Brian Kurtz – Read This or Die

SalePage: Brian Kurtz – Read This or Die

Description of Read This or Die

Dear Friend,

Have you ever wondered how much higher-performing, profit-producing copy you could write if you were able to “pick the brain” of one of the greatest copywriters who ever lived?

Not just a copywriter who is “good.”

Or even a hallowed A-Lister.

But someone with a unique ability to produce industry-shaking breakthroughs? The type of copywriter who comes around only once or twice a decade?

Well, on this page, I am going to share with you a rare opportunity to do just that.

Jim Rutz was known as the guy you called when you needed a control that could pull record-breaking response.

He could—with a flick of his pen—generate millions in revenue. Hundreds of thousands of new customers. And quite literally build businesses on the back of a single promotion.

He commanded fees up to $100,000 per package—plus hundreds of thousands more in royalties too. And if you count for inflation, that means Jim was raking in a cool half million for writing a single sales letter.

But even with those outrageous fees, he had all the best direct-marketing companies of the day vying for a slot on his calendar. Companies like, Boardroom, Phillips Publishing, Rodale, KCI Communications, Agora and more.

I can tell you for a fact…There was no one like Jim Rutz

It wasn’t until I visited Jim at his Colorado Springs home that I came to realize just how it was that he got to be so good.

I had worked with Jim for years by that time. And we had mailed millions of his direct-mail packages selling Boardroom’s highest-grossing books and newsletters.

And because he seemed to have a constant outflow of “knock you on your butt” ideas, I had always sort of assumed that writing brilliant, breakthrough copy came easily to him.

But then I visited Jim’s home. And when he opened the door and led me inside, I saw that…

He didn’t have a single piece of furniture anywhere in sight!

Instead, he had stacks and stacks of ad copy he had gotten from the biggest mailers of the day.

And that is how Jim got to be so good.

Even while cranking out one multimillion-dollar control after another… and reaching legendary status among his peers…

Jim continued to build his copywriting skills head and shoulders above those he competed against by reading, studying, and absorbing every bit of control copy he could get his hands on.

And with all that control copy “bouncing around his brain,” it is no wonder Jim pumped out what seemed to be an endless number of winning ideas, such as…

Jim’s “brain-child” that revolutionized the world of marketing and has been used to sell billions worth of products in almost every industry and niche imaginable

Maybe you’ve heard about the “magalog.” It’s a long-form sales letter with lots of sidebars and order forms that masquerades as a magazine.

But what you might not know is that the magalog was the brainchild of Jim Rutz and a top-notch designer named Ed Elliott.

And unless you’ve been in direct-marketing as long as I have, you probably don’t know just how truly groundbreaking the magalog was.

In fact, Gary Bencivenga, who is widely known as “The World’s Greatest Living Copywriter,” said in one of the few interviews he ever granted that…

“As soon as I saw that first magalog, I knew these guys had done it.”

They had “done it” indeed.

Because the magalog—plus the “bookalog” and other formats it spawned—became so successful that almost no other direct-mail format is used by any of the major mailers then or now.

Which is why Boardroom, Rodale, Phillips Publishing, Agora, and many of the biggest names in our industry will tell you that they used the magalog to not only build entire product lines, but…

In some cases they used it to build entire businesses

For example:

One of Jim’s most notable promotions was a “bookalog”—the book version of a magalog—he wrote for Phillips Publishing with the infamous headline:

This legendary promotion sold a whopping 100,000+ subscriptions for Phillip’s Publishing’s “Alternatives” newsletter despite breaking every headline “rule” known to man.

“Read This Or Die.”

I can’t say for sure how many subscribers this promotion generated for their newsletter Alternatives, with Dr. David Williams as the “guru.” But word on the street is the number was somewhere north of 100,000 new subscribers at $39 to $79 a pop.

Which means:

This promotion brought in $6 million or more in revenue… on the front end alone.

And when you count the year-after-year subsequent renewal revenue… the high-priced air filters and water purifiers sold to subscribers on the back-end… and the hordes of new subscribers who would rabidly buy Dr. Williams’ recommended supplements from Phillips’ nutritional supplements subsidiary, Healthy Directions…

Add it all up and you’re talking about tens of millions of dollars or more produced by one winning promotion

That’s the power of studying Jim Rutz’s copy and using the same principles to create your own breakthrough promotions.

If you’re a copywriter, it can put you on the map and get the best, most prestigious clients lining up to work with you.

If you’re an offer owner, it can potentially add a zero to your yearly sales or even your profits.

And with all that success surrounding Jim, it is easy to see why A-Listers like David Deutsch and John Carlton sought him out when they were looking for a mentor.

It’s also why—especially since Jim passed away in 2014—savvy copywriters and marketers have searched far and wide for samples of his work to study and learn from.

Yet all too often, they’ve come up empty-handed.

Because even though Jim was a “founding father” of our industry…

His work and teachings are extremely rare.

Jim never sold a course on copywriting. He never promoted himself as “guru of the month.” And outside of the small handful of publishers he called clients and the few copywriters he taught…

Almost no one has ever seen Jim’s work or so much as gotten a glimpse inside his brilliant marketing mind

That’s why, unless you were on lots of mailing lists in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s… and you happened to get and save one of Jim’s breakthrough promotions…

It is nearly impossible to find any of his work today.

