Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 16:42
I thought you were gonna say email to email to lorem so they thought it was someone’s name.
Kurt Luidhardt: 16:45
Yeah. So we so we had.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 16:47
That probably would have been a better headline.
Kurt Luidhardt: 16:49
Yeah it would. Well but here’s the interesting thing. Yeah we sent it out not changing the subject line. Our client was very upset about it because they hadn’t approved, you know, email to non donors. And that’s pretty aggressive right to get an email. It was the best fundraising email they had. And the lesson there was sometimes to get movement. You’ve gotta you’ve you you really have to you know call people out.
And so we’ll often do that. And when, when we’re, we’re seeing email people fall off or die off like you’re that sort of aggressive thing like click or you’re gone. You’d be surprised how many people click on those and re-engage.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:34
It’s all a test, right? Yeah. I’m curious. So the offer was so for Trump just because he’s so recognizable, you could ask for money off the bat of what you typically wouldn’t. Is there any other reasons why?
Yeah. In this case, you did that.
Kurt Luidhardt: 17:50
I would, well for him I wouldn’t you know we had two issues which was we hadn’t ever really, you know, done anything with the email list. So normally I would have sent, you know, 5000 at a time and try to kind of, to your point, kind of warm it up. But it would have taken 4 or 6 weeks. And we’re in the middle of a hotly contested presidential campaign. Nothing is allowed to take 4 to 6 weeks.
So we just went up and and and we just went and gone. And that works for Trump. Because, you know, by June of 2016, Trump versus Hillary was the top story internationally, let alone the US. So no one needed no one got an email from Donald Trump and said, what’s this about? Right?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 18:32
Right.
Kurt Luidhardt: 18:32
And that’s often the same for my other political clients which creates a disadvantage. It’s really, there’s a reason why. The reason why we get a lot of the same faces in politics is because it’s really difficult to build that kind of awareness. And Trump Trump built it outside of politics. Being on TV and the whole deal.
And so for these first time candidates, they’re thinking, well, if Donald Trump can raise, you know, $4 million in a day, then certainly ought to be able to raise $40,000. But it’s not that simple, you know. Kurt Luidhardt for Congress, nobody knows who Kurt Luidhardt is. And none of those emails get opened. And so to your point, for most of my people, we’ve got, you’ve got to have a long introductory process, and you’ve got to provide some value where most political candidates screw up because they’re so all addicted to these small dollar donors. All they do is ask these people for money and their lists fall off pretty quick because there’s no value in between.
There’s no, you know, there’s no rest. You don’t get two emails with really cool political news and then one ask for money. It’s and every day it’s, it’s another one. And after a while, the hyperbole and the urgency just doesn’t resonate anymore. It’s the boy who cried wolf thing. If today is ,we always joke in politics, this election is the most important election ever. And so was the last election and so will the next election be. And after a while, people just roll their eyes when you say it’s the most important election. So you’ve got to find a way to provide some value and not just be asking all the time.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:18
In that email. It seems like you spent a lot of time in the offer, right? Yeah. Talk about what the offer was. And then you mentioned a couple other what was in the running that just didn’t make it because you went with what you thought was the strongest offer.
Kurt Luidhardt: 20:31
Yeah. I mean Trump’s offer that we did the very first email was what we would call a matching donor offer in politics. So it’s for every dollar you give it’s going to be matched. Now what’s interesting about that it’s become a more controversial method. It’s perfectly legal for Donald Trump to match any donation to his campaign, because any candidate running can write an unlimited amount of money to their own campaign.
But then it became common for other campaigns to make these similar matching offers. So Kurt Luidhardt for Congress would say, I have a, quote, group of donors who are matching every dollar to your campaign. Well, donors can’t give federal campaign more than $3,700. So some of these folks who are making these matching donor offers weren’t telling the truth, right? That it was actually happening.
It’s not even legal because you can’t, you know, you’d have to have a group of a thousand donors to match that because they’re maxed out at $3,700, but that was our offer. It worked really well. Very credible. Trump had already given $38 million and it was super exciting. But we were also looking and eventually did for the campaign things where people could get a copy of his book, The Art of the Deal. Right. And you could get autographed copies and eventually you could get MAGA hats and autographs.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 22:03
If you donate enough type of thing.
Kurt Luidhardt: 22:05
Yeah, you donate $25 and we’ll send you this or $50. I think eventually they were testing on Facebook a $280 offer for a copy of The Art of the Deal. Right. Which you could buy used for $5. Right.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 22:20
With him signing it or not signing it?
