A New Generation of Digital Strategists with Caleb Brock

We all have to really just understand that this is different times. There's no perfect candidate, there's no perfect consultant, and it's time that we all kind of just hash these ideas out, because we've got to win in 26, 28 and going forward. Hello, this is the Great Battlefield Podcast. I'm Nathaniel G. Perlman. A great political battle is being fought right now between progressives and the forces of reaction on the other side. This show is about the political entrepreneurs and other progressive leaders who are finding new or improved ways to fight. This episode features Caleb Brock, Director of Digital Strategy for Congressman Rokana. Caleb represents a new generation of young digital strategists who live in an online world that's quite different from the one inhabited by more senior political consultants, digital or otherwise, and he provides a useful perspective. Caleb has put together quite a varied set of experiences working for candidates like Senator Markey, attending digital training programs like Arena, working with groups like the P-Triple C and Humanity Forward for other digital consultancies, and as both a staffer and independent consultant. So, I asked him about that history, about his current work for Kana's campaign, and about his views on political consulting more generally. We had fun. You should listen. So, after a quick word from our sponsor, my interview with Caleb Brock. Look out Facebook. Now you can try website visits directly from CivicShout, introducing Express CPC, CivicShout's new cost per click ad system. Everyone already knows that CivicShouts the best way to grow your opt-in email list. Folks like M&R, Greenpeace, and Feeding America stand by it. Clarify agencies saw a 200% return on ad spend in just two months. Grow your list and run traffic campaigns that hit so hard your team will wonder how you did it. CivicShout, the ad platform for progressive causes, head to civicshout.com/partners to learn more. Are the things that you want to be sure to talk about? Yeah, let's talk about the old guard consultants. Let's talk about the consultants who have ruled this industry for a long time, who have cycled growth and progress, and who have even cycled their own candidates as well, I believe. And so, I'm ready to call them out for that because I think that the Democratic Party can do better. We must do better. There's groups all around showing that we can do better if people are willing to work together. So, maybe something like that. You've listened a little bit to the podcast. Yeah, used to listen a long, long time ago. I listened like a lot. Okay. So, I'm going to take you through some biographical stuff, and then we'll get into sometimes we find opinions along the way, and then sometimes we find them towards the end. Certainly plenty to talk about. Well, how do you find all these people? I think the first one I remember listening to was I was speaking to, I think Jeremy Smith for Syvotech way back, way, way back. He was wanting to tell me about this, and I was like, oh, this is fascinating. I didn't realize there was a whole, because I was still like young, younger, right? And then I did, there was such a whole industry behind making this all work. Yeah, I've been interested in that industry since I was in college. So, this has been an opportunity to kind of meet people and share like conversation. I think of it as going a lunch three times a week and finding out about folks. And how do I find all the people? Mostly it's through other people. People introduce me. Nowadays, publicists will bring people to me, but it's a different one. I wish I was good enough for that. Now, my thing, I just moved to DC in July. I haven't put it off for years and years and years doing remote work, doing all these different campaigns, but decided to finally bite the bullet, see what's up with this place. Against all people recommending, I don't, because we had just lost, right? But I thought, you know, I think it'll be interesting to see kind of what delay the land is and the people who stuck around and are putting up this fight, right? In person every day and dealing with the kind of things that are happening and still managing to put out good work, I think is pretty admiral. You get a lot of good ideas. Like he said, a lot of good stories and you can bounce off people. Yeah. I'm going to assume that you're pronounced Caleb Brock. Is that correct? Yep. Yep. There was a book that I read as a kid called me and Caleb. Have you ever seen that? No, I haven't. What was that about? A book for boys, probably 1960s. I mean, I read it later. It's a series of short stories about kind of rural life growing up. The first chapter of that is one of the funniest chapters that I've ever read. I had a bit of an interesting upbringing. I grew up in the suburbs, but it was in Texas, of course. So all sorts of land is around there, all sorts of different kind of people and I'd be curious here what was kind of funny story they got going in there. It was about two boys. I won't ruin it for you, but they discover something under their house and there's a lot of miscommunication and hilarity ensues. So the whole family gets involved in the confusion about what's going on. Maybe it's like six, seven, eight pages long, but it's funny. Six seven. You heard about six seven? I have. Oh my god. You're, you're, you're, we are so not the same generation except I'm exposed to it by having kids. I can't believe the first thing you said was six seven. I can't believe that it matters. Oh, it matters. Big time. Big time. There's the whole arm thing and everything. I have, I have, I have observed it. I have absorbed it. I have not understood it. Well, I think the beautiful thing about it and the beautiful thing with a lot of trends these days is that they're not understandable, right? And six seven and I could be completely wrong, right? I could get flamed by some 10 year olds or five girls. I assume they listened to your podcasts in that age group. I have a huge following in the six year old. Yeah, 100%. I mean, they're great. I mean, they're just great retention rate. So I would say like the great thing about six seven is it doesn't entirely mean anything. And it's completely inoffensive. And I think the best videos I've seen across social media have been the kids being able to engage in that at something as simple as like a basketball game, right? And I think it adds all the highest dates and it makes life actually a whole lot more enjoyable for pretty much everyone around them. It's kind of like doing the wave. Yeah, the wave, except the wave, I think, was much more grounded in reality and looking cool. And this is kind of just an alpha absurdity. I mean, I'm aware of it. But while I was completely inattentive to the fact that I had exposed myself to a six seven reaction. So here we are. This is why I like to interview young people. It's because especially in stuff like digital politics because it's a different world. It is demonstrably different. And if I can understand you, I'm going to have to draw out something explicable from what conversation is. I'll just I'll be faking it on my side and you'll be knowing what's going on. I can see you make it of course. Actually, I really don't believe in that. But it goes on all the time, especially in this industry. Yeah, I probably everywhere everywhere. So Caleb, would you mind introducing yourself and giving me a quick biography? Yeah, so I'm Caleb Brock. I am currently the director of digital strategy for Rokana on the campaign side. And I've been doing this for almost a year now. We've had quite a hectic year, quite a very interesting year, but also quite a fulfilling year. And I think that this is the kind of work I like doing because previously I was doing consulting in the Pacific Northwest fundraising, all of that leading up to 2024. And before that school, I dropped out of school at 19 after doing the Markeyverse running Ed Markey's DMs and creating ways to connect to people, this really old senator who was actually basically once you