Brian Kurtz is the Founder and CEO of Titans Marketing, a direct response marketing educational, coaching, and consulting company. For nearly 40 years, he has employed proprietary direct marketing principles that have allowed him to scale a publishing company to $150 million. As a self-proclaimed serial direct response marketer, Brian has marketed and sold newsletters and books through infomercials, email, and the internet. He is also the author of Overdeliver.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [5:32] Brian Kurtz’s journey from an employee to an entrepreneurial force in direct marketing
- [16:11] How to define your exit to achieve freedom on your terms
- [22:06] Brian talks about his most successful marketing programs
- [27:26] Lessons in product and service pricing and marketing
- [33:07] Brian’s approach to helping business owners scale
- [44:37] Examples of revenue-generating strategies
- [50:50] Are QR codes underutilized in direct response marketing?
In this episode…
Exiting your business doesn’t mean you have to sell it immediately. It’s an intricate process requiring years of planning and reverse-engineered strategies. How can direct response marketing help you map out your destination, and what strategies are essential for growth?
With the advent of digital marketing, the industry has become saturated with channels, methods, and strategies, making it overwhelming for small-to-midsize businesses to establish a presence without breaking their budget. According to direct response marketing pioneer Brian Kurtz, marketing is everything, but you don’t have to advertise on every channel to achieve results. However, you should explore both online and offline strategies like social media and direct mail to remain relevant. Brian suggests conducting research and evaluating your financial assets to determine an ideal method for your business, allowing you to plan your exit effectively.
Join Pat Mancuso in this episode of Destination Business Freedom as he welcomes Brian Kurtz, the Founder and CEO of Titans Marketing, to discuss designing a marketing plan that fits with your business landscape. Brian talks about the role of QR codes in direct marketing, the lessons he learned when pricing and marketing his products and services, and how to define business freedom.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
- Pat Mancuso on LinkedIn | Website
- Recover My Tax Credits
- Mancuso Consulting Group
- The Mancuso Method
- Brian Kurtz: Website | LinkedIn
- Overdeliver: Build a Business for a Lifetime Playing the Long Game in Direct Response Marketing by Brian Kurtz
Quotable Moments:
- "Marketing isn't everything; it's the only thing."
- "Stealing is a felony, and stealing SMART is an art."
- "Getting rich slowly is so much more satisfying than overnight success."
- "People refund transactions. They don't refund relationships."
Action Steps:
- Assess your business asset: Identifying what you own or can own allows for strategic decisions on creating or licensing products.
- Build your knowledge on various marketing channels: Understanding the "whats" before the "hows" helps target your marketing efforts effectively.
- Explore direct mail marketing: Local businesses can especially benefit from direct mail campaigns by targeting specific geographical areas, offering a more focused customer outreach.
- Establish a content-driven relationship with customers: Providing valuable information positions you as an industry expert, fostering long-term customer relationships and moving beyond one-off transactions.
- Engage with Brian’s resources: Join Brian's online family for free or acquire his book Overdeliver filled with bonuses to get equipped with actionable marketing insights and educate yourself on successful practices.
Sponsor for this episode...
This episode is brought to you by the Mancuso Consulting Group, a go-to resource for entrepreneurs, CEOs, and business owners dedicated to personal and business growth.
Our team of experts has coached, consulted, and trained over 15,000 entrepreneurs, C-suite leaders, and business owners in areas of sales, leadership, organizational development, and personal growth. Additionally, Pat Mancuso has launched multiple multimillion-dollar business ventures, giving him a firsthand understanding of entrepreneurs' daily challenges.
At the Mancuso Consulting Group, we are committed to exploring innovative ways to help businesses and leaders grow their people and improve their bottom lines.
To learn how the Mancuso Consulting Group can help you unlock your full potential, visit www.themancusomethod.com, email us at pat@themancusomethod.com, or call 651-503-7355.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:02
Welcome to Destination Business Freedom, hosted by Pat Mancuso. Join us as we explore success strategies and hacks from leading entrepreneurs helping you bridge the gap between financial success and personal freedom. Your journey starts here. You
Pat Mancuso 0:23
thanks for joining us today on the Destination Business Freedom. I am Pat Mancuso and I am the host of our podcast, where we interview thought leaders, entrepreneurs, of business owners who have exited their business or on that journey. My goal is to help small, medium sized business owners close the gap between their finances and their freedom and ultimately define that destination, that exit, if you may, whatever that looks like to them. The episode today is brought to you by the Mancuso Consulting Group, where we are committed to helping entrepreneurs and business owners close that gap between their finances and freedom. We've created a 360 view of a business owner through what we call the Mancuso Method. And that is an opportunity for any business owner to answer 10 very simple yet very powerful questions. And that assessment is going to allow that business owner, upon completion, to schedule a call with us, with me, and we're going to go through those 10 areas. And the guarantee is this, you spend 30 to 45 minutes with me, and if we can't find you at least $10,000 worth of value, I'm going to write you a check personally for 500 bucks on the spot. That's how confident we are in that process. So when you're ready to move forward, forge your finances and moving towards that freedom, go to www.theMancusomethod.com, and take our assessment and schedule a call with Pat today. Now I am super excited about our guest today, and this individual is going to help us all close that gap between our finances and our freedom. I want to introduce Brian Kurtz to you now, Brian, as I understand it's had two careers, first one and only two, which is kind of interesting, because most people have 10 or 12. But Brian is an amazing talent, so he's only needed to but the first one span 34 years as a force behind boardroom, an iconic publisher and direct marketer. The second as the founder of Titans Marketing, a direct marketing and education and coaching company. Titans Marketing is known for exclusive mastermind groups, an array of classic books and swipe files. We're going to get some definition on what that is, swipe files Brian has published and created as He's authored two books himself. During both careers, he's been a serial direct marketer with a foundation in eternal truths. I love that and fundamentals of direct response while being committed to over delivering. I think there's a book in there, yeah, over almost four decades. So Brian, welcome to the show today. Oh, thank
Brian Kurtz 3:02
you, Pat. I've heard so many good things about you through our mutual friend Jeremy Weisz. And you know, I love your I love the premise of this podcast, because the idea of, you know, Destination Business Freedom is, is like what you do to be that's why you're an entrepreneur, that's why you're a business owner, that's why you're even a CEO in a in a company, which I can talk about as well, because I think that you know freedom. You know money doesn't buy you everything. It's important. But freedom is everything, and the word freedom is just such a powerful word, and to have that as the premise of this podcast got me very excited to be here. Well,
