Andrew Frawley, Andrew Yang's CMO | How to Market a Presidential Campaign

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You can listen to the Martek podcast anywhere you get your podcast or if you want, you can of course listen to it on the HubSpot podcast network at HubSpot.com slash podcast network. You'll find the Martek podcast there. Today, my guest is Andrew Frawley. Andrew was the CMO for Andrew Yang during his bid for president in December of 2017. Andrew Frawley joined Andrew Yang when at the time, the operation was running out of Yang's mother's apartment as a team of only three Frawley worked in a myriad of catch all roles until he was entrusted to develop, build, strategize the campaign's marketing team from just himself to over a dozen individuals. And this role is director Frawley created the well popularized math hat. So make America think harder directed the campaign's social media team, which saw a growth of 375,000% developed the awarded quote unquote best in politics, merchandise and raised tens of millions of dollars fueling the organization's growth to over 300 staffers. Andrew Frawley is a marketer and business builder by trade. He's worked on a dozen startups and now political operations from Silicon Valley to New York to Richmond, Virginia. He received the BA in brand management and certificate adventure creation and product innovation from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2016. He has been writing for his blog for the past six years and has been asked to contribute to the Guardian, Inc. Huffington Post, Thrive Global, and Lifehack. His writing on popular questions and answers on Cora have been viewed over two million times. So we're going to break down his story, his origin story, how he got involved with Andrew Yang. Some of the things you have to consider when you're building out a marketing campaign for a potential president, where do we even start? How do you measure the effectiveness of some of these early stage marketing tactics? How he got Andrew Yang on Joe Rogan and how that changed the entire trajectory of the entire marketing campaign? Some of the things that he's had to think through when marketing in the political arena, what type of marketing resonates with American voters? And also how do you focus on fundraising versus generating awareness when you're actually trying to make someone a household name? So a ton of marketing lessons. Also, there's a ton of great stories from the Andrew Yang campaign and he has definitely the inside scoop on what actually goes on behind the scenes and what is actually presented to the public when you are building out a potential presidential campaign or a presidential marketing campaign. So I hope you enjoy. This is Andrew Frawley who was the CMO heading up all marketing for Andrew Yang during his bid for president in December of 2017. So yeah, my original story starts in college like I think for many people at least where they're charting their way. You know, I spent my first two years doing pretty much nothing productive and eventually at some point near the middle to end of my sophomore year, I just had this sort of great desire to like not just burn out and just flail and to know where land after college. And so I started wanting to figure out what I was going to do when I came up with this big aspiration to change the world, which I didn't know what that meant at the time. I just wanted to change the world because it sounded great. I got all into Steve Jobs and really, really started like getting pretty obsessed with that guy. I wanted to get into startups and do all those things. And you know, I'm in college. I have, you know, I'm studying marketing. You know, I don't really have anything going for me. I mean, I'm at Virginia Commonwealth University. My grades are like a 2.5 GPA. I mean, really not not thriving at all. So I start like working super hard, you know, start getting Dean's list. I jump into a bunch of certificate programs and things like that where I'm studying venture creation, entrepreneurship, product innovation. I do all sorts of interesting things, long story short. I, you know, need to figure out where I'm going to go after college for, you know, startups and things like that. One of the places that I sort of latched on to was this organization called Venture for America, which as some may know was founded by Andrew Yang. And the whole thing was like, it was an easy ramp into entrepreneurship. You got to mentor under people, your job security while we're gonna start up to two or sort of a contradiction. And I really became obsessed with it, put my heart and soul into applying and trying to get into this organization. And somehow I got an interview because I really, I guess my, my application just showed my heart and soul so much. Before the interview, a few friends of mine, we ended up driving to New York City to go to the Venture for America headquarters. You know, we wanted to like try and push our hand and, you know, show that we were motivated and we're in the city, you know, battle trick. So we stopped by the headquarters and we happened to, while we're there, we're just chatting it up with the recruiter, you know, I'm super nervous. I feel like an imposter. I'm like two years ago, I was doing, you know, keg stands and stuff. Or actually at that point it was like a year ago. And at some point, Andrew Yang walks in the room and I'm like, oh my gosh, I, you know, I really, it's like seeing your idol. I mean, at that point in time, he was pretty much a nobody in society, but I really idealized this organization. Well, both good and bad luck happens. He steps out of the room. But right after he steps out of the room, I, I built up the courage to say something. And I think their recruiter for allowing us apply ease to visit, you know, their headquarters. And obviously everyone's like, what the hell is an applyee? And then someone's like, you mean, applicant, I'm like, yes. And obviously that's just like the one point of the worst days of my life. In front of Andrew Yang, well, that's, that was the good luck of the situation. He had just stepped out. And after the meeting, you know, a friend of mine is walking in the street and he's like, you know, don't worry, man, like, at least Andrew Yang, I didn't hear you say that because then you definitely wouldn't have gotten in. Well, long story short, I get denied. And I'm crushed and I write some like long sad story on my blog. But I gain a lot of inspiration from Steve Jobs, because you know, that guy's just never gave up in his career and sing with Elon Musk. I was, you know, those guys were popular then, but, you know, Elon Musk was much less popular than he is now. So I like to think I was ahead of the curve, but really obsessed with those guys. And I took inspiration from the tenacity and just packed my car and just drove to California. I couldn't get a job out there because at that point, I had a 3.0 out of VCU marketing degree, no one cared who I was. So I couldn't get a job. And if you can't get a job, you can't get a house in San Francisco because the rent default rate is so high. So I had $6,000 in savings and I just packed my car and I just said, you know, fuck it. And I just drove over there. I really had no idea where I was going to stay. I was like, I guess I'll just like stay in Airbnb for a few nights. I don't know. Eventually, around Colorado, a friend of mine text me and he's like, hey, there's this thing out there called hacker houses you should live in one. And I love the idea because one of the main reasons I was driving to San Francisco was under this advice that I'd heard on a Tim Ferriss podcast. No idea who said it. They were basically like, you know, whatever you're doing after college, the number one thing you should be optimizing for is putting your surrounding yourself with just the smarts people that you possibly can surround yourself with. And I'm like, well, San Francisco is a good place to start. At least if you're trying to do startups. So I applied to this hacker house. I cite all these weird side projects I've been doing in college as proof that I am, you know, a motivated person. They accept me and I show up to San Francisco and I'm living in a bunk, the top bunk of a 10 by 10 room in a hacker house with 50 people. And that was quite a year. Long story short, I ended up getting a job out there. I have a big existential crisis. I ended up realizing that, you know, I wanted to change the world, but ultimately I came to realize that like, you know, I was just like insecure and changing the world was like this is great. Like safety blanket that made me feel like I was powerful and strong. Like if you can change the world, I mean, it's like, aren't you special? So I was like a very educational experience for me. Nine months of just like basically being depressed and sad. And now there are two things that we're going on at this time. I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my life because I became existential and my