Duke: Once again, another shout out to Chills Music.
The guy who did our intro song, man, I can't get enough of it.
CJ: Yeah.
It's awesome.
, when I heard that thing, man, goosebumps.
Goosebumps,
Duke: this is one of the best things we ever did for the show.
Anyways, if you was thinking about doing the same thing, we'll have
a link of the description below for how to contact Chills music.
All right, Corey, what are we talking about?
CJ: All right, dude.
Today we're talking about how to run a campaign using ServiceNow, a political
campaign that is not a marketing campaign.
Well, kind of marketing too, but a political campaign.
Duke: Yeah, so for those of you who don't know, Corey has a very interesting hobby,
CJ: It is the indeed . That's a great, that is a great way of putting it, right?
So, uh, I'm involved very heavily, with local government
here in the village where I live.
And, I'm currently on our version of the city council.
, I was appointed back in October.
And, , I'm running for a new term, which is four years.
and then prior to that, I'd run for this same spot.
Back in, 2019.
I lost by about 50 votes, which kind of sucked.
Um,
Duke: the village
CJ: 54,000 people.
Duke: and you lost my feet.
Oh God.
just like pull my hair out.
CJ: Do you could find 50 votes in the couch, right?
Duke: That's awful.
CJ: Well, there's Chicago, so , so for those who don't know,
I live in the Chicagoland area.
the village that I'm running for, that I live in is, , Oak Park, Illinois.
And, there's no point in trying to hide it.
Right?
You Google my name, that's the only thing that shows up.
Duke: So if you're a fantasy J in the Duke, you will realize
that we talk about build, build, build, build all the time, right?
Especially for newcomers.
We're like, build what you know.
Build what you know.
So Corey and I made this gigantic swimming pool of Kool-Aid.
And we've got three or four straws each, and we are going
to drink all that Kool-Aid.
And in this episode we are going to role play, Corey is gonna be a stakeholder.
I'm going to be an implementation consultant, and we're going to, , explore
his world of work and we are going to try and gather requirements for a,
, political campaign app in ServiceNow.
So what we hope you get out of this is just a way to engage with yourself, future
customers, future employers, for how to make sure you have the best understanding
of these apps before you go and.
CJ: Yeah, duke.
And, and, and one other thing I want folks to get out of this, right?
So we often talk about the unconventional uses of ServiceNow, right?
ServiceNow is marketed as it t s M, right?
So IT service management, and then there's some other, sibling processes, enterprise
service management processes that get marketed under that same umbrella.
You and I have often, and for a long time, been talking about, utilizing ServiceNow
in kind of non-traditional ways.
Right?
running a household.
you often talk about the example of running an ice cream shop, you
know, offer, offer a bike when you were a kid, those sorts of things.
And so I think this is a really good, in practice version of some
of that advice to see to, so folks can see actually, actually how
it would be done and that it can.
Duke: Exactly.
It's, it's about.
if you, if you have a craftsman come over to do something to your house,
they're gonna ask you all sorts of questions because you can't just
say one sentence and it's done.
or even a better example, somebody's gonna build you a house.
Like think about all the stuff that goes into planning a build for a house.
And so it's like, no, we're not building a house.
but the questions will get you there no matter what the situation is.
So here we go.
Um.
Corey, what is the, like when you tell me you have to run a campaign,
CJ: Yeah.
Duke: like what is the point of running the campaign?
CJ: Oh man.
So the point is to win the seat, right?
that's the macro point, right?
So there's an election and you wanna win the election.
In the case of my campaign, there are three open spots, right?
And there are five people running.
And so what I want is one of those open spots, right?
So that's the point of it, but that's the point of the, uh, my involvement in.
But when you think about the campaign, the point is to maximize your outreach,
Maximize getting in front of folks, right?
Like you want to, your visibility in front of the, the village or
whatever kind of constituency that you're running for, right?
so I wanna make sure that folks see me as often as possible, that they understand my
message, and that they know when to vote.
that one is really, really key.
That last one, that they know when to.
Right.
Because what happens is, and what I heard a lot after the, um, the
election in 2019 is, oh man, I didn't know the election was this Tuesday.
Or crap, I would've did early voting because we had spring break and we,
we didn't get back until Wednesday.
Right.
And so ensuring that folks know when they can vote for you so that they show
up and actually do it is one of the.
