470: Spreading Liberty Across the World! (with Joshua Eakle from Students For Liberty)

Brian Nichols  
faced with an uncertain future many business owners and technology professionals don't have time needed to invest in their business technology strategies and as a result are afraid of their technology getting outdated and putting their company and customers information at risk. The digital future is already here. But with all different choices in the marketplace, it's difficult to know which one will be the best fit for you and your strategic vision. Imagine having the peace of mind that your business is backed by the right technology investments that are tailored for your specific needs. Hi, I'm Brian Nichols and I've helped countless business owners and technology professionals just like you helping you make informed decisions about what technologies are best to invest in for your business. Voice bandwidth, cybersecurity, business continuity, juggling all the aspects of business technology is messy. Let me help at the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash help and sign up for a free one on one consultation with yours truly to dig deep into where you see your company headed and how we can align your business technology towards those goals. Again, that's the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash ELP. To get your simplified business technology started today. Instead of focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Happy Monday there, folks, Brian Nichols here on The Brian Nichols Show. Hope you had a great weekend I am as always your humble host and today you know what's in store for you another fun filled episode and today we're gonna have a returning group but a different name associated with said returning group Students for Liberty. Last time we had on the show, Dr. Wolf Vaughn lair today we're having Joshua Eagle join us on the program. Joshua, welcome to the program. Hey, Brian,

Joshua Eakle  
thanks for having me.

Brian Nichols  
Absolutely. But thank you for joining. We were reminiscing there. We're like How long have we been friends on Facebook now? In I think we said like six years. And we both kind of laughed because wow, no, eight years because time is crazy. Yes. And this is the first time we've actually connected face to face though it be over the the interwebs. But alas, we'll take what we can get. And Joshua as I mentioned, your your a new face for Students for Liberty. Now we had Dr. Wolf on there, the CEO for SFL on the program way back in 2018. I think it was right after our Justin Amash interview we had back then. And it was a great opportunity to learn who Students for Liberty is the fact that you guys are international, you have such a great presence, but also all the great work you're doing and helping raise awareness and support for Liberty causes and organizations and fast forward to where we are today. Obviously, we're talking to a lot of different people, you are now joining the SFL team. And I would love for you if you could to number one, introduce yourself to the audience, but also a reintroduction to Students for Liberty.

Joshua Eakle  
Sure. Okay. So yep. My name is Joshua Cole. I'm the Global Marketing Director here at Students for Liberty. And as Brian said, I think I've joined the team of almost a year ago, it's about eight months ago, I think now so we're getting up on that year anniversary. You know, for your audience who may not be familiar with Students for Liberty Students for Liberty is the largest international student group focused on furthering the values of classical liberalism. We have students in over 114 countries on every inhabited continent. We last year had, I think, almost 3000 events with almost a million attendees. And we're growing like crazy, you know, this year where we I think we grew our budget by 30, or 40%. And we're just kind of experiencing meteoric growth moving upwards and onwards, spring the values of liberty across the world. In a nutshell, Brian, you know, our mission is to educate, develop and empower the next generation of leaders for liberty. And we're different from other student groups in the sense that we are truly decentralized and bottom up. So those of you interested in libertarian ideas, a lot of organizations like talk about it. But then when it actually comes to living those values, we have built our organization to operate in that way. So that's kind of the 10,000 foot view. And you've got a cameo for my dog in the background. But uh, yeah, glad to be here, Brad.

Brian Nichols  
Thanks. Absolutely. That's what we call a special for the the video watcher here on the YouTube. So you get to see Josh's dog, how about that. But no, my friend that what you guys are doing is incredible. And we see the value of the Liberty based organizations here in the continental US. But to the point you guys are across the world, and I think sometimes, more often than not being Americans as we are we get a little self centered and maybe a little focused on what we have as our our geopolitics here in America. And it turns into much more domestic politics, versus the the overarching Liberty issues that we really should be focusing across the world. I mean, I'll just say it that's why I really made a hard turn towards discussing COVID Over the past few years, because that was an issue that's literally impacting everybody. And I mean, we had people on the show from South Africa to Australia. to anywhere in between pretty much on the program to give those different perspectives. And I think it's great because now you have a chance. And I say, now you have a chance, there's always been the chance but to the audience today, you can see that if you're out there in your in the, you know, the SFL range of the target market, you being a younger, Liberty oriented individual, you have a place to go, you don't have to feel like oh, Young Americans for Liberty is is out there in United States, and I can't, I can't have access to that you have an option and the fact that guys are actually getting things done. That's huge.

Joshua Eakle  
Absolutely. And to your point about COVID. I mean, we just ended a massive protest movement within North America, our students took to the streets in Canada, after Trudeau declared that, effectively martial law on the topic of the trucker, so I mean, we literally our students, organized several events, protests across the across the country, Canada, and really made an impact, you know, you can kind of go through our Twitter page and look at some of the just really powerful protest videos that came out of there. And you know, our student groups are actually down getting their hands dirty and fighting tyranny in their local communities across the world, Canada just being one example.

