3 Key Marketing Principles That Built a $150 Million Business with Brian Kurtz of Titans Marketing

Speaker A: Join Ian Garlic as we uncover the

Speaker B: hidden marketing stories that shape our world.

Speaker A: Reveal the latest marketing tactics that will shape your future. And the amazing people that grow organizations, movements and businesses. Learn to grow your business and shape the world around you. Welcome to the Garlic Marketing show with Ian Garlic. And yes, it's Ian, not Ian, that's marketing too.

Speaker B: Today I've got the legendary Brian Kurtz, one of the most successful direct response marketers of all time. I know he'll say he's not, uh, but we're gonna talk about the three things that he really were the keys to growing his 150 million dollar business. The problem with the quick hit. We're going to talk about the secret of rfm which in the concept that made Brian rich slowly. The not so secret 40 20, 20, 404020 rule. And I think it's absolutely critical to every single person doing marketing about the best copywriting book ever. He had the number one question that copywriters ask him. That's a signal of a great copywriter and how he gets 70% open rates, how frequently you should be emailing. And we're going to do a deep dive into AI all this on the Garlic Marketing Show. But of course one of the best things that you can be doing is understanding your customer stories. Go to videocasestory.com finder where we'll help you find your seven figure story. All right, let's get started. One of m my first 15, I think guests on the Garlic Marketing show and we're now in like up into the five.

Speaker A: When was that? 1927. Yeah,

Speaker B: it was almost 10 years ago. My good friend Brian Kurtz here, legend, I mean billions of dollars sold and he won't, he'll be humble about it, you know and we talk about he was on giants of video and he's like I'm not a video guy. I'm like dude, you had a half a billion dollar infomercial in the, in the early 2000s which is in these money it's like $20 billion in. But I'm, I'm so excited because Brian like really is one of the best books out there. Uh, you know, over delivered but as a student of all of this, of direct response marketing, but marketing in general, so many brilliant ideas. And what's weird about this is I just met Brian for the first time in real life a uh, month ago.

Speaker A: Uh, that was fantastic.

