Mark Bayer, Government Relations Expert

Mark Bayer of Bayer Strategic Consulting  helps scientists, engineers, and organizations get funding, gain influence and build relationships with their most important stakeholders, including Members of Congress, investors, and the public, with custom-crafted, true-to-life training and government relations services.

Mark is an international keynote speaker and consultant specializing in legislative strategy and the art and science of persuasion. 

Former Chief of Staff in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives during a 20-year career working in Congress, Mark designs and delivers interactive, true-to-life training that gives scientists and engineers proven, powerful tools for effectively navigating the policy environment in Washington, DC.

Mark teaches scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs the same methodology he used in Congress to rapidly distill complex policies, craft strategies to advance high-profile initiatives, and concisely explain them to Members of Congress and journalists from leading media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Boston Globe, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, AP, and many others.

Mark has been touted in Politico for his "decades of superlative experience" serving as a Congressional staff member. His work on how to combat alternative facts has appeared in Science and The New Yorker. Mark has been featured in IEEE-USA's "Lessons on Leadership" column, and he serves as a guest lecturer in the Science Policy Bootcamp course at Cornell University's Meining School of Engineering. 

Host of the weekly podcast When Science Speaks, Mark explores communications, science policy, and career issues affecting grad students, PhDs, and Postdocs in engineering and the natural and social sciences. 

Mark is a magna cum laude graduate of Cornell University, where he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his Master in Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

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Transcript

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oh how about i had his one great conversation got so engrossed was like i never recorded this oh that's brilliant and and so she i said look danielle's this one i said look you have three choices one is just to like hang out never hear from me again uh you know get my apologies or you know we do it right now just roll it back and start again or we could reschedule and she said no let's just roll it back and do it again you know and i had um duke stump um who was the marketing director with uh nike and lululemon and who i it's one of those episodes where um you can literally see me you can see my face going increasingly you're awesome aren't you you know as i'm going through as i'm going through the episode so it was probably slightly weird for him to see another grown man kind of slightly getting enamored by just how awesome i thought he was but when i first tried to make contact with him i was so keen to get it right that i'd gone into zoom was in the room setting it all up the audio and all of that and then forgot to come out and actually join the meeting that he was in i was like oh god i only had one job i messed it up but uh anyway as they said in uh they said in i think it was uh pulp fiction uh into character and uh off we go yeah yeah sure so so listen uh mark it's fantastic to have you on this episode of leadership bites welcome thank you and i'm so glad to be here guys great to be with you and super excited to have you on i saw you on linkedin i started to do what um all people now do i did the googling got a sense of who and what you are so i've done a little intro before we start but i just for people that don't know who you are mark it'd be great just to hear who you are what you do and what you put your energy into sure so i have a consulting firm that's called bear strategic consulting and the focus is to help scientists and engineers and entrepreneurs really distill and communicate their value their the value of what they work on to their most important stakeholders so that could be the public policy makers investors um employers and so forth you know i just find that people it's almost the opposite of of of me for sure which is i'm a verbal communications guy very little to zero aptitude when it comes to science and engineering so i work with science and engineers who have the opposite issue um and they have so many great things to to talk about innovative discoveries that they've put together but they just have trouble communicating that and they can have huge you know consequences negative consequences kind of for all of us if we you know if we don't understand science i think you know covet is really the example of that um the public not really um getting it from the from the scientists sometimes and not following mandates that are based on science so um i started working on this um right after the election in the u.s and in 2016 when science and sort of facts started to fall out of fashion ah well that's a big statement and i think i'm going to make a note of that and we'll come back to it because i think that's the that's the point isn't it the social media kind of slant and um this relationship with the truth um that's going on out there so we'll definitely get to that before we do i have this kind of little thing that i do now with everybody which is to go backwards to go forwards which is um i think when people talk understanding where they've come from and how they've got there it's if you know the person a little bit better it makes it a lot easier to listen to the message so i'd love to just get that you know how did mark get to be mark and uh wherever that journey starts uh through to where it takes us i personally would love to hear it and i know it adds value for people listening well thanks well you know i've always really been in the political world um you know so just sort of going further back when i was growing up everything from watching the news to volunteering on political campaigns but but also more than just i guess partisan politics um you know when i talk about politics kind of talk about empower relationships how can you get your voice heard you know how can get your viewpoint and your ideas acted upon and how can you solve problems and that was something that i learned early on sitting around the dinner table with my parents who were who