The Undefeated 5 Step Marketing Formula | Phillip Stutts | 283

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August 3, 2020

Phillip Stutts is a keynote speaker, bestselling author, and marketing genius. But, don’t just take our word for it: Phillip founded both Go BIG Media, a political media firm, as well as Win BIG Media, a corporate digital marketing agency. Together, these companies have won over 42 national awards for marketing and creative content.

With over 20 years of political and marketing experience, Phillip has worked with multiple Fortune 200 companies and contributed to over 1,200 election victories.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Phillip Stutts talks about the diagnosis that inspired him to re-evaluate his entire life
Phillip’s moonshot to find a cure for his disease
The two values that inspired Phillip to become a better leader for his companies
Phillip discusses the biggest mistakes that people make in the marketing industry
Why the most ethical marketers are actually political marketers
Phillip breaks down his 5-step undefeated marketing formula
How Phillip’s companies help small businesses learn more about their customers in order to make the best marketing decisions
Phillip explains the impact of his 5-step process for any and every business—even the New England Patriots
The biggest insights from Win BIG Media’s recent COVID-19 consumer research
How Phillip Stutts stays positive and keeps moving forward

In this episode…

Have you ever struggled with the marketing side of your business, implementing tactic after tactic without seeing any change? How much would your business grow if you had a step-by-step marketing process that actually spoke to your customers’ wants and needs?

With over two decades of experience in the marketing industry—specifically political marketing—Phillip Stutts has found a simple, 5-step solution for these worries. With his tried and true marketing formula, Phillip provides businesses with a clearer vision of who their customers are and how best to reach them. And now, he wants to share that methodology with you.

In this episode of The Growth to Freedom Podcast, Dan Kuschell interviews Phillip Stutts, founder and CEO of Win BIG Media and Go BIG Media, about his 5-step undefeated marketing formula. Phillip discusses the medical diagnosis that inspired him to re-evaluate his career, the biggest mistakes businesses make with marketing, and how even the sports industry follows his step-by-step process. Stay tuned.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode

Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com.

Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall in growing your business? Well, let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. You can do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com. That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com.

In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free small business toolkit. You can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com. That’s activate.breakthrough3x.com.

If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

Episode Transcript

Dan Kuschell 0:02

Welcome to growthtofreedom.com, the show that brings you inspiration, transformation and leadership. We’re helping you connect the dots, see the blind spots and get unstuck. So you can go out there and grow your sales, grow your leads, grow your profits. More importantly, so you can have a bigger impact, a bigger reach and bigger contribution. Let me ask you, do you think data can help your business grow? Do you think data can help you drive decisions? Do you think that if you’re in marketing, or focused on revenue generating activities, that data can give you some of the key decision making processes giving you some of the distinctions of what to do versus what not to do? Well, if so, you’re gonna love today’s guest expert Phillip Stutts. He is the founder and CEO of multiple companies. He’s a bestselling author of Fire Them Now: The 7 Lies Digital Marketers Sell and one of the masterminds behind the curtain of, get this, political marketing. Now don’t shut it off just because of that, because there’s a lot of insight you can gain by what he does and how he helps not only people in politics, but also small businesses, maybe like you, founders, CEOs, big businesses, all over the globe. He’s the founder and executive chairman of Go BIG Media, which is a political media firm, and the founder and CEO of Win BIG Media, a corporate marketing agency. Together, the companies have won 42 national awards. What does this mean for you, though, right? On top of the fact that he’s represented by Gary Vaynerchuk speakers, he’s a keynote speaker at one of the largest companies in the world. He’s had over 260 national media appearances CBS, ESPN, Fox, and MSNBC, CNN, and a whole lot more. What does this mean for you? He can help you, at the end of the day he can help you grow. He can help you get more clients, he can help you use data to save you time and help relieve anxiety, help you reduce the stress in growing your business, is that what you want? Then if so, grab a pen, grab a piece of paper and jot down some notes. If you’re driving, pull over like right now you should just pull over to the side of the road. If you’re on your treadmill, jump off, you need to go grab a pen right now because you’re gonna walk away with some amazing, amazing nuggets. Phillip, how are you, my friend? It’s great to have you with us.

Phillip Stutts 2:20

You’ve wasted like 20% of the podcast that introduction, Dan. So let’s get down and help people. I’m excited to be here.

Dan Kuschell 2:28

Awesome. So why don’t we talk about like, why are you doing what you’re doing? I mean, you have such a fascinating background. Yeah. Anyway, I’m looking at your work. If you’re driving right now and you’re listening behind him. He’s got an Alabama football helmet signed by Nick Saban. I’m a huge sports fan. So this caught my attention right away. It’s a great you know, one of those attention-getters. So why are you doing what you’re doing today, Phil?

Phillip Stutts 2:52

Oh, that is a loaded question. The short answer is that in 2012 I was diagnosed with what doctors call an incurable disease. And I have a disease called Achalasia. It’s basically the muscles and nerves in my esophagus.