Duke: Okay, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna repeat back and you tell me
if I've got, the outcomes, right?
So this whole app has to make it easier for you to win, but if we
break down the essence of winning, it's that you have to get as many
people aware of you as possible.
So, outreach and awareness.
but not only do they have to know that Corey Wesley exists, they must
associate Corey Wesley with your message.
CJ: Correct
Duke: Okay.
And then they have to know when, and is it fair to say where to vote?
CJ: Jas, when and where.
Yep.
Absolutely.
Duke: Could anybody in Oak Park go to any, polling place in Oak Park or is it.
CJ: Um, no.
So that's the thing, right?
So, and during early uh, voting time, they have to go to village hall.
, and so early voting is like two weeks or something like that.
and then on voting day, on actual election day, then they need to go to the polling
place in which they're assigned, which will typically be like a school or
some other public building like that.
Duke: Wow.
Okay.
so I've broken it down into four outcomes that we definitely have to, optimize.
Maximizing the outreach, maximize the knowledge of your message, knowing
when to vote, knowing where to vote.
Is there anything else you can think of?
CJ: I think that's a good, uh, a great start, honestly.
I mean, there's probably a few other things like the, there's some,
uh, no, that's the point of it.
No, that's the point.
Yeah.
Those are the outcomes.
Yes.
Duke: Uh, other outcomes are allowed, like, there must be
several processes within a campaign.
, otherwise you'd just be doing this in your head, right?
But clearly you have people and records and stuff like this.
So why don't we break down some of the processes that you
would have within a campaign.
CJ: Yeah, so we talk about logistics a little bit, right?
So, um, you gotta manage your volunteers, right?
So you have folks who are gonna be knocking on doors for you.
You got folks who are gonna be spreading your message via like, social media or
email or having, outreach with their friends or hosting, you know, meet
and greets and that sort of thing.
you also have, fundraising, right?
Like, that one's really, really key.
Just like you can't run an on me, right on empty stomach, right?
As some kind of metaphor like that I remember.
Or you can't run a campaign on an empty stomach either, right?
Like, you gotta have money.
And so fundraising is also one of those things.
Uh, a local election, at least in our village, doesn't cost nearly
as much as say, like running for mayor in Chicago, but you still need
some money in order to get it done.
communications is another thing that you want to make sure that
you're tracking and scheduling and hitting the right frequency.
Right.
And so, and planning out right, the plan of that, especially with communications,
like when do the blog posts go out?
When do the social media posts go out?
When do the emails go out?
What are they saying?
What's the target demographic for this message?
Because sometimes you're gonna wanna split your message up.
Some people are gonna care a little bit about, issue A more than issue B, so
you target your message to emphasize issue A with people who care about
issue A and emphasize issue B with people who care about issue B, right?
So all of that needs to be tracked and planned and scheduled right,
so that you don't lose track of it.
And so that the logistics of communications are, are really key.
Duke: there's a lot to unpack here.
I've got some notes.
I'm gonna go over them.
You tell me if there's anything.
I've completely misunderstood.
So, I've counted three processes so far.
We can certainly talk beyond that, but one of which is manage your volunteers.
Uh, so we have to have a, a place to store the volunteers.
Right.
And you, you mentioned three different types of volunteers.
You have your door knockers, your social media, and your event managers,
event planners, event executors.
CJ: Yeah,
Duke: Are people only one of those or are people Many of those.
CJ: Um, some people gonna be, um, many of those categories.
Some people might only be one.
Um, that you're gonna also have strategic advisors too, right?
Like, so you might have folks that you, , that you have , that you have
to look at the communications before you send it out, so that kind of thing.
Or, or just kind of advise in on strategy, in general.
So you, you would want another category for advisors as well.
Duke: so I've, I've added a category for advisors, but I wanna come back
to how those categories matter and the specifics of managing volunteers.
Let's just go over the top level processes again.
The second thing you mentioned was fundraising.
and this involves obviously the asking and the sources of where those funds are.
Right.
But is there also any kind of, compliance.
CJ: Oh yeah.
Duke: That you have to, in your fundraising, you have to like track
it a certain way, and so in order you could be com compliant with some
kind of campaign law or anything.
CJ: Absolutely.
And I'll, I'll, I'm gonna punt the details of that to my treasurer, right,
who's not on this call, but he, I, that he, he handles all of that for me.
But yes.
to be clear, there are, campaign finance laws, right?