still are just you know amazing problem solvers you know just going through life and challenges they were always really adept at figuring out how to to deal with a challenge and overcome an obstacle of course as you're growing up there there are lots of those and so part of that also i guess in addition to the problem solving was you know what problems are we going to try to solve you know beyond our own personal ones and instilled in me was the value of helping other people solve their problems and then you start to get into a broader sort of policy making or government perhaps non-profit um corporate too i guess their issues and so i remember my mom you know stacking and filling our basement with winter coats you know for a close drive she just decided that she wanted to do in town um organizing actually one of my early memories of what my mom was working on um was trying to get these this family out of the soviet union um who have been trying to immigrate they actually were two phd scientists and they had a son and they wanted to leave um but um gorbachev and the soviet regime said no and fired them both from their jobs and he was working as an elevator operator i remember and you know they sort of had exhausted all of their options they went on a hunger strike to get more attention my mom heard about this and she organized it sounds quaint now but uh telegrams you know telegrams from all states and um for the kids those of you that don't know what a telegram is google yeah right um you know so um she organized those from all 50 states to uh to gorbachev and she published you know she she talked to reporters she talked to our member of congress tried to draw attention to this um and you know she never would claim credit and we we don't know what impact if any she had on the process but um they were let out uh they were able to leave and that made a real impact on me that that one person you know this is my mom she's you know she was working pretty much when we were home growing up she was she was not really working outside the home much and but she figured out how to do this um and made this major change in this this family's life so that was a message that i got early on that actually you're not you know life doesn't happen to you you can help shape it and you can help shape it for yourself and you can help shape it for other people um and so that brought me you know through college and my focus on government and history uh and then after that working on capitol hill in the us congress for about four or so years and and then deciding i needed to go to grad school i did that for two years um and you know that my focus was have been kind of government and public policy all along and when i was my first year after i finished my first year grad school my master's program i thought you know what i want to experience um the business world more i don't think i really unders you know understand had much experience firsthand experience you know working in a corporate environment so i went to work for pricewaterhousecoopers on the consulting side right after grad school which was really helpful for me to get just different viewpoints of course they're we're talking about humans whatever organization starting maybe from the family unit to multinational corporations you're still talking about people and how they interact and i've always been curious about people's stories and really enjoyed talking with people and learning new things so from pwc i went to a startup for about a year and then um 911 happened and uh i was living right outside actually not far from where i i'm talking to you from now guy right outside washington dc and so we could see the smoke from the pentagon and and obviously this was a monumental you know searing moment for for some for so many um and so i kind of felt like i was on the sidelines and it was time for me to get back involved in public policy and around that time my former office in the u.s congress you know the called me back and said hey what do you think about coming back to to work uh in a different role and you know i worked for ed markey who's one of the two senators from massachusetts and of course you know two of the planes took off from boston's logan airport which you're growing up in massachusetts as i did visited all the time and so many there's such a massachusetts part of this as well and so i went back and um i actually focused on aviation security reforms for the first five years or so after i got back my boss was on the boss of the time was appointed to a special committee to come up with reform security reforms to close security loopholes and so that was really my focus um and then i i did that and i was i stayed on and then after we were successful in getting that provisions that i had worked on signed into law john kerry got appointed by president obama to be secretary of state at the time and of course he being one of the massachusetts senators and leaving that seat that opened up a new senate seat for uh for ed markey who decided to run uh and uh was his i was ed's chief of staff at the time and so he had we had a campaign for the unexpired piece of john kerry's term the piece left um you know uh since he had left and then one and then 18 months later a second election for the full six years because senators u.s senators elected for six six years in uh in the us um and so he won ed won that and i was at chief of staff in the senate and then at that point i thought you know what um i want to i want to learn some new things i was so fortunate to be in the middle of many really exciting i felt meaningful initiatives that really helped a lot of people i'm just lucky to to be there and work for a great boss and work on these high profile issues and then i i wasn't exactly sure what i wanted to do but i knew i wanted a new challenge and so i i started uh you know that was in 2015 and then the election in the u.s happened november of 2016 and i started getting calls from people who were just you know we were all sort of if you're you were a democrat you you were just stunned um and so as we approached almost it was almost exactly four years ago um now it was early december you know the inauguration was was happening then right and people who had sort of been in a state of denial we're starting to come around to the feeling that no actually this is going to happen that wasn't just like a bad dream you had you know uh in november this is actually myself a few