Dan Kuschell 3:11

Don’t ask me to spell that Phillip.

Phillip Stutts 3:12

Don’t worry. It’s not easy, but the muscles and nerves in my esophagus don’t work. They’re dead on, they’ll never work again, according to doctors. And for the first five years of that existence, I didn’t even Google the word Achalasia. I just stuck my head in the sand. I was being treated at the Mayo Clinic. I basically farmed out my health to them and say, well, they’re the best they’ll figure it out. I’m not gonna worry about it. I was after my, I’d had 16 minor procedures on my esophagus. I had three major surgeries on it. The last surgery they cut out 25% of my stomach, wrapped it around my esophagus and pulled it straight, stapled it all together and that’s where it sits right now. And after I went into my checkup with the Mayo Clinic, I asked the doctor I said, You know, I know you guys say it’s incurable, but like, what’s the long term prognosis? And he said, Phillip, you’ve had too many surgeries. Can’t have another one. The next thing we’re going to do is sometime in the next five to 10 years, we’re actually going to be doing a soft eject to me will remove your esophagus. And either you’ll be on a feeding tube, or we’ll just connect your stomach with your, into your throat, and you’ll be on a liquid diet. And, you know, in my mid 40s, and this disease affects about one out of 100,000 people, most of the people in the 70s and 80s not like me, I was diagnosed in my late 30s. And so the disease caused me to reevaluate everything in my life and I’m really I realized, first of all, is at the time it was a solopreneur. And the reason I was solopreneurs no one would work for me because I was such a terrible person. So I don’t know if I can cuss on this video rated version, right? Yeah. And so I had this wake up call. And I think most people, whether it’s in their business or the things they’ve gone through through the COVID-19 crisis, or whatever it is, they’ve stuck their head in the sand, and they don’t do anything about it until the pain becomes too big. And in that moment in the doctor’s office, the pain just became too big for me. And so I’m driving home from the Mayo Clinic and I said, I don’t accept this. Actually, I actually said, I don’t accept this to the doctor. He laughed at me right at the Mayo Clinic and patted me on the back and said, Yeah, we’ll see you in six months take the medications we gave you. By the way, those medications have long term dementia effects, but in the short run, they work, and I just wrote him and said, I don’t accept this anymore. I got to figure this thing out. And the, what happened was, first I had to get my diet in order. And that took about six months, I found a guy named Dr. Steven Gundry. Have you do an introduction, Dan, if you ever want to talk to him. Four time New York Times best-seller has the book called The Plant Paradox, is a diet and anti the lectin diet I got on it. I’ve been on it for three years now. And I don’t take any prescription medication anymore for a disease that is being the doctors tell me is incurable. I keep saying that doctors say is incurable. Because the second part of the story is that I decided that I would find a cure to the disease. And the first thing I did was I wrote an article in Inc. Magazine and told and wrote and said, I would find a cure to this disease. And in five years, there’s no research behind rare diseases. They, you know, nobody’s working on this right now. And the ignorance of an entrepreneur is sort of a beautiful thing, because I didn’t know it. You know, how stupid the proclamation would be, frankly, after having the disease for five years, I’d never told anybody other than my wife and my parents and so people read this article and we’re like, you know, jaw drop shot, and and I didn’t tell Because I was embarrassed. But what the moonshot that I took to find a cure has done is it reprioritize my entire life? It’s the best thing that ever my disease is actually the best thing ever happened to me. It taught me to live in abundance. Look, we probably share a similar story, right? Yeah, and your health situation. And so I just decided life wasn’t worth that I have done seven years of a ton of therapy from talk therapy to go into conferences that deal with psychology to recently doing psychedelic therapies like LSD and MDMA. And all of that has led me to have a more abundant life with my family to have a strong relationship with my wife and my child. And I’ve grown my businesses to mid age figures. And I have 30 employees now and I did, I could have done that if I was still attached. Terrible boss or a terrible dad or a terrible husband, and it was all of those things. But I realized, now I have a finite time in this world. And I want to share and be, I want to be one of those people just gives more than I take, I guess is how I put it on a bumper sticker. And it led me to understand that all the work I did in politics could impact business owners that were struggling to figure out the way the world was changing. The world was innovating and disrupting and that I come from a pretty disruptive model and political marketing. And I think what we do there is beyond innovative much further than any kind of corporate marketer is doing and so I decided to apply those strategies and principles. And it’s led me down this crazy route. But we’ve got this whole corporate marketing agency now that is grown about 11 next year over a year. And it is, it’s it we’re helping a lot of business is growing in the Coronavirus moment in the new economy, I sort of have something in place and we can talk about the data that helps businesses eliminate their risk and grow their bottom line. And then the last thing I’ll say is that moonshot took three years. But in February of 2020, as fast February, I walked into Johns Hopkins, and with a team of about 25 doctors that I had assembled over the three years that took my moonshot. We started a one man clinical trial that had never been done on animals and never done on people. And they had extracted stem cells out of my thigh muscle six months earlier. And in February, I went down and then that grew them in a lab, and they injected 225 million stem cells into my esophagus to try to regenerate the muscles and nerves. First time it’s ever been done. So we don’t know. I’ll actually know Probably by the fall of 2020. And right now I have all these stem cells in me. They’re working, they’re not working. We don’t know. But I’m safe. I haven’t had any there were, there was a big downside to trying this. I went for it anyway, which was pretty nerve racking. But so far since the surgery I haven’t had any downside. And I’m hopefully we’ll get some functionality back into my esophagus in about the end of the year.

