Justin's Podcast
Dive into the captivating world of extraordinary individuals with "Interesting People," the podcast where host Justin Wallin sits down with some of the most intriguing personalities from all walks of life. Each episode unravels the unique stories, challenges, and triumphs of guests who have made remarkable impacts in their fields or led fascinating lives. From trailblazing innovators and inspiring artists to unsung heroes and enigmatic personalities, Justin brings you candid conversations that reveal the human spirit's endless capacity for wonder and achievement. Tune in for thought-provoking interviews, surprising revelations, and a celebration of the diverse tapestry of human experience.
Justin's Podcast
Advocacy, Social Media, and Embracing Failure with Alex Dickinson
Join us as we explore the transformative world of public affairs and digital communications with Alex Dickinson, managing partner of Beekeeper Group. Discover how social media has evolved into a cornerstone of daily communication, allowing even small organizations like patient advocacy groups to amplify their voices in powerful ways. We challenge the changing perceptions of lobbying, highlighting its crucial role in public discourse and the intricate dance of influencing policy. From innovative marketing tools to the advocacy mindset, Alex shares invaluable insights drawn from her expansive experience in the field.
Communication takes center stage as we discuss the dynamic landscape of information consumption. Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have become more than mere tools; they are the architects of how opinions are shaped and news is consumed. Personal connections are proving to be more influential than traditional media, and we explore this shift through the lens of history with a nod to Abraham Lincoln's legacy. The timeless lessons from the Lincoln-Douglas debates offer a compelling framework for genuine discourse, whether in politics or organizational communications.
Venturing into the realm of personal growth, we engage with Alex on the empowering theme of embracing failure and bold new challenges. We shine a light on the courage it takes to step outside comfort zones, where failure is not a setback but a stepping stone. Our conversation concludes with inspiration from the Awesome Foundation, underscoring the ripple effect of creativity and community engagement. So, please tune in to Interesting People for a captivating episode filled with stories and insights that challenge the status quo and celebrate the extraordinary.
Welcome to Interesting People, the podcast where we delve into the lives and stories of fascinating individuals from all walks of life. I'm your host, justin Wallen, and in each episode, we bring you inspiring, thought-provoking and sometimes surprising interviews with people who are making an impact in their fields and communities. There's only one common thread that the world is more interesting because of them. Get ready to be inspired, entertained and enlightened as we spotlight the extraordinary. Let's dive in All right. Today I am joined by Alex Dickinson, who is managing partner of Beekeeper Group, one of Washington DC's preeminent communications public policy organizations. That has grown tremendously since you were part of it. You were early, which we might speak about a little bit, but it's a tremendous organization. You guys do tremendous work and it's a pleasure to have you with me today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, justin. I am so excited to get to chat a little bit here and, yeah, I've been with Beekeeper for 12 years and I've seen a lot of transformation in those 12 years, so excited to talk a little bit about that and about the future too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wonderful. I'd like to one talk about your experience with Beekeeper, specifically because you were part of driving growing an organization, which is always fascinating. So that's one thing I want to talk about and the other thing is well, there's a lot of things, but the other thing specifically to Beekeeper is what have you seen change in this funding world of ours, this world of communications? What's changed and what's stayed the same?
Speaker 2:Well, you know not to like immediately bring this into my own personal interest.
Speaker 1:No, no, no. That's exactly what this is about.
Speaker 2:When you and I were talking a little bit previously.
Speaker 2:I mentioned I have a deep fascination with Abraham Lincoln and that actually predates Beekeeper Group.
Speaker 2:Beekeeper has nothing to do with Abraham Lincoln, but he has a quote which really resonates with me when I think about the change in evolution of the public affairs industry and digital communications overall, which is just that public sentiment is everything and whoever can change it can change the government, and that power and that understanding is what has always drawn me to the work that we do.