whole journey to change the world no longer made sense. And at the same time, I'm living in the attacker house where I have all these friends who are like 80% software engineers, like super hardcore techies. The great folklore of the house is that the talk Booter and founder of Ethereum supposedly stayed there for a week. That's the claim to fame, not sure if it's true. So everyone there is super techie. And a bunch of my friends in the house were talking all about artificial intelligence. And they're like, you know, the gray goo is going to take over the world. And we're all going to turn into paper clips if you know those sort of those, you know, those were worrisome tales of AI. And you know, I think they're right. I'm like, yeah, that's pretty concerning. But what I see happening is that before they turn us into paper clips, they're going to take all of our jobs and then everyone's going to get very sad and depressed because I'm not spending all my time, you know, thinking about mental health. And I'm like, wow, you know, jobs are obviously a very key part of, you know, people's, you know, purpose in life, which is, you know, one of the great drivers of quality of life. Self-worth. Yeah, yeah. So it's your self-worth is very tied to your job. Yeah, I mean, and you know, I believe people can have a lot of worth without jobs and things like that. But you know, when you've grown up in a world where they tell you that your worth is your income and your job, unless you're like very esoteric and bohemian, which I sort of am. But that's like a hard concept to like adopt, especially after, you know, young adulthood. So I get all into mental health and I'm all about the robots and I'm really concerned about it. And I start getting into psychology and philosophy and economics because I'm trying to find a big new system to deal with this joblessness that seems like it may be coming down the pike. And I'm on a trip to New York City in June 2017. I'd actually networked my way into a meeting with Gary Vaynerchuk because I was obsessed with him. And this was one of the most pivotal life experiences for me because I had the chance to have a private meeting with Gary Vaynerchuk. But I think it's long just me. I'd spent three years networking to this guy. The way I landed the meeting eventually was that he had posted on his Instagram that he was decorating a new room in his office themed after some band being like quiet riot or something. And I never heard of them, but I decided to DM him and I'm like, hey, I have a quiet quiet riot record. And he's like, okay, like send it on over. And so I go on eBay and I buy a quiet riot record and then I send it to him and I'm like, okay, great. I have an in. And I cash that in two years later. I'm like, hey, man, I'd love to come by and see this quiet riot record. I get the meeting. And I have this choice where I'm like, okay, I'm visiting your city. I have this awesome meeting with Gary Vaynerchuk. And I know my friend who's also visiting New York City with me at the same time we were visiting for a conference. I know this guy would love, he loves Gary Vaynerchuk. And I know Gary doesn't give a shit about this meeting. He's just doing it. Just, you know, whatever, because that's what he does. And I'm like, should I invite him or should I just like be a glutton and take in just every minute, every second of this. But through my whole existential crisis to just go, I'd become much more like empathetic and, you know, caring and compassionate, I guess. And I decide, you know, share the moment, just, you know, be a inclusive, giving person just for the sake of giving. So I invite my friends and he's like, hey, I actually have a meeting at the same time with Andrew Yang. But we can move that back because who cares? And we can go to Gary Vaynerchuk together. And then you can just join me for my meeting with Andrew Yang because it's not a big deal. I'm like, sure, whatever, like who cares about that guy. So we go to Gary Vaynerchuk. It's an awesome time. And we go to Andrew Yang. And you know, he's, this is summer 2017. And he's, you know, he's like, yeah, I'm going to be leaving venture for America. We're just chatting, hanging out. And he started talking about AI and robots and the future of labor. And I'm freaking out. I mean, I literally have textbooks in my bag. I pull them out. You know, I'm like, economic textbooks that, you know, I admittedly only understood the time. I'm like, what's the system? Man, the robots are coming. And so we connect a ton. And he says he has some big project coming up. And we really hit it off. I mean, just like BFFs immediately. I email him afterwards. I'm just, you know, hey, man, whatever you're doing, I love to help out. That's when he tells me, you know, I'm running for president on universal based income. If you're into that, like, you should join. I don't even know what that means. I pretty much hated politics growing up. I grew up in DC where the stench is very real. And it took me three months to decide I had a few phone calls with them to define what it means to like help out. I basically says I'm going to be the launching the marketing team. And I eventually say yes. Obviously, that's why I'm here. And I end up officially joining in December 2017. Second person on the staff, it's me, him, and one of their person working out of his mother's apartment as we launched campaign. And then, you know, that whole story begins. Have you ever done marketing up until this point? No formal. Any sort of formal market. So that little thing. So when I was in San Francisco, I was running marketing for software startup. But admittedly, it was kind of like a joke. I mean, God bless the place. But the whole team was remote. Like everyone, like a lot of people were hired. We're out of like the Ukraine. And so it's just a team of one. It was just me. So this is where I had actually been writing a book about my experience on the campaign. And the title of it was imposter revolutionary because Andrew Yang and I used traveled one-on-one for the first nine months of the campaign. And he always used to sit in the car and be like, man, put revolutionaries. We are like, look at us. Just roam in the country like taken on like this big challenge. And I always felt like an imposter because, you know, I'd gotten rejected from his organization before. And I don't know if he knew that. And then I also would sit there and think like, I don't know anything about politics. And truly, I've only done been full-time employed at a marketing place for nine months before this. And even there, it was just a one-man operation. So it's one of those things where it's like everyone does one-man operation marketing. You know, it's kind of like a commodity at this point. Like everyone's personal brand is like their own little one-man marketing operation. They all use co-schedule and you know, buffer and heat sweet. And they've everyone's pretty much used this thing. So it's like, what do I really bring here? So how did you, obviously, incredible imposter syndrome? But I would say that. And I don't know the entire backstory of how he funded and how he grew and how he became such a prominent name in American politics. And obviously, I know how the story ends. He didn't, he didn't get to where he wanted to be. But I mean, he made quite a run and quit name for himself. So what were some of the first things that you took on to market, Andrew Yang? Yeah. Well, it was, yeah, I mean, it was, it was a really interesting experience. We would sit in his mother's living room, who was out of the country at the time. So she wasn't also there with us. And it was completely surreal that this campaign would ever be anything. You know, he has no business running for president, frankly. And we're just sitting there and, you know, I'm looking at the employee number one, Wuhan, and we're building the website. And we're basically just copying Bernie Sanders' website. You know, that, that idea, still like an artist by Austin Cleon. I don't know if that's how you say his last name. We live that completely. I mean, that was, that was our motto basically the first year. So we built up the website. I mean, my first task were just ridiculous. I mean, he didn't even have good photos of himself. So I spent a ton of time just trying to find a photo of him that wasn't like 700 pixels. I mean, I was fighting like Wikipedia to list him as a candidate, like all sorts of silly things. The rough goal that we had though was like, okay, we're launching for president. We have a lot of time. We're launching pretty early. It was a very start-up mentality, which was, you know, we're going to try and just launch early and iterate based on like what feedback we're getting from the market. Our loose expectations were that Asian Americans would care about him. UDI supporters would care about him. Techies would care about him. And young disenchanted voters would care about him. In the long run, that played out, but early on, no one cared, no one cared about