My disease is actually the best thing that ever happened to me. - Phillip Stutts Click To Tweet

Dan Kuschell 10:33

That’s amazing. I mean, there’s so many different, you know, faces I want to go with this. One thing that pops up, Phil, I mean, you’ve I mean, this is an incredible journey and like you’re experiencing, you know, if you extend people’s life, right, and they go through stuff, like over the course of whatever 20, 30, 40 years you’re experiencing in this hyper chamber, it seems to me Oh, yeah, a couple years so the highs can be higher, the lows can be lower, etc. So I’m curious before we get into what you called undefeated 5-step formula, right, for business owners to eliminate risk and increase their bottom line. I want to go back to like going from being a you know, tough asset in your business to then have building 30 employees like, what do you what would your team if we asked your team today? Like what’s if they knew you back then? I don’t know if they would, but if they did, what would they say has shifted in your leadership to help you transform to become a better leader to grow a company with team and people and yeah, not not resent it but actually embrace it.

Phillip Stutts 11:43

Presence and vulnerability. I was the worst kind of narcissist, you know, eight years ago, not the one that had a lot of confidence, the one that blamed everybody for everything that went wrong and then took all the credit for the things that went right. know someone like that, Dan. I think we all do, right. I was that guy. Was my Bay? Yeah. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, I was absolutely that person. I built all of my companies without any debt and no outside investment. I’m the only owner and so we built it by being scrappy and serving other people first and that has always sort of been what we have two values at the company and some people come in and said they’re all for these two values. And then within six months they leave and that happens right? But the people that come in and embrace what we believe in really it’s what I believe in and it wasn’t I created these values when I wasn’t this, I, this is what I wanted to be. And I, you know, because I’ve wanted to be it I became it. It’s really easy. We don’t have long mission statements on the walls framed we don’t sit there and talk gobbledygook and then generic platitudes. Nope. We have two values give and grow, give more than you take and always be growing and I believe that everything falls out of that if you are a selfless person and you’re giving all the time, abundance will come back to you. And I believe true purpose in life comes from growth. How you grow? You know, is it? You know, for me, it’s I’m growing in my health? Am I getting better with my family and and are we progressing in the company and in the businesses? And are we serving our clients better? And part of that 5 step formula that you want to talk about? That is because we were relentless for about five, six years now on optimizing client success, not trying to get clients in the door and then hoping we could figure it out once they got there. And that has a lot of scary moments to it. You probably understand that. Oh, yeah. When you put your clients success first, but they can leave you for anything they want, for any reason they want any time and you put all your eggs in that basket. it you know, it is perilous, but we made the commitment. We didn’t deviate, made mistakes, I’ve taken clients that shouldn’t have. And I’ve compromised that 5 step system some of the time. And I’ve, every time I’ve done it, it’s backfired on me. And so ultimately, we just decided we were going to stick to what we believe in. So I think the people that come into this company, go Phillip’s vulnerable, he’s present most of the times what I struggle with most is presence. But he is, yeah, he does abide by what he says, give and grow. And he has a relentless streak to improve his client outcomes every day.

We have two values: give and grow. Give more than you take and always be growing. - Phillip Stutts Click To Tweet

Dan Kuschell 14:33

And speaking of increasing outcomes every day, as you’re listening, as you’re watching right now, like, what would happen for you? What would the impact be for you, if you were able to build into your company, greater presence, greater vulnerability, and keeping it simple, the idea of keeping it simple and focusing on giving and growing, right, think about that. Think about the simplicity of that and how it would impact you. If you came from that place, do you think you’d be able to have a bigger impact, have a bigger reach, make a bigger contribution, you know, have a dent in your industry, if not own or dominate your industry by serving others being a servant leader. I think that’s what we just heard Phil have talked about. And guess what, we’re just scratching the surface. And when we come back, we’re going to dive deeper into the five step formula. That is the undefeated formula for you to be able to eliminate risk, and increase your bottom line. And what you can do today in these times, in these uncertain times, and in any economy, whether it goes up or whether it goes down the steps you can take to be able to grow with a lot less stress, that and a whole lot more coming up on Growth to Freedom right after this. Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com. Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall and growing your business? Well, let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. You do For free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com. That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com. In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free small business toolkit you can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com. That’s activate.breakthrough3x.com. If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com. Welcome back to growthtofreedom.com. Now feel before we dive into I want to also give a shout out to a mutual friend of ours who got us connected Dov Baron, and you know he’s he’s one of the you know top leaders in the world and if you don’t know Dov, just go to growthtofreedom.com, search the episodes we’ve got a couple of them with as well. We’ll put some of his episodes in the show notes so that you can have an opportunity to understand what we understand about love and him. He comes from that servant leadership doesn’t he, Phillip?

