Operatives

Towards A More Ethical Fundraising Culture – John Hall (Apex Strategies)

"We have to do this better. There's no chance we'll catch up to the Democrats, at least come to parity with them unless we start treating our donors better."

Our guest today is John Hall, partner at Apex Strategies, a new firm focused on building sustainable fundraising programs. Prior to starting his own firm, he was President of Targeted Victory where he collected over 48 million individual contributions and raised more than $1.5 billion. In our conversation, you’ll learn why it’s so critical for Republicans to narrow the online fundraising gap, what’s changed in the digital campaigning landscape, and some ideas for how to move forward.

Transcript

John Hall:

We have to do this better. There's no chance we'll catch up to the Democrats, at least come to parody with them unless we start treating our donors better.

Eric Wilson:

I'm Eric Wilson, managing Partner of Startup Caucus, the home of campaign tech Innovation on the right. Welcome to the Business of Politics Show. On this podcast, you are joining in on a conversation with entrepreneurs, operatives, and experts who make professional politics happen. Our guest today is John Hall, partner at Apex Strategies, a new firm focused on building sustainable fundraising programs. Prior to starting his own firm, he was president of Targeted Victory where he helped collect over 48 million individual contributions and raise more than 1.5 billion. In our conversation, you'll learn why it's so critical for Republicans to narrow the online fundraising gap, what's changed in the digital campaigning landscape and some ideas for how to move forward. John, let's start by setting the table for our listeners of, of what the online fundraising gap is, numbers wise and practically speaking, why that matters for Republicans as a strategic imperative.

John Hall:

It really depends on who you talk to in terms of the gap, but if you just look at a, a recent political article that was written that did an analysis of Win Red last Cycle versus Act Blue Last cycle, Republicans had 2 million individual online donors and Democrats had 5 million. So that's a two and a half times gap that is having real consequences for us. And the biggest consequence you can see is just the disparity that we have on the candidate fundraising side. Smart media group did a, did an analysis of, of candidate spending in the 22 cycle. And on the Senate side, the Democrats accounted for 73% of total candidate spending versus Republicans having 20 7%. That's the top six Senate races. And then if you go over to the house race, we're having a, a similar problem where the top 15 house races, Democrats spent 77% of the candidate money that was spent in the election, whereas Republicans only spent 23%. So having this disparity online is certainly contributing to the fact that our candidates just don't have the same amount of resources that the Democrat candidates have. And then it turns out that in order to try to even reach parity, we have to spend a huge amount of super packed dollars, which just aren't as efficient on things like television.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. Listeners will, will remember from our episode on the explanation of hard dollars versus soft dollars if you want to get a refresher on that. But it's telling that people don't understand the practicalities of what's going on, John, because we saw last cycle and said, oh, Republicans, you know, are, are narrowing the, the, the money gap. And so if you look kind of at the top line, you put in our super pecs, they're superpacs, they're candidates, our candidates and dollar amounts, it, it's not as big a deficit, but if you dig into, to your point, those candidate ad rates on TV just kill Republicans who are relying on Super pacs for help. So that's the clear consequence that we face.

John Hall:

Yeah, for sure. And our super pacs are doing, are doing a lot of really great really great things. They're raising a huge amount of money. They're out raising the Democrats, but to the, to the point that you just made, when it comes to the individual television ads that are run, our candidates are, are being massively outspent. And it's because we can't, even though we're, we're raising far more on the super PAC side, we're not able to make up for it because of the, that increase in television rates.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah, it's, it's sort of like if you're playing basketball and one team gets to make three point shots and the other can only do free throws, right. <Laugh> like that, that's, that's sort of the, the deficit that we're, we're up against. So you wrote a really good essay that people can read from the, the show notes here. You point out that raising money and building relationships with supporters are two different things. It doesn't necessarily mean if you're raising money, you're, you're building relationships. How do they conflict? Is it even possible for these objectives to align?

John Hall:

Yeah, I think it is. I think that when you, when you think about online fundraising, when you think about all on all fundraising, really the, the first step is identifying people that could become donors and then converting them over to donors. And on the digital side, the way that we do that typically, or most broadly, is with renting email lists renting text message lists, and with online ads. And in the rental market, whether it's rental email or rental peer-to-peer, a lot of the focus over the last couple years has become getting as much revenue in as possible kind of regardless of the, of the tactics that are used. So you've seen, I mean, I'm sure you saw last week the article that Politico wrote that had the Trump campaign asking, asking agencies not to use his name unless there was an agreement on it.

