Matt Krayton - Founder and Principal of Publitics - Talking to Cool People w/ Jason Frazell

Episode Transcript
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Jason Frazell (00:11):
Hey everybody.
My guest on the show today isMatt Creighton.
Matt Creighton is the principaland founder of PublicTix.
And we're going to get into alot more about what that is.
We are, I always love it.
We're sharing a time zone.
We could probably drive to eachother's house, which is not
always the case.
I talk to people around theworld.
You're maybe an hour and 15minutes from me right now.
And so we're almost, we'realmost like neighbors, Matt, but

(00:34):
welcome.
So good to have you here today.

Matt Krayton (00:36):
Thanks for having me looking forward to it.

Yeah, excellent.
So Matt, let's start out bylet's just talk.
Where are you in the world andAnything else you want us to
know about you as we kick offhere today?

Sure.
Yeah.
I am in beautiful New Jersey.
So as you noted, not, not toofar from, from where you're at.
And in, in today's age of, ofzoom, where you could talk to
someone halfway across the worldwe are basically neighbors.
So we're

basically neighbors.
Yeah,

there you go.
So I'll, I'll come over and askfor a cup of sugar.
Next time I'm baking.
Perfect.
I love it.
There you go.
So yeah, beautiful not so sunny,New Jersey at the moment.
But yeah, this is where ourheadquarters are.
This is where I, I live in, inNorthern New Jersey.
So yeah, that's where I'mspending my time.

Excellent.
So let's talk now about what'sgotten you here today.
And we were catching, we'venever met each other until 15
minutes ago.
We were just catching up alittle bit about what you do and
getting to know each other offbefore we press record.
So you're the principal andfounder of.
So let's talk about what thatmeans, what the company does and
what's led you to becoming theprincipal and founder of that

(01:37):
company.

Sure.
Yeah, that, that's a really goodquestion.
One that I often field fromfamily, in fact you know, every,
every holiday, right?
Every holiday.
And this, so this is goodpractice for for the Easter
holiday coming up because I'll,I'll be sitting around the table
and I'm sure somebody will lookat me and say, so what is it
that you do?
Again, like happy to be ofservice to your

family.

This is great.

So

I'm going to work it out right now.
So we're we're we'll we'll getthe script straight before
before I walk in there.
So public ticks is a fullservice public affairs, public
relations strategy and politicalconsulting firm.
I started the business back in2011.
So the, the journey to thispoint is Kind of interesting.
And I like to say a little bitof a sort of quintessential

(02:22):
millennial story.
So I graduated from undergrad in2010 did my master's 2011 and
then, you know, a couple yearsbefore that there's a little
financial meltdown, you know so.
I heard,

yeah, I heard.
Yeah,

yeah, yeah, you hear me.
It seems so far off, right?
We've been through a financialmeltdown global pandemic all
sorts of other, other stuff.
So everything kind of seems alittle little surreal at the
moment, but anyway, that's,that's life.
So I, my original plan was tobecome a high school social
studies teacher.

(02:57):
So that was the that was the,that was the plan.
So I did political science andhistory undergrad did master's
in education.
Got certified, teach, did thewhole student teaching thing.
And confluence of things kind ofled me in a different direction.
So number one is there were nojobs or very few jobs, right?
So at that point a bunch ofteachers had been laid off in,

(03:19):
in New Jersey where, where I wasyou know, living at the time.
Still, I'm still here.
So when you're applying forjobs, you were up against
hundreds of experiencededucators who had been in the
classroom already.
So I was like, Oh, this is, youknow, so you're submitting
hundreds of applicationsanywhere that, you know, we'll,
we'll give you the time of day.
So I went through that processfor a little while.
But as I was student teaching, Irealized that I like to teach,

(03:41):
but I did not like.
The paperwork that went alongwith it, right?
And so the increasing amount ofpaperwork and standards and
testing and all of that.
So the act of teaching a wholelot of fun, helping students,
whole lot of fun, paperwork, notso much fun.
So,

yeah,

I was like, you know what?
Maybe, maybe I just won't dothis.
You know, again, for combinationof factors.
So I just took the first jobthat came along which was doing
fundraising work for my Almamater.
So as you can imagine, so, so Ithis is wild.
So I was brought in.
With with another gentleman.
So there were two campuses.
I went to a fairly Dickinsonuniversity in New Jersey.

(04:18):
There are two campuses.
So they brought one of us infrom one campus and another
recent grad from another campus.
And our job was to prospect andthen call young alumni for
donations.

Fun.

Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
So, as you can imagine you know,student loans, financial crisis
lack of jobs, all of thosethings people had a shocking
creativity with which theyapproached telling me to do
certain things to myself, right?
Like, you know, jump out awindow or, you know, play in the
street or pounce there.
And I won't even mention many ofthem.

(04:53):
And we're

also talking about New Jersey folks too,
which have a very special, avery special type of language
as, as a fellow New Yorker thatthey'll tell you very straight
how to do things.

Oh yeah, definitely.
No there was no shying awayfrom, from getting to the point.
So I, and again, I totallyunderstood it.
So, you know, we would callthrough these lists of people
that didn't, that didn't goparticularly well.
And 10 months later, we wereboth laid off due to budget
cuts.
So I was like, Oh man, what am Igoing to do now?
So in grad school, I had gottensome experience working for a

(05:28):
polling institute called thePublic Mind Poll at Fairleigh
Dickinson.
So that I got some experience.
I mean, I had always had someinterest in politics and public
policy and all of those things.
So but it was mainly academic,you know, an academic interest,
you know, it's on, you know,some political science work and
it was a lot of theoreticalstuff, you know, some, some
practical, but never, neverworked on the campaign in my

(05:48):
life.
But I had worked for, for asemester or two at at the public
mind poll where I got acquaintedwith how public opinion research
was conducted kind of got asense of how the public thinks
about certain issues how, how torun polls.
So I was of interesting.
So I was like, you know, I'm,I've always liked politics.
Let me just become a politicalconsultant.
Now that sounds crazy, right?

(06:10):
Just, just be like, Oh, I'mgoing to become a, I'm just
going to do this.
So, but I did, I incorporated,you know, filed the paperwork
and went, went out searchingfor, for clients.
So I was fortunate enough toland two campaigns.
One was very local, low budgetcampaign.
And the other one was acongressional race.
And I had thought to myself atthe time, I'm like, I'm young.
I have no experience.
Why would anyone hire me to doany of this stuff?

(06:32):
And I was like, well, I'm young.
And social media is like a thingthat people are kind of
interested in now, like Facebookand digital.
So like, I'm going to be adigital consumer.
So I went to these campaigns andI'm like, I'll do your digital
media.
And of course, you know, whatended up happening was that the
campaign manager and one of thecampaigns was like, Oh, well,
OK.
You're young.
I'm sure you know what you'redoing.

