Reinvent Faster: Winning Strategies for Business and Politics with Kurt & Kristen Luidhardt

I remember to this day a time in early 2010 when we sat down and said, we've been running a business now for almost four years. We've been grabbing change out of our cushions to pay for pizza and just going along and we're racking up debt. If we can't make it this year, we need to just get real jobs. And that was the first year we ever made some serious money.

Hey, I'm Joe Fear and welcome to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. The this is where we talk all about building businesses so they give you the freedom and fuel for your life. I'm not here to help you build a billion dollar business, but I am here to help you create a business with systems that work for you so you can make more money than you need just by working part time. You know, I was a chronic Hustle mode kind of guy and I want to share my experiences and mentors I've met along the way to help you reframe things to be the most effective as an entrepreneur. I wish I had this guidance and insight when I was younger, so that's what I'm doing here for you. Please share and enjoy.

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I know it feels like years ago, but just a couple of months, it feel.

I think what we've ended up doing, I mean, we've been chatting a lot about what you've done in the political space, you and Kristen with Prosper Group. And it's been. It's been pretty epic. And I love. So I don't know exactly how to start that off. Start this off, other than saying that you guys are veterans in the space of helping people get elected, primarily on the Republican side. And what you got a president, 14 governors, 15 senators, 88 members of Congress elected. I don't know if any of these numbers are outdated or if.

I mean, I validated. It's actually a little more than 100 members of Congress now, but who's counting?

And it's a testament to some really smart ways of approaching marketing. And I love the way that you both think about.

Not only obviously, campaigns, but now translating that over to business owners. And that's where we connected is with what you're doing at Reinvent Faster. And you know Mike Cannings, a lot of people here know of Mike. He's been on the podcast. So, you know, the guy is just brilliant at kind of putting pieces together. And it's been really cool to see how now you're translating what you've done in the political space and bring that to business owners.

Well, it really. It's. It's taken on a life of its own a little bit, which is an exciting ride. But it really started with us wanting to or having this realization that we could help traditional businesses with their marketing with all of these things we've learned from politics. You know, Kurt jokes that we just had this assumption that it was more sophisticated than what we do, and so surely we couldn't. We wouldn't have anything to offer. And then we started having conversations with people because we've been doing this for 17 years, and we've never had anything to offer if you weren't running for office or involved in some kind of advocacy effort, you just weren't a potential customer. And as we talked with people and their frustrations with their. With their ad, their marketing partners or their vendors, we just realized that, yeah, there's so much we can bring to people because of our obsession with metrics and, and all of these things. So really what Reinvent Faster is, is our new effort to take what we have learned doing all this work in politics, marketing, and helping people get elected to helping your business get elected. Right. And helping you grow and expand and add more value. And it's taking all those lessons. We've built our own framework that we can try to educate business owners on what to do. And it's just taking all of these lessons that we've learned and trying to help you apply it to your business.

That's what's so fascinating and why, you know, I really would love to understand how your mindset works when it comes to a campaign, working with a politician or an elected, maybe soon to be elected official, working with you all. But how that also translates to business owners because it's, it's this interesting kind of startup mentality. It seems like you have this very finite window of time. You have resources, the messaging, what you mentioned, data and analytics. So you're heavy on that.

If you're running for office, you might start a year, sometimes as little as six months ahead of election day and have to build an entire organization in a short period of time. And some of these candidates go from literally nothing, it's them and their spouse saying let's do this all the way to a team of 100 people and spend $50 million in the course of a year and a half or two years. And that's a massive undertaking. And many of them start from no real awareness. There's no known brand for that individual out in the market. And it creates an environment where we've learned how to compress what maybe a business would do over the course of 8 to 10 years into 8 to 10 months and eliminate all the malarkey, eliminate all the stuff that the, the little dog trails that you go off on when you have unlimited time and unlimited ability to be happy being fourth or fifth in the industry. But a politician needs to be number one. There is no number two. There's no, there's no value in being second place. It's you win or lose. You've got a defined election day. There's a tremendous amount of urgency. So we, you, you end up pushing away all the nonsense. Now, there are candidates who lose too, that get engaged in a lot of nonsense. But the winning candidates learn how to get past all that stuff and stay laser focused on what really matters.

You make a really good point on, I mean on all of that because you have this perspective and I want to go back in time. I mean, we've talked about the successes of what you've done and what's been over 15 years or more, I believe.

17 years in business, but over 25 years, really in the industry.

Right, exactly. So I want to. I want to get, like, get the story briefly on how each of you got into this industry. And I know you have some fun stories there as well, but also just to highlight the fact of what you just said there, Kurt, is you have this such finite window of time where it's like. Like, yeah, you look at yourself like a business owner. You might look at the finite time as like, your bank account or whatever investments you have to, you know, start a business up from scratch or scale it. But, yeah, it's. It's very easy to get distracted when you don't have these blinders or this constraint. And then also you make a good point. You have to be number one to win. I mean, there is no second play. Like that's first loser, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. It doesn't get you anything.

Yeah. So it's all or nothing. And the fact that you had this perspective and you've been doing it for this long and with the success track record. Take me back now to the days of, like, what got you into here? And then I always love to highlight the struggles, like, I think we could all relate to the failures and the things along the ways, because all.