times i i haven't woken up right right and uh so you know it um i decided that um i wanted to start writing about what was happening particularly um with a focus on on all this misinformation that was coming out after the actually right the afternoon of the inauguration january 20th is the inauguration at noon and it wasn't long afterwards that we were seeing you know the white house saying the word there were more people at the inauguration than it were obama's and clearly that wasn't true but that was just sort of the beginning of this wave that has just built over the last four years from my perspective of misinformation and disinformation and and then i linked up with scientists who were who were you know concerned about that because really facts and data are the oxygen that enables them to do their job enjoy the oxygen for their professional lives and they were they were really concerned the march for science happened i did some work with them i did more speaking about how to push back against this i wasn't really interested people were saying oh that's like the thousandth time that they've said something that's not true and i said well that's great but how do we talk to the people who believe it and get them to actually reject it and so i kind of geeked out on that and started writing about um persuasion principles and kind of combining work i had done on the hill as far as advocacy uh drawing on some classics i had taken three years of latin in high school so the rhetoric and the persuasion and the sort of advocacy that i picked up on the hill kind of combining those things to work with uh to kind of put out like look how do we deal with this um and then that's led to what i do now which is continuing to work with technical people whether they're big companies uh whether they're phds and post docs and university setting or faculty members who now sort of woke up to the fact that they just can't stay in their labs they just can't you know remain divorced from you know the events that can really impact them they need to get involved but they didn't know how to do that because it's not the job just like i don't know how to use a pipette or you know any kind i think i'd be quite dangerous in a lab i wouldn't trust myself there but when it comes to getting the word out and actually reaching people that's really been my specialty since the beginning so there's quite a there's quite a lot there and i i think the um the relationship with truth is is an interesting one that um and who controls the pipeline and their relationship with it i've just seen a clip of a democratic senator holding to task um twitter facebook and google around what they throttle what they don't and all this kind of stuff so even at that level um there's a whole load of things about how the world is reacting to who controls the truth what the truth is how long something maybe stays in the public domain even if everybody agrees it's not correct what's the what's the correction period for something like that and so there's a lot of stuff that didn't wasn't true you know i'm 51 so you know a decade ago it just didn't it wasn't like that and so is is this is that your this is then your sweet spot this kind of let me work with you to take your information out into the world but is it also if it's been misunderstood and misinterpreted and there's a narrative that isn't working let me help you course correct that is that is that your domain yeah absolutely um you know whether that's in a somebody who's even you know somebody who might be say uh biomedical engineer and his thinking you know she's thinking about going into industry uh after she finishes her phd but really doesn't have a lot of training in just how to how to communicate in a way that's clear and concise now not just to people in her lab but you know to management and other departments um everything from that to you know public public policies that are being distorted you talk a lot guy about connection um that's that's really the core of um of of of you know approach that the approach that that i use and connection to me has a lot to do with emotion in connecting with someone emotionally however you want to describe that we can talk about that but um this is an area which often is a blind spot for people who have strong technical and scientific backgrounds because they're really taught to just follow the data and that the data speaks for itself but we found you know particularly these last four years that science is powerful but it can't speak for itself the the scientists or somebody with credibility really needs to be there to figure out how to connect with the listener to get them to understand the vaccine when it gets approved uh in the u.s you know there are many people who won't want to be vaccinated because they'll be believing these things that are put out there this misinformation and so i've been talking about well how do scientists and experts actually reach those people and the tendency is to talk about clinical trials and the fact it's been tested and we've had we've gone back to the you know the actual research and and redone the experiment i mean those are all facts and they're all true but facts are not enough to move people uh very very often if they were we would all be driving the exact same color car you know uh all the time and have all the same things just based on features that the things have but it's emotional and it's and that is where this connection is so key that you you know you're expert in and it's a it's an area where people that i work with often have trouble so if i was going to work with you what is your approach to that individual is is it an assessment phase is it a talk to me about well how do you talk about how you almost approach that person and you to for you to have the insights that you need even before you start saying that that's what we're going to do with you yeah sure so you know i have an online course um so it's a group group experience i've done it for a few years now and it's um how to effectively communicate your science to any audience and it's a four it was always an online course which is helpful these days since everything is online but pardon me um the first module is called connection um what this you know and and so it's really connection and then i call construction like let's learn these rhetorical tools that have been effective since humans first started talking uh and then it's okay combination let's let's