How to Build Loyal Customers in a Noisy Market with Kurt Luidhardt

The statement that when you take a stand, you're gonna marginalize or lose customers, I think most of the time the exact opposite is true. 82% of all American consumers right now say they prefer to do business with a brand that matches their values. And 75% of them say they've switched brands in the last 12 months over some kind of values misalignment. There's a difference between being willing to take a stand on something that's important versus being an asshole. There are people who behave poorly, poorly, and, and they marginalize their people. If you provide bad service, you're rude to your customers, this isn't taking a stand, it's just being a bad person. Being willing to stand for something, whether on a conviction level, will attract more people than it loses.

Hey guys, welcome back. As you know, we've made a massive shift in the show to help you rise, lead, and last, bringing on leaders who are leaders of industry, leaders of titans of industries in many respects. Today's different. We've got Kurt Luthart, who's a great friend. He's becoming a fast great friend of mine. He's the co-founder of Prosper Group, which has aided and supported both conservative and Republican movements to the tunes of millions and thousands, helping senators, presidents, and everyone else kind of make their way. Now, this show is not going to be more on the political side. We're going to dive into his marketing genius specifically and how he came to be the one and only Kurt Luthart. How you doing, buddy?

I'm pumped to be here in this absolutely stunning and beautiful place.

Oh man, dude, I'm so happy to have you here.

Yeah.

You know, it's really funny. We, we get a lot of wonderful guests like yourself to come on and share a lot of beautiful gems that, you know, to our, to our methodologies, help people rise, lead, and last.

Yeah.

And part of lasting is having essentially deal flow and lead flow and actually having, you know, customers coming to your door. So I could go there first, but I don't want to because you and I share a story. You and I share the fact we've both had to sleep in a car before, and we both had to turn our lives around. And I want to know that origin story before we get into the awesomeness which you and your team have co-founded and created.

Yeah, you know, my wife and I started our business together. Some people say, how do you work with your spouse? I have never done it any other way. We got married in '04, and we couldn't figure out how to fund our wedding, right? We, we had some help from our family, and we thought, well, we, we're just the kind of people who, we wanna do things big. And so we were working in politics at the time, but political campaigns are all about temporary jobs, right? Win, lose, or draw, you're unemployed, right? And so we were in that sort of stage, unemployed, and we needed to make money. So a friend of ours ran a fireworks company and they would put up these temporary tents around 4th of July. And, uh, different charities would run these tents in return for a percentage of the revenue. He said, why don't you run them and you'll just pay for your wedding? Your wedding's in August, you'll sell fireworks in July. Yeah. And that was our very first ever experience of running a business, was selling fireworks out of a tent.

It was really funny.

Yeah.

Is my next door neighbors over here.

Yeah.

They use commercial grade fireworks on the 4th of July.

Oh yes.

So when you're in— so the, the audience can have seen part of the lake. So we got a 300-degree view of the lake here at Safe in. And this turns into a firework bowl. So you see fireworks all over the place. So yeah, maybe some of your former customers, maybe, maybe.

And you know, we sold the boring stuff they call Class C fireworks. But that 2-week period, we ran 3 tents. It was a crazy experience. We had wacky employees that did some crazy— all the stuff that you have, all the things that business leaders face. Yeah, all in 2 weeks time frame. But we, we made $9,000. To help pay for our wedding. And that was the beginning of a business journey. I distinctly remember thinking, why would I ever work for somebody else? At the time, my first job out of college, I was making $24,000 a year. And I made 9 grand in 2 weeks. My wife and I, we loved it. We kind of loved, I think we're a little addicted to the sort of, that's why you get into politics, right? You're addicted to the sort of the energy of a crazy, urgent, everything has to happen by July 4th. What you don't sell by July 4th, you're taking home, right? Yeah. And so I remember thinking, we're going to do this. This, this is our life. We're going to start business. And a year later, we did fireworks again. And I kept my job, but we were going to— the idea was we're going to build these sort of temporary businesses. And this was wild. We were sent to Pennsylvania because I talked to the same company.

It's not the same. And there's a famous family there that deals with fireworks, right?

Well, potentially. I'm not sure if they're headquartered there or not, but we worked with a company called TNT Fireworks, which is owned by American Promotional Events, which is the largest fireworks company in the world. The Anderson family runs that. They're the same people own Books-A-Million as well. Really fascinating family. But they were, I said, we don't want to do Indiana again 'cause there's fireworks tents on every corner in Indiana and fireworks are legal there. Where can we go and do as much business in 10 days in one location as we did in 3? And they said, well, you need to go to Pennsylvania. They sent us to Pennsylvania. We were supposed to run a place in Harleysville. Instead, they said, "No, no, no, no, we'd like you in the city of Philadelphia." What they didn't tell us was during the interim between the years, they had worked with the state legislature in Pennsylvania, and they'd gotten the Pennsylvania state legislature to overrule all the bans on fireworks in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. And they had just gotten it done. 2 weeks before, because previously for 25 years, no one could legally sell fireworks in the city of Philadelphia. But they sort of snuck it into legislation. The city didn't know it. They couldn't stop it.

And there are little Kurt Luthart things snuck into legislation.

Yes. Little Kurt Luthart shows up with 2 guys to sell fireworks in Philadelphia. I put this big tent up, says fireworks on it, with this giant orange Schneider semi, 14 pallets of fireworks. We're about halfway done unloading it. And in rolls the fire and the police department as if I were selling cocaine. They were on the— they were in their whole like getup with the machine guns and the boots and the whole thing. They came riding in on the side of the SUVs like they were raiding us because no one had told the city of Philadelphia that the rules had changed. And, uh, and so the police were just like, this guy's selling illegal fireworks. But the long and short of that story is that month we sold $40,000. We netted that 10-day period, we netted $40,000. And the rest was off to the races. We quit our jobs. It's like, I'm done. And that's when the whole crazy story about, well, you know, I quit without a real plan. All I knew is we could sell a lot of fireworks. And I thought, we'll do Christmas lights in the fall. So we'll have fireworks, we'll have Christmas lights, you know, and I'm sort of a wheeler dealer. Let's just make it happen. And we had come from politics. So the thought is in the interim, we'll run some political campaigns. And that's where we ended up in our cars because Indiana every 4 years has no elections. And that's a problem for us.

Yeah.

There's nothing to pitch. And we couldn't afford hotels. We couldn't afford to fly. And so we just drove. I still remember today driving 14 hours to Oklahoma City to meet with a big political consultant to hopefully sign some political campaigns as clients. And I had inadvertently offended the guy, not knowing it. I had met with his chief rival just 30 minutes before, showed up, said, hey, I just got—

That was so interesting.

He's like, he got all upset and 10 minutes later I was kicked out. But those moments I almost look back to now with, like, I wish I could be back there. I remember what it was like when I'm driving to Oklahoma City, crashing in rest areas. I learned you don't sleep in Walmart parking lots, by the way, in your car. Not a good idea. Walmart will call the cops on you. Hotel parking lots, you can do, uh, rest areas, both good places, uh, for— the good thing is never had to live in my car, thankfully, but I did on all our sales trips. And, uh, I remember doing it in Palm Springs, California. That was a great place to sleep in the car. But I just missed those— you missed those like days when you just woke up dreaming, one day, one day I'm going to be there, and you're in it and you're working it Uh, those were great days.

Yeah, it's so interesting you say that because I, I think there is, there's a good bit of nostalgia in my career. Um, now I, I tell people all the time because, you know, I get a question, the number one question I get, as you can imagine, how'd you go from homelessness to building it? Yeah, yeah, like, it's— I'm like, I was an idiot. That's how I was an idiot. I got smarter, you know. Now, I mean, there's, and there's depth there. I don't want to placate that because they're, they're being serious because there's a lot of people that are struggling now that would like to live a better life and, or build a better business or whatever. So I don't want to, um, throw shade that way because I've absolutely been there. But I have found myself just being— now in this stage of life, um, and now helping leaders become better leaders and be, you know, build better, bigger organizations and that aren't stealing their soul in the process, right? Right. Because there's one thing to— and I've done both— like, it's one thing to build a great business and have no soul left because you're— all your time, all your energy, all your focus is in that business, and you just you feel like you can't get out.