Yeah.

You know, I think you'll find that most political operatives have the same story.

For me, though, maybe I started a little more nerdy than others. I was that kid who brought the briefcase to high school and listened to the news and talked.

I didn't know him then.

Exactly. And talked and talked. Current events with the social studies teacher.

Okay.

And just started volunteering for small political campaigns, people running for things like county commissioner and city council. And really loved it and grasped the excitement of the. And the movement in the kind of political scene and all the crazy controversy that goes on. And this person's doing this and this person's doing that, and I just ate it up and loved it. And it just takes a hold of you like a drug. And the. Everybody, almost everyone we talk to in the industry experiences the same thing. It's. It's like a high that you get on the. To work in the space. And then you. You can't imagine doing anything else, which is probably why it's taken us 25 years to entertain the idea of doing anything else. And so I just started volunteering and did that in high school, did it again in college. And I organized college Republican club at my university, which we didn't have at the time. And that's how I met this lovely lady. So she may claim, she may claim that she was cooler than I was, but she was the one who showed up at a college Republican Club meeting, so.

Oh, there's evidence I was cooler. We don't have to argue that that's.

That'S we can flash images on the screen later or what? No, I'm just kidding.

Yes. And, and we, and that's how we met and just continued to get involved there. We didn't really convert the idea into a business until much later. We, we were just the kinds of sort of, you know, political hacks for hire. For a long time you work for a campaign and then election day comes, you're unemployed and you find somebody else to work for and you're unemployed again. And one day soon after we were married, we said to ourselves, this is getting old. You know, we were not going to, we're not going to really make anything of ourselves if we're basically unemployed every eight to 10 months. We need to start a business, which may or may not been a brilliant epiphany because we started a business in politics which. The only difference between losing Your job every eight to 10 months is we lose all of our clients every.

What's the longevity of clients?

An idea, brilliant idea.

And we, we started, we did. Hadn't done anything notable at the time. We were just small time operators, small time campaigns. We didn't have much of a portfolio to brag about. We had some connections and where we were living at the time in Indiana and to talk about struggles. I remember to this day a time in early 2010 when we sat down and said, we're, we've been running a business now for almost four years. We've been grabbing change out of our cushions to pay for pizza and, and just going along and we're, we're racking up debt and we just, if we can't make it this year, we need to just get real jobs. And that was the first year we ever made some serious money. It was a great, it was a big wave election year for Republicans. So we were.

Massive breakout for us. Yeah.

And just a big breakout. We almost, but we almost quit, you know, earlier that year.

No, we were, I was ready to be done.

Tell me about it. Kristen. Yeah, yeah. What? Like, because this is the part where a lot of people do quit and break and maybe they're not seeing what's to come right around the corner. But yeah, take me back then.

Well, we had just, it's just like there's so many stories about this, right, where the person.

You know, has their big goal, their big dream and they're working at it and working at it. And we had that work ethic and discipline and we had been driving all over the country because, you know, there was no elections in Indiana. We started off just working in our home state, which is in Indiana. Yay, Hoosiers.

And you know, but we had an off year, there were no elections. So it's like, oh my God, we've now got to find customers elsewhere. And so we hit the road and you know, we had no money, so sometimes we couldn't even afford a hotel. We'd sleep in our car. And you're showing up talking about your team back home that can do the work, which is like, there is no, there's like a couple of people, you know.

And yeah, my team will get right on that. And.

So we had just been traveling, we'd been doing all the hard work and it just was very difficult because like he said, we didn't have any clout. We weren't well connected in Washington D.C. most people that were starting businesses in this space, they had been working for a national committee or a very large, well known campaign. They were connected, we were not. And so that's how you would start your business, you know, and you had some clients already to like hire you right when you started. And we were not quite that way. So. But it paid off. You know, it really paid off. Eventually, all that hard work. We got hired by, by some clients that year that, that just ended up being breakout elections and it put us on the map. And so after that 2010 election campaign, I'm trying to think, I think that year then we had had 14 winning members of Congress. We went from doing very little to all of a sudden having this massive election. We'd worked with two of the top US Senate races in the country, governors, campaigns that weren't supposed to win one. It just was like everything just came. And truth be told, I don't take credit for it. I think it was God's blessing, but we certainly had worked very hard. And I was, I was ready to, to call it in. And we had an agreement, we had a pact, this is the last year we're going to try and if we can't make it work, were done and, and it was incredible. So it's just a lesson that we've been There I know what that feels like. I know when you're like crying in the car, you know, or like having those, those, those plagues of self doubt and just feeling like you're spinning your wheels. If you just go a little bit more, a little bit further than you think you can go, you'll get there.

And that's incredible. Yeah. And thanks for sharing that. And what was the, I guess the point. You said the election year, what, 2010. Right. So was there something that triggered things to just start clicking? I know you said there was a lot of Republican candidates that were getting a lot of traction, so I'm sure that helped. That's market conditions, I guess. Right.

Kurt can pontificate better, but I like to, I like to emphasize this point, but it was that it was all the underdogs. That one. It was a big insurgent year within the Republican Party. And so the fact that we weren't well connected meant we got all the underdog clients.

Yes.

And then we just rode. There was a big wave. That's why I said it wasn't all us, you know.

Sure, yeah, that's all right.

