Thomas Peters | From Tragedy to Success

Wesley Donehue Podcast

🗯️🎙️You won’t want to miss today’s inspiring episode featuring Thomas Peters, founder and CEO of the political texting company, RumbleUp!

🐘Big Observations: Thomas recounts a key insight from Mitt Romney’s 2012 defeat: the potential of using smartphones as a tool to organize a winning campaign.

🤫Behind Closed Doors: Wesley and Thomas discuss the lack of transparency among political professionals and how this secrecy limits potential growth in the field.

🛟A True Lifesaver: Thomas shares how creating his business saved his mental health during his recovery from a traumatic, life-threatening injury.

💪🏼Creating Teflon: Thomas and Wesley reflect on lessons about life's fragility and how these lessons influence decision-making in entrepreneurial pursuits.

✂️Democrats Invent, Republicans Perfect: Thomas discusses how many digital crafts are initially developed by Democrats, then adjusted to perfection by Republicans.

📑Code of Conduct: Wesley and Thomas theorize about the regulatory measures that should or should not be implemented in GOP political campaigns.

🚌The Keys to The Bus: Thomas describes his positive experiences on Carly Fiorina’s presidential campaign, highlighting that camaraderie and trust in a young staff were key to a great experience.

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Thomas Peters, 38, holds two masters degrees, grew up in California and Michigan, and moved to Washington DC in 2007, where his career began in online political organizing and digital grassroots advocacy, first through his award-winning personal blog AmericanPapist, read by millions of people a year at its height, then as a communications director, writer, consultant and pundit. In 2012 he consulted for the advocacy organization CatholicVote on a project to mobilize millions of Catholics in several swing states on behalf of Mitt Romney for President. In 2014 he founded uCampaign, a platform which enables clients to launch and operate their own white label iOS/Android apps. uCampaign built the official smartphone apps of over 50 organizations in 12 countries, including Ted Cruz for President and Donald Trump for President (2016) as well as the UK, Canadian and Australian center–right parties’ apps. These apps were downloaded over 700,000 times in 9 languages and resulted in tens of millions of grassroots actions being performed by their supporters. In 2018 he launched RumbleUp, the most advanced political texting platform. In 2020 RumbleUp powered the official white label campaign texting platforms of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). In 2020 he wound down uCampaign to focus his team 100% on RumbleUp. In 2021, he launched Switchboard, a texting platform dedicated to shortcode texting as well as non-political texting use cases. Its first two significant clients are the Republican Governors Association and Friends of Ron DeSantis. In 2022 in addition to powering the NRCC & NRSC’s platforms for a second cycle in a row, RumbleUp also powered the official white label campaign texting platforms of the Republican Governors Association and the Republican State Leadership Committee. In 2020 he was awarded a “40 under 40” award in “recognition as a leader and innovator in the political business community” by the American Association of Political Consultants. His work has been profiled by The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and he was featured as a Fox News Sunday Power Player on August 30, 2020. He has been interviewed by NPR, Axios, Reuters, USA Today, Campaigns & Elections as well as Bloomberg’s Balance of Power podcast, the Business of Politics podcast, the Digital Politics podcast and the Ruthless podcast. He has given talks to the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC), the Cellu