into an online business, either on the front end or the back end.

So that's an easy one. I mean, there are a lot of ways to do it. I think that if you have a product that's already a physical product makes it a lot easier because you really kind of need selling a digital product as the main offer in a direct mail campaign isn't, I wouldn't do that unless. Well, I wouldn't do that basically. However, if you have a, I mean, here's a good example. So you know, if you have a digital product that's a course or something like that. So, so Stefan has a course, his RNBC course, it's all digital. But there are a lot of things that he could create as physical product. Now if he went out to some direct mail lists with the product as a physical product, with the digital as a bonus on the side, that's a new audience coming in for that product. And I think if you're not doing that, you probably could test it. But the other thing would be that if you're selling high ticket, like a high ticket item, you know, the idea of, and I'm not a big fan of love gifts in direct mail, but if you're say selling a 25, I mean a $25,000 or $30,000 or a $50,000 mastermind, for instance, the idea of, and this direct mail doesn't always have to get an immediate response. The idea of sending direct mail that me, you know, not sending potato chips to everybody in your group through the mail. But I'm thinking about, you know, a book like for instance, I did this once with my mastermind I read a book that I thought was just tremendous. And so I just, I bought, I bought, you know, 40 copies of it. I got them shipped to me. I put a personalized note on each one. It wasn't with their renewal notice, it wasn't with anything else. That's a support mechanism. Indirect mail that's supporting an audience that's paying you. I mean, you, you know, don't think, you know, oh, wow. I went to the post office, I mailed, I mailed 30 pieces at, at, at I don't know what, what postage, $12 each or something. So it was like maybe it cost me $500 with the books to send out this thing. Wow, that's so much money. I can't do that. What do you mean you can't do that? You have like, you have like $600,000 from these people. You don't want to do that. You don't want to do that. So that, that's a type of direct mail on the back end. But then there's, you know, being able. I did a project with an online digital product that was doing launches in the $10 million range. And they basically productized the entire product which was all digital. They put it into physical product and we created a direct mail campaign. They didn't roll out with it mainly because they didn't think it was going to scale because the lists weren't that big. But we had, we had, I mean we had lists that were doing 8 and 9% front end response with like 70% payout. And they never even thought to do a bill me offer because they're online, they have to get the credit card up front. So what direct mail gives you is the ability to have no cash up front, no credit card up front. Because when you mail lists out in direct mail, you can actually do suppression files where you can take people out that are generally bad debtors. There are files you can do that with like, and you can titrate it up or down if they've bad debted people once, twice, three times. But whatever it is, you can take any product and productize it. And the interesting thing is the difference of the universe that you'll mail for direct mail will be mostly direct mail buyers. Previously, the people that you're selling online with a digital product, there's overlap. You're in a, you're in a competitive market, but you'd be surprised of how much a new universe that is for you Now. I think you need some price point that's decent because direct mail is Expensive. But again, I think that. I mean, I look at direct mail, like, say if you're. Say if you're looking for a job. Okay, just look at this. This is a direct mail campaign. You're looking for a job, and you're going to send out tons of resumes. I mean, it's not really applicable to a lot of people in this group. We have a lot of entrepreneurs. But just think about this. Why not. Why not take a look? Instead of having. Sending them out and seeing what comes to you, why don't you go and look at all the companies that would be your dream companies to work for, like the companies that you would want to work for. And then send out a personalized Federal Express envelope with either. If the president of the company or the entrepreneur who runs it wrote a book, you send him a copy of his book with a return Federal Express, ask him to autograph it for you. Yes, it works. Ego is a big thing, but they have to be somebody you're really a fan of. You can't bullshit this. And you say, I want to work for you. You're not going to. Got to be transparent. But, you know, if you don't, I'm eager. I'd love to have even a Zoom interview with you before you meet me. But. But what I really want also is you to sign your copy of the book and send it back to me. You know, even that you could do that with the 10 companies. And I have done it with my son. He's a football coach. And I said, why don't you just pick the coaches you want to work for? They all have books and do this with them. But that's just one technique that you. Basically, I see somebody says, ego is not. Oh, ego is not the enemy. I thought ego is the enemy. It's the enemy internally for you. It's not for the other guy.

Right.

And so it's just a. Things like that is a direct mail campaign. It could be a direct mail. It could be a direct mail campaign of 10 pieces of federal Express mail. That's direct mail.

Yeah. So good.

Those are just. Those are just some at. But there's a lot of. I mean, there's tons of ways. I mean, if I was. If I was consulting with a client who had a full digital product, I'm sure I could find, you know, dig deep and find some ways to develop at least a way to test direct mail. If they want to. Only if they want to.

Yeah.

No, that's. That's incredible.

All right, so how. From Shuriya how has copywriting changed you as a person?

Say that again.

How has copywriting changed you as a person?