Yeah.

That was one thing I was mentioning recently is like, you don't build a business to build a prison, yet many of us do. And to that end, as you share, there's a certain light in your eyes about the nostalgia attached to that. And I wake up with a depth of gratitude right now because the dreams that I had then are the dreams I live in now. And now I've got new dreams. It's like, okay, well, how can I help a million business leaders? Like do what I have done and beyond? What would that look like? You know, so have you found yourself like re-envisioning what the, what the next dream is going to be?

Absolutely. I do think the reason I felt so much nostalgia about it was there was a time in my business career where I stopped waking up dreaming about the next thing. And to your point about feeling like you're in a prison, yeah, uh, I, I wasn't waking up dreaming. I was waking up thinking, I just need to get through the next couple of days and you're not having fun anymore because it doesn't feel good. And so I can totally— Doesn't feel like you're building, feels like you're dying. Yeah, it feels like I'm just getting through. So, you know, Tony Robbins will also often say, happiness is feeling like you have progress. I think he's missing a little something with that, but there's some truth there that when you feel like you're making progress, you're happy. If you feel caught in the prison of it, And then recently, I just, I felt that more again. In fact, lately I've been having this new problem, which I think is a cool problem, where I'm wide awake at 3 in the morning, eager to get up and work. And that's the way I felt back in the sleeping in the car.

That's when you know you're walking in a flow.

Yeah, you're like, man, I just, I don't wanna go back to bed. I wanna get up. Some of that's because my special quiet times in the mornings have become so much richer. And so good. And you just can't do, it's hard to do that with the kids. Run around.

I tell— I tell leaders ask me what is my first step all the time, and I said you've got to have a presence practice, and it has to be very first thing in the morning. Yeah, when, when the world hasn't woken up yet.

Yeah, it's so much better, by the way, at 3 in the morning. There's a secret there. I don't know if that's biblical. There's a 3 AM secret. Yeah, uh, those are— because I'm not in a rush. Yeah, I don't feel like, well, I got to get through today's scripture reading quick That's so good.

I want to dig in there just for a second because I, I feel like a lot of, you know, you and I both love Jesus. We're both Christians by design, um, and we both see both good and bad in the world. And we're, you know, there's no, there's no shade there, or there's no hidden thing there. But one of the things I see consistently that I even had to deal with for the longest time is I felt like many of the things that from a faith perspective, God was asking me to do, right? I didn't understand at the time. I felt like they were tasks. And then I've, and now in life, I realize they were invitations. So invitation to sit in quiet with him. So I share with my audience all the time, a journaling practice I do called "What I Hear You Say Is," which is me not asking, me not praying, me just sitting with a pen and just listening, which happened out of a moment of crisis is where it started. Yeah, something I did religiously for 6 months. Um, now I do it when, when I feel led, but I always have the first— like this first morning I'm up at, you know, call it 6 this morning, like I'm walking out into the foyer area here, I'm staring at the lake, there's no sound in the house whatsoever, by myself, and that's when those downloads happen. So did you ever go through a season where those, those times were more task-oriented versus relationship-oriented?

Absolutely. I— one of the things that I've felt impact on in my life recently is God really making it clear to me that there's a difference between, as a Christian, saying, I'm going to do my own thing, I got my own plans, I'm taking things in my own direction, and God, your role, if I could give you one, is you—

he works for you.

Yeah, you get to tell me when I've gone out of bounds, right? I'm a football fan, so I like to I'm the quarterback in my life, or I'm the coach. You're the referee. If I step out of bounds, let me know. But outside of that, I'm gonna do whatever I wanted. And I felt very distinctly at a point in late 2023, like I had fallen into this place where the, it's not that my relationship with God didn't exist, but I was trying to pretend like he could be contained somewhere. And I was elevating other things in my life to be more important. I was more, I was pursuing success and comparing myself to others. I was putting my faith in the idea that if the bank account was big enough, that I was secure, or that, or that, or I'm really concerned about what other people thought of me. That one took a longer time for me to accept. And in those times, it wasn't quite as rich because I wasn't really, I wasn't in love.

Would you say in those moments and times that you weren't fully present in that moment?

I would say so, because there's a power, the Bible talks about how sin is blinding, right? And so when we're caught up in some of these things, we don't realize we're caught up in it. And so maybe we're struggling with feeling that, maybe feelings is the wrong word, We're struggling with the right kind of connection to our spiritual life that we need because we're blocked because we're elevating things. We're putting idols on the throne. We can't see it because I'm saying, look, I know a guy who's got a bigger house and a better car. That guy has money problems. I don't have money problems. I live in Indiana, right? I don't live in Hollywood. I don't have that because I can compare myself to other people and give myself an excuse. And looking back on it now, I can see, I wouldn't have said, if you had asked me, probably at those times, if you had said, do you feel like this is rote or this is just a habit, you're not really doing it? I wouldn't have said that. But now I can look back compared to the way that I feel like God is speaking to me now. And it's totally different. But it's because it's taken some rough moments to get here. God had to get my attention. 2, 3, 4 different ways because I'm pretty—

I'm, I'm, I told him all the time I'm one of his more— I, I stopped speaking this over my life, but I used to say I was one of his more stubborn kids.

Well, I've said it, I suppose. Yeah, some people are smart and they sit down with a notebook and say, what are you telling me? Other people need bopped across the head, and I appear to have needed a few more bops than others.

So I, I also, in these transformation— and one of the reasons I like to get in the transformation moments and stories is because at any given moment, you're either going into a transformation or you're coming out of one, right? And the, the distance in the middle can either be 3 months, a year, 2 years, 10 years, 30 years. And I've discovered that the length of time you're in that, that window is directly tied to your resistance to the lesson you're supposed to learn, right? You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah.

It's the pushing, it's the ignoring, it's the, it's the, um, disillusionment. It's, uh, dysfunction, as I've shared before. But I also find in many cases, especially in gigantic catapult moments, like one of the things that I've realized when I go back and look at my life is I go through these seasons of compression and then rapid expansion. So the moments when I think the world's going to fall apart, I shouldn't be here. I haven't had that thought in 3 or 4 decades, thank God. But I had to be reminded, it's like, this is part of the process. So rather than me resisting, I'm gonna lean into it. Okay, Lord, what is the lesson? What do you want me learning right now? Which ironically, he doesn't talk in busyness, he talks in silence. He talks in presentness, which is where the present practice and the journaling piece. On top of that, I also find that there's historically, there's both a catastrophic moment that takes you in, right? And there's a catalytic moment that takes you out, an awakening of sorts. Did you have a massive shift in a moment in time that started what would become regular development and growth in your own journey?

I would say I had a big moment when I, I felt like God came down and, and, you know, gave me the proverbial slap on the face.

Yeah.

Um, I, as I look back on it now, I have a greater respect for what was really happening, which is I made my own choices to put certain things up. I like to use success as an example. You know, I'm pursuing success, not because of maybe a stereotypical thing where I want a bunch of cool things. But it's a scoreboard for me. So if I'm doing well, I know that I'm, you know, I'm a worthy human being, or that that's where I'm sticking my identity. And I'm making success my master or money my master. And at one point or another, those cruel masters come for their pound of flesh, right? And I just remember in 2023, I'd come off what was our best year ever in business. And it was a real miracle, by the way. We, a major public figure that everyone would recognize, had came in and hired us in the final hours of the 2022 campaign and just spent a ton of money. It had nothing to do with me. I was there at the right place at the right time. I could take no credit, but I was feeling pretty good about myself. We had a great, profitable year. I had amazing plans, but I was putting success above God, and the initial consequences of those decisions were starting to germinate. I have— I'm— I know I look 25, but I'm 46, and I have a— my wife and I started our family late. We have a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old. So at the time, in 2022, I had basically a newborn and a 2-year-old, and I was starting to resent my kids. Because they get in the way of my success.

