5 Secrets to Getting Elected by Your Best Customers

What really struck me in working with individuals who go for elective office is that it's a pure entrepreneurial activity. And the reason is because it's unambiguously win, lose.

The thing that really made this thing even more real is when we prototyped this little AI tool that would help you find money in your business. So it's a diagnostic and we were able to show a prototype in a couple of days. That's when the lights and the ding, ding, ding went on. We're like, God, we got a winner here.

The primary mistake is that the commentators are intellectual and they, they tend to think in terms of abstract policies being the determinants, when in fact they're, they're lunch pale emotional issues that determine the vote.

We decided to call this episode the entrepreneurial election. And there's some big ideas in here. One of them was a question that you asked, which is what would you die for in your philosophy of not being neutral? And those don't directly correlate with the topic. But I want you to define what is the entrepreneurial election. Dan?

Well, I've actually been very active politically from an election standpoint. And I don't mean just voting, I mean that I've actually been, I think it's eight election campaigns where I've played a part, not a major part, but a time part and a money part and strategy part in some cases. I've actually, you know, been central to sort of this strategy that politicians and.

Recently the last three, I've been very, very successful, the candidate one. And it was a particular use of a coach tool that actually helped them get strategic coach tool that got elected. One of them is a small sitting U.S. senator right now. And what really struck me in working with individuals who go for election for elective office is that it's a pure entrepreneurial activity. And the reason is because it's unambiguously win, lose.

And it struck me that the moment they're in, they have to think about the next election. And it's not too different from entrepreneurs who, yeah, you got a big payday, but now you got to start working on the next payday. And so it struck me that it would be helpful to people who have a dismissive attitude or a negative attitude towards politics that these individuals are, you know, are putting their past on the, on the line, they're putting their reputation on the line. And there's no loser in American society like a political loser loser. I mean, entrepreneurs can come back, but when you're a loser, especially those who go for the presidency, you're, you lose in a presidential campaign, you are a loser forever.

Yep. Yep. And I have a really.

Except for maybe one exception who's presently with us right now. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. No, that's very. Yes. So, and so I have a very relevant story.

So for the past three days, I've been working on a new business with a husband and wife team. It's Kurt and Kristen Lewdhart, who have been in the business of getting people elected, which include one president, 14 governors, 15 senators, and 88 members of Congress. And they say it's 50% plus one is what it takes to win. Right. And if you're not, you're a loser. And just to give you a little context here, they've raised over a half a billion dollars from over 11 million political contributions. And over the past 20 plus years, they've had to adapt to get people elected and done the equivalent of created a startup that lasts for about 18 months that they know is going to die somewhere between as early as tomorrow to as soon as their candidate gets elected. All right, so it's a business where there isn't a lot of loyalty, but they've had to build an, a small army of, of people who know how to convince people and sell one of the hardest things ever. Right. And, and one of their case studies that I thought was really, really interesting.

So we, we dug into everything they've done and we've adapted all their past wisdom into tools that entrepreneurs can use to grow their business. They basically are moving out of the political world and into.

You know, entrepreneur support. So, you know, they came to me and said, hey, what do you think we should do? And I said, well, first of all, you have a great story. They met in college. They were both involved in, in Republican politics.

Geogr. Graphically.

Where Indian IndianAP Indianapolis area. So they're Indiana. Yeah, they're really sweet, nice Midwest folks.

Good state for getting Republicans elected. Well, and I mean, but they've done it all over.

They have. I mean, they, they worked on, you know, Trump versus Jeb campaign and they've, they've, they've done so many interesting projects. And, and so part of the experience that we've been working on is I've been deconstructing their greatest successes and adapting those into strategies that a business owner, founder can use. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you an example one here because it's darned interesting. And then what we built is this toolkit and an AI platform that will evaluate your business and Generate a report that will say, here's how you can use our tools to grow your business. And it'll give an estimation. So it's been a ton of fun. So there's some lessons in here, but one of their campaigns was something called the rank choice system. Any election process, yeah, I know the rank choice. And whether you like it or not, it's really hard to describe to people because most people don't understand how elections work in the first place and how ballots are counted, etc. Etc.