Brian Nichols  
Josh, you're doing, you're doing the Lord's work my friend, because we we need to have the ability for people to feel they have a place to go. And let's talk about some of the things you're gonna be doing here at Students for Liberty, I know you guys have a lot of fun, exciting initiatives. And you mentioned 30 to 40% increase in funding, that's a nice little feather in the old cap there. So let's talk about some of the upcoming things down the road, whether it's short term or long term, from Students for Liberty.

Joshua Eakle  
Yeah, so this year, you know, we, one of the things that I'm excited to tell everyone about is that we are bringing back Liberty calm for the first time since COVID. That's going to be hosted in Miami towards the end of the year. In the fall, details to follow, you can get on the the list for alerts at Liberty con calm. But otherwise, you know, some of our student activities that are coming up this year, were, you know, are a lot of our students were very impacted by the Ukrainian situation. So we're going to continue to track that and fight for Ukrainian sovereignty. We have, you know, webinars going across the country, we have events going across regionally and you can kind of go track those on our website, on our events page to kind of see what's coming up in your region. But you know, one of the big things that we just kicked off, Brian, that might be interesting, is what we're calling the Prometheus fellowship. The Prometheus fellowship is, is a fellowship that we just launched this year, for the top 50 students in SFL. And basically, what we're going to be doing is flying in the top 50, into the United States for a series of trainings, that's basically focused on, you know, like, building a personal professional skills. This is a, you know, 10s of 1000s of dollars of investments that we're putting into these top 50 students. And, you know, it's really focused on making sure that these young people have the tools, they need to make a really dramatic impact in their professional lives. That program just kicked off applications are still open. Obviously, you do need to be in LLC and local coordinators, we call it to kind of get involved in that program. But the applications are open for the LC coordinator program right now. And you can, you know, apply to become an LC on our website. And that's a really exciting, exciting program that we just launched. And then on top of that, you know, another thing I wanted to mention to your audience to Brian is that we're always hiring new staffers with a meteoric growth this year, we have a bunch of open positions and we're growing like crazy. So you're, you know, what in your in your audience might be interested in getting a job in the movement, there's also that opportunity to

Brian Nichols  
There you go look at you want to work for liberty, there, you have an opportunity. And by the way, it's a great book, you can read by our good friend Connor ghodous work for liberty, which is an organization you get together and also have a different networking opportunities, a little plug there for Connor, why not but let's go back to SFL. Um, you guys also have some awesome programs that you have for not just Liberty activists, but for actually going out and making things happen in the community. Can you speak to some of the resources you offer?

Joshua Eakle  
So as an organization, we you know, we focus on providing, I'd say the biggest thing that I hear from my from students in SFL. As to what what our organization does, it really is different than other organizations is we have an extremely powerful international decentralized network of students and alumni. So while we invest in our students, if you become a local coordinator will invest in you will put you through training programs will give you the resources you need to do Tabeling and outreach and on your college campus. We also have one of the largest and most powerful decentralized networks of liberty advocates, both current students and previous alumni that, that work together to kind of provide people with opportunities for career advancement, to provide feedback, insights, skills and education building up you know, across the world, so no matter where you are, no matter what continent you're in, you can kind of you have access to that network. And that that alone is one of the most powerful things I think that makes Students for Liberty different than other organizations is just the the fact that we are focused so much on cultivating the next generation of leaders. And to that end, you know, the resources that we provide, on the on the tabling side, the education side, the skills building side, are our mash with the existing network of leaders that we built over the last 13 years, that all work together to kind of come alongside each other to help you help people with different projects. One of the things that you see in student groups is other student groups like ours is that they're very focused on the political space exclusively the political space Students for Liberty, while we're very focused on you know, that the typical libertarian ideas like academic freedom, individual freedom, economic freedom, we are also focused on making sure that our students can go out into the world and make an impact for liberty in ways that are not just politics. You know, we have entrepreneurs that come through our program, we have journalists that come through our program, you know, writers and creatives that come through our program. And the way that we see it is we look at a very holistically you know, we set up somebody and Paul, you know, we both know that the most of the important society culture changing work that happens is not through politics, it's through the private sector. It's through innovation, right. And so it's not just, you know, you don't have to just be politically interested, if you're interested in classical liberal values, and you want a network to kind of come alongside you cultivate your skills, and really give you the resources you need to succeed in whatever your passion is, that's what we're focused on is finding those, those leaders, giving them the tools they need. And, you know, get plugging them into the network and letting it run.

Brian Nichols  
You had a slogan, you mentioned there before, and guess what we share the same first word, educate. And I think that's a super duper important part, because we talked about the world of sales too. You have to educate your client along the way, while also piquing the interest while also getting that emotional appeal. You have to bring something of value to the table and you guys are doing that you have two different resources over as Students for Liberty SFL Academy and then I think a lot of people know of the organization Learn Liberty, which is a Yeah, the learning arm talk about the SFL Academy Learn Liberty for us.