But I can let you expand on that further.

You know, in, in business, in life, it's often the, the metaphor of the rocket ship that takes more fuel to just get the first little bit off the ground than it takes to get to the other end of space is true. We had spent so much time building relationships all over the country, those car rides that each, that in and of themselves often felt like a waste. I still remember driving to Oklahoma once from Indiana, which is a 14 hour drive for what was one major meeting. And on the way there, I stopped to meet with one other gentleman. I got to the meeting, I really wanted to have the gentleman who we thought could be a good business partner for us and bring us a lot of opportunity. And I told him about my previous meeting. It was a guy I didn't like and he kicked me out of the office. I drove all the way back 14 hours. And those meetings, why are we doing this? But it was the cumulative effort of all of those meetings and the fact that the investment made meant that we made some connections that ultimately led to the campaigns that made, that changed our business. It was, it was helping defeat, helping win a U.S. senate race in Massachusetts, which was again one of those random things where we, we found a state senator who wanted to run for U.S. senate in Massachusetts as a Republican, which was a laughable thing to even stay out, say out loud. And, and then he won in January 2010. And we. We ended up working on several big races like that that were the efforts of those meetings. And probably also in part because we were forced to get out of our comfort zone. We weren't just sticking around in our backyard.

Right.

We were forced to drive to Massachusetts, Virginia, New Jersey, Oklahoma, California. And these are places that. These are trips we wouldn't have taken had we felt like there was opportunity in our backyard. So it was probably a blessing. Yeah. That in 2009, Indiana had no candidates on the ballot. If we were going to survive, we were going to have to find races. And then it was the little connections. We ended up getting a meeting with the Republican running for governor of Virginia because the gentleman in his home state went to our alma mater, and he happened to be on the Republican State Committee.

I forgot.

And the governor needed the future governor. He was the attorney general at the time. He needed his support for something he wanted. So we were able to get a meeting as a favor to this guy who was part of our alma mater. And that meeting led to another big client, and that guy won his race for governor, Bob McDonnell in Virginia. And that engagement with Bob McDonald led to a positive recommendation to Governor Chris Christie in New Jersey, which led to a small engagement with Chris Christie in New Jersey. So by the time we rolled into 2010, we had worked for the three biggest Republican victories in 2009.

That makes sense.

And the year that we were going.

To give up, by the way, we were. We hadn't quite got there. But those three wins in 09 that weren't giant and in early 2010 led to what ended up being a banner year for us. And so that, I think, is. Is. Is where I would keep my mind. If you're a business owner who's in your fourth year and still taking sales meetings thinking, I don't know about this.

You may just be at that hundredth meeting that gets the job done. Yeah.

And I know there's so many stories like that, and we hear it all the time, but it's like, it's true. And we are way more connected than we think we are. Even if you feel like you have no connections like you just stated you did, and you literally hit the road and all over the place. I mean, I can't believe you Drew. Drove out to California even and all. I mean, that's far.

It's good relationship time, too, by the way.

I was gonna. I was gonna mention that.

Well, good and bad, I guess.

Hampton Inns, those were the best. They were reliable, affordable. They had Free breakfast. That's where, that's where you stay.

That's it.

In case you need a tip. Anybody.

Yeah.

This is incredible. And I wanna translate this over to. So business owners, what, what gives you the spark to now take this package of knowledge which I would love for you to maybe use some of these elections that you've, that you've helped win, maybe that president one, if it's relevant. That's interesting. But like, because you're doing so much, you're fundraising, you know, you're doing the marketing side of things, I'm sure, I mean there's probably a lot I don't, I'm not even aware of, but so I guess talk about that bridge now as it relates to business owners.

Well, first I'd like to answer your question a little bit about why. And we, we both in our own way got involved in politics because fundamentally you want to change the world. And I was really a believer in sort of conservative ideas. Still am. And I thought if I go into politics and I help elect the right people, that the sun will come out, the waters will part, there'll be rainbows everywhere and the economy will thrive. And you, you, you start with this belief that if I get the right politicians elected, the world's going to be a better place. Right. And over time you start to, I started to recognize that's sometimes true. And we work for a ton of really good people. And I think that in general in this country we tend to have a more negative view of politicians than we should. They're mostly good, well motivated, well intentioned people in a really bad system and with really bad incentive structure. That being said, we, we, at some point you realize there's not a politician we can elect that's going to save us. And we've fallen into that trap a little bit. As a society we think, well, our politic, our problem are these politicians or if we just elect this person, or if we just elect that person and we've abdicated responsibility for our own communities and our own families. And it became clear to me over time I was making a lot of difference simply employing 50 people and supplying their families with income and supporting them emotionally and supporting them when they had health care problems. And, and that the money then that we made that we were able to turn around and give to community organizations was making a big difference. And it hit me at that point that maybe a politician wouldn't change the world, but thousands of businessmen and women thriving and driving the economy would make a giant difference. And then I saw it so much more clearly even when I, when Chris and I took on this little side hustle slash passion project of my own, which is we in my little hometown of New Washington, Ohio. Hello fellow Buckeye Central bucks. We. The local walk up ice cream shop had posted on Facebook that they were going to close in 2022 if somebody didn't buy them. And I was crazy enough and I don't know if I just caught Kristen on a good day to talk her into buying an ice cream shop where.