But they're the ones who created the campaign that got it passed in Alaska. And right now it's going through a repeal process. But the way they sold it is by saying, hey, if you're in favor of getting rid of dirty money in politics, vote yes on blah, blah, blah. 2. Whatever the. The thing was, I've got the whole ad, but the point being, when something's too complicated and people already have their minds made up about something, make it easy for them to say yes to something that sounds the same. Now that can totally be used as a bad, bad weapon. But in this particular case, there was no possible way they could have educated the public on what this was or wasn't. But they got them to raise their hand on something they felt strongly about. And, you know, so when you create these campaigns, you know, you gotta move with like yesterday's news to, to create and maintain momentum when you're playing the game of politics. So I learned so much over the past, you know, working with them here, and I've had to rethink. It was like I had to reeducate myself on how to think about what politics mean and then adapting it to a totally different world. And in this case, it's like getting elected. Your business gets elected every time you make a transaction.

Yeah, well, my whole attitude about politics and people say, well, you know, I've been around high tech people, you know, that technology is just going to bypass politics. And I said, well, you know, you haven't really read much history, you know, and you don't really know it. But I think politics, even in.

Certainly in democratic places, I'll just confine it to that where there's a chance for change. You know, democracy creates the possibility for change, okay? But it's change without violence. And the reason most places you can only have change with violence. Like for example, in Russia, if you look at Russia, there is no possibility of Putin being removed as leader unless there's extreme violence, okay? And the way he got to.

Be leader was through extreme violence. And I have a belief that every action causes, you know, it's Newton's third law. And then in China. China. There's no happy ending for the current situation in China.

Nope.

You know, you know, you can just name the countries around the world, but, you know, the United States is really interesting because taken from a certain perspective, it's actually 50 countries who have created massive cooperation and agreement between each. Each state creates massive agreement with the other 49 states, you know, but they compete like mad. They compete for, you know, they compete for citizens, they compete for workers, they compete for investment. They can, you know, I mean, it's just, they're, they're fiercely competitive. For example, in your home state of California, Texas has the equivalent of four political consulates, I think probably one in your city, one in la, one in San Francisco. And, you know, and, and all they do is invite California business owners to come in and they, they present them with a deal. We can move your entire company to, to Dallas or Houston or Austin or San Antonio. And here's the tax deals. We'll get you in the first five years if you move your company to that and every. There's hundreds and hundreds of companies that take the deal, you know, they move. But that's completely legal under the US Constitution that states can steal from each other, you know. Well, it's really interesting. And in every state there's a permanent bureaucracy of people who are just lifetime administrators, but the people who really make the decisions and vote on the decisions are the elected officials.

Yeah.

You know, and I mean, it takes a certain type of nervous system to do it. You and I don't have it. Nope, you don't have. But the current senator that we have is just perfect. And he's an entrepreneur. He's got his own business. He comes from a big, big entrepreneurial empire. And.

He'S just. I said he's just the perfect guy. I just saw him give a speech. It was on YouTube. I saw the speech from. And it was just a beautiful speech. You know, it's on the current Middle east troubles. And he's gave this speech and everything. So, you know, it's not your preferred way of living your life and you, you know, you don't think that's very valuable, but it only exists because it's valuable to a great number of people.

It's.

Really.

And your friends would be deep in this probably more than almost anyone else.

Well, they, they, they have such an interesting point of view, because know that.

So they're, first of all, they're Entrepreneurs, first and foremost, just built that way. And they, they, their backstory, Curt and Kristen's backstory, is while they went into college, they had to make some money and they had to have something that was flexible while they're doing their political stuff, which at the time didn't really pay. So they sold fireworks out of their car.

And at one point they were, and they, they worked through a broker who had them sell somewhere, and they showed up to sell their fireworks and cops came and they were going to arrest them because he couldn't sell fireworks. Wherever this town is. I don't remember the name of the town.

Well, some states, Some states you can and some states you can't.