got to know I'm a good guy. And so my way of doing that was with the Markeyverse and I think so many good talent came out of that. And after that, I got an offer, a conversation actually, one of the best conversations of my life, I think in terms of where I ended up from this guy, Liam Declive Low. And I was 19. You know, we had just done Markey. I did Iowa Democrats internship. And then the Wisconsin Democrats, I did some digital stuff for them. And I learned a lot there. And Liam, who I reached out to, because I reached out to him on LinkedIn, kind of like I found you, he was telling me about this new nonprofit that was doing some really cool work. And they were looking for someone who might be interested in doing digital. And Caleb, you could have it. You can have this, but you got to drop out of college for it. And so I was 19. We're on the precipice of a Biden election, a great Biden election, the Wisconsin Democrats team, still some of the best people in the business. And things were looking a lot more different than they had been for me growing up in Texas, right? Which is where you're used to loss after loss. You're used to trying all you can and coming up short. I did City Council races when I was younger and March for our lives and things like that. And actually, you know, bringing back to high school, I think about the most impactful thing that ever happened to me in politics was I used to go to these soccer games and became friends with a lot of the people. I used to play goalie when I was growing up. So I like the goalie. You know, you like to watch the goalie, see what the goalie's doing, throw some yells at the goalie when the goalie does poorly. One day, there was this brother and the goalie, Diego, who did not end up coming home from soccer practice. And everybody was wondering what happened. The Snapchat stories were piling up. Everybody's saying, look for this guy, prayers for this guy. And it turns out that their car had overturned into a ditch coming home from soccer practice. And Diego and his brother both passed away. But the road that they went off into this river end was a road that was knowingly dangerous to our community. And I had no idea how municipal processes worked. I had no idea the ins and outs of city government, but it just did not sit right with me. And so I forced the chief of police, I think some city counselor who might be the mayor now of Denton into this room with me and some of Diego's friends and really forced this conversation of how is it that we can have something as simple as a road that is maybe a hundred feet. And it has taken the lives of two people, maybe more. Nothing has been done about this. What are we doing? Now when I'm visiting back home and I'm traveling into Denton, the road ended up getting shut down now. But after that, they fixed the road, added signs, added speed bumps and things like that. And I think that that was such an impactful moment in my life. And it really showed me that even at the smallest level of like civil service, you can get things done. And so I think that that's something I think about all the time when I'm doing this work. I think I understand you a little bit better from that capsule. Tell me a little bit about your family and what was the politics of the town you grew up in. All takes to the town were as you can expect in a conservative affluent part of Texas. Very interesting high level conservative politics, people engaging in those things, not always in the best faith. Coming into age and growing up, I was a freshman in sophomore and high school when Trump was elected. And so seeing how my friends on the speech and debate team were reacting to it. And then also thinking about how the year prior, I had done ROTC because growing up, the whole expectation was where a Marine Corps family, we love the military, serving your country as patriotic, which I do agree with. I did ROTC, Excel, did a lot of good stuff. There really learned a lot of interesting stuff and discipline and things like that. And then moved into speech and debate as the kids do, the liberal clubs. And so seeing the election of Donald Trump, seeing how it impacted my friends who were gay, bisexual, people of color, things like that, it was astounding to me to then also see just a classroom over people cheering and yelling and having the best day of their lives rubbing it in your face, right? And so that's how I was in my high school. My dad is a hardcore MAGA Trump Republican, Facebook posts and all. And he'll think it's funny that I'm bringing that up and so will my mom actually. But basically, my brother's a moderate Republican, the rest of the family didn't entirely pay too much attention to the ins and outs of politics, which changed when Beto came around. But basically, we've got an interesting dynamic here and with those political viewpoints within the family and within the school itself, there was always a level of engagement across the party lines and you could never just shut out the other side, right? You could never just say, your way is wrong, my way is right. I learned a lot of being in that environment and that you have to have these opinions or else nothing is going to get done. What do you mean you have to have these opinions or nothing is going to get done? Or sorry, you have to have these these open debate of opinions. You have to be able to come within the arena of ideas, whether it's a argument, whether it's a discussion or whether it's anything in between and disagree or agree and then push the envelope further in terms of how we can connect together as like a community. And I think that I'm extrapolating something out of something as simple as a family environment and a school environment in conservative Texas. But I think that that really shaped how, along with that work I did, the mayor of Denton is a Republican, right? And he's the one who helped me fix that road. And so I've learned that there's definitely times and places to have these open ideas and debates and free speech. And I think that it's been interesting to be a part of the Democratic Party very proudly while all of these things kind of play out. Well, how did you go wrong from maybe your dad's perspective? How is he headed to MAGA and you headed to Rokana, which are not the same thing? Yeah, well, it's actually funny because my dad, he says the two Democrats, he likes one of them is Rokana and one of them is John Federman. And he says that Rokana is a moderate. I think Rokana has a lot of very pragmatic opinions on the ideas and makes the common sense case for positions like Medicare for all. And he's willing to go into these spaces like Fox News, Temple, Benny Johnson, and have these discussions with people and take the pushback and defend his ideas and change hearts and minds along the way, I think, right? And so the way that I diagnosed as my dad and I having differing opinions is I used to think of myself when I was younger as a conservative, but I was very online as a kid. I was learning about all these different things on Reddit. I was watching Occupy Wall Street happen. I was playing video games with people who were saying, Hey, man, you got to get Bitcoin, you got to get this thing Bitcoin. And my biggest regret in life is I did not listen to that guy who told me on CSGO to get Bitcoin. But I engaged in these different environments with people and really paid attention to the media that was being consumed in the household and how people were reacting on social media to these different things. And it really comes down to the problem of that we're in fractured media environment, a web of media environment that that sometimes people are seeing completely different things than the other. And if you can game the system like that some people have up top, you can game those attention points and really hone in on those things to activate people and get them to the barrier in. So, but what happened to you? So what happened to me was really just experiencing life and having the humility to admit that I was wrong or that I was not holding the same ideas that I held when I was younger. Really, the