New Recording 14

The speaker discusses strategies used to grow a chapter into a large organization on the University of Iowa campus. Starting with only four members, they emphasized personal outreach, tabling on campus, and hosting events to attract new members. They found success in engaging individuals based on their interests rather than focusing solely on politics. The chapter experienced a turning point when hosting prominent speakers like Mike Pence and Alan West, drawing hundreds of attendees and revitalizing interest in the organization. Internal meetings solely focused on politics were found to be ineffective, leading to the shift towards more engaging and interactive activities. So walk me through what you actually did to start growing the chapter, like not the big picture stuff, but what did you do personally and what did your chapter president do to grow the chapter to be this humongous chapter on the University of Iowa campus? Yeah, for sure. So obviously I already told you that it started very small, four people, so there was little room to go down. You know, it didn't necessarily hurt us. As a matter of fact, it helped us a lot because we weren't so scared to run into something that would be like, oh, this is going to tank us. We're never going to recover from this, you know, because we're pretty far down already. So the first obvious thing that I did individually was just talk to my friends about it. You know, I knew that most of my friends were somewhat value-oriented in my direction, but none of them were like politically active. So I tried them, you know, I even got a few of them to show up to some meetings. But one, my roommate, who I go back quite a ways with, we actually, I talked to him all the time. Really, I just yapped to him all the time about everything that I was doing with the app, and eventually I was just like, bro, you've just got to come, you know, you've just got to come check it out, come to a meeting, come see what it's about. And he went, and he was like, wow, you know, I actually think that I can use more information on this, you know, because he was a business major and he actually ended up starting his business today, but to go back to that, it's like, he knew that he wasn't necessarily going to benefit from like the political involvement side of it, but he did know that he was going to benefit from the knowledge of what's going to help his business down the line. What kind of principles that run his business are going to make it solid? What kind of legislation will he be supporting in the future, not to screw himself over with tax write-offs, you know, like things like that. So the first thing that I did was go to France. The second thing I did after that was to mess around with the other clubs that I was in, because like I said, I wanted to be involved, and I kind of bit off more than I could chew, something a lot of freshmen do, you know, sign up for like 20 orders and only stick with a couple. Now, when I was doing that, I was openly recruiting people to YAT. I was like, even if I thought that they might be interested just a tiny bit, I would be like, just come, just come check it out, check it out, and that worked a little bit. But if I'm being honest, that's not, it wasn't a great source. It wasn't a great source because there's not a ton of people who entirely stick with those things. So what I did instead was I went the YAT route, and this is what my chairman helped me understand as well. The more, the more that we can be on campus as a chapter and be seen by people, the more likely that they are to come up and talk to us. Let me put it like this. So if you show up to a gym for one day, nobody's going to look at you twice. They're going to ignore your existence. And if they do see you, they'll probably think, huh, I've never seen that guy here before. Now, that being said, if you go to a gym for six months or, you know, even a couple of weeks, then people are going to see you and they're going to be like, oh, I've seen that guy here before. Like, oh, that guy's always here when I am. You know, type of deal. So the more that we got ourselves on campus, the more, or excuse me, the less hesitant people were to come up and actually ask us what we were, what we're doing, what we're about. And that gave us a chance to tell them that it's like, oh, yeah, we're the best conservative organization in the country, and we give opportunities like no other. You want to go to DC and meet a bunch of people from across the country? Nice hotel, free meals, and we're going to also help pay for your flight. I mean, come on. I thought it was a scam. Who's turning that down? Am I right? But the reality of the situation is that you're building a small community at the school that is bold about their beliefs, and they're going to carry those beliefs outward into the professional life and into their family's lives as well. Just like my friend. So my friend did not, he's not involved in politics now, but what he is doing is he started his own business, and eventually that guy's going to have a family. So that means a business and a family has now been built off of the principles that made this country what it is today. And I think that that's amazing, and that's exactly the kind of opportunities that we would give to people. So that's, tabling was a great way to grow our chapter. And obviously hosting events helps a ton. I think, on the same note, I think being creative about what we tabled about really helped. Understanding that maybe I really care about gun rights, but but Kyla doesn't, you know, but Michael doesn't, you know, so it's like, okay, well if I'm trying to, if I'm trying to do something that will help Kyla and Michael, but they don't care about what I'm trying to help them with, then they're not going to listen to me at all, you know. So I have to find out what's important to Kyla and Michael. Maybe Michael likes going out and drinking on the weekends, and maybe Kyla goes to volleyball