Well, this is right over the border in a border town. But here's what had happened. So they called up the guy and immediately, like, within minutes, all the cops backed down because it turned out the guy who told him where to go to sell the fireworks had written in a special policy in that one town and made selling fireworks legal there. So even though the surrounding area wasn't, it was just in that town. And, and what wound up happening is they got a ton of press and a ton of media, and it was, it, and at first it was like a SWAT team, you know, armed guys there ready to pull them down, and that got captured by the news. And, and then when they backed off.

You can't buy that kind of advertising.

You couldn't. And suddenly they became, they were little heroes. And then they parried that their next step. So that was like, huh. Well, this is, you know, there's a good learning experience there, and it's about having people in high places who make special rules for themselves. Whether you like it or hate it, that's the world we live in. Right. It's sort of like you're talking about the states. But then.

The other thing that happened is then they adapted the same strategy to selling, basically installing Christmas tree lights. So they had a, a business that. But then they started, you know, using their political know how and it's my.

Christmas tree lights today would get you arrested in some towns.

Yeah. And we have to have.

Or something, whatever. Yeah.

Well, but I, I, it is really good. There's so many great stories here. And again, the more we decoded it, I, I put on my Dan Sullivan hat, you know, and I'm thinking, how can I use this? How can I use this? How can I turn this into another strategy and, and basically productize these, these political strategies for.

Storytelling, income generation? And also, like, here's another key idea that came out of this. So they've raised half a billion dollars from 11 million people. They really, really understand both sides, how they think, the demographic psychographic. Imagine for a moment where they can analyze all your buyers and all your customers and say, we know exactly who they are, who they voted for, and what their other issues are that they love. And we can actually make campaigns designed to attract your perfect customer to you.

I mean, going back to the 2016 election.

The whole election in the United States for president came down to 220 voting districts in five states. You know, it was Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin. And I think that there was one other. And it was very interesting. It was 220 districts that in the previous election, two elections had voted for Obama. Okay. And they all went to Trump.

Yeah.

And what they did is that they watched Twitter feeds.

And I think, you know, your friend's handiwork. Well, this is the actual election. They were getting him the nomination. Right.

Well, they've done both. They were involved in the full election, too.

Yeah, yeah. The big thing was that they just measured Twitter conversations in these 220 districts. And what are people most passionate about in their Twitter feeds? And they geared all the election issues to what they were most excited about. And it took. See, the first of all, Trump himself will explode people's heads. But the fact that Trump used high tech. High tech.

The people in Silicon Valley, that's not their candidate. He actually used one of the weapons that they used to actually win. And that, that was. I think it was humiliating. I think it was unforgivable that he. He did this. I mean, a lot of people say he's unforgivable, but. But, you know, he understands not to get off topic here, but Trump, Trump, first of all, I think he's a natural born politician who spent 50 years in the business world.

Well, in. And he understands.

He's entrepreneurial. He's entrepreneurial.

Yeah.

The rest of them are lawyers. They're, you know, they're, they're, you know, social workers, you know, and everything else. And I, I won't, you know, push this too far, but it's generally the rule that when one party gets elected, a man in one party gets elected, he or she takes a pay cut.

Yeah.

And the other party, when they get elected, they get wealthy.

Yeah. Yep.

Yeah. That is, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, you know, I'm not pointing fingers here, but it's my experience that general. Yeah. One of them really does it for the money, and the other One, you know, does it for a variety of different reasons.

Yeah, no, I think there's a big. The power turns into wealth and stays that way, generally as long as you can stay in where. Yeah, that is a great distinction. Well, here I'm going to give you some numbers because I looked it up in here. So they, during the election, they managed the Trump SMS campaign, which at the time was very new, to send videos, images.

What is, what's her s. Pardon? Sms.

Yeah, sms. It's basically text messaging. But they, they did what's known as mms, which is the multimedia text messaging, which then they also did the America first app. So they were the first to appify politics. And what they did in there is they made it viral, so you basically shared and would effectively enroll other people in getting the app by messaging them through the, through the system. So they, and ultimately they also did a whole bunch of email and like, one of their emails generated $2.6 million. They raised over $60 million. But here's what's important about this.

One of the. When they looked at the, the, the value or, or the cost for a vote.