Pat Mancuso 3:43
you know, Brian, one of the things that I know, you know this is that, you know, most people get into businesses almost by happenstance. Certainly entrepreneurs, either they were working for somebody and said, Hey, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to have somebody tell me what to do. I can go work for the men. Yeah, I don't want to work for the man and then or they inherit a business. Let's say they've been in a business or an organization for a while, and the you know, Owner, founder wants to exit. And yet, what I have found as an entrepreneur is that there's, there's not like you don't go to entrepreneurial school, right? I mean, now we're starting to see more of what they call entrepreneurship in the colleges and such, but Strategic
Brian Kurtz 4:24
Coach with Dan Sullivan is, like, the ultimate entrepreneur PhD kind of thing. Correct? Not, it's not a literal PhD, but yeah, you're absolutely right. There's, it's sort of like, you know, in back when I was in college, like direct marketing, which is the a subset of marketing or general advertising wasn't really taught, so Right? Gotta go out and find your education basically And absolutely, like you around people can find it, which is great, absolutely,
Pat Mancuso 4:50
absolutely, well, and I noticed in doing a little bit of research prior to our call today, direct marketing and you have certainly followed and. And have relationships with some great people. And one of the common ones that I follow is Dan Kennedy and, and what, you know, almost the Godfather, if you may, of direct marketing, yeah. So, so let's jump in. Brian. I always like to start with the journey of the individual I'm talking with as the entrepreneur themselves, and talk about those experiences that they've had and and, you know, kind of tie some things into that. So, like, where did you start? You know, the first journey was 34 years ago. How did you get into the boardroom? Like, how did that start?
Brian Kurtz 5:32
Yeah, so it was actually, it was actually almost 45 years ago, because I've been right for like, eight years. But the thing when I, when I came to boardroom, and it was a, you know, not a, I wouldn't call it a sleepy company by any means, but it was a small, entrepreneurial, gritty company run by an entrepreneur, Marty edelston, took his life savings to build this business. And I got there. I, you know, I fell into it. I have, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to deny that. But the thing that that my journey has had, that is not, is not as typical, is that I had a an intra entrepreneurial journey. And what I mean by that is that I came in as an employee. I proved my worth, basically, over the first 10 years, became an equity partner in the company and an owner, and in fact, we almost put the company up for sale at one point in the year 2000 we backed off on it, which was, I'll tell you that story as a sidebar in a minute, because I think it's important for the for your audience. Absolutely, I think, what, what? What I but I was, I was fortunate, because it was a learning organization, organization that always looked to the outside for the best consultants, the best list people, the best copywriters, the best everything, and by bought everything a la carte, as opposed to using agencies or anything like that, which was to my advantage, because I got exposed to the best of the best in everything. I mean, I was just in a great place at the right time. Sure made the most of it. And I would say that anybody can do it, because, you know, if you can recognize your surroundings in a way that's profound, you can say, Okay, this looks like a job, but it's not, and, and that's that was really how I started. Now, it was a job to start right that I saw that there was so much available, like talent from the outside, to teach me and mentor me. And you know, I always say, you don't choose your mentors. Your mentors choose you, and I found these mentors who were working for us, and I would go out of my way to do stuff for them. Based on my expertise, I became a list expert, whether that's of interest to anybody but but it was, it's important element of direct response marketing, and by being a list expert, I could help these top consultants with their list work in their companies, and in return, they mentored me. I didn't say, be my mentor, and I get that all the time. Now, people send you an email. It's like, will you be my mentor? It's like, no, that's how it works, yeah, you got to, like, be there, you know, in on the battlefield with them, do stuff for them, you know, sure, give them 100 zero, you know, complete you give of yourself, contribute of yourself, with no expectation of return. And the returns you get are astounding. So that was like, the early part of my career. Was basically from employee to like partner to and it was all intrapreneurial, where I was able to create products. I was able to, you know, Marty was a hands on entrepreneur, Marty Ellison, but he's, as time went on, he started giving me more freedom. And it's another lesson that you know, wherever you are in your career, early or middle or late, if, if you someone else has the purse strings of of how you get paid, make sure they know who you are, what you're doing, you know how valuable you are. And I did that from day one, not, not to show off, not to tell them, hey, I'm do. I'm here Marty, you know. But I just did it on, I did it, you know, on the job. And he noticed it. He He got me involved in more things as time went on, and he sort of had no choice but to make me a partner in the business and so. And then just the sidebar I was mentioning before, the idea of putting a company up for sale, and this was in 2000 so the company started in 1972 I got there in 1981 and in 2000 Marty was frustrated. He didn't know where the company was going. He said he went to an investment banker and said, but see who would buy this company for $100 million and he went out and we got, you know, 72 potential buyers. It was like. You know, it was, it was it taught me so much about not we didn't exit, but we could have exited and we didn't. And the and the thing, but I learned, is that when you put your company on the market and don't sell it, that sometimes is as important as selling it, because then you find out what people would have wanted what they didn't want. We found out what parts of the company were really worthwhile, and over time, we got rid of some of that dead weight in the company, because we put it up for sale and then didn't sell. And I saw another company who was a rival of ours, who had a company that had four diverse divisions, and the guy wanted to sell the whole thing, lock, stock and barrel, and he couldn't, because there were four and when he went, when he went to four different buyers, he made more money than he would have from one buyer, because each buyer bought the niche, so to speak. And they weren't. They weren't as nichey as I'm saying, but they were niches. There was a financial niche, A, B to B niche, you know, a Consumer Health niche. So I learned so much, even though I never exited. And I know this, this is a podcast about exiting. I learned so much about how to exit, if I wanted to, how not to exit. And so that was really so important during the journey at boardroom. And then when I left boardroom in 2015 Marty had passed away. He had three kids in the company. I was not one of them, although I was, you know, I was probably, I don't, I don't like to say this too often, but I would maybe he wanted, but we won't say anything more than that, but he loved his kids, and I love them too, but it was time to leave. I had gotten equity out of the business. I was I was fine with it, and that began my real entrepreneurial journey. And it was obviously easier to go out on my own when I already had seen a role model for entrepreneurship, Marty. I had been involved in maybe selling and not selling. I had been involved in every aspect. And Marty had a stroke, I think, 12 years before he died, and I kind