We don't live or we don't know.

Anything about the business and I live four hours away. The only thing I know about restaurants is how to eat in one. But again it became an example of how even a small ice cream shop brings so much joy into the community. The community appreciated it staying open. So that's why I've become so much more passionate about helping businesses. Because I'm connecting the original dream I had which was changing the world to these businessmen and women, family owned businesses. People like Kristen and I who are sitting at home fishing through their coat couch cushions right now saying I don't know if I can make it. Who I know if they give it that extra bit can make a lot of difference in the world and solve a lot of problems. So that's why I think we're here.

It's a beautiful why.

Yeah.

And it's a much better of a ripple. I wouldn't say better but it's a more effective ripple effect. You have a lot more control over the outcome.

Yeah. Yeah.

You can measure.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's what's really driving us to do it. And then Kristen hit on it as well. When we started talking to businesses I was just shocked at the, the, the fact that there were. They were so poorly served by the, the marketing firms they were working with or they just really hadn't grasped what was required to generate the kind of growth they wanted to have. They didn't know how to put it together. And I, and, and I was finding what I thought were relatively obvious solutions from what we were doing in politics. But just felt strange. Yeah. To a business or, or their marketing firm just wasn't used to that kind of let's just get this done and not screw around kind of attitude that.

We have at the time.

Right.

How long does this need to take? Let's go.

Why are we spending this money if we can't track it to a sale? Why are we, why are we, why are we telling this message which clearly nobody gives a crap about instead of Sharing the true emotional appeal that makes people want to do business with you. And so it was that secondary motivation of seeing. Well, actually, we have a lot to offer.

Right.

These people that I, we had. I had doubts about. I have my own sort of beliefs that, well, these brand marketers must be, you know, all masters, because that's all they do. And I've not found that to be true.

No way.

Yeah.

I'll tell you that right now. I've talked to a lot of them all making it up, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's a big experiment. And like, what you. I mean, what you've done in the. In the politics space and still do. I know you have frameworks, you have ways to approach things. You're using data and analytics. There's goals, like there's certain metrics and things you're trying to hit. I'm going to pause this really fast and shout out another podcast that's on the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. This one one's a podcast hosted by someone I've followed for years. I've read his books. His name is Donald Miller, and he hosts the podcast called Business Made Simple. The whole premise there with that show is that it helps take the mystery out of growing your business. And one of the recent episodes is one with Alex Hermosi, someone else I followed for years now. And it's all about talking about the uncertainties that we're living in right now in 2024 beyond, but how we can take our business and shore it up. There's actually four principles Alex shares and Don gets into it as well. So definitely recommend checking that out to go listen to Business Made simple, hosted by Donald Miller, wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I want to tell you about an all in one marketing platform that's been a game changer for a bunch of businesses. It's called Kartra, and it's the all in one tool that you need to grow. So the point is, you don't need to pay for a whole bunch of different things, subscriptions, because Kartra does it all. So what makes Kartra different is that you can automate everything. Everything from delivering your online courses, sending targeted emails, selling products, and even handling your customer support. So all in all, it's saving you time and a bunch of money. And right now, you can try it out for 30 days. Just head over to hustleandflowchart.com Kartra and go get that free trial again. That is hustleandflowchart.com K A R T R A and maybe this is where we can kind of transition because I would love to give some frameworks and methodologies that you use in that space, in the politics space, successfully, very successfully, and how that translates to business and some takeaways that someone listening now can start to implement and think about.

Chris and I spent some time thinking about, okay, there's some bad campaigns that lose, there's some good campaigns that win, tough campaigns, there are some candidates who are going to win no matter what. But let's look at the ones that are in the toughest campaigns, the most competitive, the most expensive, the most surprising victories. And let's find out of our clients, what did we find that was in common? And we really found they were, they were all sort of, they would all sort of fit into a four step framework that we, we then took some time, put it into paper and, and we ex. And, and we're called our reinvent faster X framework or RFX framework. So but what we learned is first of all, the ones who win take some time at the beginning to think about their strategy and to be thoughtful about who they are, how they want to represent themselves to the world. And they don't just jump right into it. And I've seen it both ways. We have clients, they, they, they decide they want to run for office, they want to tell the world the next day. And they haven't really thought about how do they want to present. They've not thought about what their brand is, they haven't thought about what they're selling. They haven't thought about their value leadership strategy they want to bring to the market. They haven't thought about their unique selling proposition or their unique differentiator. They haven't thought about what they're specifically offering. They don't understand their ideal customer. The good ones take some time and do that. And the campaigns that I think that we worked on, that worked the most were the folks who often would take a couple of days and get together and have some really tough conversations, which by the way is really tough for a candidate to have because the product is, you know. Yeah. So when you're having a conversation about, okay, what are we telling the world? You're having this really sort of vulnerable conversation about, well, this is who I am, this is who I'm not. Oh, by the way, here are the things about me that are going to be liabilities. Here are the things about me that are strengths. The ones who really spend that time thinking and planning first do well and we Find the same with business, right? And that in that planning time, that thinking time is about making choices. It's about deciding, this is who I am, this is who I am not. I can't be everything to everyone. For a candidate, you can't be. You're never going to win all the Republicans and all the Democrats and all the Independents. You've got to win the right number of them to win. And that means you, you. You have to make choices about what you stand for, who you're targeting, whose votes you can win. Same with the business. You're not. You can't be in the business of selling everything to everybody. Your customers aren't both the people who want the cheapest product in the most modern. You have to make choices. And then the really good ones then would take a step next, which in the industry we call making a pathway to victory. And this is where they're often bringing in data. But it's like a validation step. You're saying, okay, I've decided as a. For example, I've decided as a Democrat, I want to run for governor of Indiana. Well, you know, you start 15 points down as a Democrat running for governor of Indiana, you know that the voters tend to lean more conservative than more progressive. So you have to sit down and say, what's my true pathway to victory? If I'm starting this far down, if I've made strategic choices up here that say I want to run as a brand, as a really, really progressive Democrat in the, say, a Bernie Sanders type of framework, that's that there's not a pathway to victory for that in Indiana. You've got to run. You've got to appeal to and find that group of Republicans who would consider a Democrat. And how many of those people are there? So there's a validation step there where you say, okay, I need to win a million Republicans. How am I actually going to do that? Okay, if I'm going to do that, what. How can I win them over? So there's this validation sort of iteration step that I think a campaign would make, but a lot of businesses don't. Businesses will sit through. They'll think they make a bunch of assumptions. They never validate those assumptions. We have a business we're working with or hope to be working with shortly, and this is a perfect example of a business where they're. When we looked into it and we did this validation step internally, we discover there's only about 75,000 total people in the entire United States of America who might even consider this business as service, and then they're on the high end of the cost framework. So then you got to cut out half of those people. So maybe we're talking about 32,000 targeted customers.