Yeah, regatta minutes.

Yeah, because they need time.

When I'm done, when I'm done.

Yeah, they need time, and I, I don't like it. And they— and I can't, I can't travel for business the way I used to. I can't fly places without figuring out babysitters. There's all this stuff that my wife and I used to do together.

These are real problems. I'm glad you're— I'm glad you're talking about this.

Yeah, they're 1% of problems, maybe. I don't know. But I— that— but the— I was confronted at a very specific moment of time that if I didn't stop serving the wrong master, the consequences were gonna be real. They're newborn and too young to recognize Daddy doesn't wanna be with them because he's got more important things to do. And even secondarily, you know, I felt this similarly about my wife 'cause she was loving kids. I mean, she'd do nothing but hold the kid. You know how wives are, they have babies. And I thought, this has got to change. It was, and it was so disjointed and it's so messed up the way I looked at the world. I remember having a hard time getting out of bed the next day because I thought, if that's not my fuel, what is my fuel? Why am I getting out of bed if I'm not sitting there dreaming about, you know, $5 million in the bank account or being the biggest in my industry or whatever, then what in the world am I supposed to be doing? I remember I was at a Tony Robbins event when all this happened. I was supposed to fly home the next day. I couldn't get on the plane. I got on the plane.

Wow.

I got on the plane. I couldn't, like, I was like anxious and petrified. I called my wife like, I'm gonna have to drive home from Florida because I can't get on the plane. She talked me onto a plane. I got on. But that moment was the moment when God showed me something I needed to see. But what's interesting about that, that's almost 3 years ago now. And I don't think that process is done. It took a while for me to recognize I wasn't just putting success too high, but I was putting too much of my faith on external, external things. So money, I, not that I wanted possession, that was always my justification. I'm not a, I'm not a person who wants fancy stuff. But I'm like the biblical story of the guy with the barns, right? I have 4 barns of grain. That means I can feel good that my life is okay, right? And then another one God wanted to show me, which was how important it was for me to be perceived well by the people around me. And so that's been a long process, but what it's done is it's put God back to where He's supposed to be. And so, and it's not, I don't remember, I wouldn't say there was a moment in that process where I thought, oh, night and day, something, it's now fully transitioned.

Yeah, I was just thinking, just entering into the forge. I call it the forge.

Yeah, but I do feel like the way I'm thinking about the world is totally different. It's more upside down. It's the idea that, you know, our purpose in life is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, like the Westminster Catechism says. And I feel that's more authentic for me, which it wouldn't have been years ago. And it's changed how I'm, the business I'm doing and how I'm approaching my clients because the whole, there's a value system that's changed.

Yeah, that's so good. In fact, I got lots of thoughts, lots of layers. I think the first one I would share is it's interesting how God loves us so much, he'll let us get the things that we want to show us it's not the things that we need, to wake us up, to have us have desire for the things that we need that only he can provide through. Like, you know what I'm saying? I experienced something very similar. Just 'cause we're two brothers sitting here at a table having a convo, I'll share with you that in late '23, I exited a company that I built over 25 years, started from a trash pile of a construction site. Audience knows that. I'm not gonna go into the stories there necessarily. But here I am at the top of this mountain. I'd moved to Utah for about a year and a half before coming back to North Carolina. And as I'm sitting there atop this mountain, I had a rupture, a relationship rupture that I didn't expect, didn't really see coming. I think my friends and family probably could have. They were the ones like, are you sure? Kind of thing, you know. But it felt good, felt like it was strong. And long story short is I remember being in this moment this is, uh, late 2024 now, so it's been basically a transition of a year— in this really nice home, on being able to look out for literally 20 miles. I could see 20 miles of mountains. I had a, literally, a city down below me. And I used to joke around, I used to call it the Kingdom View. Yeah, because you walk out, it's like you have a whole kingdom down there below you, right? And I would, you know, it said it out of love and joking. Obviously, I try to be a good steward, but but I remember being— it was, uh, it just like started lightly snowing outside. I cut the fireplace on, and I remember being on a couch, uh, like a white kind of leg chase— I guess you call it like a chase couch— and just weeping. And what I realized in that moment is I had, like, I had financial resource, I had a couple toys in the garage, um, I had done the— what success says is the impossible, which for the audience perspective, if you sell a business and you sell it at a reasonable value, it's like you're less than 0.2% in the world, right? To exit a company, it's very rare. To build a company to 7 figures is very rare. To get it to close to 100 figures, 9 figures is very rare, right? So all these different layers of rareness that I used to attach my identity to and my worth to, well, if I just do a little more, If I just do a little more, then I'll be worthy. Now, keep in mind, this is a subconscious voice. We don't realize this is actually happening, right? I finally had to go back to the— it finally had to do anchoring work because I realized that I was pursuing things only to be perceived well, period. Yeah, right. Perceived well in relationship, perceived well in the marketplace, perceived well in the faith community, perceived like I wasn't being me. And what was really crazy is in that season, I would be speaking on stages and doing these other things, and I would have a good response, right? But I would say I was probably more performing than I was being authentic. And I was able to share with you off camera that, you know, this new Stephen, if you will, just really launched last November.

Yeah.

Like, and now the responses that we get, like, for just sharing, because you're, you're your authentic self, right? Is incredible. Like, and now the crazy part is now you're getting constant validation or appreciation from those that are witnessing whatever you're sharing, only to not even want it or need it.

Yeah.

Where there was a time in my life I needed the validation, I needed to show a scorecard on paper, I needed to have a thick bank account, I needed to be perceived as a leader. Um, and I think some of that is— those are internal traits that God gives you, gives me, gives leaders, um, that get corrupted over time or become counterfeited. So it's like the beautiful thing about being a strong leader, and it's where, you know, I've shared with you that I have this new mantra about becoming one part lion, one part lamb, which is the integrated maturity of both the lion and the lamb, was being developed. 'Cause if I was honest with myself, I was acting more like a Saul and less like a David during that season, right? So first of all, I wanna thank you for sharing that because I feel like a lot of leaders are, living with a false front. They're terrified of letting anybody know about it. They're also terrified of the fours to get it, like, to like formally get it out of their system. So how did you— when you say your wife helped you like get you talked onto a plane, I'm now I'm curious what happened at Tony Robbins event that shook you up in such a way that you didn't want to get on an airplane.

Yeah, well, the thing that— so, um, I, I'm a big fan of Tony's. Um, we've been— we were part of his mastermind for 3 years, Kristen and I, so you get to go to all his events. Annually he does this thing called Date with Destiny. And after you've done it a few times, you, you know what's kind of coming. And on, uh, second or third day, he always does this thing, um, that culminates with showing the scene from Mr. Holland's Opus. Now, I don't— this is an old movie for people who— for now, I mean, I guess it doesn't feel old to me.

It might get restarted now. We're gonna help the streaming services right now. Here we go.

