(Note: the book now returns to present-tense.)
It's Friday night, and I'm in my Brooklyn bedroom, which consists of a mattress (and just a mattress) on the floor, when an unexpected message from Andrew Yang appears in our team Slack channel, "It's up."
It's up? What's up?
Then he shares a link to a New York Times article titled, HIS 2020 MESSAGE: ROBOTS ARE COMING.
What! Why is the article up?!
The launch was supposed to be tomorrow morning in the paper, but as is abundantly clear, that's not the case. It's 7:00 p.m. on the Friday before Valentine's Day, and we've just launched our campaign for president, apparently.
While Yang, Muhan, and Katie celebrate the event, I find myself debating whether or not to be the negative nancy pointing out that ain't no one gonna read this shit at 7:00 p.m. on a Friday.
While I continue to debate what attitude to project to the team, Yang asks me the fateful question, "how many people are on the website?"
I take a peek at our Google Analytics then shutter. My eyes dart around my bedroom. Then I sigh a long sigh. It seems I am destined to be the bearer of bad news after all.
"24," I type, wincing as I hit send.
Yang reacts unphased by the number and continues to celebrate what good fortune awaits us down the road.
Meanwhile, I take to the internet, scrambling around all of the most active communities — Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram — to see what sort of reaction there is. After five quick minutes, I conclude there is no reaction at all because there is not even a mention of us anywhere. I use a handful of my teenage Reddit accounts to submit the article to a bunch of subreddits such as r/Politics.
The posts net 0 Karma and 20 views — which send me into a fit. Zero karma? In r/Politics? How is a New York Times article about a man running for president not relevant enough content for a fucking upvote in the political subreddit, you bastards?!
As I simmer down, I begin to worry — no one cares? I begin to hold out hope that the online article wasn't the big hit and that the paper in the morning will reach millions.
When I wake up on Saturday, I'm wary and suspicious of the day. I begin wandering through Brooklyn, looking for a bodega to buy the paper. Along the walk, I'm hit with a moment of clarity; no one reads the damn paper! What am I thinking?! Before I even arrive at the bodega, I see the reality of our situation — Yang's launch for president of the United States has come and gone already with not an ounce of conversation. I take some time to process what our ragtag band of patriots have gotten ourselves into.
By the end of our launch day, or day(s), which will forever be contested now, we raise about $1,500. Yang remains utterly upbeat and acknowledges that a New York Times launch wasn't supposed to be a big launch to normal people. It was for the big wig coastal media heads who will boost us to the normal people. I don't really buy it.
Sunday morning, Yang's comments are bearing some fruit. I've received a few press requests into my inbox, which I can't believe for two reasons. One — they're emailing us. Two — they're emailing me? I mean, of course, they're emailing me; I am the Communications Manager. But then again, me?
I begin to feel shreds of hope and relief, especially as some big names come in.
NBC Nightly News, Vice News, and Fast Company. Three hits? Plus some random blogs? This is our big moment!
I become anxious when I read the media requests in their entirety. The producers are asking me for a press kit and all sorts of other scary media materials. I Google search for input on what to respond with.
Sitting upright on my mattress, I take a breath; I have no idea what I'm doing.
But that's okay.
I tap out my responses. My emails explode with enthusiasm. I offer up Yang's time in fat chunks of the day like an auctioneer looking for the lowest bidder — 2:00 p.m. Anyone? Anyone?
Then Yang gives me a ring.
"Andrew," he says nicely, "You've got to play hard to get. We need to act like we have something going on. Is this your first time dealing with the media?"
"Oh," I say, wondering how it's not apparent. "Yeah, I've never done this."
"Okay, I've been doing media hits for years. There's a game to it, and you can't be too eager. It's like dating," he says.
"That makes sense," I say, laughing.
"Yeah, so let's look at this last email of yours," he calls out. "Here, where you said, 'Yes!! We are absolutely free. All-day Tuesday and Wednesday are open.' That makes it sound like we have nothing going on. We're important people. You should respond like we are."
"Got it, I can do that," I say, ready to write some powerful emails to my new media producer friends.
Unfortunately, I don't get to write those emails on this occasion. I never hear back from Vice News and Fast Company. Wonder why. And NBC Nightly News takes my bite immediately, which sounds great, except after Yang films the segment, it vanishes into the corporate ether and is never aired.