Phillip Stutts 17:03

Dov is the sweetheart of the industry in my opinion of this Thought Leadership industry. I love the guy, like I just think he has a heart of gold. I’ve been very blessed to come into his circle. So yeah, I am. And by the way, he said, like, I’ve done a couple. I’m talking to him this week. We’ve done like two interviews already. And he thinks the world of you Dan, like he was like, yeah, there’s a guy that you got to connect with. So that’s how we connected.

Dan Kuschell 17:35

Thank you. And if you want to come back to this episode, by the way, again, I hope you got your pen out you got your piece of paper because we’re going to dive into some of these strategies that are going to transform the way you think about building your business. Do it with less stress, do it with less risk and obviously, increasing your bottom line is important, isn’t it? Especially in these times. So if you want to come back to this episode, you can do that at growthtofreedom.com/283, that’s growthtofreedom.com/283. You never want to miss an episode, go to growthtofreedom.com/subscribe, that’s growthtofreedom.com/subscribe. So before we get into the five, you know, a 5 step formula, Phillip. What do you see are some of the biggest mistakes that most people make? Like as they’re looking to go out there with their marketing?

Phillip Stutts 18:20

Yeah, they’re all tactics right? Everything’s like oh my god, I need Facebook ads, I need SEO, they scream SEO they don’t even know what that means. They think they need to have an Instagram presence. We, I can give you 1,000 examples of how we work with those kind of people and I mean specific examples but you cannot work on tactics until you have a strategy in place.

You cannot work on tactics until you have a strategy in place. - Phillip Stutts Click To Tweet

