Transcendent Listening: How Understanding Different Perspectives Can Drive Change with Leslie Crutchfield

Evan Meyer welcomes, Leslie Crutchfield. Leslie is a social impact strategist, author, educator, speaker, and authority on CSR, ESG, and social change. She serves as Executive Director of Georgetown University’s Business for Impact at the McDonough School of Business, and she teaches courses on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Nonprofit Leadership and Social Movements.

Meyerside Chats seeks to eliminate the “us and them” narrative and toxic polarization by striving to create virtuous community leadership and authentic conversation.  The intent is to showcase the humanity in those that take on the often thankless jobs of public service through civil discourse, and honoring differing points of view.

Leslie Crutchfield

Leslie is an author, educator, social change expert and Executive Director of Business for Impact at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Business for Impact is founded on the belief is that companies can be a powerful force for good in the world, and delivers world-class education, student experience, and cross-sector collaborations for people, planet and profit.

Leslie’s latest book is How Change Happens: Why Some Movements Succeed While Others Don’t, noted in The New York Review of Books as a blueprint for groups inspired to take action on today’s major causes. Leslie also co-authored the bestselling Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits – recognized by The Economist on its Best Books of the Year list – and Do More than Give. She teaches corporate social responsibility in Georgetown’s MBA program and nonprofit leadership on LinkedIn Learning.

Leslie previously was managing director at Ashoka, the global venture fund for social entrepreneurs, and co-founded a national nonprofit social enterprise in her 20s. Leslie has contributed to Fortune, Forbes, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, and Stanford Social Innovation Review, and has appeared on programs such as ABC, FOX, NPR and PBS. She has volunteered on SEED Foundation and Kiva’s boards and with Crossroads Africa.

About Evan Meyer

Evan is the Founder of BeautifyEarth.com, a tech platform and marketplace that speed tracks the urban beautification process through art, as well as the original 501(c)3 sister organization and public charity that beautifies schools in the communities that need it most. Beautify has now facilitated thousands of murals around the planet, working with hundreds of communities, community organizations, cities and national brands.

He is also the Founder of RideAmigos.com, a tech platform that optimizes commuter travel and behavior through intelligent programs and analytics for governments, large enterprises, and universities, serving many regions across the US.

As a civic leader in the City of Santa Monica, he is the past Chairman of his neighborhood (Ocean Park), giving residents a voice in the public process, as well as helping the City of Santa Monica with innovative, actionable ways of civic engagement.

Podcast Highlights

Summary Keywords

Companies for good, How Change Happens, Movements, Forces for Good, High-Impact Nonprofits, Corporate social responsibility, Nonprofit leadership, Same-sex marriage, Gun rights movement, Climate change, Transcendent listening, Listening with empathy, Middle ground, Divisiveness, social media, Truth initiative, behavior change, social marketing

[00:00:00] Evan Meyer: Thank you for joining another exciting episode of Meyers side chats today. I am grateful to have Leslie Crutchfield with us. Leslie is an author, educator, and social change expert and executive director of business for impact at Georgetown University McDonough School of Business for impact is founded on the belief that companies can be a powerful force for good in the world.

[00:00:22] Evan Meyer: And delivers world class education, student experience, and cross sector collaborations for people, planet, and profit. Leslie’s latest book is How Change Happens. Why some movements succeed while others don’t. Got it right here. And it is an amazing book, highly recommended. And it’s been noted in the New York review of books as a blueprint for groups inspired to take action on today’s major causes.

[00:00:47] Evan Meyer: Leslie also coauthored the bestselling Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits, recognized by the economist on its best books of the year list and do more than give. She [00:01:00] teaches corporate social responsibility in Georgetown’s MBA program and nonprofit leadership on LinkedIn learning.

[00:01:06] Evan Meyer: Leslie previously was the managing director at Ashoka, the global venture fund for social entrepreneurs and co founded a national nonprofit social enterprise in her twenties. She’s contributed to fortune Forbes, chronicle of philanthropy and Stanford social innovation review. And has appeared on programs such as ABC, Fox, NPR, PBS.

[00:01:26] Evan Meyer: She’s volunteered on SEED Foundation and Kiva’s boards and with the Crossroads Africa. She holds an MBA and BA from Harvard. Leslie it is an honor to have you here today. Nice to see you.

[00:01:40] Leslie Crutchfield: Great to be here, Evan, enjoying the cozy Meyerside chat format.

[00:01:46] Evan Meyer: It is cozy. It is cozy. And we’re actually, we’re live today from Sedona.

[00:01:53] Evan Meyer: Funny enough beautiful place to be doing doing this. I feel energized spiritually and lifted [00:02:00] enlightened. But I have this wonderful book here that I just finished reading and having you on a chat about it is awesome. It is such an important book for a lot of reasons. It is inspiring.

[00:02:15] Evan Meyer: It is informative, can give people a blueprint of how to think about movements that they’re really passionate about. And I think that’s amazing. You’ve really dissected a number of different causes and on all sides of the aisle, which is super impressive that you’ve been able to do this with such impartiality.

[00:02:38] Evan Meyer: So I’d love to understand a little bit, just to kick things off. Like how did you, it’s very hard to do that. You’ve take you’ve I was looking for bias and I couldn’t find any and I was really impressed. So how did you write this book without being able to put pervasive language in there that would [00:03:00] skew people’s thinking towards a political stance.

[00:03:03] Leslie Crutchfield: Thanks so much Evan for having me here and really excited to dive in. I think the impartiality approach to the book really was just easy to do because we really didn’t set out to prove a political point of view or a political ideology. We really wanted to understand how change happens. So we started out by saying, what are some big changes that have occurred in the 21st century?

[00:03:34] Leslie Crutchfield: In our lifetimes, in the last couple of decades what are the big impacts? For better or for worse, depending on your political view or your social view. But undeniably these changes have happened. So we grounded our research in truth and fact, first of all. So here’s some big changes that have happened in the 2000s and the 2010s.

[00:03:57] Leslie Crutchfield: Big changes in America. People in [00:04:00] America have pretty much stopped smoking. Smoking rates are under 15% for adults, under 6% for youth. Gen Z might be the generation that ends smoking cigarettes for good. We’re gonna leave viping aside because with movements, it’s whack a mole. One thing starts, another thing stops.