Speaker B: And Brian, uh, you know I'm going to say it right here. Go to briankurtz.net, k u r t z.net and sign up for his email list to see how email should be done. We were talking a little bit about how he can improve it, but, Brian, thanks for being on. I'm excited to talk to you about this. We, you know, last time we talked about direct mail, but I think we need. We should do a revamp into what you feel are the fundamentals of great successful marketing.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's a. And it hasn't, you know, as I said to you before we turn the camera on, I didn't, um, I did try to listen to the interview from 10 years ago to see how timeless or irrelevant it was, and I listened to a little bit of it and it felt somewhat relevant, but it was more about direct mail. But direct mail is still relevant, whether people believe it or not. So. And I just wanted to just give a, uh, thanks to you, because at that time, 10 years ago, it was shortly after I launched Titans Marketing after a long career at boardroom building, you know, a big business at boardroom, and I started doing the podcast tour, and you were one of the first ones I was on. And it, uh, and you and a couple other guys and women got me. Got me jazzed for what I was doing, because you asked good questions. You're smart, you know, you know what you're doing. And I'm so impressed now that we got to finally meet in person. But I follow we've been following each other and in touch with each other over the last 10 years. And I do think that, you know, I've seen. I mean, you have evolved so beautifully. And some people don't, some people don't. I mean, fortunately, uh, I did. I mean, the people I grew up with in the direct mail business in the 1980s and 1990s, I'm sure a lot of your listeners weren't even born. Now I'm feeling old, but I'm not. Being the oldest person in the room is not the worst thing in the world. Um, but it was amazing because I just saw people just fall by the wayside as the Internet came about for marketing, as email marketing came about, and because they knew one thing, they knew direct mail. And I realized early on that the Internet and email marketing was going to be the ultimate direct response marketing medium, just like direct mail was, with an immediate response, with immediate. And. And I, I didn't know anything. So I, as you said, I. When you said, um, um, I'm a student, that, that, that warmed my heart because people see me as a teacher or a mentor or just an old Guy, you know, spouting off shit, grandpa at the picnic. But the. But I. I am always a student. I'll be a student till the day I die. Because there's no other way to be. You got to be a sponge. So given that, I'll answer your question. You know, the. The fundamentals. I mean, when I. People, uh, think I'm a copywriter, I'm not. I'm not a practicing copyright. I've worked with the best copywriters who've been alive over the last 50 years. That's been my. It's been a pleasure and a privilege to be in that position to know every great copywriter who's been alive during my career, and I've worked with most of them. That alone is, like, you know, a blessing. But when I talked. When I thought about my copywriters and that, you know, copywriters shouldn't write for food. That's a Dan Kennedy line. You know, you need to be a trusted advisor. You need to be, like, more. More complex, more m. Have more depth. And when I. When I wrote a. I wrote a, um, I wrote a blog post that was something like, you know, you may not know it until you see you. You won't. You may not know it when you see it, because there was, like, these elements of, like, seven characteristics that every great copywriter, the A listers, like the top of the game, had in common, and I got them on paper. And number five is like, a real knowledge of direct response marketing. You don't have to be the expert as a copywriter, but you need to understand the fundamentals or you can't be a great copywriter because the list is more important than your copy. And so I thought about that, and then in that context, I said, okay, what if, at a minimum, and these are the concepts that I'll share with you at a minimum, what are, like, the two or three things that every copywriter and every marketer needs to know in depth? And I did come up with three, uh, things. One is rfm, recency, frequency, monetary value. It is a cornerstone. It's not a rule of thumb. It's basically how consumers behave in the marketplace. And it's based on recency, frequency, and a lot of your listening. I know you have a sophisticated audience, so I'm sure they know what I'm talking about. But just in case they don't, I've explained it in my book in detail, but. And I have. I didn't invent it. It's been around a long time, but recency Is uh, a more recent buyer is going to be worth more than a less recent buyer. A more frequent buyer is going to be worth more than a less frequent buyer. And the people who spend the most money with you will spend more money with you. Which was counter to what I thought when I got into the business. I said that doesn't make sense. If someone just bought from me, they're out of money, they can't buy more. I mean that's how I was thinking in 1981 or 84. Um, but it's such a important. And then combining recency, frequency and monetary is how