Over the coming days, a few other press hits trickle in. One is an interview request from The Hill. Oh boy! I set Yang up to interview with Kaitlin Milliken. The two share a lovely phone call, but the interview is never published. It's not until months later I discover Kaitlin Milliken is an intern.
Around the same time, I'm fielding an interview request for a prestigious news outlet named InfoWars (for those who don't know, see Alex Jones). Katie, Muhan, and I were lounging in the office one afternoon when this mistake became clear to me.
We were feet up on the coffee table, kicking back, having fun, until Katie took a look at Yang's upcoming meetings for the week.
"Guys! Oh my god! Why is InfoWars on Yang's calendar?!" She shrieks.
"What about it?" I say, looking at her coolly.
"Dude, are you kidding me! You scheduled this?" Katie shouts in awe.
"Yeah, I mean, I googled them, and they seem to have a big following."
"Frawley!!!!!"
"What!!"
Katie scrambles to pull up the InfoWars website.
"Did you even look for a second at what was on here???" she says in such bewilderment you'd think she was going to pass out.
I take a quick little peek at the headlines,
OBAMA PORTRAIT SHOCK: PRESIDENT COVERED IN SPERM
BREAKING: GLOBAL ELITE ARRANGE DESTRUCTION OF MANKIND
VIDEO: MELANIA TRUMP SEVERS MICHELLE OBAMA'S HEAD
I purse my lips and begin doing a slow, repetitive nod as I look at Katie, trying not to crack a smile at the sheer lunacy of what I have done.
"Frawley," she says, looking at me with all of the compassion she can muster up. "You're the gatekeeper to someone running for president. That's what a scheduler is. You're also the only marketer and communications person here full-time. Everything in politics is about the message. You need to think about every decision you make and what the message of that decision will be because what Yang does matters as much as what Yang says."
I continue nodding my head. "Yeah, makes sense. I didn't really think about it like that," I say, glad someone finally recognizes that I'm doing two full-time jobs, which has been stressing me out.
After my conversation with Katie, I write a friendly email to the InfoWars team, "Unfortunately, something sudden has come up…"
A week later, I find myself joining Yang for a LIVE four-minute "hit" on Bloomberg Business. It's our first television piece that we theorize will actually be released, given that it is live. Yang brings me with him, so he doesn't look like a loser going alone. I'm clueless about what to do with myself while we are there. I spend the entire media hit taking 200 pictures of him sitting at a television studio desk with my gargantuan Nikon telephoto lens. As Yang and I take the elevator down from the far too immaculate and spaceship-like Bloomberg HQ, I pull up our website's web traffic to see how many millions of people heard the message.
"There are 13 people on the website," I say, looking at Yang grimly
"Man," he says with irritation, shaking his head, "these things don't do shit."
Running for president is off to a phenomenal start.
***
You'd think our spirits would be low given that we've been running for president for two weeks and approximately 500 people know about it — but actually, our spirits are high. Whenever we're in the office sitting on the couch or munching on face-sized cookies, Yang loves to quote Gandhi, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" (apparently Gandhi didn't even say this, but Bernie and Trump both said it in 2015 (and attributed it to Gandhi), so it seems Yang's biggest crime here is being a cliche). The quote serves for the team and me in many ways as a quiet and simple roadmap for the movement we hope to build. According to that four-step strategic plan, we are right on track with being ignored, so there's not a drop of panic.
Plus, this team — Muhan with his years grinding it out in pursuit of passive income streams, Katie with her years of writer's perseverance, Yang having successfully willed multiple companies into existence, and my having reinvented myself about a hundred times — has a nucleus laced with hard-earned grit. We're true believers in the mission, and it's going to take more than raising only $100 a day to throw off our spirits. That said, if we do actually keep raising $100 a day, it will literally send us into bankruptcy in about three months — which might throw off our spirits a smidge.
To deal with our big challenges, Yang has outlined two major strategic levers for us: raise some dough and make The War on Normal People a bestseller. And of course, we are sending up prayers every night to the NBC Nightly News gods, asking them to run that damn 'hit' Why Dontcha?