[00:04:18] Leslie Crutchfield: You gotta keep at it. That’s a change that has happened. We wanted to understand how and why that change happened. Millions of lives saved, hundreds of millions of people that would have been suffering from smoking and tobacco use related diseases averted because of the tobacco control movement.

[00:04:37] Leslie Crutchfield: Another big change that’s happened in our lifetimes. LGBT marriage. We have same sex marriage now. Today is the law of the land. At the start of the 21st century, we had DOMA, we had a federal law, the Defense of Marriage Act, banning same sex marriage. We had 13 states with ballot referendums underway trying to never [00:05:00] allow gay marriage.

[00:05:01] Leslie Crutchfield: So that has flipped in our lifetimes. And another big change has happened. The gun rights movement has massively expanded its footprint. There are more gun shops in America than McDonald’s and Starbucks combined. We have access. We can stockpile assault weapons. We can have private citizens owning and using firearms.

[00:05:26] Leslie Crutchfield: The movement and the organized by the NRA, the National Rifle Association has been very successful in expanding the right to own and use firearms. We also looked at the movements that are countering those things. Why has gun control not been able to gain as much ground as the gun rights movement?

[00:05:48] Leslie Crutchfield: We looked at climate, a big change that happened at the turn of the century was we solved acid rain in North America. We got the sulfur out of our atmosphere, but climate, carbon [00:06:00] reduction, we’re not making as much progress on that. Why? So we looked at first of all just the facts, what’s changed, what hasn’t.

[00:06:08] Leslie Crutchfield: Depending if you love it or you hate it. And then how did it happen? So we looked at the movements and we talked to the leaders and we talked to grassroots participants and funders and journalists and anybody could give us a view and how it happened. And that’s how we ended up writing the book.

[00:06:26] Evan Meyer: Yeah. It’s almost the opposite of a lot of the mainstream journalism that’s out there today, which made it so refreshing to see it in this way. It’s difficult to do. So it’s commend worthy. But one of the things you were saying why didn’t some of them succeed?

[00:06:44] Evan Meyer: And one of the things I remember resonated with me, especially around the LGBTQ movement was that they changed their language, right? They changed. They, instead of coming with a why we need rights, they came with why from a [00:07:00] standpoint of love for all of us, right? And made people relate to their situation, even if they weren’t LGBTQ.

[00:07:10] Leslie Crutchfield: Exactly that was a real pivotal moment in the history of the LGBT movement.

[00:07:18] Leslie Crutchfield: Because you’re right. Back starting in the 60s and the 70s, you had stonewall, you had protests, marches, the need to recognize LGBT community members and the rights that they had, they were being discriminated against, they couldn’t get jobs they couldn’t be open with their relationships getting bullied, getting beat up many states had laws in the books that made these relationships illegal, right?

[00:07:41] Leslie Crutchfield: By the time the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same sex marriage in 2015 in that landmark case, the view, the attitude, the norm across most of America, not all of America, had started to shift, right? And how did that happen? Leaders in [00:08:00] the same sex marriage equality movement Freedom to Marry was one of the kind of coalitions driving a lot of the change, working with a big spectrum of NGO and advocacy organizations.

[00:08:13] Leslie Crutchfield: And they started to do some research. This goes back right to the turn of the century, the turn of the 21st century, back when we had DOMA in the early 2000s, and all these states were trying to ban gay marriage. And the LGBT movement was really, they were up against the ropes we’re losing right?

[00:08:30] Leslie Crutchfield: And at that moment, gay marriage didn’t look inevitable like we talked about it after the fact, it looked impossible. So they started really trying to understand where most of people in America were at, right? So not just talking to their own camp, and they started to map out.

[00:08:50] Leslie Crutchfield: In America, you can think of a bell curve, right? And at one end of the bell curve, you might have 10, 20% of the population that’s in the movement. They do [00:09:00] identify as LGBT. They support this, even though there’s a lot of contention, even within the community, about whether they should have full marriage, because there was dissension in the ranks.

[00:09:09] Leslie Crutchfield: A lot of members of the community said, we don’t want to be like straight people. We don’t want to use their norms. We want something different. But, on the other end of that bell curve, would be the far right. People who, under no uncertain circumstances, would never accept LGBT marriage, lifestyle, anything.

[00:09:28] Leslie Crutchfield: Religious conservatives, political conservatives, ideologically, fundamentally opposed to the very notion. On those two ends of the bell curve, that left about 80% of America that was in what Evan Wolfson, the founder of the Freedom to Marry described as the persuadable middle, but about 80% of people that were not hardcore for not hardcore against just didn’t know.

[00:09:52] Leslie Crutchfield: And so they started talking to that 80% of America, polling all different kinds of polls done and they would ask [00:10:00] questions like, okay, you’re a straight person. Why did you get married? I got married because I want to be married under the eyes of God. We want to raise our children. We’re in love.

[00:10:10] Leslie Crutchfield: We got married because we’re in love. And then another question in the poll would be, okay, then why do you think a gay person might want to get married? Number one answer in the 2000’s, early 2000’s. Why do you think Evan people said?

[00:10:27] Evan Meyer: For financial benefit.

[00:10:29] Leslie Crutchfield: Financial benefit or can I visit my partner in the hospital if they’re sick?

[00:10:35] Evan Meyer: Oh hospital. Yeah

[00:10:36] Leslie Crutchfield: So right those were answers, but that was not the number one answer the number one answer in the early 2000s of why a straight person thought a gay person might want to get married was this, I don’t know why do they want to get married. I never thought about it. I really don’t know.

[00:10:56] Leslie Crutchfield: And that’s when the light bulb went off for the LGBT [00:11:00] advocates. They’re like, we want to get married because we’re in love. Just like different sex couples. We’re in love. We want to have kids and we want to be married in our church in the eyes of God. We want all the things that the different sex couples, we’re no different.

[00:11:12] Leslie Crutchfield: Except for obviously the gender identity of our partner. So that’s when the shift happened. And so all of the social media and the advocacy and the activism, the messaging, the narrative became about love. And so instead of marching in the streets and demanding that you recognize my rights, you were discriminating against me, which is an oppositional frame. We’re in love. You’re in love. Who’s against love. And so there’s this pivotal moment and described in a great book. If you want to read more about this movement called winning marriage by Mark Solomon, where he describes this moment where the advocates have got set up a meeting between then vice president Joe Biden and two men that had a family they were raising out in California.