And specifically with Jeb Bush, jeb was paying $5200 per vote using traditional media. Trump was, was buying them for 300. So, and at the time, you know, Trump asked people to solicit friends and family versus Jeb was using broadcast TV and responding to vanity metrics. And I think, again, the distinction, this isn't a political statement. It's just like using your head and what they said. The beauty of working with Trump is, is he want to know all the metrics. He, he want to know exactly what everything costs. And he was constantly just axing out.

Well, he's an entrepreneur.

Yeah, he had to. Right? Yeah, you got to pay attention to that.

So the other thing is that he had, in the general election, she had twice the budget. She had twice the budget. And I wonder, you know, I mean, first of all, you're. Each party is going to get 30% automatically.

It's the 40% in the middle where the election is determined. You know, you have to get, you have to get out of the other 40%. You've got to get 21% to get elected.

Yeah.

Okay. 20. 21 out of the 40. It's actually the election. Most elections come down to a very narrow segment of the electorate that goes this way or they go that way.

Yep. Yes. And yeah, when you're, when you're that slim with that few number of votes.

Being able to react in real time truly understanding your metrics and.

Apply really cool storytelling to the latest technology. Because what's been tipping elections lately is the youth use. I mean, you know, Trump, again, he did it with, with social. And ultimately, you know, one of the things that Kurt and Kristen said, the whole thing about the.

What was the. The, the. I, I forgot the name of it. Informatica or whatever. It's the big.

The. Whether that software is Cambridge Analytica.

All B.S. they said complete. But it was a sensationalized media hype piece. But again.

Well, they had to explain some nefarious reason why the election had happened.

Well, they.

Right. And, but here's the deeper thing that, that goes on and again, I'm not making a political statement at all here. It's just like I'm fascinated with the combination of the strategy, the storytelling, the technology, the stack behind it and the. And who does this stuff, right? And creating an unfair advantage. But it doesn't matter what the truth is or what the story is after one party loses and. Right. Not at all. And so what you've. And when the, when, when things are slim, you got to stack things in your favor. And what ultimately works here, you know, if, if you're going to boil down and I'm still very raw and very fresh and like really thinking about this and looking at their whole world or palette of tools and strategies they've employed over the past 20 years and they've got a massive body of work, but you know, they've employed games and, and like they did a game, for example, that was a Monopoly game where it was basically no matter how you played. And it was like it was basically how they were trying to illustrate how much money was going to illegal immigrants, how much, how many free money programs were available. And the bottom line is whenever you'd play the game, you'd win no matter what you do. And you got free money. And, and you know, it was clearly a dig. But the whole point is what can you do that will get attention and, and mobilize.

A behavior? And what they have said, one of their biggest takeaways is people's minds don't get changed, but they will get motivated to take action. So it has more to do with getting people out who haven't been voting to vote. Again, that can sway an election. And there's a whole bunch of tricks, psychological tricks. So the same mindsets can be applied to how do you reactivate inactive customers? How do you encourage someone to like in political. It's all about getting, getting contributions. So how do you get them to not just buy once, but to buy over and over and over again. And ultimately, I think political psychology is much more raw and primal than.

Traditional marketing. And that's one of the reasons I'm so fascinated.

The mistake is because the.

The primary commentators on politics. I think that's certainly the case. And, you know, I live in Toronto and. But in the United States, where we live in Chicago. The primary mistake is that the commentators are intellectual, and they. They tend to think in terms of abstract policies being the determinants, when in fact.

They'Re lunch pail. Emotional issues that determine the vote. Oh.

You know, an emotion is. And we're experiencing it in Canada right now. They say, yeah, but he's very articulate, and, you know, he travels all over the world and everything else, and it comes down to, yeah, but I really don't like him, and I really don't trust him.

I mean, you know, how. How do you argue with someone? I don't like him and I don't trust him.

Yeah. Yeah. How do you. How do you. You gotta.

How do you turn that? How do you turn that one?

Need a war. Yeah. You need something pretty. Yeah. You gotta have something where we all have to get on the same side.

And that is.

Yeah. The dog.

Yeah. Right. And I think that that's another part of what has been fascinating.

Can I ask you two questions?

Go for it.

One is that in working with them, what's shifted from your standpoint of what politics is all about?

Oh.

I have a second question, too, but that's.