just we announced like February 9th or 10th or something, February 2018. And we had set written goals on our whiteboard that were like, how much money do you think we're going to raise? And like the first, I think it was a weaker month. And we said like 350 to 500,000. And we didn't raise that for the first year we ran for president. I mean, we just got owned. The actual development of the strategy was, I mean, at first we thought people would care. So then once that thesis was disproven, like we had to change things up. Like I had thought early on, all I had to do was email a few reporters, hey, look at this guy and they'd be like, wow, he's interesting and he's smart. We're going to talk about him. And then that didn't happen. So then the strategy changed. It was like, okay, so let's try and get attention. So we started doing all sorts of weird things like we did our first UBI giveaway in New Hampshire and Iowa. In 2018, like we went to the States and we were like, hey, we're going to do a giveaway. One family will get a thousand dollars a month from Andrew Yang himself. But ultimately, still no one cared. I mean, we really thought we were going to break that one open with that, but nobody cared. Our budget at this time was about 30,000 dollars a month. I mean, we were really, really making nothing. And he wasn't really funding it. I mean, he put in about 50,000 at the outset to fund us in like December before we had launched. But truly the campaign was funded by people, albeit for 2018, it was like 30,000 dollars a month. The big breakthroughs that we had were essentially alternative media. One person on the team credits me for pushing us towards this. I know I advocated for it a lot, but I don't know if I was like really the number one, you know, originator of it, but podcasts were pretty much how Andrew Yang became a thing. The first breakthrough was in 2018 with Sam Harris, who just happened to find his book, Followed Andrew Yang on Twitter. Andrew Yang is like, hey, this guy with a million followers followed me. He DMs Sam Harris and says like, hey, good to meet you. Here says he likes his book, invites him on the podcast. I love Sam Harris at the time. I still do actually. I'd even gone to see him in person that that spring. So one day I just get an email from Sam Harris in my inbox saying, hey, Andrew Yang, I want to come on my podcast. I freak out. That becomes the biggest event for us. We're raising $60,000 a month. After that, everything became an obsession about Joe Rogan, because that was the next big consolidation of, let's say, disenfranchised voters and things like that. That's the rough schematic of 2018, but I can dig into more interesting details or if you have a listening. No, I'm wanting, I want to dig in. This is interesting out because I want to figure out how you took this, this, because Andrew Yang was the brand, and you took it from, like, you didn't have classical marketing and training really, and you built something with it. Very, very, like a very, like, it's what I mean, very impressive. So let's, let's go. Let's dig in more. Like, what else, what else do you got? So you did alternative media. You got a podcast with Sam Harris. So you're doubling down. Go ahead. Yeah. So 2018 was a three spiritual moment for me, where I was really doing a lot of still searching, because I thought, I'd always thought that I was exceptionally marketing. Like, I grew up on the internet. You know, I was always doing memes and like viral things when I was like 13 and 14. I played World of Warcraft. And so I just always felt like I knew this, this whole, you know, arena. But I was really struggling to have him grow. And I really believe that Andrew Yang was an exceptional product. And that was like one of my most educational experiences, because in the long term, he was an exceptional product. And yet, I was sitting there doing everything that like the growth hackers of the era were doing and like nothing was working. You know, I was doing outreach to journalists. I big media blast. I mean, I was, I was tracking, you know, media who were talking about the presidential race. And I was sliding in there, you know, emails. You know, on Instagram, I was commenting on other people's posts, responding to people responding on the DMs, doing follow-unfollow. I mean, I was doing everything that you could imagine. And you know, we were growing it like 50 followers a week, you know, on Facebook. Yeah. So, and on Facebook, you know, I'm inviting friends of friends. I mean, on Instagram, I'm connecting the contacts of people's phones. Like I would go to lunch with a friend and I go, Hey, can I get your phone? I would log into our Instagram and then invite their contacts to like his, I mean, I was like really scrapping it. And we just weren't going anywhere. And our content, you know, it's doing all the shareable things, you know, the headlines, and, you know, optimizing the videos and, you know, putting a face and the right, I mean, I was like doing everything, timing of posting. Nothing was growing us for for shit. You know, I was doing, you know, I love Ryan Holiday's book. Trust me, I'm lying. So, I was pretty much doing everything in that book, you know, trading up the chain with media. I was, you know, I mean, I was literally doing everything that you could think of. I mean, I even had, I used the service Hit Leap, which basically sends views to articles. And so on the rare chance, there'd be an article about Andrew Yang, I would send like 30,000, basically spam, you know, spam views to the articles so that looking at the editors would see the Andrew Yang sells. I mean, I was doing all the things and nothing was working. The biggest breakthrough was that right around the time that Sam Harris was happening, I started a Facebook group. And I was really, really big on the Facebook group. I mean, the things that I was touting at this time during the campaign was LinkedIn, Korra, podcasts, and Facebook groups. LinkedIn and Korra, we never really got going, but I was advocating for them. I mean, I don't even know if they would have succeeded, but those to me were the alternative media routes to actual growth. I say this to people now, like Facebook and Instagram, you're not growing your audience on those platforms unless you're huge, like you're maintaining your audience, and you're essentially directing the narrative and the story to those who follow you. But those platforms are now like the website of 2021. Like, there is storefront that people go and search for unless you're huge. So you have to like find new places to grow yourself. So I was all about the alternative media. Alternative media also has the incentive just for what it's worth side note. Alternative media has the baked in incentive where like these platforms want to grow. So what they actually end up doing is they incentivize creators to come to their platform by giving them like highly shareable content. So it spreads and or highly shareable algorithms so that basically they get discovered. I mean, if you look at Instagram, it's pretty hard to actually see your content spreading. So TikTok, obviously, perfect example. I mean, literally like you look at a video and send it to everyone you know, I mean, it's just like that thing. So whatever side note on alternative media and early platforms. But so I push this into a Facebook group. My whole thesis was like, you know, we don't have a lot of supporters like what we want to do is put them all in the same place. So I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot. 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I've come up with this analogy, which I call the house party analogy, which is if you think about your movement or your building a community, whatever it is, you have to think about it like a house party because one of the interesting things that I did on our campaign was I did not have us optimized for money or donations. Pretty much until the middle of 2019 because in my view, if you think about a house party, we're a house party that's empty. Like if you go to a house party and there's nobody in it and they're like at the front door, they're like, hey, it's $10 to come in. You're like, for what? What do you chart like you're annoying? There's nothing here. You have nothing to sell. I view this the same thing because I always thought to myself, why does it seem like donating to Andrew Yang right now is such a waste of money because you know he's not going to do anything with it. I mean, when he's an irrelevant guy, you're just like, I'm just going to light my money on fire. People only donate as if for politics, but people only donate when you have momentum and they think their money is going to make a difference. When you're 80% out of first place, they'll, you know, they think it's just a waste of resources, which I mean, I don't blame them. So that was my sort of thesis. So if you have a house party, having a Facebook group and a Reddit group or just discord, whatever, a place to congregate, your people is like, let's say you have 10 people in your home. Okay, 10 people just wandering around your home, still a weird experience. 