take this idea of connection as the prerequisite for communication take some of these tools and techniques let's combine them and let's have you practice talking about your research in a way that like we're saying resonates and is accessible and is exciting and engaging for for general the general public and let's have you continue to practice that and get feedback so i do two we do two rounds of that kind of feedback so at the end the scientist feels like he or she really has a tight description of it so that's a great group experience in the one-on-one coaching yeah it does start with okay let's talk about because let's talk about first i always like to start at the finish line you know um what what do you where do you want this to be at the end of at the end of the experience okay this is what i wanted to be and then working back from that you know while i have said scientists and technical people often don't have this kind of feel this comfort in and developing connections and and sort of talking on an emotional channel there are so many assets that they do have um credibility the public generally believes what they say anthony faucino you know his his approval ratings of course he's a he's a special case could talk about him a lot but in any case the idea is um that scientists do have assets and things about um them individually or them professionally that maybe just need to be reoriented a little bit for a different environment meaning one that's non-technical that's general um that doesn't really understand and really doesn't need to know all the little details that often lose and distract audiences so i do start with an assessment but basically ask them like what do you want at the outcome at the at the end of this and working working backwards to find out okay what assets do you already have what are you comfortable doing you know what are your you know people talk about relationship building one of my students you know one of the coaching clients she said you know i have no trouble you know starting a relationship and talking to people i like doing that but i don't know how to maintain a professional relationship and i thought that was really interesting um and so we're working on that and i you know come up with with things for her to read things for her to do things for her to record um to to do that in a way that's effective but authentic i should say every kind of going back to the beginning with truth like all this has to be real right like if this isn't you then you never want to pretend uh you know if you're on a team and you can't authentically interact with a decision maker then find someone on the team who can or hire somebody who could um but but you can't you can't play at this you know people have a a pretty strong bs bs meter so you have to feel and has to be authentic i was always fascinated by some of the comments around obama when he spoke because he's often um ordained as one of the greatest orators of our time regardless of content or whether policy i'm not interested in that but just the impact of the man and i used to sometimes show his inauguration speech or something along those lines when i was doing a workshop and every now and then somebody would go yeah but you can't trust somebody that's that good which i thought was absolutely fantastic you know as in all right so you'd like the president of the free world to be inarticulate and well unless that's a joke there now but the point is but you know the fact that he's learned his craft and become incredibly good at it and made it something that he wants to get good at that you don't trust i'm always frustrated by that yeah i mean you had that plumber and he was really just so good he must have done something that i didn't know that's right they ripped me off somehow i'm sure yeah but i i do wonder when you when you were working with people you know there is something like um well the clothes that you wear or whatever it is you know it may look good on you but it may not look good on me so i've got a sense if i'm hearing you correctly it's not one size fits all or one one look fits all it's finding their truth i think it's possibly what i'm hearing yeah you know i think like just to reflect on that comment about you know he's he's too good he can't be trusted i think it shows sort of a just a lack of real i can't relate to that person like and you know i'm not that good at communicating he's just so great like there's just this gulf between us uh and i just can't can't get it but you're taking it down to a more you know common kind of situation you know i think you do want to look for similarities always um and they can be you know they can they can be really sort of trivial just a brief brief story about you know this um this woman who was a great great phd scientist and she was doing research at ohio state university um on wild birds and so she had she had come over recently from south korea english wasn't her first language her english wasn't great um and but a lot of her research required that she go out into the farmlands of ohio around the university and you know with their binoculars and and look for particular types of birds well in many cases that would lead to a very irritated farmer barreling down the road in in his or her pickup truck like what are you doing on my land you know it's like that instinctive reaction and then he he kind of sees this this woman who you know who doesn't speak english perfectly uh isn't you know isn't what is non-white is different from the people that he interacts with on a normal basis and so i always say to her well you know um jenny you know you were really under the gun literally right because sometimes they bring you know the shotguns in the pickup truck and so what she said to me is over time she got really good at immediately connecting with the farmers and how did she do that well she always starts she started wearing ohio state football sweatshirts she started putting ohio state football magnets on her car she led by talking about ohio state football and who they were playing and what was going on in the off season and everybody in ohio is fanatical just about ohio state football so she would immediately start with this connection and she would just see the the irritation the tension just melt away so much so that sometimes these farmers later would would call her on the phone weeks later saying hey you know i think that bird you're looking for i think i just saw it