Joe Lestingi’s professional life has been transformed and then transformed again over the past four years. In 2017, the long-time consultant teamed up with Liz Chadderdon to form the mail shop Chadderdon Lestingi Creative Strategies (CLCS), but it was never meant to be a partnership for the ages.
“We negotiated our divorce before we negotiated our marriage,” Lestingi said. “We set it up intentionally so that when [Liz] was ready to retire, we left ourselves avenues to negotiate that at that time.”
In 2019, the partners exercised an option to begin unwinding the business. Once the pandemic hit, Chadderdon accelerated the process. In December 2020, she announced her retirement on Facebook. “When she retired, she basically took her assets out of CLCS, and signed over the company to me,” said Lestingi. “Her retirement was the equity she had in the firm.”
But now the firm had a name that didn’t line up with its current makeup. The former partners had talked about keeping the existing shingle going, but Lestingi asked himself this question: “What happens to the employees at my agency when I retire?” It was a question with implications beyond just the name of the firm.
Ultimately, Lestingi decided not just to change the name, but the entire structure of the company. Campaign X Collective, which was unveiled June 2, was formed as a C-corp that allows for employee ownership. “We are not a non-profit. We are in this to make money. But does it matter if I have 15 houses across the country? Or I live comfortably and see people grow under me?” said Lestingi, who retains majority ownership.
Several different collective-type shops have opened on the left recently, but in many ways Campaign X Collective is unique. For instance, when new employees are hired, they can select the number of shares they want and the corresponding salary — the higher the salary, the lower the number of shares and vice versa. Salaries are not negotiable and will be posted publicly on the company’s website. After they start, the shares are held in escrow. When profits are dispersed periodically among the employees, they receive a dividend based on their number of shares.
Once they’ve been on the job for four years, those shares will be eligible for vestment. At that time, the employee can begin buying their shares out of escrow — all at once or at a slower pace. But for non-vested shares, the program will always work essentially as profit sharing. And if an employee who has equity decides to leave the company, Lestingi has to buy their shares back.
“The shape of business on the left side of the aisle is changing. It is about more values-based companies. It is about more inclusive agencies,” said Lestingi. “We’re hoping this encourages more women and people of color to come join the agency. It’s not a matter of them being just an employee who gets a percentage [of the profits]. They can build this how they want when the time comes.
The name came from the idea that the firm, which is anticipating expanding beyond mail, is able to help its clients solve for the unknown in an equation.
“Not only is X an unknown in that sense, but X represented this sort of idea that there is a solution because when you’re solving for X, there is a solution to that problem — you just don’t know what it is yet,” said Lestingi. “In the end, solving whatever a client’s X is, whether it’s an unknown voter or literally a problem that they have — an October surprise, whatever — it makes all the difference.”
Now, the new name and ownership structure are designed to give the shop a better chance of surviving beyond the original partnership.
“We’re building a living, breathing firm in the political consulting sphere — a firm that I hope will outlast me,” said Lestingi.