I mean, if you go back over the last eight years, so much fundraising has been done off of president Trump's name. And if you're doing fundraising off of his name or off of someone else's name, that's not your candidate's name, you're gonna get those people onto your list. You're gonna get these people making an initial donation. You're not really building that relationship between your candidate and the and the donor itself. These folks may think in some cases that they're actually donating to President Trump's election. And, and when you then follow up with a ask for money it just isn't gonna resonate as much. And then you go even kind of further down the, down the kind of like what is a slippery slope of, of how you're gonna get money in on prospecting. You tend to embrace more aggressive tactics, whether it's matching which is extremely like over the top like 76 times matching type language or, or actually asking people or calling people traders if they don't, if they don't chip in.

And those types of things may convince supporters to give, but they're probably not gonna give a ton of times to you if you continue with that kind of behavior. It also kind of weakens the ability to call for an emergency donation because everything becomes an emergency. So I think that like the first thing we, we do have to look at is how are we getting donors into these campaigns files? And we need to, we need to do that in a way that really does introduce the campaign to the donor. And then you can start following up with your house email, your house text program with, with content that really does kind of build that relationship. I don't think that it has to be two separate things. I think that you can build a relationship while you are soliciting money, but in order to do that, it has to be a, a more of a mutual thing.

You have to give something a value while they're giving you money. It can't just always be, it's an emergency, it's a deadline. We have 56 times a match today. You need to chip in to support President Trump, even if it's not going to his campaign. And if, if we actually start building kind of those relationships, giving updates inviting people to join town halls, inviting them to in-person events, writing them thank you cards, sending them gifts from time to time, if you do those things that I, I do believe you, you start building that relationship that is more, more it's just stronger and it's gonna have less impact by external forces. Cuz like today, we're all in win red. We all use, we all use Win Red as the, as the main payment platform. And if there's one person that does something that's over the top that makes donors angry, it can have a negative effect on everybody. But a lot of that is because there are not a lot of direct relationships between the donor and the campaign. And if you build your own, if you build your own relationship when somebody does something stupid, it should have less of an impact on, on you and your program.

Eric Wilson:

Well, I I, I think back to kind of the challenge of of, of social media. So when I'm working with candidates are leading trainings, I always talk about how, how social media is shared media. Just because people are following you on that platform doesn't mean you have a relationship with them. Right, for sure. And, and it's the same ha has held, held true for online fundraising, right? Just because you get someone in the door and make a donation doesn't mean that there's any loyalty, there's no brand recognition with you. And, and so I think you're exactly right where it's, yeah, you got 'em in the door on, on on something related to Trump, but y they're, they're not getting give another time when they realize that you're, you're asking for, for help for your race or something like that. Yeah,

John Hall:

Yeah. I mean, it, it really, I mean it's, this should be no different than than any other relationship that you have. And if you're in a relationship that the, the other side is always asking you for something and never gives you anything back, it, it's not gonna last very long. It's not gonna, it's not gonna work out for you very well. There has to be some kind of, you have to give something back. And I, it can be, I mean, I think a lot of folks would say, well, the thing you're giving back is you're, you're going and running in this race, or you're, you're winning elections. But I mean, in a lot of cases, like the campaigns aren't always successful. I mean, we don't have the ability to say that we're always gonna win, and there just has to be more of that connection.

I i I believe between the donor and the, and the people that they're, they're donating to and, and you can give things back. Most of these folks really do want insights into the campaign. The reason they're donating is because yes, they care about the campaign, they care about the candidate, they care about changing things in America or protecting things depending on, I guess, the candidate. But they, they really do want insights into what's happening on the campaign. They wanna feel like they're part of the team. And so doing some small things can help build that, that kind of more of a two-way relationship where you're not just only asking for money, you're asking for money, but you're also giving them an update from the campaign. You're providing them pictures. I mean, it can be very small things that I think will, will really help in, in building that relationship.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah, my advice to candidates has always been the bigger your list, the more money you'll raise. That that's, I sort of joke that that is the only secret there is to online fundraising. You know, I, I think that that message has been heard in, in some quarters and probably over-corrected. I still think a lot of smaller down ballot campaigns aren't doing enough list building. But, you know, you're offering a a different perspective on that strategy of chasing leads versus donors. Can you elaborate on that a little bit and where do we need to update our, our mental models?