we built $150 million business at boardroom with regression modeling to show basically who was going to respond to the next offer based on what they responded to previously. Recency, frequency, monetary. So that's one concept that will stand the test of time online, offline, anywhere, even on the moon or Mars. It's always going to be there. The second one is one that everybody knows but you know, I don't know we pay attention to it enough is lifetime value like you know, being a one trick pony, you know, is not the way to do marketing. In fact my book Over Deliver, the subtitle is, you know, build a Business for a lifetime Playing the Long game in Direct Response Marketing. It's a long subtitle but I needed to do it because Over Deliver is a one word title and I wanted to make sure that what uh, people knew what the book was about by the subtitle. And the key thing there is long game. You know, if you're going to, you can give me quick hits. Even in the infomercial business. You mentioned video and we got into the infomercial business at Boardroom to the tune of like $300 million franchise. However, it was so interesting because I didn't uh, I saw it as uh, even that as a long game. And most people in the infomercial business saw it as like get the big hit, find the killer product, burn it out, like roll it out, make as much money as possible, then send, send the inventory to retail at uh, 20% and just get all the cash you can get. I'm not going to be in a business like that. I'm not saying it's bad, but I want to be in a business for the long haul. I mean and I've been in a business for the long haul both at Boardroom and then with Titans Marketing. So that is a fundamental. People in my mastermind, people who work with me, if they're, if they're I mean I have people who are looking for the quick hit get rich quick. I'm m into getting rich slowly. Um, and you know, I have gotten rich slowly. Um, and you know, it hasn't been frustrating. It can be frustrating when you have, you're not getting rich and you've got a lot of bills to pay and all that, but you know, you have to bide your time. And so I think the concept of lifetime value and we can go deeper if you want after this. And then the third concept that I, that I, that I think about a lot is a variation on the 40, 40, 20 rule, which is the 404020 rule in direct response says that the success of any direct response marketing campaign depends 40% on the list or the audience, 40% on the offer you make, and 20% on the messaging or the creative. Now that sounds like the creative is half as important as the other two. It's not, but I'll explain that in a minute. But the most important thing is the list. So I made it the 413920 rule. So that emphasizes, and this is all in my book because it was so important to me to say, look, you could have the best copy in the world and an irresistible offer and if it goes to an audience that's not interested, not not doesn't have, uh, a propensity to buy, you get zero orders. Yeah, opposite is not true. The opposite is like if you have a perfectly segmented list of people who are so geared to buy your product and you have a mediocre offer, flashing red box with an arrow and you've got the worst copy in the world, you'll make some, you'll make some money, you'll get a few orders at least. The key is put all those three. It's a three legged stool and you need to put all three things into it at the same time. But you need to do them in order. You got to get the list dialed in your irresistible offer. And then you go to the creative and the messaging. Now I said, I teased it and I said the, the messaging being 20% and the other two being 41, 39 or 40 each, um, makes it sound like the messaging is half as important. It's not, it's the least important until it's not. And what I mean by that is once you have the first two dialed in, the messaging and the creative becomes the most important. And I can prove it because going back to my copywriters, when I work with the best copywriters in the world, um, again, I'm not bragging I did it, so I have to say it because I did it. It's not bragging if you did it, by the way. So the thing, the thing is like if I went to the best copywriters in the world and asked, you know, write a new promotion for this product to this list, and it was a new format or a new copy, uh, platform, a new approach, that's where I got my biggest lifts. Like I got, I got some lifts on the offer, changing the price, changing the premiums, whatever. But when it came to the biggest lifts, it was always on the creative. But that doesn't mean it's hit. So it's, it went from half as important to the most important. So I, that's a, so those are concepts that I live by, I talk about all the time. I probably talked about them at the Mastermind. So now you're bored listening to here. But I, but I just think it's so imperative that if you have that in your toolkit, then you have, the world's your oyster. I mean, you know, Pablo Picasso is a great quote. You know, um, uh, learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist. And that's what it's about. Like you've gotta, you gotta know the fundamentals so you can break the rules. I'm not saying don't be a rule, you know, be a rule breaker. But know what rules you're breaking before you just make up and just do it.