10 people focused in your kitchen, very, very focused tailored experience. And then the key about the Facebook group and why I advocated a Facebook group over Reddit and things like that early on was that you can control it a lot more. And I think that's important. Same thing with the house party, which is like, if you have 10 people in your house, you can completely set the tone of the experience, which is important because it essentially sets the direction for the rest of the night. You know, are you, you know, just having white wine and sitting around chatting over, you know, some coffee table books, or are you, you know, whipping out the tequila and saying, you know, let's go everyone, you know, you very much set the tone. And so in the Facebook group, I set it up just before the Sam Harris podcast by coincidence. And one of the things that I've done is if you went to our Facebook page on Facebook, every single other candidate who ran for president and the whole entirety of the campaign, on their Facebook page, they used their Facebook page, they made the button, you know, go to the website and donate. I made ours join our Facebook group. And I swear, I swear, I finesse them so hard because if you came for our Facebook group, you have to answer questions like, what's your email? How are you finding us all these things? It ended up becoming a super, super effective way to gather data on like how we were growing at the time. And I, we captured tens of thousands of emails throughout the time the campaign. Anyway, so people joined the Facebook group and then in that Facebook group, Sam Harris blows up. And then all of a sudden, we have like 500 people in this Facebook group. We have a real thing. And that was essentially the beginning of the Yang gang because I then went to that Facebook group every single day. And I set the culture for what it means to be part of the Yang gang. And so I would go in there and I would give people daily tasks. I would give the whole group, I'd be like, today, this journalist left Andrew Yang off his list of 2020 contenders. Here's his email. Let him know. Let him know what you think about that. He mobilized that community in a big way. Yeah. And so that was okay. That became essentially, you know, I tell people, I'm like, well, I think the inevitable result is that Andrew Yang supporters would have been the online mobilized, mobilized army that they were either way. But I also can't help the coincidence, can't help recognize coincidence, which was that for six months, until from that point, until the Joe Rogan podcast, I was growing this Facebook group and then eventually a discord and a Reddit group that had explicit activities had a spreadsheet that I'd made of like directed communities and places to go and just like dominate. And then so throughout that entire fall, I was essentially just curating this community. I would bring in Andrew Yang's own personal Facebook. He would let me log on there. And then I would make a post from him, which was like, hello, everyone. Here's like the three activities of the fall. And it would be create. I think it was create, distribute and something else, which was just these directives over and over day after day. And then we hired community leaders to run the groups, expand the groups. And it just sort of started to blow up. We incentivized mean creation. I mean, I gave these people a drop box folder of funny photos of Yang, like looking weird that I'd taken. And I was like here, like, make these into weird means of him. So we were completely fueling this fire of like online mobilization, just take over the web. Because if you actually think about it, that goes back to the, you know, the Ryan Holiday sort of trading up the chain idea, which is like start really small and then build your way up in the smallest as forums. I mean, I had, I had a Google alert tracking every forum that talked about him on the internet. And then I was just funneled that to this Facebook group. And I'd say, hey, go, go live in this community and talk about him some more. So all this was going on. That, that was a tech activity one entering the fall. The other thing that I realized was that I basically wasn't going to break into Yang out. I tried it all of my moves. And so what my strategy eventually became was I'm going to prepare us for the day he does breakout. And so I spent a lot of time actually building out our online funnels, our tracking, our infrastructure, you know, Google ads, all those things, making our website stronger. And then purely just optimizing for a super exponential opportunities, which is effectively the only thing we really cared about was getting on Joe Rogan, which eventually came through and, I mean, he went on in February, 2020, but that actually came through Sam Harris who just texted Joe Rogan was like, hey, you should have this guy on. Then he said yes. That was it. That was it. That's the strategy. That's a secret. We'd actually asked Sam Harris to do that before, but he, I don't know if he asked or I don't know what happened, but that's that's how it happened. I mean, I emailed Joe Rogan obviously. I was bombarding him. I was sending our community to just blow up this guy's channels for months. So I don't know what the real tipping point was, but as far as we know for sure what happened, it was a Sam Harris text message to Joe Rogan. Man, it's who you know. He really is. Yeah. And then he goes on Joe Rogan, and that's when things just go just totally off the rails. We were still spending or raising about $25, $30,000 a month, and then we go on Joe Rogan, and we start raising $40,000 a day. So entering Joe Rogan, we were a team of like seven, I think, and then that was February 2019, and then September 2019, we were 300 people. We just entered this totally insane scaling mode. He ends up becoming like the third person to qualify for the debates, noting those who he is. I mean, it's just the spring was, the spring was like that time in life where you just feel like you're the coolest person at the party. Like the media was obsessed with him. They had no idea what he was or what was going on. I mean, the downside was that the alt-right became obsessed with him, which was super strange. That was super weird. Effectively, what happened was in March. I was going to say, you better tell me what you better tell me what happened. You can't just leave it. Super weird. I want to know intricate details of the weirdest shit that you saw. Well, it was really weird because in March 2019, Andrea Yang blows up on the internet through Joe Rogan, and I don't know what happened, but I think some people on the Yang gang just went into 4chan, and they started posting about Yang. At this point, I wasn't even directing the Yang gang, really. I mean, it was just like this very autonomous animal, but still living by, sort of like the directional values, which was cool. But so they got on 4chan. I guess just to plaster Yang to the internet. And 4chan, it was just so weird. 4chan, like, fell in love with him, because Yang, you know, was organization, organization venture for America was covered a lot of Midwestern cities, and so he'd spent a lot of time in like essentially the Midwest. And we had done some work out there, you know, working with truck drivers and stuff, trying to talk about automated vehicles. And he had once shared a tweet from the New York Times talking about white deaths, which is, you know, I think the life expectancy of white Americans has gone down like three years in a row or four years on a row or something. So it was some of these activities that gained some interest from all right. Yeah. Okay. And so not not intentional, but just like these these individual activities over the course of a period of time, all of a sudden, they're looking at this person, like, who is this guy? They're like, hey, it's a Democrat that cares about white people. Was an explicit comment that I had found on 4chan. Which is, I mean, I'm not even going to comment on that. It's just like a whole thing. But for whatever reason, they become obsessed with him. And I mean, that was just super weird, because we're like writing this high of exploding. And then all of a sudden, we're like, you know, we have these like alt-right people showing up at our rallies. And you know, then you're like, oh, like fucking shit. Goddamn it. Yeah, it's just like weird. And then they started, the weird thing is a lot of people on 4chan didn't think it was possible that 4chan people would like Andrew Yang. And I mean, I sort of agree with them. But so then they thought that we were faking it. So then you had half a 4chan that loved Andrew Yang. And then half a 4chan that thought all the love was like fake bots that our team of like five was producing. And so then they started attacking us. You know, they started like doxing people on our staff. Like they would