you know in a few acres of my land why don't you come over and take a look maybe you should uh bring it back to the lab to examine it for a bit um and so it all starts with this connection and a lot of that is built on similarity and it doesn't have to be um something monumental um but it does have to be true and authentic and that's something i find very interesting when i work with leaders who sometimes go you have a guy i've got better things to do than you know try and engage now some people obviously really get it and really understand it or some people go yeah well i don't want to be machiavellian about it you know it sounds a little bit too contrived i go well but that's if your integrity is in the fact that you want to be good at connecting to people then putting effort into it is then not contrived if your intent is to manipulate and do harm well yeah not so good so it's finding maybe a reason for people i sometimes find to feel that it's okay to do it on purpose if that makes sense and trying to find a reason that they're okay in giving themselves a permission to not just see it as it's not a trick of the trade it's a it's an actual craft and i find that that that quite useful yeah and you know i think the essence you know of being human is this need for connection and we're seeing that through through kobit when we're so disconnected and people are are uncomfortable with that right um so as humans we need to have some connection so i would say look you're you're on one level you're being true to kind of the the intrinsic qualities of people which is this need this feeling that that you need to connect and the second piece which you alluded to is you know when i talk about persuasion i always make the distinction between persuasion and manipulation um you know manipulation it's based on on things that are not true you know you're trying to get someone to do something perhaps against his or her self-interest by using um lies or other deceptions okay that's that's what manipulation is about but but persuasion is really finding a way to connect with someone uh authentically um that enables you to to make progress or to let them hear really hear what you're saying maybe act upon what you recommend but it all has to be you know authentic authentic and true you know just one thing about an executive in that kind of situation it just reminds me of the john lennon quote you know life is what happens when you're doing other things uh it's kind of like okay well don't do that and just go do what you think is important but by not doing that all these things are happening that will really impact what you're doing that you think is so important you know it's like these are not two distinct phases uh you know i have to engage and then i have to do the important stuff they're really one is enabling the other you're actually accomplishing important stuff that you think is important by doing that kind of engagement so you work with people on that very personal impact that their ability to connect and engage to create trust so the message can be heard and so suspicion dissipates because actually i'm engaging with you before you maybe even you try and share your message i guess is is right and when it moves up to almost a a product or a policy or when it moves from maybe just being the individual to um getting something heard in the world beyond that individual's need talk to me about that work and maybe how that might be different because people then it's about agendas maybe beyond reaction to person sure yep and look we can you know taking covid as an example and maybe you know how is the us effectively going to distribute a vaccine once it's been determined safe right i don't mean logistics but how how are how is how is the u.s government going to convince americans to actually agree to be inoculated that's it's going to be a persuasion exercise and we've done next thing here yeah you know and and we've done everything possible leading up to now to make it as difficult as possible as far as you know all the all the garbage that's been all garbage information that's been put out there and so forth and this real erosion of of trust and all that but i guess i would say when you're thinking about high higher kind of initiatives like when i was on the hill you know on capitol hill we were always putting together coalitions of different groups um and looking at okay who are our most important stakeholders uh who's who do we want to persuade or who do we want to get the message out to and then who do those people listen to who do they trust you know it's funny i say like you know i would never tell my wife that she needs to exercise more but if one of her girlfriends told her that she would you know you have to think about the messenger uh you know you talk about communication as really being the the foundation i mean sorry connection really being the foundation of communication and then there are the means and the devices to actually get that through in a way that's distilled and clear but also the messengers are important i think they're so important in these larger scale initiatives so you know having um you know a scientist from the federal the food and drug administration tell you know put out information that um you know this this vaccine has been tested it's been proven it's been effective clearly that's important but you know also having these uh messengers you know these spokespeople who are much more community based and they're trusted in their community and they're credible you know having them uh talk to they are connected to these different groups having them talking about the need for inoculation is so so critical and i don't think we're going to do enough of that that's what i'm concerned about and not just talking about the facts but bring in this more and we're very it's a very emotional decision if you think about it should i get inoculated should i inoculate my kids this is a vaccine that's never been taken against the virus never been you know been out there before there could be bad side effects should my older you know elderly parents take the vaccine there's a lot of emotion there and just addressing that with data and facts is not going to be not going to be enough i think you really need to acknowledge the emotion and try to develop that connection using these more grassroots types of um of structures so i'm interested there in the fact that you're almost planning a campaign you know