Speaker B: I, you know, it. What's amazing to me is all those things. RFM, recency, frequency, uh, you know, and, and uh, LTV, lifetime value and then 40, 40, 20, 41, 39, 20 rule. They're all so important. And yet I think most people just look at that 20 rule and like I want great ads.

Speaker A: They go right to the world class creative without any, like, not thinking about the market. That's why Breakthrough Advertising is such an amazing book. And I don't know if your audience knows about Breakthrough Advertising. I happen to be the publisher of it. But it's a book that was written in 1966 by a copywriter by the name of Gene Schwartz, one of the best copywriters who's ever lived. And the book's not about just copywriting and marketing. It's about human behavior. It's about how people behave. And it's amazing that um, Breakthrough Advertising is as relevant today as it was in 1966. And I'm not just saying that, but it's because human beings have not changed. And Gene who is a copywriter knew all about. It's all about the market. It's all, uh. In fact, he talks about being a market maker in the book. He talks about, like, he's m. All about the concept of mass desire in the book. Like, mass desire is something that the copy. It's not the copywriter's job to create desire in the marketplace. The desire is already there. You just have to find where it is and. And then go after it with your poetry, basically. Yeah, but to not do the research. And it's all about research too. Just like the copywriters talk about the research that they do. The best copyright. The best copywriters I ever hired. The first thing they asked me for before they took a project on was for a list history. Meaning, like, what are the lists that you've mailed successfully and what are the lists that you've mailed unsuccessfully? And then give me the. In the case of direct mail, back in the day, they had data cards. They wanted to see the data cards on each of those lists to see the profile. And then I would even get them the mailing pieces that got the names on the lists that we were mailing successfully so they could get into the psyche of the buyer. That's just not recent. That's like. And it's not a rabbit hole either. That's like. That's like research, real research on the ground research. Now, AI makes that shit a lot easier. Today. You could do a lot more, you know, using AI to get to it faster. You still have to do it. You have to have the right prompts to get there. And so I think that, you know, the idea that, um. And you said it, um. You got me going there when you said, you know, people say I want to get like, the best promotion. I want to get like the splashiest ad and the best offer. That's important. It doesn't come first. It can't come first. The audience is everything. It's like, yeah. So I mean, it sounds so basic when. As was talking here, but I just think that it's important to get it out there. And you asked the question, like, what are the. I guess you were trying to ask what are the basics that have stood the test of time?

Speaker B: Well, the fundamentals. It's the fundamentals. I wouldn't call these basic. It's, you know, because it's simple but not easy. And like, when you come to offer, it's an irresistible offer. Like, we banter that around and you get in a room with marketers, they're gonna say the irresistible offer. But then, like, you ask someone to define it and get into the weeds, right?

Speaker A: It's like, what makes the offer. It's the price, it's the premiums, it's the, you know, it's everything that. I mean, Todd Brown has a great concept. You know, he goes about the, you know, the big idea. And so he has a great way of. Of coming up with irresistible offer. There are certain people that have dug into that topic, and I'm sure you have, too. Um, I haven't as much because I rely on the experts on that. But yeah, to just assume that you've got an incredible. It's sort of like with, um, watching Shark Tank, you know, and the entrepreneurs come on, and everybody's got the best idea, right? Yeah, everybody's got the irresistible offer. And as soon as they start pitching it, it's obvious whether it's irresistible or not. And it's always. I always wait for M. Mark Cuban to say something. Like, when they say, well, it's a $18 billion business and all I need is this much of it, and Mark Cuban says, I'm out. Because it's like, that's not a reason to come up with an offer. It's like. And that's just one example of how that works. But, yeah, I mean, the whole idea of the irresistible offer pains me when I see people misuse that term.