(06:52):
I'm like, yep.
Sure.
For sure.
A hundred percent.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
So so I taught myself a lotabout digital media was able to,
so it was, it was the otherthing was it was bound to be a
losing campaign.
Like I just knew that.
So anything that would becompetitive, even remotely
competitive or kind of on the,on the on the fence of whether
or not the candidate could winwould never have hired me.

(07:13):
But a losing campaign, you havea lot more latitude to try
stuff.
There's the, you know, you cantake more risks.
So that was pretty cool.
The, the guy did loseultimately, but I learned a
whole lot on that campaign.
We ended up winning the localcampaign though, which was kind
of an interesting surpriseactually.
So that helped network intoother places.
And ever since then the businesshas been growing.

(07:35):
We've done, you know, campaignson all the way up to the sort of
national level.
And then in 2014.
Brought in a partner businesspartner, Henry, who then we
started to expand into other,other places as well.
So doing more corporate workwork for nonprofits advocacy
groups.
So you, you name it, we've,we've pretty much done it.
So ever since then we've beengrowing and been diversifying

(07:56):
and, and have been veryfortunate to work on some pretty
cool projects over the years.
Yeah.

Yeah.
Yeah.
So you, so you didn't know whatyou're doing, yet you've grown a
nice thriving business withoutknowing what you're doing.
That, that's something, there'ssomething to be said for that,
Matt.
I have a, I have a questionabout the term political
consultant.
Hear that, you hear about that alot in the news.
For those of us who don't livein that world, which I certainly
don't, what does that actuallymean?

(08:21):
That is, that's a

really good question.
So the way that it is presentedin the news is sort of this
monolithic thing, like politicalconsultant, right?
So you're some person sitting ina room, you know, providing this
you know, sage counsel towhoever will listen to you.
In reality it's a little bitmore specialized.
For, for the most part that, sothe, the super like visible

(08:43):
political consultants that yousee like James Carville, for
example sort of like a messagingguru type or or David Axelrod,
you know, of, of the Obamacampaign theme.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, they were very much inthat space, but political
consulting is, is a prettydiverse field.
So if you look at marketing, forexample, there are different
things in general that you coulddo in marketing.
You could be you know, doorganic like social media, or

(09:05):
you could do paid pay per clicktype advertising.
You could do content.
So political consulting issimilar in that you have like
media consultants who handlelike a lot of the TV ads or
direct mail specifically.
So there, there are specificfirms that handle direct mail
exclusively.
You have polling firms whoexclusively do polling and
digital media firms who dodigital media exclusively.

(09:27):
And even within that, there aredifferent subspecialties.
So you have people who do emailfundraising.
Specifically.
So, you know, they, they helpI'm sure, you know, you've
gotten in some of your audiencehave gotten those obnoxious
emails that you never signed upfor.

Matt, I, Matt, I, I just have to tell you, I've
gotten multiple text messages inthe last two weeks from my
friends, Kamala and Joe.
Yeah, they're, they're in my,they're DMing me and inviting me
for coffee and yeah.
And then obviously emails, yeah,from blue, whatever it's called,
or the if you're a Republicanside, like, where you're like, I
didn't.
Sign up for this.
I do have a question about thisfor you shortly, but it continue

(10:02):
that since we've got you here inyour expertise, I mentioned
something, but please.

Yeah.
The text messages, the emails.
So all of those are subspecialtypersuasion, advertising on
online.
I'm doing that sort of stuff asa subspecialty.
So and then their thing, thepeople called like general
consultants who sort of help setup the campaign, develop
management.
So it really depends on the sizeof the campaign, what you need
from our perspective or in ourfirm, we do almost everything

(10:29):
except for we fundraising.
So we don't really do fundraise.
There's specific politicalconsultants who focus on
fundraising and compliance.
So they sit with the candidatecandidate calls through lists
and asks for money and all ofthat stuff.
So we don't do any of thatcompliance.
That's it.
They, you know, make sure allthe I's are dotted and T's are
crossed when it comes to filingwith whatever, you know,
campaign finance authority theyneed to file with.

(10:49):
And then we don't do like fieldtoo.
So there's a whole subspecialtyof, of consultants who focus on
door knocking volunteerorganization.
Yeah.
Getting a paid, paid canvassersout, like, so, you know, getting
paid an army of paid people outin the streets to knock doors
and, you know, activate votersor have conversations with the
voters and then phones and stufflike that.
So we don't do that, but we doall the media stuff.

(11:11):
So we do polling, media digitaland general consulting.
So that, that's sort of what wedo, but against and certain
firms specialize in certainthings.
We're, we're pretty much a Swissarmy knife when, when it comes
to that.
Nice.
Yeah.
It's a pretty broad term.
Yeah.

So who, who is it that hires you inside of a
campaign?

It depends.
So sometimes it's the candidatedirectly.
So you're having ground floorconversations with, with the
candidate directly.
Sometimes you are referred to acampaign manager.
So they already have like staff.
So we, we don't so we're notlike staff on campaigns anymore.
That was something that we allkind of did running around or in
our early days where.
You know, you manage campaignsor you're like directly paid by

(11:53):
the campaign.
Now we're, we're justconsultants, right?
So we do a number of campaigns,you know, every cycle.
So sometimes it's, it's through,through a campaign manager.
Other times, you know, you'rereferred through different
groups or campaign committeesthat help groups of camp
candidates win win their racesor run their races.
So it really depends.
The smaller campaigns, typicallyyou're, you're having a

(12:13):
conversation directly with acandidate and, you know, there's
been some referral from previousbusiness and.
And that's sure.
They make the decision about whoto hire.
And then, you know, for thelarger campaigns, I mean, if
you're talking about apresidential race, that is a big
sprawling organization, all, youknow, 50 states.
You know, so it's, you'redealing with various levels of
staff and leadership on thecampaign.

(12:33):
And in, in that case, it's,it's, Probably not likely that
you're dealing directly with thecandidate who is who really
should be focused on other otherstuff like giving speeches and
You know running raising treeand all that.
Yeah.

Yeah raising millions and millions of
dollars.
Yeah.
Yeah billions

in this case.
Yeah So

I was gonna ask you Just because you mentioned
it the like the outbound theoutbound marketing email text
and such This happened in thelast cycle when Trump, Trump
Biden in 20, 2020, I ended up ona list of a bunch of Congress
folks in states that I am notin.

