5 Presidential Election Strategies You Can Use in Your Business Today

Kristen Luidhardt [00:00:00]: Campaigns are so cyclical. They're up and down. How do we even out the revenue? And it's just looking at what you have to offer, what assets do you have, what things to. To your point about spinoffs, we found out that we had incredible data, that if we had the right agreements to keep everything legal, that we could find ways to monetize that data, use it for other purposes. And that's what's really helped us be successful. And we've done that over and over and over again. Mike Koenigs [00:00:23]: I love the fact that you've got a deeper understanding of how to use the data, how to use the psychology, how to take advantage of the timing of the media cycle. There's so many factors that I don't think traditional businesses either have the time or the background to think of. Kurt Luidhardt [00:00:41]: Candidates have taught us that we're really looking at a very short time frame in these days. Candidates don't have a lot of time. Businesses don't have a lot of time. Yeah. Things that were popular yesterday aren't going to be popular today. Things that were working two years ago aren't going to work tomorrow. The need is to reinvent faster. You can't pause and wait for everything to blow apart, then try to fix it. Kurt Luidhardt [00:01:04]: It's got to be done proactively. Mike Koenigs [00:01:17]: Hey, this is Mike Candy's welcome to another episode of Capability Amplifier. These are my friends Kurt and Kristen. Say hi. Kristen Luidhardt [00:01:24]: Hey. Kurt Luidhardt [00:01:24]: Hello. All right. Mike Koenigs [00:01:25]: Well, this is super exciting, because what does it take to get one president, 14 governors, 15 senators, and 88 members of Congress elected and millions, tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars in order to win? It's 50% plus one. There is no second place. Now that in a big freaking smart engine, that reinvents itself, because every campaign is a startup. My guests today are Kurt and Kristen Ludhart. I met them at Tony Robbins home in Palm Beach. Now they have an amazing hero's journey that began in college. They are consummate entrepreneurs who slept in their car selling fireworks and wound up building an incredibly successful political marketing organization that has raised over half a billion dollars. Now, they've traveled over a million and a half miles, many in their car, in 48 states. Mike Koenigs [00:02:13]: Now, some of their clients that they've helped get elected included President Trump, which includes a $60 million raise, Ted Cruz, with millions raised, Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia, Governor Chris Christie, US Senator Rick Scott, US Senator Paul Rickets, whose family owns the Cubs, and many, many more. Now, their unique ability and superpower is their ability to reinvent faster with an easy to understand framework that they're going to share with you today. And a team they deploy in their clients businesses. Now, their systems can help any B two B business find hidden money, generate MRR, that's monthly recurring revenue, create spinoff companies that sell for quick wins. They've done it themselves. They're going to talk about how they can do it with you. But they also spin messages and stories that turn around organizations and generate more revenue in a media cycle. So their unique mindsets can be applied to any business, including yours, no matter what industry you're in or what your political leaning is. Mike Koenigs [00:03:11]: So welcome, Kurt and Kristen, thank you so much for being here. Kurt Luidhardt [00:03:14]: Great to be here, Mike. Mike Koenigs [00:03:15]: So exciting. So first of all, I want to just begin with Kurt. You ripped your pants in front of a president. Kurt Luidhardt [00:03:23]: So tell us the did you know I had the unique privilege of going to the Bush family compound in Kenny Buckport, Maine, a few years back and get to spend some time with Governor Jeb Bush, George P. Bush, his son, who is land commissioner in Texas, and of course, President, former President George H. W. Bush and his wife Barbara. Very excited about it because that's the very first election I ever really got to vote in, although it was a student election at the time. But I remember that and I was excited about a chance to meet them. And we were actually doing something outdoors. We were meeting outdoors and they had positioned themselves on the porch of Jeb Bush's little cabin there in the Bush family compound there. Kurt Luidhardt [00:04:12]: And we did the whole grip and grin thing. We have a great picture with the two of us and George, HW and Barbara. And as everybody got done with the grip and grin, they were all by themselves. This guy, opportunity. I'm going to start a conversation, get some real FaceTime, and I'm going to get right up in their face. Had this plan. I'm going to ask HW about the land because the family's owned it for 150 plus years and took a big step up on the porch. And right when I did it, you get that feeling when, you know, like a little popping, something has happened, but you don't know. Kurt Luidhardt [00:04:54]: It's kind of like you can't really look and find out. How exposed am I? Because then everybody will know. Hello, ladies. And so, yes, I just remember the piercing blue eyes of the former first lady looking at me and thinking, well, the only thing I can do is just start talking and hope nobody notices. But I did escape it. I had to kind of jump backwards off the porch and immediately find my way out of view. But it's wonderful. Sometimes you meet your idols and bust your pants right in front of. Kurt Luidhardt [00:05:29]: Yeah. Mike Koenigs [00:05:30]: So did you know what was going on at the time, Kristen? Do you have any idea at all? Kristen Luidhardt [00:05:35]: I did not. I just remember him coming to me afterwards and having me check. You can't see anything. You're. Kurt Luidhardt [00:05:42]: You're good. Kristen Luidhardt [00:05:42]: Good. But he was very worried and he thought that the former first lady noticed, but I don't. Kurt