Speaker 2:It's this concept of connecting people's voices to changes that they want to see, helping people empower their causes and their interests to make a big impact out there. And when I started it was just at the beginning of organizations really embracing that social media could really collect that public sentiment and could harness it and direct it towards efforts and energy that they really cared about. I think one of the biggest transformations that we've seen is that social media is just every day now. It's not a new powerful tool, it's just how we communicate. So this transformation of the broader public media, the transformation of journalism, alongside the way that we're able to connect and build different kinds of communities and how we move and shift those communities, I think has been deeply, deeply powerful in the American democracy experiments that we've got going on. The American democracy experiments that we've got going on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it has. And two, there's a lot there. But two things leapt out at me right away. You know, in the American public, the world of lobbying, of advocacy, you know, has a long and bad name.
Speaker 1:If you want to kind of cast aspersions on someone. Oh, it's lobbying, and inevitably it's tied to big interests, right, whether it's big business or big unions or whatever. It is your particular flavor of things that you don't like. That's what people tend to associate with this. But it's more than that and it's a lot more than that, and in fact I think it's exactly the opposite of it. If you are big and you are well-moneyed, you get your voice heard, no matter what Washington listens. You fly in, they're hosted, you're taken care of, you almost don't even need a staff, although of course we say you do, you really need our expertise, which they do. They need to be refined. But what this does actually, what I think people don't recognize, is it enhances democracy, because it really allows those minority voices to have a force multiplier. Right, they're allowed to punch above their weight and equalize that playing platform with people who have essentially unlimited funds and unlimited contacts and unlimited resources.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I think that's exactly right. We have witnessed this transformation where voices that were one time actually just a minority they're also able to find other voices that echo their voices, that share their voices and that's the power of digital and social, and then it helps them elevate up to those levels where they really are able to have that broader impact. And I think about small patient groups. I think about small patient groups If you have a rare disease and you really need to secure this level of funding and it might not be this massive, massive amount, it might really only be like $6 million you have the ability and the capacity now, because of these tools, because of the way that the landscape has changed, to actually go up and have a higher success rate and have an ability to connect in deeper with the people who might have those first drinks.
Speaker 2:So it's really powerful stuff. I think it's really important. The other big transformation of the past decade has also been in this shift towards embracing an advocacy mindset for everything. I think everybody now thinks a little bit more in terms of connecting the dots between what their interests are and how they advocate. So, yeah, lobbying does have this sort of bad name, but I think we have forgotten that lobbying is really just part of our voice as well, and that lobbying is really just part of our voice as well. It's just how we're able to actually make change happen. And now that's dispersed a little bit more evenly across the populace.
Speaker 1:And the tools are much more, I think, interesting. Now, right, they are marketing tools. That's my background in marketing and that's what we do. Right, it is not. The old thought is you go to Washington or your state capital, whatever it might be you hire the white shoe lobbyists. They go and have dinners with people and conversations with people and slowly the ball gets moved down the field. Lobbying that classically interpreted perspective of lobbying is still very powerful and an important part, but it is a part of what is done. Right, it is much more than that. It's a marketing effort in many different tools and many different landscapes. I think that's one of the things that makes it truly compelling, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, I teach a class at George Washington University on digital strategy as well, and one of the biggest lessons that I impart to these people, who are primarily getting a political management degree, is look at the marketers, watch what they're doing, take what they're doing and apply it to the work that you're doing now. In the past few years, we've also seen a lot of people talk about advocacy growth and talk about these kinds of connections as a marketing funnel. We're really literally using the same tools and the same approach, but just refining it with a slightly more civic-minded viewpoint.
Speaker 1:And before we move over to talking about Lincoln some more, I want to mention one other thing and kind of reaffirm that change in digital and social media. And yes, we all see it's ubiquitous, but it's more powerful than that, because the landscape of what I would call consequential information the old, serious information that we would get through newspapers and things like that what's happening today? What are the things that get back my life? We all know that the world of newspapers has changed dramatically and for those of us who grew up with them, it's kind of sad, right, you see, these noble old mastheads kind of crumble and fall. Some of them are still moving along. They're changing, they have to change. The masthead is Mass heads kind of crumble and fall. Some of them are still moving along, they're changing, they have to change. The mass head is still powerful. Right, the mass head carries weight.
