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
Navigating Global Advocacy and Eastern Europe's Hidden Gems with Gerry Gunster
Ever wondered how one of the world's foremost communications strategists navigates the complex world of international advocacy? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Gerry Gunster, the mastermind behind Gunster Strategies Worldwide, as he uncovers his transformative journey from the bustling corridors of Capitol Hill to the global stage of communications. Gerry shares the insights that have shaped his career, emphasizing the importance of paying one's dues early on, and how foundational experiences in political environments can serve as a springboard for diverse future opportunities. We also delve into his hands-on involvement with the historic Brexit campaign, where he shares how creative grassroots strategies were employed to overcome unique challenges like the UK's ban on political TV ads.
Our exploration doesn't stop at advocacy; we also journey to the hidden gems of Eastern Europe's Georgia. Experience the region's rich history and beauty through Gerry’s eyes, as he shares stories of resilience in towns shaped by their communist past and the dynamic evolution of cities like Tbilisi.
Learn how to balance the demands of a globe-trotting lifestyle with mental well-being, as Gerry offers practical advice on strategic planning during quieter times and the value of a supportive team.
Tune in for an episode brimming with wisdom and insights, whether you're a budding professional or a seasoned expert seeking inspiration.
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. 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.
Speaker 1:Today we are joined by my friend and colleague who I've had the good pleasure of working for a number of times Jerry Gunster, founder and CEO of Gunster Strategies. Worldwide and a lot of firms will say global or worldwide, but your firm truly is. You are one of the leading uh communications advocacy campaign firms, nationally, but also internationally, and you work in a lot of interesting places. The. The headline that most people will will remember or take to heart is is you were instrumental, of course, in Brexit leaving the uh, the, the leave campaign, um, but uh. You work in a lot of more exotic places throughout the world, a lot more difficult places to work throughout the world. You've got a whole litany of amazing things you've done, but I'll leave that to people to go research on their own. Jerry Gunster is the real deal, and thank you so much for joining me today. I truly appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Well, it's good to see you, good to hear your voice.
Speaker 1:Good to see you. Well, I wanted to start first by you know it may sound like a standard question, but it's not. How do you get from A to B, from where to where you are now, to back to when you started? How do you create this successful career?
Speaker 2:Well, I think that you need to pay your dues and I tell all of my interns that come through this office that you can't just wake up and be Justin or Jack, right, you have got to be able to have paid your dues somewhere, and probably much like a lot of people's political careers, probably to you to a certain extent too I started off on capitol hill and I made fifteen thousand dollars a year. I lived in a group house with eight people it was an extension of college, essentially and if the congressman I worked for said jerry, would would you get me a cup of coffee? I'd say what do you want it? And that is where you need to start. You need to start, you've got to pay your dues and once you live in that environment, especially working on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, you really can launch yourself in all kinds of directions, and I've seen that happen.
Speaker 2:I happen to just continue in the political path, moved out of Capitol Hill, then started doing some lobbying and could, with the proper credentials, say I can help you on Capitol Hill because I work there. It's very difficult just to wake up one day and say I'm going to be a consultant, the path from there to doing international government relations in Somaliland and South Sudan takes a couple of decades, which we could spend the entire podcast going through, but bottom line is probably, much like you, you have to pay your dues somewhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's absolutely true, and the work that um overseas because it's not, it's just really isn't something that that most people do or are aware of or or understand. Um, how do you encapsulate? How is it different and how is it similar to traditional work done here in the States?
Speaker 2:Well, it is similar in this respect. Development and content creation and understanding where and how you're going to win is done with what you do. You've got to be able to do opinion research, message development, and you've got to be able to start with the fundamental, which is opinion research. And I always tell everybody there's a lot of things that I can't do internationally. I can't speak your language in most places, but one plus one is two, whether you're in Washington DC or Juba, south Sudan, and the numbers matter a lot. So that's the one thing that's very similar.
Speaker 2:Where it's not similar is where you go from there. Each country has their own rules, their own regulations about how you can do things, and they're not the same as the US, and you've just got to be able to navigate. You've got to be able to know what you can and cannot do within the law. For example, in the UK for Brexit and I tell people this all the time and they're stunned you cannot do television. Political advertising is not permitted in the United Kingdom. So those are the kinds of things that, tactically, you've got to shift and you've got to bob and you've got to weave.