you're you're looking at the the points the stakeholders you're looking at the people that do have influence and i'm also just hearing something there about when you're saying it's quite a motive which it is to a greater or lesser degree there is something that about the ability of people that are trying to influence to talk to my fears rather than just convince me with facts and that capacity to go so some of you are going to be worried about this some of you will be thinking i don't know if i want to go first and it's almost that ability to go into go into the fears rather than just work under the assumption that the facts will will win and if i'm hearing you correctly that's yeah yeah that's exactly it guy i mean you need to acknowledge that uh and um you know it's it's again it's that that emotive type of message for scientists you know who are who are closest to say this particular data and this this vaccine development that that's something that they're taught actually not to be is emotional um don't get connected to this conclusion uh because science is growing and we you know don't advocate for these particular findings um just let the data speak for itself you know i had this i did this talk um at a university uh in north carolina a couple years ago and um you know we were talking about okay well what do you think about this particular you know scientific finding or this particular policy this is to a big big group of phds postdocs and he and the person said well you know the evidence suggests that this is a good choice so i said you know it was really funny to hear him say that because that term using that phrasing the evidence suggests in the science world is an extremely powerful statement it basically says this is really what we think the answer is but in the policy world i said you know if i heard if you came into my office when i was working on capitol hill and said you know we want the boss to support this scientific endeavor and i said is it going to work and you said the evidence suggests whatever i would stop listening after i heard the evidence suggest because it's passive um there's no agency there so there's like no ownership over this right it sounds like you don't know right right and then you use the word suggest which is one of the weaker verbs that we have around and so you see that translation how things can get lost in translation but not addressing the emotional component of this in one way or another is really would really undermine the effort i think i'm always thinking of that book men from mars women are from venus you know that's the you say i heard and all that kind of stuff and it's and maybe that's it isn't it it's awakening people to the somebody once said to me that good communication is the response you get not necessarily the one that you want and it's a stocking sort of stock trade uh phrase but that's what it is isn't it the fact that your paradigm that word means that in that language in some respects if you went to another country and you were speaking another language in another dialect you'd have to understand that some of this is about the context that you're using the words and so maybe it's yeah i can see what you're doing you're saying you know you're almost getting them to recognize before you do the work you do understand that when you speak that isn't necessarily what's being heard right and that's what i think i'm hearing it's so true and it's funny two things that you said i mean well one is you know in in your in your in your comment you you talked about you know listening and getting a reaction well just like when you said you know some of you are probably really scared or afraid um that's really like a question right and and so i i talk about the need and actually query and questioning as as part of this communication and the listening aspect of it um it's so so important not just to make this a one-way uh make it make it a monologue but like you said you know you're asking first you're recognizing the validity of it but you're also asking a question it doesn't matter if it's rhetorical you know or not but doing that kind of engagement and maybe getting information back that's very important is helpful and as far as the translation thing i mean it's kind of funny but i i had a situation exactly like this when i was living in paris you know i i i lived there for a couple months at the time and my french was sort of like you know you learn everything and then but in school and then you actually go in a real world and it hits you like actually people live their entire lives in this language you know this is when i was back in college and and you struggled to keep up so i was at a restaurant and i won it was a beautiful day and i wanted to i i hadn't really eaten out much i was doing research in the city i didn't have a lot living on a stipend and uh i thought you know i'm going to eat out today because such a gorgeous day i want to sit outside so um i i said to the maitre d you know i'd like to sit outside but i'd like to sit on what i wanted to say was outside like on the terrace or on the sidewalk right um and so i used the literal word for sidewalk in french and i thought okay the my accent sounded good all that well he kind of gave me this disgusted look dismissive sniff um because that phrase i learned like he said after i said the word he said taras you know terrorists that's that is what it that's the word you need to use in this context because i learned later that using like the word that i use for sidewalk has almost like a working the sidewalk kind of uh connotation which i was completely oblivious about so it's very much the same kind of thing understand the native language is what i like to call it and it doesn't mean an actual language necessarily but understand the native language and the expressions the demographic you're trying to have impact on yeah yeah and that's that's interesting isn't it because when you come particularly from academia perhaps or and i get that you know people have been in a commercial space and they if they move into a different market or there's a different age demographic coming through that they're now managing you know the words are the same but the language is different is is almost that that that kind of thing and i think i see a lot of a lot of that and the stuff that you're talking about that focus for that sort of science community do you reach outside of that because it feels incredibly applicable