Yes, let's do it. But theme of Mr. Holland's Opus. Mr. Holland wants to write his opus. He wants to write a famous, um, compose a famous set of music, uh, but he can't make any money doing that, so he takes a substitute teacher job or full-time teacher job. But, and like me, I'm watching this, I'm seeing myself in it. He's, he's resentful of his students because when he's teaching, he can't compose his opus. And then he and his wife get pregnant, resentful of his son, not only because of the time he takes him away from his goals, but also because son is born deaf. And here he is a music guy. And so he can't really involve him in his life. And then, you know, the story over time, he evolves, he matures, he becomes a great teacher, everybody's favorite teacher, you know, he slowly gives up on his opus. And then at the end, you know, They actually play it. So, his family. But the point is, there's this culminating moment. And I remember watching that and thinking, I am Mr. Holland. I'm this kind of bitter guy who's trying to skip out early on his family responsibilities so I can do— So that's really the— I just— And I knew it was coming. So I almost left the room. Because I was like, oh, I know this. Mr. Holland's Opus is coming. I've seen this a dozen times. And I know what Tony's going to say. And that was the moment I remember thinking, realizing, hey, this is you. And if you don't shipshape, you know, you're gonna be upset. And then I'm not sure if this whole plane thing was a weird thing other than I was just anxious. I've never felt anxious in my life.

Well, your body was trying to release energy that it had stored and the other part of you was fine.

Yeah, 'cause I kind of dealt with that for 2 or 3 months later. Like I just, I didn't wanna fly anywhere.

Um, and I would call that the process of integration. Yeah, going from anxiousness into excitement.

Yeah. And so, yeah, it was weird. I, I— if you would have asked me at any time in 40-plus years of my life if I'd ever felt anxious, I would have denied that, although I probably had felt anxious. I never suffered from anxiety. I never was a— I didn't have— I don't like snakes, but like, I didn't have— I'm not afraid of flying, right? But I was afraid of flying for a few months. Still, it puts me slightly unease. So I'm not 100% sure of the connection there. Part of me thinks, you know, this was a role for the enemy to play in my life to get me, you know, in a weird sort of state of mind.

It sounds like you were given a chance, which I think is a gift when God gives us a chance to really— it's almost like God will let us go down a certain road all the way to where there has to be a choice. Yeah, there has to be a fork in the road. It's like, all right, I've let you go as far as I can. I'm going to give you not necessarily a warning, but I'm going to give you insight.

Yeah.

Into what I want for you and what you've currently wanted for yourself.

Yeah.

Right. And then that fork in the road, we have choice.

Yeah.

Right. And it sounds like that, that's essentially what you were given.

Yeah. And it's been a deep— it's been a long process. You know, God has slowly started to strip away things in my life, you know, business for the last, you know, for the time after that was not great. And slowly having to learn that I can trust God. You know, I was thinking about this this morning, the very first lie in scripture that the snake tells Eve is that God's not really trustworthy. He can't be counted on, he's withholding, right? The reason he didn't want to eat the fruit.

I say dysfunction always comes from doubt.

Yeah. Is he doesn't want what's good for you. In fact, he's keeping you away from things that are good for you. And so coming to an understanding that God wants something better for me than I can even imagine, I have to believe and trust, which is something as a controlling sort of entrepreneurial type is really difficult for a lot of us to do. Like we wanna write a business plan and X plus, Y equals Z.

Write the vision and make it plain. That means create the strategy.

Yeah. But in the end, this is not our world. And we're not in control. And so it's been a good long journey. Even what I remember realizing there in 2023 is not even close to what I needed to hear long-term because it's not just me giving up on success. It's me understanding that the opinions of people aren't all that important. It's me understanding that I don't need a lot of money anywhere. Because the sparrows of the field, right? That's what Jesus says.

Which is really interesting because I found that when I released— when I— this is— I'm speaking of myself now. When I released the desire to just create more for more's sake, after a time of— I'd call it— I would call it purifying or forging— that as I released the desire for it, it began to flow to me anyway.

Yeah, right.

Because then you turn yourself into a constrictor. It's almost like I got a water hose in my brain right now. It's almost like you got the water hose and it's crimped.

Yeah, like it's—

some water is getting through, right? Um, but because they're— because you were the one squeezing the water hose, all flow is not getting through. But if things flow through you and in and into others and into other domains and places, that can add immense value. Like, that's the purpose of stewardship. You know, when I look at it, so.

Yeah, well, I mean, I think, like I said, I think God has needed some time to show me in really direct ways that he can be depended on. And I realized at some point, one of the things that started to change was I started to pray. I've always been a praying person. I always had my morning prayers, but I started to pray with more expectation that God was really the solution for my problems. But in the midst of all that, I'm recognizing that I'm acting as if I will be happy if God solves X problem. So I've got an apartment complex, by the way, if anybody wants an unsellable 16-unit apartment complex.

That's a great sales pitch.

Yeah, right there. If I own one, right? And I realized I was praying to God as if, if you only solve this problem for me, I'd be okay.

Until the next job came.

That's no different than—

it turns into a genie in a bottle.

Yeah, that's, that's no different than saying, you know, that I, I need money in the bank to feel good. Yeah, I'm coming to him to ask for it, but I'm still acting like I don't need you for you yourself. I need, I need these problems solved. I want you to solve them. There's some faith in that. That was an improvement for me, but it still ultimately led to the same destination. I need you to solve my money problems. And so it's taken me longer to just sort of step back.

You say money's not your problem.

Take the emotion, it's not my problem. I could sell the apartment complex for twice what it's worth. I'm not necessarily any happier. And that's not what God has for me, right? There's something deeper, you know, that's available for me beyond financial success. And so, you know, I think there's a longer, deeper process that I've had to go through. I'm grateful for it now. And I'm not on the other side of it, I don't think quite yet. But I'm—

You're well on your way.

Yeah, but I love the deeper relationship I'm getting. And I'm realizing and understanding things that I didn't understand before.

Well, what you're now walking in, and what I think has been so transformed for my own life, is what I call presence-based wisdom. Yeah, there's only— there's, there's wisdom that can only come to you and through you when you sit still and you're not asking. You're just saying, I'm here. Yeah, right. I mean, so I'll share just a super quick story. My audience has heard it before, but, um, my oldest son comes to me and divorce had happened, um, or the divorce is in the process of happening. And he was very affirming of me and how I showed up as a dad and a father and the husband and stuff. But he said, there's one thing you can do better. He's 22 years old at this time, 21 years old. Um, he said, if you can just be more present when you're present, that would make all the difference to us. And literally in that moment, I had all these flash times, and I'm like, I'm in my phone or my computer, you know, like, hey, can we have a— can we have a talk? Like, they want to just share with me about, you know, it wasn't like I wasn't absent from their games. And he was a drum— this particular son was a drum major. It wasn't like I wasn't that I wasn't at the event or events, but I wasn't always at the event, right? You know what I'm saying? Yeah, my mind was somewhere else. Um, I was putting out a fire that honestly could have waited till the next day, which means I wasn't holding integrity with myself. I wasn't holding integrity. And then, and now Quest, uh, and a bunch of others did this birthday video for me this, this year because I just turned 50. And, um, What I didn't realize is there's a lot of lives that I was touching just by being me. It had nothing to do with the stuff. So I'm really, really anchored in on helping entrepreneurs and business leaders know that the external will never ever be enough. You'll, you'll be chasing and striving for it your entire life until you realize you just need to go inside. Right? You secure that, you secure the doors and stuff on the inside, everything, everything like locked, like it anchors in, and everything out of that becomes overflowing pure.

Yeah.

Like even when you first walked in the door here at Safe Haven, I was like, oh, this guy's got great energy, I love this, right? It's almost like— but you only get— but you only get that. It's not like I'm sharing with the speaking stuff recently. It's like you only get there by going through a forge.

Yeah.

You only become more of yourself as impurities are burned off of you, so to speak.

So yeah, well, I think we don't want to miss there's so much joy on the other side of it. So in the middle of all this, the richness of my spiritual life is so much better. My relationship with my kids is stronger and with my spouse. And I can already feel it. And I'm probably tapping into just a little bit of it. And, you know, it's this realization, which I referenced earlier, that these masters I'm serving, they're ultimately cruel. They come for their pound of flesh. And this morning, as I was thinking about that very concept, I thought, my, my master, our master, he came, he came for a pound of flesh too, but it wasn't my flesh, was it?