Luidhardt [00:05:48]: I still think she did. I don't think she had a look on her face. Mike Koenigs [00:05:51]: Oh, that's great. I love it. I love it. So one of the things that we're going to do today, just to give away the big prize, is you guys have built this brilliant, reinvent, faster system, and we've been working on this for days now. And what I've really enjoyed is just deconstructing how you've been able to look at all these political campaigns and businesses, businesses you've built yourselves. And the bottom line is it's a really fast way to examine the data. You've got this modularized way of bringing in business units that you think in terms of everythinG's a startup, which is really smart. And the way you think about it, though, is different than I've ever seen before. Mike Koenigs [00:06:36]: That's one of the things I'm super excited about. But maybe before we begin, why don't you talk a little bit about your own backstories, like how you met, how you got together, and how you started some of your first businesses? Because I think the journey is just as important, and it makes sense. Like, it makes everything that you do and have done since then make sense. So take it away. Kurt Luidhardt [00:06:58]: Yeah. So I was that kind of nerdy high school kid who brought a briefcase to high school. Mike Koenigs [00:07:05]: I find that very hard to believe. Very hard to believe so far. Kurt Luidhardt [00:07:08]: And I wanted to be present now. Kristen Luidhardt [00:07:10]: It's just appropriate. Kurt Luidhardt [00:07:13]: Yeah. Mike Koenigs [00:07:13]: I've grown into, now you can lean into your character once you have some success under your belt. Otherwise, you're just a weird kid. I think I know what that feels like. Kurt Luidhardt [00:07:22]: So good for you to be. I was going to be president. That was my goal. Yeah. And eventually morphed a little bit into maybe I'd want to run a presidential campaign and got very involved in politics in college, which is how we met. We met in the College Republican Club, and she was also enthusiastic about political matters. She spoke passionately about a number of issues in front of our group, and we absolutely just hit it off and developed an interest in being running campaigns together, working in politics. Together and a few years later, preparing to get married, and realized we wanted to do something grand. Kurt Luidhardt [00:08:15]: Didn't have the money for it. Kristen Luidhardt [00:08:17]: I don't know about grand, but maybe. Kurt Luidhardt [00:08:20]: Grand by our standards at the time and wanted to get married with some pizzazz. Right? Kristen Luidhardt [00:08:29]: Couldn't afford it. Kurt Luidhardt [00:08:29]: Couldn't afford it. So one of the political campaign candidates that we had volunteered to help, who has become a mentor over the years, suggested, why don't you, since you're getting married in August, make money for your wedding by selling fireworks around the 4 July? Mike Koenigs [00:08:46]: How patriotic is that? Unbelievably patriotic. Kurt Luidhardt [00:08:50]: Yes. And he had a hookup with a fireworks company that he had sold his business to, who put up these seasonal tents and consigned fireworks mostly to charities, as a way to raise money. But he said you could just offer to do it as a kind of for profit enterprise to make money for your wedding. So we volunteered with the company. Not volunteered. We took over three locations in the Indianapolis area where we were living, and that's how we made money for our weding. We made $9,000 in two weeks. Yeah, we got our friends to volunteer to sit with us in the tents and run the cash registers to do all that. Kurt Luidhardt [00:09:34]: We slept in our car. Mike Koenigs [00:09:35]: I imagine you paid them really well, too, right? We did. You are such good capitalists. Kurt Luidhardt [00:09:42]: I'm telling you, my parents came out for a week and helped. We had to sleep in the tent, in the car, because that's how you kept people from stealing your fireworks. Which was the first time we ever did that, but made the 9000. And that was how we paid for the wedding and performed. Better, I think, for the fireworks company than they felt like the charities had done. So when it came to the following year, which was 2005, after we've been married for a year, we volunteered to run what we thought would be a larger operation. And they suggested, well, if you want to do as much revenue but from one location, you need to do it in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is much closer in proximity to Jersey, New York City, and fireworks are not legal there, so people drive into Pennsylvania to buy. Kurt Luidhardt [00:10:28]: So you'll do more revenue. We'll set you up with a place in Harleysville, which is just outside of we. Kristen Luidhardt [00:10:35]: What could go wrong? Sounds simple. Kurt Luidhardt [00:10:38]: So we prepped for that. I went out first. Kristen was going to come later, but when we got to Harleysville with two other people, there was no tent there, and I was confused. I called the rep from the fireworks company who we never talked to before. His name was Sam, and Sam was a pretty cool cat. And he said, oh, no, we've got you. You're going to be in Philadelphia, the city of Philadelphia, instead of Harleysville. Just drive down on us one. Kurt Luidhardt [00:11:08]: So the corner of us one and Welsh, there's kind of a shopping center there. That's where we have you set up. So we drove in there, slept there that night. The next morning, they showed up with a big orange Schneider semi truck and 14 pallets of fireworks, which I was not expecting. And we start setting everything up. We have a very angry truck driver because he can't leave until the fireworks are off. And there's only three of us to move 14 pallets of fireworks. Kristen Luidhardt [00:11:36]: They did not prepare us at all. Kurt Luidhardt [00:11:37]: No forklifts, no hand truck. We were expecting a much smaller operation. But about. I don't know, towards the evening that night, when we were getting close to getting the thing emptied, I hear