Well, first of all, it. I mean, Stefan can go on forever on this, but I'll go on it from my perspective. So it. Because I'm not really a copywriter per se. I don't write video sales letters. I don't write soup to nuts packages. But I gotta tell you, it's changed my life because working with, like, the best copywriters, and I've been blessed. You know, Boardroom was the place everybody wanted to write for. And I happened to be sitting there, you know, and then I recruited a lot of copywriters too. I mean, we were one of the first ones to use David Deutsch, one of the first to use Paris Lampropolis. But it's still. I didn't discover them, but I was in the right place to be able to work with them. And so it's changed my life, first of all. I mean, actually, one of my. They all became like my best friends because they were working as a partner with me. So that's changed my life. You know, Paris and David are, you know, they're as close friends as almost, you know, my high school friends that I've known for, you know, 40 years or 50 years or 55 years. Oh, God. I have a friend since I was. Since I was seven years old. But I think that that's one. But the other thing is that they didn't teach me how to write because I was probably not worth them doing that. But watching them, first of all, realizing that it's. I realized very quickly, this is not. This is not a commodity, that it's a real specialty. And the people that can. Can get People can. Can make people vibrate, get them to send a check in. It's. It's. It's an art. It's. It's an art. And so observing that art for as long, as long as I did, what rubbed off on me was, first of all, they were contributors to the success of Boardroom, which was good for my family, it was good for money, it was good for all that. But it really gave me such an appreciation of copywriting that when I went on my own, you know, I write a lot of my blogs about copywriting, not from the copywriter's perspective, but as kind of like an observer of the art of copywriting. And so when I talk about, you know, the seven characteristics that every great copywriter that I ever met had, I go through them one by one, and I. And Then I realize it's a Seven Characteristics. A very great marketer too. So I was able to pull that out of my hat. And it was just, it was so gratifying that I got so much from my copywriting relationships. And as far as me personally with my skill, I write a blog every Sunday. I, you know, they're long, just like the way I talk. So, you know, some people don't like them because it's too long, but that's fine. They don't have to read it. But the people that do read it, I think get a lot out of it. And I'm able to, you know, really, really trust that I have enough experience to write to an audience that, you know, and they, they open my emails at, you know, close to 40%. And that's pretty good, you know, and I know that a lot of people every Sunday morning at 6:00am Eastern time that they're going to be reading something that I wrote that week. And it's just incredibly, it's been. I am so grateful to every copywriter I've ever worked with because I know they're in my writing somewhere. My writing is different than all of theirs, but I've got, I actually have a skill. And I also was an English major in college, so I knew how to write. And now I'm able to write to a B2B audience that, you know, kind of likes me. It's fun. It's very rewarding.

That's amazing. And by the way, Ed, he had a heart out, so. And then I want to be respectful of your time, Brian. And I'm going to a wedding and leaving a half an hour to go up to Sedona from Scottsdale, but.

Oh, Sedona.

Just for the day. There's a chocolatier place Joe Polish told me about.

Yes, I've eaten there.

Have you?

Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a vegan.

Yeah.

Yeah, my wife's a vegan. I'm not, but I love it. And they have these chocolates. Some of them are just horrible, but some of them are good, these vegan chocolates. And they're sugar free too. It's like wild.

Yeah, I'm gonna try to.

Chocolate here. It's called.

Yeah, he gave me the, like the, you know. Yeah. So he's like, he's. And again, this is my first time ever really hanging out with him, but it's like, I'll send you a text. Like, here's the owners, here's. You asked for like shooting a video Message like, hey, it's me. Like, this is Stefan. Like, it's like the guy's just cannot help himself but just be help himself.

To connect people and love people. He's amazing.

He is amazing. That being said, I mean, do you have about maybe five minutes for just a few more questions or.

I can do, I can do five more.

Okay, let's do. We'll do five. We'll keep it, we'll go quick here.

I think there are like maybe, maybe, maybe 10. Go ahead.

Okay, we'll keep it. I mean, I'll be respectful of your time.

I mean, people are still on.

So I guess, I know, I know some of them think it's okay, I guess. Let me see here. I will play the role of Ed. Go ahead. It's kind of an interesting one. It's maybe kind of open ended, but lutefied, said, what is the biggest revelation you've ever had in terms of copy that has stuck with you till this day?