to anybody that's trying to communicate their perspective out yeah um you know kind of getting into the leadership so to speak aspect of it um and and talking to people who um want to you know make change and and move people in a positive direction um you know i i do work with folks who want to do that and and don't really necessarily know how to go about it or maybe they learn some things that they read in a management textbook or management course or something and they they sort of want to graft it on to their particular situation um so yes i mean i think overall when i if i had to sort of sum up my professional life it's like i just want to make positive change i just want to make positive change and i want to help other people make positive change too now correct me if i've misunderstood this but you know so that's very much the human dynamic that's working with the person or the team to get their physical message out when it's coming from them and then when it comes to policy itself and you know do you have an interest or are you involved in enabling the the written word or the the the mechanism that something is read or delivered by not the person but by the the product so to speak do you get into that space i haven't done as much of that um you know i'm sensitive to it um i notice things and and kind of think about ways maybe that things like that could be done differently but just so far i haven't i should say too that you know my business is about four years old and i always you know tell people um you know i just love what i'm doing i'm also open to you know other ways of doing things i started doing live you know occasional live streams on my podcast um i've been using a because somebody said oh like i've got this new report and a couple of different authors and i said well maybe we should do a live stream uh because it's so topical it just came out and rather than doing it recording it and then releasing it later so i i kind of view expansion i'm just curious by nature and trying new things is something that makes me happy so i certainly would would think about you know stuff like that too and what is your podcast called mark it is called when science speaks and it is um at when sciencespeaks.com and also on you know apple spotify amazon now all the platforms i said the magic words made my speaker amazon stop it's very funny and the funny thing is that particular company is opening its second headquarters about 15 minutes from my house right now well you've probably ordered a cab there who are you getting on your podcast at the moment uh let's see um i have had um the most recent person that i had on the show um was works for a big company uh called adp uh in the u.s and um he is an industrial sort of organizational uh change organizational behavior type behavioral economist type and you know so studying how people work in the corporate environment and how to uh make it more meaningful and things like that it's just so much fun to talk to him that episode hasn't yet been released but it will be pretty soon another episode that i had was you know in the u.s we have what's called the occupational safety and health administration it's really it's it's it's within the department of labor and the u.s government and it's its purpose is to make sure that u.s workers are safe um and that they're not exposed to whether it's harmful physical conditions chemical any kind of thing like that and i had the longest this i had the longest-serving osha director on the show it was uh during he was during the obama administration basically from the entire from 2009 to um to the end of the administration um he was the uh he was the head of it and it was just brilliant because you know he talked about testifying before congress and how he made um the the regulations or the policies that he was hoping to have enacted and passed and then enacted how he made those real to these members of congress and so the bottom line of the interview is he talks about story first then science and so he would literally start his testimony by showing a video to the committee of an individual person who was going to work and then that person didn't come home um because you know he or she was was killed on the job and this policy he would say that i'm proposing today or here to talk to you about is meant to stop that from happening ever again and then he could go into the science after that but he led with the story um of course on a scale that we can understand you talk about policy making then you start talking about well what does that even mean what's a policy who does it affect how many people like we just can't really conjure that very easily and say no this one particular person would have gone home to his family if we had this policy in place so i'm urging you to you know support it um really really powerful so david michaels is his name and he's actually working right now on on vaccine distribution and he's part of the biden transition team so listen mark time kind of ticks away with these things and you know i i keep saying to people as i do these episodes that um i have this sense that you know with the with the right beverage and the right food in front of us you know we could keep going and yeah people's time but if people want to reach out and connect with you what's the uh so we've got when sciencespeaks.com but uh what what are the mediums or uh ways are there to reach out reach out to you mark sure so my website for my consulting company is bayerstrategic.com so bear like the aspirin i never use that by the way but i think it's probably most helpful in this case no connection at all from my family to that company but bearstrategic.com is the website and there are contact me buttons on there and i'd be happy to connect with people also on linkedin if you just you know put in mark bayer b-a-y-e-r um then you know we'll we'll we'll find each other just like you and i connected guy fantastic well i'll put all those links in the description as well so on that note mark i'm going to call us to our halt i'm going to ask you to stay on just to make sure that everything does what it's supposed to do when we finish um as i've made the accident once or twice and i don't want to do it again so just for me to you thank you so much for coming on the podcast oh this was so great guy it was great to hear your your insights and your perspectives too i appreciate that it's been a privilege so i'm gonna i'm gonna press stop