sirens and turn to look and see what's happening, and I noticed there is a set of police SUVs rolling into the parking lot with police officers in what they're. I don't know what you would call it, riot gear, police machine gun, firemen, boots. Kristen Luidhardt [00:12:11]: Yeah, fire engines, fire trucks, the whole deal. Mike Koenigs [00:12:15]: They rolled everyone out just for you, the welcome wagon, patriotic. Kurt Luidhardt [00:12:20]: And they approach us and they say, it's not legal to sell fireworks in Philadelphia. And the only reason you're not in handcuffs and down to the jail right now is that you weren't trying to hide it yet. We had a big sign on the tent that said fireworks, and I am not sure what's going on. Sam and I chat again. He comes to visit. Sam is yelling at the police officers, I dare you to put us into prison. This is perfectly legal. What I didn't know was our mentor and friend had worked with the state legislature in Pennsylvania and slipped a change in their state law into a bill that made it so that all fireworks laws in the entire state were standardized. Kurt Luidhardt [00:13:03]: So the city of Philadelphia and the city of Pittsburgh, they couldn't develop their own local ordinances. All the fireworks laws were standard. So it legalized fireworks in Philly. But the cops didn't know. Yeah, neither did the fire department. Kristen Luidhardt [00:13:15]: Somebody forgot to give them the memo. Kurt Luidhardt [00:13:18]: But it was that access to our friends what got us there and kept us out of jail, thankfully. But also the unintended benefit for us was it got all this attention because there was all these police officers, fire trucks. This went on for hours until the situation got resolved. The local news showed up and filmed kind of what was going on multiple. Kristen Luidhardt [00:13:38]: Stations all went live filming it. I saw the coverage later, of course, but, yeah, it was unbelievable because then everybody came and just completely swarmed our tent, and we sold an insane amount of fireworks. So it all was wonderful. Kurt Luidhardt [00:13:55]: So it was $24,000 we made in those ten days. And it was at that time we thought to ourselves, why do we have jobs when we could make. That was what I was making at the time, at my job for a year. Yeah. Mike Koenigs [00:14:09]: Your salary in a couple of days. Right. Kurt Luidhardt [00:14:11]: Why am I doing this? We don't need to. Kristen Luidhardt [00:14:13]: Maybe slightly more. But it was like, this is. Kurt Luidhardt [00:14:16]: And that's what really gave us a taste for business. Mike Koenigs [00:14:20]: If I remember correctly, you said a down payment on your house on top of it. Kurt Luidhardt [00:14:23]: Yeah, that's what we did with the money. We put down payment on our first house. Yeah. So we got back and we said, okay, well, we could do fireworks in the summer. We need to do something in the winter. So we hunted around, actually found somebody in your backyard in San Diego who had a sort of a franchise, more of a license arrangement, where we could license their name, the Christmas Light pros, and sell and install Christmas lights. Mike Koenigs [00:14:50]: I would like people fireworks Christmas. Kurt Luidhardt [00:14:53]: Yes. We should have done that together. Kristen Luidhardt [00:14:55]: Extra pizzazz whenever you need it. Kurt Luidhardt [00:14:57]: Add more value. So, yeah, we started installing Christmas lights in Indy, and we did. Kristen Luidhardt [00:15:04]: We're both afraid of heights, too, so I don't know why we're picking these things we know nothing about. That's what other people are historically true. We didn't really know much about fireworks, so sure, we could sell that. We're scared of heights, so, of course, let's install Christmas lights on people's houses. Kurt Luidhardt [00:15:20]: Yeah, we did $80,000 in Christmas lights installation that year. And I think it was in year one or year two that we obtained a client, a guy named Tim Durham, who lived in Indy and owned the rights to that national Lampoons franchise, which the Christmas vacation thing with Chevy Chase is part of that whole deal. And of course, he had the same propensity for lights, and it took eight people seven days to install his lights. Kristen Luidhardt [00:15:49]: It was a great client. Kurt Luidhardt [00:15:50]: He was a wonderful client. And it became our second entrepreneurial venture. And what's kind of funny is the political work, which eventually became our marketing agency and really took off, was just supposed to supplement our seasonal or fun seasonal businesses. We'll just take on a couple of political clients. It's what we used to do for a living. And it'll fill in the gaps, because Christmas light stuff really only runs from November to January, and fireworks is just June. And in 2007, took our first political client. Kristen Luidhardt [00:16:25]: There you have it. We got our round the clock business. Mike Koenigs [00:16:27]: Yeah, well, one of the things that I learned just when I was researching you and talking to you initially about this was just how, when you think about it, what really benefited you at the time with the fireworks was someone had figured out how to write an exception law. You got a lot of media, which taught you a lot about, well, you can take advantage of the media, spin something, and produce a great business from that with free press and free media. And then on top of it, you've got just what connections can do for you to keep you out of trouble. Oh, yes, you've got a tremendous number of things here. So what was the connection then between politics, though, and those things? Because clearly you had connections besides the fact that you made relationships and you really started understanding politics with your being involved actively in college. But why don't you just dive into how quickly did you figure out how to get people elected and what were your big wins? So what's the transition point there? Kurt Luidhardt [00:17:36]: Yeah, I don't know. We just kind of dove right into it at the time. A digital marketing for political