And so you gotta make sure that you're adhering to those and
that you're disclosing donations above a certain amount and the
mandatory reporting threshold time.
and things of that nature, right?
And that you're keeping track of how much certain folks are donating.
And I, I think there's some individual contributor limits as well.
I don't, I don't know.
Like I said, I, I, I, I pun a lot of the details off to my treasurer, cuz he
is got a lot of experience with this.
But yes, campaign compliance, finance, compliance loss are a
thing and we need to, uh, make sure that the system can support that.
Duke: Okay, so, oh, the, something I'm going to add to the outcomes
list that we already discussed is that the campaign must be compliant.
CJ: Yes.
Duke: And I'm just gonna break the fourth wall here for everybody listening
A really good rule of thumb is as soon as somebody starts talking about money,
you start talking about compliance,
CJ: Amen.
Duke: right?
CJ: yeah.
You wanna start thinking about as soon as people start giving you
money, you wanna start thinking about, okay, how do I record this
Duke: Yep.
Because oftentimes they'll be thinking about just the numbers.
I gotta track the numbers, I gotta track the numbers, but hit
those two birds with one stone.
provide them a solution that not only tracks the numbers, but maybe prevents,
warns, inhibits your capability to do it wrong or in an uncompliant fashion.
CJ: Absolutely if there is a limit to, individual contributions, right?
Like you want the system to flag it, or generate some kind of report when you
got folks who are approaching that limit.
Or if you try to enter in like a donation that's above that limit.
Then you can go back to the person who offered it up and, return it,
and get you, get yourself down to the limit or something like that, right?
There are, um, mandatory reporting, laws about contributions that
come above a certain level.
those things need to be disclosed, near, immediately, I think within five days.
So, you know, we would build in some kind of rule for that as well.
So if I'm entering into the ledger, say contribution of, $5,000 or
something like that, that needs to be disclosed in like five days, right?
So the system should, yeah, the system should note that so that my treasurer
can input that data into the requisite system, for the state of Illinois
so that it all gets done correctly.
Duke: we, we know for certain that fundraising is gonna have
to be tracked in service now.
To some extent and that we have to, look out for mandatory reporting rules
and your treasurer's gonna gimme that.
So we will book a second meeting with your treasurer to talk about that.
so that's two of the three of the high level, campaign
processes, that you mentioned.
The last one is communications, uh, and subprocess to that are
planning, execution and targeting.
Now, since you did this last year already, Is it safe to assume that you already have
a platform that does the actual mailing?
CJ: so this is funny, right?
So 2019 when I did this, I did all of my email, uh,
communications through ServiceNow.
and so yeah, so that was the platform initially, but I'm reaching a much
wider audience this time around, so I do have a platform for that now.
Duke: when we talk about managing communications and ServiceNow, the
tasky bit is, planning the comms, the channels, and the targets.
Not necessarily the individual people targets, but the, , the interest targets.
CJ: Yes,
Duke: are interested in property taxes, so send this one, send this
email promising that there'll never be more property tax ever to those folks.
Right?
CJ: Yes.
And then immediately go back on that once you get elected, because
that is a promise you cannot keep
Duke: Okay.
CJ: yeah.
But yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
You break it down by, interests.
and that way.
Uh, and then target folks.
Sometimes you can, use demographics to age you in those.
Interesting.
But, um, you know, other times you just might have to know
Duke: fair to say the actual mailing list is in another platform, but for this
communication, we're basically gonna Okay.
A message.
CJ: Yes.
Duke: So when I, when I think of somebody's check marking a
message, that's an approval, right?
So part of communication is app.
CJ: Absolutely.
That's exactly how, how I would think about this, right?
Like there's a, you know, a message that needs to go out on property Texas
on this date to this demographic.
Uh, let's make sure that there gets an, a candidate sign off or a senior
senior strategist sign off, To make that get done, Because maybe the,
current, atmosphere of the campaign means that you need to switch tactics.
And so you do that in a moment.
That's why I think an approval is really, really,
Duke: I'm skipping around a bit.
And by the way, breaking the fourth wall again, it is okay to do that
. When you're in a workshop, it's not necessarily going to build itself in
order, you will have to revisit concepts, questions will pop up in your head.
feel free to bounce around a little bit because the most important
thing is that you understand this thing like your stakeholder.
CJ: Absolutely right?