And that's okay because it's a high ticket offer they're selling. But by the way, their previous marketing firm was running television advertisements and totally not targeted. Probably it made no sense when there's only 32,000 people. But that's a good time to say, if there's only 32,000 and I can't possibly conceivably get every possible client, do I still meet my revenue goals? It's the same kind of question that a business needs to ask, that a.

Candidate would ask during that planning. Is it typically a financial goal like that? Obviously, business need revenue, but like, you know. Yeah, on the politics side, it's the, it's the election. It's winning. Winning the seat.

Yeah, on politics, it's very simple. If you, you look back at a previous election. So the, the Indiana governor's race in 2024 is next year. So you take a look and you say, okay, 4.2 million people voted in the last governor's election. Voting has been trending up or trending down. So we're going to estimate four and a half people. Four and a half million people voted. If we're mono and mono here, that means I need 2.25 million plus one to win this race. And so who are those 2.25 million plus one going to be? If you're a Republican, you might start with one and a half billion.

Got it.

That are there. So it's that math equation, but there's also a budgetary. So then you say to yourself, okay, I've got to get known by two and a half million. How much does that cost? And do I have the financial resource? Because can I either write a check or do I have some friends and family? And so there's a number of things that kind of go into that validation portion of it. And then you iterate, you say, you know what, we may need to change our strategy a little bit based on that data.

I, I was just answering, I think what you were trying to ask Joe, which is, yes, for businesses, it'd be revenue targets. Right. How many items you need to sell going back to your offer.

And as Kurt said, you know, you go through these questions and it's kind of difficult, I think, when you're a small business. He talked about candidates being vulnerable, about figuring out where their liabilities are. And I don't know about you, but, like, my business is me. I feel like it's an extension of me. And it's just that, like, personal, what am I good at? Who am I really? Right. How can I serve my customers the best? Or what, what can my product bring? And you just have to be really honest about that. And I think to his point, marketing firms, they're just thinking about the tactics first because that's just where we naturally go to. And if you have a specialty like, hey, I'm really good at Google Ads, then as we like to say, if you're a hammer, everything's a nail. So that's the solution for everything. And if you can take a step back and try to think about the whole picture, you can be effective. You can really know that what you're doing is serving a purpose. And you know why you're choosing that strategy? Why is that the message? Why is that the, the medium that we're choosing to go through? Right. Why are we doing, if we're going to do TikTok ads? Why? What's the purpose of that? What does that get us? And so answering those questions, yes, it helps you get to your goal of what can I charge? How many? What's my revenue goal? And then you break that down, right? And in politics, what he's trying to demonstrate is that it's math, right? You figure out the math. And I think that's harder for a lot of people and business because you just feel like your audience. So many people we talk to a lot. My audience can be anyone. And it's, how do you do that, that research.

To figure out that that's not really true, you know, or what's your, what's your slice or what's your approach going to be? And you have to make those decisions, right? It's based on what, what, what advertising budget will you have? And all of those things narrow. They help you make choices that narrow down what you're going to do.

I think that's the big takeaway here I'm hearing so far. And I know there's more to the framework, but it's like, get really clear and really honest with ourselves as business owners from day one, try to take your ego out of there as much as possible. I know it's tough because you're right. Business is an extension of us because it starts with us with a harebrained idea, some weird creation, and we're going to hawk it to the world somehow. And we're trying to find the people that connect with us for whatever reason. And, and, but at the same time, the harsh reality of life is that there's bills to pay, there's. There's people to have on the team to help bring that out to fruition. So what are the metrics? And, and, yeah, really honing in on, on the target market and, and also what the available market is. Right. And the time frame at all.