In fact, Lawrence Bernstein—the “world’s most obsessive ad archivist” and the man behind the popular Info Marketing Blog—confirmed this.

Telling us that he, even after a lifetime of looking, had only one or two Rutz pieces in his personal swipe file.

Which shows you just how rare these promotions are.

Until one day…

A chance phone call from The Copy Sister saved these rare promotions from “dusty death”

If Jim Rutz is a little-known “Titan of Direct-Response,” then his sister, Ginger (aka “The Copy Sister”), is even less so.

Jim Rutz with his baby sister Ginger. What most don’t know is that Ginger was Jim’s secret copyediting weapon. He “trained” her from a young age by reciting poetry to her by rote since the tender age of just 9 years old.

Ginger was Jim’s “secret copyediting weapon”—working behind-the-scenes on many of Jim’s most successful promotions.

She was responsible for making sure each piece was perfect. And for “toning down” any of Jim’s eccentricities that might be offensive or fly 10,000 miles over the reader’s head. (Jim was that “off-the-wall” and unique!)

One day shortly after Jim had passed, I got a phone call from Ginger. And strangely enough, I happened to be writing Jim’s eulogy at the time.

When I picked up the phone, Ginger told me something wonderful.

She said that she had been organizing Jim’s belongings and had found a box of hundreds of promotions he had saved as part of his personal swipe file.

And right then she knew what she had found was “gold” to any copywriter or marketer working today.

But there was a problem!

When Ginger found these promotions, she realized none of them were labeled or organized.

Which meant we had no way to tell the genuine Rutz controls from the ones Jim had gotten in the mail and saved to study.

It felt like finding a box of unsigned plays at Shakespeare’s house. And having no way to tell which were “lost plays” he wrote and which he admired enough to save.

But then, by a stroke of luck…

I had to almost die before I was ready to put this out

Seriously.

It wasn’t until I had a stroke and saw “old man death” knocking at my door that I realized if I didn’t get this product out now… that it might just become an unrealized footnote in the story of my life.

And so it was the fickle nature of life that made me realize that now is the time.

So finally, after all these years and a near brush with death, my team and I collected 208 of Jim’s best and rarest promotions in: health, supplements, financial, B2B, consumer, services, and more.

And thus we created a one-of-a-kind direct-response collection that no copywriter worth his or her salt should be without. It’s called:

Read This Or Die: The Lost Files Of Jim Rutz

To help you decide if it’s something you really do want, here’s a quick overview of everything you get when you pick up this one-of-a-kind collection today:

• Over 200 promotions (many of them generating millions in revenue) – Including: Financial, Health, General Consumer, Business, Services, Personal Ads and more.
• “Rutz Selling Rutz” – Where you will see how the master himself sold his copywriting services. Here you can find the perfect “swipe and deploy” material for copywriters, coaches, consultants, and other service providers that live or die by their own selling power.
• “Dear Jim” – A never-before-seen cache of Jim’s personal correspondences. See letters from young John Carlton and David Deutsch persuading Jim to be their mentor. Plus, find out what Gary Bencivenga and legendary copywriting scout John Finn talk about “behind closed doors.”
• ”Sex” – This section—curiously named because “Religion” sounded too boring – shares some of Jim’s promotional materials for the religious movement he built from the ground up. If you’ve ever wondered how to change the religious habits of hundreds of thousands of devout Christians… this section can show you how!
• The Jim Rutz Headline & Teaser Copy “Cheat Sheet” – Scan through Jim’s best headlines and teaser copy whenever you need some inspiration. Not only will this get you “up to speed” very quickly on one of the greatest headline writers who ever lived… but you can also use it as an “instant headline or subject line generator”! Plus, scanning through it is just plain fun!
• Jim Rutz’s “Furniture” – As mentioned, my team of “copy sleuths” had to track down and verify each of the 208 rare promotions in this collection. Unfortunately we couldn’t verify them all. Which is why this section holds all the unverified pieces. Whether they were written by Rutz or not… he made a point to save them. Which makes them every bit as worthy of study and will give you an even deeper insight into how Jim got to be so good.
• Jim Rutz “Live” – In this section, you will get two “can’t-find-anywhere-else” audio trainings plus full transcripts. The first is an uncut recording of a rare interview Jim granted to none other than the legendary copywriter, Clayton Makepeace. In the second audio training, you will hear me sit down with two of Jim’s closest mentees, John Carlton and David Deutsch (both A-List copywriters themselves), as I grill them on what copywriters and marketers working today can learn from Jim’s legacy. And how you can use these ideas to increase the selling power of your copy right away. This is over 2 hours of hard-hitting audio content that you will want to listen to again and again. (One young copywriter I talked to said he’s listened to these 5 times each… and still isn’t done yet!)

The fact is, you have the chance to own the swipe file of one of the greatest copywriters who ever lived.

But with everything included above, this collection goes way beyond a mere “swipe file.”

Because when you get this collection into your hands—When you begin imbibing and absorbing some of the most creative and brilliant ad copy ever to be mailed… when you see breakthrough after breakthrough and hear the secrets from the master himself…

Readmore about: Brian Kurtz