That's really good. So here's what I was preparing to talk about, and I think it'll. It'll equate into the same thing. So now Kurt and Kristin have worked with some of the greatest political strategists and commentators, and of course, they have to know both sides. And much like Washington, you know, you hear about people who are like political opponents, but they'll sit down and have drinks together because they know it's an act. Right. It's a performance improv. And I think one of them is.

Just how.

Aware of storytelling.

And how you can get someone to react and get motivated to do something. So, like, one of the tricks of the trade that I'd never heard of before is because your vote is public record, one of the biggest tricks they'll use that'll get. That'll get reactions, but it'll piss off a lot of people. And in fact, you'll even. You can even get death threats. Okay. Is when you do mailers shaming people and saying, you haven't been doing your duty, we know your record and you didn't vote. Or if you call someone on the voting inconsistently, all right. Oh, they hate it. But it'll motivate them to do something. They'll take action. It'll get the votes out, especially for Republicans. So I think, I hadn't thought of the level of, of, of shame that can be employed and how easily malleable people really are.

And I, you know, like, I've been aware of politics in the sense, like, oh, I see a campaign, you see a message. But now I really have an appreciation for just how much thought goes into this and that there's a totally different personality type. Like one of the things they said, we've got employees who just love politics and they wouldn't want to do anything else. That's.

And they'll do it. They'll actually almost do it for free. Yeah.

I think, I think.

Election campaigns are mostly volunteers.

I think you're right. And then when you get into the strategy side and the business side, I'd have to ask them that specifically. But I, I, I.

Like, I love toolkits. And to see.

You know, like, Kurt went through with Kristen and they went through decades of creative and we found lots of ads and, and when I saw the creative and the evolution of it. So, like something that would have worked six years ago. Absolutely will not now. Like, our attention spans are so short and, but the, the, the lesson in there, the psychological lesson is great. So I think the level of depth of understanding.

Yeah.

And how they're, they're direct response marketers, but way different than we are, which is why I think they're going to do so well because they bring in a totally different type of secret weapon thinking that can be done ethically, morally.

And effectively.

So I don't know if I answered your question, but that's one of the big ones and I have to, yeah, I'm going to think more about it.

I mean, it's a vast universe. I mean, we think of the business world as a vast universe. Politics. I mean, first of all.

You know, there's significantly more money available in the political realm than there is in the business. In the business realm. I mean, there's just huge amounts of.

Money that flows and they spend someone else's money. Right.

Yeah. And you know, it is what it is, you know, and it's been around forever. Politics has been around forever. Yeah. And the.

So tell me how they're better off for knowing you for the last, because this is very recent. So they spent three days with you. So what did they find out about themselves and the secret to how they work that they did not know before they spent three days with you?

Yeah. So.

So last night we had dinner at my friend Chris and Pam Hendrickson's home. And they're, they're the ones who've worked with Tony Robbins for over 30 years. Both of them. Pam's been responsible for product creation and Chris. So we're all sitting around having this conversation. That's why I brought it up. It's, it's fairly fresh. And this actually was our second three days. So we built a business at first with a model called Reinvent Faster. And, and what I told him as soon as I met him because they said, hey, we're, we've been in this political game, but the truth is.

The.

World of political marketing is changing dramatically.

And it's going to change even more dramatically. And, you know, we enjoy this, but we, you know, like, you, like who you work with is who got to hear, like, who's available. It's not like you really pick your clients. And, you know, they wouldn't say we don't like our clients, but there's a lot of people that we just, you know, we would, we'd prefer not to work with, but this is what we got to work with.

There's a bit of same old, same old, too.

Yeah. And, and when they told me about this, I said, well, and I, I interviewed him and I told him flat out, I said, first of all, this is such a unique story. I can guarantee you that your history, what you've learned, what you've done can totally apply to business and you can hit the ground running and get results. Hey, this is Mike Koenigs. Sorry to interrupt the podcast, but if you're an action taker and ready to transform and reinvent yourself and your business, go to connect to mike.com to learn more and book a conversation with me right now. All right, back to the episode. And then when I heard the basic idea of, you know, raising half a billion dollars, 11 million contributors, and, and I said, if we just went to business owners and said, we can give you access to a buyer you've probably never known how to talk to in a unique way, like, every business could grow.