candidates was kind of new campaigns didn't know how to handle that. What's this Internet thing? A lot of candidates tend to be 60 plus, and so they weren't digital natives. Mike Koenigs [00:17:57]: They weren't using that new fangled Internet. Kurt Luidhardt [00:17:59]: No, they are not email communications. Kristen Luidhardt [00:18:02]: New media is what it was called. And that's a new market that's opening up. And if we want to do this for a living and not have to be on a campaign where you lose your job every so many months, if we want to keep make it a business, we've got to find something that we can do, that we can bring that other people don't know how to do. And guess what? If they don't know how to do it, they won't recognize that we also are just barely learning. And so it made a lot of sense. I thought, we can figure this out. Kurt Luidhardt [00:18:27]: Yeah. Kristen taught herself to code, and we just kind of figured it out as we went. And the three things together were sort of making us a living, but it just wasn't. First couple of years didn't really take off. Take off. And I remembered, as we were talking about this, a conversation that we had in very early 2010 to say, look, we're struggling to pay employees. We had had one nightmare scenario where we only had a couple of employees, but I remember bouncing a payroll check that was embarrassing. And I thought, if we can't make it work this year, we've been at this for four years, let's go get real jobs. Kurt Luidhardt [00:19:06]: At least we'll have money in the bank. We won't be fishing in cushions for pizza money. We can just go do what everybody else does. But we ended up having a breakout year in 2010. We thought we were going to give it a big. Kristen Luidhardt [00:19:21]: Well, we drove everywhere to build relationships, to meet clients again, saving money by sleeping in the car sometimes. And that hustle really paid off. We just hit the road and busted our butts. Kurt Luidhardt [00:19:33]: So it was a real breakout year for us. The first time we did millions in revenue, not just a few hundred thousand. We had obtained a bunch of congressional clients, 14 of which won that year. And we had a couple of higher profile campaigns. We had Scott Brown, who won a US Senate seat that year, Chris Christie, governor. Well, Chris Christie was elected governor in late 2009, and Bob McDonald in Virginia, and also late 2009. And those big upsets were our clients. And in this business, it's all about what have you done for me lately? Have you won something big lately? And those were the big ones, right after a pretty particularly bad year for Republican candidates, we had a couple of really good elections in nine and ten. Kurt Luidhardt [00:20:19]: And so that really took us from unknowns to people who win races that nobody thought were wittable. And then 2012, we were able to do our first presidential campaign, and things were really. We never looked back. We went from getting excited when we had our first million dollar years year to having million dollar months to having $8 million months. And it's been a fun business to be in. Mike Koenigs [00:20:46]: Yeah, that's extraordinary. When did you start raising money, too? Because 2016 was massive for you guys. We'll get into that in a second. But the crossover between here you are message making and then literally money making and doing it better, faster, more effectively, but also starting to understand the data. And that kind of leads us to what you've been able to adapt to not just your own business, but now to other people's businesses as well, which, as far as I know, you're the only people I've ever known, which gives you a really unique angle, a true category of one offer of being, using all this political knowledge, all this media knowledge, combining with thinking about everyone and everything as a startup, lumping it in one place, and then finding, like, where's the MRR? Because you started spinning off little businesses from within your businesses, some of which you sold, some of which generate to this day, basically what you call mailbox money. Kristen Luidhardt [00:21:51]: Right? Mike Koenigs [00:21:52]: So tie this together between the making money, raising money, but also bring it to the presidential, the big win for you guys. Kurt Luidhardt [00:21:59]: Campaigns are weird. You can't really compare them to a business because they are startups and there are startups with a deadline. Most of them really only last about a year and a half and they have to go from zero. Nobody knows who they are. They don't have any money to fund, any staff or advertising activities to sometimes having 253545 5 million or if you're running for president, a billion dollars to spend. And so it creates a unique challenge. How do we identify supporters? You can't raise all that money from billionaires because there are limits to what they can give. Mike Koenigs [00:22:38]: Yeah. Kurt Luidhardt [00:22:39]: So it has to come from thousands, tens of thousands or even millions of people. And so we got good at identifying donors and activating donors for campaigns in really short time frames. Kristen Luidhardt [00:22:51]: We had finding out what moves people, what they're interested in, what speaks to them about the candidate, so that we can then tap into that to get them to take action. Kurt Luidhardt [00:22:58]: Yes. Right. Mike Koenigs [00:22:59]: But being able to do it literally inside of a news cycle, which could happen in hours or at most a couple of days, which means you got to think fast, respond fast, create these campaigns, create the copy, get more clients, grow your business with better marketing and messaging, make more money and get a better life with more freedom of time, money, relationship and impact. Learn more about our three day one on one done with you reinvention workshop. Visit Connecttomike.com to book a conversation with me right now. All right, back to the episode. And like, one bad, dumb message movement can destroy a brand, right? Like, this is literally not just the life and death of that political character's