Like you want to make sure that you understand like you
said, the outcomes, right?
Like that's really what, what drives a lot of this.
You know, once you understand the outcomes, then you can understand
what a value in the system is, right?
So, Yeah.
It's okay to jump around to try to get, paint the full picture.
Duke: Better now, Even if you look disorganized or whatever, because you
ask questions out of order and jump back to other things and what are, it
is way better to do that at the start than it is to do it in the middle.
CJ: Yeah.
and look, I'm a systems stinker, right?
It's one of the things that I actually advertised in my campaign in a,
in a way that folks can understand and don't actually use those terms.
but what happens to a systems stinkers is, is that as you're starting
to talk about a topic, another.
Thread starts to become available off that topic and you start
to explore, it's kinda like dot walking where you're coding, right?
you can start with, you know, the user table and then you
can end up at the company table or the location table, right?
Because you start to see these connections, right?
So it's okay in a workshop to follow those connections as well, and then
eventually bring it back around.
Duke: so I need to go back to the fundraising a bit now.
Fundraising is about the, the accumulation of your fundraising
knowledge and the compliance thereof.
Do you have a similar.
Need on the spend side?
Like do you have to track where you're spending certain stuff?
CJ: Absolutely you wanna track everything you spend on a campaign, right?
, you know, and there are different ways to do that.
And again, I let my treasurer, tell me, but I just let 'em
know, like any kind of thing.
so like, you know, if I was using, ServiceNow this time around, right?
I pay for that.
Um, as part of my company, I have my own instances, which is why I could
use it for email, um, if I wanted to.
, but you would have to categorize that as an in-kind contribution.
but I, I'm not quite sure.
So I would run it by him and tell, and he'd tell me like, okay, this percentage
of it was used in the campaign, or something like that, hypothetically.
and then, we would qualify it.
That, that's what I think would happen.
Again, I would punt those questions to him, and he'd make sure that
I was doing everything correctly.
Duke: What I wanna make sure is that I don't build you a solution for a
problem that already has a solution.
So when you're, when you're in a campaign, you're in the trenches and
somebody's like, oh, we need to update our website with some information.
And, you know, we don't have a web designer anymore.
Like, let's just get a freelancer to update our website for like 500 bucks.
Is already factored for by your treasurer or and accounting team.
They just look at the bank transactions and then categorize it their own way.
And is there any need for formal approvals?
CJ: in my case, there's probably not a need for formal approvals
because I'm the person who would be cutting the checks anyway, right?
It's a local campaign, really small sort of thing.
I can imagine, right?
If this was Chicago and somebody's running for mayor, that there's
these levels of intermediaries where they would need approvals for xpa
or rights ban, and Ys spin and that, and that gets documented, right?
So if we were building the system, right, and we're building the system,
I'd say we need to make sure that, we're documenting the spin, the purpose
of the spin, and getting approval for it And even if that is in the, in my
case, would be like a self approval.
Duke: Okay, so it's basically, it's um, it's a possibility for a bigger scale.
Campaign, but for a local election, it's probably not worth our
time exploring for right now.
Right.
CJ: yeah.
Unlikely that we need the approval mechanism.
But I'd put that in the parking lot and, you know, revisit it if, if I was ever
to like run for president or something.
Duke: Okay.
Just reviewing the campaign processes, managing the volunteers fundraising
communications and campaign spending.
but we're putting that in a parking lot, for right now.
CJ: Well, we wanna make, we wanna do the compliance aspect,
just not the approval part.
Duke: For the spending.
CJ: For the spending.
Yeah.
So I want to, you
Duke: talk to me about that then.
CJ: Yeah, so it looks like, it looks pretty much like the
inverse of the donations, right?
Like, we wanna know, who we paid and the purposes of the payment.
and if anyone volunteered their time instead of money,
we wanna record that as well.
Duke: Okay, this is people volunteering time, people who work for your
campaign, volunteering their time
CJ: Yeah, let, let me, let me reframe that, right?
Cuz that's not quite right.
So say you have a photographer and a photographer donates their services,
Duke: Oh, okay.
CJ: Yeah.
You wanna record that Now?
People knocking on doors, you don't have to record that, right?
Like that's just volunteer work.
but if you have someone who's an expert in their field, And they
donate that expertise, Then you have to, record that because that's that
whole in-kind, contribution thing that you need to don, document.