Kurt Luidhardt: 22:22
They did both. And eventually, you know, eventually it was clear, you know, we were selling tens of thousands of these signed merchandise, and he was okay with an auto pen, right, so we could auto pen some of the merchandise. Right. So those did really well, things like and we didn’t run the Facebook campaigns ourselves, but on Facebook, those Art of the Deal things. The books were good offers.
Even in his reelection campaign, which we didn’t do this part. But Ted Cruz, who’s one of our clients, the Trump campaign offered a Ted Cruz book to people who gave to his campaign, and that did really well.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:01
You’re like, I’m not going to sign up with Ted Cruz will sign his 10,000.
Kurt Luidhardt: 23:05
Well, yeah, we’ll.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:06
Get him carpal tunnel. That’s fine.
Kurt Luidhardt: 23:08
But really, what works in politics is urgency. That’s really good for a lot of businesses.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:16
It’s not just it’s not just politics, right? I mean, this is applies to all, everything.
Kurt Luidhardt: 23:20
Yeah, this absolutely applies. It’s just harder to do. If you’re a business, sometimes it’s hard. People might. You have to be interested in the product.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:29
Some kind of manufacturer urgency somehow.
Kurt Luidhardt: 23:32
You know, how do you get them to pull the trigger today? Well, in politics, the election is in November. So I can’t procrastinate and then decide to give him money in December. I gotta do it now. And there’s a number of milestones. Oh, let’s give around the debate. Let’s, you know, we need to raise money for this or we need to launch this television advertisement. So you can create urgency. That’s always really effective, but it’s got to be credible. And again, I think that’s where people struggle in politics is they there’s everything’s always urgent all the time. If everything is urgent then nothing is right. And and then we would.
And then you’re always you’re you’ve got to create emotion. Right. So people in all things business or politics. Decisions are made emotionally, justified intellectually. So a political donation, particularly a $25 one, tends to be an impulse buy. Like people don’t sit down at the kitchen table and say and discuss with their spouse and kids. Should we donate money to this campaign? You do that when you buy a car. You don’t do that when you donate. You get an email, you get a solicitation, you hear something on TV, you get upset, you get emotional, you get excited, and you give money.
So it’s that it’s creating that emotion, which is also why so much of our political communication is negative, because the easiest way to create that emotion is to get people worked up. You know, if Donald Trump is elected, this bad thing will happen. If Kamala Harris is elected, this bad thing will happen. It’ll probably happen to you. And so you need to so that emotion combined with urgency is what’s powerful for contributions. And that’s why you’re seeing so. And people politicians got really good at it, which is why you’re seeing so much money coming in now from these small dollar contributions.
I think Trump raised well over $100 million from small dollar contributors. And that was when he started in June. And I think Obama’s numbers were bigger. And that’s really driving a lot of our politics these days as well.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:46
There’s a lot of lessons there, Kurt. And, you know, from the urgency to the offer to the matching, I mean, even businesses, when you talk about matching or buy one get, you know, give one. Yeah. You have companies like I don’t know if they’re still doing it or not, but like Warby Parker provides a pair of glasses to someone in need or Toms shoes or Bombas socks, you know, all of those are doing the same type of matching, so to speak, right?
Kurt Luidhardt: 26:11
Absolutely. And getting creative and trying the good. What we did a lot in political also is you try a lot of stuff, you know, they’re constantly testing, trying things. That’s how we found out we could raise money from Democrats is one day somebody said, okay, let’s open up the targeting. In fact, it was so surprising that during the Trump 2016 campaign, I remember an article coming out written by a political consultant, talking about how ridiculous it was that he was seeing ads from Trump, and he was a known Democrat, super hardcore Democrat.
And what they didn’t realize he was getting so many crossover votes, he was profiting off of asking Democrats for money in 2016, particularly from, you know, you know, the decisive, you know, group for Trump in 2016 was rural white Democrats or independents who voted for him, and those people were given to him and turning out in the end in these giant margins.
So being willing to try stuff, and I think it’s interesting, I don’t think anyone but Trump would have tried that. And Brad Parscale, by the way, who ran that operation. So Brad wasn’t from politics, so he didn’t come. My preconceived notion, I would have said, we’re not even going to try to target Democrats, because I would have said, that’s totally unprofessional. It’s not a best practice. Why would we waste our money? Brad’s like, let’s turn it on and try it and see what happens.
And I think as businesses to be okay to just try stuff. Don’t feel bad when it doesn’t work and move on to the next thing. And you might be shocked what works and what really connects.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:53
Yeah. It’s really quite interesting. So I mean that goes into targeting. Did you have a different messaging to those, to the people? The Democrats than Republicans? No? Same messaging.