He came to give his own. Yeah.

And that's what's so powerful. And that's why the, that's why the devil's first lie is, if you do, if you step back and you give your life over, God's withholding. You're going to end up a missionary to Africa, right? Or you're going to end up doing something you hate. Because God doesn't really want good things for you. That's the crux of the first lie. And but when you get past that and you realize that there's so much joy in it—

well, it's because he's— and this has been my experience— when you finally surrender and lean into God in general and you just trust him, that you trust him, that you trust him, what you realize is much of the assignment that you've been operating in or for or pursuing is not the actual assignment you were created for. And there's something special about watching him architect the assignment you were created for, right? I was sharing with you before we hopped on that our messaging and what we stand for has drastically been shifting and changing. Um, and all I did was I finally sat still and said, where, God, where are you placing me all the time? What rooms are you putting me in? What tables are you putting me in? What value am I bringing? And it was always with leaders who had big initiatives that they were scaling.

Yeah.

And what I discovered was they were going through the same emotional journey, the same intellectual journey, the same spiritual journey in many respects that I had either been through or was coming out of.

Yeah.

Right? So there's wisdom there. And if part of what I think God does with people is I think he takes people, he gives them individual specialties, that can speak to the pain and the provision of somebody else's issue a little bit behind them, right? So an old adage I used to say from stage a long time ago is you're ultimately created to serve the person you used to be. Yeah, right. So there's— and there's lots of variations of that person. Like, there's a 10-year-old Stephen, a 15, a 22, right? And all of them were fairly stubborn, you know. And I don't know, I just, um, It made me just, I don't know, I love the conversation. I do want to pivot to marketing a little bit. Yeah, 'cause yes, I would be a disservice if I didn't tap into this genius brain of yours that's done so many great things. I actually jotted a specific question down.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's one that I hear a lot in different ways with different leaders that I've been talking to, whether it's one-on-one, whether it's in the community, whether it's out in the public or whatever. And here's the question. Most founders I work with are afraid to take a stand because they fear they lose their customers. From your experience raising over $500 million and building conviction-based campaigns, and I think that's, I know that's an important phrase, I want to anchor there too. What is, 'cause we're all about rising, leading, and lasting, right? When does taking a stand actually increase enterprise value?

Yeah, you know, I think the statement that when you take a stand, you're gonna marginalize or lose customers, I think most of the time the exact opposite is true, particularly in today's world where 82% of all American consumers right now say they prefer to do business with a brand that matches their values. And 75% of them say they've switched brands in the last 12 months over some kind of values misalignment. So people are asking, they want to know where you stand. And so trying to be kind of neutral on everything is difficult, maybe even impossible to do. Now, There's a difference between being willing to take a stand on something that's important versus being an asshole. Pardon my language. There are people who behave poorly and they marginalize their people. If you provide bad service, you're rude to your customers, this isn't taking a stand. It's just being a bad person. But being willing to stand for something, whether on a conviction level will attract more people than it loses. I think there's plenty of evidence. I was looking the other day at Hobby Lobby, for example. In 2015, they were a $4 billion company when they sued the Obama administration, 'cause the Obama administration was forcing all businesses to pay for abortions. And Hobby Lobby took the Obama administration all the way to the Supreme Court, won a Supreme Court case, which allowed Hobby Lobby and other closely held companies to not be forced to pay for abortions. That was a pretty controversial stand. That's a 50-50 issue in this country. Abortion, maybe, maybe it's probably one of the most hotly contested issues. They're now an $8 billion company, and that's just a few years later. That stand didn't hurt their company, it helped them grow. Now, you know, and you see other examples. Black Rifle Coffee is another good example of that. They In 2017, they had 32 employees. They were doing $30 million a year in revenue. Starbucks got upset at President Trump over something he was doing in 2017. He was banning refugees from certain countries. So Starbucks announced they were gonna hire 10,000 refugees, and they had previously just announced they were gonna hire 10,000 veterans. And so the perception was they were canceling one promise to hire the other. And Black Rifle Coffee made a big wave saying, We, this little 32-person company that's doing $30 million a year, and Starbucks, I think, had 282,000 employees at the time, we're gonna hire 10,000 veterans instead. And it made a giant splash. It really grew their brand. 3 years later, they went public via SPAC for $1.7 billion.

Wow.

So there's something about being willing to stand for important issues that's gonna attract people to you. It's as simple as I understand who my customer is and who they aren't. And, uh, and so I encourage brands to really think strongly about that. I mean, we can all think of examples where it's been done poorly and badly, but I think there's more good examples than bad.

Well, I want to— all right, so I'm going to ask a pivot question. This is more of a selfish question, um, because I feel like what I'm— what I'm being— what I've been assigned to do, right, is, uh, I've told people before, it's Jesus with a woman at the well. Jesus is in a town he's not supposed to be in, sitting on a well he's not really technically supposed to be sitting on, talking to a woman he's not supposed to be talking to. And yet, because they ended up creating a conversation, healing took place. The women went away freer and bringing people to Jesus. And Jesus was just Jesus, right? And that's been the art, kind of the heart behind everything that we do undertone-wise. This is the first time I've ever even shared this publicly. So I say that to say that with so many divisive things in the world today, there just are. It's not hard to see. Um, I think deception creates divisiveness in general. Doesn't matter what— left, right, purple, green, red, blue. Yep, does— completely irrelevant. Um, I would like for everything that we stand for internally to be a representation of what we actually do. Like, we actually help business leaders build amazing enterprises without losing their soul.

Yeah.

Okay. They may be— they may have a political perspective here or there or everywhere. They may be Muslim, they may be Christian. Um, that doesn't stop me from talking about my faith. It doesn't stop me from being me. So I feel like all that's authentic. Um, but I also don't want to alienate people who actually need what we have to offer.

Yeah.

So how do you— how would— how does someone navigate being authentic to your brand while simultaneously being an invitation, an open invitation to other people?

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things I've learned in politics that I think would be better if we approached it this way— I think the perception, you know, having worked in the industry for years, I think the perception is if we if all of our politicians were moderate, that we would have a better system. And I don't think that's the problem. And I think the same goes for how we approach standing for something as our business. What we need to, a skill we need to develop in this country, which we stink at, is it's better if we all state boldly and confidently what we believe, but with humility and the interest of learning from others, but also—

See, that's the piece that's missing is listening and learning.

And so the way I see some people responding to it is, well, I don't wanna say anything because that's the right way to be welcoming is I'm gonna develop some sort of moderate sort of—

Which is a form of self-abandoning a little bit.

Yeah, and as opposed to saying, no, this is who I am. We are a Christian-led organization. We're a Christ-centric company, which by the way means we're gonna treat you like Christ would treat you, which is better than you would get treated Well, on the tricky part with that is people have stated that very thing and done the opposite of what Christ would have had them do.

So absolutely, there's like broken trust everywhere. In fact, I was— I think one of the things coming up in my mind is we are, we are now in where people are marketing in some ways have been some done so well that trust has been broken so bad.

Yeah.

Um, I even saw a video, and I'm not throwing shade on Russell, it was a YouTube video he did, and there was this book that he paid like $30,000 for, which is all about the psychology, essentially, of having to get someone to buy.

Yeah.

Like, getting to buy whatever thing. It's a famous book. Apparently there's only a few copies, but apparently this book was like the anchor book that created emotional— the emotional— I'm going to call it manipulation, right? Because I think influence is for the service of others. I think manipulation is for service of self. So that's just my opinion. Um, but even as he's sharing about it, I'm like, is this really how we should be marketing to one another?

Right?

Because you have to let someone know you exist for them to find you to begin with, and what you do and how you do it, and how you can be of service. But do you even really want a customer that's going to get in a little bit later and find out, become a client or whatever, and find out that you guys don't have value alignment? And that, that disenchanted value alignment keeps causing explosion. So you spend all your time, energy, and resources trying to manage chaos rather than growing the audience that you already— that already share values with.