It’s part of our, the five steps we can walk through but over and over again. We just see that. That or here’s the other one. Ever, you know in my book, I interviewed 100 CEOs, from Fortune 200 to small businesses and every single one of them had fired a marketing agency sometime in the life cycle of their business. Everyone, multiples, a lot of times it was two or three. And the factor that came up all the time was at the marketing agency, one before the business made money. And I went, oh, that’s really interesting, because I’m going to tell you something that’s gonna blow your mind. The most ethical marketers in the world are political marketers, I know doesn’t make sense. I get it. Let me explain every contract and this is my line number one in my book, but every contract I’ve ever signed in since 1996. Is month to month, every contract month a month. The reason I signed only do month to month contracts, even during the corona moment when you would wish you had the long term contract. I said no, but Because every month my behind is on the line. If I don’t perform for my clients, they can fire me at any moment. Now, what that does is it forces everybody in my company to understand that they better be doing everything they can, at every moment of the day to get performance, the best performance out of the marketing and ad campaigns we run for our clients. And every one of these CEOs I talked to you said every marketing agency they’ve ever had bought them into a 6, 12, even an 18 month contract. Yep, I just said that would never fly in politics ever. In politics, we don’t get rewarded until the candidate wins. And if the candidate loses, we get nothing. So we’ve wasted a year of our time. And so everything we do is about speed and about winning, right? Because speed is because we have Election Day, and we have a deadline and everything comes to ahead on the deadline. And so there are just these weird factors that we put in place. We have to in order to be successful in order to me to leverage and get bigger in my political marketing with and work with bigger candidates, I have to win first. Right? I have to succeed for my clients before I can use that to leverage to get better clients, right? Yes. And and I’ve seen this over and over and you know, with businesses that hire marketing firms, they go, you know, we spent 100 grand and we got no results, and we’re locked into long term contract and what the heck are we doing, whereas when someone we so I decided, you know, we’ll jump into this 5 step system that we have. The 5 step system comes from politics, I’ll walk through how we do in politics, but by dude that I realized, we eliminate so much of the business owners growth and for a small investment upfront, they can not only make their money in a short amount of time back that they invested, they’re going to have an exponential growth in their marketing by using our we call it the undefeated marketing system. It’s a five step system. Here’s how it works in politics. First, candidate comes to me and says, I want to run for office. Awesome. I say, we’re good. Let’s find out what the voters think in your state. Let’s say he’s running for governor. Right? And I say, great, what are the voters think in your state? So we go out and we take a survey a poll right now in the kind of poll you see on CNN, or Fox News or anything like that, like we’re trying to figure out what the voters care about on issues, not who’s winning, who’s losing who’s out right now, like, I don’t care about all that stuff. I want to know what the voter cares about. And then I asked the politician, I said, Tell me the 10 things you want to run for office on me, give me those 10 things. And then I’ll look at the data from the voters. Now, let me tell you, it is much more complicated than this. But for brevity’s sake, this is how we do it simply right? We look at the data on from the voters and we typically find two issues where there’s total alignment, not 10 that the politician wants talk about 10 things we’ve done to and we’ve done those two things that at an exponential rate that if the candidate just focuses in on those two policy issues, that it is going to switch voters that are undecided, it is going to move bass voters into their column. And it could even swing a few cross party switches, right. But it’s ultimately going to get you to 51% of the vote. Right minimum. That’s what we’re aiming for. And so once we find those two issues, right through the data through what voters care about, not what the politician wants to talk about, what the voters care about, and we find alignment with the politician, then we say let’s look at that data. Let’s build out a strategic marketing and ad plan media plan. That’s step two for us. Then step three is now that we know the data set and we have a strategy plan in place an ad strategy, a marketing strategy plan plays. Now we’re going to look at your content, we’re going to look at your brand, and we’re going to get it aligned because if the voter goes oh, that’s an interesting ad of a candidate. Let me go to his or her website and check out what they’re all about. And the brand is off. You’ve lost that. That voter. Yeah. So we get the brand on point, the website focuses mainly on those two issues probably bio as well. it’ll, it’ll have the right video content. It’s, you know, it’s mobile friendly. It’s all the things that fit the brand, right. The fourth step is now that we know what the data says, We’ve got our strategic plan in place we’ve created and made sure the brand is established, and foundational, we’re going to go out and test the messages. So the one difference between us and corporate is we do low cost testing. The way we’ll do it is through banner ads rather than video because I hate banner ads, I hate them. But from if you want to low cost your message and someone sees your message online, whether it’s a politician or a company, and they go oh my god, that message is so compelling. I’m willing to click their banner ad that tells me the message is going to work and how we produce the video content for that, how we produce the platforms and where we put everything out right and so On the Trump campaign in 2016, the Trump marketing team would typically take 162 different tests of one message. They would do a red background or green background, a woman in the picture man that picture different type funds, different questions asked different things. And the message was all the same, just they tested 100 different ways. Sometimes the message, the type font would be in the left corner and sometimes in the right corner. Typically, they would find eight to 10 ads that exploded, and they couldn’t tell you why. But because they did this low cost testing. they now know what will work and then they shove all their chips on the table. That’s our step 5 now that we know what works, we can we’ve eliminated all this risk of the politician. We know what the voters want. We have a strategic plan in place. We’re not running on tactics. Your brand is set, right we’re testing at a low cost those ads to figure out what works before you go invest real dollars in your marketing can Then we run that now the difference between what I do in politics in the corporate world is everybody in political marketing does it. I’m on the Republican side, but my Democratic colleagues, on my democratic marketing colleagues, right, are running the same 5 steps for their candidate to beat my candidate. It’s a mano a mano, it is like the war of all wars. It produces the greatest innovation that you can ever imagine, because it’s a win or die mentality. Right? And so I thought to myself, my God, nobody in corporate America is following these 5 steps. They may test, they may look at data, they work on brand, but they don’t put them in a sequential order. And so I said, I got this we’re going to do this right. So right now I’m finishing my second book, and it’s going to be called undefeated, the secret formula that elects presidents and will grow your real, grow your business in any economy. And the 5 steps are what I just told you, right for a business owner. We are going to overlap. Have a partnership with the largest data collection analytics and AI company in America. This is the same data that Amazon uses. It’s the same data that Disney and ESPN use. It’s the same data that Hershey’s, and TurboTax, and defeated dialysis systems all, you know, Fortune does a Fortune 200 company. These are all what they use to understand their customers and run ads. I went out and got an exclusive licensing agreement with this data company, so that I could provide it at a much reduced cost to smaller businesses because they should have the same access that the big companies have. And so that’s what we do. We overlay your customer base online, and we track their movements three months in the past one month in the future. We look at what these customers do, not just what they say. And then I can come up with a 60 page report that will tell you what your customers feel, what they want, how they want to be communicated to the messages that they like, and the social media platforms they’re on in a chronological order. We worked for an Instagram influencer, who had a million followers and built out products in the salon world. She was selling, you know, shampoos and salon products, right and was making a ton of money. She was on stages and had conferences, and she built a million followers on Instagram. And she said, I want to, I want to go to Facebook, right? And we said, Well, before you go to Facebook, let’s figure out where your customers are. And we overlaid the data and we tracked all of her customers. And here’s what we found. Facebook was the number four performing platform amongst her own audience, and she was about to invest a ton of money into that platform. The number one platform was not Instagram, even though she’d built a million followers on Instagram. It was Pinterest. Hmm. And she went, Oh my god, I never thought about that. Yeah, what’s that worth? That is worth the time we work for a national pest control company. They had lost, they had spent $2 million in marketing and lost $1.8 million in market share the two years before they hired us. The first thing we did was we said, we’re overlaying your customer data and figuring out what they want. They were marketing all the wrong messages. So it made sense. And I said, Why are you marking their marketing on discounts and their customers were effluent and didn’t discount seem cheap, but they didn’t want to buy it. When they said, Well, we built our company on the backs of the great recession in 2008, through 2010, on marketing, to discounts and it worked, and it doubled the company and tripled the company and all this stuff. And all sudden, that message started sliding as the economy got better, right? Yeah. And they couldn’t figure out why. And they were like stunned by it and all the data set all these other things, it said, you know, the customer wanted a higher value product, they want a green product, so their family was safe in the home and all these kind of things. So we reorganized their brand, we did redid the website, we shot a video that was kind of weird. We like to inject a lot of humor in our ads. But it also injected all the data that we like all the messages from the data. We tested all of our ads, and we figured out what works. And then we launched the campaign. In the fourth month of the big launch. After the fifth step. We’re working with us. This 35 year old national pest control company had the greatest month in the history of their company. And why is that? Because they’re not talking about, they’re not guessing with a bunch of tactics. They’re marketing. They’re following what the customers want. They’re relevant to the customers from the customer’s perspective, not their own. And I get this because every business owner loves to brag about their business and how great they are. I do it too. But ultimately, the customer may or may not care what you’re talking about. And so I’m obsessed with data, because I’m always focused on what the voter cares about. And now I’ve kind of translated over into the business world. What I’ve figured out Dan, and Sorry, I’m going on a tangent, but let me say what I figured out is that almost every decision making process in the world follows these 5 steps. And in my book, I’m going to lay out like 40 different industries that follow these processes. I’ll do one for you. Who’s your favorite sports team? You like sports? Right? You said sports, right? So let’s just do that one. Who’s your favorite sports team? The Patriots?
The most ethical marketers in the world are political marketers. - Phillip Stutts Click To Tweet