Speaker B: I think when you get most businesses, they have no idea what an offer is. And because, uh, I talk about this all the time, they're like, well, people buy my stuff. I'm like. Because, like, you had this other stuff done. You had a list, they were hungry, and, you know, you had a good enough marketing or good enough referrals, and they bought it in spite of your offer.

Speaker A: I mean, Gary Halbert's quote is the best. It's not about a, uh, brilliant burger. It's about a hungry audience.

Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker A: And that says it in a nutshell.

Speaker B: But like you said, like, everything kind of compounds on itself. Now, I want to switch topics a little bit because I think, you know, you're a master of email, of sending it. Well, we're talking about Tom Ruich, who does a great job of daily sending.

Speaker A: He's a great email. He's. I actually. I actually learned a lot from him.

Speaker B: Yeah, he's awesome. And let's talk about email. Why do people make the mistake of thinking that they can't email their list regularly? And I think this is across the board because everyone's like, I don't want to disturb them.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I was of that, I was of that mindset when I got into email marketing. Um, very early in. You know, once I was thinking about leaving boardroom and creating like a tight, the Table Titans marketing brand, I realized I had to, you know, build a list, uh, or what I call my online family. And that's an interesting concept too. It's like, you know, thinking about, when you think about your list as your family, it changes things. Um, because then, then, you know, then you're gonna only send them stuff that you're proud of. So that's. And sending them more of it. If you're proud of it, why not send more? I did not. I was not. I mean, Ben Settle, who's like one of the best email marketers, um, and Tom is like this too. I mean they send. At least, I mean Ben sometimes sends two emails a day especially he's promoting something. And you know, he has, he has created a list of buyers. Because of that, I've created a list of tire kickers. But really, really, um, uh, involve tire kickers, which I find exciting for me because they are engaged. And so when I look at Ben and Ben does, um, he does, uh, he did an email once about, um, open rates being overrated. And they are overrated because it's all about the engagement with your audience. And if you're going to like be a pussy and just hit everybody with an autoresponder every time they respond to your email, good luck with that. I mean, you can still make money. But I want to have a relationship with my audience now. I was only doing one email a week for the first, I don't know, six, seven years I was doing, but I did one every week. I mean, I was like, I was uh, consistent. So consistency is number one. It's not the volume, it's not multiple emailing, but it's that you have to be consistent. And I got, I got it down to like every Sunday at 6am Eastern time. If you're a part of my online family, you get my blog and that alone makes it so. I mean, and I'm not bragging here but. And open rates are, are not really accurate these days with iOS and all that. But I will say that the numbers, whatever the numbers I get, I do an email on every Sunday morning and then I send another email the following Friday. The same email with a different subject line to the people who didn't open the Sunday email. Those two emails alone I get over a 70% open rate. Now it might be a 55% open rate, but it's always the same every week. And, um, if it goes down a couple of percentage points, I get nervous because the consistency is so perfect. I'm looking for consistency, not a number here. And so when I realized that I'm not mailing them enough. And Ben, Ben used to read me the riot act all the time. He said, brian, you're mailing them once a week. Come on, you know, they want to hear from you now. I wanted to make sure, though, I think doing it the way I did it, better, worse, I don't know. But I think I established that baseline Of Sunday morning, 6am, you're getting content, always getting content. A story, a lesson, something from my career. I repeat them. Not often, but I repeat them year to year. Uh, which is fine. You update them, all of that. Um, but I do think that, you know, and then if I want to sell something, I always sell it in the ps. Now, I may refer to it in the post, but the post, I have a mission. I want to teach a lesson. I want to. I want them to learn something. I want to learn something from them. If they engage with me because I asked them to engage with me, that's another thing. You got to encourage your audience to engage with you. But the PS selling in the PS is. I don't recommend it necessarily, because I think it has taught my list not to buy to some degree. But then again, you know, when I put out, I do a boot camp, I do a promotion for my mastermind, I get people to buy. Not in the way that Ben probably does and a lot of other people who email more frequently. But I'm more comfortable emailing multiple times a week now, too. Uh, so. And then I had a podcast for a while, and I did that on Wednesday. I did a transcript and a video of that podcast as another post to the same list. So I think, to answer your question, people should not be afraid to email their online families on a regular basis as long as you're leading with value. Now, does that mean you can't sell? Of course not. You should be selling all the time. And Ben, if you look at, if you follow, I mean, Ben Settle and Tom Ruich are two guys, and there are many more I follow. I could give you a bunch more, but those are two in particular that you want to follow because you can see the pattern. You know, you never know what to expect. You always know at the bottom of their email that Tom, um, is going to have an offer and that Ben is Going to have an offer to email players because that's his core business, his print newsletter, um, and now he's promoting my boot camp. I just got an email from him today, and it's email players, slash boot, you know, breakthrough advertising, bootcamp. And he's got an offer that just compounds what the offer is to go to the boot camp because that's what affiliates do. Right. Um, but he's got it dialed in. I don't have that dialed in. So I'm not going to be the guy that's going to give everybody on this, you know, listening to me on this podcast, the best advice. I know what to do, I know when I see it. And it's done well, Ben and Tom, um, so I can do some of that. But the key for me and for them, too, and for anybody who's emailing, whether you're mailing once a week and less than once a week is silly. Less than once a week, you're not going to develop the continuity and the consistency. But even if you're mailing once a week or you're mailing six times a week, lead with value, lead with the customer. It's the same thing. It's the list, right? It's the list. Stupid. You know, it's not your offer, it's not your brilliant copy. Although the copy, if you're telling a story and it's narrative, yeah, you want to be entertaining. You want to be, you know, the, you know, email, like any copy is like, you need to go people the best. The purpose of every sentence is to go on to the next sentence. I know that sounds silly, but, you know, that's what it's all about. So being compelling, but being compelling means get into their head as much as. And doing research on your list. And the only way to do research is to survey them, to get into their mind. And here's the key. When they email you off your emails, read every email. I learned so much by the language they use, by the way they want to share with me what my list is thinking, what my online family is thinking, and that generates all new ideas. I mean, Ben has this way and Tom does this too. They take the emails they get from their audience and turn them into new emails. They read them the riot act. If it's a stupid email, Ben will tell you it's stupid. And. And he won't. He won't call him out by name, but he'll ream. But that's his style. And, you know, uh, that's just a writing style. And he's fine having anybody unsubscribe anytime. I am too, for that matter. You don't want people who are troublemakers and who are gonna just troll you on your list all the time. No, but people engaging is not trolling, and you want to give them the respect. So those are some of the things. But you're basically. Your question was the idea of being afraid to multiple email. It's crazy. And it was crazy for me. I experienced it. I said, but I knew I had to do at least once a week. And that's a minimum. That's a minimum. And now I'm doing more than once a week. And I'm not doing. I'm certainly not doing worse, and I'm definitely doing better. But I don't sell all the time. So I'm not the best barometer of, like, success rate. But my email, I mean, my email list is worth millions to me. Yeah, over time.