Duke: would I be wrong to assume that is a type of fundraising?
I've got somebody like fundraising.
This person gave me $10,000.
This person gave me 10 hours of photo shoot time.
CJ: Yeah, that's a good place to put it actually.
if you were to look at some of the compliance portals that are out there,
that's where they tend to have it.
Duke: breaking fourth wall here for a second.
There's a lot of social, friction sometimes around asking questions.
It is okay to ask clarifying questions, even leading questions to somebody
who's at your building, Corey mentioned pretty explicitly that this was within
the campaign spending topic, right?
I had an instinct that it wasn't about the spending of money, it's about the
acquisition of resources, which seems to align more in fundraising in my mind, And
so I use my courage and, manners, right?
Am I right in assuming ? I give him plenty of opportunity to tell me, no, you're
wrong in a nice way, But I challenge, I, I cha it challenges the wrong word,
Corey, but you know what I'm saying.
CJ: I, I do.
Yeah.
and I've got all rice right to tell you.
No dude outta my office.
But
Duke: Fired.
Everybody's fired.
Especially you
CJ: You're fired twice.
but No, no, you're absolutely right.
Yeah.
Uh, that's the leading questions.
Challenge the answer sometimes if you think, a person means different
than what they're saying, because this isn't a court of law, right?
Like what you're trying to do is get down to the truth of what
they ask, what they're asking for.
And you have to remember that you don't always know.
I, I'll be honest with you, even as we're having this conversation,
like it's helping me dial in on some of the things in the campaign
that I actually need, right?
So there are things that are popping in my head that I didn't even have, actively
cir circulating in my brain before we actually started this conversation, right?
So challenging, me and pushing back on some of the answers, does
help me clarify, you know, the thoughts on what I actually need.
Duke: Awesome.
so we talked about the general processes in a campaign, but let's
talk about nitty gritty work.
The assignable sub-tasks.
and I think a lot of this comes in The management of volunteers.
Right.
You said door knockers.
Tell me what it takes to get your foot soldiers out there and knocking on doors.
Just that part.
CJ: first you gotta identify a pool of talent, so the folks who are gonna knock
on the doors, then you gotta identify the area, area where they're gonna knock.
you need to have a match that they're going to convey.
and then you want to have some kind of deliverable, right?
That's gonna be some kind of collateral that they can leave.
and as part of that message, you want to have like, you know, talking points
and maybe re rebuttals, like, depends on how deep you want to get, right.
but they should know you well enough to be able to vouch for a lot of this stuff.
And that's where the collateral comes in as well.
I think that's it.
Duke: Okay, for a given door knocking campaign, you have to identify the
people that are on that campaign.
or on that, door knocking night, you have to have messaging ready.
And I hear there's different types of messaging.
There's talking points and objection handling,
CJ: Yeah.
Duke: and there's the organization of collateral.
CJ: Yep.
Duke: So it's not, yeah, exactly.
It's not enough that I know how to talk about it.
I wanna leave you with Corey's smiling face above the three bullet points of how
Oak Park is gonna be awesome afterwards.
and then you have to assign them to, I dunno, I'm going back to my ice cream
pedaling days, but you call it a route or,
CJ: Yeah.
A route that's a good way.
I, I'll call it, let's, let's
Duke: neighborhood to cover or something like that.
CJ: Yeah.
Yeah.
Neighborhood, a collection of houses, whatever you wanna call it.
Right.
I think a route's just as good as anything.
Duke: when you cover a, a neighborhood with door knockers, is that a fire
and forget process, meaning you just tell them to go do and there's
no return metrics or feedback?
CJ: you might do a debrief and figure out like if anybody actively
refused your message or something like that, but most of the time
it's not really worth the time.
Right?
This is really, very much a, a fire and forget, right?
Like you wanna knock on as many doors as possible to get as much
awareness going as possible.
And if people are unhappy a.
You know, the candidacy is much better to just move on than to try to convince them.
Duke: But would you ever like audit or improve on the fly?
Any messaging?
CJ: That's a good point, right?
Like if if a lot of folks are coming back to me and saying, Hey, we are hearing
that, , folks don't believe that you like puppies and you know that we've heard that
from, at least 10% of the doors we knocked on, then that might be something we wanna,
log somewhere and figure out like, how do I do better messaging on me liking.
Duke: Everybody knows you don't like puppies.