get our phone calls or phone numbers and call us. I mean, and like, you know, threaten us. I mean, there were some get threats. And you know, we're gonna come. I mean, it just got super weird. And I was like, wow, we are, we are in politics now. Eventually, it sort of died off just because Andrew Yang just kept saying, you know, basically like, you know, I don't want your sport with me alone. And then, you know, then we just rode the wave. That's around the time I came up with the idea for the math hat, which was probably the coolest thing I've done so far in my career. We were actually filming with Andrew Yang in the studio making some ads for Facebook. And he had his, you know, slogan that you would always say, which is, you know, the opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian guy who likes math. And he finished that line. Yeah, I actually, I actually never loved that slogan. I wrote about that on my website, which was, you know, technically wouldn't it at the minimum be like an Asian woman? Or like, you know, if you want to get to Soteric, like, you know, the opposite of Donald Trump is like a non-living rock or an empty like, matterless orb. I mean, you know, how, how, how far are we going here? So, you know, I never thought it really made that much sense. But I mean, he loved it said all the time. And he said that line at the end of the ad. And then he just was sitting there and he goes, math, math, math. I love math. And then it just clicked in my head. And I said, oh my god, what if we like, I was like, I forget exactly how I said it, but I said, oh my god, imagine if we had rallies and we had people holding up signs that said, math. Imagine, like, I just thought it was the funniest thing ever, just like total satire and trolling. You know, you have all these candidates, you know, with hope and, you know, all their ridiculous slogans and stuff that just feel like empty platitudes. And then I just imagine this guy just like roaming around America with just signs that said, math. It just was the greatest thing ever. But Yang loved it. Zach Rom in our campaign manager loved it. And we just loved it. We were like, that's the perfect slogan. It represents what he stands for, which is just, you know, buy the numbers. You know, he's a candidate who's not here to just, you know, sort of charade you or, you know, play in the circus, like he's just like buy the numbers, solve the problems, like objective, like do the work. That's sort of what it stood for. And then I made the math hat and we sold. I took a lot of inspiration for our merchant base from streetwear and like supreme and all that stuff. And so our first sale of the math hat, we only sold 500 and they have like a little tag in it that says it's like the original 500 or something. And those things, you did a custom drop on the math hat. I didn't realize that. That's awesome. And we sold 522 minutes. And then over the course of the campaign, we sold about 300,000 of the hats. And then I just kept going back to the custom drops. We did one that was like a marijuana themed math hat. It was like green. And we did all sorts of things. I mean, some of them, we were selling for like $100. I mean, we were just, I was really playing up, you know, the same exact ideologies of streetwear, just exorbitant prices purely for the hype. Yeah, and then it was crazy. And at that point, he had broken out and he was just getting invited on everything. I mean, he went on cold beer. He did all sorts of things. And we got up to like 4% and polling. But we sort of stalled there for a few months and in politics, it's like a really long time. Like you, especially when you're down so far, you need to grow pretty exponentially. So around September, we started hiring a bunch of like more traditional political people. And we had had this sort of spiritual crisis, which is, do we keep trying to be the same fun, happy-go-lucky troll kind of candidate? And hope that maybe we're stalling because whatever. Or maybe do we, you know, change our strategy? And you know, the challenge is there's good slogans for for each of those, you know, or, you know, business axioms, you know, what got you here won't get you there. But at the same time, you can stop and look at Trump and you're like, well, that guy was literally just a giant, you know, oh man, what's the right word? That's both accurate and appropriate for a podcast. Uh, troll. We'll just say troll. That guy was a big troll from start to finish. And it got him there. That guy almost got re-elected, not changing. So, you know, there's no right answer. We tried to professionalize. And so in the fall, we stopped doing as much fun stuff, you know, you saw Yang, Yang like take off the hat, do all sorts of things. And yeah, it didn't really work. And then we pretty much just stalled at four or five percent, and then we lost the most anti-climatic and do a story. You just totally out, you just like dropped the mic. I'm done this. That's it. Dude, that's in all seriousness. I think you are, I think you're under, um, under selling how impressive the stuff that you did was coming from where you came from. Oh, yeah. I mean, it was pretty wild. I mean, we had pretty much no business being like fifth in line, um, given where we came from. I truly do think he would have been an exceptional president. Um, I mean, but he ran for mayor and I was not really involved in that. I think he would have been an exceptional mayor too. But I, I'm pretty disenchanted with politics right now. I mean, I, I pretty much always was, but I, you know, the lack of nuance in political discourse is very discouraging. Uh, really, you know, makes it difficult to feel like anything productive will ever happen, um, because everything is so nuanced. Um, you know, I'm just everything. I'm just everyone's perspective. What people say it's a context relevant. Um, I mean, and then politics spun out of context, which is just, yeah, intentionally cutting out the context. I mean, it, it's really discouraging. I mean, the way he was covered in the mayoral race was, was unbelievable. I mean, it, the stuff that I'd read was surreal. I mean, it was really surreal. And it's weird knowing some uneffectively famous. So intimately, I mean, I, you know, his whole family is mom. I'd birthday dinners with his children. Um, and it's just really weird. I mean, obviously, I, I don't think he's, you know, I, I think he's, uh, has all these exceptional traits and things like that. Um, and it's just, it, it's just strange because it has changed a lot of how I look at media coverage. Um, I'm not like, you know, some anarcho guy who's like, you know, the media's, you're totally terrible. But it has changed, um, a lot, you know, a lot of times I saw, you've seen me, you've, you've lived behind the curtain. Yeah. I like, I, I mean, I was in the room for things that I saw that were written about. Um, and I was like, wow, that is, that is an interesting portrayal of like that event. Um, I mean, even business insider wrote this article about Yang, um, I, I think maybe what, what, what, probably in like February of this year, they write this long article about him. And they are, uh, saying that the campaign had this big bro culture and all this like terrible stuff. And I read the article and I'm like, wait a second, they're citing like 10 people here, but I know for a fact that out of these like 10 instances, like seven of those are the same person. I know that's the same. Like I was there. I know the only person who's saying that. Anyways, we ended up getting a whole thing with their, um, editorial board. And if you go and look at the article, I mean, it's behind a paywall. So way to go business insider, but, um, they have like a three, three paragraph corrections added to the article because they were like, yeah, we, I mean, they said explicitly, we made it sound like we had way more sources than we had. I mean, they had pictures in the article where I was like, I have text messages receiving that photo from the person who took it. Like, like, I was literally, like, I was there for all those things. Um, so it's just very strange, very strange, but as a, as a marketer, like you still have, so now that you know that, now that you know that, are you, I'm just, I guess I'm more curious where your aspirations are focused on going forward because you had an incredible run. You did things that most marketers will never be able to do in their career or have the exposure or the, the impact that some marketers will ever have in their career. And then you've, you know, written the highs, seen the lows, seen the worst of it. Um, so where does that leave you as a marketer? Is that something that, because are you going back into working with gang? Are you doing your own thing? What's, what's next after this? Well, when the campaign ended, actually one of the major reasons I, um, wanted to like move on for, you know, the short term, I would, I could see myself working with him again, but I wanted to have some separation to sort of like go off on my own because when I joined the campaign, I was 23, like when I ended, I was 27. And when you're 23 versus 27, like anyone who's 27 would know, you change pretty dramatically career wise. You know, that's your first five years, like, it's like your first five years, you know, walking, you know, you really gain a lot of like a cutie. Um, so I wanted to sort of go out and just sort of venture off on my own and sort of like, I guess, fly my wings as an adult. Um, as far as marketing, I mean, let me think. So, I mean, one of the things that I'll say, I mean, this doesn't directly answer the question, but it does loop into it. It was very humbling. Um, it's like one of those things, I wish I could just take the experience out of my brain and just like give it to people because the context I gained and the self-awareness as like what it really takes to blow something up or to just do anything at a mega scale was just so life-changing because for the first year I had like very, I was very self-conscious about my marketing because I was like, um, not growing or business. I was like, we have an exceptional product and we're not growing. I mean, whose fault is it? It's mine. 