I have probably a lot of them. It's not about, I mean, not the usual, it's not like headline and lead and you know, sidebars and it's not like the technical stuff. It's more about that when you're, when you, when you have done your copywriting training, right, Even if you haven't written copy before and you go deep into your niche, there comes a point where you might be the best copywriter that you can find for your product. And what I mean by that is that, you know, if it's a passion project, if it's a, you know, if it's your life's mission to write about it. And I'm not saying that you should write something and then just put it out on the Internet or put it out in the mail. Just saying that you might be the best copywriter for your product. And so what that means is you should write the first draft and you should then find a copywriter. Because to me, one of the, and this is, this is one of the things as well is that the best copywriters I've ever met are the best interviewers. They're the best interviewers. They know the questions to ask. They know how to get under your skin in a good way, into your head in a good way. If they're really, I mean, you know, I always. The story I tell is Gene Schwartz and Marty Edelston. You know, Gene Schwartz was going to write the, the, the launch package for Boardroom Reports, which was Our first newsletter. 1972. I was in junior high school just for the record. And, you know, Gene interviewed Marty for, like, two days, wrote the package, it launched the product and the company, and everybody was, you know, lauding Gene with, that's an amazing package. You're amazing writer, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Gene basically said, I didn't write it. Marty wrote it. I took it out of his head. I mean, I put some poetry in there, you know, Gene Schwartz poetry. But, you know, so that. That is a real good lesson that, you know, sometimes, because a lot of. A lot of entrepreneurs and business owners who are hiring copywriters will say, I gotta hire this copywriter. And then they hand them the product with maybe some background information and just say, do me, do it, do it. And, you know, we didn't do that anytime at Boardroom. We always would give them what I call a start kit, which had all the list history. It had everything, the winners, the losers. It had research on the. On the area that newsletter was about or the book was about. So, you know, a start kit is very important and all that. But if. If the pro. If the actual product is a. The brainchild of the entrepreneur, that you're the inventor of it, per se. Yeah, you should be interviewed, and you should go really, really deep. It's, you know, it's. It's just. It makes a lot of sense to me. And so that. That would be. That was quick off the top of my head. But, you know, I tried to go with my gut, like, what would it be? So it started with, you know, copywriters being great interviewers. I think every copywriter should learn, you know, interviewing skills. Absolutely.

Yeah. That's. I think that's a great. That's a great one, and it makes a ton of sense. What we're gonna do is. I will actually stop it here. I'm looking at the questions. A lot of them got answered. If you watch this. And you. You should be able to infer a lot of what Brian said to answer a lot of your questions here. You know, if we didn't get to yours specifically, I do apologize. But at the same time, it's with someone like Brian who's got so much, you know, so many gems to share. I want to. I think that's. That's also so valuable, and a lot of the questions get answered. Brian, thank you so much for joining me. It's been. Thank you. Thank you.

No, it's great. You know, your webs, your Facebook group, the Justin and Stefan, you know, copy group is wonderful. I've been in there a few times. Mean, I Got to sell a few books, of course, you know, but I'm not a nonprofit by the way. I'm a really kind, gentle. You know, Joe Polish once called me the director of sales, Prevention, so, but, but you know, I'll sell books with the best of them and it's, it's a really exciting group because you have a wide variety in there. And you know, one day I think we said maybe, you know, I'll come to your copy accelerator group or I don't know if that's whatever your high end group is or maybe not your high end group. Yeah, I will, you know, always, you know, if I have the time. And I would, I would love to, you know, you know, do deep Q and A and tell some more war stories if it's helpful. But yeah, I really enjoy being with you. I enjoy, I love what you and Justin are doing. I love what Justin's doing on his own and what you're doing on your own as well. I don't want to always put you guys together because you're also separate. And I also am blessed to have you in my mastermind because you make it better. And that's why my assistant went out to everybody and she went to you first and said, don't do anything else when we have our next virtual mastermind. So, you know, that kind of stuff is really important to me because you got to be with the people to get the most out of them. And so that's why I love being here.

So thank you, thank you so much. And thank you to everybody who attended, asked questions, watched on Facebook Live or who's gonna watch the replay of this later. And if you watch it on YouTube, make sure you subscribe. And if you listen to it on itunes when it comes out in a few weeks or a month from now, whatever it is, make sure you also subscribe there. But. Alright, that'll do it, Brian. Thank you again.

You know, one thing, if there's a way, and I'm not gonna belabor it, but if you, if you want to send me the chat, I can look it through. I'm not going to look through everything, but there's a lot of, there's a lot of jabber in there, but I would look through and see if there was a particular question, then I can just send it to you, you know, the answer or any, if you want to send me the Q and A, I'll look at some of them and if there's a pressing thing that was there, I would, you know, I would gladly, in my leisure answer some of that, but I don't know. I know. You can send the chat. I don't know if you can send.

The Q A. Yeah, I don't know. I just tried to copy the Q A. Yeah, I think I was able to copy it. I'll send it over to you. If you have time to do any of those. I will either, you know, I'll send them out to my list or do something like that, but that would be amazing. But obviously, no expectations there. We're not going to.

No, no. No expectation. But, you know, I'll look, I'll get jazzed by a question or some. Something in the chat and I'll go off on it because it'll give me. It'll be fun for me. So.

Yeah, 100%. Cool. I'll shoot that much after we wrap up here, but.

Okay. Stephen, enjoy the wedding. Enjoy Sedona. Sedona. Sedona is a magical place. It's my. My wife and I. It's. It's. It's one of our really special places, so.

Awesome. Cool. Thank you, Brian.

All right, take care.

Bye.

Bye.