Dan Kuschell 31:17

Of course, now the Buccaneers, right?

Phillip Stutts 31:20

Okay. So, uh, if you have, let’s say it’s the Patriots okay.

The Patriots play a game on Sunday, right on Monday. What’s the first thing they do when they come back to the, to their, you know, practice facility, they look at what, what is that data? They figure out what they did wrong, what they did, right. They’re now looking at the tendencies of their opponents. Right. And then what’s the next thing after looking at all the game film? They put a game plan together? Yep. strategy. Step two, right. While this is all going on, what is Robert Kraft doing? Well, he’s cleaning up the stadium. So the brand looks good. They’re cleaning the jerseys. They’re making sure the vendors are meeting the needs of the patrons for the next week’s game. Right? They’re getting ran right during the week, right. Fourth step. I, you know, in politics and in marketing, this is the testing phase. What do the Patriots do from Tuesday through Saturday, run the game plan, they practice installs, they call it install plays, they figure out what plays will work, and what plays won’t work. And that ultimately goes into the final game plan. And then they go into Step 5, they all play the game. Yep. Guess what? The Patriots are doing this. The Bucs are doing this. Every NFL team is doing this just like in politics. Every marketer in politics does this, right? Why is sports considered like, like the greatest place of innovation, the greatest athletes in the world, the most admired people in the world are athletes. Why? Because they have to fight it’s a win or die mentality will do whatever it takes. And they all follow the 5 step process. I can tell you now the doctors working on my disease follow this 5 step process. The Trial Lawyers follow this 5 step process being my surgery,

Dan Kuschell 33:14

My son’s 12 year old team, we follow this process, right?

Phillip Stutts 33:19

Marriage follows this 5 step process. I mean, venture capitalists, all these 5 steps are everybody does it except business marketers. And so I went, Oh my God, I’ve, you know, found this and explaining this over the last two years. It’s been interesting because people are like, Oh, that’s interesting. But the economy is so good right now really don’t you know, I can do whatever I want. And then COVID hit, and then all of a sudden, I’ve never my, um, I own a marketing agency and we have quadrupled, sets COVID because every business owner now is saying, I need to eliminate my risk. I need to run my mark in the right way. I have to mark it as the only, I’m gonna grow my business or stay alive right now. And if I follow these 5 steps, I put myself in the best position to do that. The last thing I’ll say is this, that, that pest control company, they spent $40,000 with us before we got to step 5, to run a, do the data, get a strategic plan together, fix their creative or fix their brand, and then test the ads about 40 $45,000. And then they had the greatest month in the history of the company four months later, how much better is it to spend the $40 to $40,000 upfront to get it right, rather than what they spent $2 million over two years and they lost 1.8 million in their company.

Dan Kuschell 34:43

It’s crazy. And as you’re listening as you’re watching, how we’re putting this 5 step approach impact you right, whether you’re a small business, medium size, large business or anywhere in between. If you’re brand new, getting started, avoid the biggest mistakes most people make by putting this game plan in your business. Install it, implement it. Take action with it. Oh, speaking of taking, I mean, we’ve scratched this. I mean, this is so amazing, Phillip, where can people go to connect with you to get more of you learn more about what you have to offer and how you can help them?