Making a book a bestseller is not something I know anything about. None of us outsiders really know who or how the decisions are being made, but a bunch of people on the internet have spent far too many hours reverse-engineering the formula to the best of their knowledge. The theory goes that each week a secret council will confer in a secret place. The council looks at book sales, and whoever has the most for a category is listed as a bestseller (frankly, this could be automated). Each bestsellers list has a different threshold. The internet surmises that you need to sell, in one week, about 8,000 copies for the New York Times list, 5,000 copies for the Wall Street Journal list, and 3,000 copies for the USA Today's list. It's pretty stunning how low the bar is (it seems) to be a bestseller, but as it turns out, the average book sells only 300 copies in its lifetime. Yes, you read that right — in its lifetime! To confirm, I asked Yang, the author of one book already, if it's true, and he said, "Yeah, bro, isn't that crazy?" The most important part of the whole process is that all of a book's pre-orders count towards its first week's of sales, which basically means it's all or nothing in that first week. So our team's plan is now to go whole hog on that first week. So that's been our life for the last few days — the four of us badgering every human we know to pre-order The War on Normal People before its launch on April 3rd, 2018.
Muhan and I are lounging around in the office one day in March when I make a big mistake. I'm lying on the floor working when I receive an email from Yang's book publisher, who is upset that I scheduled an interview without asking them first. The publisher has been helping to schedule Yang media hits since we are close to the book's launch. They have big hopes for The War on Normal People, so they're going above and beyond, which is generous.
This all sounds nice but let me tell you, I've been terribly stressed out since we launched in February because of my 90 different jobs. As the scheduler and the marketer, I have been racing all over New York City with Yang handling logistics for his meetings while posting random social media from subway trains, and then getting stuck in meetings for five hours a day while Yang gives the same 'robots are coming' pitch to everyone we meet. Somewhere in between all of these meetings, I have about 75 emails to respond to. I am responding to angry Muhan's because I am bottle-necking the website or angry fundraisers who haven't been told what table cloth we want. I have also rescheduled this one "law school buddies" lunch 90 damn times, and I am this close to ghosting them. Sometimes, I'm also blessed with kind messages from strangers saying that our marketing team sucks. Well, if I had the fucking time to do marketing, sir!
So, to say the least, I've been struggling. So when I receive an email from Yang's publisher saying, "Hey, can you check in with us before scheduling media hits?" I interpret it as, "Hey ass face, we're your boss now, and your shit goes through us, twerp."
Given their obviously aggressive message, I respond appropriately to what I think I receive. I say something just short of, "Thank you, kindly, but I'll let you know what I schedule because fuck off."
That's when my phone rings.
It's Andrew Yang.
"Andrew, what the fuck is this email I just read?" Yang growls. Muhan hears the growl through the phone and gives me a look of great concern with wide eyes as he realizes that his evening chat buddy may not live long enough to chat again. There's a deep sinking feeling in my loins. Muhan turns away so as not to be a witness.
The call becomes a blur for me. Yang is giving me a life-lesson on professionalism and reminding me that the publisher is doing us a favor by working hard for the book. He reaches a crescendo when he, still riddled with irritation, tells me, "This is a campaign of warmth and love, bro. Every day you wake up, ask yourself, how can I be more warmth and love today? Every time you respond to an email, fill it with warmth and love. Warmth and love, Andrew."
I apologize and say, "I've got it."
"Okay," Yang says, now cheerful. "Don't sweat this email. We all make mistakes. Warmth and love."
Yang hangs up.
"Well, that was less than ideal," I say.
Muhan looks back at me.
"Wow," he says, "a campaign built on warmth and love? THIS IS THE CAMPAIGN OF THE FUTUREEE!!" Muhan begins cackling towards the ceiling.
We've all started to get a little on edge as the days continue to pass. The times are much like we've been together in a car for far too long during a cross-country road trip.
Muhan, pull off here. I need to pee!
Pee in the bottle, asshole, we still have 2,500 miles to go!
I mess up Yang's schedule a lot, the apartment's musty coffee pot is smelling worse by the day, and we're raising no money. Yesterday I nearly took one of Muhan's chopsticks and put it in his leg after he badgered me to hell over some website mockups. I'm not a fucking designer, Muhan! Where am I supposed to get professional website mockups in these circumstances? I'm only asking you to change the color of the fucking donate button!