practice, you know. So it's like, okay, well, I know that Michael cares about paying less for his drinks, and I know that Kyla is probably not wanting to face six foot five men in her volleyball league, you know. So those are the issues that I should be attacking rather than gun rights, if that kind of makes sense. Yeah, so finding out what people care about and then getting them to understand that we're not doing this for ourselves, but for them and the people around them. Good to know, good to know. So what do you think totally flopped? What were some things you guys did that just did not work? Yeah, so I think that the things that didn't work, again, I want to go back to this, getting out on campus is like the best thing you can do. So what didn't work was when we tried to like kind of make it more about the chapter itself, and like, so like for our internal meetings, you know, we would do those. And they never worked when we just tried to like talk about just politics, you know, where we were like, oh, yeah, well, you know, we just hate that those freaking, those libs, they're so bad, and they just make us mad. Oh, free markets, those are cool. Yeah, we like those, you know, because it's just kind of like all of us just agreeing, and it's really lame. And we did that for a couple meetings, and we saw like, like five people stopped showing up, and it's like, okay, okay, okay. Like, we get it, you know, like you're bored, you know, you don't want to do that. So this, and this is again, like kind of what made me choose the app, is the amount of activity there is. So instead of doing a meeting where we just sit and talk, or where we watch like, oh, here's, here's a video about economics, but like, no, dude, you can get that in your 10 a.m. lecture. Yeah, you know, like that's how much. So we kind of turned that around, and stopped with the menial kind of meetings, because we found out that people really don't want to go to an extra lecture at the end of the day. And I would say that that's what flopped for us the most. Interesting, cool, interesting. So what was your biggest event or moment where it was like, okay, this is the turning point, this is where I feel like my chapter is, is really something huge now. A lot of people are coming. Walk me through that. Definitely. So, I think there's a couple points to this one. So in terms of like scale, like how many people were we able to gather for one single event? We, we brought Mike Pence, and he brought around like 600 something people, you know, just, just a ridiculous amount, like over a half a thousand people. And they got there, they were all in that room because of us. Obviously, Mike Pence is a big name, so he attracted that. We did the same thing with similar numbers with Michael Knowles and Matt Walsh. So it's like, these are all people with high name recognition, especially in that time when like, What Is A Woman was circulating. Daily Wire was like, very, very coming up in 2022, 2023. And we were able to get hundreds of people into these venues, but it wasn't like they were there necessarily because we did something special. Like, they were just there because we were bringing somebody very noteworthy. Now, I think that a different time was my first, or excuse me, my second semester as chairman. So it would have been 20, the beginning of 2023, and we noticed that there was a slight drop-off. Typically, there is coming into fall. You know, a lot of people in the summer are either like, they stop caring, or they forget about it, you know, whatever. People have lives. So, we were trying to rejuvenate kind of the movement, and we ended up bringing Lieutenant Colonel Alan West, who's an amazing speaker. He pulls the stage like no other, and he's definitely one of my favorite speakers. Now, that being said, he's not Ben Shapiro. You know, he doesn't get that name recognition like those other speakers do, but I knew that Alan West had just as much potential as him. So, what we did was, we worked our butt off. We advertised for a month before he came. We came up with creative ways to get his name out there. Not only his name, but more importantly, again, I want to highlight this, more importantly, the issue that he would be talking about, which was PEI on our campus. As I already mentioned, with the murals and some other aspects. Very big thing in Iowa. So, I knew he was going to be a great speaker, and I knew that people were going to connect with him on this. We just had to make people know that it would be a connection thing that they could get across. So, we did that, and we filled the room with Alan West. We got just under, it was either 60 or just under 60, but it was also just like a lecture hall, you know, so it wasn't like a massive ballroom. But it was the hard work that me and my chapter members put in, worked tirelessly to get this guy's name out there and to get this guy's cause out there. What we did was we filled the room. We had some great questions that not only challenged our viewpoints, but also kind of gave food for thought for the left as well, and we got a lot of members out of it as well. This was the first time when it was like, okay, I feel like we did everything we possibly could and we got maximum benefit, because not only did we have a successful event, but we also learned that having a boring meeting afterwards completely kills the vibe. Because when you're at one of those events, you know, you want to be like, hey, this is who brought them, this is who did it. So we do that, and then we had a meeting that was based around breaking up into sections and basically like steelmanning arguments and having people like, forcing altercations between members, and what that leads to is like almost a productive way of thought. So we did that, and a lot of people stayed. I want to say five, then we had like 30 to 35 members showing up to our meetings, and that was like, it was amazing, because University of Iowa doesn't have a super large political