career, potentially, it certainly can lose that election, and a lot of people lose their jobs as well. So again, I love thinking about the mindset. Right. Well, and that's why the wins are big for you guys as well. Mike Koenigs [00:23:59]: But also being able to think of every single thing you're doing as a new business that you can create and spin off, which that's what I really love about you guys is the notion that when you roll into a business now and you run your AI bot on the data and have it examine the information and find hidden money and repeat money that can be responded to very quickly, you can build campaigns that generate information. You can look at and figure out how are we going to spin the news cycle? How are we going to spin information cycles to create massive engagement? And the mindset of how do I win a presidential election with the mindsets and the tools that you built. Every business in the world should be talking to you guys right now to use these, because, like I said, I haven't ever heard of anyone thinking like you do or doing what you do. Kristen Luidhardt [00:24:54]: Well, that's a huge endorsement. Kurt Luidhardt [00:24:56]: Yeah. What a set up. Kristen Luidhardt [00:24:59]: Okay, where do I write the check for that? But I will just say, it's something that was so interesting and cleared us. We got good at what we did. We really loved it. We got our team on board, which that was a huge learning experience of just learning how to build a good culture of people moving in the right direction, because you don't see a lot of that on campaigns. As you might imagine. That's not their first priority. And so once we got that and we got into a rhythm, it's, well, how else can we make money? I mean, campaigns are so cyclical. They're up and down. Kristen Luidhardt [00:25:31]: How do we even out the revenue? And it's just looking at what you have to offer, what assets do you have, what things. To your point about spin offs, we found out that we had incredible data, that if we had the right agreements to keep everything legal, that we could find ways to monetize that data, use it for other purposes. And that's what's really helped us be successful. And we've done that over and over and over again. Different IP, different data assets, new ways of looking at, what can I sell to the same customer? It's all the same stuff, you know, but we've just had to do it. Kurt Luidhardt [00:26:01]: Yeah. Mike Koenigs [00:26:02]: And maybe, again, just so we bring this home, let's close the loop on the presidential cycle and the money you raised for president. T so I think I want to put a pin in that, and then let's get into your system, because part of the promise here is we're going to reveal the system. But again, I think the setup and the story and the mindsets are the most important thing, because then everything else falls in place. So who wants to take that one? Kristen Luidhardt [00:26:29]: Oh, go for it. Kurt Luidhardt [00:26:30]: Okay. Yeah. For President Trump in 2016, you had a very unique situation. Somebody who was first to be understood as a political candidate, not previously understood, but is reinventing himself as a political candidate in some respects, and being able to jump in there and find a way to generate a lot of small dollar contributions for a guy who could write a check, which he had been doing for much of his early campaign, was a unique challenge. We ended up doing about 50 or 60 million of his total raise, which was much higher. All things considered and learn new ways, more sophisticated ways to find donors and to activate them, and also find people that folks were ignoring that might be interested in giving, finding new. In this respect, it's the parallels, finding new customers, new people who might want to engage in politics never wanted to gauge before Trump, whatever you think of it, brought a lot of people into the system that were felt left out by previous politicians. And so that was something that was a joy to master, and it was everything. Kurt Luidhardt [00:27:32]: Some of it happened slowly, some of it happened fast. During the Trump campaign, one of the campaigns we ran generated $2.6 million in just a few hours. And it was just, you're just watching it come in thinking, this can't be happening. Yeah, it was. Yeah. It's so awesome. Mike Koenigs [00:27:50]: It is so awesome. So at some point then, you've been at this now for going on two decades, and you had this position where you started buying some little businesses of your own, you had spun out some of your own IP into little businesses, and you had this big aha of like, I want to reinvent faster. I want to take what I've been doing, I want to give back on a bigger level. And I think one of the conversations we've had is, like, in politics, you're selling something either a lot of people don't want. It can be super polarizing, and you deal with extremely difficult customers at time. I'm saying it, not you. That way, you don't get in any trouble. But they're complicated personalities who forget you when they've won or they've forgotten you when they've lost. Mike Koenigs [00:28:48]: The nature of the business is it's not a loyal business. And one of the things that we really have in common is the fact that we just love America. We love American ideals. We love capitalism. We love the idea of creating jobs and giving back. And we both agree that a strong small business environment is a strong America. So the movement, your next call to adventure, to reinvent faster and then evolving that into your toolkit that you had been building. And literally, if you think about it, if you guys have raised around a half a billion dollars and gotten governors and congressmen and participated in presidents getting elected, who wouldn't want that force behind them in a business environment? So what's the system? And get us back to the call to adventure that made you say, I got to do it a different way for different people, a different customer? Kristen Luidhardt [00:29:48]: Yeah. Kurt Luidhardt [00:29:48]: I mean, when it's all said and done, you get