Kurt Luidhardt: 28:04
No. It works. I mean, for fundraising. Right. So there’s a whole separate side of the campaign, which was persuasion. You know, how do we target people and convince them to vote for us or not, vote for us. And that’s a whole different equation. We’re creating advertisements specifically targeted.
So you’re saying, well, Trump is pro-Israel, so how am I going to win over some some voters? Well, I can there’s a certain segment of voters, maybe they’re Jewish voters who are pro-Israel, too, and I’m going to target them with that. But these rural, these rural Wisconsin Republicans. We need to talk about jobs moving to Mexico.
So you’re sort of, you know, you’re figuring out what people care about, that and so on. From a persuasion standpoint, you see a lot more diversity into these small groups. From a fundraising standpoint, it’s a little more, it’s less personalized, a lot more frequent. Like we’re just going to, we’re going to send an email out every day and we’re going to see what’s working, what’s not, in fact, that, you know, they had multiple companies like ours writing copy. And so that we were always even competing against other copywriters.
So during the campaign and of course, during that campaign, I mean, it was like a news, it was a major death defying news story every day, which helps, you know.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 29:32
I want to get into the book a little bit, Kurt. And you can see here we’re at LibertySpenders.com. And if you go to book free you can actually download the copy. I bought it on audible. So you’re welcome for the $3 or whatever commission you got from Amazon.
Kurt Luidhardt: 29:51
I got a little check the other day, so thank you.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 29:54
That was for me. But one thing in the book, which your wife was reading this part at the time and she didn’t go into the full story, but there was something. My memory is hazy. Something about George Bush and your underwear. I don’t remember what the story was. She doesn’t tell the story, but I’m like, I’m definitely going to ask him about it.
Kurt Luidhardt: 30:15
Yes, yes.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:17
And then we’ll talk about there’s a five piece in the book which we’ll get into. So I have to hear this story.
Kurt Luidhardt: 30:22
Yes. This is, you know, if there was a P for being embarrassed, this is it. But it’s a really funny story I can laugh about now. But not too long after this, working on the Trump campaign might have even been before. I try to remember the date, but George W Bush’s nephew, George P Bush, he’s Jeb’s son. He was the commissioner, the railroad commissioner in Texas, which I want to say railroad commissioner, no land commissioner, sorry, land commissioner, which is a really important role in Texas.
They’ve got oil issues, various things, and also just a really dynamic guy. And he’s no longer an elected official there. But we were helping him in his campaign, and he was having an event for some of his campaign staff and donors, and it was going to be in Kennebunkport at the Bush family compound.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 31:22
Oh, I’ve been there. I’ve been not to actually the compound, but like, you know, there’s a you walk along this path and you can see the compound. And I’ve definitely seen. It’s remarkable looking.
Kurt Luidhardt: 31:34
It’s remarkable. So we so they brought us.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 31:37
You got up close. You got inside the compound. All right.
Kurt Luidhardt: 31:40
So we’re in there. And every member of the family has what they call a cabin.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 31:47
I’ve seen it. It’s definitely.
Kurt Luidhardt: 31:49
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 31:49
Definitely not a cabin. Yeah.
Kurt Luidhardt: 31:50
Yeah. It’s not really a cabin when you probably what you and I are picturing. But. So Jeb has a place there. George has a place there. I think there’s another brother. And so the event for George P was at Jeb’s cabin because he’s Jeb’s son. And there was, we were told if George H.W. Bush and Barbara are feeling up to it because they were still alive but older at this time, they’re going to come and you’ll get a chance to shake their hands and meet him, which I was particularly excited about because my first interest in politics when I was a kid was when Bush was running against Dukakis. I was too young to vote, but they had elections at school, and my parents liked H.W. so I was sort of, you know, excited about H.W. winning.
So super excited about meeting him because I never met him before. And, and and as advertised, we’re there for a little bit of talking. And now you see them. They were both in scooters at that time in their scooters making their way up the paved path to come. And so there was a ramp on the porch that took a ramp up. And they both sat next to each other in their scooters. And we did the typical political grip and grin line where everybody goes up, you say hello. They take pictures and it’s like, you know, how fast can we move people through? So we did all that, got a great picture with them.
And then I, you know, Chris and I are milling around and then I noticed, you know, the president and his wife are alone and no one’s talking to him on the porch. And I’m thinking this is my chance to have, like, a, a real conversation with the former president of the United States. And I spent some time thinking about it. I thought, what would really get him talking? I thought, I’m going to talk to him about the property here, because I know it’s something he’s passionate about, and he’s built it up and they live there. And that’s, you know, that’s more interesting for him to talk about probably than some political thing.