I made the website mockups in Microsoft Paint. Don't let anyone ever tell you making memes as a kid in high school won't pay off.
I think the stress is even getting to Yang some now too. Yang's is all alone in filling up our fundraisers, which is tough after the first ten. Muhan, Katie, and I help ink out logistics, but because the campaign has pretty much no supporters anywhere to invite, it's all on Yang. The hard part is that you run out of friends real quick when you ask them all for things.
I'm also unclear on what to do with myself anywhere I go — still. Last week we had a rich person fundraiser at the home of a friend of Yang's. I took photos the whole time with my gargantuan Nikon telephoto lens, which was awkward for an event in someone's NYC apartment. I had pictures up the nose of wealthy people. Rich person nose interiors! You can't beat this type of access to society's elite. Yang said not to post any photos because these people probably don't want their faces thrown across the internet at a private political fundraiser. We only raised $250, anyways.
***
"Okay, let's do a run-through and make sure we have everything," Katie says, standing commander style in the living room amongst Muhan, Yang, and me.
"Check-in sheets?" she says.
"Check," I say.
"Pens?"
"Check."
"Business cards? Flyers? Camera? Music Playlist?"
"Check. Check. Check. Check!"
"Okay, great. This should be fun. Let's go."
The four of us pile into Yang's mother's 90's Subaru and are on our way to Philadelphia for our first public event. The meet and greet is hosted in what I described in an advertisement for the event as "a very cool warehouse." The drive is reminiscent of our campaign's launch — we are full of hope with starry eyes, wondering what will come of our near future. About 50 people have RSVP'd, but we have 93 interested on Facebook, so anything is possible.
When we pull off the highway, it becomes clear that we've made a grave mistake. The streets are barren and rough. Buildings are boarded up. Trash is strewn about, and there's a big train line running right through the district — which is always trouble.
"Uhm," Yang says, pursing his lips, "Are we in the right place?"
"Warehouse on Watts. This is Watts street. It should be right up ahead, that brick building," Navigator Muhan says, pointing at a brick building. The first level of the building is wrapped in black tar, with splotches of graffiti, discolored steel doors, and the far too iconic set of dueling green dumpsters next to the entrance, all located in an alley of crumbling asphalt. The second-floor windows have bedsheets taped across them. Not alarming one bit.
Muhan looks up again from his phone, "Confirmed. We have arrived."
The venue is a mess, to say the least. We're given a small section of the first floor, which is blocked off with musty black curtains and cheap foldable tables that are stood up tall as makeshift barriers. The ceiling is low, everything is painted black, and one wall is a floor-to-ceiling mirror which gives the room an uncomfortable vibe. Plus, there's a hanging disco ball.
Katie, Muhan, and I race to make the venue presentable — Muhan is setting up music and a projector, Katie is organizing the merchandise table, and I'm making a panicked phone call in the alley because I forgot to order the pizza.
"What toppings should I get?" I shout to Muhan through the warehouse's now open delivery door. I wait for a brief moment until I hear a faint "Buffalo chicken!" echoing from within the very cool warehouse.
"And we'll add two buffalo chicken," I say on the phone.
When attendees of our event trickle in slowly, they join a lonesome Yang who is bored and milling about the free buttons we've left at the sign-in tables. We've not yet figured out that Yang should be revealed to the crowd after everyone arrives, so for the time being, Yang makes small talk with a handful of college kids, most of whom are old Venture for America fellows. Then the trickle stops. And that's it. About 15 people ultimately show up, one of which is a one-eyed fellow running for local office who counter-campaigns the other attendees the whole event. Of course, I am unsure what to do with myself and take 200 photos with my gargantuan Nikon telephoto lens. However, I use the mirror to make it look like we have twice as many attendees.
Yang, who has a tremendous ability to show up as a performer no matter the circumstances, puts on a dazzling performance despite the venue's stage lights blazing right into his face the whole time, "And that, Philadelphia, is why we need to build a new type of economy! One that puts people first! And don't forget to pre-order The War on Normal People!"
"You know," Yang says, taking the optimistic route home to New York City, "I met some really cool people tonight. Like that guy who was an American Sniper. Did you all talk to him? I couldn't believe the stories that guy was sharing!"