into politics because you want to make the world a better place. That's what motivates everybody, no matter where they come from. And that's what motivated us. And at some point we realized one of the ways we were making the world a better place was we were providing jobs for people, making successful businesses, contributing to the economy was just as important, maybe even more important than electing your favorite politician. And we wanted to sit and think, how could we help businesses? And what do we do? What do politicians do that are unique, that could be brought to an average small, medium sized business to help them thrive? And what's helped us thrive over the two decades we've been in business doing this. And we really sat down, come up with what I think is a great system that we've operated on, sometimes unintentionally right, and what we can bring. And we notice that most successful politicians and businesses similarly are really focused on what are those to start with? What are the critical drivers KPIs that are truly driving their business today? It's easy for politicians and it's easy for businesses to get distracted on things that don't really matter. Kristen Luidhardt [00:31:05]: Vanity metrics. Kurt Luidhardt [00:31:06]: Vanity metrics, right. For a politician, it might be really sexy television ad that makes them feel good about themselves, but isn't really leading to votes. For a business, it might be. I'm so excited. I have 40 employees. But employee count doesn't equal to profitability. Sometimes it's the exact opposite. So starting with identifying what's really driving your business at the moment, what are those key things? What's driving your profit? To understand what's working that helps you understand what's working and what's not, and to spend more time on the things that are working. Kurt Luidhardt [00:31:40]: So that's the first thing we really have learned to focus on. And good campaigns understand. And then the ability to optimize against those drivers is that second priority or part of our quadrant we've been working off of that are so important for campaigns is it's understanding what the driver, which for a campaign ultimately is votes, what's actually leading to somebody to vote for me. And are we optimizing for that? Are we talking to the right people? Which means people who might actually consider us as opposed to somebody who wouldn't vote for us under any circumstance, or vice versa, they're already voting for us. Or are. Kristen Luidhardt [00:32:22]: Who's your ideal customer? Kurt Luidhardt [00:32:24]: Yes. Or who isn't going to vote at all, which is a big thing, particularly in a non presidential year. 40%, sometimes much larger, don't even vote. So why are we optimizing? We need to optimize for people who will vote. Do we understand what our message is? We're not off the beaten path talking about things that voters don't care about. What's our message? What kind of buzz, what kind of engagement are we creating? Is that second thing that every politician and every business needs to look at in order to continuously reinvent? That leads to a discussion about your team. Do we have the team that can execute well? Kristen Luidhardt [00:33:02]: And I would just add test, test, test. Kurt Luidhardt [00:33:04]: Right. Kristen Luidhardt [00:33:05]: That's a key part of it, too, because sometimes you think, you know, or maybe something has worked in the past that no longer works. So the whole key about optimizing, you got to know your numbers, you got to know what those metrics are, and then you've got to constantly be looking at those. Mike Koenigs [00:33:17]: Yeah, well, what I'm getting, too, and I'm going to restate what you've just been saying because your first step is the drivers. That's like you say versus vanity metrics. But you're looking at, and you've got an amazing tool, the business bot that looks at the data, you feed it in, and you've got the support of AI looking at the money, looking at the control, and those are the core drivers. Then it's optimizing the message, the media channels, but also it's about buz creation. Kristen Luidhardt [00:33:46]: That's right. Mike Koenigs [00:33:47]: Mike Koenigs here. Just a quick message before we go back to the program. One of the things that I love about Kurt and Kristen, besides the fact that they're just brilliant, is they put together a really cool tool that's available on their website@reinventfaster.com. It's something they call the unfair Advantage Optimizer bot. It's a tool that's using AI that will dig into your business. You'll just simply answer a few questions and you're going to get an amazing, detailed report that'll show you how you can take advantage of some of the strategies that we've been discussing in this interview and even more. And what I love about it is we design something kind of like a McKinsey report plus a magazine output. It is beautiful. Mike Koenigs [00:34:31]: It is detailed and customized for you based upon your business. So head on over to Reinventfaster.com. And now we'll go back to the program. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. And you had said something that I hadn't thought of in our prior about, you know, votes. That's the equivalent in the business world of engagement. But it's the pre sale even to, well, for you guys, it's the sale. Mike Koenigs [00:34:58]: Right? The vote is the sale, but the engagement is how people react and respond to the buzz. But I think it's more nuanced than a traditional business environment. If you think about the granularity of how you've had to think, it's actually more complex in a political environment than it is for us, where it's sort of like, let's generate a sale. And it's a different transactional mindset. And I love the fact that you've got a deeper understanding of how to use the data, how to use the psychology, how to take advantage of the timing of the media cycle. There's so many factors that I don't think traditional businesses either have the time or the background to think of. Kurt Luidhardt [00:35:40]: Right. Mike Koenigs [00:35:41]: And all