Phillip Stutts 35:13

Well, a couple places one, you can just go just it’s my name. It’s phillipstutts.com, and that has, you know, you can reach me there you can, you can get a lot of freebies over there we have, we give you a free data assessment. So if you’re a business owner, and you want to understand how the data could work for you, the way that we run data, we will do a free call with you. We’ll walk through how we do our system will tell you how we should you should be looking at your own customer client data. We do this for B2B, we do this for B2C and that doesn’t cost you then go to phillipstutts.com. If you’re trying to understand the new world economy that we’re living in under the Coronavirus you know everything with Coronavirus related, we actually decided to take this data and we’ve done month over month service Over the last few months to understand how American consumers are making purchasing decisions, and I’ve met multiple times with Mark Cuban in the last few weeks on this going over this data I’ve been on, met with Peter Diamandis, with Darren Hardy’s Mastermind Group, with Michael Hyatt’s Mastermind Group, with Mike Calhoun’s mastermind group. I’ve now had our data report downloaded over 36,000 times in the last month. This is available for free without any funnel, without any email, you just go to winbigmedia.com, click on the tab that says COVID-19 research. And you will see month over month data we’re spending $25,000 a month just to produce this without any ask. Because it’s a moment where we should be giving back right those values are important to me and back into March, when everything hit for the first time I wrote down a question. I said, How do I want to be remembered in a year. And out of that I decided we needed to give as many business owners an opportunity to take advantage of this moment when usually they’d be frozen head in the sand like I do with bone health. Because I stand out It feels and I wanted to break that out. So we can it’s we could help businesses grow in a moment that they probably shouldn’t. And so we’ve been doing this over each month. And you can go over there and check it out ton of really good information about how you should be messaging to your customers right now as well.

Dan Kuschell 37:37

And I want to encourage you to go to the sites today like right now, right this second open up a new browser where you’re still listening. You can go to phillipstutts.com, that’s phillipstutts.com. If you’re, you don’t know to spell it, Go to the episode at growthtofreedom.com/283, that’s growthtofreedom.com/283. you’ll see a link you can just click it also go to go winbigmedia.com. That’s winbigmedia.com find the button and access this amazing research. Phillip sent me a copy of this in advance. I mean, you want to talk about getting to the core of what the message is, like why people are buying what they’re not buying right now, what they’re saying what they’re not saying. It’s there for you in a very simple and easy to understand, report. And chances are you can get this done for your business too. So I encourage you to go check out what he’s got at phillipstutts.com and winbigmedia.com, that’s winbigmedia.com. Now as we wrap this up, fill up, what’s something I should have asked you that we didn’t get a chance to cover?

Dan Kuschell 38:38

Do I see the economy and go for it?

Phillip Stutts 38:42

Well, I would tell you this, that we’re in a new economy. So we had this great 11, 12 year bull run it by the time you listen to this, you don’t understand that we are in a permanent new economy that the old economy has not changed. The biggest insight that we found in the data that we’ve looked tracked over the last few months. As the US people are buying for need not want, a W-A-N-T. We wanted things in the past and we bought to our heart’s content. And now people are only buying for need. And you’re the top messages that are working right now are safety, trust and helping others in something else in the in the in the data that we’re seeing across the board across the nation. This is a very macro view is that we’re moving away from the globalization economy. I’m not saying Amazon’s going away. But what I am saying is people feel safe and trust local businesses. So if you’re marketing your business, and you’re talking about how you your product or service keeps the customer safe, and you’re showing and proving trust, and you’re somehow helping them in showing that utilizing and saying that, you know, there is some kind of local angle or local approach that you take will also be extremely beneficial. To show and how you convert customers in the future.

Dan Kuschell 40:05

What’s that worth to you? Think about that, that insight from all the data, you know, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of data points that are part of helping you understand its necessity not one it’s safety trust helping others it’s globalization is fading away and people trust local more so than not well, what else could you learn from Phillip and his company by when you go to win big media calm or go check out his site with all the amazing resources? He’s got encouraged you go do that now? No, Phillip is as we wind this down, I like to get into some of the backstory like the personal stuff, right. So you went to Alabama?

Phillip Stutts 40:47

I thought we already did that.

Dan Kuschell 40:49

Go away when you were younger, like your number when you were like, Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know when it would be when you’re a kid. When you were inspired gun, you know, one day. I’m going to do bigger things. I’m going to be an entrepreneur, I’m going to go make an impact. Like, do you remember that touch point, whether it was young, whether it was, you know, in your 20s, 30s? What was that and when

Phillip Stutts 41:13

I, when I was 17 years old, I know where to go working in politics not to run for office, but to work behind the scenes and politics. I was fascinated by how political campaigns were run. And then that kind of led me to that journey. And then when I was 40—I’m 46 now—that’s when I realized that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I’m at 40. So all the things that we’ve done, I just channeled 17 years of 18 years worth of experience into becoming an entrepreneur. And really, that’s my calling. I mean, yeah, that to do it over again, probably would have started at 17 being an entrepreneur, but I didn’t know that I didn’t have the tools to know that. So my path is my path. And I’ll never forget, I was, I was driving to see a client, I was a solopreneur, at 40 years old and I listened to Tim Ferriss interviewed Tony Robbins on a podcast. And I thought, oh my god, whatever they’re talking about speaks to me. And that literally, I pulled over on the side of the road and started writing and started figuring out my plan. And that’s really the moment I knew. I wanted to build businesses. And so now I’ve got four businesses. We’ve grown into the mid eight figures now and in the last six years, and we’ve done it without debt, without any loans and without any outside investors and yeah, that’s really the key for me.