"Oh, yes! He was a phenomenal archetype of persons in the system who retain perspective!" Muhan says empathically, with four leftover pizzas in his lap.
"That guy was charged up when he heard your message," I say to Yang. "It's exactly what we've all been saying. All we have to do is get the message out there, and people will catch on."
That night, after returning from our big trip to Philadelphia, I take a moment before bed to record a journal entry titled, "we could win."
When we told Zach Graumann about the Philadelphia event, he was mystified at what he was hearing. In his slightly southern draw, riddled with confusion, he said, "Y'all, what on earth? You're all not freakin' out about this?" I'm not sure if he was more worried about the event or how nonchalant Yang, Muhan, Katie, and I were about how it went.
Muhan, Katie, and I have been preparing for Zach Graumann mentally for weeks. Zach is a corporate guy, Director of Philanthropy at UBS, which is an investment bank with a cool trillion dollars in assets. Zach was in this corporate job until he quit and sent a two hundred word manifesto to the entire bank staff saying something to the effect of #YangForPresident bitches. That impressed our team, to say the least. Joining a crazy campaign like this automatically makes someone a bit of a neurotic change-maker, but I thought that move placed Zach without a doubt in the true believer category, even though he wears suits.
It's hard to introduce Zach without acknowledging his image. Zach's slightly shorter than me, about 6'2" it seems, and he resembles nothing short of a picture-perfect blonde businessman. And I mean that literally, Google "blonde businessman," and you'll see a Zach Graumann doppelganger with meticulously combed hair, sharp blue eyes, a clean-cut long face, paired with a trim blue suit.
Zach grew up between Buffalo, New York, and Hartford, Connecticut, as an overly enthusiastic Buffalo Bills fan. For college, he went to Duke University, where he studied political science and sang Acapella. He's been a 'suit' with a pretty voice ever since. I'm not sure where the southern twang comes from.
All things considered, these are the traits you'd want in a Campaign Manager for your longshot political campaign — buttoned up on the outside, radical mover on the inside.
Zach's first week in the office has pushed our apartment office from chaotic to a total shit show. When Katie is working, five of us are competing for four seats, which means someone is always on the floor. Often, it's me, but only because I like lying down full prone while I mischedule meetings. Yang likes to joke when we get a real office, we'll roll out a sliver of carpet for me to lay on. The office is also now residence to three mammoth boxes of books, 500 Yang branded goodie bags we overzealously wasted our money on when we fell in love with the logo, and four boxes of merchandise. Plus, Muhan still lives here and simply has no interest in making it look like a home.
It was only a few days after Philadelphia when Zach laid his very own eyes on one of our fundraisers. We raised about zero dollars, and he was beyond himself. Zach and I were standing at the check-in table, which had been the scene of a bloody data capture meltdown. We were both arms crossed, frowning as we suffered through flashbacks of crashing web pages, frozen laptops, cached data clearing out people's information, and no backup paper sheets for print out. This is when I hear him muttering to himself, "This is unacceptable. This is so unacceptable. We have to fix everything immediately."
***
The team wakes up earlier than usual for a not-so regular Sunday morning in New York City. Our campaign Slack channels stir with eagerness. Did we make it? Is it up? The team is dying to know if our efforts landed The War on Normal People on any of the best sellers' lists.
Reality strikes quickly.
"Guys, I don't think we got it," Muhan says with a sad face emoji. He shares multiple links to the bestsellers list. Yang's name is nowhere to be found.
The world slows as I feel our collective let down in the air all across New York City. We had worked pretty damn hard at the bestseller list, and as I note to Muhan, "We didn't even get one …?"
"Yeah, pretty rough," he responds.
"And to think Yang did all of those radio and TV interviews, not to mention our hounding everyone we know. And we didn't even get that sorry ass USA Today list," I type.
"Yep. Those media hits are clearly not the needle-movers."
"For sure."
As we slide into April, we're striking out big time on our goals.
We didn't make the bestsellers list, our fundraising hasn't improved, and we don't even talk about that seemingly now deranged goal we set before our launch. Which one? Oh, that one of raising $500,000 by March 31st. Yeah, we're entering April with a little over $50,000 since launch.
