We live in a age where every staffer is a spokesman for your campaign. Set policies accordingly.
- Wesley Donehue
Surround yourself with awesome people
July 17, 2012 by
I’ve made a lot of dumb mistakes in trying to build my company but there is one big thing I did right – I surrounded myself with awesome people who are smarter than me. One of those people is Rally CEO Tom Serres who has taken tremendous amounts of time to show me the ropes. I honestly couldn’t be more grateful.
Tom is actually younger than me, but unlike me, he didn’t waste years sitting behind other people. He jumped out and created his business very early and now at just 30-years-old, he’s completely changing the way political campaigns and nonprofits are raising money.
This guy is a true innovator. Keep your eye on him. And in the meantime, try to surround yourself with people like him.
- Wesley Donehue
Life has been insane
July 10, 2012 by
Day 341 – The year-long project will soon come to a close. Just one more month. I really cannot believe it’s been a year.
It sucks that I really fell down on my goal of writing every day, but as you can imagine, this election year has been very chaotic.
I’ve learned so much about business, marketing, fundraising, politics, marriage, friendships, and myself. It seems that everything is changing for me.
It has been a while since I told you what’s happening in my life, so here we go…
Donehue Direct is slammed up busy. We have people crammed onto couches and we are hiring new people every week to service our new clients. I don’t know if I’m making any money because every new client requires new employees. I’ll get that figured out sooner or later. I’m just pumped that we are doing amazing work and growing our brand.
The busy part of Elizabeth’s year is over. She works around the clock during primary season to raise money for SC legislative clients. Now she’s just chilling for the rest of the year.
I’ve probably told you this before, but when Elizabeth and I first met, she was a vegetarian. She has eaten meat for the past seven years- but after watching a couple documentaries, she has decided to become a vegan. Honestly, I wish I could too. Those same documentaries freaked me the hell out. I just love meat too much. However, I’ve gone about 75% vegan. I’m eating almost totally vegan at home but I rush to the burgers and steak when we are out and about. I say 75%, but I haven’t touched meat or dairy in the past three days. I gotta get on a burger tonight, maybe a hot dog.
Speaking of getting healthier, Elizabeth and I are now doing the Insanity workout. We just started our second month yesterday. HOLY CRAP! If you want to lose some pounds, get on this workout. You will burn more calories than you ever thought you could. Also, this circuit training puts your metabolism on crack. I’m ALWAYS hungry. Most surprising result is that I’m becoming much more flexible. It’s tough, but I love it. If you don’t mind sweating, get on it as soon as you can.
I’ve been traveling to San Francisco and New York City a whole lot lately. Exploring these two great cities has been a blast.
More locally, I found an amazing micro-brewery in North Charleston named Holy City Brewing. Check it out and support local South Carolina brew masters.
I just read an amazing book, Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonas Lehrer. This is a must read for any creative who oftentimes finds themselves unable to get into the zone. It’s already helped me.
I’m now finally reading Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup; so far, so good.
I have been trying to read The Bible in one year. That’s still going strong.
Elizabeth and I just finished watching the entire Friday Night Lights series. AMAZING!
I’m currently looking at taking two more international trips before the end of the year. We may go to Israel with the church, or to South America for the first time. I’m thinking Brazil. Let me know if you’ve been anywhere cool down there.
That pretty much sums up the last few weeks. I’m heading back to New York City. Hopefully I’ll find time to knock out a blog post from a local coffee shop.
Have a blessed day!
- Wesley Donehue
Inspire Yourself
June 2, 2012 by
Day 303 – Wisconsin is cluttered. The airwaves. The streets. Mailboxes. Especially computer screens.
I swear, it looks like someone vomited politics all over web browsers. Nothing stands out while everything blends together into one giant heap of regurgitated spin.
Nowhere, in my entire political career, have I seen such blatant examples of mediocrity. Everyone does the same thing because they think that’s what political marketing is supposed to look like.
Three months ago a client told me he wanted a completely innovative website. The next day he sent me an example of ten political websites he liked. “Seriously?” I asked. “How do you want to different while looking like these political websites? You cannot have it both ways,” I explained. Unfortunately he went the ‘normal’ route. And that’s normal.