[00:11:57] Leslie Crutchfield: And it was this very, personal interaction [00:12:00] and Biden is describes getting to meet these two kids. And of course, when the two kids come in he lights up. And he’s talking to them about Champ, his German shepherd, and he gives them stuffed animals. Biden likes to give stuffed animals. And he just was like, look at this beautiful family.

[00:12:15] Leslie Crutchfield: How can you be against this? And so it was these intimate, one on one, very personal moments that added up to a movement. Again, using love as the channel between these sides that otherwise were either in opposition or just ignorance about the whole thing.

[00:12:38] Evan Meyer: And in this case it happened to be about love specifically because it’s about marriage.

[00:12:43] Evan Meyer: Yes in many cases. It may not be necessarily love but just reframing it for people in a way they understand that they can relate to or identifying that the thing, like you said, they just never even thought about it. It opened, it was [00:13:00] like their mind exploded in a sense with the possible, I can’t even believe it’s possible that they would have some way of loving each other.

[00:13:09] Evan Meyer: Like they just didn’t ever thought about it. They didn’t know it’s not an act. It wasn’t an active conversation they’ve had with anyone or themselves or whatever. So that’s, and I think that’s a really good way of looking at a lot of issues and, another one of these. Reasons that you’ve given is transcend transcendent listening.

[00:13:30] Evan Meyer: And Fred Krupp from the Environmental Defense Fund President, I actually have a little may I read a short snippet from the book around how he was inspired here? Okay, Krupp was influenced by the writings and just for a little background for people this, he was responsible for putting forth the cap and trade in regards to [00:14:00] hot acid rain was the main reason for that which has been very successful and it was because he listened to the needs of the people that he needed to come to think about how to reduce the impact that they were creating right and those were businesses and they created a business model type program that they can participate in without necessarily just scolding them and putting do I have that right?

[00:14:25] Leslie Crutchfield: Yeah. They were trying to set the context for this passage that I think you’re going to read out. The Environmental Defense Fund understood that they’re an environmental advocacy NGO, right? But they’re talking to scientists. They’re talking to economists. They’re trying to understand businesses that are doing the emissions of sulfur that’s contributing to the acid rain.

[00:14:50] Leslie Crutchfield: So in this piece talks about how they really tried to understand the point of view of each of these stakeholder groups before coming up with a solution.

[00:14:58] Evan Meyer: That’s right. That’s [00:15:00] right. Okay. The most important thing is to really get into their shoes and understand their view points. Listening doesn’t really explain it.

[00:15:07] Evan Meyer: The word transcend comes to mind and I’m going to jump down and Krupp was influenced by the writings of Jesuit theologian, Father John Dunn. Explored the phenomenon of passing over, deliberately entering into the experience of others and understanding what they believe with complete empathy. Passing over as a shifting of standpoint or going over to the standpoint of another culture, another way of life, another religion.

[00:15:32] Evan Meyer: It is followed by an equal and opposite process, we might call coming back with a new insight to one’s own culture, one’s own way of life, one’s own religion. Done practice passing over with people who held religious beliefs different from his far from dissolving his own religious commitment.

[00:15:48] Evan Meyer: He held that this practice helped him see his own beliefs more clearly. That’s beautiful. It’s beautiful because you think you’re going to come out like it. And you don’t, you can either go in with an argument or you can [00:16:00] go in with transcendent listening and come out with insights to support your own belief, but understand the bigger picture better.

[00:16:07] Leslie Crutchfield: Exactly. And it’s so easy to respect that process. It’s very hard to do because you have to suspend your own belief ideology. Don was a Jesuit theologian. This practiced a lot in the Jesuit tradition. I work at Georgetown University is where I teach and it’s a Jesuit institution.

[00:16:28] Leslie Crutchfield: If you’re a Jesuit or Catholic, you might think it’s odd to spend a lot of time studying Judaism. Might that convert you to this other belief system? In fact. No, by really understanding their beliefs, their rituals, what’s influencing, it affirms your own beliefs and also gives you greater understanding of someone who’s very different coming from a different place.

[00:16:50] Leslie Crutchfield: So I think this is a hallmark of great leaders and that the successful leaders that we studied in our movements research [00:17:00] and I would say across the board and nonprofit business, public service the ability to listen and then listen with empathy to the other side, withhold judgment for a moment, understand where they’re coming from, and then bring that back.

[00:17:19] Leslie Crutchfield: Sometimes you might change your mind. Sometimes you might harden your point of view, but you’ll have a deeper understanding of where the other person’s coming from. And it’s that listening with empathy, I think that is hard to do and are these successful movement leaders really mastered this?

[00:17:37] Leslie Crutchfield: When you go back to the LGBT same sex marriage. Equality movement they were saying okay, we’re going to really listen to where to non gay people where are you at on this? We’re not trying to convert you to become a member of the LGBT community. Our goal is can we persuade you to be open to the possibility of allowing us to marry [00:18:00] too just like straight people, right?

[00:18:01] Leslie Crutchfield: And by really listening and understanding this, Aha moment of love sparked and then they carried it through and they did this in really I think sophisticated and creative ways everything from one campaign in Massachusetts, you had Massachusetts, which had passed a marriage bill and then Romney and the Catholic Church and a lot of conservatives were trying to repeal the right to marriage for same sex couples up in Massachusetts back in the early part of this 21st century and so they took this message of love and they put it out they made this ad and now up in Massachusetts, you have to realize there’s two religions.

[00:18:40] Leslie Crutchfield: You got Catholicism and hockey, ice hockey, right? So they found these two hockey moms that were raising their son who happened to be like a state champ. And the odd’s all about them getting up at five in the morning freezing their butts off at practices to get the rink time just like the straight parents, right?

[00:18:58] Leslie Crutchfield: And then they’re celebrating the big [00:19:00] win on the ice and they’re using air quotes they’re normalizing these families are just like the other families, right? Or another creative approach that got some controversy in the LGBT activism community was they’d have a chat like this with a guy, a straight guy who’s an uncle.

[00:19:18] Leslie Crutchfield: And he’s talking about how his nephew wants to marry his male partner. And the uncle’s, coming around to it. He’s I think about it. Like I want him to have what me and his aunt have. Love and commitment. We want to have kids and I want them to have what I have and the protagonist in these videos are straight people.

[00:19:36] Leslie Crutchfield: So then some people in the LGBT community were like, why are we doing videos of straight people? We’re the ones that are being discriminated against. And it’s no, if you want to convince straight 80% of that bell curve in America. You need somebody who looks and talks like them that they can identify with and then they’ll once they are they can hear the message, right?