There's a free money play here. And I think they really settled into that and they felt super hopeful that they wouldn't have to start a completely brand new business because, just full disclosure, they started buying other businesses. And what they were about to do is just start buying. They bought an ice cream shop in a little tiny town. They started buying other little shops and businesses because they love small business. That's their passion. They bought real estate. And I said, man, you've got this beautiful opportunity to really be innovative. And they got excited, like, genuinely.

Well, you already have a lot of real estate that you don't recognize as real estate.

Yeah.

You know, yeah, yeah. You know, in. In our history as a Coach, we're approaching 25,000 entrepreneurs.

Yeah.

Okay. We've done in coach. And on average, they've spent three years. Three years. If you take them right from the beginning, it's about three years.

And personally, I've coached 7,000. We have coaches who coach the others, and.

I can name on less than two hands the number of people who've actually, when they went through a transfer transformation, actually started doing a different industry.

Oh.

What they did is they found the part of their present thing that they really loved and got rid of everything else. That's what you did.

Yeah, that's. That is very true.

And there's a reason why they've spent their adult years doing this. You know, going back to a previous podcast, there's a. Something that they're doing that they cannot not do.

Yes. Isn't that the truth?

Well, they don't have to. They don't have to change citizenship to do this. They don't have to move to another continent to do this. It's just taking a look at the.

But their market just got like orders of magnitude larger, you know, than I. I believe that the story of having the secret weapon of a President, you know, 14 senators, 15 governors, 88 members of Congress on your side, finding new ways to reach new customers in ways you've never thought of before that can. And who's used to building startups that create elections in. And they build entire teams. Right. That have to be effective, that were designed to only last for 18 months or sometimes a couple of months. That's a very, very unique skill set. That. That's what got me excited. I'm like, hell, yeah, I know, I know. Well, and the truth is, we pivoted several times because the story's changed. Right. And even, you know, it, the thing that. That really made this thing even more real is when we prototype this little AI tool that would help you find money. So it's a diagnostic, and we were able to show a prototype in a couple of days. That's when the lights and the ding, ding, ding went on we're like, God, we got a winner here. This is going to be like the best stage trick ever to hook an audience and say, you want to find out how much money we can find? Just answer these 10 questions and it builds a custom report. So it's, that was, it's, that's an over answer of your question. But it was a momentum building experience for both of us, all of us.

Them. And they're in what generation? What they were. How old would they be?

So they are in their early 40s. 41.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. Yep. So they are impacted.

A lot of experience that packed a lot of experience in a couple decades.

It's. I, I have to remind myself I'm not Talking to a 60 some year old because, because there's so much embedded wisdom like when you get immersed in the world of politics and I, and I'll, I'll single out Republican specifically because there's a different mindset about what goes on. Right. And, and what's important. So I think that values based and also where they came from. I mean they're, they are like salt of the earth from hard working families who. Yep. They're good Midwestern folk. Right. And they have really worked hard and they're also young parents now. So they, they held off making babies until later on in life. And so yeah, they're, they're definitely wise beyond their years. Both Kurt and Kristen.

Yeah. Did I ever tell you the difference to the two different targets that the parties have? The Republicans and the Democrats?

I don't think so.

You think of a target with a bullseye and then the outer range. So if you're. I'll say conservative. Liberal. Okay.

Yep.

Not necessarily the parties, but conservative liberal. Because it would be true here in Canada too. In the center for conservatives is God. And then there's family.

Yeah.

And then there's community. And then there's their occupation and their business. And maybe that's number three. Number three. And then there's an outer ring called politics. And every election cycle you get involved in some way. You write money, you do everything else. You may volunteer and everything else. So in the, the liberal target, the center is political power.

That's God. For liberals, political power is God. Okay. And then the next one out is your identity group.

Your identity group. And then there's your career. There's your career. Okay. And then there's the community you live in which only has people like you.