Speaker 1:But I do a lot of research with asking this one question for clients of residents or stakeholders or whatever it is when do you get your news and information about? Whatever? And inevitably, when you unpack it, leading the pack are facebook and instagram. And it's not that they necessarily generate, uh, news, right, but they repurpose news and it's just a practical reality that's. That's the way our society works, and it doesn't do any good to rail against it. It does good to recognize this is the way people consume information. Now it's different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the part that I always get caught up on is when we think about how people change their opinions. What is it that actually moves the needle? It's not, it's never been the news media. It's always been peer to peer information. It's always been their family, it's always been their friends family, it's always been their friends. So it makes sense that now we would, with the ability to communicate and connect with people and have other individuals on the other side of the world who might have the same perspective or point of view as us, surprisingly could share that information and persuade us and could be that interconnection is really, I think, a critical component there. But yeah, it's just logical. I think we still obviously value and benefit from having those big mastheads, but thinking about how people use that information, how they always use that information, the sort of inherent human connection of sharing and imparting political information, is really an important part of how we could approach the future of communications.
Speaker 1:I always shift a little bit to one of your personal passions, to Lincoln, so one. We all talk about Lincoln, an enormous figure in American history. But what initially drew you to Lincoln and why are you still interested? This is a longtime passion of yours.
Speaker 2:It is, yeah. So what initially drew me to Lincoln was actually a project that I was working on. I was at C-SPAN prior to Beep Beeper Group and I was working on American History TV, which is this block of programming that's on C-SPAN 3. They also was witnessing all these preeminent Lincoln scholars talking about his impact, really digesting the different elements and really figuring out how we make sense of someone who is so sort of big and monolithic in a lot of ways. And what fascinated me early on was that everybody claims Lincoln he's a unique figure. You know he's a classic Republican president but he has in a lot of ways, I think, embraced a lot of ideas that Democrats tend to embrace as well. So he's a really unique figure in that way now in our current context, but also beyond that. It's this continued popular use of him.
Speaker 2:We take the idea of Lincoln and we apply it to different frames that help us make sense of things moving forward, and it's been that practice that's been really fascinating to me.
Speaker 2:So it's a sort of pop culture and the continued idea of him as a touch point of something that was great and something that was good. He was a deeply flawed person. He had a lot of really damaging things that he did and a lot of incredible and amazing things that he did for our country, and I think that conflict is what makes him so fascinating to me, and especially as I sort of think about what's the future of this great democratic experiment. And I do think he is, you know, that good touchstone for us. Still, he presided over a extremely divided country. He helped us get through it and I wonder will there be another figure like that ever? And are we just going to always have to grapple with what that historical person was and what he could mean to different people? And is that a bridge that we can actually use to build a future together through as well?
Speaker 1:And I'm not going to make this about politics, but I'm drawing a distinction because and not with candidates or anything like that with process One of the inflection points in this year's election was a presidential debate. Inflection points in this year's election was a presidential debate and your debates are far and few between at the presidential level now. And, of course, with Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, there were the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which are extraordinary. What lessons can we draw from those debates for today's society?
Speaker 2:I think the biggest lesson is just embracing discourse and embracing conversation. Part of what made the Lincoln-Douglas debate so powerful was that it was a genuine elevated conversation. They were going back and forth on specific ideas, specific concepts and policies and they were really listening and responding. And that seems so basic but it's, I think, a really transformational idea that I would love to see more of in conversation and discourse today as well. It's something that I not to pivot back to communications, but it's something that I think a lot of organizations really benefit from too. When they can put messages out there and then also hear what their potential supporters, the constituents of the members of Congress they might be trying to reach or the elected officials they might be trying to connect to, wherever they can do, that, that listen and response, I think, is going to be really the most rich source of growth for us. I also think there's the possibility that just the prospect of conversation can change opinions more powerfully. We're also talking about this public opinion idea as well.