high school part of it gave a ton of insight on that, right? And the election of Trump gave a ton of insight on that because I thought of myself as a conservative one of my Google accounts. I remember the password I always like saying this because it's funny. But I was really I was younger in the password was conservative all lowercase. And there's two problems with that. One, it's not a secure password. Easy to crack. I'm surprised I didn't get hacked. Maybe I did. I don't know. And two, I made it such a fundamental part of my identity when I was in middle school that looking back on it now I can see a lot of young men doing that exact thing right now. When I was growing up we had the social media algorithms. We had Reddit, YouTube, all these forums gaming forums and things like that. But now they're they're moving in such an advanced way that it's capturing the hearts and minds of young people. And I don't think that the Democratic Party has really put in the effort to try to fix that. I mean, they put in the money, but they have not put in the effort. Well, I still don't understand why you went over to this side. I think it was just the change of values. I saw that the vision of the Democratic Party was offering and that was Bernie Sanders at the time. It was Bernie versus Hillary. I saw the vision I was being offered there and I saw the vision I was being offered by Trump. And I saw how everybody was reacting to all the different candidates and made the personal decision along with being with friends and things like that who are willing to change your mind and hear you out. The Democratic Party's vision is the Democratic Party that I want to align with and that brought me over. Right. So Medicare for all, you know, taxing to billionaires really making a government that fights for the people. I think that that was very foundational and bringing me into this Democratic Party. How did you get hooked up to the marquee campaign? I saw that picture of Ed, that beautiful image, historic image of Ed and his green jacket and his tennis shoes. I have it on a t-shirt somewhere and I said, okay, this guy seems pretty cool. You know, it's the pandemic was happening, things were moving online. I was used to doing city council races or local races, knocking doors for Beto and red areas and things like that. And I saw this guy at marquee had no idea who he was. I had no idea politicians really like that at the level I do now. And I deemed Paul, they're a digital director on Twitter. And I was like, hey, like, can I get involved in this? This guy's awesome. And Paul was like, yeah, let's do a call and get you hooked up with Emma, friend, who's great. And you know, next thing, you know, I'm on this team of, oh my god, I'm gonna set it. And I'm gonna say it six or seven people, six seven, we talked about this. There's some movement I'm supposed to make now. The hand gestures, the hand gestures, right? There you go. And let the crowd know that you didn't make those hand gestures. So I get onto this team of fellows and immediately it was already different than anything I'd ever done. One, it was the whiplash of being in this fast-moving digital pandemic environment. And two, it was the level of courage that I think the leadership of that campaign showed by enabling us young people on the campaign to fulfill these roles that were previously typical consultant roles or typical super volunteer roles. They were letting kids come in from all over the country, you know, and say, hey, I think I'm good at this. How can I be plugged into hell, right? And Paul was just really good at seeing that. And Emma was good at seeing that too. So I ended up helping with the text program. I don't know where I thought of the idea. But I was like, why aren't we responding to people through Ed's dance? Why aren't we creating this avenue for people to engage with this US senator we're in the fight of our lives versus a Kennedy in Massachusetts. And we got to do everything we can to really show people the values that Ed have and that he's really fighting for people. He's really connected with the community. I did not get close to that campaign, but my perception from a far was that that was a very loosable campaign for Markey that he positioned himself to get young energy even though he was the older candidate. And that that was done very deliberately, very successfully and probably won the race for him. Is that right or how did he view it? I would say yeah, not to bring up this merch, although they have a killer merch game. And I think merch can be a good part of campaigns, winning or losing. I have a T-shirt that says some specific date and we were down 22 points in the polls and then as the end result, which was winning by double digits, right. And so the really interesting thing about that was looking at the ideas of Ed Markey, looking at the ideas of Joe Kennedy. Joe Kennedy is a nice, he's an all right guy, you know, he's a good leader in things and I just happen to be on the edge. I know some people who worked for Joe Kennedy. We laugh about it now and the young ideas were Ed Markey's. Ed Markey's was the original half of the green like New Deal with AOC. He really energized a lot of people and his way of doing that, I think, allowed him to succeed in that because if you don't have the young ideas or the bold ideas, you're not going to get the the activist class behind you, right. And at that age, I was the activist class. Did he do the green New Deal with AOC because he was worried about how to position himself for reelection? So I was just a boy on that campaign. I was 19 year old, right. I would say, I would say, you know, that he took a chance with AOC and I think he showed courage in the way that a lot of Democrats had not in that time period and picking and standing with AOC and showing that she's a serious legislator who is serious about getting things done. And I think that that means a lot to people. Even if you're a 19 year old who is just out of his first or second semester in college during this world changing pandemic, lives are being upgraded and things are we all fundamentally understood not going to be the same. So what was the Markey verse? It's a loosely connected group, web of people. There was great people like Austin Patrol and organizer memes and those kind of people who were very, very involved in organizing and putting in the work to make sure that every person felt like they had a place on this campaign. And so the Markey verses, anybody, the good thing about it is anybody can say they're part of the Markey verse, anybody can really actually genuinely point to something concrete that they provided for the campaign. And I think that that was so successful about the movement is that you didn't have to join some special club to be a Markey verse guy or kid or girl or whatever, right. You were just willing and able to put the time in online to host about this old guy for Massachusetts. Were you doing this all remotely? It was. I told you before, and I don't know if it's in the recording, but I just moved to DC here in July of this year, right. I've only been in the swap for however many months that is. And before all of that, 2020 to now, I was working remote jobs in different states across the country. I did stuff in Wisconsin. I actually have the 2020 Victory Tat. It all show you here. That was my first tattoo there. 