(13:15):
And I, and I'm, I was just, Iwas so curious about this from
your perspective because I comefrom a world of like this, I
think it's called the spam canact.
Like there's the marketing emailrules around that.
And I say, and I say to myself,well, my name obviously got sold
somewhere to someone, but what awaste of money.
Like send me, send me the emailsor mark it to me as a

(13:38):
congressperson or arepresentative somewhere in
Texas.
And I live in New York.
I can't do anything for them.
I'm not going to give them any.
And it wasn't like askingparties, like come to the polls
and vote for me type of stuff.
I'm so curious, like what the,to me, it felt disorganized.
And so I'm curious from yourperspective as somebody who's
worked inside of campaigns, isthere a lot, is there a lot of

(13:59):
like operational deficienciesthat happen because it's so, to
me, it seems it's so fastmoving, there's so many things
going on, things just getmissed.
I'm curious what yourperspective is on that.

Yeah, that's really good.
I could, I could you know, tellthe joke like what is spam
actually when it comes tocampaigns, right?
What, what, what are we, what isthe spam thing?
I've, I'm not familiar with theterm.
So yeah, it's a really goodquestion.
So it looks like it's, it's alittle disorganized.
So what's happened in the pastseveral election cycles is we've
seen A lot more selling of, oflists or, or leasing of lists.

(14:34):
So you can, you can actuallylease an email list and you
know, if you have, for example,if you're a candidate in, in New
Jersey and you are known for aspecific set of policies or
positions and there's anothercandidate somewhere else or, or
a group.
a pack or something in adifferent part of the country
that stands for those samethings, similar things.

(14:55):
Maybe you're a little moreprogressive or something like
that.
You might ask if you can leasetheir email list to see if any
of their donors would beinterested in, or any of their
email list members would beinterested in donating to you.
So so it's not a hundred percenteffective you know, you're going
to miss some, but the, the, thereal thing is it's, it's.
Low cost for, for the most part,to, yeah, send cast a wide net

(15:21):
in, in that case.
So sure, you know, you might notbe donating to that candidate in
Texas, but someone else might.
You know, and, and a lot of thatis very ideologically driven.
Particularly if you have, like,if you're running against a, a
well-known opponent, like that'sa big one, running against you
know, sort of a villain, youknow, from, from the other,
other party.
Like the, the big thing forRepublicans for a while.

(15:42):
You know back in the tea partywave was like ragging on Nancy
Pelosi, which never reallyended, but it's like, you know
We're running against Pelosi.
Let's you know, even yeah, Iactually I had the opportunity
to you know Get speaking in aclass at Rutgers Law School
yesterday and we were talking alittle bit about about this Like
oh, yeah, when when did you seelike a negative campaign work

(16:04):
really well against candidatesand I was like in 2014 We were
doing a couple of local racesand every single piece of mail
that was sent out against ourcandidate had Nancy Pelosi on
it.
I'm like, is she running forcouncil in like town council or
city council?
And they'd be like, what, whatis, but it was effective because
she was sort of like the, youknow, the villain of, of that
cycle for, for Republicans.

(16:25):
So you do see that a little bit,like when like in Texas, like if
it's like calling all red, forexample, is probably like one of
the things that you got youknow, running against Ted Cruz.
I mean, Ted Cruz, I think that'sa little bit of a villain, even
among, you know, his own, ownpeople.
But not, not to get super, superpolitical on that, but that's
what you, that you tend to seethat.
And like, there are, so forevery, you know, one of you,

(16:48):
there are like five of you,there's maybe one person that
will, will.
give, you know, a small amount,5, 10, and it all adds up at the
end of the day.
So, sure.
So the real thing is it'sactually fairly low cost and
there's, there's generally, orat least historically has been a
fairly low risk to, to justcasting a broad net.
Eventually, I mean, you're,we're going to see open rate.

(17:09):
I mean, we've already seen this,like open rates decline.
And stuff like that you know,certain types of like hair on
fire, messaging is not workinglike it used to.
So if you look in your spamfolder, I bet you'll see at
least a couple of emails withlike the subject line, like
we're packing our bags and goinghome or like we're defeated or
something like that, you know,big capital letters.
And that worked for a while.

(17:31):
You know, but then you getdesensitized everything.
So like if you're the firstmover in almost anything, you
can, you can make hay out of it.
And then as you know, More thaneveryone else.
Does it?
It becomes a little bit harderto stand out in the inbox.
So those are areas that we'vekind of are, are keeping an eye
on to say, okay, well, you know,it's fairly low cost, but at a
certain point the cost willoutweigh the benefit, you know,

(17:53):
based on again, open rates.
And we'll just have to figureout some other way to reach
people.
The same thing with the text,right?
When that first came out, bigwinner, right?
And that, and now it's kind ofleveling off because there are
just so many texts coming,coming through.
So it's a constant game.
Very friendly.
It's so friendly.
Hi.
Hi, Jason.
Hi,

Jason.
This is this is Vice PresidentKamala Harris Would you like to
join me in for coffee at NewJersey?
I'll be there and you know, I'llbe there next week or whatever
It's so so friendly.
It's like you're

old friends, right?
It's like, hey, it's your oldbuddy,

Kamala.
Yeah, exactly.
I have a couple more questionsabout the politics that I want
to expand into some of the otherwork you do because like This
obviously applies to doing thiswith private, private companies
or nonprofits.
The two questions I have one iscuriosity.
My own is when you're going outand doing political consulting

(18:44):
work in any, any discipline,like you said, there's a lot of
disciplines.
Do the candidates or campaignmanagers really care if you
actually are aligned with them?

That's, that's a good question too.
So politics, even within a partyis a fairly diverse space, you
know, you're not going to agree100 percent with every
candidate.
So I mean, you do try to filteron, on things where you feel
like, So from our perspective,right, like in our firm, and I
can't speak to how other, otherconsultants work in, in this

(19:14):
space.
But from our perspective, wegenerally try to, we ask, the
first question we ask ourselvesis, can we advocate vigorously
for this client a hundredpercent of the time?
If the answer is yes, then weshould, we should take that and
we can, even if we don't agreewith everything, we, we, you
know, know that we can actuallydo our jobs and not feel
uncomfortable doing that.

(19:36):
I was going to say, withouttaking

a shower four to five times a day, yeah, like
just feeling gross.

Yeah, that's, that's right.
If the answer is no, then I'm abig believer in like, you should
not cash the check.
I mean, that's simple as that.
I mean, not, not everyone feelsthat way.
Like in, in, it is a business tosome extent and there are a
limited pool of candidates andthings like that.
But so do you always agree witheverything that your candidate
candidate is it believes in?

(20:02):
Probably not.
But.
At the end of the day, you haveto believe that they're going to
be better than the other personrunning.
And, and that's, that's the end.
So it's a comparative exercise,right?
It's not like you're runningagainst the it's, it's the old
Joe, Joe Biden quote, right?
You know, don't compare me tothe almighty compared me to the
alternative.
And yeah, and that's very muchtrue, right?
There are alternatives.