Speaker 1:Well, and so how do you compensate for that, Curiously, just in that particular case study, when you're doing Brexit, is it digital mail, radio, all of the above?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's high digital, high grassroots. I don't think they quite ever saw a ground game like we implemented in the United Kingdom. They're just not used to that. The idea of knocking on someone's door and providing them with literature somewhere in the UK is the British don't do that.
Speaker 2:They don't do that and it's not. But we had to change the way that people looked at this very differently and the Get Out the Vote program was really phenomenal. That is really what drove it. So the answer to your question is the fundamentals are there, but the tactical execution of it is quite different.
Speaker 1:You know it's interesting. You mentioned ground game because when we started the conversation kind of how you started that value of being on Capitol Hill, I would also say the value of being part of a ground game when you're young, knocking on doors which is the hardest form of cold calling, right? Because you're face-to-face with somebody, you're on their property, you're doing everything that your body and your mind tells you don't do this. This is uncomfortable, it could be dangerous, people are going to say no or worse. All of those things are critical towards, I think, successfully establishing your ability to honestly create a successful business, whether you are an employee or you're running it. It's key, right? I mean, it's sales 101.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is, and I think that that's also a really good point that you raised, justin, is that the ground experience is also something if someone wants to get involved in campaign management, you're not going to start by being the strategist. You're knocking on the doors, you're being rejected, you're hanging out literature and that is what you're doing. That's all changed because now you can do GPS micro-targeting and send teams right into a specific district where you know you're going to get either a favorable response or at least a neutral response and you can start talking. But yeah, just get in on the ground. It's a big, big part of the experience.
Speaker 1:One of the things that you also do is you do quite a bit of teaching, and I was wondering if you could share a little bit about, uh, what drives you there, uh, what you personally and professionally get out of it, because it takes more time than people imagine. Right, it's, it's a real commitment.
Speaker 2:It does I. I run campaigns and what again. We could have an entire podcast alone on the three-phased approach and most of my career. I just did it. Okay, here's phase one opinion, research, message, development, pre-planning, demographic, geographic breakdowns. Phase two is actually writing the plan, going tactically and then launching it's phase three what does paid advertising mean? What does programmatic mean? Digital, what are you doing? From phase one to phase three? And I just did it. But I'd write all these massive campaign plans for people that would map out the entire process from the day that I got hired to election day and I decided you know what? I'm going to just turn this into a class.
Speaker 2:And I started just doing it on my own and having clients ask me to do it. And then I was invited to give it a shot at Georgetown, where I think I'm on my fifth year now at Georgetown University and I absolutely love it. Like if I could do that in retirement, I would be absolutely thrilled. I just think people look, you see it yourself all the time. People just think that we're making stuff up when it comes. Oh, that's a great tagline, that's a great message.
Speaker 2:How did you get that message? That's a beautiful message and it just doesn't work that way, as you know, so I get a lot out of it. So I've been at Georgetown for five years now. I do a lot of international work. I'm at the British University in Georgia the country of Georgia, not Georgia and I go over there once a year to do lecturing. And places like Georgia are great because I'm talking to the youth who are waking up every day, thinking we have Russian soldiers literally on our border, and I try to tell them that you can change the world with guns and bullets, sure, and you probably need that to some extent, but here's a way, a path to get your message out the right way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that theme. I think you're exactly right. Most folks look at these things when they show up and they're digital and they show up on TV and say you know what I'm? So it's just a message and you're amplifying it and through volume you assume it's going to work. And that's not how effective messaging works. Right. It requires a deep interest into how people think and a respect that people don't think is blocks, that they are nuanced and sometimes there's what may appear to be cognitive dissonance on the outside right, but you've got to thread that needle. And how that message works goes right down to that. What appeals to people? Have you actually met them where they are, found out what drives them, what scares them, what their hopes are, and found a way to align that with your particular agenda? And it's not as easy as just falling out of bed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think it's something that you do very well. As easy as just falling out of bed, yeah, and I think it's something that you do very well. You know, you understand what I call the phase one, which is you dig pretty deep into the research and obviously we work together, which is absolutely crucial. And it's got to be and you know this, it's got to be quantitative and qualitative. It really does. And then people sometimes just want to skip that step. Well, let's just do a poll. Well, first of all, I have to remind people this is not polling, this is message development. That's actually far more sophisticated, and you've got to do both and it's something that you obviously have done quite well in your career.