of took over the company, completely sure marketing side, and we were a marketing driven company. And that was like the experience of a lifetime, Marty was still there. He was giving me support everything, and I had a great staff, and I didn't do it myself, believe me, but it was a fantastic second journey within boardroom that told me that going out of my own was going to be easy, and I also followed the advice. Part of my journey was following the advice of one of my early mentors, Jay Abraham, who's in the same school as Dan Kennedy and most marketer direct marketers, came off of one of those trees in the 1980s it was, you know, it was the Dan Kennedy tree, or the Jay Abraham tree. I was more on the Jay Abraham tree, although I know Kennedy well, and I've done events with him, but Abraham and Jay. Abraham wrote the forward from my book over deliver and with Jay. Jay taught me early on, and he said, you know when, when you, when you do, doing something of of significance, whether it's run a company, create products, create services, creating marketing funnels. Whatever you do, there's a time to do it and there's a time to teach it. And so the second phase of my credit, so I said I had two careers, yeah, one was the doing it, and now I'm teaching what I did. And actually, Jay Abraham was even more, you know, stern about it. He said, You have a moral obligation to teach it, right? And so I've always been about contribution. I've always been about my big why is probably, you know, contributing to connect, which is not networking. People used to call me a master networker. I hate networking. Networking implies, you know, the most Facebook friends, and you know, quantity over quality. But I'm into quality of relationships. I always say that, you know, no one has ever, ever people refund. People refund transactions. They don't refund relationships. Yeah, and the building of my relationship capital is a thing I'm most proud of throughout my 40 plus years in in the business. That's a quick snapshot. Yeah, two careers, but the launching of Titans Marketing was really easy, in a way, because I knew that I could put 25 people in a mastermind group at $25,000 each, and have a business, because I was going to teach those 25 companies everything that I had learned, plus bring in all the masters that I have learned from, and the people who were in the group were also masters in their own right. And it was a model that was so I don't say it was easy, but it was, it was simple to put together, and I had a half a million dollar business immediately, right, right? And then I built on that with products, as you said. Yeah, he said swipe files. You know, swipe files are a really important part of the direct marketing business, because I always say stealing is a felony and stealing SMART is an art and a swipe file, you know, getting swipe files and getting, you know, the best work from the best copywriters and the best marketers is the way you learn, it's the way you adapt. You're not stealing, right adapting, you're innovating on someone else's invention. And that's what I do. That's what I've done my whole career and so and then I also have the rights to a book breakthrough advertising, which is one of the greatest books ever written on copywriting, marketing and human behavior, written by a copywriter by the name of gene Schwartz in 1966 the book is 100% relevant exactly as he penned it in 1966 I've sold 15,000 copies of it in 75 countries down a long time, but I've been keeping his name alive in a big way. That's kind of what I'm about, you know, I'm about leaving legacy for my mentors and the people that got me here. And so that's my that's my second career, but it was all based on the first career. So,
Pat Mancuso 16:11
and wow, Brian, I mean that that journey is amazing. And there's so many things that you mentioned that you know, kind of tie into this conversation, you know, like the first one, you know you mentioned is we talked, you know, you talked about the exit, and that's what our show is about. And that is absolutely true. And yet, most people don't realize there's multiple ways to exit the business, right? And there's also multiple ways to enter a business, and you kind of experience both sides of that equation. And, you know, our point is this, is that, is that the preparation for that, like, think about you're going to, you know, you're getting in a car today, and I'm in Minnesota, and I'm going to drive to Florida. Well, if I want to drive to Florida, I have to put an address in. Otherwise, I'll get there just knowing I gotta go south, but it could be, you know, three buds, right? And you know, thinking about that, that address in advance to really design your exit. That's the challenge most business owners. In fact, my feeling is 95 to 98% of them never, ever stop, slow down, and frankly, they don't even know how to calculate that. You know, we're, we're pretty excited. We're working on a project right now where, literally, we'll be able to take a business owner, and, you know, let's say they're today, and they're a million dollar company, and they decide, you know, the 10 years from now, they want to exit. And, you know, again, they have variable options and exiting, but we'll be able to dial forward 10 years, define their exit, whatever that number looks like to them, and then reverse engineer what they're going to need to do on a monthly basis to actually get there, whether that's adding new products, adding new companies at you know, in it, there's so much power in that. So I love the fact that you shared that. I mean,
Brian Kurtz 17:58
also, like, it's also what you're saying is so critical, because it's not just putting lipstick on a pig. You know, a lot of people say that when you're preparing your company for exit, that you just ramp you cut your cost, you build it up and all that. But if you have a long runway and you're thinking about it well in advance, that's critical for any sale. I'll also say this. This is interesting. I think you'll, you'll like this, even though it's not, it's not relevant to people who are are looking only to sell their business, right? Businesses that shouldn't be sold like I'll say that my my Titans, marketing business. When I launched it, I didn't know what assets I would have. Most of the assets were me as I teaching. I was doing masterminds. Now I have some products, I have books, I have swipe files, I have stuff. But it was interesting because I went into it just the opposite. Instead of planning for an exit, I was planning for no exit. I was planning for a wind down at some point in the future, whenever that might be and I'd be happy with that, but yeah, business you're in to do that? Yeah, there are people that have a business like mine, like Titans Marketing, even without the product, and they think it's going to be unbelievable as a selling that they'll be able to sell it easily, right? Not so easy when you don't have really any tangible assets, and you don't aren't planning for it, as you said. So there's so much involved in positioning a company for sale, and I'll tell you, a boardroom, when we put the company up for sale, what happened was, what we were really selling was actually the list. It was almost like the we had, we had books and we had content and we had staff that was qualified, and all of that, man, we were basic. I mean, we didn't own our building. So what? We weren't selling real estate. We were basically selling our list our customers, think about like a dental practice. They might be selling the equipment and the chairs in the building, but they're selling. Selling the clients, they're selling the customers. And so I really believe that you have to know what, where the value is in your company, and value for you, like go to back to Titans Marketing, the value for me is not the value for anybody else. Whereas at boardroom, I could create value, and we did, and we look we would have had some offers if we had taken a company to sale at some point. Yeah, but it was, it was not, it was not a it was not a slam dunk, believe me, sure.