Yeah, there's value in being very upfront about it. I think it's, uh, I think it makes sense. I think it's supportive. Yeah, because to your point, the opposite is, uh, they find out later, or that you abandon, uh, your, your truly held convictions. So I think there's plenty of room for people who want to work with entrepreneurs, and it's not faith-based. There's people who want to work with entrepreneurs that are, and we shouldn't begrudge each other. That's part of the, the problem. The, the solution isn't to abandon our beliefs or hide our beliefs. The solution is to be confident about them. Uh, but, uh, and, and tolerance becomes not this modern sort of woke vision of tolerance where we, we act like there's no real truth out in the world, but there is truth, but we can still accommodate other people.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, as I'm kind of thinking through this, and again, this has been a— I think this has been a hard one for me the, like, the last 5 years. I think it's why we went so— we've gone through such a— I think I had to go— I think I had to go through an authentic transformation process to really determine and discern what my authentic message is, right? And then how I can be of service. And I feel like that's the start of all the work.

Right.

And I do feel like there's elements of sharing from my scars and not open wounds. There's a lot more listening. When I look at Jesus and I look at him being in the Roman Empire, right, and the Jewish people at the time, specifically in the orthodoxy, right, Pharisees and Sadducees, again, no shame on anybody, right? Because everybody's in theory doing the work of God, right? Minus the Rome, but they were doing the work of their gods, right? So anyway, Well, long story short is I see Jesus numerous times. This goes back to becoming one part lion, one part lamb. Jesus knew exactly who he was. He knew exactly what he was called to do, and he was executing with purpose. However, his executing with purpose, from what I have seen, never created alienation or some kind of evil intent from his side. Right now, those that were in control and wanted to maintain control people obviously chose narratives and all kinds of things, even in Jesus's day. So part of me really, I want to be a bridge. Like, I want to be able to have people with differing opinions be able to sit down and have a normalized conversation and not be so anchored in on a perspective that they, um, they're unwilling to listen. Because there's— I think, I think there's a beauty in having an anchored approach of knowing who you are, knowing what you stand for, but also just being willing to listen sometimes makes the other person feel heard.

Yeah.

Regardless if you're gonna change your mind or not change your mind, right?

Absolutely.

So how, how would, how can we shift, shift that a little bit? Like, I just, 'cause I really feel like, I feel, I feel like there's a place and time for discernible communication to happen in a responsible way.

Yeah. Well, I think, uh, there's a scriptural example. Paul talks about, uh, this concept. He's talking about people in the church.

Mm-hmm.

But some people, they're talking about food sacrificed to idols, right, in the New Testament. Some people who are Christians at the time felt like we're not going to eat food sacrificed to idols because that's a bad practice to be seen eating food that's sacrificed to idols. We don't believe in idols. And then there's another faction of the church who were saying, well, idols are all fake. Only God is real. So who cares whether they're sacrificed to idols or not? It's immaterial. And Paul's saying we gotta reconcile this situation. And his recommendation wasn't that, well, we immediately adopt the views of other people. It was we can be accepting of other people's views and accommodate them. So if it's gonna trip somebody up because they see you eat food sacrificed to idols, don't eat food sacrificed to idols. So there's this sort of idea—

A bit more of a give and take.

Yeah, that there's this— true Christian-based tolerance is we recognize that there is absolute truth, but we are willing to accommodate others where possible. Whereas a more modern view of tolerance is, well, there isn't any real truth in the world, but I also expect everyone else in my vicinity to accept every word out of my mouth as truth and to accommodate my life choice.

Yeah, so basically believe what I believe.

Yeah, you got to believe what I believe.

The question I jotted down here, because I think, because I think we're all over top of it, is how do we build conviction without building arrogance?

Yeah, well, there's a need for humility. There's, uh, and, and true, you know, I, you know, true conviction is more often than not going to come from a mature relationship with our Savior. Um, uh, And I think people see, and I don't know if this is where we're kind of hovering or not, but the people will see and appreciate authenticity behind it. 'Cause you brought up the example of, we've all had experiences of somebody who talks about Jesus a little too much in a transaction and you start getting the feeling like, hey, this is not authentic, this is manipulative. In fact, we talk about that in our book because there's a number of us, myself included in the past, who would almost automatically particularly with like a contractor. If I had a contractor show up at my house and start talking about how much they are honest contractors who, you're protesting a little too much. And so we've got to come at this from humility. We've got to come at this from faithful service to our Lord.

You know what's really interesting is a long time ago when I was trying to navigate how to be an exceptional entrepreneur while trying to be an exceptional husband at the same time, I noticed that it caused a little dysfunction in both camps. So hence, I'm anchored in all dysfunction. But as far as that being a core problem that we all need to kind of address, but there were phrases that were given that I think we use and we can use in relationships in which we want to restore that can be very powerful. And they're used a lot in one-to-one interactions. In fact, I heard these in a relationship interaction, right? Marital specifically at the time. Um, can you help me understand? And what I heard you say was, yeah, yeah, right? Because I've, um, I've been a lot of folks that don't share my, my specific views on specific things. And when I used to try to push my own agenda, like convert them to my way of believing and thinking, a couple things happen. First of all, I realized I didn't have all the information. And also realized they didn't have all the information. And as a result, we were both being deceived in many respects. Right. But what seemed to work is, hey, we were good before all this election stuff happened. Like, what changed? Like, okay, so let's sit down as friends or in a relationship and say, okay, help me understand. Help me understand how you see what you see. Right. And when you ask that question, you're not doing it to to literally pick apart, right, what, what is being said in that moment. You're actually saying, okay, well, this is, this is their perspective, and just honoring it. That's their perspective. And then being able to simply say, well, what I heard you say was this is your perspective.

Yeah.

And then follow that back. You could follow that back up with, and in theory, if it's a great relationship, ask the same of you, right? And the next, and the next question historically is 'Have you considered?' Right? And 'have you considered' is non-threatening. It's not— because I think what happens is we get these discussions, people are just like, it's— you're poking, you're poking at each other. And I don't know, I, I feel like— I, I don't think— this is, this is my personal perspective— I don't think Jesus wants a world at war, like, internally.

Yeah.

I don't think he wants brothers and sisters fighting, especially if they're believers, right?

Well, absolutely not.

Over issues that are going to be completely irrelevant in heaven, honestly. The same time, I'm now going on a little bit of a tangent. I want to see more unity because what I did a conference in late 2024 down in Florida, I was at 600 entrepreneurs, US Chamber of Commerce, I think it was down in Orlando, great conference. And literally on the airplane, I was like, okay, Lord, what do you want me to share? And all you just gave me, I want unity. I want unity. And, you know, part of the anchoring of unity is to love one another as you love yourself. Pivot of that is, if I don't love myself well, if I don't love myself well, how can I love other people well? So these kinds of things started doing that. So, um, I believe there's absolute truth in your marketing approach, the conviction-driven marketing that you guys use, and the, and the 5 Ps. I want to get into those, but I wanted to share and hear your feedback because I know your heart. Like, I see you operating, right? And I see you giving and serving and stuff like that. But being as successful as you are, specifically within the political realm, it's like, I want to make sure that— like, how do we get to conviction without arrogance?