(20:23):
Every election is a choicebetween one thing or another
thing.
And as a consultant, you justmake a decision about who
represents the better thing in,in that in that equation, then
you ask yourself, can I do this?
And if the answer is yes, thenyou, then you do it.
So you don't agree oneverything.
There are always going to beareas of policy that, that you
know, you'll, you'll perhapsbutt heads on.

(20:44):
You really do try though, as aconsultant, not to let your
personal beliefs get in the wayof, of, sound strategy as well.
So a big part of, of thepolitical political consulting
communications and reaching outto voters is understanding when
you, where you need to meetvoters, where they are, and then
when you need to lead them toanother conclusion on something.

(21:04):
And that's a very hard thing todo because you can't convince
everyone of everything.
It's, it's a very hard thing to,to push someone off of a belief
that they have about something,a very strongly held belief.
So you have to be selective too,in, in what sorts of things you
talk about, what things are mostsalient or least salient with
voters, and then you know, kindof go from there.

(21:24):
So that sort of factors into,into that.
But in general, if you share thesame principles, you know, with,
with with a candidate and thenthe candidate approaches things
with integrity, then.
You know, by and large,everything is going to be fine.
And, and, you know, it's prettysmooth sailing, but again, you
don't always agree on everypolicy and, you know, there are

(21:45):
certain red lines.
I think every consultant islike, I will not work with
people who do X or believe X orwhatever.
So that's, that's sort of wherewe're at.

Yeah.
So the second thank you forthat.
And the second question, and Ithink this kind of leads us into
the overarching scope of whatyou do outside of politics is.
You know, you'd mentioned thatyou kind of kicked us off in
2011.
There's been such a, such ashift.
I think it started withpresident Obama in 2008 with, so
that was the first, really thesocial first social media

(22:14):
campaign.
And, and then of course we'vegot, you know, Cambridge
Analytica scandal in 2016 andall these things that didn't
exist even 15 years ago.
So I'm curious, like, what's thething that you see as that's
going, like, what's the next.
Innovation in this space thatyou think will make a
difference.
And we're recording this.

(22:37):
We're in an election cycle.
We're recording this March 26th,2024.
And there's a presidentpresidential election happening.
And I guess that would be eightmonths from now.
So I guess my, like, what do yousee is like, what might be an
innovation or something that arethe general for those America
Americans listening here, likewhat, what might be see that
could be new or innovative.

(22:59):
In this next cycle, because itseems like every cycle,
especially the presidential,we're getting new things.
Like you said, you got the text,you had the emails, we had
social media back with Obama,what do you, what do you see as
what's next?
I hope

I'm wrong about this, but I'll just preface it
like, I hope, I hope I'm wrongsomewhat.
But but I think this is, this isprobably where we're going to
see some good things and somepretty bad stuff too is, is AI.
And I think, I think everyoneknew where I was going with that
one.
Right.
It was not, not hard to seewhere we're headed, but yeah

(23:31):
yeah, I think AI is potentiallyYou know an area that is going
to change things significantlyfrom, from a number of
perspectives.
So, number one, and here's thedanger, generative AI,
generated, being able togenerate images video, and
voice.

(23:52):
is very concerning,

Barrier to

barrier to entry on that stuff now, as it stands,
especially on the, on the voicegeneration and even some of the
video stuff you can still kindof tell a little bit, but it's,
it's getting better.
Every iteration is, is gettingbetter.
And as you mentioned, Humanbeings, we don't evaluate things
very closely either on socialmedia.
You know, you're scrollingthrough your feed and you see

(24:17):
something very quickly.
It's not like you're going toexamine things in, in a super
critical way.
So that is terrifying in thatthat that's ripe, unfortunately
for bad actors to take advantageof, of those.
those types of things.
So cause actually this is funny.
This is like another topic wewere talking about last night in
in that class was that I thinkthey're just broadly taking a

(24:37):
step back has been a little bitof an erosion of this idea of a
shared reality and a shared setof facts that we live under.
Like I think our realities andhow we experience the world is
diverging significantly.
And it's, it's very much coloredin by what we want to believe
that we're seeing in any givenmoment.

(24:58):
And AI certainly can feed intosome of those preexisting biases
that we have.
So if you believe, for example,specific candidate is a certain
way or believes a certain thing,or you just have this like kind
of feeling in the background.
And then you hear some AIgenerated voice, you know, in a
robo call, say something thatfits with that preexisting
biases.
See, I knew it.

(25:20):
Frightening.
So that's a little, it's alittle scary.
In other ways, AI can be quiteuseful in terms of, of, well,
also useful and scary at thesame time in terms of, of scale.
So you can analyze and so, sothat, so that, that can
certainly cause issues down theroad, because, because you'll be
able to.

(25:41):
zero in on messages that aremost effective.
And sometimes the tweaks areminimal between, you know,
slight variations of words thatthat make a difference in how
people think about differentissues.
So that could be one thing.
In, in other ways, it could bevery useful too, in that you can
collect data or, or, or developunderstanding of particular

(26:02):
issues at scale

in ways

that you were never able to before.
So I'll give you an example ofthis.
So, so we've done some earlystage so we've invested in some
early stage startups over, overthe last couple of years to kind
of stay on the cutting edge ofsome of these technologies.
And one of them, is a generativeAI company that you know,
basically, I don't know how Iwould characterize it would,
would be sort of likelightweight, lightweight
language models where you canquickly program stuff.

(26:27):
You don't need reams and reamsof data to train, train the
model.
But basically what you can do istrain it to be a moderator for,
for a focus group.
So typically if you're doing afocus group, like qualitative
research, you get a bunch ofpeople, like 10 people in a
room, you try to get somediversity and, and have that,
have those people berepresentative of the broader
population that you're trying tounderstand.
Yeah.

(26:47):
And then you dig in deeply totheir beliefs about certain
things.
So polling is a little bitdifferent in that you ask a
whole bunch of people what theiropinion is.
Like yes, no, you know, rankingscales, things like that, that
are very easy to do from aquantitative perspective.
The qualitative stuff though.
really helps you dig below thesurface and truly understand why
the why of, of beliefs.

(27:08):
So I think of like polling islike helps you understand what
the beliefs are and then likesubtle shifts in language that
could help you know, framethings in different ways that
that'd be more persuasive orless persuasive.
But the focus groups really helpdig into the why of, of why
people feel the way that theydo.
Now, Imagine instead of doing 10people in a room with one

(27:31):
moderator, you can actuallycollect a huge sample, a
thousand people, right?
With one AI, oops, sorry, AImoderator who, which then can
collect all of that data andhelp people dig into the beliefs
of why.
So now you have thatunderstanding qualitative
research at scale which, whichis very interesting to us.
And, and probably beneficialbecause it can help understand a

(27:54):
broader range of things and, andreduce, you know, the amount of
error that you would get just byhaving like 10, 15 people in a
room.
Instead, you have thousands ofpeople and you can do it very
quickly.
So.

