Phillip Stutts
You may not know his name, but you sure have felt his influence. Phillip Stutts, founder, CEO, and bestselling author, is responsible for getting three presidents into the White House.
Speaking with Steve Sims on The Art of Making Things Happen podcast, Stutts explains how growing up with ADD led him to his achievements. “I was told I was dumb my whole life. I was put in classes that were below normal, and I could only do what I was passionate about. And growing up in high school I was passionate about sports and I was a nerd about politics.” Today, Stutts gets to honor his passions while impacting society and using his marketing skills.
Standing up for the value of marketing, Stutts explains, “We get scared about marketing now. I love marketing… I think there’s a science behind it, but a lot of people actually look at it as manipulation and brainwashing. There is a talent to it, there is a strategy to it.”
Stutts was part of what he calls “one of the most disruptive moments in political marketing history,” using consumer data to target voters on issues they cared about for the first time on George W. Bush’s reelection campaign.
That’s become key to Stutts’ marketing approach. Spilling an insider secret, Stutts describes the “five-step formula that we use in politics and political marketing to get presidents elected,” a formula that is used by every politician, sports team, and trial attorney, and something that is not being used by marketers. “I think it’s crazy. The businesses that have worked with us that have implemented this formula have all grown their bottom line, every single one of them.”
Step one of the formula is research, finding out “what the clients think, what they feel, what platforms they’re on in chronological order.” The key is discovering and following what the customers want and not what the company thinks they need to talk about.
Step two is building a marketing plan. Step three is working on the brand: the website, videos, and verbiage. Step four is low-cost testing. And step five is finally launching the marketing campaign, only after all of the aforementioned groundwork. Says Stutts, “This is how we run marketing campaigns in politics and now we’re doing it in businesses. So I implore businesses to do this. I will tell you one thing, no marketing agency is doing this right now.”
This ability to try something new and be “an outlier in a disruptive world” has worked wonders for Stutts, who explains, “I have two different companies. I have no outside investors. I have no debt. I’ve grown the political business to 30 million. I’ve grown the corporate business into the high seven figures in the last 15 months alone.”
All of this while battling a rare incurable disease of the esophagus called achalasia. But, like with his businesses, Stutts took control of his health by being an outlier. “I was at the Mayo Clinic and the doctor basically said, ‘we will remove your esophagus in the next five to 10 years and you’ll be in a feeding tube the rest of your life’,” explains Stutts. “And it was in that moment, I looked at the doctor and I said, ‘well, I don’t, I don’t want a feeding tube the rest of my life. No, I don’t want to accept that’.”
Stutts took the initiative to study nutrition and began following a diet that changed his life. “Within a month I got off all of my prescription medication and to this day I have an incurable disease and I take no medication for it,” says Stutts. He wrote an article about this experience, leading to a John Hopkins team reaching out to Stutts to study him in an FDA-approved clinical trial.
“I tell [this story] because for six years with my own health, I stuck my head in the sand and I didn’t do a damn thing about it. And I was scared and I lived in fear over my own health,” Stutts says. “I didn’t live in fear in my building a business, I didn’t live in fear in a lot of other parts of my life. But in this one I was scared to take any positive momentum or action.”
Now, everything has changed. Explains Stutts, “Ultimately the disease is the best thing that ever happened in my life. I would not trade it for anything. If you told me I could go back seven years ago and not be diagnosed, I would tell you, Nope, I’m good. Because it refocused my life, made me understand priorities and what’s important and that’s where I am right now.”
To learn more about Phillip Stutts and receive a free digital audit:
Listen to the Podcast: Phillip Stutts on The Art of Making Things Happen
Subscribe to: The Art of Making Things Happen with Steve Sims