2020 victory was what we called our volunteer platform for the Biden campaign in 2020. I think that was a fantastic campaign. Great people on that campaign, but I did it all remotely. And I also did die with Democrats remotely with Theresa Greenfield. I did stuff with the working families party remotely. I did stuff with humanity forward remotely. And I think that the pandemic and that digital environment you were forced to adapt to survive, right. And as someone who's just trying to get into politics or just understanding that they can make an impact, I think that the pandemic forced everybody to thank differently. And young people as part of that. Okay, so it sounds like there was a big decision to drop out of college and do this work. Actually, not really. No, you didn't want to be in college. I wanted to be in college. I thought it was fantastic. I really enjoyed the classes I had. Where were you in Texas in college? I was at UT Austin, yes. And I was not, I don't think, you know, grade wise, I had decent grades, but I was still surprised when I got in. I applied to two colleges. I applied to University of Houston Honors Program. And I applied to UT Austin. And I applied under the economics degree because I was like, oh, yeah, all the successful people do economics degrees. And I think economics is cool, you know, how it all works. But I think that there was so much more to learn by thinking outside of the college, even though I think it's fantastic. And I wound up going back and graduating hook 'em horns at terrible football. See, I mean, let's not get started. I write on the football. It's not the best, but it was not a hard decision to drop out because what we were fighting for at Humanity Forward with Liam and the team was basically creating a startup nonprofit from something that was a vision of focus, I would say adjacent to what it is that it was. And it was the bipartisan lobbying for the child tax credit in the stimulus checks heading into 2020. And so Liam and the whole Humanity Forward team were giving me the chance to prove that this marquee thing wasn't just a fluke, right? Like, that these different kinds of thinking, this different way of digital thinking can be useful and it can be useful in ways that aren't explicitly progressive politics. So I think I should pick up one more bit about what you did at marquee that you think was valuable. Well, really was valuable was the leadership team willing to give me the chances to do what I did. And what I did with marquee was we basically found a way to use the DMs, Instagram, Facebook, which were connected in Twitter. And I created this way on your iPhone, you know, you have the keyboard. I think the easiest way to describe it is when you say, OMW and it goes on my way, explanation point. And you're like, yeah, I didn't mean to sound that excited. They're going to think I'm weird, they're going to think I'm weird, right? But that text shortcut change OMW to on my way. I thought there's no reason why we can't use this for phone banking scripts or text banking scripts. And with a digital first generation as Gen Z was in this time, it's so easy to put on your keyboard, QW and change that into a, hey, it's Caleb with team marquee. We have five days left until the vote. Would you like to make some phone calls? Okay, link. So it's not just like macro expansion. Pretty much. I don't know entirely what that means. But well, in some programming language, it means this expands out to a longer piece of code. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. And it was like finding a place. So you might. Yeah, exactly. Find a place. Yeah, it was taking that and thinking about how we could engage this young audience who is aware of that and use it as a strategy for phone banking, text banking, and social media, DMs. So you think like a 19 year old with a modest knowledge of politics at that point, as anyone at 19 does can make a big difference through this digital world these days. Oh, my God. Yes, even more so now. One of the most impactful accounts I know with with Rokana, we work with a lot of accounts. And some of the best accounts I know and the best people I've worked with have been people who are literally like younger, right? They were in such a great spot right now. There's so much going on. We're in such a big moment for politics and digital as a whole that everybody is finding their niche, activating it and making things happen. And I think that's what's so interesting about this next generation. And I guess current, I mean, eventually I will be the old guard, right? When I'm old and I am, I'm washed. I'm pushing 30. I'm 24. And if you're older than 24, but not yet 30 and you're listening into this, I'm sorry, but it's over. It's over. I'm actually not sorry. I mean that, but it's okay because I'll be there soon. And so I think that these people are already innovating and that's the beauty of digital. They're innovating daily, hourly and by the minute. And if you're willing and humble enough to accept that, you don't know everything and you don't know every exact idea and you're willing to let people in who are trying to make a statement or make a proof of concept, I think that you will benefit from that. So how is this kind of innovation, this kind of bringing in of audiences through the current technology or whatever? How is that a good thing for democracy? Well, I mean, it can be a good thing and a bad thing, right? And I think both sides could both say the other side is using it for bad, right? And so I think that I would counter in the fact that I think connecting people on a more global scale, on a more country wide scale, I think can be good for society, right? And I think that if you can bring people differing as perspectives across different forms of media or avenues, whether it's a podcast, TikTok, a real or a short or whatever, I think that that is in that positive for society. It's in that positive for society for road to go on a podcast with Benny Johnson and hash out their ideas and their disagreements. I think that it's a good benefit for society for Gavin Newsom to have differing opinions on his podcast and Andy Beshear and Alyssa Slotkin to go on podcast like breaking points. I think that those things are good and the Democratic Party for too long has really left that at the side because of I think people who don't want to change and don't want to admit that it's time to change. Well, all these people you're talking about that you're saying are good examples, including Markey, they're all Democrats. AOC is, I kind of hate when people say, oh, the Democratic Party sucks because there is no the Democratic Party. Exactly. I mean, you're the Democratic Party. You're the Democratic Party. I'm the Democratic Party. The person listening to this is the Democratic Party and maybe they aren't with the or not, right? But the point is that when you have these engagements with people and you go, you truly go everywhere rather than just saying you're going to go everywhere. I think that that is how you increase the tint of the Democratic Party. That's why it's so interesting going back to my family that my dad thinks in beliefs that Rokana is a moderate, right? Because he's row is willing to go onto these platforms like Fox News and have the conversations with people and maybe it hasn't turned my dad into a Democrat, but it has showed them that the Democratic Party isn't a bunch of whatever they believe social is communist Marxists, right? It has shown that there is an alternative to the Republican Party. And if they don't take it, then that's a personal values belief. But I think that that kind of thing is even more important now with this young generation. You've got figures like Nick Fuentes and all of these different people who young men are flocking to these people in droves, right? Because they're giving them a space to have ideas given to them and also ideas that they believe. And I disagree with these ideas completely, but there is a platform for those ideas that has been created by people, right? These aren't just people who come out of nowhere, which is why I disagree with the concept of people getting mad when you go on a certain podcast or a certain TV show. I think that it's just a flawed outdated concept because it's the internet man. It is so big and wide and we've got to fight in every corner of it if we're going to have any chance to succeed. You've had some stretches where you're kind of operating as an independent consultant and some stretches where your staff at an organization or a campaign. How would you compare those two positions? Yeah, I mean, I love waking up every day, not knowing what's going to happen. Really, anything could happen. It could be a big day, slow day, crazy day. The project could be different. And that's why I like