Yeah, that's brilliant.
So my assumption would be forlarger scale campaigns that data
scientists and such are now fulltime positions within campaigns.
And that probably wasn't, It wasmaybe a thing, but in a
different way now because of allthe, like the information
available.
So if you're talking about a,like a, a federal, like a, a
national campaign or a Congress,Congress or something with a

(28:27):
large budget, they have datascientists on staff that are
constantly looking and makingrecommendations.
And now you're adding thegenerative AI on top of that,
around things like my assertionwould be, and I'm a big AI
person, I love it, is like, whatshould I say to these people?
What would be, what are the,what are the words in this
speech that are most likely.

(28:48):
Going to hit the folks that Iwant that are in that are, you
know, like swing voters orsomething Which is interesting.
I think like writing speechesand writing content writing
emails that used to just have tobe done by people.
Now, generative AI can do a lotof that and do it with the data
set.

Oh yeah, a hundred, a hundred percent.
So it really is scaling a lot ofthat stuff.
And you said you know, sort ofduring the Obama campaign was
when a lot of the digital stuffstarted to happen.
And, and that's when theystarted taking a look at a lot
of the data science to themodeling of, of the electorate.
So that, that's sort of a subsetor, or related sort of
discipline to, to the pollingand research pieces is then

(29:25):
extrapolating those findings in,in a large scale poll and
modeling exactly how specificvoters feel about very
particular issues which is,which is really interesting.
And then you can score peoplebased on, on, you know, how you,
whether or not you think they'regoing to turn out to vote what
they think about gun safety, forexample you know, and different
things you can model all ofthat.

(29:45):
You can create dynamic modelingto Kind of track how a race is
developing overall.
So kind of get more real timeinsights into how opinion is
moving or isn't moving.
So AI definitely will, will helpyou know, scale, scale that
process a little bit in, in away that, that we haven't seen
before which, which could be,could be helpful.
Now, what I will say, this iskind of an interesting thing

(30:06):
though, is like looking atcampaigns from, how they used to
be.
And I'm talking way, way back,you know, this is pre Obama, pre
me being alive, actually, onthis planet.
It's you know, as a candidate,you used to be able to, for the
most part, go on a couple of, ofnews shows and the majority of
the voting population would seeyour message.

(30:28):
Yeah, and here and it wouldpenetrate in a big way, right?
So like, it's a big broad thing,not specifically micro targeted
to any one thing or the other,but you're kind of winning the
overall conversation.
And you know, that was the casefor years.
And then we kind of got intomicro targeting, right?
So then how do we persuadepeople that are interested in
very niche kind of issues in thegrand scheme of things and

(30:50):
target them repeatedly with adsthat specifically focused on
that issue.
So, We did that for a littlewhile and I think I still think
that's important, but I thinkwe're actually coming full
circle now back to a place whereyou really have to win the
cultural, the broader culturalconversation in in these races
because our media environment isso fragmented that you're never

(31:11):
going to be able to force yourmessage into each of these
spaces online that you have tobe in.
You almost have to do somethingso big and so broad and so
interesting that it does filterinto, like, if you look at
podcasts, for example, like someof the biggest podcasts in the
world they have their audiencethat listens to them on wherever
they get their podcast, but thenyou, then the clips, right?

(31:32):
The audience is so much biggerbecause of all the clips that
filter into different, differentplaces and talk about the
cultural relevance of all ofthat.
And it's not like it's beingfiltered, forced into those
spaces.
It's that people are taking, youknow, stuff and spreading it
out.
So I think we're kind of cominga little bit full circle and
that we have to figure out howto kind of tap into the
zeitgeist and when the overallcultural conversation and really

(31:55):
like broadly.
Communicate to the vibe of themoment, right?
Like this is what we kind of do.
It's like vibes based politics,right?
It's not, you know, specificpolicy stuff anymore.

Yeah, it's really that's that's brilliant I was
thinking about and I do have acouple of friends who actually
do this, but I know I don't Idon't know many people that Turn
on Newsmax and watch an hour ofNewsmax and then go and read the
New York Times, right?
It's like, generally, you go tothe, you go to the place that
gives you the story you, like,that kind of vibes with you

(32:26):
generally.
Like, like, that's, that's how Iconsume news and I think most
people do.
So it's actually really hard.
Like you said to, to get the,the larger scope of that,
because I'm getting it fed to methrough the thing that I've kind
of chosen into that alreadyfeels good in a way, or like,
you know, I mean, I don't knowhow it is for you, Matt, but
like, I like to listen to newsthat I agree with, which is a

(32:47):
limiting thing for me, but it isnice to go like, Oh, this
person's talking about thisthing and they have this point
of view and they're interviewingthis expert and this expert
saying what I already, what Ialready believe to be true,
which is like, make me like, Oh,my cognitive bias.
And and you can see this, like,I'm thinking about the
presidential, the presidentialdebates in 2016 with Hillary and
Trump is, it was kind of a, itwas kind of a disaster, but I

(33:09):
don't know that any of those, Idon't know that any of those
debates swayed anybody becauseyou're already were like, okay,
these people are this and thatthey're going to show up this
way and they did it.
It was kind of like, and thenthe election kind of showed
that.
Based on the results of those,those debates.

Yeah.
I mean, that, that's a hundredpercent true.
So it kind of goes back to thisidea of, of you know, a shared
reality eroding.
So, so much of our informationis governed by these algorithms
that sort us essentially intolike, Oh, you like this video,
I'm going to show you more ofthis and more of this and more
of this.
And then we're going to gofurther and further down that
rabbit hole.
So it's so yes, I, like, I liketo listen to stuff that I agree

(33:45):
with and, and watch stuff that Iagree with and read things that
that generally jive with andalso like provide a sort of, so
we talked a little bit too aboutyou know, activating emotions
versus like contentment typeemotions, so like anger
activating emotion.
So like if something makes youangry.
in a way that makes people likeyou angry, right?
You're more likely to share thataround.

(34:06):
And so those are things thattrigger reactions in our brain
of like, Oh, MSNBC showed methis thing.
It makes me angry.
I want to share it like, Oh, youknow, and, and it goes on and on
and on like that.
If you're just happy and contentwith something, you're not very
likely to share and maybe noteven likely to click through to
read the thing.
Right.
Unless there's some element ofsurprise or some, something
interesting about it.

(34:27):
But other than that, like, ifyou're just happy and like
content.
That does nothing for, yeah,exactly.
There's no engagement inhappiness.
So it's yeah, it's kind of sad.
But it's, so I, I agree withthat.
I mean, like now forprofessionally you know, I have
to try to get on the other sideof tick tock, the other side of
Instagram and see what's goingon over there.