Speaker B: Over time. But in. When you talk, um, about like, yeah, you're not getting, like, tons of money, tons of success, like, every email is a sale. But what are some like, especially recently, I feel like with AI, we're looking at content completely different. So how has your conversation with your online family changed in the age of AI?

Speaker A: It's a good question. So I did an email that I was really proud of. I did one where I basically led with, uh. Because I basically said, I don't use AI at all when I write my Sunday blog. And then I said, well, one. In one email, I said, you know, I. I have this topic that I've talked about before. I wanted to see what AI would do with it. And I asked AI a, uh, complicated prompt, A couple of complicated prompts. Basically, I fed the previous blog post in. I said, um. And I was transparent with my list when I, you know, I led with this. I said, I'm going to do an AI experiment with you and I want your feedback. So basically what I. And the prompt was sort of leading to. I want to get. I want to create new lessons from this blog post without repeating the old ones, or at least only using the previous ones as a base or a foundation and come up with some new ideas from the blog post. And it did an okay job, you know. And then I commented within. So it was like. It was something I learned from a guy, Sean Stevenson, who was a great friend. Uh, uh, he used to teach speakers. He died suddenly, which was horrible. But, um, he did a live event once, and basically he was teaching people how to create a $10,000 speech. And he basically did it in real time for himself. He was on stage. He. And he would. It was. This is before AI. So he was like saying. He would talk about something and then he would say, stop, here's what I'm thinking. Here's what I'm. Here's what I'm going to do next. And he was like. It was almost like. It was like the. It was like reading, uh, a play of what he was doing with all of the stage directions. And he did it in a way that you could follow it like. Like when I'm doing narrative, when I'm doing instruction. And it was phenomenal. I tried to imitate that a little bit with this AI post that I did. I didn't do a great job in terms of what he did, but it was. It was a great experiment. And I'm going to do it again. I'm going to do it again and again and again. So basically, I want to. I want to. I want to love AI. I want to hug AI. I want to incorporate AI. I don't want to make it my savior. We have. We have a guy coming on to Titans Accelerator that you're. You're in my mastermind.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Accelerator, which is a virtual Mastermind. We have 30 live calls a year with guest speakers and hot seats and all that. And, um, we have a guy coming on this Thursday who is the perfect AI Guy. Because he's not like. Because he talks about AI in terms of three things. He says. It's either it's a say, is it a savior, is it a threat, or is it a tool? And basically it's all three.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And. But to not get all hyped up about any one of those things. Although if you're gonna get hyped up about it, get hyped up about it as a tool. But to get hyped up about it as a savior or to get hyped up about it as a threat will drive you crazy.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Because you could go down a rabbit. That's a real rabbit hole. You go down a rabbit hole that you'll never get out of. And you'll get depressed too. If you go. If you go for the, if you go for the, uh, the tragedy scenario, right. Um, you go for the Pollyanna scenario of like, everything is peachy with this shit. You'll also go crazy because then you'll make it the. The. The. The answer to everything. Now, of course, there are some people that are doing that successfully. Like, they, A lot of them, you know, they Use it as, uh, a. They use the threat factor as their thesis to show how not to make it a threat. That's valid. They can use it as, um, um, they could use it as the savior within reason. Some people use it without reason, but that's okay too. I mean, I think, I think as I said, you have to, you have to love it before you can hate it. I do think also that, you know, the whole, um. And I'm not the first to say this, I'm probably the, you know, hundred thousandth person to say this, but, you know, there is like a human need out there and it's happening everywhere. You know, you talk about the loneliness of men in America in particular. You know, it's like people need human connection and the fact that if you let AI take that away, we're taking away our lives there. Yeah, I'm not doing a lecture here on AI, so I, I'm not. But I do think that I want to ignore it is stupid to make it your entire business, I think is stupid. I mean, certain businesses should make it their whole business if they can automate their business. Uh, but we've had speakers at Titans Accelerator who basically, come on. One guy had AI agents doing everything in his business. And after he talked about, he said, the AI agents are scaring me. You know, they're doing stuff that I didn't ask them to do. And so I'm not recommending this for everybody here. But it's coming. It's coming where it's going, going to get better over time. And so you want to be prepared at each step. Do you need to be at the cutting edge on everything? I don't think so. Some people think you do. Even in people who do what I do, you know, who, who teach direct response marketing, think you have to know everything about, you know, Claude Chachi, PT Perplexity and how each one interacts with each other and all that shit. Uh, not for me. That's something I don't do well and I don't want to do it. So. So I'm not going to do it. But having people around me, like the guy who's going to speak this Thursday, like, I want to surround myself with people who know more than me and everything. And AI is no exception.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's one. I think you made a good point about the loneliness. And when it. If you put too much AI content, I think once you put the AI content out there you are. You can betray your list, your online family. Right. And that leads to more loneliness it's like, oh, nice letting the AI talk for him.

Speaker A: And I had, I had one where I was doing these Wednesday emails, which were summaries of the Titans accelerator calls from the week before. And my marketing partner Chris did them all in chat, GPT or Claude, I forget. And he would send me the draft because it wasn't my Sunday blog, which I basically promised that it would never be done with AI. Although when I use AI, I'm just transparent about it. And so. And that's just a principle for me. Not everybody needs to follow that. That's just how I work and. Huh. But so the Wednesday email started being all AI. And then with my edits, and even with my edits, I got multiple emails from my online family telling me, said, is this you? Like, really? I mean, people I kind of knew through correspondence. And one of the emails actually came from a copywriter who I've worked with for 25 years, um, who knows me like a book, who said, who knew it wasn't me. Like, even though I made, I made changes that were all me, like with my sense of humor, with my sarcasm and all of that. But they were only, they were only parts. They were, they were, they were like sporadic in the email. The email was basically, you know, written by AI. And so was that a lesson for me? No. I mean, I would do it again because it was, it was easier to do, it was faster. I didn't need to be as, as meticulous with the Wednesday emails as I am with the Sunday emails. That's decision. I could have made a decision that the Wednesday emails had to be all me, 100% too. I made a decision that I don't have the time for that. And that's where AI becomes again a tool not to abuse. It can be a savior because you get another email out during the week without the same effort and it might still be, it should be effective, still, it should deliver value. It's got all the same things that it needs to have, right? But I, I guess I didn't see any big damage to my reputation if I did. And I saw people were unsubscribing in droves right after that email, I would have taken notice. But my open rates haven't changed, the engagement rates haven't changed, and in fact, the. I used it as an engagement that I then spoke about in the next email. You know, if you read my Wednesday email, you'd know that, you know, it might not be all me. And then one of my readers told me about it. So it Became a topic to talk about. So as long it's like no harm, no foul, right? I guess. Um, but you have to watch it closely. You have to watch your numbers. You have to see if it's affecting your audience. Your audience is everything. If they get bored with you and they leave you, that's not good. As long as you don't want them to leave. Some people are worth leaving. The trolls go, goodbye. You know, I mean, that's my take on it, I think.

Speaker B: You know, I, I, I. It's such an important topic and a subtle topic and it's. But the point being is you need to email your list and you need to care about them. And I think this is important for everybody. Everyone. And because they're like, well, not in my business.