working for Rokana, right? And I compare that to when I'm a consultant, I was doing a lot of that when I was still in school. And it was taking on different various projects for digital things and stuff like that. And I think it was interesting with that because I was taking what I was learning with those projects and then taking also what I was learning in class and meshing them together to have these things. But the thing that's interesting about working for a candidate rather than as a consultant or having your own LLC, which I do have is you're really a mercenary when it comes down to it, right? It is about the candidate and it is about the cause and the values and the people that are part of that cause. It is not about you as the digital director, right? It is not about you as the staffer to this candidate. It is about how can you put in the best work possible to make your principal succeed in places where they might previously have not? And so it's an interesting concept because you're really putting the movement first always. Data dividend, arena, progressive change campaign committee, Pete Triple C. I had Adam on not that long ago. Any of those something noteworthy went on that you want to talk about? Well, I would say that the really noteworthy stuff, especially at the Pete Triple C that happened was it was a continuation of being so lucky as to have mentors and bosses who were willing to allow me to try new things, right? To still know Adam now, Adam Green, he's fantastic and to still know that he is still thinking in ways that are innovative and cultivating that next generation of talent. I think it's super important to me. And so doing that, and if you've got it from my LinkedIn, it's like cable.us, that's kind of what I called my consultant thing because I bought the domain for that. And I was like, you know, that's good enough. Sure. The lab was a project I did at UT for live strong. I think that all these different experiences, though, the things that I truly remember about them, and the things that stick with me is the stuff I learned from the people on those teams. And I also think like the mistakes I made along the way, right? Because I think everybody's really scared to make mistakes these days that everybody is not everybody, you know, but people are they're not moving as fast as we need to be moving and they're not as willing to make mistakes as we should be. You were saying good things about the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, Wickler was the head back then, right? Ben Wickler. Yeah, Wickler. I never had the fortunate chance to be able to speak with him one on one, but I spoke to the next best thing, Bobbick. He's great. We still keep in touch. And there was super fascinating to see that they were already also on the front lines of digital. And Ben has always been on the front lines of how can we make the Democratic Party stronger? And that's why he's just fantastic. And so what happened there, I got to see, I didn't have a part in this, but I got to see their fundraising where they would bring in cast members from old shows like Rocky Horror Picture Show, have them do a, you know, either cast reading or just watching the movie and talking about it with people. And this is the amount of creative ideas that were being splashed around on the 2020 campaign because out of necessity, you had to have creative digital ideas. And those were being spotlighted. I think that it was such a reason why there was such a big success. And what was great there is I also worked with Hibba Muhammad and Priya on the digital teams. And they really allowed me to work as well and doing, I did disinformation monitoring and things like that and finding ways that we can make these communities more connected. But really, it's just part of the, because I'm only 24, right? It's just part of the learning stages of how to be the best I can be and help the teams that I'm on succeed. And also learn from the teams that I'm on because if you don't learn, then you're losing. At what point did you decide to finish up college and how did that go trying to, I assume work on the side? You know, a lot of my professors were super understanding because I also have like ADHD, right? And so I was still figuring out how it was that that was impacting my life and my work style and my work ethic and things like that. And how was it impacting? You know, and having an assignment given to me, I would sit in the library till 6 a.m. with my friend Yasmin and get a bunch of nothing done and be like, all right, good work Yasmin, let's call it a night. And then the assignment gets turned in late. And I'm like, what the hell's going on, man? And you know, you go through mental health, you go through medications and things like that. And it's people that are understanding that that is not something that is entirely up to your control. Although it is up to your control, how you plan to address it and make it not affect your work and your grades and your life, I think that that was really special. Once I started taking that seriously, it was kind of night and day in terms of getting things done and also thinking about things in a future way. What do you think most helped you to address that? Do you think it was medication? Do you think it was like structures around you that I know people who have that difference in how their brain works have to do? How would you characterize? I'm sure it's kind of an ongoing solution. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, mental health is it's always an ongoing process in terms of how you can address it, work with it, learn to work with it better so that you're putting out good work. I think that medication certainly helped and also good support structures and things like that, as well as having great work that I was excited to do. Sometimes during class, don't tell my professors, but it was an election the way. It was interesting how that all played out. What did you study? I went into school for economics and got in for economics. I'm going into semester two. First semester was rough. I was like, you know what? It's just introecon. It's just introecon is no big deal. We get to like all these crazy equations and stuff and I'm like, this is not the kind of economics that I thought I was getting into and that was naive of me, of course. I should have known there was going to be numbers and God forbid I try to take calculus now. So I dropped to that and went to government and I had a fantastic time in the government program. A lot of reading, a lot of thinking and learning political thought from people and also discussing with students who agreed and disagreed with me about what we thought was good and where the country should be going. And then I was like, you know, that's not really for me either. I'll try advertising. My mom used to work in advertising way back when she was younger teacher now. One of the best there is applied to advertising did not get in decline, not accepted. I was like, okay, well, that sucks. I'll try PR instead. It's in the same school. I got accepted to PR. Did those classes had some journalism classes and I was like, oh, okay, this is kind of sick. This kind of awesome doing these different assignments and tried applying to advertising again and got in. I don't believe in failing and then just failing. I think that you fail and you adapt and you re-address the situation and go back and win. Right? And so I ended up sticking through advertising, doing art direction there, painting, trying out new things, working with great teams of people on art directing projects and smart suites and Netflix and HBO Max. And all the while I'm working these side projects and doing work that I think was more meaningful to me than just selling products. I was in a way selling ideas to people. I was engaging people. But it wasn't feeling like I was just working for a profit motive or a profit margin. Although I respect people who do that. I think that that's an entirely fine skill set. I just I found personally more fulfillment in my side consultancy projects. And so I finished out the