The value of knowing when it’s time to leave
Here’s a simple nuts and bolts question that many candidates just aren’t sure about.
Dear Allan,
You go to an event. You attend a thing. You hate the feeling of leaving prematurely and you want to support the organizers and be respectful. How long should you stay?
- A Candidate
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That question, like many questions, is really a form of this next question:
What do you want out of life ?
I will leave that for another time.
Let’s move on to a simpler but also important form of that same question.
What do you want out of this day ?
If you are running for office, the answer to that question is simple:
To be closer to victory today than you were yesterday.
The reason the answer to this is simple is because when you run for office, just like in a military campaign, which is what a political campaign is named for, all attention is focussed on victory.
You need to win.
If your attention is elsewhere, it is in the wrong place.
You enter the campaign with goals. You continue to revisit those goals. You adjust as needed. You stay focussed on your goals.
Your goal as a candidate should NOT be
Bad Goal 1.) get to every party
Bad Goal 2.) be the last one to leave
Bad Goal 3.) have the best events
Bad Goal 4.) have lots of events
Bad Goal 5.) have lots of people at lots of events
Bad Goal 6.) have events people talk about
Bad Goal 7.) speak to everyone in the room
Events have little-to-nothing to do with winning, especially at the local level.
They may supplement the core plan, but what they really are is almost always a distraction. But an event, as long as you approach it right is also a great opportunity.
So, as a candidate you attend an event to
Good Goal 1.) get more voters
Good Goal 2.) get more donors
Good Goal 3.) get more volunteers
Why do you do that?
Because you want to win.
Why do you want to win?
Because you owe it to your values to win.
So how do you achieve that in the context of attending an event?
Proviso 1.) Be clear with everyone about why you are there. That means ask for the things you want and ask for them clearly. If the host will give you a few minutes before his audience to communicate what you are there for, that can help to communicate this more clearly.
Proviso 2.) Don’t just ask the whole audience for what you need. Ask in every individual conversation.
Proviso 3.) Don’t just ask in every individual conversation, but make that the whole point of the conversation. All points of the conversation should lead to you asking for what you need and arriving at a clear answer as efficiently as possible.
Proviso 4.) Do not have long conversations during a campaign, and especially not when you are at an event like this. 30-45 seconds of individual conversations will probably get the job done and 90-120 seconds is getting to be way too long. If the people like your ideas and they are a fit for your campaign then they understand that it is a quick conversation and a very concrete outcome — voters, volunteers, or donors: commitments are desired now and with little additional candidate time required
Proviso 5.) Given that your presence has been announced at the event, the people who are most motivated to speak with you at the event will come find you. The eagerness it takes to cross a room and meet you is an eagerness that can be helpful in other areas of your campaign. Staying until you speak to the very last person in the room is a waste of time and leads to arm twisting rather than genuine support for your candidacy.
Proviso 6.) Bring 3 or 4 people with you to an event, unless it’s a tiny event, in which case you scale down commensurately.
Proviso 7.) Bring legal pads and clipboards. Put one or two in each team member’s hands.
Proviso 8.) Have your team get contact information and commitments down on paper.
Proviso 9.) Have a team member follow up with them THAT SAME DAY by email and schedule a follow up call as needed. If you don’t have a team yet, then you do this part. By doing this part a dozen or so times, you pretty quickly end up with a team.
Okay, when you look at it through this lens, ask me again how long should you stay at an event?
Be there before it starts and leave early, or get there late and stay until after it ends. Do not stay for a whole event.
I wouldn’t even want a candidate to stay for a whole event that the candidate is organizing.
In fact, before walking out into the event, I would want to have the candidate in a private side room either at the start of the event or at the end of the event making calls, doing phone interviews, raising funds, and recording videos.
Again, I would get the candidate even out of his own event early and off to other business.
Why?
Because we are focussed on winning.
Contrast that behavior with what many candidates do: they come early and stay forever. In fact they may even stick around and help take down tables after the event because they have such a servant spirit and want to do good for the community. That spirit is good, except taking down tables is a severely misplaced use of that.
When you run for office, the most important service you can do for the community is to win.
If taking down a table doesn’t bring you 1.) votes, 2.) volunteers, or 3.) donations then you shouldn’t be doing it when you are running for office.
Hint: it doesn’t do any of those.
I want you to win.
I want you to win for your values.
I want you to become one of the people who make a return to those dark days of March 2020 impossible.
I want you to be a champion for freedom.
I am here as your resource.
Join “There Is No Substitute For Victory.”
The cost to join goes up Tuesday.
Allan Stevo