Pat Mancuso 20:30
Well, I actually, I'm, I've been on the podcast. Sometimes I challenge it. It kind of opened people's mind to thinking. So I want to challenge you a little bit and go back to the Mr. Schwartz, his his product lives on now, I think you probably bought it out. There's no heirs getting royalties off of that, but there are oats, exactly right. So, so there's always that. And yet, what, here's our point, is, doesn't matter what you want to do. It doesn't matter where you want to exit. It doesn't even matter what you want to exit with. It's just thinking about it in advance and in the last thing I'll say. And then I'm going to ask you a couple quick questions. Then we're going to transition, is you, I don't care what business you acquire or sell. And I'm in a mastermind group with Roland Frasier and Ryan dice, and I know that group, yes, yeah. And in the due diligence for companies is their database, their list, so to speak, and the quality of that. Because if I'm asking a million dollars for the company and I have a client who's 70% of that million dollar revenue, and they're not staying, or they're going to leave if the owner sells, obviously, the value to the company changes overnight. So
Brian Kurtz 21:47
and the transactions are important in that database, right relationships are also important, depending on 100%
Pat Mancuso 21:52
Yep, 100% and you can't transfer sometimes that relationship, yeah. So let me ask you a couple of quick questions, what, what's been your biggest success? Do you feel in your journey as a business owner?
Brian Kurtz 22:06
You know? I've had, I've had some real, I've had some big, like, marketing programs that were just, you know, off the charts, you know. And I'm very, I'm still proud of those, but they feel like, you know, so 2014 you know, but actually two, I'll say 2004 not 2014 or 2005 2006 but we, we became, we switched. But the thing I'm proud of is that we switched gears and and mastered a medium that we had no business mastering, although we did have business mastering it, because we had mastered direct mail in such a way that we were able to master TV. And so we went to the infomercial world from the direct mail world. And that transition, I I have a blog post that says, you know how, how insomnia made me a $200 million and it was like I was watching an infomercial one night, and I always wanted to get our products on TV. And I saw the model as I was watching it. How I could do it? It was, again, swipe file. It was a swipe file on TV at two o'clock in the morning on a snowy night in 2004 that I saw the model, and I was able to rep replicate it with our products and our business, and that that took our company in one year, we went from like 70 million in revenue to 150 million in revenue with no addition to staff. We re rework the people, because everybody was a great marketer in the company. So they just bought we learned to buy media on TV as opposed to buy media mail. So it was like just the transition the smooth, and there were headaches in there too, of course, sure. So I'm really proud of that as sort of a case history. I'm also proud of the fact that one of the things I'm very proud of is that I was told by one of my top consultants, we were actually creating a book division at boardroom that we created, and it was basically the greatest hits from our newsletters. It was like, you know, these big encyclopedic books that we compiled from our newsletters. And he said to me, he goes, you know, you gotta run out of content soon. You know you gotta, you know you can have and so I took that as, like fighting words right at this other blog post and a case history where I went to, um, Barnes and Noble. That's a bookstore, by the way, for those who don't know, not, not Barnes and noble.com this was a physical bookstore, yeah, went there with a hand truck and talk about database and lists. I walked around Barnes and Noble with a hand truck and put all the books on the hand truck that would appeal to my two, 3 million name database of customers already in all categories that would be be applicable Finance. Health, executive taxes, tax planning, and I bought all these books. I tell the story. I had a 219, 84 to go to Camry. I put the books in the back, $900 worth of hardcover books in the back. And my tailpipe was like on the dragging on the ground. And I but then what I did, I didn't invent this, but I but I innovated on on a concept. I knew I had lists, I knew I had interest, and so that I realized that I was a good dot connector. I could connect dots, right? Marketing sense. And so what I did was I brought all the books back. I had my editors look at them. I said, which books would you be proud to put our name on? Of course, not many, because they had such pride in the boardroom. You know, sure, sure, a little too much pride. We need to, we need to do a little more marketing, right? So, but, but any books that they felt decent about, then the key things I took them to my copywriters and said, Which of these books could you write incredible sales letters for like the books had to be marketable in direct mail. And basically I developed an entire division of books that were sitting collecting dust at Barnes and Noble into a book, a direct mail book, Division of books that were not being sold anymore, and we created a whole new market for them. In one case, we sold a million dollars worth of one book that was selling, you know, $20,000 a year at Barnes and Noble. And all I had to do was pay a 5% royalty, and the publisher was thrilled. And I also reworked the book. The book was maybe a soft cover, and I made a hardcover so I could charge $39 for it instead of $17 on the shelf of Barnes and Noble. Plus, I added premiums and bonuses. So I innovate, the innovation there was what I didn't invent anything. I mean, right? But I really, I was really proud of that. I was really proud of the TV thing, and I was also, you know, I have some those case histories. Are the ones that stick out in my mind.