[00:19:59] Leslie Crutchfield: They’re more [00:20:00] open to it. So you and it gets into having to sublimate your own ego. It’s not about you being in the video, right? Or you you have to be several steps beyond that. Tobacco control and anti smoking is also another great example. If you want to talk about other movements that have really understood their audiences, their target audiences and then developed content that speaks to them in a really effective way.

[00:20:26] Evan Meyer: Do you think you do you think that this approach can help? I’ll say this in many of the conversations that i’ve had I have it’s been repeated that listening is one of the main things active listening. Empathy, right these words when you’re having conversations before you’re about to divorce your family for their political beliefs try to come from this place, right or when you’re going to council meetings and public comment or you’re at any of these different commissions or neighborhood meetings [00:21:00] or wherever that you’re voicing your opinion or you’re there to active listen but it has been the common theme and i’m wondering how to get that message out to people because it seems like if movements can succeed on this, right?

[00:21:14] Evan Meyer: This is also something that we talk about in like relationships in general being able whether it’s your partner or close friends or family, whatever Is there a way to use this or how can we use it? More effectively in the political realm to bridge divides and at least reduce toxicity so people can have meaningful conversations and at least respect the differences of political beliefs even when they’re on different sides

[00:21:44] Evan Meyer: of the aisle.

[00:21:45] Leslie Crutchfield: Hope so. Absolutely and I think that there are possibilities I think a couple things your whole series here is really focused on this increasingly intensified and [00:22:00] divisive moment that we’re in with our society here in America, all around the world. And, we’ve gone from warring parties that have lots of disagreements over policy, over approach, that now it’s the parties don’t just disagree they think the other side is actively trying to hurt America and they hate the other side, right?

[00:22:24] Leslie Crutchfield: So it’s not agree to disagree it’s you’re wrong, I’m right and you are not only wrong, you’re trying to do bad things to the country and we don’t trust you and your view is not legitimate, right? So that’s where we’re at as too well and one thing that I think the transcendent listening approach requires is like camps on both sides of any issue have to engage in it, right?

[00:22:48] Leslie Crutchfield: It’s not just you could take let’s take, you often hear on the left the political left in America, but they don’t understand, where all of the MAGA support [00:23:00] movement people are coming from and it’s like they haven’t necessarily walked in their shoes lived in these communities. Faced these challenges and you could take the time to understand that the same time the people on the right need to be able to do that for it.

[00:23:16] Leslie Crutchfield: The progressives on the left and obviously that’s not happening right now to a large degree. So both sides have to be ready.

[00:23:25] Evan Meyer: Yeah, and I guess one of the things that I think about is also to forget about when you’re engaging that you almost have to forget about the extremes like you have to, I think people need to remember.

[00:23:40] Evan Meyer: Or at least the approach that I take is a lot of the stuff you’re seeing is an opportunity for companies to get you to like and click and algorithms that put controversial content. Everyone seems to know this seems to be almost common knowledge that algorithms are showing you what in your filter bubbles, right?

[00:23:56] Evan Meyer: You’re seeing the same stuff that gets you to keep liking and clicking. [00:24:00] There’s ads being sold to you because the more you’re on there. There was a quote, someone said it, I won’t shout out the name but it was a famous person said our only competitor is sleep. And it was a media company.

[00:24:13] Evan Meyer: So when you’re thinking about all right, so then how are you going to make money and it’s on ads and that’s the goal. But we know this, like we understand this is the issue but we continue to embrace extreme viewpoints that are on Facebook that are from sources that are not verified a friend sent it to you and even verified sources even the best of these publications are putting out things to get you to read it.

[00:24:37] Evan Meyer: And I just think there’s such a middle ground. We forget to focus on that middle ground. Like you said before, the 80% of the people in the middle.

[00:24:46] Leslie Crutchfield: Here’s the operative word here that we got to be cognizant of is you said we know this intellectually, we know the algorithms are pushing us more divisive stuff but here’s the thing we know in [00:25:00] marketing, psychology, behavioral economics, we are governed by our reptile brains, right?

[00:25:08] Leslie Crutchfield: There’s that deep in our brain cord back there these very visceral emotional reactions. And they take over so when you’re on your Facebook page and see something that elicits a really strong emotional reaction we know that the likes and the shares get the highest activity on the angry, hostile, incendiary drama. We’ve known forever of media, if it bleeds, it leads.

[00:25:34] Leslie Crutchfield: Like trolls in there. Yeah, that is that gets your blood pressure up that gives you an emotional reaction. In this case, it’s cortisol, it’s adrenaline, it’s anger. And so you’re going to exponentially share that out more because it’s triggered an emotion, right? Anything that’s blah, not exciting.

[00:25:56] Leslie Crutchfield: Tops that anger and emotion [00:26:00] gets amplified way out of proportion to the actual number of people for instance that might truly hold that view. So that’s one fact that happens. And and then you’ve got, as you were alluding to nefarious actors that have outside of the US that have interest in US sowing discord trying to overthrow the government trying to elect. Someone like the former president Trump, who was more friendly towards Russia. It’s in foreign actors interest to have us be doing those things. So that gets accelerated and so even though we know as you said in America we’re not dumb like we know but we can’t override our reptile brains.

[00:26:43] Leslie Crutchfield: So that the antidote is how do you make content that is truthful is productive leading to civil discourse, equally emotionally exciting, right? But in another way. So I think about some of these other [00:27:00] movements like tobacco control for instance the anti smoking movement.

[00:27:06] Leslie Crutchfield: Was up against some pretty powerful forces. The tobacco industry, huge billions and billions in revenue. They owned all the mad men marketing advertising agencies on Madison Avenue up in New York. They employed all the lobbyists on K street. Every tobacco growing state had a vested economic interest in keeping people smoking.

[00:27:27] Leslie Crutchfield: So billions of dollars in money and politics tied up. It’s a formidable force. Beyond that, the advocates not only had to combat and work against these powerful industry interests. The norm, the attitudes around smoking in the previous century 70s, 80s. Smoking’s cool, smoking’s sexy. They were fighting Marlboro Man and Joe Camel, right?