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I mean, there's multiple articles online citing our merchandise as like, you know, the best of the entire political cycle. And I'm a guy who literally have never didn't know shit about politics until so it's very educational. And so the one thing that I'll say to anyone trying to do anything is like if you want to blow up, have exponentials, like your product must absolutely be exceptional. Because what I learned was like even with an exceptional product that became this like little mini political sensation, we spent like a year and a half in total of security, a year and a half, 30 came month. I mean, we were literally pushing credit card debt to pay our bills some months. And that is with a guy who became a sensation and was like, you know, glue to people's eyes. If your product is anything short of like exceptional, if you think about any of the other 25 candidates who are in for present, who like no one remembers. So I just think that's like really helpful context. It's like really what it takes like exceptional product and years of toiling are like in your future if you're trying to, you know, break something out. If you have an exceptional product, if you don't, I would find a way to get an exceptional product. So I, that was like my biggest marketing lesson, just period. So I, you know, I put that out there because I think it's great. As far as marketing for me, I mean, I'm trying to transition out of marketing, honestly. But for probably the next six months to a year, I'm probably going to get involved in the next political cycle, just in the light capacity, just because it is kind of fun. I mean, when you know shit so well, like I've had like a lot of people reach out to me this year to, you know, just ask questions on how to set up their campaigns and stuff. And I mean, I'm charging $200 an hour. I mean, people are just giving me like real money and I just love it. And so I'm like, okay, well, why would I completely step away from this? But so yeah, I mean, for the next like year and a half, I'll do consulting for that sort of stuff in a light capacity. It is fun. I'm hoping to probably do some consulting in the music industry. I love music. I mean, I was inspired by the music industry. So that's just like a fun thing. But big picture for my career. I mean, I'm trying to transition out of marketing full time to like mental health advocacy. I was obviously my original mission. I'm ultimately trying to, well, I'm trying to solve a certain problem, which is mental health. How that happens unknown. I mean, I have a lot of ideas. I'm currently in a research phase trying to figure out what direction that is. I mean, it could be me working under someone who has, who's doing something exceptional. It could be launching my own nonprofit. It could be launching a private business. I'm literally just in the phase of like reading psychology textbooks and talking to professors and stuff, trying to figure out the best way to solve the exact like sliver of the, you know, let's say, crisis that I care about the most. And then I'm going to evaluate, you know, highest leverage point to do that. So if that answers the question of both sort of like marketing and like what I'm doing. It does. What's when when you think of when you think of one and now that you know how to grow something, I'm sure that whatever you're going to take on, now you have a way to take it to market too. So that's always useful. Let's go that out. What is one marketing lesson insight that transcends industry? That transcends industry. Well, or product. I think the one I said transcends industry for sure. The product focus. So having an incredible product. Yeah, I think, I mean, I just think that's like the, what about community? That's what I wanted to unpack. You did it well. Yeah, I mean, I definitely think community transcends industry. I mean, I really think everything I had said about how we built our community is pretty much what other people should be doing. To me, I say this to friends, I think marketing today is harder than it has literally ever been because I have the little so this is the way I look at it. There's you essentially have like four ways. Well, technically, there's five. Well, here's the biggest insight that I gained from the campaign. If you're designing your marketing plan, like the first question I asked yourself is like, do I have credibility or like cloud or some sort of influence in this industry? And pretty much for everyone, the answer is no. Like, unless you're Andrew Yang now or Joe Biden or I don't know, Bobby hundreds, that's a random street where artists, but like those people have credibility. Like, they already have sort of like a reputation of brand. So they can cross industries. They can jump into the more traditional social channels and marketing channels and actually have success. Like, Bobby hundreds probably actually grows his Instagram on Instagram because he's big enough that people share stuff. He gets added to, you know, the discover page, you know, things like that happen when you're big. When you're small and have essentially no credibility, you have to find a way to get credibility. That retrospectively to me was like the central task that we were trying to figure out on the campaign. And one of those ways to get credibility is having a community. And for us on the campaign, we had obviously no credibility. Yang was like, had literally nothing. I mean, just like not even super rich, like just just a guy. And so your task to grow becomes very challenging. You pretty much have four marketing channels, four options. So you have stunts. We'll actually start with the number one. You have legacy media, which is like New York Times, you know, Washington Post, Fox News. If you have no credibility though, like, you're probably not getting on there to begin with. Yang got on there a few times early on in like 2018. And I swear to you like five people on our website. I mean, he would go on Fox News live with Stuart Varney, you know, 10 people on our website. I mean, really when you don't matter, it just no one cares. They're like, oh, who is that? People don't even look up at the TV. So your second option of stunts, which is, you know, what it sounds like. It's flapping your hands and the air. It's doing crazy things. And ultimately, I realized they don't really help or matter, you know, Andrew Yang at the peak of his hype goes on the debate stage in July 2019. And he says, I'm giving away, you know, or maybe your September, whatever. I'm giving away $120,000 to 10 Americans. Each person gets $1,000 a month or whatever the numbers are right. He said, he's giving away a bunch of money to 10 Americans. Our website blew up. And we had 100. God, what was it? 150,000 people on our website at one time. We have like a million signups on our website in 24 hours. And I swear to you like 90, 5% of those people unsubscribed in like a week. I mean, it was like no hesitation. So I learned a lot about stunts. We were truly the stunt campaign. Like trust me, like we did all the stunts, just Google Andrew Yang stunts. I'm sure you'll find a list somewhere. They really didn't help. Like they just don't. I mean, it seems like it's going to be good, but it just doesn't. Unless you can truly find a way to make it last long, it really was literally just up and down. And it was like a total waste of effort. Your third option is paid ads, which again, if you don't have credibility, you really probably don't even have money to begin with. Because usually if you have money, that's unfortunately just like inherently credibility. But you know, the same thing with us, 2018, what are you going to do? What are your Facebook ads going to do for $2,000 a month running for president? You need to go from, you know, I used