(34:47):
Yeah, I don't, I don't like it.
I don't like it at all, but likemost people don't seek that out.
And in fact, it's very hard toget there unless you are
consistently consuming,consuming that sort of stuff.
So but it is very selfreinforcing that people do.
Go to go to the spaces that thatthey like to go to.
Now, I will say that there arecertain I think I would be

(35:10):
remiss in saying that, like, wecan't both sides everything to.
Like, there are certain outletsthat are doing as close to
objective journalism as ispossible, you know, as human
beings.
And then there are outlets thatare and and influencers and
personalities that are simplynot.
It is just bad faith.

(35:31):
It is nonsense.
It's not real.
It's not based in fact.
No, it's just a lot more moneyin that

though.

Oh,

yeah A lot more money in the polarizations.
Yeah, and the polarization a lotmore money in that the middles.
I say the middle is boring Oh,well, you're mentioning podcasts
the some of those popularpodcasts in america are
polarizing podcasts Becausethat's interesting.
Very much for people.
Yeah, very, very much

so.
Controversial sometimesbordering on, on conspiratorial
too.
Like, you know, certain, certainthings.
I'm, you know, obviously notgoing to, you know, start naming
names and getting myself introuble here.
But but there are like, there isa conspiratorial elements to
some of this.
Like there's certain nefariousthings.
So it almost actually makes youpart of the in, in club, right.
The in group when you're a partof the conspiracy.

(36:15):
It's like we, as a community wholistened to this.
Not this podcast, but aparticular podcast knows
something that the rest of thepopulation doesn't.
Right?
We're in on the, we're in onthe, like, we know that there's
some nefarious thing going onbeneath the surface.
And like, there's some plan to,I don't know, depopulate the
earth or whatever crazy stuffgoes on.

(36:36):
Like, or the, the COVID, we dida lot of public health
communication around COVIDvaccination.
Yeah.
That was a big one where a lotof conspiratorial stuff going on
just beneath the surface.
People forget that the Trump,this is really funny, people
forget that the Trumpadministration, they were the
ones that fast track that.
Totally.
You know, and rightfully so,right?

(36:56):
We were facing it.
And, and that's the only timeyou'll ever hear me say anything
like that, but that really was athing that they should have
done.
And, and they, and it was smartbecause.
People were dying and they hadto move, move quickly on trying
to find something that wouldprevent death.
And guess what?
It did.
We're in a much better placetoday because of vaccinations
than, than we were before.
But, but you go into some ofthese spaces online and you

(37:19):
hear, there must be some otherthing going on.
There must be some otherulterior motive.
Like why would, you know, they,they can't be safe.
They're putting microchips in usor you're going to be magnetic
or it's all sorts of stuff likethat.
And it kind of makes people feellike they're in in group.
It's like the rest of you.
You know, you you know, lemmingsout there.

(37:39):
You're just following peopleright off the cliff.
But me, I know exactly what'sgoing on.
I see the real thing.
I am smarter.
So it's, it's kind of aninteresting thing to see how
that how that plays out inonline.
And it is self again, selfreinforcing because if you
listen to one thing like that,then it pulls you into other
spaces where they're talkingabout other stuff.
That's just like, Yeah.
Completely off the wall.

Just real quick on the conspiracy thing, then I
want to pivot a little bit intosome of the private work you do.
I forget if it was a comedian oris it somebody I was talking to?
And like, I'm, I know there'sthings going on, you know,
Department of, Department ofDefense and CIA and there's
things, NSA, there's things thathappen.
That are actual conspiracies.
I'm sure.

(38:20):
But this big federal governmentconspiracy, I think the quote
was like, these are people thatcan't even pass a simple law
sometimes.
And you think that this federalgovernment has the wherewithal
or the organization to likecreate this worldwide global
conspiracy or things like, likethis, this statistically
improbable based on the only waythis is possible is if all the

(38:43):
rest of the way it goes isactually fake, which would be
just, you know, Absolutely not.
Like, that would beastronomically improbable.
Like, some of these conspiraciesthat come out, I'm like, the
level of organization that itwould take.
And the level of nobody sayinganything to have that actually
be true would be unbelievable.
And maybe it was a comedian.
They're like, these are peoplewho get like, these are people
who can't always show up to voteor like, can't pass a temporary

(39:06):
budget.
So we don't shut down thegovernment, but you're saying
that they all are in this thing.
I'm just like, huh.
Like, it's like, it's awkward.
Razor is like, what's the mostsimple explanation.
It's not that there's a massivegovernment conspiracy around
some of these things.

Oh, yeah.
I'll, I'll take it a stepfurther with Occam, Occam's
Razor.
So also, oftentimes it's noteven the simplest explanation,
it's the dumbest possibleexplanation for something.
It's, it's just that somebodystumbled into something and a
cascade of events occurred as aresult of that.
But I mean, even if you thinkabout like a, a group of, of
friends or acquaintances, right.

(39:39):
And and that group of friends,like, you know, you have some
secret, right.
There's some whatever.
Yeah.
Somebody in that group.
is bound to say something,right?
Because like over time, sototally, and I'm not saying that
like aliens don't exist or thereisn't some sort of
extraterrestrial life out there.
I mean, there's a lot that wedon't know, but like, we also
know for certain that we don'tknow everything.

(40:01):
That's fine.
Like, that's okay.
But like, you're telling me thata group of any, People, any
amount of people on this planetare stashing the corpse of an
extraterrestrial somewhere.
Right.
I haven't said, and nobody,nobody said anything.
Nobody, nobody said anything.
Seems pretty unlikely.
Like, again, if you just thinkabout like like you go out for

(40:21):
drinks with with your buddiesor, and someone does something
embarrassing and then thatfriend, please don't, you know,
can you just like not tellanyone about this?
And it's like, Oh yeah, noproblem.
And then the next day it's like,Oh man, did you see what Bill
did last night?
Man, that was crazy.
And it's like, come on, man.
It's the same thing.
Same concept.
It's like just cannot believeand you're right.
Like it's it's what what you canChalk up or would oftentimes

(40:43):
people chalk up to againnefarious intent is oftentimes
just pure incompetence Exactlyit's well I joke about so this
is really funny whenever peopleask me about like different sort
of portrayals of politicalactivity or, or government or
on, on in popular culture ordifferent shows, right?
They're like, Oh, is it, is itlike house of cards where it's,

(41:05):
it's, you know, they're, they'replotting and, and, you know,
thinking through all theseissues and they're like, it's
like 3d chess and all that.
Or it was like, actually, it'skind of like, It's veep for the
most part, totally.
Yeah.
And yeah.
And parks and rec.
Right.
Parks and rec is another.
It's just like, think aboutevery human being, you know, and
it's just like, that's what itis.