Speaker A: Like anybody who says, not my business, not in my business, read them. Especially if it's someone you can tell the truth to, tell them, shut the up. I don't know if I could curse on this podcast. This is a G rated podcast. But what I mean by that is, like, when someone's on a hot seat and they say, that doesn't apply to my business. Uh, like I want to say, shut the F up and listen. You have the rest of your life to reject this idea. Why do it now when you're in the middle of a hot seat? Like, it makes no sense. But people do that all the time. You know, they hear something and they say, doesn't apply to me. And they shut down. You know, if you're in a room or in a podcast or whatever, but even in a room with great marketers and people who know what they're talking about and you dismiss something. And that was a great line, Ian, because it was like, you know, not in my business, man. It's like, everything is your business. Yeah. Like when someone is on a hot seat before they even begin the hot seat, I always lead with, keep in mind, this business might have nothing to do with your business, but it might have everything to do with your business. In terms of what the challenge is, how they're looking at it, the questions that they're asking, and then the stuff that comes up in the discussion, get something out of it. Don't just dismiss it. Especially if you're in the right room. You know, being in the right room is everything. Sort of like, again, making sure the list is dialed in right. You don't want to be in a room of, like, idiots who can't help you or you can't help them. So, yeah, I think that's really critical. That was a great. That was a great, um, thing you pulled out there. That was.

Speaker B: I like that I. I hear it so much. Like, I'm like, are you emailing list? Uh, oh, no. Like, it's.

Speaker A: You're right that it didn't work. How about that one?

Speaker B: Yeah, we tried that. It didn't work. And then I'll go post a thousand posts to LinkedIn that, like, a few people will see that you don't know. You can't control at all who sees them.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: But to your point, you can control the list. You can control who sees it. You can send it to them again in a different way, and then you can monitor everything. And, you know, people always ask me like, well, I. How do I get more traffic to my YouTube videos? And I'm like, um, here's my secret traffic hack. You send them to people like, well, I'm like, have you emailed any of these videos to anyone? They're like, no. Like.

Speaker A: And that'll be $10,000 for that piece of advice.

Speaker B: Exactly. It's. It's. And like, you're saying people will if you get the right information and you. And you get good at talking to them and listening to them and making your online family. And that's something I want to work on more. And I forget so often. And that was great hearing from m. You. It's like. And I sent to my list and I got such a great response. I'm like, oh. You know, because it's. It's the only thing I. And going forward, like, I think we're entering an age where AI is just talking to AI and social media.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so it, like, LinkedIn has become kind of a dumpster fire of just AI back and forth, you know, AI posts and AI commenters. So, like, it's the one place that you can, you know, besides texting, that you know, which kind of falls in the same camp. Get, uh, in front of people. Um, but to your point, you've got to listen and you got to be around smart people. And so you. You all should remember Brian kurtz.net we'll put a link to in the show note, get on his list and, uh,

Speaker A: become a member of my online family. I just want to mention one thing. You maybe thought of something else. I wrote a blog post that the subject line was the last 10% is everything. And you can. You can glean what that. What my m. What I was getting at just by the subject line. But basically what my thesis was that I'm good. I Will till the day I die. I will believe that. That no matter how much AI takes away our personalities, takes away, you know, writes copy for us, becomes our own, you know, clone, whatever. It's that last 10% that, you know, you're human. You're a human being. You'll always be a human being, you'll always be unique. And this sounds like a pep talk for people who are thinking about, you know, I get a lot of emails from copywriters who are giving up. I can't compete with A.I. you know, they can write. Claude, can write copy better than I can. Chances are you shouldn't have been a copywriter then. But that's okay. But, but I think that it's. So I said, I said it sounds like the last 10% of everything. I admitted that. It sounds like I'm just trying to justify my existence, right? It's like I'm gonna justify the fact that I'm a human being, I'm unique, and no one's gonna take that away from me. And therefore I'll always be relevant. That might not be true even in my lifetime, and my lifetime isn't, you know, I don't have a lot. I don't have as many years left as most of your listeners, probably. On the other hand, why live into. Like, I'm gonna be taken over by a bot? You might, but, like, why resign yourself to that when you can still have the power? You met. You said, you know, you have the power. You own your, you know, you own the platform, not necessarily the email service provider, but you own your platform much more than you do on Facebook or, Or Instagram. On email. You own the platform, your own platform, you own your online family. So, uh, like, why would you throw your hands up at any time, even if it gets frustrating? So that was the whole concept of the last 10% is everything was. I guess it was a little bit of a pep talk to people justifying my own existence, but trying to help people justify each of their individual existences because we're all individuals. And that was my, that was my premise. And I think, I think it's, uh. I know it's valid whether it's true or not. Forever, I can't say. Um, but I'm not going through life thinking that being a bot would be better than being me.