[00:27:54] Leslie Crutchfield: There’s sociological research and poor black and brown communities of kids. [00:28:00] Joe Camel has higher name recognition in some of these communities than Mickey Mouse or Santa Claus, right? Like the marketing is pervasive and so how do you detangle smoking from these alluring sexy images? So when you look at the truth initiative and a lot of the campaigns coming out of the tobacco control movement coordinated by a coalition with Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids at the Center.

[00:28:25] Leslie Crutchfield: They were trying to put out ads that would combat young people’s interest and acceptance of smoking. So how did they do it? It goes back to our conversation before about really listening. The creators of these tobacco control ads spent a lot of time really understanding attitudes opinions of millennials.

[00:28:46] Leslie Crutchfield: Gen Z. What do you care about? What are the psychographics of these young people? And they first of all know that young people aren’t going to listen to adults telling them what to do. I have three kids. The [00:29:00] best way to get one of my sons to do something that’s dangerous is to tell him not to do it and it’s dangerous.

[00:29:07] Leslie Crutchfield: Number one way to get them to try it, right? So they did all this research and they came out with there’s a really popular social media thing that just went viral in a nanosecond around cats, right? And stupid cats doing silly things and costumes the typical YouTube addictive stuff and and the punchline is secondhand smoke can kill the pet.

[00:29:31] Leslie Crutchfield: Smoking equals no stupid cat videos. The punchline for the young people is not you shouldn’t smoke. You’re not going to have a cat and cat videos if you smoke. And that gets them where they care, right? Where they’re at, got it. And so you got to go and kids don’t care about their own health.

[00:29:50] Leslie Crutchfield: So and they got three things right in these videos the ones that have been very effective. One, they got the right message, right? The message isn’t [00:30:00] you shouldn’t smoke, smoking is bad for you. Smoking could hurt your pet. Kids care a lot about their pets, right? Message the thing they got right.

[00:30:08] Leslie Crutchfield: Number two is they had the right messenger in these. It was the cats it wasn’t a mom wagging her finger. It wasn’t a doctor in a lab coat, nobody in authority there weren’t even any people in these videos it’s just cats. And then the third thing is they had the right medium so of course tweens, teens are on consuming all their media on social media YouTube these days, right?

[00:30:31] Leslie Crutchfield: Right message, right messenger, right medium. And of course, these homespun looking… kitchen table made type videos had millions of dollars of research that went behind them to make them look so quaint, right? And so you’ve got to fight fire with fire in these movements. And in the case of smoking, you were up against these really sophisticated advertising forces.

[00:30:58] Leslie Crutchfield: And all of the movements that we studied [00:31:00] by the way found ways to tap into emotions to move people in the direction of their cause.

[00:31:08] Evan Meyer: And I guess that’s similar to thinking I suppose in that way is important you’ve mentioned and you show how they’re very similar for businesses or social causes the way that you need to get two people have an audience the right audience the right medium right is very similar for a business If you’re trying to get some like the idea of meeting somewhere where they’re at to buy something or to change their heart.

[00:31:34] Leslie Crutchfield: Yeah. And it’s all marketing. There’s different kinds of marketing. So in business you’ve got commercial marketing in social change world we call it social marketing. But it’s all about your marketing to get somebody to change a behavior. So in business, if it’s soda and you’re Pepsi, you’re trying to get people to not drink Coke and drink Pepsi, right?

[00:31:55] Leslie Crutchfield: You’re trying to get, you’re trying to convince a consumer to switch over. Or if they’re [00:32:00] younger you’re trying to get them to… Be loyal to your brand once they start making their own purchases right? So you’re it’s a lot about switching. The behavior is to not choose that brand and use this different brand.

[00:32:12] Leslie Crutchfield: And there’s lots of tools within marketing’s toolkit to do that. You can lower the price. You can get a celebrity, like Cardi B to be your spokesperson and up the brand, right? There’s all things you can do to get people to make that behavior change. In social marketing, in the world of public health and trying to have people do things that benefit their health, like not smoke or wear a condom so they don’t get STDs or whatever the behavior is.

[00:32:40] Leslie Crutchfield: You’re marketing them to choose a different behavior. To either stop smoking or never pick up a cigarette, right? Drunk driving was one of the big movements that we studied. We’ve dramatically cut drunk driving death and injury rates in half in America with the ascent of the Mothers Against Drunk Driving movement.[00:33:00]

[00:33:00] Leslie Crutchfield: And a big part of that was really trying to tap into getting people to change their behavior never get behind a wheel, right? So one of their marketing campaigns that went viral way before we had the internet because this was like back in the 90s, was adopting the friends don’t let friends drive drunk idea, right?

[00:33:20] Leslie Crutchfield: So putting it on friends, the accountability of each other and it was an easy action to do. Friends take the keys, come up with a designated driver.

[00:33:31] Evan Meyer: I say that for all sorts of things. It was that good. I still just say that for all sorts of things about what friends. Shouldn’t let friends do.

[00:33:39] Leslie Crutchfield: Now they didn’t come up with that.

[00:33:41] Leslie Crutchfield: It was a Canadian marketing agency that came up with the Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk slogan, but MADD made it happen and this connects to another piece of our research, which is because Mothers Against Drunk Driving or MADD had chapters all around the country, grassroots community based chapters.[00:34:00]

[00:34:00] Leslie Crutchfield: It was really easy for them to go person to person at a very visceral local level with these messages. Fast forward to today obviously a lot of this is happening on social media and can happen more instantaneously.

[00:34:13] Evan Meyer: So in part of this, there’s this triple bottom line thing that everyone loves to talk about.

[00:34:19] Evan Meyer: And as a business we all strive towards triple bottom line, or at least people say that they do different companies now that part of that is purpose. Every company now seems to or many companies seem to adopt some form of purpose. Is there really do to identify with people’s causes?

[00:34:39] Evan Meyer: I suppose it’s part of a market share conversation, but it’s also doing good for things they believe you hope their values are aligned with their actions. Do you think that the triple bottom line business in thinking, are there enough tools and resources and can hearts and mind change enough [00:35:00] and make enough money for the businesses can make enough money to solve some of the real serious stuff we have going on, the homelessness crisis and mental illness and fentanyl and obesity.

[00:35:12] Evan Meyer: There’s a nice section in there about obesity and what it takes to change how complex that is and what it can the rules of this book transcendent listening and triple bottom line businesses who can all because ultimately if you can make, there is a lot if you can make money on it and build an ecosystem in a way that people can profit.

[00:35:33] Evan Meyer: You’ve got a real self perpetuating mechanism for change. Can it be used to solve some of these really pervasive issues that we’re seeing right now in the country?