Pat Mancuso 27:06
So let's flip it upside down, and then I want to talk to you about how you're specifically helping business owners today and what they should be thinking about. What's your what's been your biggest challenge? Or, you know, some might say failure or opportunity. But where did you struggle in that journey the most? And what did that look like?
Brian Kurtz 27:26
Yeah, I had quite a few. We all do, yeah, we all did. One of them is actually off of the biggest success, the infomercial success, because I started reading my press clippings. People were saying, like, wow. Boardroom, this company came out of nowhere. You know, infomercials are supposed to be one out of 21, out of 20 work. We got three of our first four to work big time. And then I said, Man, I this is easy. I've arrived. Yeah, I've arrived. And the next nine, to the tune of, like, you know, a million and a half dollars, all just when the toilet right, just like we got, we got, we got, we got, we got beer strong, you know, we got sure, you know, we were feeling our oats, and we said, okay, we can do this. We we just have to slap something together. And so that's a good lesson in terms of because I always have, I've always had a lot of humility, but I think you can tend to lose it when you see your successes staring you in the face. Yeah, the other, another big, big failure in the company and me was that we, you know, we probably sold, I don't know, over my time at Boardman, let's say we sold a billion dollars. Probably was more than a billion, but we sold at least a billion dollars worth of business. But we did it $39 at a time, meaning that we had newsletters at $39 we had renewals at $39 we had yearbooks at $39 with renewals, and we had one shot books at $39 we never had an ascension program like, where's that? Where's the higher priced product? Right, right? And then when, when, when the internet came along and I started looking at digital, digitizing our products, I was met with resistance from people in the company. That's when I eventually left. I left in 2015 when, you know, digital courses were all the rage, and I had a lot of ideas, and at that point, you know, Marty was gone, I couldn't implement what I wanted to implement, so I had to leave, which was sad for me, but I realized that I had spent a lot of years like not figuring out that, you know, you can, and we did well. I mean, doing, doing over a billion dollars worth of business 39 time is nothing to sneeze at, but it's so much harder. You know, what? If we had, if we had a $1,500 course or product, we'd be so much easier. So that was a big I think that was a big fail on my part and the company's part to not and at the time, I'm not going to blame everybody else, but no one else was really into. Ascension like that, sure, for masterminds and going from, you know, $1,000 coaching group to a $25,000 coaching group, that stuff was just at the infant stage when I was realizing it. But we had so many opportunities to do higher priced products with, you know, more more stuff. And it was just, it was a big, it was a epic fail in my, yeah, the company never went bankrupt. The company always did, well, sure, the margins were always so tight. And, yeah, so that was, that was a big, that was, I call that one of my biggest failures. Well,
Pat Mancuso 30:39
you know, Brian, you mentioned something, and, you know, reminds me of a, I'll say, potential consulting client that we worked with about 910, years ago. And you know, people give consultants a hard time, and yet, consultants have the opportunity to look at something in a different way, and they're not attached to the outcome, but they don't have the biases. And I remember this individual sitting in our conference room, and this individual was referred to me by the CFO, who know the knew the company was in, was struggling and in trouble, and at the end of the day, he he realized what he needed to do, and that was to hire us. And he chose not to, and that was his choice. But what he did do was hire a consultant in the field that he was in. And what happened is, six months later, the company went bankrupt, and this was, this was a very significant player in our market, in a certain niche industry where they literally controlled that market 90 to 95% and six months later, they were bankrupt. And that's the blind spots that we all have, right? And if we're not getting that outside advice or not following, you know, other businesses where we can apply those things to our business, that
Brian Kurtz 31:53
sometimes you can be too close or too far, yeah, you need to have, need to have the right feedback loops. Need to have the right people in your corner, I do a ton of that, and I teach a lot of that too. So,
Pat Mancuso 32:05
so let's shift gears here in the remaining job that we have, and I want to talk to you about the premise is this, you're, I'm a business owner. There's business owners listening to this conversation. And, you know, let's go to the small to medium sized business owner could be, you know, a significant size business owner. But they, they hear all this, and there's so many things, so many, you know, places for them to go, and different things they could do, whether it's pay for click and social media and this and that. The other thing you know that business owner, I think, gets overwhelmed, and so they, you know, make money, and maybe they grow their business, but they never get to where they want to get to, because many times they need to scale it, to do it. And so talk to us about your approach with a business owner, and what you're doing today to help them to grow their business, scale it, or even create higher margins without, you know, scaling it massively. Like, what are you doing to help them?