Yeah, well, I've often wondered if what we have as a country, which has led to all this disunity, is a massive countrywide identity crisis. And what I mean by that is we've been taught for 20, 30 years, not just in schools, but by a lot of self-help gurus and others, that if you really want to understand who you are, and if you want to form your identity, you ought to take a deep, abiding look within, look deep to your heart, find out what you really care about. Find out what you are really born to do, and then you establish your identity this way. You go on this journey, and there's some truth to that, but it's ultimately a failed way to really understand who you are. Because when we look deep inside, along with the good desires, there's crappy desires, right? And there's evil desires. As we know, we're all born sinful. And when we try to find identity in ourselves, it's like finding identity in sinking And so we have a whole generation of people who don't know how to be happy. They don't know how to feel confident in who they are. They've been taught self-esteem stuff, which is ultimately empty. And so what is the closest, easiest, lowest common denominator to feel better about yourself when you don't have an anchor in something that really matters, like receiving your identity in Christ from the God of the world who says you are? When you don't have that anchor, what's the quickest way to get there? Quickest way to get there is to feel better than the other people. I mean, I, I don't know how good I'm doing, but I'm a lot better than that Democrat comparison. Yeah, who, who believes this, right? Or I'm a lot better than that Republican who believes this. It's the closest way to feel better about ourselves. I think we're in a massive crisis, and that's why these conversations are so impossible to have. We're not just talking about whether you think taxes should be up or down, which which you could argue could be an issue argued without emotion. But those emotions are so deep because it's built into our identity. And when we can't feel superior to our political enemies, it's like we're being unmoored from who we are. And so there's a solution to this unity problem. And it's ultimately Jesus, right? Of putting our identity in something that's really rock solid. So I'm hoping that's where we're headed.

Yeah, me too. Yeah, I think just having the dialogue, even you and I sitting down having a conversation, um, because you and I share similar views, so it's not— we're not at odds. But, um, you know, I've got close friends and family that we were at odds, and they were, they were very angry for a very long time. Yeah. And unfortunately, we, through work and through wanting to listen and wanting to learn and wanting to have the conversations, and some of them were a little bit rubby, Right.

Yeah.

You know, but, um, I keep coming back to whether or not we're operating in fear or love.

Yeah.

And I think you just brought up a really good thing about identity and where identity is tied to and how identity can honestly accidentally, not even intentionally, shape self-righteousness. Right. I think that— I think there's— I think there's a lot of meat there. I'm gonna— I'm gonna ponder on that myself, uh, because I think there's something deep there. I wanted to jump into your 5 Ps because I absolutely agree with the conviction-based marketing plan. I have to be absolutely convicted, even myself, that I can help business leaders or I shouldn't be doing what I'm doing, right? Because something's got to carry me through the challenges that arise in trying to serve people at scale and stuff like that. I understand that the conviction modality as well is like the values have to be really anchored, really strong and articulated, communicated to attract essentially the other. If we could just use that old analogy of being the person you used to be, right?

Right.

That person still had similar values that I have now, large in part, but I also want to attract that person. So help me understand the 5 Ps of how this all comes together in conviction-based marketing and why this has been such a good tool and been so successful for so many.

Yeah, well, we started to develop these ideas working in politics. There's a couple of things you learn in politics that seem counterintuitive. We've already talked about one of them. My first perception when I thought I worked in pol— when I, my first perception about how you should market yourself as a politician was, well, it'd be better to win 75% of the vote than 51% of the vote. So you would want to put together a platform that grabs the most people. And in 20 years of working in politics, I've never seen that work. Every once in a while you get a truly transformational politician that inspires people in certain ways. We saw that with Ronald Reagan in the '80s. We saw it to some extent with Barack Obama, where people just really gathered around them, even people who might have disagreed.

They were magnetic.

But very magnetic. But those were one in a million scenarios. What we've always found more effective was you win political campaigns by targeting a relatively small amount of people. Second thing we learned was there's a certain amount of emotion you need to tap into. People, this is old sales rule, I'm sure you've heard before, people buy emotionally, they justify intellectually, right? And so as we started to develop these, we recognized our winning campaigns got a few things right. In my book, I actually talk about Trump. It's a little difficult for some people to look at that dispassionately. But if you look at what he did so well in 2016, you learn a lot, you understand there was something about— he understood about a certain population of the American public that nobody did. And we were hired and worked on that campaign. I didn't understand it when I was working for him. Some of the stuff that instinctually, instinctively he was doing made no sense to me. There was a significant—

a lot of things he's doing makes no sense to me.

Well, sure, but the, the population of people who were Democrats that he was talking to and we were, we were spending money to reach out to logically made no sense. But there was this population of folks and in rural America that were looking for something that he provided. They felt marginalized. And when we talk about conviction-driven marketing, the first thing you get right is you got to really understand your people, right? You mentioned that a little bit. You're serving somebody 3 years— you 3 years ago, right? If you could start by understanding who your people are, what they care about, what their motivations are. The second one we've also sort of talked about already, you kind of got us into— you got to position yourself properly. There are a number of companies—

I find that people struggle with positioning because it seems very confusing.

Yeah, absolutely. And in this particular context, it feels a little scary because what we're talking about is if you're going to position yourself in the arena of your convictions as a way to attract customers and clients, there's a lot of different ways to do it. We talked about Hobby Lobby earlier. Hobby Lobby is a very outwardly Christian company. They run paid marketing ads. Around Easter and Christmas with Jesus in it. So there's no mistaking the way where they stand on faith. Chick-fil-A is another business that's fairly well known as being faith-friendly. They send a pretty subtle signal. They're closed on Sunday. The owners, the Cathleys, have spoke publicly about their faith, but there's no paid marketing campaigns from Chick-fil-A. Talking about their faith. Their marketing campaigns are two cows on a billboard saying, eat more chicken. Yeah, that's right. And even on this, I thought was genius, by the way. Yeah. And even on the closed on Sunday stuff, if you go to the door of the church— of the, uh, of the Chick-fil-A on Sunday and it says it's closed to give their employees a day off, it doesn't say they're closed for the Sabbath. And so you have two different positioning strategies there. In our book, we call what Hobby Lobby does an ideology position. So they're staking a solid, firm, conviction-based position that is more marginalizing because they're saying we are a Christian company. We're not a religious company. We're not just a company with good morals. We're a Christian company. Whereas Chick-fil-A has more of what we call an issue position. They've chosen some things that people relate to, like being closed on Sunday. It sends a clear signal, but they haven't been super in-your-face about their faith. Black Rifle Coffee is another good example of a company they are pro-military, pro-veteran, pro-America. Arguably, everybody in the US is pro-military, pro-veteran, pro-America. Nobody wants veterans to be in bad shape. Every one of them want them to be healthy and to help them out with their issues. And so that's what we call more of an issue position, but it sends a very clear signal and it attracts certain type of person to them or really sort of aligned with those values. And then there's another positioning we talk about, which is market fit. If you're selling Bibles, by implication, you have a product that what we call our audience, which is Liberty spenders, they want, you don't need to tell them, it's sort of implied. So getting that positioning right is tough and it has to be authentic to who you are. And it also gives a lot of variety. To market with your convictions, you don't have to go too far. You can pick it right. You still need to be confident, bold, but you don't have to do it hobbyist.

See, what you just described showcases conviction without control or without arrogance. I love that. I love that model.

Yeah. So that's the second P we talk to people. I say, you understand your people, you understand how you're going to position. The third is an old marketing— the third P is something that's not new, but you got to really learn how to tell your story in a passionate way. I think most businesses really screw this up.

Where do business owners go wrong with that? Because I find there's a lot of marketing messages right now that I feel like if just the message itself was repositioned a little bit, it would be a lot more alluring to their ideal client.

Yeah, they get in their head, not their heart. That's the number one problem. They think they're going to talk somebody into buying their product. No one's ever been talked into buying anything. You've got to connect with them emotionally. Once that's done, yes, you got to provide some facts and figures. So people hire Stephen Scoggins to support their business because they first connect with you emotionally. And then at some point they're going to ask, have you helped any other business like mine? Uh, what's the biggest transformation you've done? But that is the second step in the sales process. The first step is they connected with you emotionally. Now they're just looking for intellectual justification. And so getting that story right and getting it down to the emotional core, it's where so many businesses fail. They think the right fact, the right tidbit is what wins people over.