Absolutely. You're get, you're nailing it completely. We, we got to take that time to make those decisions and we got to validate those decisions make sense and find and, and use. And I. That's where math is 100%. Right. Another conversation today with a customer, and one of the math equations in this validation step we were going through is, how much money do you make on a customer? What are you charging them? How much money do you make? And then what opportunities come from that because of your margins on your customer? So in this case, you've got a $6,000 a year customer with a. It's a. Because it's mostly consulting, it's 100% gross profit. So. And his retention rates are almost 100%. So your math equation might be as simple as. I'm willing to spend 2,500 bucks to acquire a new customer without shaking a stick because I'm going to make 3,500 bucks in year one, and I'm going to retain them at $6,000 for the next five years. So that math equation, I think is essential, and it's a step that a candidate would make, and it's one that we often don't work with a candidate unless they've made that validation step. Because for us, as a, a company working on behalf of a candidate, if their campaign flames out, we're done. Yeah, right. We, we don't have a client anymore. So if you've not taken the time to take a serious look at, I'm going to build this tower. What are the costs here then? You know, we're not interested. And I think that's every good business needs to do that. And those decisions, they're the hard part. It can be kind of fun, I think, to go through the exercise, but once you're there, then you get to do the fun stuff, in my opinion, because the third thing we encourage everyone to do then, and we've seen every good political candidate do, is establish that grand narrative that's inspirational. Tell your story, tell your why. And that's probably the easiest thing to see where a. The differences between winning and losing political candidates.

So what's a good Example of, like, of that narrative.

I, I love the 2016 campaign as such a good example of, of good and bad choices for grand narratives. And I think it's hard, I think, sometimes to look at it because we all have strong, intense feelings about the various candidates. So we have to kind of set those aside for a moment. But when you compare, say, make America great again and how Donald Trump chose to tell his story of, I'm a successful business person, I've taken advantage of the system, and I'm here to help the little guy take advantage of the system and get rid of these corrupt politicians that are here, and I'm going to kind of blow the place out. Make America great again. This was a very solid, easy to understand grand narrative that he stuck with for the entire campaign that spoke to his audience and obviously propelled him into the White House. In the contrary, Hillary Clinton ended, she ended up with six or seven different slogans over the course of her campaign. At the very end, she had I'm with her, which was a slogan that was essentially about Hillary Clinton, not about what she was going to do for you.

Yes, yes.

And it, of course was about dividing people by gender. And, and then she tried to kind of play off of the Trump saying where he was, you know, he can, he can be, as everyone knows, a little caustic. And she had a love Trump's hate kind of or better together type messaging at the end, which was essentially a response to Donald Trump.

Yeah, it's very tied to him. And then, yeah, of the, of the, the race, I guess, more than anything, rather than the people or the outward customer, you know, or person.

So if you asked a random person on the street, why, what was Donald Trump's narrative? What was he running on? I suspect in 2016, most people could rattle off Make America great again and probably a couple of his key points around building the border wall especially. And they wouldn't have been able to say the same thing about Hillary Clinton. And that's an important choice, by the way, because you want that narrative to appeal to the audience you want to, you want to target. And sometimes that choice can be accidental. I, you know, Trump found something in that 2016 race that no one knew was there. And I'm sure if you asked Donald Trump, he would say, I knew it all the time. I had it all figured out. I think it was probably more intuitive than it was some kind of brilliant epiphany had. But he found that there was a high percentage of disaffected, low income, low college educated, white Voters who felt, who previously voted Democrat, by the way, who felt really abandoned and left behind. And that grand narrative spoke to them. Make America great again. I want what I'm supposed to have here. I feel like here I am in a drug infested community with meth method in a crime infected community and the factories are leaving and nobody gives a crap about me. And that worked in that appeal to that audience. That grand narrative is so important. You can see that, by the way, in 2008 you had.

And again, these are often situational. So in 2008 you have an electorate this little tired of George W. Bush. They wanted something different. He kind of fit the stodgy old white guy thing. Now we have Barack Obama. He's hope and change. And it was a very. Again, it's very simple. There was nothing, you know, he didn't invent a new word. He just, he had said some, he said two words. But they, they articulated what he represented on a grand scale. And in contrast, you had John McCain, who I think was an excellent human being and ran on country first, also grand in that regard, but not on point for winning the election in 2008. When people wanted something different, they didn't want that same sort of feel that George W. Bush gave them. They wanted change.

Yeah.

And so they, you can see that. You can go back so many elections and see where the grand narrative was well established and you can often see where candidates lose it because they, they get too involved in tools and tactics and it's sub narratives instead of the grand narrative. So a business has to do the same as a business owner. This is an opportunity to tell your story. So that's when we talk about our desire to change the world. Moving from politics to helping small businesses. That's a true story from our heart about why we're doing what we're doing. And every business owner, most business owners have that they got into their business because they cared about. I sell pies because my mom made the best pies. And when I woke up in the morning and I could smell her baking that apple pie, it just made me feel like everything was right in the world. And there's nothing I've ever wanted to do more than to give that feeling to other people. And that's why I started the Great American Apple Pie Company. Come get some. And that's.

Yeah, I want one, man.

My mouth was salivating while he said that.

This isn't fair, man. Bad example.