[00:35:43] Leslie Crutchfield: I think it’s a really interesting question because first of all, business whether you’re a sustainable business trying to do right by people on the planet or you’re not business is having an impact on all these issues. Climate, our health, [00:36:00] obesity, everything, right?

[00:36:02] Leslie Crutchfield: And businesses can be part of the solution just like they can and are part of the problem. So I think two separate issues. I think for Georgetown McDonough we think a lot about sustainability and the triple bottom line as doing well by doing good.

[00:36:21] Leslie Crutchfield: So it’s not make a lot of money over here, sell the more the most stuff you can at the cheapest price at the highest margin and then give it away in philanthropy over here, right? Like a 1% most companies in America give a little less than 1% away and in kind at cash donations by the way. It’s a relatively small share in America and but when you’re truly sustainable trying to meet the triple bottom line of the needs of people.

[00:36:51] Leslie Crutchfield: Meaning your workers, the communities where you market and sell your stuff and the planet and still retain [00:37:00] profitability. You’re trying to do that all at once, right? Rather than after the fact giving it away. I think for big pro, one of the beauties of market-based solutions they do exist to some problems.

[00:37:13] Leslie Crutchfield: So let’s go back to the issue of acid rain which we solved in North America versus carbon and global warming which we’re facing now globally obviously. When Krupp was doing that transit transcendent listening that we were talking about before they were talking to not just environmentalists and citizens who were suffering because our lakes were dead.

[00:37:39] Leslie Crutchfield: There was no fish up in the Great Lakes, right? The every time it rained in parts of the Midwest and up into Canada. Our car paint was peeling the monuments outside were crumbling from this acid rain so there was real effects of this happening and so the environmental community was saying we want to stop this but let’s [00:38:00] understand where are all the stakeholders in this problem and the primary emitters of sulfur were these manufacturing plants, these companies.

[00:38:09] Leslie Crutchfield: So they spent the Environmental Advocates for Environmental Defense Funds spent a lot of time talking to business leaders, what would it take to reduce overall emissions? And the answer is we’re businesses. We compete, so make us compete to lower sulfur. So that’s where this, this policy innovation of cap trade and then cap it came in.

[00:38:29] Leslie Crutchfield: They said, okay. We’ll let businesses produce a certain amount of sulfur emissions and then we’ll cap it. Everybody has to stay below this cap. And if you can’t stay below the cap, then you’ve got to trade, right? And so it created a market. And in the end, instead of taxing the sulfur doing something after the fact businesses themselves lowered their sulfur emissions much more quickly than was projected by the economists and the EPA.

[00:38:58] Leslie Crutchfield: Because it was a race to the bottom, right? They [00:39:00] wanted to compete and it worked. Now, the cap and trade solution was proposed for carbon in the Waxman Markey bill passed the House but died in the Senate under Obama administration. And there’s a lot of other reasons for that.

[00:39:16] Leslie Crutchfield: It wasn’t the policy solution. In this case, it goes to the environmental movement. It really wasn’t I didn’t have the force at the grassroots level to hold the elected officials accountable to get that all the way through so but that’s another part of the conversation if you want to go there.

[00:39:34] Evan Meyer: Yeah they’re I guess just since you’re bringing it back to cap and trade there are mechanisms like that if they can be thought of I’m hopeful and I do believe it’s possible.

[00:39:45] Evan Meyer: I just think it’s difficult. That took thousands of years of human development to realize that you can do something like that. And at least hundreds of years in this country to get to that solution which could be used for if you can think in that [00:40:00] sort of way maybe it can be used for those causes.

[00:40:04] Leslie Crutchfield: Now, to your question about can we adopt more sustainable practices, how can you make money and do the right thing by people or the planet? And I think one of the problems is there’s so much of our vested interests are stuck in the system as we have it now, right?

[00:40:23] Leslie Crutchfield: A soda company can try and reduce the amount of plastic in its single use plastic bottles and use EV vehicle emissions to distribute them to their vending machines and convenience stores and fast food franchises, etc. Overall, we’re still dependent on these individual servings of plastic, right?

[00:40:45] Leslie Crutchfield: And yes you can ban all the straws or try and do cardboard straws, which helps the oceans but it’s not getting at the fundamental consumer kind of system everybody’s operating on.

[00:40:57] Evan Meyer: So can it be used to solve [00:41:00] homelessness mental illness drug addiction?

[00:41:03] Leslie Crutchfield: Let’s just take the last thing drug addiction.

[00:41:05] Leslie Crutchfield: So if you look at the opioid crisis obviously you can certainly point to some of the origins of where we got now is from business, right? The Sacklers, Purdue not just producing a pain blocking or pain reducing medicine but really aggressively going out into vulnerable communities, marketing it and knowing the addictive properties making it widely available.

[00:41:34] Leslie Crutchfield: Obviously there’s physicians that are prescribing it pharmacists that are distributing it government that’s subsidizing it. So there’s a whole complex behind it. So can business be the solution, right? If it’s the creator of the problem I think the answer is that we need to really step back and say what kind of responsibility do we want our companies to take because we have very lax rules in [00:42:00] the United States and our rules right now favor are in very much in favor of business and with Citizens United now, of course businesses can act as individuals in the political system as well. So it’s I think the answer to these big complex issues. I don’t think business alone can solve it.

[00:42:19] Leslie Crutchfield: They can reduce their harm by not engaging in harmful marketing practices, right? But it’s going to take movements that are demanding of our government and our public officials. Hey, we need resources to help people counseling and recovery. Not treating these addictions as a crime but as what they are a mental or a medical issue and solving it that way.

[00:42:49] Leslie Crutchfield: And other countries that are there and they have a different framing for it.

[00:42:54] Evan Meyer: Interestingly, there’s been a a massive use of [00:43:00] art, street art particularly and I know this from personal experience because it’s one of the things that I do in my company and my business partner who actually introduced me to your book.

[00:43:12] Evan Meyer: And I were talking and we were a lot of times causes use art as a way to get people and they do campaigns using street art. Great businesses do it too, actually, right? So it’s not they could try to find creative ways of using art to inspire. Art has a ton of great implications, not just street art but art therapy.

[00:43:32] Evan Meyer: And there’s a there’s a lot of self reflection that goes into that and getting people to see things to connect through art is a lot. How have you seen the street art movement or art in general be a contributor to the overall ways that people are using messaging to get their word out their cause out to change the hearts and minds of people.