Brian Kurtz 33:07
Right? Right? So it's, it's basically, I start with the premise that marketing isn't everything. It's the only thing. And I don't say that to be facetious. I don't say that to be smug, but, yeah, if you're not, you know, if, if you've got something to offer the world, why not offer it to millions, as opposed to dozens? Sure to get there is not a it's not a linear path, right? So there's so many aspects to it, in terms of, you know, the I my in my book, over deliver, which now I'm currently, right now, doing an over deliver Boot Camp, where I'm walking people through all the the elements of my book, which talk about lists and it talks about it talks about offers, and it talks about creative and copy, and it talks about customer service and fulfillment as marketing functions. You've got to chunk it down. It's not like one business one medium. It's not like the most dangerous number in business is one right one medium, one employee, one you know, one product, one promotion, can't be so right channel. Marketing is everything. However, multi channel doesn't mean that you have to be everywhere. There are ways to be to not be everywhere, but look like you're everywhere. And that's what I teach. So I have one of my mentors and good friends, Perry Marshall, great marketer, and something called maze 2.0 which I'll, I'll explain quickly. It's two axes, and on on one axis, it says, you know, it's online, offline, and on the other two axes, it's live and recorded. So now you have four boxes. Right thing that's recorded and offline is a book, something that's recorded and live would be a YouTube video, a live YouTube video, or a live cast an event. Do? Uh, online and recorded, would be a web a webinar, a recorded webinar. So basically, but if you plot, and I also go with the premise I just taught this in the over deliver boot camp today, as a matter of fact that advertising opportunities are now infinite when I was, when I was marketing in the, you know, in the in the GO, GO 80s, you know, before, in the prehistoric times of marketing, you know, we had, you know, we had direct mail, we had print advertising, we had radio, TV, package inserts and some other media. It was finite. There were only, like certain places where you could advertise, you could ever write or whatever, but there was only certain places. Now advertising opportunities are infinite, and they're getting more infinite. Even though Infinite is infinite, can't get more infinite, but And so what's happened today is that it's as you already hinted at, is that the average business owner is just bombarded. Oh, should I be on Facebook? Should I be on YouTube? Should I be on Instagram? Should I be do direct mail? Should I do postcards? Should I do and it's overwhelming, so it is so my my contribution to the marketing industry, especially for smaller businesses and mid sized businesses who want to get bigger but not throw good money after bad on bad consultants and bad media and inappropriate media, and do it the right way. That's what I do. I mean, basically, I do hot seats within my masterminds, where they get on there and they say, I've got this product, you know, guy get, I have a supplement that is, you know, it's a, it's a mushroom supplement for, you know, for for energy, how can I position it? How, where should I advertise? And you get all the suggestions, and then you have to narrow it down. And the beauty of that maze, 2.0 that's interesting. When you plot every possible media and every possible advertising opportunity within those four quadrants, right? You basically need to, Perry says you should pick at least one in each quadrant, because that'll give you a little offline, a little online, a little record, a little a little recorded, a little live, but then I say maybe a little, maybe two in each quadrant, but that's still not the infinite amount of possibilities. So you need to, but you need the right coaching for that, and you need to have the right consulting for that. I am not a consultant at all. I mean, when I, when I, when I, when I hung out the shingle for Titans Marketing. I specifically said I am not a consultant because that sounds like I'm perpetually unemployed. I mean, anybody says they're a consultant, they're usually, you know, in between jobs or unemployed. But I do consider myself, you know, a marketing education company resource that is has access to the best of the best in each of those. Like, I always say it's the what before the who before the how is who, not how. Written by Dan Sullivan, which is great, but I'm more about the what first like, what's the what? You have to know what the watts are. So what's a watt? A watt would be Facebook advertising. A watt would be YouTube advertising. A watt would be advertising on Amazon. A watt would be direct mail. A watt would be radio advertising. So I bring all the what to my people, to my group, and they they listen to the what. They listen to the person, the expert. They think about it, they talk about it. And then you don't just jump in and and now advertise on radio, because the radio expert said radio is the best thing since sliced bread, right that way, but you need to know what the watts are. Then you go to look for the who, and the who in each of those Watts is where, that's where the rubber hits the road, and that's where I commit, you know, because I can, I can decipher, based on what I know about the companies in, you know, companies in my masterminds and the people that I coach, that, you know, the you know, I think your, your product is perfect for snippets on Instagram. It's just perfect, and you can and then we figure out a test, a test program on Instagram, and not only Instagram, it could be one of four right in the quad, right? And that's the process. It's sort of like the other part of the process that's really important is to assess your assets in advance of anything you do. So you have to know what you own or what you can own. Remember, I talked about going around Barnes and Noble with a hand truck, right? I didn't own those books in Barnes and Noble up, kind of owning them, because I was able to license them and then sell them and right? You know, millions and millions of dollars. I create a $40 million book operation out of that's going around Barnes and Noble in a hand truck. So there is, there is a incredible leverage in the make or buy decision that you have to make. So you decide, am I going to am I going to make this product, or am I going to buy this product? It doesn't matter. If you buy it in white, it's a white label product and you put your name on it, that is just as good as making it from scratch, and it's a lot cheaper. Now, if you want to make it from scratch and then develop all the ancillary products, that's another decision you need to make. And those are the kinds of things that I coach people through. The biggest mistake that most entrepreneurs make, especially, you know, high, high level creative entrepreneurs, is that they all have ADHD, which is not a, it's not, it's not a, it's actually to be no entrepreneurs without ADHD. So it's not an affliction. It's not. I mean, you know Ned Hallowell, who's one of the top authors on ADHD, says, you know, ADHD is a blessing. You have to get it under control. That's why things like maze 2.0 is basically to get the entrepreneur's brain to focus on a few things and not everything, because once you do try to do everything, then you do nothing. Sure. So that's kind of my premise, and how I coach and I can get into the nitty gritty with them. Also, it's like that example with Instagram. I mean, I didn't even know six months ago. I thought Instagram was my daughter is a is a dance professor, and she does, she choreographs dances of her students, and she's on Instagram all the time, posting the stuff. That's right, it's nice. I didn't even and here I am in marketing. And I knew Facebook advertising, I know YouTube. I didn't realize Instagram is its own animal. It's its own it's its own thing. It's like, you have to figure out how to use that medium the the best way possible. And it's you gotta do it with snippets. You gotta get people to text you with a keyword, then you get them on your