***
The gang is walking in circles, making primitive grunts of excitement as we explore our new digs. Zach's first task as campaign manager was to move us into an affordable, centrally located office space by April. Zach had two weeks to land the contract, and to our surprise, he pulled it off.
"He is surprisingly talented," I wrote in my journal.
Our new office is located in primetime Manhattan (walkability score of 98!) at the intersection of 39th and 7th, which is only a few blocks from Times Square. We have an endless supply of good food options nearby, of which Muhan and I have been giddy over since we picked the spot, three Chipotles within two blocks!
The office is on the second floor of a building with a small but modern lobby that looks like the Death Star's interior. The building sports a man at the front desk who serves an unclear purpose. He often can't point you in the right direction and tends to be confused why you think you need his permission to go up the elevator. He will, however, yell at you if you try to use the stairs to get to the second floor.
After waiting five minutes for the elevator to the second floor, you take a left, then a left, and the glass double doors at the end of the hall in front of you are the new Yang Headquarters.
The space itself is not one bit luxurious, but it does command some respect with 15-foot ceilings, wood floors, a sliver of exposed brick, and four 10-foot tall windows that look gracefully into a handful of other buildings. The room is a square with a giant pillar in the middle. There is an 8-foot wall in front of the entry, which creates a tiny lobby for ant-sized welcomings. The whole room measures 900 square feet, which, yes, is only 137 more square feet more than the apartment, but do keep in mind that a lot of that apartment square footage was kitchen space and Muhan bedroom space.
Speaking of which, we have no bathroom or sink or kitchen, so we share those with all of the other 10 businesses on the floor (you never get it all in NYC!). The office is in the fashion district, so almost every other company in our 12-floor building sells some assortment of cloth, linens, shoes, or high fashion garb. Yang says his friend, Daymond John of SharkTank, has an office in the building, which immediately makes it feel like the building was built in 2100 rather than 1917.
I remain livid that we chose to have the new office team picture while I was on a call and thus unable to fix the worst hair day of my life.
"You could fit 15 people in here!" Muhan says as we continue exploring our box in awe of all of the feet, we will have between each other when working now.
"Could you imagine! 15 people!" I say excitedly from one corner. I am dreaming of a world where we are a real campaign for president with 15 employees, and it is exciting.
"One day, guys, one day," Yang says, walking in the middle of us all, still buttoned up from the chilly streets in a wool trench coat, also wearing a bicycle helmet.
"The real question is, which desk should we place Matt Shinners at?" Muhan asks.
"Hmm, I guess wherever. Probably nearby me," Zach says, assessing the room.
Matt Shinners, indeed, was the fellow on all of our minds. We had debated hiring Matt Shinners, and the choice to do so was Yang's most extraordinary brass check since he sent that email to 500 of his friends. It's not that Matt Shinners lacked talent or smarts or empathy or employable assets; we were simply broke. Like, broke broke. Like, Yang is already debating spending out of his life's savings to prevent total bankruptcy broke.
Now, the thing is, usually, when you're going broke, you don't go and start spending more money, but our situation was dire. We'd been running for president for two months, floundering like a fish out of water, and as Yang saw it, "You aren't going to save the world by saving money." If we were going to do this thing, we needed to do it for real, which meant we needed more firepower, and smarter firepower, to help us break through to someone, somewhere.
The good news is that Matt Shinners was around, and the better news is that Matt Shinners wasn't just smarter firepower; he was the smartest firepower. Matt Shinners is the type of guy who scores a perfect on his LSAT, is admitted to Harvard Law School, and has so much humility about it you won't catch him talking about it, even at happy hour. Unfortunately for Matt, though, the rest of us can't believe his accomplishment, and we tag the accolade to him so tightly you'd think it was part of his name. Mr. Matt 180 Perfect LSAT Shinners, everybody! In his free time, Matt breakdances, writes the rules for board games, and is generally the kindest person in the room (a title he and Katie ought to fight for). Matt is also a white guy with glasses from New Jersey.
With that perfect LSAT score, Matt chose not to practice law. Instead, he found himself teaching LSAT preparation courses for Manhattan GMAT, Yang's company before VFA, which is how they met. Matt's been a part of the campaign in spirit since before Yang had even invited me. Matt's been helping Yang draft out our big fat list of policies for the campaign. We always knew we'd hire Matt; it was only a question of when.