John Hall:

Yeah, I mean, I think you're, you're right to the extent if you have one email address versus a million email addresses, you, you must certainly will raise more with a million than you will won. I think that where I, where I like caution people and why i, I kind of view just blindly generation as, as a negative thing is. So, and, and this is hopefully this isn't overly complicated, but like when you're, when most campaigns, when most organizations are determining what is the, the roaz or, or the ROI on the, on the efforts that

Eric Wilson:

Return on ad spend. Yes. Right? Yes. R R O A S, we call it roaz.

John Hall:

Yes. they look at how much did you spend versus how much did you raise immediately or over time. What happens in a, in a lot of cases is folks don't then take into account how many email addresses or how many emails did you send to that email address, how many text messages did you send to that text that, that phone number in order to get the donations in. So there's a whole nother host of costs that aren't just, I spent a thousand dollars on Facebook ads to get a thousand email addresses. It's, I spent a thousand dollars on Facebook ads, I got the thousand email addresses, then I spent another $300 sending those people emails and text messages and whatever other things I did in order to get the donation is. So I think in the, in the first, kind of, in the first, my first kind of view on this is, I think one, we're, we've miscalculated the value of a lot of, a lot of these efforts because we haven't taken a holistic view of this is how much we spent to raise from these leads.

It is always just, this is how much I spent on the ads, this is how much I spent on rentals, this is how much I spent on peer-to-peer, and then all that money that gets raised off the house file, there's a whole nother line of the budget that is, this is how much I spent on emails and text messages, which should be counted against the, the return of your, of the amount you're spending to add those people. But it just never is. The second part of it is, if you're a small campaign, if you're a, if you're running for Congress, if you're running for Senate and don't have a huge list already, there are probably greater places to go or better places to go in order to get leads on your, on your list first. Like instead of running a petition on Obamacare or on the border or on something like that, you probably could come up with an email or a text message asking people to chip in to, to something around those topics.

And send a rental email or send it a peer-to-peer text message, and you're gonna be adding a donor to your file immediately. It's always been kind of silly in my mind the way that we have thought about fundraising versus lead generation for years. Like, you'll go to campaigns and organizations and you'll say to them, I wanna collect email addresses, I wanna collect phone numbers, I wanna spend $2 a piece. And there's no expectation that there's gonna be an immediate return. There's an expectation that eventually you'll get that $2 back. But it's not like immediate when we go out and we do rental emails or you do peer-to-peer text when you go and actually collect donations, when you get donors in the door, there's, there's really an expectation that you're gonna be probably netting money. You're gonna get money over the top of whatever you spent immediately.

And, and people haven't taken the view of how much is it costing me to acquire a donor? And if you were to go to someone and say, I want to spend $70 per donor, I mean, most folks would look at you crazy if you said, I'm gonna spend $70 to get these donors in the door, but we're only gonna average $25 average contribution, we're gonna be getting 35% back, 40% back. Again, they, they look at you like you're, you're, you're crazy for wanting to spend all that money. But then if you look at the lifetime value of a donor and it is generally $200 for an organization, you're getting a lot more value out of that. So I, I guess that was a long way of saying like, I don't disagree that if you have a bigger list, if you have more email addresses, if you have more phone numbers, you are gonna raise more money.

I think that my caution is always, if instead of spending all this money in lead generation, we focused it on collecting new donors into the file, collecting it on, on fundraising type efforts, and just had a better view of, are these new donors that we're acquiring? Are these, how much are these donors giving us over time that most campaigns would be in a better spot because like Eric, like, like you're like, you know, too, like you start getting into the hundreds of thousands of email addresses, we're gonna have inboxing issues. Like you're gonna have to like sort through all this data. And it's just, it's harder. Large pools of data are becoming harder to utilize, at least in the email space because of all the rules around inboxing and how you have to integrate leads into your file. And if you ran a huge campaign and added a hundred thousand email addresses in a couple days, like there's no chance you can just email those people immediately and expect that you're gonna keep all your emails in inboxes.