Okay. Like you. And then in the outer thing is, you know, sort of causes or whatever it is they're two completely different targets. Okay. So the thing is that politics is not a religion for conservatives, but it is for. Because there is no other access to power except politics. Where, you know, there's, in the conservative level, there's, there's God power, there's family power, there's friendship power, there's entrepreneurial power, there's community power and everything else. So they're much more focused and that's why they, they, when things go wrong.

Conservatives go back to the drawing board and said, well, that didn't work. Let's come up with something new.

When things don't work for liberals, they have a system wide emotional breakdown.

Wow, that's a lot to unpack.

You know, I mean, the reins may vary, but in the center is God, because conservatives are, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm one of them. And, and, you know, but then my relationship with Babs and then my company, you know, the strategic coach, our clients and everything like that. And, you know, there's certain places I like to live and I contribute. I mean, you know, I'm a dual citizen, so I vote in both countries because I think it's important.

Right.

And I live in, I live in a district in Toronto where I've been voting for 30 years and not once has been my candidate. Candidate one. Not even close. Not even, not even, not even close. You know, and, but I always vote because, you know, you got to vote, use the vote, you know.

Yeah.

And I think not voting is a vote.

Yeah, I, I agree. I agree. I think I have a, a lot more.

I've gained a lot more respect for the process. I will never look at.

The political game and the play field the same way. And now I feel like I'm armed with some inside information to spot the intent and what's going on. Now, what you just talked about, like I said, that's a lot to unpack. But one of the things I was surprised to hear is how, you know, they always say, well, it's the economy, stupid. It's about. And that would translate into jobs. But in a way what you're saying.

It'S political power, stupid.

Yeah. And.

Yeah, yeah, but, but.

It'S very, very interesting. They do surveys of conservatives and liberals. Okay. And they find that conservatives generally have liberal friends, but liberals don't have conservative friends.

Yeah.

And the reason is you, you accept people as people and then, you know, there's things you do differently on election day, you know.

Yeah, yeah. It's so interesting, the level of intolerance. Right. And I.

That's.

Yeah, I mean, I would say if I was in a conversation with someone who had the opposite belief, I would think that they're wrong and they would think that I'm evil.

Not a moral judgment. I. I just don't think you're understanding how the world actually works. Yeah, you know. Yeah. I said, but, you know, you know, you may be a very good person and you do good things and everything else, but for me, my, My, my. My sheer political beliefs makes me evil, you know, and that means that God is political power. You know, that's why. Because I'm a threat to political power. And I said, you know, you know, anyway, but it's really interesting and I'm happy with this because. Because I've had this perspective. My first political campaign that I contributed and took part in was 1964. So that's almost 60 years. Almost 60 years. And I couldn't even vote because it was 21 in the United States.

And I voted in 68. So that's my first election. And, you know, I've always taken a great interest in it, you know, but, you know, and actually participated in, I think it's eight political campaigns one way or the other. And, you know, it's part of life. And, you know, one thing I will tell you about politics, and I said, more different kinds of people participate in politics than any other human activity. And just by contributing, you meet people and get in touch with people that you had no other possibility in your life to actually come in. And I bet that both of them will tell you the same thing. It's just the mix of people who get involved.

Just because of their passion about politics is really remarkable.

Yeah, I think that and philanthropy.

Because I would put rank them both in. They're very different worlds. But we were just at a philanthropic fundraiser for cancer thing. And again, for sure, like, I could walk around. I guarantee I could pick out who, which side each person I met voted on, you know, and there was a grand mix of every. Of everyone there, researchers, you know, like, San Diego is the biotech hub right now. There's so much going on here with longevity of the world.

Of the world, probably way.

Oh, it's insane. And they filled up the rady shell, which is second only to the Hollywood Bowl. I think it's the greatest outdoor musical venue right now. It's an architectural masterpiece, and it sounds amazing. And Ed Sheeran was performing, who's quite the big deal. And it was packed, completely sold out for this fundraiser. But I couldn't help but think, and now you're making me think about it more, which is like where you meet, like there were so many billionaires packed into that place. And multi, multi, multi, like the biggest money families in San Diego were at that event. And, and a lot of academics, a lot of clearly they would absolutely be left leaning to the nth degree and getting along marvelous, marvelously, I might add. So here's what my aha moment is, is how powerful and effective tribalism can be. Because in the US and elsewhere, I've seen it very negatively. And I see so many people fighting against each other. And the bridge, and some of it just came from this project, is how I believe entrepreneurialism is an international language of peace, prosperity and abundance. And the more people that speak it, the better. The more young people who taught entrepreneurship at a young age means they'll never go to college thinking they're going to get jobs and wind up indentured servants, for example.