Speaker 2:Lincoln did this thing that he called the public opinion baths. So he was sort of famously a person who loved having different perspectives and different point of views sort of immerse around him. He would open up the White House and have people come in. Most of them were office seekers, but he was also really listening deeply listening to people, and I think that one challenge that we have with social media is that it gets harder to hear other people's voices. It gets harder to—the algorithm. Algorithms put you in one lane. So what can we do to try and break out of those lanes? So that's something that I'd love to try and encourage organizations to do as well show that diversity in variety of opinions and try and weave them together. Build what we can from there.
Speaker 1:And that's part of the path to success. Right, because it is a very human trait and we're all guilty of it to hear something to which we disagree and just simply say it's wrong. And there's, of course, a variety of colorful ways that can go. We see that in public discourse a lot, but that's the reflexive thing, because we're human beings. Right, the world will be better when it agrees with me. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just the way we're structured.
Speaker 1:On the other hand, when we hear things that we don't agree with and I would say, especially when we hear things that seem odd and for me there's always the conspiracy theorists and things like that it is so easy to dismiss the conclusions that are brought. But as human beings and as marketers and as communications folks and as organizations that are hoping to move the ball forward, I always suggest and we always have a core to this is to find out why. Why are people thinking something, not just about why they support or are interested in moving forward our particular program, but why are they opposing and unpack that? Because there's much more to it. One is it's just interesting I find people fascinating, right. But the other part is you can actually find out that information that can have a dramatic increase in the success of your particular effort right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. The other side of it, though, is the emotional appeal right. So when we're thinking about persuasive communications, the hardest thing is to change someone's mind when their emotions are up through the roof. There's a real scientific response that you have to think about here how do you bring people's cortisol levels down so that they can hear you? How do you actually connect and communicate with people? Emotion will get them in the door. Emotion will get them acting and moving, but how do we break that barrier a little bit further as well and part of that is, I think, going to be one of the interesting challenges of the future is doing storytelling that persuades people by connecting to deep emotional appeals, but then also opens up the pathway for them to hear those different perspectives and those different voices, so not thinking about themselves as just myopic, but also as part of this big, great world that we've got.
Speaker 1:You also do noble work. You're involved with the Awesome Foundation, which is one of the most awesome names I can imagine, so tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. The Awesome Foundation is one of the best ideas that I think has ever come out of the social media world. So the concept is microfunding. So you bring a group of people together and each person puts in $100, and people apply for a small $1,000 grant. I was dean of the DC chapter for a number of years. I'm still a big supporter, and what they do is they evaluate these grants on will $1,000 make a difference? Will it have an immediate impact and how will it actually? Is it awesome? How will it do something awesome?
Speaker 2:There's a framework that we think about with these grants, which is orphans and flamethrowers, and we are often realizing that orphans or projects that really appeal to those emotional heartstrings get a lot of funding. It's easier to fund those things, but flamethrowers big ideas, big concepts, big weird things can fall by the wayside sometimes and they're often the things that really create really unique connections in community. So we try and fund as many flamethrowers as we can. One of my favorite flamethrowers was a number of years ago, the Funk Parade in DC. It was just a big community movement trying to bring people together and really do a funk parade.
Speaker 2:There's been a really wonderful bike, a bicycle that had a lino print on it so you could actually go and make beautiful little prints around. It's these glimmers, these lovely little moments that again make community what it is, that the Awesome Foundation enables and empowers. Not to like the original Awesome Foundation grant one of the first ones they did it was a chapter in Boston or in Cambridge and they funded a extremely long hammock in the hall of the yard Just getting a bunch of people to. You know, have a hammock, put one side on one tree and just get as many people as you can in it, and I really love that. It's just impactful, but also very weird and awesome.