So that's kind of the last, my last kind of view on this is focusing on donors. You're gonna have far fewer problems when it comes inboxing and you're gonna be able to utilize those people really quickly. And I think just over time, like everything I've ever seen all my time, but targeted victory, anytime we did an analysis like lead generation, like by the end of a cycle, you should be able to at least break even. But if you focus on donors, like you can double and triple your money assuming that you're paying attention to it and you're actually acquiring new donors.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. Well, I, I, I'll be the first to admit John, that I have used tactics on programs that I've run that we, we now look on as sort of, Hey, we probably shouldn't be doing that. Right? It's dishonest, it's part of the turn and burn campaign. You know, my response to that would be, yeah, things, things have changed. We've gotta update our, our strategies. It's, it's not like t <laugh>, you know, tv where, you know, the, the, the format has, has been perfected more or less. Now we're tinkering with how we buy it, right? It's always changing. So what has changed in the last couple of cycles that's caused us to, to reevaluate and reassess our, our tactics?

John Hall:

I think the, that one, it's, there's so many more people in the market. You go back four years ago, you go back six years ago, I mean, you could count probably in both hands and your toes that the, the number of truly full-time online fundraising programs ran. I mean, you had the committees, you had a handful of senators, you had a, a couple house members mainly in leadership that were running programs. And then like everybody else was just running some, some small email programs. I, I think that what has occurred is there are so many people that are fundraising now. I mean, it's hundreds of candidates on the house side. Like we've encouraged everybody to create an online fundraising program. And in doing so, what has, what has also occurred as we've convinced all those people that they need to go out into the email rental market.

They need to go into the advertising market. They need to go out and they need to add they need to add these, these people to their house files, and then they need to email those folks. The more people that that I think do anything, the, the more likely you are to have folks just be more aggressive because the results, like truly, I, if you were to send an email and just said, my deadline is today, will you chip in $5 or say my deadline, my, my the deadline is today, if you chip in $5, it'll be 76 times matched. The reason people do 76 times match is cuz it works like it, it is gonna result in more money coming in for you immediately. But it goes to the, the kind of the point we said a little, a couple minutes ago. Like, it doesn't, it doesn't help build this relationship where you're gonna get a second donation, a third donation for these people.

You're just gonna get the money in. But I think that having more people in the space embracing more and more aggressive tactics in order to cut through that clutter is what has kind of created this environment where it's just not sustainable. I mean, the fact that we are, our candidates are raising less compared to the Democrats than they were two years ago or four years ago. A lot of that is because like our online fundraising programs just haven't grown. Last cycle. We also had some issues with the economy and, and certainly folks suffered from, from what was happening with inflation and people not being able to give again or give as much. But when we would do surveys of donors, like we would, we would do surveys of a couple thousand donors and get a couple thousand responses back. Almost always the the thing that these people would tell us in the verbatims is that they were sick of being guilted.

They were sick of, of being lied to. Like they just, they couldn't keep giving all the time. Like they can't, these folks don't have unlimited bank accounts, so they can't give as much. And so I just think that like all of these factors kind of played into at least my evolution on this, where I've kind of come to believe like we, we have to do this better. There's no chance we'll catch up to the Democrats and, and at least come to parody with them unless we start treating our donors better. Because the other kind of challenge we have is we could continue with all these same tactics and then go out and we could have outside groups potentially help invest in finding a bunch of new donors. But if you get those donors into your, into these files and we continue to call them traders and we continue to lie to them over and over and over again, are they gonna continue donating at a high rate?

And the answer to that is, I, I just don't, I just don't think they will. And you can go back to the evidence of the fact that it just got more aggressive based on refunds, right? Like, you go back a couple cycles ago, a campaign having a 1% refund rate was, was pretty high. I think I'm, I I heard that people were having six 8% refund rates last cycle. Like that's just, I mean, that's a very big increase. And the only thing that, I mean inflation probably helped, helped increase that, but I mean it certainly also was that folks were feeling burnout and just not treated well.

Eric Wilson:

Well, we have created a, a tragedy of the commons problem, right? We, we said, look, we've got this fundraising gap. Republicans are being outspent by Democrats because of their online fundraising. Everyone needs to do online fundraising. And the, the piece that didn't get communicated was it is your job as a candidate to bring new people into the fold to bring, I mean, that's what we saw with the Democrats in 2020 where they had metrics that they had to hit to bring donors into the, the party. And they, they stuck around. And, and so you have Bernie Sanders donors, you have Kamala Harris donors, Elizabeth Warren donors and Joe Biden donors. They, they are in the party now. They're in the ecosystem. And, and we, we miss that step, I think in telling people, look, you've gotta have a online fundraising program. You've, and, and people ended up just going with the pool that we had. You're listening to the Business of Politics Show. I'm speaking with John Hall about the world of online fundraising. John, one of the biggest challenges facing decision makers on campaigns is that the world of online fundraising is so complex, always changing. It is difficult to be an experienced expert on it. And, and of course with digital campaigning, you can be overwhelmed with lots of metrics and may not know where to start, be afraid of asking questions. So what are some of the key questions or answers that campaigners need to be getting from their online fundraising firms?