Six weeks ago a congressional campaign I was working on hired a new campaign manager. Two months prior I relaunched their website for just $1,000. That’s right, just $1,000. I did it by creating the simplest, most minimal site I could. The result was innovative. The cheap and simple site actually worked because it wasn’t cluttered and it sucked the visitor into the most important parts. The new campaign manager hated it and she forced us to redesign and redevelop the entire site to “make it look more normal.”
Normal is bland. Normal is cluttered. Normal sucks. And it sucks because it just gets lost in the shuffle.
Normal is also absolutely no fun.
This post isn’t meant to attack anyone. I honestly have no clue who is doing the web, mail, and TV work in Wisconsin. I just know its one giant cluttered mess. That’s not to say that it isn’t good. Some of the ads are very good. They just all look the same. The strategy seems to be more TV points rather than more creativity. It could have been more.
But we fall to the whims of those wanting normal. And we lose.
As we move deeper into this election cycle I find myself depressed because I’ve seen very little innovation since the last cycle. I thought this year would blow my socks off. It hasn’t.
Part of me wants to blame the marketers. Another part wants to blame the clients for holding the marketers back. Today I’m blaming the former. Marketers don’t have to cater to the clients who want normal. In fact, we don’t have to take the clients at all. It’s up to us. But we all do, because we want money.
That right there is the ultimate problem. Too many people, and not just in politics, make money their top priority when they should make innovation their top priority.
In the end, innovation brings money. And fun. And change. And most importantly, inspiration.
Being in Wisconsin this weekend has inspired me. Find something to inspire yourself.
- Wesley Donehue
Make the news. Don’t be the news.
May 23, 2012 by
Day 293 – Here’s a great tip for all my political operative friends – make the news. Don’t be the news.
It is our jobs to make news. Specifically, we are supposed to get our clients in the news in a positive manner. Nothing good ever comes of us being in the news ourselves because it is very rarely positive. It is almost exclusively negative and about something dumb we’ve done.
There is such thing as death by a thousand cuts. I personally have about 998 cuts. My good friend Phil Bailey learned over the past week what it feels like to get a few cuts.
When it happens, you need to completely disappear. Go into your bunker and don’t come out until all the bombs have exploded and the dust has settled.
Phil wasn’t the only one to take a few cuts this week. I took another one when the Jake Knotts Pub Politics episode leaked out. I didn’t do it but some people will never believe that. They have in their minds that I’m the shadiest of shady and this episode just adds to the legend.
You can be innovative. Or you can be normal.
May 20, 2012 by
Day 290 – Clients come to us asking for something innovative. We often present something completely out of the box and they respond with “it doesn’t look like a political website.”
Really?
Political marketing should be disruptive. Hell, all marketing should be disruptive. What’s the point in marketing at all if the message looks and sounds like every other message?
That doesn’t make a lot of sense.
We can build your tools and develop your strategy to be “normal.”
We would rather be disruptive and maximize every penny you spend. That’s what we want to do. That’s how we win.
- Wesley
Meeting your customers’ unrecognized needs
March 27, 2012 by
Day 235 – During a SXSW panel I heard Chip Conley describe the three levels companies reach. They are:
Level 3 – Transformational companies meet their customers’ unrecognized needs
level 2 – Successful companies meet customer desires
Level 1 – Companies that merely survive meet customer expectations
Give yourself some white space
March 20, 2012 by
Day 228 – It’s Tuesday and that means its typically the busiest day of the week. The SC legislature is in town, our primary clients are blowing us up, we tape the WACH Fox segment of Pub Politics and we are preparing for the pub version. I find these type days extremely stressful and when stressed, its hard to concentrate on work. It’s hard to be creative and its hard to be productive.
Go into your work cave
March 19, 2012 by
Day 227 – It’s 8 am. I’ve been working for the past three hours and I’ve gotten more done in that time than I have the past two weeks total.
No calls. No meetings. No distractions. Just concentration and production.