CJ: I love puppies, man.
What do you mean?
Duke: I,
CJ: Hi.
Duke: oh, uh, okay.
the last campaign you run did you have any kind of solution to get
the talking points and the objection handling points to your door?
Knockers.
CJ: no, I did not.
so yeah, when I ran in 2019, I was a newbie to all of this stuff, man.
I was flying by the seat of my pants.
I didn't have organization or anything.
I, I was, I was, uh, what, what do you call it?
Uh, what, uh, so, you know, uh, when you watch like Spider-Man
or whatever, everybody's got the, got the guy in the chair, right?
Like , I was, I was the can, I was the candidate and the guy in the chair, right?
Like, I didn't have, but I didn't have like the Avengers with me.
I got the Avengers now though.
Duke: I'm going to talk through this, the management of volunteers
for a door knocking campaign.
I gotta stop using that word campaign here cuz we're, this is
a, a giant campaign, but the, the each door knocking event, right?
Is that like an evening?
Everybody do these routes and then, a couple days later you do another one.
A couple days later you do another one.
Like these are multiply triggered workflows.
am I getting that right?
Okay.
The start of that workflow is to get the pool of volunteers, Is that like prior?
Prior to you're getting commitment to the volunteer from the volunteers.
CJ: Yes, because then that, because that allows you to do the next part,
which is determining the route.
Duke: Okay.
So part two is determine routes.
CJ: and you need to know the pool of volunteers because you don't
want to create a route that's bigger than you have capacity to.
Duke: Okay.
Now in terms of getting the volunteers, message capable, we just finished
talking about messaging a second ago to get them message capable.
would that change outing to outing is it.
we, we have a new volunteer.
They wanna knock on doors for us.
It's part of that volunteer onboarding process that they're given the
talking points and objection handling.
Does that, is that distinction clear?
CJ: Yeah.
Yeah.
And I would say it's the latter, as part of the onboarding,
you'd get those, that messaging.
and it might evolve over time.
if we're feeling the winds change a little bit.
but most of the time door knocking is just really about getting your face in front of
other people so that they know you exist.
And, and that's where the collateral comes in.
And I think, I guess this is the next part, right?
So onboard messaging during, on onboarding.
Last part of the process is make sure you leave the collateral because people
might forget everything that you said when you, after you that conversation.
But they'll have that piece of paper where they can go to the website and go
to the Facebook page, They can, you know, shoot an email, that sort of thing, and
they can, uh, continue that relationship.
Duke: one of the things I've done here, Corey, is I've started
breaking out into separate workflows.
So clearly there is the, organize a door knocking event, right?
where we're identifying the volunteers, assigning them to routes, making
sure that everybody is okay on, on talking points and objection handling.
organizing and equipping them with collateral, so pamphlets, what have you.
and then at the end of each of those nights, we're gonna have a debrief
session so that we could possibly loop back and do message improvements.
Right?
CJ: Yeah.
And the debrief might not be that same night.
But it would, there would, there should be, like at the end of that,
particular event, there should be a, debrief that happens at some point.
So that we can understand if anything needs to be tweaked.
Duke: So that's kind of fuzzy, right?
Like it's relatively informal.
Maybe you package a couple nights into one debrief, that kind of thing.
CJ: That sort of thing.
Right.
And it might just be like a, volunteer initiated thing where they kind of, maybe
they push a button on an app that says, Hey, I got some meaningful feedback.
And then we, you know, we come together.
Duke: Okay, cool.
Like almost like a post.
event, survey,
CJ: Yeah.
Like a PO Yeah, exactly like that.
Like
Duke: like, uh, yeah, yeah.
Generally did more, did more places feel, good about the
message than bad about the message.
And they could just do a pulse check and then any specific
feedback in a, in a text.
That seems pretty cool, right?
Because then you could basically like do a heat map of the
neighborhoods you're doing.
CJ: Yep.
Duke: Based off of your foot soldier feedback on how the
messages was, was being absorbed
CJ: Absolutely.
Duke: and you can almost get more specific target information.
That's exciting, man.
CJ: That, that is super exciting, especially locally because there's no
polling mechanism for elections, right?
So you, you're kind of flying blind and hope that everything's working.
but this is great actually when, when I think about it, because, and even if
you're just collecting a negative, right?
Even if you're not collecting a positive, if you're just collecting
a negative, you can understand like where you might have big spots of.