[00:43:59] Leslie Crutchfield: [00:44:00] I think street art it’s really fascinating and a great hands on way for people to get engaged with community murals taking ownership of your urban or neighborhood properties there’s a great movement led by an organization called Kaboom which is building playgrounds around the country.

[00:44:20] Leslie Crutchfield: They imagine a playground within safe walking distance of every kid in America and bringing and part of the process is getting community members to design and imagine what this playground could look like and then pulling up their sleeves and building it together. And then there’s ownership and there’s engagement and then you foster community connection, right?

[00:44:40] Leslie Crutchfield: I think street art is similar and can play that kind of engagement role and of course it’s something that everybody can enjoy and it’s beauty and it’s creativity and brings people together so so I think it’s all part of the larger tapestry and these movements and causes.

[00:44:57] Evan Meyer: Yeah.

[00:44:58] Evan Meyer: I do too and [00:45:00] a lot of that comes down to what you just said is about getting people to connect and they’re just sitting and having coffee with somebody even if they think differently than you will usually prevent a level of animosity when you realize the connection that you have with that person maybe your kids go to the same school, right?

[00:45:20] Evan Meyer: That level of connecting in bridge.

[00:45:24] Leslie Crutchfield: It’s very local it reminds me of one of the first socially responsible businesses that came up in the eighties when business for Social Responsibility was getting off the ground and you had Ben and Jerry’s and Starbucks and the Body Shop and one of these business activists founded the White Dog Cafe in Philadelphia and they started a it’s a great restaurant and they have an eating with the enemy.

[00:45:47] Leslie Crutchfield: Right? So you come and you meet with people from different political or in this case international backgrounds people on warring sides of conflicts and they deliberately set up tables where [00:46:00] you could break bread and have a free meal together and fostered connections that way. So there’s a role that business can play just with the restaurant as the you know the public square if you will.

[00:46:14] Evan Meyer: Yeah.

[00:46:14] Evan Meyer: Yeah, just the act of sharing something together food is the easiest thing you could do people. It’s like that’s reptilian and it’s just necessary and it gives you that opportunity to share and connect and it does feel that if people can make that space exposure it leads to exposure when you’re just being exposed to people different than you just the passage in the book.

[00:46:39] Evan Meyer: Yeah.

[00:46:40] Leslie Crutchfield: Now you also have to be careful as a business in particular when you step into this because you have to set it up in the right way. Otherwise, it can backfire. So let me give a not great example. I don’t know if you remember but a few years back with the best of intentions, Starbucks wanted to get people to [00:47:00] talk about race.

[00:47:01] Leslie Crutchfield: There had been some race related violent incidents in some of their stores and so all the baristas were trained and instructed to try and strike up a conversation and it just totally failed. And you’ve got comments like, first of all I don’t want to talk to you about anything let alone something as personal and visceral as race.

[00:47:22] Leslie Crutchfield: Before I’ve had my cup of coffee this morning thank you. And also it’s a fleeting experience. You’re grabbing your coffee, you’re going to work right? So businesses have tried to be that bridge but you got to be careful especially when it’s really sensitive whether wedge issue you’ve got to structure it right so that people can drop into that space.

[00:47:43] Leslie Crutchfield: And be comfortable otherwise.

[00:47:45] Evan Meyer: Yeah. You don’t want it to be intrusive because the opposite the extreme version of that is being intrusive where you’re like why are you getting in my why are you getting into this with me?

[00:47:53] Evan Meyer: I just want my coffee.

[00:47:54] Leslie Crutchfield: I just want my coffee. Another big mistake that business makes [00:48:00] is if they think that their product is a solution or they market that. So there was the really unfortunate ad campaign that Pepsi put out where they had Kendall Jenner, coming up to a big protest line with the cops lined up and it was an anti police brutality line and she hands the Pepsi and then everybody stands down. That also made everybody angry because it’s first of all the celebrity and second of all it’s such a complex deeply rooted systemic problem and the fact that this trite.

[00:48:36] Leslie Crutchfield: So you don’t want to put your product. On the other hand there are the right ways to do this. So let’s look at another case. Look at what Nike did with Kaepernick. Kaepernick had been suspended from the NFL for taking a knee on behalf of Black Lives and to protest police brutality.

[00:48:55] Leslie Crutchfield: And Nike had him as their front man and they stuck with it and [00:49:00] a lot of conservatives burned their Nikes and posted the videos on YouTube. But there was more Millennials and Gen Z, their Nikes target market. They really were trying to grab market share from Adidas. They were getting beat by Adidas at this point.

[00:49:14] Leslie Crutchfield: But the core consumer base of Nike believes and supports what Kaepernick was trying to stand for, right? Or take a knee for so in that case Nike used its brand and it’s amazing brand capital to uplift this cause. They withstood some of the backlash, but the backlash was far smaller than the greater support they got.

[00:49:38] Leslie Crutchfield: And they did it and they stuck with them. There are all kinds of roles that business can play. Business can use its brands to uplift or advance causes whether they do in the right way or the wrong way. They got some philanthropy but the biggest thing a business can do is change its operating practices, its policies to be more friendly to the planet and [00:50:00] more inclusive and just for its workers and suppliers.

[00:50:04] Leslie Crutchfield: That’s probably the most powerful way business can have a positive impact.

[00:50:08] Evan Meyer: Yeah.

[00:50:09] Evan Meyer: And I think what comes to mind also is authenticity through it, right? You would hope that leadership and the company really believes in those causes and the things that they’re doing, because if you’re just doing it to sell you’re get more market share.

[00:50:22] Evan Meyer: That’s what businesses that’s what they do. It is business but at the same time when you come with something so personal so sensitive you’d hope that there can be an authenticity there. I won’t name it but a big pharmacy and they were selling cigarettes.

[00:50:36] Evan Meyer: Now, I don’t care if you smoke or not up to me what you want to do if that’s your thing. But it does seem that a pharmacy and a healthcare company shouldn’t sell cigarettes, right?

[00:50:47] Leslie Crutchfield: I know the company you’re talking about we won’t name names, but I will tell you the one you were not in is CVS Health because CVS changed its name from CVS to CVS Health and they dropped cigarettes in [00:51:00] 2014 because they said we can’t be a health company.