of this is happening while you are working with the founders to make sure they're staying focused on the core business. That's like, never lose sight of the thing that's paying the bills. But there's all sorts of other places that revenue and spin outs and IP can be created that can also monetize hidden money. Kristen Luidhardt [00:36:05]: There's hidden money. There's hidden money in every business, and we find that all the time. And it's just about who can you get to help you find it. We all want to find it, but like you said, we're trying to focus on our core business and we need help, and that's what we're excited about doing. Mike Koenigs [00:36:20]: Okay, so let's talk a little bit about your other two. Beyond the drivers, the optimization, what are the last two of the core components here? Kurt Luidhardt [00:36:34]: Yeah. So you got to have a team that can execute. We thought about campaigns. Some campaigns fail for that reason. There are startups, they have to hire from scratch, sometimes hundreds of people. And having on the right team is essential. And you having the right team at your business is essential. Do you have the person who can execute? Do they have the right sort of reinvention mindset? Do they understand how to think about this? We're a startup, we're throwing things together here quickly, making quick decisions. Kurt Luidhardt [00:37:07]: And so that's a key part of it. You can have a great plan, a great product, you can understand your critical drivers, but if your team can't execute, it's a problem. And then finally, I think that's where you really get a chance to step back briefly and look at your innovation opportunities. And that's what we have excelled at in our business. Krista mentioned it before. We found opportunities in our data, people who were interacting with our clients. We found opportunities in our customer data in the form of other people want to do business with our customers. And that data was valuable to third parties. Kurt Luidhardt [00:37:43]: We found other products and services we could sell. We were selling digital products. We could also sell plain old boring promotional products to our clients. And often we're part of their digital advertising campaign. So there's hidden money in the data. There's hidden money in your customer list. Maybe there's opportunities to sort of see yourself a little bit like a venture fund, where there's, what would my customers really like that I could invest in creating. And that's something we've gotten good at. Kurt Luidhardt [00:38:15]: And it has led to not just money coming out of our traditional core business, but also little spin offs. We've created and sold a couple. We've created and kept a few, and. Kristen Luidhardt [00:38:27]: It'S been a joint ventures. Kurt Luidhardt [00:38:29]: Yeah, those have been powerful. And I think candidates have taught us that we're really looking at a very short time frame these days that your business doesn't have. Candidates don't have a lot of time. Businesses don't have a lot of time. A lot of things that were popular yesterday aren't going to be popular today. Things that were working two years ago aren't going to work tomorrow. And the need is to reinvent faster. You can't pause and wait for everything to blow apart, then try to fix it. Kurt Luidhardt [00:38:59]: It's got to be done proactively. And you've got to be consistently involving. You can run as a president on hope and change, but four years later, you are the incumbent. You can't run on hope and change now. You got to run on forward if you're President Obama, because you have to reinvent. And that's what businesses need to do, too, and find these new ways to make money and evolve their business models and eliminate things that aren't working anymore. Kristen Luidhardt [00:39:26]: Yeah. We can't be the only people that feel like time's just moving really fast. Kurt Luidhardt [00:39:30]: Right. Kristen Luidhardt [00:39:30]: Technology is changing. Consumer behavior is changing. And so you've got to have that mindset of being agile and constantly reinventing and looking at your business from fresh eyes. Kurt Luidhardt [00:39:41]: Yeah. Mike Koenigs [00:39:41]: And in your case, it goes back to the cycle. It goes back even after, from the driver to the optimization to the team to the innovation cycle. You go back and do it over and over again. And what I agree with you on is approaching your business, respecting the core. We're never going to cut off her nose despite her face. And yet you've got to be in a position where you're constantly reinventing, creating new little businesses and being willing to let go of the past. Because the world is changing and those who don't evolve become dinosaurs. And we know what happened to them. Mike Koenigs [00:40:23]: Dan Sullivan has a great saying. Know when you quit being useful, the universe has a funny way of asking for its parts back. And it's a brilliant, brilliant phrase that I always remember. That's why he doesn't believe in retirement at all. At 79, he's going strong and he has 100 year plan and he's sticking to it. That's amazing. Yeah. It's just another one of the many things I love about him so much. Mike Koenigs [00:40:53]: So when you go through the cycles, I think this is a good time to transition to. Why don't you talk a little bit about who you're working with? Like who's your perfect customer, your perfect client, and then who do you work with and who do you don't work with? Okay, that's always a good question because the other thing that we've prepared is a master class where you go through some of the specific steps. We've got some more specific case studies that we're going to share, but I think this is a really good time to transition to that. Which, by the way, for you watching or listening, go to reinventfaster.com. Because that's the website, that's the brand, that's the domain where you can get some extended tools and resources, including the master class, a download of their presentation, also an onboarding. So you can kind of see in here what it's like to go through this process. Because