How do you have a life, run a business and run for office?

1. Birmingham Office North Carolina Office Page 1 of 3
P. O. Box 530986 14512 South Brent Drive
Birmingham, AL 35253 Huntersville, NC 28078
205-320-7512 704-875-7892
www.rosebaydp.com
Blog: http://rosebaydp.wordpress.com
The Citizen Legislator: Solving the Time Management Crunch.
How do you have a life, run a business and run for office?
The most perplexing issue associated with running for office is balance. In the new world order of the
24/7 news cycle, the prospective citizen legislator has to understand how to balance their time between
family, working for a living and running for office. Unless you have already achieved celebrity status
or you’re a million, billion or gazillionaire, it is critical to begin planning at least 18 months in advance
of your run. Challengers have an extreme knowledge gap because they have never been exposed to the
process and that puts them at a serious disadvantage to the incumbent. Both challengers and
incumbents tend to fall into the trap of waiting too late to begin execution of their plan and because of
the shortened time line they begin to focus only on money. This singular focus causes the process to
become tedious at best and most often painful, which negatively affects their demeanor and therefore
inhibits their ascension to leadership status. To project yourself as a candidate that has your life “wired
tight” you must spend time with family and friends, your business must remain successful and you
have to raise money and manage communications for the campaign in the 24/7 cycle.
If ever the expression, “the chicken or the egg” has meaning, this situation exemplifies it better than
any other. The citizen candidate must be able to maintain a rigid and disciplined schedule that will
insure balance is achieved over the run. As the cost of campaigns continues to escalate, a disciplined
schedule is the cornerstone to building a solid money raising machine that allows you to become better
known and more liked than the other guy or gal. Very rare is the individual that can do this without
assistance and good assistance requires money. So which comes first – the money or the assistance?
A well designed campaign plan requires three major pieces of work: 1) Daily time budget; 2) Fund
raising budget overlay; 3) Communications/Grassroots plan overlay. The design is only half the battle
because after you complete the design you actually have to implement it and run it on a daily basis.
The daily time budget must be viewed as flexible, because life always gets in the way, but all parties
must commit to the schedule and work diligently every day to stay on time. The daily time budget
must include family time, business time and campaign time for the candidate. Family time cannot be
discounted and must be a priority. Refueling the tanks is critical to maintaining energy and staying on
message and there is no better way to do this than to “get away” with your family and your friends.

2. Birmingham Office North Carolina Office Page 2 of 3
P. O. Box 530986 14512 South Brent Drive
Birmingham, AL 35253 Huntersville, NC 28078
205-320-7512 704-875-7892
www.rosebaydp.com
Blog: http://rosebaydp.wordpress.com
A candidate must have a keen understanding of how much money it will take to insure victory on
Election Day. Rule of thumb: Whatever the experts say it will cost to win, add 20%. Study of the cost
of previous races for the position and current cost trends is critical to projecting a realistic number.
After the candidate settles on the target, a daily collections budget has to be scheduled and it has to be
scheduled in the context of the campaigns Daily time budget. The easiest way to do this is to work
backwards from two weeks out from the election and spread the dollars evenly over your daily time
budget. The art is to gain understanding of how many emails, phone calls and face-to-face meetings it
will take to collect a certain amount of money, each and every day and maintain a family and business
life to boot.
The candidate must also understand how to manage communications at a grass roots level in the digital
world of the 24/7 cycle. To cover all the bases and grow the campaigns core constituency, the
candidate must build and maintain a presence on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter at a minimum to
ensure maximum coverage. Communications “Gaps” will kill the campaign as fast as any competitor,
meaning that if you build a presence and you do not have the team and infrastructure in place to
immediately respond to inquiry, you loose a vote and you expose the campaign to a loss of eight votes
per gap. A long time rule of customer service is that for every customer you hear from that is
dissatisfied; there are eight more that simply stop purchasing from you.
Implementing a system that works to achieve balance seems unachievable when one considers the
following statistics produced from recent campaigns managed by Rosebay Development Partners. For
every $1000 raised a candidate should expect to “touch” a target contributor an average of ten times.
Need $100,000 to win? At an incredible close rate of 50% you would need to touch 200 people (high
income individuals that could contribute $1,000) an average of 10 times each or 2,000 touches. At a
more realistic close rate of 30% you would need to touch over 300 people over 3,000 times. This does
not include standard campaign communications, time with your family or time on your business. The
question a candidate should ask after learning these statistics is, “Who is actually managing this
schedule and how are they managing it?” The simple math illustrates plainly that a single person
cannot possibly manage all these moving parts and still maintain balance.
A well defined customer relationship management (“CRM”) system, such as the one offered by
Rosebay offers a clear path to victory on Election Day. The definition of a “full-service” system is one
that offers one-stop shopping to resolve all of your time management issues, requires no major effort
by the campaign to set up, and has a very shallow learning curve. Internet based CRM services are
great as long as the campaign has someone other than the candidate that is expert in configuring,
deploying and operating that service. Every minute that a candidate is learning how to operate a piece
of technology is a minute that the candidate is NOT developing a personal relationship with a
constituent.
A consistent Winner is a person that achieves balance in their life. A Winner understands the art of
leadership and how to delegate “routine” to others. To achieve balance and be consistently effective,

3. Birmingham Office North Carolina Office Page 3 of 3
P. O. Box 530986 14512 South Brent Drive
Birmingham, AL 35253 Huntersville, NC 28078
205-320-7512 704-875-7892
www.rosebaydp.com
Blog: http://rosebaydp.wordpress.com
the citizen legislator must build a team that is dedicated to creating an environment that will focus the
candidate on relationships.
Based on the information presented a simple check list can be created when selecting your team:
How much collective experience does my team have in winning political campaigns?
How much collective experience does my team have in implementing large scale operations?
o Can they grow with me
o Do they have the experience to understand how to capitalize on a “Scott Brown”
moment
Does my prospective team possess templates for planning and budgeting or do we have to
create them from scratch?
Does my fund raising team own “best-in-class” technology infrastructure?
o Currently configured and operating CRM system
o Virtual desktop capabilities that I can rent per person per month
o Best-in-class email hosting capabilities
o Email integration to smart phones
o Web site hosting and development offering that are integrated to my email system
o Social networking integration tools
o Graphics design
Can the team provide me with intelligence on each prospective contributor?
Does the “system” have a learning curve?
o Is my team required to learn processing skills or technical skills (technical being bad)
o Is my consultant prepared to act as my coach
o Does my consultant have a background in “closing the deal”
Is the system focused on maximizing the number of daily meetings I have with contributors?
o Is the “touch” routine pre-configured
o Are the emails and phone reminders automated
o Are the emails personalized from me to the contributor
o Do the phone reminders have the ability to provide notes and review of previous
conversations
o Does the information flow straight to my smart phone
o Does the system track every interaction I have with a contributor
Can a single member of the team manage all of my social networking activities?