Every two hours one of my teammates hits me with “there isn’t enough time.” That’s BS. There is enough time. As cliche as it sounds, its all about how you spend that time. Concentration produces maximum efficiency and production.
Talking about man parts on CNN
March 11, 2012 by
Day 219 – Is it appropriate to talk about your “junk” on CNN? Probably not. But you guys know how I roll =)
Its another busy day at SXSW. Panels, parties, no sleep and lots of fun. We are having a blast. In fact, we are having so much fun that I nearly forgot about my Macbook Air being ruined. Nearly, but not totally.
Was Obama Campaign Tech-Savvy
March 10, 2012 by
Day 218 – It has been a long day at SXSW. At some point I’ll give you a run down of everything I’m learning. Today I’m still in a tizzy over the ruined Macbook Air. AppleCare won’t cover it and the Apple store wouldn’t see it. I’m going to wait three days to turn it back on in hopes that it will dry out and be fine.
No time to blog today. Too busy learning about blogging at SXSW. Today I’ll leave you with a clip from last night’s CNN panel.
30 minutes with Eric Wilson
March 9, 2012 by
Day 217 – Hey guys. This is going to be real short. I just got into Austin a couple hours ago for SXSW. Things started off great with this 30-minute Spreecast interview with Eric Wilson. Things went downhill real fast when I dumped an entire bourbon and sweet-tea cocktail into my brand new MacBook Air. Yeah, as in two-days-old brand new.
Be different to innovate.
March 5, 2012 by
Day 213 – A quick video for this Monday. Think different, be different to innovate.
- Wesley Donehue
You cannot have it fast and perfect
March 4, 2012 by
Day 212 – Another quick video. You can have it fast. Or you can have it amazing and perfect. Very rarely can you have all the above.
- Wesley Donehue
Listen to your body
March 3, 2012 by
Day 211 – Bringing back some video posts because I’m too busy to write. Here I talk about the need to listen to your body. Don’t neglect your body for work, because in the end, it will just screw up your creativity and productivity.
Expect the downs and live the dream
February 28, 2012 by
Day 207 – It’s Tuesday at the San Francisco office. Today was spent going through statistic after statistic after statistic. My team is doing some very cool experimentation with voter-targeted advertising and the influence of content on donations. Advertising is fun, but I have a real passion for figuring out exactly what kind of content compels people to hand over their cash.
For example, does image, video, text or audio drive more donations? Short text, long text, fiery language, wonkish language, first-person, third-person, etc…
Running away from micro-management
February 27, 2012 by
Day 206 – Columbia – Atlanta – Detroit – Las Vegas – San Francisco – Washington, DC – Columbia – Yep, I’m criss-crossing the nation. Three of those are layovers, but still, I’m burning up the clouds for ten straight days.
Some might complain, but I love it. I’m chasing my dream. I want to innovate politics and I’m going to keep busting butt until I do something new, something big.
The hardest part of this journey has been to let go. I’m a natural micro-manager. I want things to be perfect and I’ve established in my mind that I’m the only one who can do it perfectly.
Weeding through all the information
February 20, 2012 by
Day 199 – The combination of politics and technology is explosive. Both are intense. And both provide way more news than one person can keep up with. It’s tough.
So how do I tackle all the information? Let me tell you about the tools I use to weed through thousands of newspaper and magazine articles, blog posts, videos and much, much more.
Not knowing is a strength
February 18, 2012 by
Day 197 – It’s Saturday and I’m stuck catching up on Facebook advertising trends. There is so much I don’t know. But the good thing is that I know what I don’t know. And I admit it.
Too many people sale snake oil. They pretend like they know everything. They pitch clients and even sit on panels pretending to know everything.
I don’t. I know what I don’t know. I admit it.
Admitting what you don’t know is a strength because it allows you to find the people who do know.
I don’t have enough time
February 17, 2012 by
Day 196 – Its an excuse that I cannot stand. I don’t have enough time.
We all have the same amount of time. Cliche, but true.
If I heard the excuse once today, I heard it a million times. It hit me from all angles.
You have enough time. What you do not have is time management.