So I get, I have it all figured out. I’m going to talk to him about the property, and I take a big step up on the porch and rip my pants right in front of him. And if you’ve ever done that before, you know that you can feel it like you know you’ve done it, but you don’t really know. Like, how big is this? Right? Am I completely flapping in the wind? Is it just a little, you know, pop. And I’m, you know, I’ve stood. I’ve, like, really jumped right onto the porch in front of the president and his wife, so I can’t. I’m in it now. I can’t walk away. And I also don’t want to take, I don’t want to look. Maybe they didn’t notice now.
And so I started the conversation with him. I asked him about the property. And then immediately not paid any attention to what he was saying. And I’m looking at Barbara, who’s staring with some really intense eyes. I’m thinking she knows exactly what just happened. And I’m not at all listening to him. And then, you know, sometimes you’re not listening to somebody in a conversation and they stop talking and they the tone of voice, you know, they asked you a question. You’re supposed to say something.
And so not only did I just, you know, burst my pants in front of the president, I didn’t listen at all to what he said, which was my whole thing. And I remember saying something like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then jumping kind of backwards off the porch. So I did survive. I got onto the bus as quickly as possible. But that was my experience meeting the president of the United States.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 35:38
I thought your first question would be like, well, how big is the hole? Can you take a look? Yeah, yeah, that would have.
Kurt Luidhardt: 35:42
Been I should have.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 35:42
Just that’s a good conversation starter right there.
Kurt Luidhardt: 35:45
It would have been a good.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 35:47
He won’t forget you. I don’t know that’s what you want to remember, but I love that story. The 5 P’s talk about those.
Kurt Luidhardt: 35:54
Yeah. So the book is about this idea that there are a segment of Americans. In fact, let me let me bounce up a little bit. 82% of all Americans, no matter where they are politically or faith wise, say that they really, really want the brands they do business with to match their values. And 75% of all Americans say they’ve switched to brand in the last 12 months over some kind of brand misalignment.
And Kristen and I, because of our almost two, you know, 25 years really of work in Republican politics, we have this thorough knowledge of the kinds of people who donate to political candidates and who. Who are politically conservative and Christian, because they’re the types of people who are giving money to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and Brian Kemp and other clients. And we called these people liberty spenders. They share the same characteristics of so many Americans who want to do business with brands that match their values, they just happen to be Christian or conservative.
And our book is about, if you want to market to this audience of 76.5 million people who spend $5 trillion a year, then you need to master the five P’s. I think there’s a whole section. I won’t do it because I can go on for 45 minutes on this about how I show how Trump mastered these five P’s. But you need to understand the people and your people within the liberty spenders. Most of us don’t need 76.5 million customers to be doing quite well financially. But so who is that sliver of people within the liberty spenders you need to be doing business with? How do you position yourself with it? How do you develop a true, passionate story that’ll hook them and make them want to learn more and buy from you?
How do you prove this is a big thing I’ve never seen anybody else’s marketing system? How do you prove that your marketing that you’re doing actually works? That’s one lesson from politics that we learned, which is don’t spend $100,000 on a TV ad that you’ve not tested ahead of time. If it’s worth the $10,000 to test to make sure your $100,000 is smart. And then how to roll a product out to the fifth P. What’s the how’s the what’s the product rollout and what’s it look like?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 38:29
Yeah, I suggest people check out the book and you can see here on the page, you know the 5 P’s here, people positioning passion proof product. And it applies to anything really. But I’d love for you to talk about Liberty Spenders and what you do there. I don’t know if you want to talk about anticipating heaven.
Kurt Luidhardt: 38:48
Yeah. So we we there with Liberty Spenders and our Liberty Business Alliance that we run, we work with Christian and conservative entrepreneurs who want to market to these liberty spenders we just talked about. And we do some coaching, but we also do some one on one work. One of our clients that we did some one on one engagement with is Pamela Pyle, who wrote this great book called Anticipating Heaven. And she is a hospice doctor who dealt with a lot of patients towards end of life. And her book is about her experiences with these patients and how to how to die well.
And most of us don’t think about that. And we helped her market that book, which became a very rapid bestseller and racked up tons of positive reviews and, you know, picked up a lot of momentum from somebody who’s never written a book before. And the content’s amazing, by the way. I would highly recommend it, even if you’re not at that stage of your life where you’re thinking about it. Most of us have a family member who’s going through that stage in life and doing that right. It’s important.