email list. There's a whole way to do that. And once I learned that from someone, yeah, I brought it to my mastermind group. I brought it as one of the watts that could be a choice, a media choice, for somebody with a small to mid sized business who wants to grow. So the growing and scaling comes along with the ride, but the ride is really the research and doing diligence, just like when you're exiting a company, right, right? More about the due diligence in the long runway. Marketing is the same way. Yeah, to be able to really, you got to do the research. And you know, because we're, because entrepreneurs are impulsive, they're going to just jump as soon as they hear something that sounds good, right? That's, that's one of the cautions. And that's why, when they work with me, I put the cautionary flag up often. I always say, you know, I know you want to get rich fast, but getting rich slowly is so much more satisfying. You know, I call it patient marketing. Now, some people call me the Director of Sales prevention because I developed the relationship over a long period of time before I go in for the jugular and make the show sure that's a relationship, sale, not a transaction, sale, and those are the ones that last a lifetime. In fact, the the subtitle of my book, over deliver, is build a business for a lifetime, playing the long game in direct response marketing. And every one of those words was was chosen for a reason. You know, it's it's not about a It's not about one hit wonders. It's about the long game. It's not about general advertising. It's about direct marketing, direct response marketing, meaning measurable, accountable advertising. So everything and building a business is not building a product, building a big it may be on Shark Tank once in a while, but building a business is not building a product. It's not building a promotion of a winning promotion, whether it's on TV or on radio or they have a, you know, something on an affiliate network or on YouTube, and they're selling a lot and, okay, what are you going to sell next? What's the next product? What's the what's the renewal? What's the what? What can you build on? Sure, a series of one hit wonders is one way to run a business, not, not my preferred one,
Pat Mancuso 43:59
right? So, so let me ask you, and I know this is going to be a tough one, but I'm just interested in your answer. I know that there's not one answer, okay, but if I were to say to you, Brian, what do you feel like right now emerges, for most companies as an area that's got a high ROI. So if you took most companies across the board, and you looked at all the places they could advertise, what do you feel like is one of the best ROIs for a company right now? And I know that's a really a tough, unfair question, but
Brian Kurtz 44:37
I'll give you some examples. So Pat. I would say that for like a personality run business, I think YouTube is one of the is one of the real stars media, because it's you can do it without. You can do paid YouTube advertising, but you can also do organic YouTube advertising. And. YouTube is video. It's he can repurpose a lot from other other, other areas. So I think YouTube is one that keeps coming up and coming up. I see,
Pat Mancuso 45:10
let me, let me, you know, want to interrupt you, because I should have asked a better question. So let me do this. If I can just indulge me a second landscape
Brian Kurtz 45:16
company, where's the best place, I would say a landscape company. So now you're talking about geographical so now you're talking you're not going to if you're a landscape company in you know, my town in Connecticut, you're not going to do landscaping in Minnesota, correct, right? So immediately you have to assess your geographical area. Okay, of note. Now I think, especially if your landscaping services have a nice price point with that, you can build on top of it. I think something like direct mail, which is a forgotten medium for most people, to get you the best ROI because, and, and, I think. But even things like, you know, old fashioned telemarketing, old fashioned knocking on, right? I mean, it sounds silly, right? Always talking about Facebook and scaling and YouTube. But for local businesses there, and there are so many techniques within the local business where you can get someone, I'll give you a good example. How about a used car lot? So there was this used car lot that that I it was at a Dan Kennedy conference as well, and this guy who has a used car lot came up to me and he goes, You know, I send out a postcard every week to everybody in a 50 mile radius, or a 25 mile radius of my, of my lot, with all the cars that are now on the lot like he gets new he gets more used cars every every week. And he said, You know, I get people coming in, some people not coming in. I said, you know, I got a better idea for you. Why don't you become the expert in used cars first? Because used cars are an episodic deal. I mean, you're not buying a used car every week, and you're, you're doing a weekly mailing of a postcard. You may hit that one week when someone's ready to buy a used car, but odds are, most weeks during the year they're not buying a used car. Same for landscaping. Yeah, what you want to do is create, become a trusted advisor. Now, you say trusted advisor used car salesman that'll go together. You could, you could create it, right? What about if you, you know are the used car salesman that says, You know what, I'm going to go out into my area, invest and do a little newsletter. And the newsletter has nothing to do with selling cars. It has to do with, like, it's information. So it's sort of like, this is info marketing. So this is like, I'm going to, I'm going to do an article on how to spot a lemon in a used car lot. Or, how do you know the used car salesman is lying, and write an article about that. Right now, most used car salesmen could write the best article about those theoretically, but they don't think about the information. They just think about selling parts, right? Beauty of that is that once you get them on your list, your email list, your or or you send out a print newsletter once a month or something, but you don't even have to. You can get them onto your email list with a QR code quickly, and then you can blog to them once a week, you know, the used car tip of the month. And at the bottom, you can say, by the way, we just got a new, you know, 89 Chevy Malibu in, you know, with 19,000 miles. So you can sell within it, but you're selling the information. It's value based marketing. It's information marketing. I had another one with a with a personal injury attorney. So this was in Indiana. I don't know if the rules are still the same, but there were these. This guy, he was a personal injury attorney in Indiana. Could be a landscaper, it could be anything, right? So I'm trying to give you some analogies. Yeah, it's not. I love it. So, so the personal injury attorney says, you know, as every every time there's an accident, 30 days after an accident, is a public list of everybody who reported a car accident. So every attorney gets that list, and what do they do? They plaster with postcards and mailings, 181 800 you know, by Brian accident, but in an accident, you know, one 800 you know, sue them or whatever. So I said to this guy, I said, you want to stick out, be the information guy, be the trusted advisor. You may not get the first one right. You'll get the ones going down the road. So I said, you know, I did the same thing, you know, do a little blog, newsletter, send out. And again, if you're talking about a geographical area, you don't have to, you don't have to saturate it right away. You can do it, you know, you can titrate it in smaller amounts first and all the. Money at once, and you see if there's any life at all, but once you get a list of people who you can write to and blog to and and deliver information to, now you're on your way to relationship marketing. You're on your way to not just transacting and transacting and transacting you want to transact. I'm not a nonprofit. I'm not, yeah, exactly, but it's, it's advice that can last you a lot longer than, you know, selling one Chevy Malibu. Want to use Carla.