Speaker 1:I love it and we love the funk here, so that's a wonderful thing. So, with that, how do you engage and find people to apply for it? I mean, how do they become aware of it?
Speaker 2:Word of mouth, social media. The biggest thing that we've tried to track for years is how do you hear about awesome, what brought you to us today? And more often than not, it's one person who gets a grant and then says, hey, you know what, you have an awesome idea, why don't you apply for this too? And that awesome begets more awesome, begets more awesome, and you just get bigger and bigger ideas. That sort of get out there. And one thing that I think is really fun is the dynamic of trying to balance again between these important and critical infrastructure things like orphan projects, and then trying to fund those where you need to and then also direct funds to these.
Speaker 1:In today's world. You do a lot so, and we hear a lot about work-life balance. Some people hear about it with a snigger. I don't. I think it's important. In fact, I think it's incredibly important, and I'm wondering what do you do to maintain yourself, Alex, so you're balanced and healthy and able to do all the incredible things that you do?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, justin, you said something earlier that reminded me of one of my core values, which is I find everybody interesting. People are interesting, people are interesting, and I think I have a job and I have so many different things that connect me to different people and help me really see those interesting ideas that other humans have. We're a unique species. Those emotional connections are really fascinating to watch grow and evolve. I'm also a mother on top of everything, and so watching a human grow and evolve and build those emotional connections too, has been really powerful. So for me it's really just anchoring in the fact that all my work is something that brings me value. It brings me joy. If I did not derive some sort of glee from what I was doing, I couldn't do it. So it's not really work-life balance, but it's rather structuring the work so that it actually feeds into who I am and what I do, and beyond that, I bake.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:I love to bake. I also I was, a couple years back won the blue ribbon in the DC State Fair for apple pies.
Speaker 1:Bravo.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. Yes, I wish you could taste it through a podcast.
Speaker 1:So do I. I'm a pie man. That is wow. I am deeply interested and I can't bake to save my life. I cook, but baking is a lot.
Speaker 2:You know, what I love about baking is that you follow a recipe similar to sort of advocacy communications as well. You're doing the same steps, but you have to adjust for so many different factors. You have to pay attention to what's happening around. The humidity changes things. If your cinnamon is a little bit too old, you might want to change out and add some nutmeg instead. So really making those decisions on the fly, I think, makes a big difference. So it's something that brings me a lot of joy overall.
Speaker 1:I love that as we wrap up in doing the stuff we do, you tend to get from time to time through a year, folks who are starting in their career and they reach out and you know, wondering what they should do. So what is your advice to folks when they connect to you and they're hoping to start a career in this sort of thing? What are the core things that they really need to keep in mind? What are the best things that they can do and the best things to kind of highlight about themselves?
Speaker 2:Keep in touch with people is always my advice. I got to be a keeper group because I kept in touch with a professor and it's not just keeping in touch with people like hey, how are you doing? But again finding those things that you found interesting in them and reconnecting them to those ideas. So reaching out to people was a real value add opportunities and not being scared of not hearing back from people, I think to your point.
Speaker 2:You know, work-life balance is a big conversation out there. There's a lot of ways to get overwhelmed Inbox overwhelm is one of them. So persistence and understanding, deep empathy and understanding, I think, are the traits that I'm always trying to encourage people starting out in their career to embrace early on. And also just not saying this is bad advice on the work-life balance side, I guess, but always saying yes, where you can Try and keep doors open. So keep opening as many opportunities as you can and don't think about a closed door as just something that you can't walk through. Think about it as something that you want to try and figure out on the other side.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if you're not perfectly prepared for something right, Don't be intimidated by it. Jump in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's all about trying something new, and failure is okay.
Speaker 1:That's right, Alex Dickinson. It's just been an absolute delight having you on. Thank you for spending some time with me this morning.
Speaker 2:Thank you, justin, this is great.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in to Interesting People. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast on your favorite platform, and don't forget to follow us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content.