degree in advertising and graduated. I already was working full time before I graduated at a Rivena strategies with Eileen and Doug and they're fantastic leaders too as well. And I worked there from late 23 up until the 2024 election and then came to Rokana. How did you get connected to Rome? They were looking for me for five years they said that was Cooper who was also very smart. I think he was on this podcast. He's going to love that shout out. But basically they they were connected to me through Paul who was the old digital director who I'd still stay in contact with and they were looking for I guess me or someone from the marquee verse it could have been to come on and think about how they do digital and how we can up the game. And my crash course of learning about row was actually listening to every podcast I could that he was on in the months leading up to what I finally have the interview with him. So that's how I learned about the team that way in that room. Tell me about the digital operation for Connor. So the digital operation for Connor is it's it's a very silicon valley thing and a lot of people are going to be they're going to grow and they're going to roll their eyes but it's really move fast break things but also build things right and go ahead and roll your eyes people it's all right you did it too Nathaniel did it too everybody which is totally fine because I don't think they were in orthodox operation. I think which is so good about the Rokana team and the Rokana digital team for that matter is that it's not an entirely siloed off thing. It is a group of people who are across who I think are obviously the best in their different disciplines. The political director Elizabeth Sarah the comms director Katie who does fantastic coswork. Cooper who's a great strategist Marie who's a great chief of staff keeps everything together. Row himself and add also our digital fundraiser. We all are able to work together and move at a moment's notice when something happens and we're able to respond to that formulate plans ideas say a good idea say a bad idea but move on and execute on the solution and that's what allows us to be at the front of all of these either popular moments as well as forcing these popular moments to happen ourselves. When I talk to people who were pioneers in internet and politics say in the early 2000s and they worked say at the RNC or the you know the democratic congressional campaign committee or the dean campaign or something like that. In a lot of those places in the places that they felt weren't doing it well they were struggling with getting things okayed through a chain of command that was very cautious that was trying not to put something with a spelling error out or that would make the candidate or the committee look bad. They would mock the the number of people who had to sign off to get something and of course there is a value to getting things right. It's impossible to go fast most of the time under those circumstances. How do you think about that balance as someone in a team that sounds like it has more leeway to just act independently. But how do you how do you think about like getting it right versus getting it fast and and consequences. I approach this from the viewpoint that failure is extremely important and a lot of my biggest failures are things that have made it so that I can do the work I do today confidently. And that doesn't mean I don't make failures still. When I was doing consulting, sending emails and stuff I got so I'll be honest. I send some typos out and emails I'll be honest, you know I'm just a guy. But when you're in this very high stakes work those kind of mistakes they can't happen and why it's so important that the team is able to bounce off each other in a way that is conducive to getting things done right. And so I think that it's important to be able to move fast and the reason you're able to move fast is if you have good leadership, if you have good people on the team who are humble and are willing to be wrong and told they're wrong and move with the team's idea. I think that that's very good as well. And also you have to give a lot of credit to because I'd never had a principal like this before row himself. I've never met a leader who is so in tune with where the digital environment is, his understanding of it, his understanding of trends, cultures, but also his willingness to learn new things, trying new things that I could not imagine any other candidate doing right. What makes a good digital operation for someone like him? Yeah, well, the good digital operation and the reason it works so well is because in a way he is the digital operation, right. He runs his own Twitter. He runs Reddit. He does these things. He posts himself and it's up to us to make sure that those are seen by people and that we're building with people who might find it interesting the things he's saying, as well as also giving a roadmap to creators and people who have felt like they're left aside to have a say in these things. And so I spend a lot of my time meeting people and seeing where they're at even if they don't entirely agree with us. And and thinking about that the things that they say actually matter and even if they're saying that I'm wrong or I'm doing terrible digital work or they don't like row or whatever, you have to have humility, right. You have to understand that. I always say this to people when when row is going on someone's podcast or someone's TV show like that is that is our honor to be a witness on their show. I don't care what they agree with. I don't care what their audience size is. It is our honor that they're even considering having us on having row on to come and speak about the things that matter to their us. And also to speak about the things that matter to them. There's no more fulfilling work than making people understand that there is a democratic party out there that cares about what they believe in even if you don't 100% agree with it. How does he decide or how does the team decide where to put him? There are thousands and thousands of options. You can't go everywhere. What's the decision making process as much as you understand it? You think about just all of those things in general and it's interesting because you know the comms director Sarah and Katie who does great work as well also comms Marie maybe saw something Cooper maybe saw something Ed Quinn you know people like that they might have seen something or maybe row saw something on Twitter and these things get presented to us. And I think the most important thing above all is making sure that it is a honestly worth rose time. But I think that there's things that are worth this time even if they don't have a million subscribers. I think that there is use cases and also it's better for the community as a whole or row to go on to these smaller level podcasts or these smaller level shows and also building the relationships with them so that they understand. Like I think a lot of people I reach out to they're like super surprised that I just had a call with someone who does a podcast and one of my first questions to them was where do you think we went wrong? And letting them speak and hear what they think and then trying to tie it back and these are the one-on-ones I have with people row you know the process is different but actually not entirely that different you know some shows most shows actually row doesn't do pre-written notes or anything like that. He doesn't do scripts. It's like not in his style. He prepares to know the material like he does so well. Really digest material and think about how it relates to his values and then make the case right and so we had him go on to a a YouTuber who no other politician really had gone on before right. The prep I gave rope was this is a manosphere YouTuber. We're going to talk about Epstein. We're going to talk about Gaza and we get out of the car take hands cameras rolling and the shows go and how did it go? Fantastic. I thought it was great. I think that working with those kinds of people and I don't want to spoil everything yet you know I