Speaker 1:Thank you, it's very kind. I love this stuff, I really enjoy it, and the surprises are what matter, right, as you find that, that, that aha moment, the whys and so forth, and that's really you know, when you know you've got something that can be truly successful. You mentioned Georgia, the country Georgia, and I want to pivot into this because it's more personal, if you don't mind talking about it a little bit. How did you get involved in in Georgia? I know you're professionally involved, but you're also personally committed to Georgia. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:I can. I did a session for George Washington University, a three-day session, and they brought in international students who were studying in their school of political management their School of Political Management and there was a 30-something-year-old graduate student named Levon who approached me right after it and said this is really fascinating. I am associated with a university in Georgia, the country of Georgia, and it would be wonderful if you could do this lecture over here in Tbilisi. Much like you, you get these requests a lot and, frankly, most of them never really go anywhere. And he continued the path and flew me over to Tbilisi, georgia, and I did a week session there at his university, with young adults trying to understand how we do political management here and, frankly, more of getting your message out, particularly for the youth who are are, ironically, you know, pro-eu, which you look at a place like georgia and, yes, you know that I've done a lot of anti-EU stuff there actually is some rationale and maybe the EU is right for Georgia.
Speaker 1:A lot of investment right.
Speaker 2:A lot of investors, a lot of youth. What I didn't expect was to fall in love with the country, fall in love with the country and it's hard not to. It is stunningly beautiful, it has wineries, it has everything that you would expect from a classic Eastern European country whose history has been nothing but occupation Occupation right up to just up to 2000, when they've got their independence from what was the USSR. I mean it's, and their lifestyle is just. They just move on.
Speaker 1:If people have not visited Eastern Europe, any part of Eastern Europe, and I don't mean you know, hop, pop into Prague and spend a weekend. I mean actually going through and driving through or taking a train through and stopping in the towns that really aren't so much on the maps. It's just an education right. It is an extraordinary one when you realize what people went through. When you go to those towns they're the huge blocks of residences and still have all the hallmarks of communist creation right and sit down and have dinners with people and go out and go drinking and go do what they do, whatever it might be, and listen to them. It is extraordinary what people have endured and for the most part you know those stories are largely untold.
Speaker 2:That's a very good point, because you go to a city like Tbilisi and you literally can go to different parts of it and see the different historical parts of the city. There's one part that is stunning like because that was where the czar used to have a summer palace, and I'm talking a palace that is quite large. And then you go another six, seven blocks and you've got what would have been the Soviet Union, which looks stale, barren and dark, and then you have this vibrant city, post-russia occupation that is vibrant with youth, and those are the things that you're not going to see in Prague.
Speaker 1:Right, right, and it's exciting, it's truly exciting. I want to be respectful of your time, but I have one more question, jerry, okay, great, when you do this sort of thing, it takes an extraordinary amount of travel. You have people that you're working with, people you oversee, clients you're interacting with. These are huge demands on time and energy. How do you take care of yourself, how do you make sure that you're mentally healthy and all these sorts of things that allow you to perform at your peak.
Speaker 2:You have to have figured out some way of making travel easy and, by the way, it isn't easy, but that's the part that you really have got to sort out, because the travel can kill you.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you're going to go halfway around the world or all the way around the world and you lose the hours and you try to keep track of time, et cetera, you really need to take care of yourself on these trips and, frankly, try not to make it last more than three or four days. I know that sounds nuts, but you just try to get in, get your work done, do the meetings, do the dinners, do the post meeting, do the other dinner and then figure out the best way to get home. Meetings, do the dinners, do the post meeting, do the other dinner and then figure out the best way to get home and then, like all of us that are in the campaign environment and I tell this to all the people that are young in my office don't worry about it when there's nothing to do, when time is short, or when the office is quiet in November and December because there's no work, please take advantage of it, because I would.
Speaker 1:It is the time to strategize right.
Speaker 2:Yes, the time to strategize is the time to take a deep breath, and you've got to surround yourself with good people.
Speaker 1:Jerry Gunster, my friend, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you for sharing your experience. Truly, truly appreciate it.
Speaker 2:You are more than welcome. It was good to chat with you.
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.