John Hall:

Yeah, I mean, I think the first, I think the first question really is how much, how much does everything cost? I think having a clear understanding of what you're paying and, and is what you're paying market rate. I think that online fundraising is so complicated because unlike mail, there's not just one channel. I mean, there's like, digital is, is mini channels. And I, I I believe that a lot of times campaigns go into this without an understanding of how much they're paying for emails and how much they're paying for text messages and how does the rental market work. I think there's some misconceptions sometimes about prospecting. What most people don't realize when you go rent an email list, there is no, there is no merge purge happening. It's not like direct mail a good portion of the donors that you're getting, you may already have on your list.

And so having an understanding of that and, and knowing what you pay for someone if they are already on your list and they make another donation I think asking like what is, like what, how is recurring handled? Like if somebody makes a donation off of a revshare email rental, are you continuing to pay for that on the subsequent recurring donations or the money pledge donations that come in? I, that would be the first thing that I would tell any campaign talking to anybody, any online fundraising spaces get a very clear understanding of where all of the costs are and what you're paying for everything. And then once you kind of sort that out, I would ask for reports on what is it costing me to acquire a donor? What is the, the true return from those folks? And, and go a little bit away from the this, it's costing me 37 cents to run a petition on Facebook kind of metrics that I think a lot of times are, are what are touted. Like, I think you need to get to how much am I paying to acquire a donor? And then how often are those folks giving to me? And, and then, I mean, then you just get into the, the, the reporting side.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. It's a real challenge because I, I, I think the, the thing that's missing is reports that go a layer deep beyond what the software spits out, right? So if you're just, Hey look, I'm, I'm pulling the Facebook report and it's 37 cents per lead. Okay, well your job's not done. You've, you've got more to do. You've gotta, you know, what, what does our cost us send what is our you know, our monthly retainer and really reflecting the, the true value of that. So for someone listening right now who might be concerned about the performance of their online fundraising program, or they're trying to figure out how they might have been able to do better last year, what's your advice on how to get that back on track?

John Hall:

Yeah, I mean, I think that you, I mean, the first thing is you have to take an inventory of what you have. Like, I mean, there has to be like a clear understanding of, I have this many email addresses, these men, this, these people have opened an email in the last 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. You know, like those kind of stats. This is how many online donors I have, this is how many phone numbers I have on my text file. To me that that's the first thing you do is you sit down, you figure out what is the true inventory of what I have, then you have to figure out what is a, a realistic expectation of what you're gonna get from these people. Like if you're a campaign and you have a million email addresses, but only 30,000 of those people have opened over the last 30 days, it tells a much different, it, it tells a much different story than if you have a million email addresses and you have 800,000 that have opened in the last 30 days.

And kind of the program you need to build is gonna be based on that. Because if, if it, you truly have a million emails and only 30,000 have opened and you've been sending emails to these people, it means you don't really have very good leads. And so you probably are starting with 30,000 email addresses. And then it's about coming up with a, a, a realistic plan. I think that the other problem with last cycle that got everybody in trouble is everybody looked at 2020, which was a historically good year and built projections that were just unrealistic. There was no chance we could get to it cuz there weren't enough donors in the space to support it. And so I think that like if I was putting a fundraising program or trying to get one back on track, I mean, I would have some very honest conversations with the, the principal and the, the people involved in the campaign about this is actually what's realistic and this is what we can do.

Because where we run into more problems is when you set a goal that is really unrealistic and then you're doing everything you can, you try to force it through, and then you get all the bad, bad kind of habits that, that we've talked about on this call occurring. So it, you set, you set some realistic goals and then like I, the way that I would do it is I would start actually talking to the supporters that I have and trying to build that relationship with them. Like telling them what's happening on the campaign, why their money's important. I'd probably schedule some tele-town halls and like invite those people to join, to listen to the the candidates speak and do those types of things to, to just make sure the people that I do have are stay a part of the team and feel like a very, very strong part of the team. And then as we add people to it, as we, as we run rental emails and peer-to-peer we continue with that so that everybody that we add becomes part of that team, part of my team that, that I can count on.