got some stuff cooking in the works we have some stuff cooking in the works. I think that those are the the best things you can do because then you can go and you can think about how other some people at Democratic Party who are saying that in this audience for example was like 80% men from 18 to 44 millions of people and I think that the best part about that was that it was a YouTuber who was way more reasonable on the issues which I expected but that a lot of other people could not expect and that's where the Democratic Party has its strong suit is that if you're willing to just have some humility we lost we have to build the tent we have to be creative about how we build the tent we have to execute on building the tent we can't just sit around and moat and lose over and over you got to be open to doing these non-traditional podcasts and I think the highest viewed video on this guy's YouTube was about driving with car fees and then another one was like spending the night with a SWAT team and then I pitched him on having a random congressman talk about the Epstein files and then talking about Gaza and he was like oh sure of course makes sense it's in the benefit of both the politician and the person and their audience right yes I actually think that's really smart that you said that because I do believe too and I think people are understanding this obviously it's not a crazy idea that social media has to be mutually beneficial for the creator as well as the politician and if anything it's super important to me that it's beneficial to the creator because our team understands the livelihood that creators have which is why going for the TikTok band was such an easy lift stopping the band was such an easy lift because and Rose said it that it was a fight to protect people's livelihoods protect small businesses protect mothers who are making some extra income features who have a little live show they do someone who has a coffee shop they stream their shift of this is supplemental income for people and these are hundreds maybe it's $100 maybe it's $20,000 that is someone's livelihood small business and also freedom of speech all in one right and so it is always super important for us that we are uplifting creators and uplifting these people and for me especially independent media is what I really like to engage with they haven't had that got you know and they don't have to be democratic or entirely whatever political ideology obviously of course work with progressives and stuff but really it's about working with people and creators who some of them were forced into necessity to make content and happen to blow up hoping them to to keep that going right when you think about politicians online digitally all of the different platforms etc who would you say are the top five who really know how to do this well AOC Gavin Newsome you know JV Fritzker Row of course Thomas Massey does good work as well I think he truly understands social media and also you know Margie Taylor Green I mentioned both parties there kind of intentionally because I think that there needs to be a discussion about how we do things around here and it doesn't mean I agree with everything that they say it doesn't mean I poured all Thomas Massey or Margie Taylor Green's views it means that I understand that that candidate those two candidates I think there's a pretty high chance that they run their own social media in the way that Row does and and they're putting themselves out there in the way that Row does and I think that having that level of connection with the community is extremely important I think that Americans deserve to have that level of access to the representatives and the ones who are putting that kind of focus first and engaging in that you can see the levels of respect they get compared to someone who filters themselves and doesn't go out and you know I would say like it's not always the candidates fault it's not always the candidates fault that they're not going out on these interviews when I was in graduate school when you studied say the US House of Representatives there was a concept called a show horse and a workhorse and a workhorse was someone who engaged in the legislative process and worked hard on their constituents problems and invited their time and worked their way up into the leadership and there was a certain kind of respect that was afforded to them that maybe wasn't to the show horse who was seeking attention it's a very different world right now but I think there is a lot of concern that what gets pulled out of members of Congress and what incentivizes politicians is to get attention at whatever cost rather than do the work or rather than do the thinking it's pulling up a Marjorie Taylor Greene who has minimal value in what she's saying I think into prominence into the dialogue not for the better of the country it affects kind of the political dialogue and it can take it to a lot of yelling a lot of more extreme positions a lot of just sort of wearing pink and jumping around or whatever the equivalent is how do you think about with Connor with other clients you've had and just kind of your philosophy of our democracy how do we how do we do this the right way to move people in the right direction to elevate the right types of leaders things like that I would say you know we could talk about the workers workers forces um show horse I would say that there is no right politician anymore I think that there really are no rules these days and I think that a lot of people very much would have liked that to not be the case but it's just the world that we live in and maybe it's easier for me because that's how I came into politics and it was a global pandemic and that was the world that I was in so I had to adapt but I think we live in this attention economy that you have to compete or die if you if you're not willing to put yourself out there in ways that are still authentic it has to be authentic then you're not going to survive and that doesn't mean that every person has to be a show horse I think that you could be a strict workhorse and still be someone who gets attention on social media still gets a lot of press still gets things done Nancy Pelosi for example and she still does good on social media because they're still an appetite for good legislators and good leaders and I think Hawkeam Jeffries is a good leader too as well and so the challenge is how do you balance that for each candidate and each principle and I think that that's where you have to really ensure that you're having a good staff of people from well-rounded places not everybody who went to you know the same internships the same school national championships the same clubs the same colleges with the same professors taking the same classes and graduating to go work in the same building together I think that if you can think about how we can level up as a democratic party I think we will all be better for and that means not requiring people to have degrees right I know it's a very hard workers without degrees I think that I look at a job posting especially for digital and I see like bachelor's degree required and they try to sneak in and say or four years of experience I think you need to just say four years of experience because let's say I didn't go back to college right and let's say a job said I needed a bachelor's degree that is hindering my ability to get results and hindering the principal's ability to get results as well when we first started talking you said something along the lines of I would like to call out the older generation of consultants who aren't doing this the right way who I think are basically damaging the party not allowing it to change in in the ways that you think would improve it what are you talking about there what are you thinking I didn't know a lot about the swamp and how it works and how the consultant class works and how all these people do things because when I was consulting it wasn't like I was getting 50K big ones a month you know I was doing like a thousand dollars here a thousand dollars there to get some beer money to go to cane and