"Ok … TEAM! This is a really exciting time," Zach says, sitting at our newly assembled IKEA conference table. The table hosts the gang in its latest form — Muhan, Katie, Yang, Zach, myself, and the esteemed Matt Shinners. It's our first campaign-wide "all-hands" meeting.
I've been waiting for Matt's first day with great eagerness for weeks. There's been uncertainty about the specifics of Matt's role, so I've been begging Zach to give him the task of being the scheduler. Please … god … Zach Graumann, remove this hellish burden from me … and let your only marketing guy do some damned marketing.
"We're entering a new chapter of the campaign, so to kick things off, I'm going to run through process changes. Everyone cool with that?"
"Yep!" I say, slowly licking my dry lips, moistening them as my eyes strain, boring a powerful, eager gaze through Zach's face.
"Great! Here's the rundown," Zach continues, in what feels like slow-motion for me. "I'm going to be the only one reporting directly to Yang. This way, he can be 100% focused on being a candidate. Each one of you will report to me directly. Muhan and Katie, your day-to-day workloads won't be changing much. Shinners will wear a lot of hats like the rest of us. He'll cover policy, communications, speeches, legal, and —"
My eyes widen. My teeth are gritting like Johnny from the Shining. I lean forward, but then Matt cuts Zach off, "Reminder! I'm not a lawyer, so nothing I say is not legal advice!"
Damn you, Matt Shinners! The group laughs. I'm twisting in agony.
Say the thing. Say the thing!
"... and Matt, our not a lawyer," Zach continues, "will be my right hand and close executive. He will also take over managing the schedule from Frawley, but that will be down the road."
Oh, holy days! Blessed be of Azeroth! At last! I'm flushed with utter, untold, never experienced human joy and relief. My mind is dancing with tremendous excitement as I lean back in my chair with a huge grin.
"And Frawley, until Matt is onboarded fully, you're going to continue in your role as our scheduler and traveling staff. You'll capture all of the content and continue running our online operations."
Zach looks around at the group for affirmation.
"Fantastic!" Yang says, throwing his hands up in the air.
"Great! Next order of business," Zach says sharply before switching to a more dramatic tone. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are running for president. This will be a long road, but I can promise you this, we are going to play ball. Andrew Yang will be a major contender for president of the United States, and it will be entirely because of the efforts of this group, right here, sitting at this table."
As Zach continues, I find myself lost in thought as I realize I'm living in a paradoxical world. I somehow believe Andrew Yang will win, and we're on the precipice of being characters in a Hollywood flick, but I also don't think we've one half-shits worth of a chance to be even mildly relevant. Zach's words manage to bring me no motivation, given their roots in outlandish fantasy while equally raising my spirits to the heights.
"Folks, I've outlined four goals that will guide this campaign. These goals are our north-star, and I can promise to you as your Campaign Manager, every decision I make will be to achieve these four goals." Zach hands us all a printed list of the four goals:
Build our tribe
Get Andrew Yang on the mainstage debate
Make UBI a core issue in 2020
Run a campaign we can be proud of
"What do we think of those?" he asks us.
Muhan applauds the beauty of the goals. Katie and Matt share emphatic praise. I am whole-heartedly in support of the vision. Yang nods stoically.
"As far as activities we have upcoming, I will be taking over the planning of fundraisers from Yang, which will create a lull in events as we set up a new strategy. Meanwhile, Yang has a ton of interviews coming up all related to the book, so we should see a good boost from those. Other than that, our calendar is wide open for the summer. Our task is clear, and I want all of you to think of ways to answer these questions:
How can we build our tribe?
How do we kickstart this movement?
How can we reach our people?"
"We're entering a new chapter of the campaign," Yang says, following up Zach. "I am thankful for every one of you for uprooting your lives to be here. We have a real grind ahead of us, but I'm certain the country will be better off because of it."
"Let's do this, team! Meeting adjourned!" Zach concludes.
It wasn't until much later into 2019 that I came to realize the fundamental strategic distinction that the team universally agreed upon that day without consciously recognizing it. This distinction was abnormal to politics but one that lived within us all intuitively. This distinction was that money is not the bottom line.