Speaker B: Well, it's, you know, not to get metaphysical or whatever, but I mean, if you really think about AI and what it. The ultimate, what it can be, it. It doesn't have true experience. It has online experience.

Speaker A: It has like that everything that's ever been put on the Internet.

Speaker B: Has everything been put on the Internet, which most of our like, most experts experience isn't put on the Internet. Right.

Speaker A: I mean a lot of it is because we tell stories, but even when, when AI pulls a story from my. Because I have a personal bot that one of my members built for me, um, one of my Titan's Accelerator members built for me. And um, even though I have, she loaded up all of my blog posts with all of my stories. So when I go to that, that, that, that bot that, that GPT that she built for me, um, and I asked for like some examples of this concept. It's, it doesn't pull all my stories. No, it doesn't pull the right story even usually. So that's the other thing. It's like the right story for the right email, for the right time at the right moment. That's a, that's a decision that I think, not that there are any shoulds in the world, but you should make that your own yourself and you'll be more satisfied with it in the end.

Speaker B: And it forces you to think about everything that's going on. And I think at that moment. And that's another thing that you know, AI isn't thinking about, it's, it's thinking about. Well, let me get all this.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: This is fantastic. Uh, so Brian, we'll put a link to the show notes, uh, and also your amazing book over deliver.

Speaker A: Yeah, so that would be another way to connect with me. Although it could cost you like a seven dollar Kindle or a, a twenty dollars book. Um, whereas signing up for my online family doesn't cost you anything. And I'm not gonna force you to ever buy anything from me. But if you go to overdeliverbook.com I'll make it worth your while if you buy my book. Because the bonuses for the book. You write a book called over deliver, you better over deliver on the bonuses. There are 11amazing bonuses. I'll just give you a couple of them. One of them is like 19 keynote speeches that Jay Abraham has given over his career.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: Jay Abraham wrote the forward to my book. He's a mentor of mine. He's been, he's a legendary. If I'm not a legend, he is. Um, there's a, um, swipe file from Dan Kennedy. Hopefully people have heard of him, um, where he co hosted an event with me in 2014 and he did a swipe file just for that event and the PDF of that swipe File is one of the bonuses. I've got two books that are out of print, um, by my two major mentors in direct mail. And people will say, oh, direct. We didn't get into direct mail today. That was the interview from 10 years ago. We could have talked about direct mail today because it's still relevant. And there are two books, PDFs of two books by Dick Benson and Gordon Grossman out of print. But I've got the full PDFs of both of their books and their masterpieces about direct mail. And don't think that, you know, war stories about the trenches of direct mail in the 1960s to the 1990s don't apply to online marketing today. They do. So that's 2 of the bonuses, the 2 books. So it's just an amazing. And so basically what I'm saying is that the bonuses are worth a lot more than my book.

Speaker B: So, um, it's amazing book. Um, I talked to everyone about it. I think it's one of those fundamental

Speaker A: books that if you're coming from you, that means a lot because you're a marketing fundamentalist who's also in the state of the art of video and podcasting and things that I'm not an expert in at all. And so for you to say, that means a lot. It really does.

Speaker B: It's great. I mean, it's, it's a classic. And there's so many, like rfm, all these ideas that are so important that I think everyone just discounts, but it's the fundamentals. And, uh, so we'll put a link to that in the show notes. And, you know, it's, It's. It's a bargain. And if you really want, if you're really invested in your marketing, you're spending a few thousand dollars a month, even. You need to become a student in marketing. And this is fantastic information. Brian, thanks so much. Thank you so much for being on. This has been fantastic.

Speaker A: It's been great, Ian.

Speaker B: And, uh, thank you all for making Brian and I part of your journey, part of your story. This been Iron Garlic and the Garlic Marketing show video. You know, it'll make you an authority. You know, it will get you more leads, better leads that close faster and spend more with you. And video stories will help you be remembered and connect with those perfect clients. The problem is, where do you start? Storycruise.com is the place to go. It's like a film crew with an s. What's your strategy? Do you do it yourself? Do you hire a videographer? An agency? Do you need an editor? How do you know if they really know your business and how to make videos for business that work? The answer to all of this and more can be found@storycruise.com it is the place to find the latest video marketing strategies, the best gear for your business, as well as videographers, editors and agencies near you that are trained in video storytelling for business. Go to storycruise.comgarlic to get special insider info for listeners of the Garlic Marketing show, including special access to several of my courses, including including my Case Story course. Go to storycruise.comgarlic to get a whole bunch of special offers just for listeners of the Garlic Marketing Show. Whether you're looking for a videographer or to do it yourself, go to storycruise.comgarlic to get started today.

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