to do the math. Like we had to, we had to like 100,000 X ads, like paid ads are generally a linear growth. You're not going to find some manageable exponential in there. So that's not your channel. So the last channel that you really have is alternative media. And the challenge is that alternative media is saturated. Like it's alternative, but Gary Vaynerchuk has basically been screening for long enough that alternative media is the way that even new media just gets blown up immediately. I mean, I think the best example of this is clubhouse, whatever it became hype, you know, in March or whatever. And that thing in like two weeks just became a self-promotional hellhole. I mean, you couldn't get on there without someone sounding like, you know, they were, you know, on SNL. I mean, it was like, are you serious? I mean, you get into a clubhouse and they're like, I mean, it was just self-promotion everywhere. And then everyone hated it immediately. And now they're, you know, their users are down 90%. So I tell people, I'm like, man, alternative media is just the hardest or marketing right now is harder than ever. If I were to be like launching adventure, I mean, you still have to do alternative media. That's your best shot. Like even podcasts, I mean, you know, you have to have some sort of credibility to even get on anything. I mean, like, you're not getting on Sam Harris without Andrew Yang writing a whole book published by a top four publishing house, you know, you're not getting. So it's like, geez, like even that's tough. Even I'm on here because I built, you know, something. So it's like, yeah, yeah, even podcasts pretty high wall. And so, yeah, if I were launching, I mean, I'd be on like TikTok, I'd be exploiting growth and stuff like that. But I think depending on your business, you could even try like older things like, like my girlfriend's launching a business or has been working on a business. And I've even told her to do like flyers. Like she's doing, it's sort of like a spiritual therapy sort of thing. And she lives in Mexico and applied El Carmen if anyone knows that. It's right next to Tulum, very hit place, very transient. And so I said, honestly, like go put up flyers in like yoga studios. And she did that. And she's had like moderate success. I mean, very low cost, you know, really targeted. So very different than what people are very different than being, you know, what people are used to when they're consuming content and being inundated on social and whatnot. Yeah, I mean, I, you know, the, the whole point of marketing is to, you know, stand out effectively. Well, the whole point of marketing is to sell your product. But really, how you do that is to just sort of like stand out in some sort of way. And sometimes that's just you know, going back through the whole cycle of things that sell. And like maybe it's doing a traditional method in a different way. But if everyone's doing something like, you should probably still be there. Like she's on TikTok has great success on TikTok. But you know, it's like, it's not a zero sum game with marketing. It's actually just, it's infinite. You could do it all. Just burn all of your life balance. Just to have no like, just do marketing all day long. Did you? But you can, you can, you can, you definitely, I think that the most important takeaways, like if you are trying alternative media, like you have to test to figure out like what works, what doesn't, and then double down on what's working. Oh, yeah. And just exploit that medium as much as possible. Yeah, I mean, without a doubt, the testing is like all marketing principles that anyone's read about like, you know, those are bundled into this recommendation as a default. Very good. Okay. All right. I want to ask some rapid fire to pull us some insights from your career. But before, before I pivot, before I go into a rapid fire, anything else that you wanted to touch on to close off the, the Andrew Yang saga or your life saga before we, before we keep going. No, I mean, I think, oh, just heard thunder, if you heard that. I, you know, I think it's just like one of those things where I look back at my sort of Yang experience. And I always do feel like it's semi magical. You know, I get to know I from his organization. And then I'm like, you know, fuck that. I'm going to San Francisco. And then you know, the Gary Vaynerchuk thing somehow pulls me back into it by this like random act of selflessness. It's serendipity. Yeah, I mean, there's something magical there. I mean, if you listen to this, like, I think there's some sort of lessons about, you know, obviously just, you know, the, the whole idea of not giving up just, just being crazy and going for it. I think culture now really rewards and encourages that. I think more young people are just doing wild stuff, you know, going across the country and just shooting their shot. That's definitely the way to do it. I mean, surround yourself with people and just shoot your shot and just go after it and learn. And I'll make it work. Where if before I do rapid fire, where would people reach out to you if they want to connect with you? I'd probably email me. I mean, my email is Andrew at AndrewProlly.com. My website is AndrewProlly.com. You can, I think I have a contact form on there. I obviously have like Instagram and Twitter and stuff like that. I really just not jiving with social media lately. What's actually kind of funny is I don't really like social media that much. I mean, I have journals that I've written to myself since 2013 saying like, I actually don't think social media is going to be a net positive for humanity. I kind of think it's fun, but I don't sort of sucks your soul out a little bit. So I actually haven't used Twitter in my like last three months. I don't really plan on using it, but I'm on there. You can find me and say it with Instagram. You just search my name. I'm sure I'll come up. Good. Yeah. No, I don't disagree with you. It's almost like a necessary evil, but for some people, but that's fair. Okay. So let's go into some rapid fire. What would be what would be one thing that you would tell your 20 year old self? Oh, man. Stop partying. That's one of my many regrets is, you know, I sometimes think I'm like, man, I don't know. There's just in college. When I was in college, I thought the thing you're supposed to do is, you know, live it up in partying of crazy. But actually, you will never get that kind of freedom again unless you gain some sort of like financial freedom or like find a way to like break out of the nine to five, employ yourself. Like it's very possible, actually. Like I have more freedom now than I did in college. But for like a lot of people, college is like this really, really rare, cosmic freedom. And I spent a lot of it partying because I thought that's what, you know, it you're supposed to do, I guess. I don't know. You know, you're like 1920. But I look back and like, man, what I would have done to be intellectually curious. You have to be asking philosophical questions and to have those resources available that time where you can go to clubs filled with like your friends, like community and, you know, people are just like the core pillar of my life. Like I love co-living. I think everyone should live in co-living. In college, it's just this giant, massive co-living. I mean, it's just a, that's why people love college so much. It's actually not the partying. It's the people. So it's like, I would actually step away from the partying, spend that time in like a club with poetry and philosophy and those people party too. I mean, it's not like you're just not going to party. But I look back and I'm like, wow, it would have just been so amazing to just be asking big questions, thinking deeply. I mean, college was literally inspired by like, play the academy. So like, I don't know. Think about that. It's, it's, it's, it's come a, it's gone. It's, I was going to say it's come a long way, but not in a positive, not in a positive way. Think about the origins of that and, it's fallen far. Try to model that. Yeah, that's what I would say. But actually, you said, it's supposed to be rapid fire. So my bad on that. I don't care. It's all good, man. This is your show, your show. What would be, what would be one, or actually, sorry, I already asked that. What would be the biggest challenge that you've had in your, in your personal or professional life? And how did you overcome it? Oh, man. My biggest challenge was on the campaign that you don't really get respect for what you've done per se. Like, on the campaign, I had a big problem, which was that I joined the campaign when I was 23 and like, super green and marketing. And this sort of gets to the concept of why I'd said, I'd wanted to sort of like step away, I guess, from working with Yang in that whole network. You know, I'd entered when I was 23 and just like, think about a 23 year old. I mean, there's a big bell curve there of like, you know, personality, but I was like idealistic. I made