ables with my friends right a dollar beer Tuesdays shout out dollar beer Tuesdays what it really came down to to me was that this older guard of consultants I call them and it's it's honestly purposely vague because I think people need to think about to be digital consultants to be media consultants pollsters I mean everybody's on the chopping block in my opinion okay because it's time to take some humility and understanding that you're not the greatest consultant that ever lived you might have 30 awards you might get to go to all the galas and sit at all the cool tables with the cool kids and stuff the big donors but you failed to deliver for the democratic party up and down the ballot and I think that it's time to really think about these old guard consultants I'm speaking directly to them if they're listening they're placed in this party and and their willingness to adapt to the changes that are happening and if they're not willing to adapt to those changes they need to to believe so be specific what does that mean to you what kind of consultant would you like to see adapt in what sort of way I would like to see the people who got millions of dollars to give poor advice to people who could do well the principal who shielded that person not have positions that was not concrete enough for me to understand what what are you trying to say like who got bad advice from whom and you think it was consequential you don't have to name names but like what kind of advice are you talking about the allocation of resources are you talking about so let's figure out a very high level here I think that there's and every person who's listening when you were pressing me to name a name probably is thinking of their own specific person that they think of who has done this party wrong and it might even be them themselves like that could be listening I don't know my big high level value point on this is that there are candidates out there who are perceived as backbenchers who are perceived as out of touch who are perceived as losers laying goobers things like that who I think could do fantastic work online in the press legislatively and boldly if their elder guard consultants who have been doing business the same way for 30 40 years would just allow a new generation of people a new generation of ideas to well then emeld with them are you talking about like what they're advocating for or just where and how they're advocating it yeah it's it's pretty much all of that it's it's thinking about and obviously I I'm just a boy you know I don't know everything that goes into everything I know that there's decisions that have to be made I know that they're hard choices and that a lot of people rest with those choices right it's this general consensus that seems to have seeps through the elder consultant class that this is not the time to make big changes this is not the time to take risks digitally if you get a spelling mistake you're fired which is never happened to me but you know things like that I get that point I'm sure there is is validity to that point there may also be something that they have learned from 30 or 40 years in the business from running campaigns in different decades from being involved in lots and lots of things that might have value to have you picked up some value from some absolutely so how do you think about what to listen to what not to listen to and how maybe a candidate ought to pull together a team what should it be composed of yeah well I think it's absolutely important to have people who have been willing to engage in this work for years and years at a time well also acknowledging that things are changing and adapting with it as well right and I think there are plenty of people in this consultant class sorry to be looped in guys but you are who who are willing enable to engage in these hard conversations internally or maybe externally think about how we can get better as a party and so the people who do that who are willing to stumble themselves and listen while also being willing to put up with people like me I think that it is good because like we talked about earlier I'm going to be the old guard eventually as well too and it's important for me that I am consistently opening myself up to being wrong or differing opinions and I really want that to be the change the use case going forward well speaking for myself I really want our party thinking about it broadly a coalition of opposition to to the really terrible leadership federally we have right now I want us to do better I want us to do better collectively I want us to yes I want us to do things differently but I but I want us to do it together as a coalition to defeat what's going on right now which I think rises to the level of such an imperative that it just has to be done if you want to speak for sort of your generation of consultants and political observers what do you think are the significant changes that the party ought to make is there a consensus bubbling around among 24 year olds that ought to be listened to I think that the great thing that's happening with this is that there is no consensus I think they're right now we're in a mad dash everybody's in a mad dash to try and say that their way is the right way and I do want to also mention that like it is important to have these older figures with this established knowledge and these ideas of things that have been done correctly right do people I have learned from my entire life I've been people who have been putting in the work for years and years and years and we're willing to just say hey let's give this guy a kale of this weirdo a chance right and so I have only respect for the people who are willing to take in these new voices and take in these new ideas and defend their own ideas I think that there has to be a dialogue because nothing I've said is 100% right and so I think that it's important to have those dialogues well it's definitely been a very enjoyable hour talking to you is there something I should have asked you that I failed to I mean you should have pressed be harder on naming those names would you have named them absolutely not I would have danced around it well then why should I pressed you harder I don't know it would have been fun yeah right exactly so I kind of I kind of guess that I wasn't going to get anywhere doing that and didn't want the circus but anything else you want to say I would say that we are the democratic party we are the right party for this moment there is correct leaders up and down the ballot there's correct ways of doing things but there's also incorrect ways of doing things and I think that is up to each and every single one of us that put our egos aside a little bit and and really understand that like you said and like I said we all want to be the best party that we can be to stand up to what is happening to this country in this time we all have to really just understand that this is different times there's no perfect candidate there's no perfect consultant and it's time that we all kind of just hash these ideas out because we've got to win in 2628 and going forward I agree with that it's kind of fascinating because I can talk to a seven-year-old professor of government or no there's nobody nobody is that exact age I promise I don't know I'll find someone I'll send it to you I'll find a Wikipedia don't you well you have you have successfully bracketed this conversation in the catchphrase what catchphrase that numbers that out of the 13 oh my god look at that be six and seven there you go thank you for the chat thank you that was Caleb you can find him at calib.us this is Nathaniel g perlman with the great battlefield podcast you can find us at greatbattlefield.com or by searching for great battlefield in places where podcasts are found the great battlefield is now part of the democracy group podcast network visit democracygroup.org to learn more about other podcasts that cover democracy and civic engagement you can also help me by leaving comments and good ratings on Apple podcasts or elsewhere and by sending me suggestions for great guests to [email protected]