(41:26):
It's not some crazy.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, but I mean, there, andthere are smart people doing
smart, but it's all above boardand stuff does get done and but
it's not, you know, the, thesuper nefarious stuff or like if
something bad happens,oftentimes it's just a result of
like a stumble or a screw up orsomething.
Yeah.
You know, funny thing.
It's not like some plotting oflike, you know, Frank Underwood

(41:47):
pushing a journalist onto thetracks of the Metro and then
wearing a trench coat, like noone will catch you.
So yeah,

exactly.

Yeah.

Why?
The thing I'll, I'll bring uphere to wrap on this is I think
about the your home state and myneighbor state, Chris Christie,
you know, they shut down the NewJersey government And then
there's a picture of him sittingat the Jersey Shore in a chair
by himself.
People are like, oh yeah, he didthis so that he could have, I'm
like, no, I just think hedoesn't have good judgment.
Or he doesn't like, either,either he doesn't have good

(42:16):
judgment and or he doesn't havepeople around him who tell him
what he should and shouldn't do,because that was just poor
judgment.
I highly doubt that he was like,actually scheming to shut down
the New Jersey, like, Shut downthe parks, and I think it was
because of COVID, and then he'sgonna go out there and be like,
Oh, and I get the beach tomyself.
Highly doubt that's what he wasthinking.
He wasn't thinking.

Yeah, 100%.
He wasn't thinking

about the optics of it.

Yeah.
Oh, or he didn't care.
Like, that was, that was thething.
He didn't care, right, or hedidn't, Cuz he can go there
anytime he wanted to.
Like, that is for the governorto use on Island Beach, Island
Beach State Park.
That, that whole area is for theuse of the governor.
You can go there anytime youwant.
You never have to deal withanyone else.
It's like, there's no reason toshut down an entire government
because, because of that.
So it was just, it was purestupidity to your point.

(42:57):
And it was like, okay.
But you know what?
It's, I think there was anelement of two of like, I
actually don't care what peoplethink.
I'm just going to go do this.
He's like,

whatever.
Yeah.
And I'm going to do it in my doit in my swimsuit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That was

iconic.
Yeah.
So many good memes on that one.
It was

amazing.
So many good, yeah.
So Matt, to wrap, to wrap uphere for today how does this
all, then, you know, youmentioned you do a lot of
private sector work, nonprofitwork.
How does the work in politicsrelate in terms of what's same
and what might be a differentconsideration when you're, when
you're meeting with somebody inone of those spaces?

Sure, yeah, we really do bring a lot of our
experience from campaignspolitical campaigns to private
sector clients.
So there are a lot of parallels.
So a campaign, really all acampaign is, it's, it's a
startup in a condensed period oftime where you have to achieve a
shared goal of getting someoneelected, which is essentially
selling a person, right?
Selling an idea.
Yeah.

(43:50):
It's the same thing.
You're dealing with crisisalmost every day on a campaign,
whether it's big or small,there's always something
happening.
So you learn very quickly.
You figure out what works, whatdoesn't work.
So, you know, we bring a lot of,a lot of those skills and a lot
of those lessons to, to youknow, the boardroom and we're
talking to our private sectorclients.
Again, a lot of things are justcomparative exercises, right?
Like, are you going to buy thisthing?

(44:11):
Are you gonna buy that thing?
Are you going to you know, havea positive view of this brand or
a negative view of the otherbrand.
So it's, it's all sort ofcomparative for, for the most
part a lot of educating peopleabout specific issues, you know,
figuring out how to frame thingsin a way that, that makes sense,
sense to people which, which is,which has been kind of
interesting.
And, and again, like battlingback against a lot of the stuff

(44:33):
you deal in the political dealwith in the political sphere,
like disinformation, forexample, like in renewable
energy.
Oh man, the amount of stuff thatgoes on there.
I mean, the, the wind offshorewind stuff that we went through,
I don't know if you followedthat a little bit in New Jersey,
but up and down the East Coastwith the whales washing up and
stuff, you know, nothing to dowith offshore wind, but there

(44:54):
was an information vacuum.
People filled it and and itturned into a thing.
I, now, in terms of net effect,I don't think it actually did
much other than make offshorewind a little bit more unpopular
among one side of the politicalspectrum.
Right.
You know, whatever, but likestuff is moving forward still.
But I don't know.
In a state where you do havechange of, of government, you

(45:15):
know, control from one party tothe other, that, that could in
fact have a huge impact onwhether or not, you know, you
can get stuff done.
So so we deal with all of thosethings in the private sector
too, is like navigating thoseissues, navigating online Again,
conspiracies, misinformation youknow, stuff that, that just
makes it really hard to to makeprogress on, on uncertain

(45:36):
things.
So so we, we do have thoseconversations and we have a lot
of, again, lesson, hard lessonslearned on campaigns that we can
bring To the boardroom toinform.
And, and, and I think the otherthing too, is in the private
sector, things are moving muchmore quickly from an information
perspective

than

they did before.
So that's, that's a very usefulskillset to have you know, for
us coming into, because everyday, again, is, is sort of this
frenetic pace of, of, you know,one thing or the other that we
have to deal with in thepolitical world.
And I think that a lot ofexecutives, people in the C
suite, they're, they're startingto acclimate to this world of,
Things are moving quick, like,you know, things can get out of

(46:12):
hand really quickly.
You know, communications can getaway from you.
Even if it's like a, a wellmeaning campaign or well meaning
tweet or well meaning, whateverit is you know, a lot of things
can, can kind of take on a lifeof their own.
You know, things might be tonedeaf, right?
And, and totally blind to sortof, again, the cultural moment
that we're in.
So, and that's all part ofcapitalism, which is kind of

(46:33):
funny.
Like people complain about likecertain things getting canceled
or not canceled.
It's like, well, a lot of thatis driven by consumer demand.
So.
Right.
That's capitalism, right?
Like it's what people want andthere's no law saying that you
can't say this or can't saythat.
It just, yeah.
Like there are consequences tosaying things that are, you
know, not that the generalpopulation or your market or

(46:54):
some other segment of the marketdoesn't like and, and you know,
that's, that's the gameunfortunately.
So,

yeah.
Well, Matt, I want to wrap upand ask you about.
Some of your, like somethingthat's been done well in this
space.
And this can be something youworked on.
You don't need to tell us it forconfidentiality reasons, or just
an example of like a good, Idon't know, call it a PR
campaign, a good campaign thatyou thought was really effective

(47:21):
and done well, and.
You know, again, something youworked on doesn't have to be
like, what's something you pointout and you'd go, Hey, if you
want to look at how to do thisreally well, Jason is a outside,
like somebody on the outsidelooking in, go look at how
they're doing it.
Cause I can, you know, it'sfunny as you're talking about
this, I can think of so manyexamples of how to do this so

(47:41):
terribly, and you know what Ilove about this topic, is that.
You know who does a great job ofhighlighting all the terrible
ways this is done?
John Oliver, on Last WeekTonight with John Oliver.
He just did the one on Boeingand he was just highlighting
just how absolutely tone deaf.
Or just thinking of otherexamples of things like the
Aaron Rodgers stuff with like,you know, talking about Jeffrey

(48:02):
Epstein with Jimmy Kimmel, justlike, And I know these guys
don't really care, but like, howdumb, like how dumb and how
improvable.
And there's so many examples ofhow this has done so.
Alex Jones, great example, whichcost him his career and a ton of
money.
How to do this so terribly.
But what are some examples thatwe could look at of like how
this has been done well, eitherpolitically or in your private

(48:23):
sector or nonprofit?