again, the mindsets are just part of this. But also seeing the entire business model they put together, it's something you'll be able to apply and think about right now. Mike Koenigs [00:42:03]: So who's the right fit and who's not a right fit? Kurt Luidhardt [00:42:10]: Yeah, I mean, we really are passionate because we are a family owned, owner operated business. So we like other people. There's something we have about passion we have for other family businesses. Owner operated founders. Founders. People who are coachable, but also real values driven, want to leave a legacy that's just really attuned with who we are looking for. People who, companies that are doing seven figures, probably 20 plus employees, and have some ambitious owners that want to reinvent faster, want their businesses to grow and evolve and get better over time. Kristen Luidhardt [00:42:55]: Yeah, and I would say we were talking about this. What clients or candidates in the past have we not wanted to work with? And it was those people that didn't want to do the things that were hard. They wanted to only have somebody else do it for them. They thought if I just hire all the experts, it'll all just be easy. People that didn't recognize how hard the task was ahead, they weren't ready to kind of amp up and do what needed to be done. And people that didn't value their team and thought it was all about them. And so if that sounds like you, that's not who we want to. Kurt Luidhardt [00:43:33]: That's great. Mike Koenigs [00:43:33]: Anything else you want to add to that list of knots? Kurt Luidhardt [00:43:39]: People who are in it for themselves ultimately struggle to succeed in an environment like this. I think you've got to really have a passion for your customer, for your clients and your employees. And those were the kind of politicians you can spot them in a second that we knew would be a pain to work with. And we feel the same way about business owners. If they're in it for a buck and a buck only, our system probably won't work very well. Mike Koenigs [00:44:10]: Well, I think what I'll do then is I'll close up this part, but I'm going to give you guys the final words. This will give you a couple of moments to think about what you want to say. But I'm going to do the call to action for you here, which is to head on over to reinvent Faster. That's where you're going to get the free goodies from Kurt and Kristen. Just get to know them better, because I've had the great opportunity to spend several days with them, gotten to know them, really gotten to learn their deeper history, their bigger whys, and they're just good people who are principled. And I've really learned a lot about how people get elected through a lens I hadn't looked at before. So you get the reinvent faster guide and video. That's all the presentation materials, including the master class. Mike Koenigs [00:44:59]: You're going to get the day in the life implementation videos. You're going to understand better on what it's like to work with them and what they'll be doing with you, and then an opportunity to schedule a strategy session as well. So all that is@reinventfaster.com. So, Kurt and Kristen, it's time for your final word. What would you like to say to wrap this up? Kristen Luidhardt [00:45:19]: Well, I'll let you close. You're always so eloquent, but I would just say that we're just really excited about helping small businesses. You can't tell or feel our passion. We've learned so much from the political industry. And for me, when he was talking about the team. I just really appreciated or had a new appreciation for the value I can bring as a business owner, as an employer, and how we can support our teams. And to me, that's what really drives it home. Everything we wanted to do about getting people elected is one piece of the puzzle. Kristen Luidhardt [00:45:53]: It has its place, but we really have so much control over making things better for our families, our communities, our country. And small business is just the heartbeat of America. And we want to help everybody reinvent faster, and we have so much we can bring to the table. Kurt Luidhardt [00:46:10]: Kurt, she did such a great job on it. But at some point during this process, over the last 20 years, we worked for a lot of wonderful people. But you have a growing appreciation if you work in this industry that there's not a politician who could save us. But I'll tell you what, Kia, that's people who are willing to stick their necks out and build great things, employ people, generate economic value, and then we've become increasingly more passionate about that. We think we have a lot that we can bring to the table. I know we have a lot we can bring to the table for small businesses that want to create that kind of value and know they need to be quick, adept and capable of building new revenue streams and becoming more profitable and changing the world along with us. That's good. Mike Koenigs [00:47:01]: Well, I'll bring this home then. Once again, head on over to reinventfaster.com. And what I'd like to ask of you watching listening is if there's something in this that just got you to light up and you can think of one or two people right now who'd be perfect fits to either hear this message or they might be right fits to work with. Kurt and Kristen, definitely forward this audio, forward this video, share the podcast with them, point them over to Reinventfaster.com and say, check this out. Because like I said, I've gotten to spend great days with them, really digging deep. And they are right fit people who have high integrity, have their hearts in the right places and believe what I believe you believe in, and that's why you're here in the first place. So this is capability, amplifier. My name is Mike Koenigs. Mike Koenigs [00:47:51]: I do this with my very good friend, my mentor, Dan Sullivan. I want to thank you so much for listening and viewing. We'll see you in the next episode soon. Let's say goodbye, shall we? Kristen Luidhardt [00:48:01]: All right. Mike Koenigs [00:48:02]: Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.