That's phase 2, not really phase 1.

Yeah, it's phase 1 is that you're really connecting with people first. And I— there's a really great story I love to tell about my— one of my favorites in this. There's a great coffee company in Wheaton, Illinois called I Have a Bean Coffee. They also have great coffee, by the way. Anybody near Wheaton, Illinois, Pete is the owner of I Have a Bean Coffee. Pete became a coffee snob and was— that was part of his business. He makes great coffee. But the other part was after he started his coffee business, he tried to hire a relative of his who had, who had some problems with the law and had come out of prison, and he couldn't hire his relative. He was working with some sort of payroll company, wouldn't let him hire a felon. And he thought, if I can't hire my own relative, then this has gotta be a problem nationwide where people who are getting out of prison can't find work.

There's absolutely an issue with that.

So now he only hires people who come out of prison.

Oh, that's awesome.

And if you go to ihaveabeancoffee.com and you go to their website, there's a video and the employees talk about what it's like to work for I Have a Bean Coffee. And it's an ugly cry kind of video.

That's awesome.

But what I love about it is what they say, They make the 1% best coffee in the world. That's their sort of, you know, goal. And the prisoners will talk about, they enter society again feeling like they're in the bottom 1%. And there's something transformational about putting their name on a top 1% product. And you're just, he's telling his story in a way.

That is so good.

Yes, I would never buy coffee from, I would never go to another coffee shop. Knowing the transformation he's doing. He's got that part figured out. Lucky for him, there was a great college out of the Pacific Northwest who needed— their students needed to do a marketing video. They made it for free. Oh, but it was a really killer marketing video. Wow. So getting that passionate stories right. The fourth thing is really counterintuitive. Um, I call it the proof step, and most people think what I mean by that is you, you need to provide proof that you're good at what you do. What I actually mean by that is, and this is what we learned in politics, is most people never test, try, or prove that their marketing messages work until they're well into spending the money. And we learned in politics, man, we— you don't have a second chance. There's no second place prize in politics. If Donald Trump wins the presidential campaign in 2024, Kamala Harris gets nothing except having to explain to the world why she lost, right? And so in politics, you get exceptionally good at learning how to test your ads. Because you've got one shot at this. You don't have a year to figure it out. Most businesses don't do it. In best cases, all they're doing with their— the test is maybe they're A/B testing. So they're running a version of the ad on Facebook and another version and seeing which one performs better.

So I'm gonna just piggyback there for a second. So I was honest with you, like, we just started running Facebook ads for the first time, Meta ads, um, specifically to invite people to a free training that we, we decided to do. Yeah, that is like 100% based on service. We, we, because we know people have been burned through the trust factor, we said, just so you know, we're not offering some high-ticket thing when you come to this retraining. Yeah, like in the, in the actual like copy.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Um, and the message is centered on, all the messaging is centered around, um, basically helping a burned-out business owner, essentially.

Yeah, yeah.

You don't have to, you don't have to be burned out. We can help you like not be burned out and still build a great company. Um, but what was interesting was, is I thought originally when the team was like, hey, can you do— we record some videos and we'll do some, you know, they're going to do carousels and some other things, but we record some videos. I'm like, sure. So I'm thinking I'm going to record like 5 videos. I recorded 30 videos. So they're testing 30 different subsets. And I'm like, is that the right way to do? Is like, because they're like, yes, that's what we need to do. Yes.

You've got a marketer who understands the proof step. And even more important, there's some value in A/B testing. What we learned, for example, when we were working on a campaign in Texas once, there was an ad running that we wanted to test and it featured policemen from Houston. And the ad did really well in Houston. It didn't do so well in Dallas. And they didn't understand, I mean, it's the same message, pro-law enforcement, And so we did what we did, like a dial test. You know, it's sort of like what you see on cable news sometimes. People watch the video and they're turning it. Do you like this? Do you not like this? And you see lines and you could see where it dropped out. The people in Dallas didn't like that they put Houston, Houston police officers in the ad.

I guess that would make sense.

There's something different. If you were A/B testing it online, you wouldn't know why it didn't work. You just knew it wasn't working. Dial testing gives you that little extra perception, or like a focus group. Either way though, we, we put a lot of emphasis in what we do in that you've got to do proof. And then the coolest part of doing what we do in conviction-driven marketing is get— is, is doing your product rollout. Now we've talked about this concept of conviction-driven marketing, and you could pick all sorts of convictions. Now I come from politics, I worked for a lot of Republicans, and so I understand this sort of Christian and conservative ecosystem really well. So that's where our specialty ideas. But what I love about when you, when you're marketing with your convictions is there's an ecosystem of people who want to see you succeed, but it's almost like a secret ecosystem. Most people don't know how to tap into Christian media. Most people don't know in Indiana that the top radio station in Indiana, or collection of them, are Christian radio stations. They just don't take ads. And so your typical marketing firm doesn't know where to go. If you want to hit this market. There's so many great opportunities in that space. And so, and that's one of, I think, the unsung heroes of marketing with your convictions. There's the, there are niche medias that, uh, that create tremendous opportunity for you to tap into. So getting that product rollout right is that fifth P that we do.

And the part of the product, part of the product rollout, well, that's a lot of Ps. Um, is actually understanding by testing, right? So before you roll the product fully out, basically, you've identified the audience, you've identified the message matches the audience, you've identified the problems that they have and the solutions actually— that your solutions actually fix or correct that problem. Because I feel like that's where trust gets broken when somebody steps into the realm, if you will. You've promised to solve a problem for them. or to assist them in solving a problem, and then your solution doesn't measure up, even though you said in multiple ways that your solution can fix their thing. Now, obviously, the only thing they can't— no one can take advantage of is how quickly or if someone's going to take action themselves.

Yeah.

You know, but I've seen a lot of situations where people did take action, the solution still didn't deliver the value, and now they're, now they're really hesitant to do anything else.

Yeah. Well, good marketing doesn't fix a bad product. Right. And there, We talk about this a little bit in our book because the temptation when you're marketing with your convictions is to treat your business like a charity. People ought to buy from me because I'm a Christian business owner. Well, people still expect a, a good experience. Yeah, they expect the product you sell to do what you say it does, and frankly, God expects that. And so you can't pretend like the rules don't—

yeah—

count anymore. And so the right businesses understand exactly what you're talking about. You got to have a solution that matches Yeah, trust is a major issue. If I were to rewrite my book again, I would have done a whole chapter on trust because I think it's part of the reason conviction-driven marketing works so well. People don't trust anything anymore. I don't know what to trust. I work professionally in politics. I don't know what to trust in the news, even though I know some of the people they're talking about fairly well, because there's so much just misinformation out there, so much partisan information where you're not really getting the facts of the case. So people will default to tribes and convictions in order to make decisions. Um, but that creates an opportunity, I think, for folks to excel.

Bro, this has been awesome.

Yeah, I loved it.

Yeah, it really has been. Where can everybody find out more about you and what you're working on?

Well, check us out at libertiespenders.com. It's the easiest place. But I'm also on LinkedIn. That's probably the other best place to find me. Curt Luthart.

Love it, man. Dude, thank you so much. This is killer.

Yeah, I loved it.

All right, guys, that's going to do it for this episode. I hope you got a lot of great nuggets. I know I'll be watching this back myself and taking a lot of notes. Thank God for AI. I can maybe drop some transcript in there and get some big notes as well. But hope you guys enjoyed the episode. As always, please like, subscribe, share, do all the things that they tell you to do that most of us forget to do or choose not to do. And it really helps. I really tested that to see if it actually worked and it actually helped reach more people. So if you enjoyed the episode, you enjoyed what we value, we bring, please share with a friend or family member, especially if something specific about this episode really resonated with you. Until then, we'll see on the next episode. God bless. Take care. Peace.