Duke: Well,
CJ: if you, and
Duke: a word in there that I lost immediately.
It's like you're doing this in lieu of a
CJ: Oh, um, polling,
Duke: Oh, yeah.
In lieu of polling.
CJ: Yeah, because there's, it doesn't exist, at least here, and maybe it exists
in some other localities, some local, um, municipalities where you can actually
figure out like how the race is going.
Like in Chicago, it's big enough where, there are newspapers and all audits, all
sorts of organizations that are polling the local folks, and you can kinda
make a sense of where you stand, right?
Like, you know, you can see, Lori could see, uh, Lori Lightfoot that
is, could see in real time whether or not she was gaining or losing, right?
There's none of that here in Oak Park,
Duke: Probably a scale game, right?
Like you just, if you're pulling one out of every 10 people, like in Oak Park,
you'll only get 5,000 if everybody votes
CJ: Right, right.
Exactly.
And so you just wanna push as hard as you can and try to, like you said, it's
a scale game to reach as many people as possible so that they know who you are,
and hopefully have a chance to understand what you're about and agree with it.
Duke: All right folks.
We are at 36 minutes of record, and clearly there's a lot more to talk about
but , I just wanna quickly review what, knowing what good questions to ask and
engage in your customer in this way,
just how much you can extract in 30 minutes of convers.
so Corey, let's review.
What is the point of a campaign?
A point of a campaign is to win a seat, but if we break down the component
pieces that contribute to winning a seat, we have, maximizing our outreach.
The more people we interact with, the better.
The more people that know our message, the better.
The more people who know when and where to vote the better.
And our campaign must be compliance.
So that's five points that we know this app has to contribute to.
Right?
And in fact, maybe as you review all these features and decide what
you're actually gonna build, you rate them against these five points.
If it doesn't support that point strongly, maybe it's something you.
CJ: right.
Duke: Now, what are some of the processes within a campaign?
Well, we know that there is a process for managing volunteers, and there are
several types of flows within that.
There's knocking on doors, there's social media management,
there's events, there is.
Okay.
And even before that, there is the onboarding of the volunteers ourselves.
Uh, we have one note in the onboarding workflow that we have to get the
volunteers, the talking points and objection handling, which also
means we need a place to store our talking points and objection.
Handlings.
We also have a process for fundraising.
we have to talk to a different stakeholder for that, but basically
we have to, obey some mandatory reporting laws, and that includes not
only monetary contributions, but also time, contributions to our campaign.
Then this is a third process under campaign management, which
is managing the communications.
Now we are probably gonna have a external tool for mailing list management
and and mailing list segmentation.
But in ServiceNow, what we plan to do is, generating communication plans.
What are we gonna do?
How are we gonna send it?
What is The medium that we're using.
Like is it social media?
Is it mailers, is it whatever?
and then we're also gonna manage the execution of that.
Included in that process is gonna be some sort of approval so the right people
authorize the right communications.
We also wanna have an earmark here for further discussions on targets.
Uh, and targets can be interests or demographics or any combination.
when, uh, we're gonna go back to the pro campaign process of managing your
volunteers, , and we just took the one workflow of the door knocking
event and in the door knocking event, we need to identify the
volunteers that are gonna be on that.
What routes are gonna take.
well, we wanna make sure that they have read the talking points and objection.
Handlings, the latest versions.
we need to equip them with collateral to leave on site.
So this would be like a little pamphlet, what have you.
we got on a potential real big win, which is can we extract information from that
foot, campaign to tell us more about the neighborhoods that we are, putting out.
it's already looking like a fantastic app build and not too small either.
It's pretty significant.
And that was 30 minutes of conversation.
CJ: Yes.
And Duke.
And another, thing I think we need to, uh, emphasize here is that you are
not a local election expert, you have.
You didn't come into this knowing the questions to ask
because you had experience here.
Um, you are a ServiceNow expert and yet we still got to this point, despite the
fact you not being a subject matter expert on the theme that I need you to build.
Duke: I keep telling people, man, like playing role, playing games in high
school taught me more about how to do my job than three years of college Did.
CJ: No right though, right?
Like you put yourself into, into the shoes of accident.
Here we go.
Right?
Next thing we're dragons.
Duke: All right, we are 40 minutes in and this is episode 80 and we
still don't have an outro We'll see you on the next one, folks.
CJ: We out