One of the things that Pamela says in her book and she says, when you talk to her, most American families, many American families are spending $80,000 in their last week, in the last week of their relatives life and on things that may not be necessary. There’s a whole host of really practical things in that book, too. But we helped her market. It helped her achieve bestseller status, helped book some media for her, and she just fits our kind of Christian profile really well because her book is written from a faith based perspective.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 40:50
When you say marketing, talk about just I mean, maybe Big picture type of campaigns. Are you doing email campaigns? Doing Facebook? Are you doing TV? Like, what kind of marketing are you looking for? Something like this.
Kurt Luidhardt: 41:04
For her, we concentrated a lot on email and on text messaging. We also worked with some influencers who she and her husband had good connections with, and tapped into some networks of folks that we knew would enjoy her book. I’m a big believer we’re a marketing firm that you know, we believe so much can be accomplished at our first reflex doesn’t need to be or should not be spending a bunch of money on paid media.
And so finding these kind of influencers, others who can make a big difference for you can be great for people like people like you and people like Pamela.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 41:53
It looks like you had a big influence from Tony Robbins. I’d like to hear. Yeah.
Kurt Luidhardt: 41:59
Absolutely. I had such a, I went to my very first Tony Robbins event, which was a Unleash the Power Within in LA in 2019, and I had never once heard anyone talk about the importance of managing your state, like Tony Robbins talks about it, and it was absolutely transformational in my life. And at that, unleash the power within. My wife and I committed to going to two other of his events that year and then Covid hit. And so we couldn’t get to all the events, and they all went virtual and we went to our next one.
So we did two events in 19. We had another one coming and finally went to that event virtually. And in that virtual event we joined his platinum community and then went to a ton of his stuff for three years. And to be honest, if I could, if I could live my life at a Tony Robbins event, I probably would. It’s such a positive and transformational experience.
And we were going to probably eight of his things a year. At that picture I think that you were showing on your screen was actually taken at Tony’s house, which was a real privilege to be able to go to. And a lot of my a lot of things that I have learned about mindset state strategy story come from Tony, who I owe a lot to.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 43:37
Yeah, I’m a big fan of Tony Robbins stuff as well. Definitely have listened to Awaken the Power Within and Personal Power one, two and all those. So. Oh, and I know you mentioned David Meerman Scott in the book also who? John, my business partner I know and he’s been on John’s podcast and great, great individual.
Kurt Luidhardt: 43:58
Absolutely. You know you go ahead. He has this great book about raving fans, and he speaks at Tony Robbins Business Mastery. And it’s such a, he’s got such a great perspective on this.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:12
I’d like to, Kurt, this can go on and on. I have one last question before I ask it. I want to point people to check out LibertySpenders.com to learn more. Get the book. I thought it was great. ProsperGroupCorp.com.
Just last question is just businesses that you love because of the 5 P’s. And when I think of this stuff and in the genre you know I think of Aaron and Alan Baylor for Patriots I think of their stuff and it makes me think of Lee Bellinger and Independent Living News and some other businesses. What are some of yours? When you consider your 5 P’s.
Kurt Luidhardt: 44:54
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:54
Now, you talk about some of this in the book as well, but I just like to hear your personals.
Kurt Luidhardt: 44:59
Yeah, I like to talk about companies whose products I think are awesome. Seven Weeks Coffee is a great company that makes an excellent coffee that we, my wife and I, drink regularly. As well as Red Coffee, which I have. I have to bounce back and forth. Red Coffee, which also sells under Patriot Red, actually is made in Greenwood, just about five minutes from my house. I didn’t know that.
Wow. Lo and behold, I can actually drive over and pick it up. Fresh from the roastery and an amazing business. I’m also a giant fan of every life diapers, which my wife and I, who have a three year old and a five year old, have used until recently. Now that our.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 45:47
You’re in the thick of it.
Kurt Luidhardt: 45:48
Holy cow. Yes, he’s been potty trained, so no need for every life diapers anymore. But absolutely great company. And then I think a lot of folks should be checking out Public Square, Patriot Mobile. Those are two great companies doing some really interesting things and what some people call the patriot economy or parallel economy and, you know, doing our great, great businesses.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 46:15
Kurt, I want to be the first one to thank you, everyone. Check out the book, check out LibertySpenders.com and ProsperGroupCorp.com and we’ll see everyone next time. Kurt, thanks so much.
Kurt Luidhardt: 46:27
Yes.
Outro: 46:28
What I got, you can’t buy it resides between my eyes. Walk through the fire. Came out better on the other side. See, life’s like a beach if you find the sand. Right now I’m feeling like a hundred grand.