Yeah. It has to be emotional. It's not intellectual. It's. It's it's like it just grabs you and makes you feel something.

It's simple. And like what, you said that earlier, you know, with Trump, with, with Obama, with the pie company. Like you're, you're framing it in a very simple language that activates the person. That, like whatever in our brains, you know, that reptilian part, probably it just like clicks, oh, wait, that's my person or that's my company. That's whatever. I trust, I bond. It's just this innate thing that happens.

One thing we know marketers know this, but in politics, for sure, it's just all human behavior. Right? We make decisions emotionally and we justify them intellectually. So if you don't start on the emotional level, that's why it's so important to make these choices.

So you're not wasting time and budget and energy chasing after every little squirrel that you see. But that's how we, that's how we respond. It's how we make our buying decisions. So many things. And so that grand narrative is important and a lot of businesses just miss that, right? They're just going for what they think is the lowest thing they can do. That's. That's appealing. Well, I'm going to run some search ads. Of course. That makes sense. I'm not, we're not against that. It's just. Or you're doing Facebook posts because you think you're supposed to and everyone else does, but there's just no rhyme or reason or no, again, overarching message that you're trying to tell people about why you're here. So it's important. And you can tell he's a little passionate about it.

Having a grand narrative opens you up to those other tools.

Even I find myself for once in a while because it's so ingrained in us because of all the bad marketing we see, but you immediately want to go into, well, come to my restaurant for a 15 off coupon.

Yes.

Or we have the best this. Or here's this feature that's in my software and who cares? And that is a. That is a sub narrative that step forward. That third step is the grand narrative. What is it that really matters? Who am I? What's my story? Why are we here? And then that sub narrative is, by the way, while we're helping you feel better about your life because you're tasting my mama's apple pie, I'm also serving you something that's healthy and sugar free and by the way, 10% cheaper than the one you can buy at the Walmart Right. And those become sub narratives that you can imbue into the system as part of step four. And you can talk then about tools. Is it really the best place to sell apple pies? Here, there, the other place? And we've got a slew. Kristen and I sat down and wrote down 50 different tools, tactics, strategies that we've employed at various times in a political campaign that when employed properly at this level and within the strategic framework you've developed at their beginning, can make a big difference. And then, then every candidate falls in the same trap. They see the good, the, the good tactic employed by the last guy and say, well, that's the way I'm going to win too. He did this thing, he ran these really cool TV ads. I'm going to run the same cool tv, but it's a different campaign every time. And so look at the Trump 2016 versus Obama. You have such a different campaign to win in 2016 than what made Obama victorious in 2008. And again, if you look back at that 16 race, you see Hillary Clinton essentially trying to run the Obama campaign in 2016. And that makes some logical sense. He ran a smart reelect campaign in 2012 when he overperformed.

Yeah.

And, and it made sense to say, well, we're going to do what he did. Right. I'm, I was his Secretary of State. We have a lot in common. He's very popular and I'm going to run that campaign. And Trump, who kind of came in as somebody who's never really run a campaign of that scope before, he'd not been a US Senator governor, said, I'm just going to do what's working. So, so as we were helping out on that race, we're seeing all sorts of things that were, that there was freedom to do that no other candidate would have ever let anybody do because Trump was so serious about the data and the metrics. And I remember Chris and I were talking about this just before this call. I remember distinctly in the 2016 race that Kristen worked out of the digital office for Trump down there in San Antonio, and they were running a host of advertisements that were, that were essentially run by the AI algorithm for targeting to pick who they were going to show these ads to. And the AI kept driving the targets based on the feedback it was getting towards Democrats. And there were a slew of articles in all the political rags saying, well, look at these stupid Trump people. He clearly doesn't know what he's doing. This is a first time candidate. He's targeting all these Democrats. But the reality was the data was pointing him towards something that nobody else was noticing, which was that Democrats were liking, clicking, engaging and giving money from these ads because he was appealing to folks that, that people thought would never vote Republican at the time. And many, by the way, have stayed voting Republican. And so there is a, there is this, this process too, when you're, when you're employing tools and strategies the right way, where you're letting the them evolve and following the data, where it goes.

It's fascinating. And you bring up a good point about, I mean, listening to the analytics and of course, now we're talking about step four, right? We get to the tools finally, and like rubber meets the road, we have to put stuff into action. And at the same time, there's so much data that can help drive future decisions. And because, you know, as you talked about in the RFX framework is essentially you're starting with the who, you know, like the who and the why. It's like, who the heck are you and why am I here? To serve whoever it is I'm trying to serve. And you're walking down into, you're validating, you know.

Step by step and then grand narrative and then essentially down into the tools, tactics, and, and then I'm sure it's this loop of reinvention and correct me if I'm, if I'm wrong a little bit, and I do want to point people to a tool that you guys have developed that I think would help people get through or like start seeing some of these questions.

If you go to reinventfaster.com There is an AI bot we've built, and it actually starts with some of our tools and tactics because we wanted to help people understand.

We'Re from politics. How can you help me? Right. Okay. This is how this can relate to business. So just for some ideas. So it'll ask you some questions. The bot, if you want to, it's free. You can go in there and play around with it. It'll ask you questions about your business and it'll spit you out a custom report. It'll send you right there. You can download it as a PDF and just see if it appeals to you. And it'll give you some ideas based on some of our own strategies how that could help you in your business. So, yes, it's there for you. Take it for a spin and give us, we'd love to get feedback on how it's working for you.