[00:51:02] Leslie Crutchfield: And also we can’t be selling you Nicorette over here and cigarettes at the counter. Now what’s wrong now? Hass help? Yes. They took a huge hit. They lost 2 billion in revenue after dropping cigarettes and everything that goes along with it. Gum and lighter and everything. But what it did from a business perspective was opened up all new kinds of opportunities.

[00:51:25] Leslie Crutchfield: They were rolling out their CVS, the minute clinics. It enabled CVS Health to purchase Aetna Insurance. The insurance companies could never be part of a pharmacy chain if they sold. There was all kinds of conflicts there. So it enabled them to be a better health care company because they divested from some of the bad stuff.

[00:51:45] Leslie Crutchfield: And then could go in a direction that the convenience store that you were referencing can’t do. Because they still sell cigarettes and liquor by the way they have adjacent liquor store.

[00:51:54] Evan Meyer: It’s the wrong stuff. I just don’t know why you would sell that stuff in your store. It’s just you have to have [00:52:00] conflicting values at the upper levels of thinking about somewhere money is taking over values like I just don’t know what else the issue would be.

[00:52:08] Leslie Crutchfield: It’s hard to think of a company that’s really purely perfect. Patagonia comes to mind, but that’s a high end more luxury type outdoors product.

[00:52:17] Evan Meyer: But like they strive in their values. Apple does another one, right? So Apple does that too. They’re huge on

[00:52:22] Evan Meyer: values.

[00:52:22] Leslie Crutchfield: Yeah. If we went back to Nike. Yeah, Nike stuck with Kaepernick but Nike also stuck with Tiger Woods continuing to make a lot of money even though he was really in trouble with women. Yeah. Also they had a big problem when they came out one of the new Jordan shoes at Nike and the design team had designed it with this kind of Betsy Ross flag and they went out on the street and it was like here’s this Confederate symbol. And they had to pull that so a lot of this actually companies can avoid if they took DEI seriously. Diversity, equity and [00:53:00] inclusion, not just have a prominent spokesperson but if you had in your focus groups and in your marketing teams true diverse perspectives.

[00:53:08] Leslie Crutchfield: You would not put a confederate symbol on a million pairs of shoes, right? Or you would not put your Pepsi can at the front of a police brutality protest, right? So companies right now are getting targeted by the conservative right for being too woke. They’re getting it from both ends but they also they could be smarter.

[00:53:30] Leslie Crutchfield: About how they incorporate diverse views into all their lines of business design marketing products to be more inclusive of audiences but also to help them avoid some really these are unforced errors right? They should not be making.

[00:53:45] Evan Meyer: Yeah. A diverse and we’ll say a mature corporate culture and how you think about corporate culture and it’s really important.

[00:53:54] Evan Meyer: It’s one of the reasons I’ve always loved Zappos. I think they’ve just done an amazing job there and they put their values.[00:54:00]

[00:54:00] Leslie Crutchfield: I think companies have it very hard today because there’s so many competing stakeholder interests, like you look at the controversies just this time of our recording you got Target in the headlines for having to pull some merchandise around LGBT pride month.

[00:54:17] Leslie Crutchfield: You’ve got Budweiser people pouring out their Budweiser because of their brand promotion with a trans influencer huge backlash. And what you’ve got is a company where you’ve got your employees often in corporate and marketing and brands they want to work for companies that are inclusive and diverse and tolerant but they might not share the same values as your customer base.

[00:54:42] Leslie Crutchfield: And when your values of your employees and the customer base clash, your investors are not going to be happy right because you’re losing maybe Budweiser lost 20 billion in value. Since that and right now nobody’s happy right so it’s it’s [00:55:00] really hard and but to your point, I think companies that are really clear on their values and make choices across all of the value chain of activity that they do in alignment with those values are able to steer through this and have a long term view.

[00:55:17] Evan Meyer: A lot of Tony Hsieh book. Sadly, he’s not with us anymore. It’s such a good book Delivering Happiness and maybe it talks about some of these things around culture and how he got there so shout out to Tony Hsieh but I think that one of the themes here is maybe we can all have a little more tolerance for each other and listen first sometimes.

[00:55:41] Leslie Crutchfield: There are companies that are doing this.

[00:55:42] Leslie Crutchfield: I think about VF, which owns like Timberland and North Face,Vans.

[00:55:49] Leslie Crutchfield: They’re looking at sustainability in overseas and there’s manufacturing how they make investments how they source the energy to power their offices [00:56:00] and their plants, right? They’re thinking about it not just from end to end, from birth of the idea all the way to trying to reuse upcycle recycle at the end.

[00:56:08] Leslie Crutchfield: There are companies that have these values and are really trying to live by them. And make it a profit having a successful business while they do it. Timberland is one of the iconic sustainable socially responsible businesses, but others it’s possible for others too but you have to make an intentional conscious choice about it.

[00:56:27] Evan Meyer: What is your vision for the world and all the work that you do and all that you’ve put out into the planet and all that you write about and all the research. What is your vision for

[00:56:39] Evan Meyer: us?

[00:56:41] Leslie Crutchfield: My belief and vision for the world is that I fundamentally believe that change is possible. I know it because as we look at these changes, it’s remarkable to me.

[00:56:53] Leslie Crutchfield: Look and think about all the issues and changes we just talked about on the show, right? Nobody pretty much smokes in America [00:57:00] anymore. There’s same sex marriage allowed in every state. There’s more guns than there ever were around rank. Incredible changes have happened all in the exact same two decades with the same guys in office, the White House, the same Congress, right?

[00:57:15] Leslie Crutchfield: Very different political views in the governance chair but very different outcomes depending on what side of the political aisle that you sit on. So it also tells me that change is possible and also at the end of the day change is nonpartisan, right? Change is deliberate it does not happen by chance and so I think the people that are going to have the most influence on what happens in our future are those that choose to join and build movements and be the change that they seek in the world.

[00:57:49] Evan Meyer: I want to thank you again for being here. This was awesome I really enjoyed this. Thank you for all the inspiration that you’ve given to so many people through your work and i’ve really enjoyed this [00:58:00] very grateful for having you here today

[00:58:02] Leslie Crutchfield: Me too. I really enjoyed it. So great to meet you.

[00:58:05] Evan Meyer: You too.

[00:58:06] Evan Meyer: You too. Take care. Okay.

[00:58:08] Leslie Crutchfield: Thanks for being, letting me be part of the show. [00:58:10] Evan Meyer: Absolutely.