Yeah, so I think one of the just kind of going
back a little ways, one of the,and this is sort of in the
political social sphere ofthings is is same sex marriage
was, is you know, thinking abouthow the Overton window, right,
shifted public attitude shiftedon that issue over a relatively
short amount of time was, wasreally the effort of a lot of

(48:46):
very dedicated groups who did agreat job of relaying human
stories about how life, howcertain, certain people
experience life and how thosethings are not all that
different from, from the peoplethat they were talking to.

(49:06):
So they did a lot of work indoing like deep canvassing,
right?
Talking to people, kind ofshowing those similarities and
overlap and, and livedexperience.
and removing the fear from thatsituation.
So I would say like in terms ofoverall, like an effective
campaign from a human rightsperspective and, and just from
the perspective of justbasically like getting

(49:26):
government to leave peoplealone, to, you know, do whatever
they want to do in theirpersonal lives.
I think that was anextraordinarily You know,
powerful campaign, and it wasn'tall one big unified thing, but
there were pockets ofcampaigning and activism and
communications that work reallywell in that space.
Again, looking at, again, theshort window in which attitudes
shifted dramatically in thiscountry on, on that particular

(49:48):
issue.
And so I, and I think it had atremendously positive outcome
again in, in that You know, youhave people, you know, your
neighbors, your friends, your,you know, even family members
who are in this position whereat one point they literally
could not marry the person thatthey loved just because of some
outdated thing.
And, and so I think that wasextraordinarily effective.

(50:08):
I mean, again, it's, it's somuch easier to see, like, that
wasn't, that wasn't superobvious though, that that was
the, the mistakes are alwaysmore obvious to your point,
right?
Like the, the screw ups, the,like the stuff with you know,
Kensington palace and the, andkeep mental, again, not to cast
dispersions than that.
Cause that's an incrediblydifficult topic for, for people
to deal with.
But like, again, all the backand forth and the images, you

(50:30):
know, coming up on, on you know,photo, coming up as photoshopped
and stuff like that, thatreally, like that sticks in your
mind, but it's the stuff whereyou have the subtle victories
where, where attitudes shift,where you can tell human
stories, where you can, can kindof develop that you know, shared
understanding and empathy for,for people around you, I think
was, was extraordinarilyeffective.

(50:51):
You know, and, and I think Youknow, a lot of the public health
stuff during the, during thepandemic you know, we were
involved in, we had, we're veryfortunate to work with some
really great organizations on,on that and really truly
understanding the barriers togetting, getting people
vaccinated earlier, early on youknow, from that and, and the,
the number of lives that weresaved as, as a result of, of

(51:12):
those efforts and understandingthat, you know, Some people had
like sort of good faith concernsabout the vaccine.
Like, I mean, I'm sure I did myown research.
I know it's like a dirty words.
I like I did my own, but I likeI did.
I talked to my doctor.
I talked to, which is a naturalthing to do.
And I think having empathy forpeople who are just like, I'm
not so sure.

(51:33):
And then there were certaingroups too, that had actual like
historical reasons to haveconcern because of abuses.
of people in authority towardthem, right?
Like, like a lot of communitiesof color, a lot of black
communities suffered at thehands of, of people who were
doing, doing actual nefariousthings to them.

(51:54):
So there were some very goodfaith concerns there.
So you can't dismiss that.
So I think like in those cases,like being able to have those
conversations and again, gettingto a place of mutual
understanding and lowering thosebarriers to understanding was,
was extraordinarily effective.
You know, during, during thatyeah, I mean, those are, those
are big ones that I would pointto, and they're not always
obvious, right?
It's not always just some, like,it's not fireworks go off at the

(52:16):
end.

Well, because they work.
And, and when they work, it'sactually not that obvious
because they're just doing whatthey're supposed to be doing.
I thank, I really appreciatethat.
To wrap this up, you broughtthis back and we'll do a call
back here.
I was thinking about what wewere talking about, about 20
minutes ago about governmentconspiracies.
And then I think about outsideof like the Kensington palace

(52:37):
stuff, that's obviously a veryserious thing.
So not.
Making a comment on any of thatin terms of the actual health
thing and the privacy and allthat, it's very serious.
And then you look at that, you,you look at that from a, like a
public perspective and you go,these are folks that have
arguably unlimited resources,unlimited resources, and they

(52:59):
can't Photoshop a photocorrectly.
And you're telling me thatthese, and they're not obviously
monarchy, not the government,but you're telling me that there
is a global conspiracy.
That is done to perfection.
Like when people and the federalgovernment, you can argue has
unlimited resources in certainways and they don't get it right
most of the time.

(53:19):
And I just, I just, I just laughabout that.
Like it's so improbable thatthere's this major secret
hundreds of or thousands ofpeople are holding onto.
And like you said, it's muchmore likely that it's, it's it's
Veeper, Parks, and Rec, just abunch of normal human, normal,
normal people with theirthoughts, feelings, and egos
walking around, trying to makeit work just like the rest of
us.
This is awesome.

(53:40):
I'm so glad we got a chance todo this.
Thank you so much for coming on,really appreciate the work you
do out there.
I'm sure that we'll be likely,we being people listening and
myself, we'll likely seesomething that you're involved
in here in the near future.
And we won't even know.

That's possible.
But it's

a, you, but you somehow had a hand in it.
It's, that's a super cool.
So I really appreciate you andthe work you and your firm are
doing there and keep up the goodwork.

Thank you.

Thanks so much, Matt.
Thanks for listening to anotherepisode of Talking to Cool
People with Jason Frizzell.
If you enjoyed today's episode,please tell your friends, follow
us on Instagram and Facebook,and give us a shout out, or take
a moment to leave a review oniTunes.
If something from today'sepisode piqued your interest and

(54:23):
you'd like to connect, email usat podcast at jasonfrizzell.
com.
We love hearing from ourlisteners because you're cool
people too.

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Matt Krayton - Founder and Principal of Publitics

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Matt Krayton - Founder and Principal of Publitics