Yeah, it's a really fascinating tool and it produces some really interesting suggestions as we've played with it. And like Kristin said, we're always trying to make some improvements, but I'd love for you to test it out. There's also a way to just hit the contact us button. We'd love to chat with you.

And yes, it's a constant iteration. It's why we've called this Reinvent Faster. Because one thing we learned in politics when we talked about every campaign's a startup. We start over every couple of years. The electorate's different, the mood's different, the technology is different. And so we bring that to business and it helps keep us agile and always on top of what's, what's working.

Yeah.

And I'm assuming going through this process, you know, the, the X factor process, the RF X process is like, it gets the ball moving at that reinvention phase. Right at that point, whatever it is, if it's starting from scratch or maybe it's like, hey, stuff's not working anymore. Markets have changed, my business has changed, Offers products, you know, whatever it is, I would imagine that's the time it's like, all right, run through the RFX and see where you go.

The era of sort of developing a business plan and five years later working on it without much adjusting is just long over. And if there's one thing we haven't really talked about but is so important, and Kristen alluded to it with campaigns, they are new every time. And if you're a member of Congress, you get reelected every two years. And every two years it starts to feel different because the first two years you run, you're a challenger candidate. So you're fresh and new and you're the new person on the block. The next time, you're no longer the new person on the block, you're the incumbent, you're part of the machine, you're part of the problem. And they're very different campaigns. And many bad candidates, many bad businesses lose because they assume they make the same assumptions each two year cycle. And you have to adjust that. And the world is changing so fast. And that's true in politics. Six months ago, no one was talking about.

What Joe Biden might do in an Israeli Hamas conflict. And now that is a top issue and that's driving the conversation. And so you might have had a race that was solely about the US Economy, and now all of a sudden it's about foreign policy and it's about foreign wars and it's about supplying weapons to different countries. And that's the kind of dynamic you get in Politics that's more and more true of business today because one day you can be cruising along running your sit down restaurant, killing it. The next day they could be banning you from having customers in there.

Totally.

And if you're not thinking about how you can reinvent and you're not willing to be no nimble, you just don't exist anymore. So that sort of RFX process, the framework, it's a, it's a constant. To your point. It's not something you do, particularly the five big strategic questions. It's not something you do every month, but certainly something you need to revisit once a year and really seriously revisit, revisit at least a couple of years, I think.

Yeah.

To, to, to see where you're making those subtle changes and keeping ahead of your competition.

No kidding, man. Yeah. And like you said, the world's moving faster. You have technology never slows down. So it's like, well, we got to keep up with that. So how can you predict what's going to happen, you know, as an online business for one. But brick and mortar.

Yeah.

Who knows what, what powers that be will, will change the game for you too.

And it's an exciting time, right, for a lot of small business owners. They're scared, right? It's like, oh my God, the AI is coming for us and how are we going to do this? And, and it can be scary, but it can be exhilarating. It can be exciting if you are intentional. And that's what we're so excited to share with people. That's what we really want to help business owners do is take this mindset that we have and help it to better their business, support their families, their employees. Right. And their communities.

I love it. It's a perfect mission and you are the perfect pair to, you know, take what you've done so successfully in politics because that's such a unique perspective that I don't know anyone else that, that has the kind of, you know, optics that you've had in the experience. But now with that drive to bring it over to business, it just makes a lot of sense.

We hope so. We're excited to do it.

Yeah, we are. It's been a wild and fun ride both in politics and now in helping transform businesses growth and their marketing strategy. So we, we've been loving it.

Right on.

Cool.

We'll find all of that over@reinventfaster.com check out the bot too because yeah, even if you don't feel like you're in a reinvent phase you probably are. Or at least, at least start thinking that way. Go check out the the bot and get that free report because yeah, I've seen it. It's so detailed. It's custom to exactly you and the the answers that you give that bot. It's, it's literally a strategy guide given to you for free based off of of what we just talked about here and more. So appreciate you putting that out there for free to everyone because it's needed. So Karen, Kristin, any final, final words before we wrap it here?

As a husband, wife, business owners, it's, it's interesting being in in business meetings with us because you never know quite what you're going to get. But no, it's just a thrill to be chatting with you and we're learning a lot from you and what you do in your podcast, by the way, Joe. So we're like ripping off a lot of things that you do. So keep doing awesome ST stuff. And yeah, thanks for having us. We're just really grateful and honored to be chatting with you.

Same. I appreciate you both very much and can't wait to see what's coming soon. So thank you everybody listening. Go check out reinventfaster.com until next time. Have a good one. All right. All right. That's what I got for you today. And remember, it's not all about living to work. It's all about working to live if you need to do the work. But you know, work can be fun and it should be feeling for your life. So if you enjoyed what you just heard, if you got some nuggets of wisdom that you want to share or you're just noodling on right now, please go tell others. The way that people find this show and how you can help others get their aha moments is through word of mouth. So if it is telling your friend, telling your family, send an email to your list, writing a review or whatever it might be. Every everything helps. So thank you so much for listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast and I will see you next time.