atmosphere. It's a D1 school, so it's very known for like other things besides politics. Yeah, exactly. So that in itself was a massive success, and the other thing that I really, really want to highlight here is that it's not always about how many people are in the room, but who's in the room. So for example, even though there were four people in that first meeting that I showed up to, all it took was us four to bring Mike Pence, because we were extremely dedicated. We wanted to make an impact and a difference, so we did. So we now had 35 people who were incredibly devoted and motivated to take action. So it's like, this is a massive jump. In terms of a percentage increase, I mean, that's a ridiculous increase. So, very happy about that. That was a massive kind of change for us, and we took with it and ran with it. We started doing more tables. We started getting crazier with the topics. Not more devices, just more open about our stance. So we would kind of alter the things we would do, but we would have them in like a month where, so like for example, like Black History Month, we wanted to tie into like DEI and things like that. So we made it very easy for people to understand why we were doing it, when we were doing it, and it made sense to them. Yeah, so it was like a hot topic on campus, and we were like, okay, boom, we're going with that, because that's what the people care about, and it paid off big time. All right, I got to ask though, was there any pushback from the administration? Like, what did the administration, the other students, the faculty, teachers, what did that look like? Because there's got to be some. Oh, for sure, yeah. So I'll start with the obvious one, which is the students. So the students, like we were not the most liked student organization on campus. I can imagine, I can imagine. We were the most active, however, which is something that I'm very happy to say. Now, with that, we had many, many people come up and try to call us fascists, bigots, racist, the whole nine yards. It was really, really funny, because we had a pretty diverse group of people usually at our table. So when people tried to call us that, like, it was easy to refer to one another and be like, oh, like, how do you explain this person? How do you explain this person? Yeah. And kind of like put it back in their face. Now, other than that, we would have people come up, we had people pour water on our table, trying to ruin our stuff. We had people flip our table. I was assaulted at one of them. That was, that was fun. So she got arrested. Oh, wow. Yeah. It wasn't anything crazy. I just say assault because that's the charge. But what I really want to highlight is that students are going to have that negative reaction. It's more about the response, right? Because we have a chance to uphold these values, regardless of what's going to happen. And I think that that's something every student needs to understand is the importance of what they're doing. Because if you think that what you're doing is not important, then the first sign of confrontation, you're going to back down, you're going to step away from it. And if that's what you want, then go ahead and do that. But for us, it was just different. We understood that the things that we're going to be doing are going to impact these students, not just for while they're here, but when they leave college, which is insanely important. I can't even explain it. So when things got hard for us, and when things got scary for us, we knew not to back down. One of my members even had people like stalking her in like, you know, like, basically like the doctor in their little boat, like socialist group or whatever. I'm going to say YDSA was a big problem, as well as some other some other groups, which were openly supported by the university, by the way, like not even openly supported, like they existed because the university paid for them to exist. So, which is very common, which is very common at universities. So these groups are what opposed us. And the best way to combat it is action. Just got to be out there, got to be open with it. And you got to be on top of it. You can't let it get to you. More importantly, stick together, you know, we are not only a club of people, but we're also a club of people who care about the same things. And what that gives us a chance to do is to be honest and open with each other. And when you have that, then you're going to be able to communicate with one another when somebody needs help. Yeah, either help them. So that was the student side of things. In terms of faculty, it was less. So if you're not, if you didn't want to see it this way, you had the option to completely think that the university was just incompetent at their jobs. No, that means that it obviously wasn't that. If you take a closer look. So we would try to put in like budget requests and those wouldn't often go our way. But eventually, when we started like bringing up to the university, like, hey, you can't unfairly give other clubs money when you give us less. And they're like, oh, yeah, I guess that is a lawsuit waiting to happen. So then they had to start doing that. And they would take a long time with their processes. And I understand that it is a bureaucracy and that that'll happen. Right. But in terms of trying to slow down an approval process for bringing somebody like a speaker, that's very common across universities. And it was no different in Iowa. So we worked very hard and we annoyed the crap out of our student or life faculty and they might have hated us for it, but we got things done because of it. So it was less like they weren't openly against us. Like nobody ever told us. Well. We did actually get a couple of sniper marks at some tables, but nobody, nobody from faculty ever told us that they openly hated us or disagreed with our existence. So it's more of one of those things that's systemic in the sense that you have to be consistent with battling it, but it definitely exists. So.