And what I'm excited about is, is using this knowledge and wisdom to propel and accelerate entrepreneurialism.

Versus, you know, the problem with politics is more often than not it creates more bureaucracy, which is the antithesis of all things entrepreneurial.

Yeah, yeah. And I always say that both of them are French words. The entrepreneurism and bureaucracy are both French words. And I said that they decided that they didn't want the one, so it moved to England, you know, to Holland and England and then the United States. My sense is that, you know, I take a bit of a.

Simpler view of entrepreneurs. It's about prosperity. It's about prosperity. And peace is a lot easier inside of prosperity.

Yes, I completely agree. Yeah, yeah.

I think peace is a byproduct of prosperity. Focus on prosperity. The other thing is that.

The way things are in the United States right now is kind of historically, from my standpoint, the way that things have always been in the United States, but not since the Second World War. Okay? And so there was this notion, there was this tremendous unity about the war. And then they came out and the Democrats and the Republicans, they vied for it and they said, but the media, you know, the media was totally unified. But what they don't realize, it was totally unified on one side, it was totally unified only on the left. Okay. And what happened was FM radio, FM radio broke the solidarity of the United States.

The reason is that it was possible in the 1930s to do FM radio and RCA and AT&T blocked it because they thought they would lose their power with AM radio. And it came in in the 70s and 80s, but it immediately went to center cities and went to university campuses who were very, very much on one side of the political spectrum. And the AM radios were just dying everywhere, and they were taken over by religious programs from the right.

And then.

Yeah.

Russ Limbaugh said, you know, there's a political medium here.

Yeah.

And then all of a sudden, they said, we're polarized. No, there was just a second voice.

Yeah.

It wasn't polarized. It was the first time I grew up when everything. Everything was a single voice. You know, Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, they all had the same message.

Yeah.

But then in the 70s, it started changing. It's because the left side of the medium abandoned AM radio.

And there was a vacuum to be filled, and it got filled by the other side.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it's.

Yeah.

You have an.

Anyway.

Cheap bandwidth, right? Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Magic happens. That's. That's a. It's a. That's where great entrepreneurial stuff happens and sort of like, why do you sell on the streets? Because it's free.

Right. No secret to all entrepreneurial breakthroughs is abundant and cheap.

Yep. I love it. Well, this is. God, this has been another super fascinating, interesting episode. Did not go in the directions I thought I will put it.

I hope we. I hope we cross your two friends.

Oh, you're gonna. They're. They're. So.

I did a good job of setting up Coach, and I think they're gonna be amazing, amazing members, too, that, like, they're gonna be. You're just gonna love conversations. Plus, they've got just the. So Kurt's the strategist. He's got this really great creative mind, and he just knows exactly what to do. And then Kristen, his wife, is the ops person. She is. So she's the one who knows how to operate, operationalize, and scale and grow things. And she's super bubbly, delightful, got a beautiful smile. Just laughs last. She's just like, we have a lot of fun together. So I think you're just going to enjoy both of them. And then I'll. I'll shamelessly plug their. Their new site that's going up. It's Reinvent Faster dot com. So you can try out this little tool we built, which as of now that we're recording, it's. It's going to be done by the time we. We release this podcast episode. But it's just been a. Like I said, I've learned so much in a short period of time. I have just a new appreciation for what feels more like an art form to me now than. Than a grinding business.

Yeah.

So.

Well, there we go. We amplified a capability.

Another one, Another one. It's been a blast. So I'll wrap this up by saying, as usual, if you know someone who would enjoy a spirited conversation about the entrepreneurial election, but also rethinking how you get elected every time you do a transaction with a client or a customer, share this with someone you know and rate it, and we'll see you in an upcoming episode very soon.

Thank you very much, Mike.

Oh, yeah. Total blast. Bye.

Bye.