easy, like, careless mistakes. I mean, I had like a big vision and obviously I did fine with our marketing, but like, I made a lot of mistakes. Like, I fucked up our scheduling, like, I double booked things and you sort of get anchored to this identity in people with, like, unconsciously, it's just how it goes, how the mind works. And so, by the end of the campaign, you know, I'm looking on paper and I'm like, wait a second, I'm like, crushing a lot of these marketing things. And yet internally on the campaign, I mean, not with everyone, but like, with a variety of people, they just were like, like, you're just like this fucking clues kid. And I'm like, I'm literally raising us like 30% of our money. And this market, like, and like the merchandise is what I'm doing in like, my free time. Like, what are you saying? You know, look at the map, look at the game. They're like, yeah, you didn't make that. And I'm like, so that was like very frustrating, just sort of getting taken seriously. I guess when you're young, it's maybe the best we'd articulate it. Um, honestly, how did I deal with that? I mean, really the only remedy I think is, uh, getting space, uh, from the people for a few years. But on the campaign, I mean, I read a few books about just professionalism. And I just started being like extremely professional. Um, like I came, you know, people thought I was not prepared. So I started being more prepared than anyone could ever be for everything. I mean, I had ridiculous flowcharts for everything. I'm not ridiculous. They were actually practical. But like, oh, you want to know about like, the merchandising process. You want to know how to tech team operates. Like, here's a flow chart. Here's, here's where you are. Here's like what you do, you know, um, it actually helped a lot. But, you know, I was so sort of looked at as like, uh, by some people as just like, uh, yeah, whatever I sit, whatever I describe myself as. Yeah. Um, that's annoying. That's very annoying. And that's silly. Whatever. It is what it is. Do you know what these other campaigns would do to have me in like one of their meetings? It's like, it's like getting me right now. I love it. I love that, man. You gotta, you gotta know your worth too. But it's tough. It's tough when you're young. You, you know, it's not an easy thing to do or to, to feel confident in it. Okay. One person who's been highly influential. There's been many, but pick one. Who is that person? What do they teach you? Uh, like a person I knew directly or just like read about, it's a, you interpret the question as you want. It's yours. It's your question. Somebody who's had an impact on you. Who comes to mind? Well, I mean, it's pretty much three people come to mind. I'm not going to go into all of them, but we share their names. I mean, they've all been talked about already, which is, uh, I mean, Elon Musk Steve Jobs and Yang, uh, I mean, they're super cliches. Again, I like to think. And when I was obsessed with them, it was a little ahead of it. You were, you were out of the club. Not on Steve Jobs. I mean, that guy was looney passed away. Um, I mean, I'll probably say that Elon Musk thing, uh, I mean, that guy, like super inspired me. I mean, I'm not going to get into his behavior the last few years. That guy's really just actually, to be fair, I actually predicted this in 2016. I'd text my friends. I said, watch Elon Musk become like so big that he ends up doing, you know, getting lost on his ego, doing stupid things and while people start hating him. I have a screenshot of that text message. Um, but yeah, in college, I mean, I became so inspired by that guy, same with, uh, San Francisco era because, you know, I read his biography and that dude just, that that guy's tenacity or I don't even know if that's right word. He's such a workhorse. He's just so for the mission and just has such a tolerance for grinding it out. Um, and I always thought about that on the campaign. I mean, I thought about that at every phase. I mean, that guy just like never gave up, ever just took every punch to face and just kept on going. Um, I mean, on the campaign, uh, like I was often referred to as like one of the hardest working people on the staff out of the whole 300. Um, I mean, I was, I don't know, I ever want to do it again, but I mean, I was in there like 14 hours a day just pounding it. I mean, just getting after it. Uh, and, you know, I think it had a net impact on our outcome for sure, but, uh, I mean, it was bad for my health. No doubt. Um, so it's a great inspiration. You know, it's a great inspiration. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think there's a whole other, that's a whole other conversation about hustle culture. You follow, you follow, if you, if you have any point, idolized, uh, Gary Vaynerchuk in his earlier days, uh, I think he has a more wholesome message now, but or Elon, uh, there's a, listen, there's nothing to be said, you work hard, you get shit done. It's effective, but it's not sustainable. And there's other ways too. Absolutely, uh, not about that now. You my whole, I have journals. I, you know, I'm really intentional with my life. I always have been and I mean, all over my journals are, are balanced. Like I'm all about the balance and the whole being and, um, true mental health, which is, uh, uh, you know, requires, um, the maturity to maturity and the, uh, the effort that it takes to allocate time in the, um, uh, I don't know, the ability to just like stop yourself, interrupt a task and go, go, go, go, I finished this. I'll come back tomorrow. I recognize, you know, life will go on. I don't finish this next hour. Does it help you? Does it help you mindset that? Um, okay, a book or podcast that you'd recommend people go check out. You mentioned Ryan Holiday before, uh, you can, you can go with that one, you can go with any of his work, but I mean, is there something else to stop the mind for you? Well, well, well, well, um, I mean, the, wow, so, wow, the book that I've talked about probably the most in my life as a recommendation people is sapiens by you've all know, or are you? That's definitely not necessarily like a business first book. Uh, it doesn't have to be a business. Yeah, the subtitle is a brief history of humankind. And that just gave me so much context. I read that during my whole existential crisis. It changed the game for me, um, because it just really helps you understand the, the big levers that sort of drive society. Um, and, you know, I'm all about, you know, I'm in politics and society. So those are the things that really get me going, you know, how do we shape the world around us? I mean, that book will educate you. Um, and the other one, the honorable mention is a book called Trains End by Scott, Scott Perry Kaufman, which is essentially like the science of well-being. And, um, it's like a self-help book. It's super informative. It's beautiful. It, he, he took Mazda's hierarchy of needs and essentially said this is how real it is based on the science last 70 years. It's very real. He gives a new analogy, he makes a little sailboat. It's just like, he literally gives a 13 point spectrum of like these are literally like the scientifically like vetted sources of like well-being and well-being and psychologists like the defined term for just like, just like live in a good life. Like, and it's, yeah, I mean, I already have the 13 point spectrum and I review it every week. I like write a number. I'm like, you know, how did I do on my vitality? You know, how my, with positive relationships, my mastery, my sense of purpose, you know, growth mindset. Um, if you really focus on those things, I mean, it's, it's pretty, pretty informative. And this is hopefully not too much of an existential question for you, but I have to ask everybody this. What does, what does success mean for you? Uh, freedom. It's totally freedom. Okay. Uh, I mean, I have four words that I'm optimizing my life for right now. It's, uh, money impact freedom and fuck, I don't even remember the last one. Well, you get three out of four money impact, uh, in freedom. Um, what is the last one? Whatever. Money impact freedom. Uh, those are good. Those are good. Money, basically, funds, freedom. Uh, I saw this post interesting, this post recently on Instagram of all places. And someone was basically saying that, you know, it's not money that people want. It's the lifestyle. And I totally agree. I mean, I spent my summer in Europe. I literally went through like the Amalfi coast, Tuscany, Italy, Venice, Florence, you know, the French Riviera. It just changed my whole perspective on money. Um, like there's that whole region of the world change my perspective of just like, just pleasure. I guess, I mean, it was so nice. Um, I just realized like, wow, like, life can actually be really, really pleasant if you afford it. Not that, you know, sitting in the suburbs is a bad time. I mean, I definitely push my, my zen here. But, um, yeah. Smart, very smart. Okay, man. That's all I got. That's that.