Zach didn't sit in front of our organization and outline a strategy saying, we must raise lots of money, and everyone should optimize 100% for money because money gets our word out. If he had, that would have been an entirely respectable and common vision to push. It's what 95% of executives in politics (or any organization, really) will push you to do because money does indeed pay for the staff, the ads, and the flights. We surely needed money, we wanted all of the things money could buy and were going to fight like hell for it, but our campaign had to have a different approach.
We believed in a more startup approach which was to build a wickedly good product (message/candidate) that would generate for us directly the only asset that actually matters in politics (one in which money tries to buy) — attention. I like to refer to the situation in a Jobsian or Muskian way* which is to say if you build something great, success, attention, and money will follow.
What we didn't understand at the time was that obsessing over our product wasn't just something we believed in as a way to run our operation, but as I've later come to see it, it was the only way we had a chance of breaking into politics as an outsider.
This is because outsiders lack credibility. When you lack credibility, you get laughed at and, even if you have money, you can run ads, but your ads will just get laughed at (See: John Delaney (Sorry, John)). For this reason, the idea of making your product worse by asking for money doesn't make sense — (Yes, this assumes that asking for money reduces the customer experience in politics. Please sign up for a political newsletter and try to tell me that's not true.)
As I've come to explain to people, imagine you're throwing a house party, and you have no one there. This was our campaign at the time. Now imagine, someone finally shows up to your party, and at the door, you tell them it's $10 to get in. They're going to look at your empty party, your open palm, think you're a total wacko and walk away. You have nothing to provide, no credibility to warrant charging money, and there's already way better parties charging the same amount. In party land, you have to earn the right to charge money.
This party scene is the equivalent to optimizing for money when you're a loser candidate with no credibility. Furthermore, badgering your supporters to hell for money at this stage doesn't make sense. Each individual's value is far higher than $15, so the idea of scaring people away for a nominal amount of cash is lunacy.
Thankfully, our team intuitively understood this, which required us to be more creative in our thinking about our bottom line, and our central problem, how to gain credibility?
In my mind, gaining credibility comes down to three ways in politics — (1) work for the machine, (2) be famous for something relevant like business, or (3) control lots of attention.
For us, we had none of these, and only one of these we had even a moderate shot at obtaining — attention. Therefore for us, the vision was simple: the bottom line is attention.
Startup founder knows that when you're broke and have no institutional support, the only way you will ever meaningfully stand out amongst the competition is by creating a product, so god damned good that people will scream from the rooftops for you. As it goes with startup strategy, you start small by winning a small niche, then expanding.
In the chart below, my philosophy on campaign strategy can be set up in a matrix that will inform the remainder of our early strategy discussion.
*Once you have credibility, you can re-evaluate the matrix.
As is shown in the chart above, time is the only other major factor besides credibility.
If you run for office with credibility and have the time, you might as well build a tribe because they're powerful. But if you don't have time, you can just force-feed your credibility down people's throats with ads (see: Mike Bloomberg), and you'll still give it a good run.
If you run for office without credibility, you better have the time to build a tribe (which first begins with owning a niche) if you want even a shot cause if you have no time and no credibility, no one will care, and then it'll be over.
As mentioned, while we weren't evaluating strategy with this sort of matrix in 2018, we were in the ballpark. Below are some things we were thinking about.
We knew that Yang lacked credibility as a politician. The need for credibility was too obvious to be a spoken goal, but we were constantly fighting for any little crumbs of credibility — such as a fancy signature or Yang just having a guy to hand him water in front of media producers. Of course, this doesn't make you a credible politician, but credibility is a sliding scale, and crumbs are better than no crumbs.
We knew (as mentioned in the last chapter) that announcing early was our advantage as it would help Yang hear stories of Americans, improve his message, and get better as a candidate.
We knew that optimizing for money would fast-track us to being one of those annoying, soulless campaigns that seem to have nothing to say besides gives us money and then wonder why no one gave a shit about them.
We had all grown up in the same world I had grown up in, one where the government, smeared with their failures of the late 20th century, still often seemed to present enraging platitudes in the face of the crises and strife of millions of people. For this reason, our group knew exactly what we were going to bring to the table — a real frickin' person — and that was why, as Zach always said, "we're going to play ball."