Dan Kuschell 42:42

Congratulations, man. It’s Yeah, it’s uh, you know, when Dov got us connected, we had our couple conversations again, amazing, thank you hear your story. And then in a lot of ways, probably, I think for both of us, we’ve said this, almost like a little bit of a mirror. like totally different. Different parts of the country that you know we have had our experiences. Who is your earliest influence if you can remember back?

Phillip Stutts 43:10

Oh man. Yeah, honest answers nobody, huh I did not have anybody that I could ever. I didn’t have a mentor until I was 28 years old. Which is why I took so much too when I was 40. I mean, I did every Tony Robbins conference sometimes multiple times because I went My god, there’s a mentor for me, right? I’ve done I’ve worked with Keith Cunningham. I don’t know if you know, Keith is he’s known as unbelievable mentors in my life. I asked a lot of people to mentor me now because I’m like a sponge at 46 because I never had anything. I always wanted mentors. Maybe that was an eye on that part of my own psychology. I just wasn’t someone people wanted to help. until I was about 28. And someone finally said, you can come under me and I’ll guide you and that was hugely impactful for me.

Dan Kuschell 44:09

And now you’re mentoring others. You’re mentoring founders, CEOs in guiding them. Your team is guiding, doing some great things like what action steps would you hope that our viewers, our listeners would take from our, our conversation today?

Phillip Stutts 44:23

Now, you, you know, Peter Diamandis is another guy that I’ve studied under. Now he’s become a really good friend. I went to China with him two years ago. He says, you know, this is very in vogue right now, let’s say this stuff, but he really was the one that impressed me don’t set your goals to be 10 x 10%. Higher seven to 10 X. I set probably 30 or 40 goals a year at a 10 x rate. And I’m maybe hit three of the of the 30 of the 37. I don’t hit 10 x but three of them I do, I never would have hit the 10 X on those things. Three, had I not said I’m not satisfied until I reach this goal, the other 37 ones, they maybe they go up 10% maybe they go up two or three X, maybe they go four or five x, but by always climbing the mountain, right? You know, that is what you’ve got to strive for. Ultimately, it’s the climbing the mountain. I’ve always thought, man, I can’t wait to get to the top of the mountain. And I think what I’ve learned in my journey is I actually need to enjoy just the ride the walk up the mountain every day. And if I can do that, I’m going to be ultimately very satisfied. Listen, I tell you all these successes, Dan, I had tons of failures, right? I’ve had personal failures, professional failures, we’re all failing all the time. They just don’t get to me. It’s only feedback. Yeah. And I just keep moving forward. And, and I’m very blessed that when the Coronavirus said I had worked for seven years to improve my psychology and be a better person and leader and I was able to handle that moment with abundance and with a positive outlook rather than what I would have done 10 years ago, which is panicked, sat in the corner of my bedroom with my thumb, my thumb in my mouth and in the fetal position, and would have blamed everybody for everything right? And that’s just not the way I’m going to look at it anymore.

Dan Kuschell 46:22

Well, the world’s better for your leadership fellow. And, you know, it’s an honor to have you here with us today. I encourage you as you’re listening or watching you want to go deeper, you want to get understand someone who’s got greater presence today than he’s ever had. He comes from a place of vulnerability comes from a place of growth and contribution. I encourage you to go check out what he’s doing at phillipstutts.com, winbigmedia.com. The links are in the episode. You know, I’ve got four and a half pages, roughly of notes, five and a half pages actually, of notes here. And, you know, here’s the thing. We’re still just scratching the surface at the end of the day. And what would happen for you, if you took This 10 X approach that Phillip just shared with you that he learned from Peter, right? What would happen for you? What would happen if you put these 5 steps in place and made that part of your permanent planning? moving forward? What would happen if you got access to this data? That basically, you know, takes you from being blind to immediate clarity, certainty confidence in your market, what they say what they’re not saying and how you can approach them in a far more effective way? Well, we’ve given you the tools are you going to take action with it? Are you first action you can take go check out what he’s doing at winbigmedia.com, winbigmedia, go check out his site, what he’s doing, I encourage you to take action with what Phil have been sharing with you today. You know, again, Phillip, it’s just an honor to have you here. Thanks. Appreciate your brother. Your just your story, your journey, your vulnerability, all of it. And I encourage you, I hope you’re inspired today. Seize the day. Make it a great week. And guess what? We’ll see you next time on growthtofreedom.com. Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com. Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall and growing your business? Let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. Do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com, that’s breakthroughstrategycall.com. In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free small business toolkit you can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com, that’s activate.breakthrough3x.com. If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.