Eric Wilson:

So more nurturing those, those leads and building those relationships, you know, trying to salvage what you've already got. We're, we're gearing up for, for 2024, John, and I know you're, you're involved in one of those efforts. So can you tell us a, a trend that you expect to see over the coming cycle? So maybe not just the presidential level, but but up and down the ballot of, of what campaigns are gonna be doing to recalibrate their online fundraising programs?

John Hall:

Well, I mean, my hope is that they do what we've been talk <laugh>, what we've been talking about, which is we treat donors better. We go out, we try to find new donors. I mean, that would be my, I I you asked me for I guess a trend, not my hope, but that that is, that is kind of my hope. And like we're trying to do that with, with the, the campaigns and organizations I work with. I mean, I, I think in talking to you Eric, like, like these, these kind of conversations I think help that because the more people that kind of recognize what is being done in the online fundraising space, the, the more that we can kind of pressure the, the tactics to be just better. So that's my hope. I think in terms of trend I mean, I think that you're gonna see people, I mean this is a popular, this is gonna be popular answer I guess, but I think you're gonna see people start to embrace AI more.

Umhmm. Shane Goldmark of New York Times wrote an article yesterday where he talked about re the Democrats, a lot of the things they're doing. I know Republicans are doing a lot of the, the similar, similar things. I I think that there is an ability there is an ability to create very customized content using ai. I don't know that anybody is there yet, but I think with a presidential cycle coming up, I would imagine that there will be campaigns that will be looking into how to better utilize AI in order to create more custom marketing programs for people. Cuz it's like crazy that you could have, let's go back to the million person list. You could have a million person list and that the way that those million people got onto the file is not one way. They probably got onto the file 200,000 different ways and that they got onto the file and then they all acted different.

Yet when we try to do marketing to a lot of these folks, we end up doing one email to as many of them as we can at a time. But the reason why we, it hasn't been as individualized as it should is because it takes a huge amount of effort. I mean, it couldn't create 200 different marketing funnels. Like you couldn't do that, you couldn't have 200,000 journeys, like who's gonna be able to create that? But I think that AI opens up the possibility to create more customized programs for each person on your list. And so I would expect that people will be talking about that more now, whether anybody comes up, it's kind of like CRMs. You'd think that by now we'd have CRMs that are used in politics that actually work, but like we've been talking about it for a decade and like the, the stuff that I see is pretty much the same things we were doing 10 years ago. So I don't know, I'm sure people will be talking about AI and how it's gonna have these huge impacts. I don't know that actually I don't know that it actually will, but I'm excited about it. I think that it has a, a, a ton amount, a ton of applicability to, to what we do.

Eric Wilson:

Well before we wrap up, John, if, if you could change one thing right now to improve the overall prospects of Republican online fundraising, what would it be?

John Hall:

I mean, based on my earlier answers, you'd think I'd go in a different direction, but like, what I would say is that we should we need to change the incentive structure for how we pay for things in online fundraising. Like that is the quickest way that we would change everything. Like we should, like if I had one wish, it would be that everybody is paid on a net incentive mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that everything is based on cost. Like we we're, we are charging at, at like pretty reasonable markups on products, but that everybody makes their money based on netting money. And if we did that, you'd have far more efficient programs. You would have people ideally treating donors better because it would be in their interest to get a second and a third donation from those people off a house file versus off of a rental list or a peer-to-peer list. So that would be my, if I had a magic wand and I had to change one thing, that would be the, the, the singular thing that I would change, which makes me probably an enemy to many people in our space.

Eric Wilson:

Well, it certainly is one, one thing that we could change to, to get people focused on the results and the outcomes, right? Like that, that's, that's what we want to do. I wanna say thanks to John Hall for a great conversation. You can learn more about him at the link in our show notes. If this episode made you a little bit smarter or gave you something to think about, all that we ask is that you share it with a friend or or colleague. You look smarter in the process too. So it's a win-win for everybody. Remember to subscribe to the Business of Politics Show wherever you get your podcast so you never miss an episode. You can also get email updates at business of politics podcast.com. With that, I'll say thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.

Continue Listening