Pat Mancuso 50:30
So we're going to, we're going to wrap up, Brian, I've got a quick question for you, yes or no, and I just want to see if you're, you like, I think the way that you do, let's just say not. You think the way that I do, we'll say, I think the way that you do, in direct response, yes or no, is the QR code the most underutilized thing?
Brian Kurtz 50:50
No, no, no, it's. It is, it's, it's more utilized today than ever before, and it's getting better, and technology is,
Pat Mancuso 51:00
but that's my point. Oh yes, my whole point. But
Brian Kurtz 51:03
it's the most underutilized. I mean, frankly, I think, you know, believe it or not, you know, people rely on their website much more than anything else and their landing page. But I QR codes are good because you can get right to the landing page right there are situations where a phone number can work too. So sure, sure, under utilized, but, yeah, I think the QR code is underutilized. You know,
Pat Mancuso 51:28
you mentioned earlier the the direct mail, and I just yesterday, got this whole magazine, and it just shocks me. They spend all this money on these ads. The phone number's super tiny, and they don't have a QR code. That's just me. So, okay, I think
Brian Kurtz 51:42
you make a good point. Every every ad to be direct response, regardless. And QR code enables an ad to be, to be direct response. Well, you
Pat Mancuso 51:52
tie in the free report. You know, I remember when I started real estate back in 1990 you know, that was the big deal free reports, and we didn't have QR codes back then to, you know, we had to bring them to, you know, even when I started, websites were just starting. But it just, it blows my mind, you know, I
Brian Kurtz 52:10
mean, I'll rephrase my answer. I would say you have a good point,
Pat Mancuso 52:14
yeah, well, and just go back to covid, like when you were eating someplace, like every place was, you know, QR code, because nobody wanted to touch I think, I
Brian Kurtz 52:23
think covid was a good, was good for, oh, I agree. QR codes, absolutely, yep. Okay, so
Pat Mancuso 52:28
if somebody wants to reach out to you, find out, you know, you've talked about a lot of things that you offer, where is the best place for them to do that right now? Brian,
Brian Kurtz 52:38
well, to spend no money and to do nothing and to just get on become a member of my online family. And I remember, I, I don't, I don't say that lightly. I it's right. It's not my list. It's my online family. You go to Briankurtz.net, b, r, I, a, n, k, u, r, t, z.net, is an opt in. You get a free interview with me and Perry Marshall, two of the stories I tell in that interview. One is the one about how insomnia made me 200,000 $200 million and the one about hand truck at Barnes and Noble. And then another one. So it's a real nitty gritty details of those. And so you get that interview, and you end up on my online family. I blog every Sunday and Wednesday. Wednesday is an installment of my podcast. And Sunday is is just a blog post about my my musings in the in the direct marketing world. And if you would anybody who would want to buy my book, which I make no money on, but if they go to overdeliverbook.com overdeliverbook com, you go there and follow the instructions. You either go to Amazon, Barnes and noble.com you buy the book, you come back, you put your order number in, and the bonuses alone there for a $20 book, which I don't make any money on. Sure is, they're unbelievable. There are, you know, there's a swipe file, going back to swipe files from Dan Kennedy, there's a, there's a a full day DVD of a day I did with Perry Marshall, who I've mentioned here today, Jay Abraham, who I mentioned, there's a course that he spent $200,000 on to Create the whole course. Is there digitally. There are 19 keynote speeches that Jay Abraham has given. This is all on the all there, yeah, for the book, buying the book, yeah. So that would be, you know, if you want to, if you don't want to spend $20 don't go there. You want to go for free. Brian kurtz.net, but if you want to be a cheap skate and get 1000s of hours worth of bonuses, some of them are priceless. In fact, yeah,
Pat Mancuso 54:41
oh yeah.
Brian Kurtz 54:42
There are two PDFs of books that are out of print by two of my mentors in direct mail, Dick Benson and Gordon Grossman, and both of them. The full PDF is on. Is that overdeliverbook.com only place you can get those books. So that's the best way to find me. And then once you're. In my world, you'll hear about my my my boot camps and the books I sell, they're all educational. I don't do affiliate marketing, so I'm not selling a bunch of other people's products. It's not part of my model. I'm not saying sure that I just don't do it and and I also, I will sell things from other people that are educational. I never take a commission. I basically give the commission as a discount. So if someone wants to, if someone's going to, going to sell something in my in my blog, and they're giving a 50% affiliate commission, I say I don't want the commission just give a 50% discount to my online family, and they all do it. So it's a really good place. Yeah, it's a good it's a good list, aka online family to be in, yeah? Well,
Pat Mancuso 55:50
talk about over and delivery, wow, Brian, you've been amazing today. Oh my gosh, we could probably spend hours together, and I absolutely believe you brought value to our listeners today. We so appreciate your time and sharing it. I trust a bunch of our listeners will go and take advantage of that offer, because it is amazing. It truly is and so thanks everybody for listening. We appreciate your support. Go to your favorite podcast, wherever you listen to podcast, download the podcast. Please share it with the other individuals, because we want to help more business owners get to that destination. Otherwise they should just go get a job and get paid and not have to lay awake at night about meeting payroll and all the things that they lay awake at night about. So thanks everybody. Have an amazing day. Brian, thanks again. Thanks. Pat, yep, take care.
Outro 56:43
Thank you for joining Destination Business Freedom with Pat Mancuso, may the insights and strategies shared guide you towards financial prosperity and personal freedom. Continue to navigate boldly until next time. Keep transforming challenges into achievements. Farewell and stay the course. You.
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