Joshua Eakle  
So it's interesting, we actually are kind of merging those two together this year, Brian, and we're launching Learn Liberty courses. You know, we're kind of like rebranding, that product is wearing Liberty courses. And that's going to be happening this year. But in a nutshell, what what's SSFL Academy is it's a gamified platform where you can learn about the values of liberty and like a gamified engineering like really motivating type environment for effectively for free we you know, we provide that to our LCS as part of the program so that's works in in tandem with Learn Liberty which Learn Liberty is basically a you know, a media site. It's a it's a YouTube channel, we have a website that just focuses on educating the the broader public on what libertarian values mean, in practical application. So you know, one of our more viral videos on the Learn Liberty side is about you know, why everything everything you hear about inflation is wrong. There's a video where Anthony Davies debunks a lot of these myths that you hear, you know, perpetuated in the mainstream media about how, you know, inflation is caused by X, Y, or Z. And it's not to do with the money supply, or maybe it's good. It's, you know, a great video, and there's a series of them, they come out videos every week on the topic trying to educate the public, but the SFL academy that that tool specifically is available to our LCS or local coordinators, as we call them. And that's just a very powerful education platform where you learn about the values of liberty and have a fun time doing

Brian Nichols  
over the past three, four weeks, probably longer than that we've really been digging into the future of not just the monetary policy, but also the future of technology, looking at blockchain so cryptocurrency blockchain technology, we just had another conversation here last week with our good friends over the Beckley Foundation and the cure token and cure chain. Both Jacob Beckley and gymnasts are talking about the value of not only are they going to be opening up the healthcare space to help on silo the research, but now, all the research is going to be there and it's going to be able to really help incentivize exponential growth in the development of healthcare. You know, just the the Innovation in Healthcare has been so stifled by the regulations out there and the ability to actually grow. And one of the things I noticed over on your site and I was going through, you're talking about changing the way things are done, we've seen technology changed, but sometimes it can be confusing. That's why I've been having candidly guests on my show to help explain this stuff. Because I think your average person will come into a conversation and they'd be like, Yeah, I want to like Bitcoin, but I don't know a lot about it. I don't feel educated to speak on it. And then they just kind of play fly on the wall. More or less Boyer as you're actually offering a Bitcoin Academy. So Joshua, what does that look like and what would that entail?

Joshua Eakle  
Yeah, so we actually put this together in January. And it's something that we plan to bring back again this year. Basically what Bitcoin Academy was. And just to take a step back, you know, our CEO Wolf, who you know you have on the podcast is massively orange pilled. And so as many members of our leadership team and our staff and our students, so we're all on the Bitcoin train not only because of its power for individual freedom and like sound economic, the sound economic reasons, but we also pay our staff in Bitcoin that's a whole nother conversation, or we allow our staff to take Bitcoin as payment if they want to. But no, in a nutshell, Bitcoin Academy was was we brought in some, some some big names in the movement, you know, Alex Gladstein, Stefan Vieira, Wolf, obviously, we brought them together for free training, a webinar, trade based training for about three weeks, where you can opt in no cost, learn about the power of Bitcoin for human rights, the power of Bitcoin, you know, for for economic freedom, economic liberty, privacy, and why it, we believe it's one of the greatest the best tools that we have to further liberty in our lifetime. And so this was something we put together for free to the broader public in January, I actually was talking to wolf about bringing this back either in the summer in the fall. And we plan to do these over and over again, not just on Bitcoin, but on other topics that are surrounding, you know, our value set and our set of pillars that we as we call them. But that's something that's an extension of what we do, we take our network, we connect, you know, these really powerful educational resources, these these these very influential people, and we provide them to young people for free. They can learn and grow their skills and kind of understand how to communicate better about these ideas. And Bitcoin accounting is just one piece of that.

Brian Nichols  
So your average person out there who's listening, their interest has been piqued, and now they're saying, okay, Joshua, let's, let's, let's do this, I want to get involved with SFL. Now, obviously, it's an international market that you're reaching out to. So if I'm somebody, I'm interested in getting involved with SFL, what's what's that process look like?

Joshua Eakle  
For first place to start would be going to our website signing up to get alerts, you can, you can do that pretty easily. If you if you're interested in becoming a local coordinator, and kind of having these resources and skills kind of come alongside and back you up, you can also go to our website and apply for the LC program. In the US, I believe, applications are open right now. And they're open year round. In other regions, in other countries, we do typically have a limited window. And I think it's about to open for most regions in the spring. So you know, keep an eye on that. But you can, you can go to our website you can apply to become an LLC, you can get connected with our network, obviously, via social media, the typical ways in via email. And, you know, if you're on the list, and we have, say other opportunities, like a Bitcoin month or free these free resources, we make sure to notify our entire network about that and push that, you know, month over month, so that I think that's a good place to start. If you're interested in the ELSI program, I would recommend going ahead and planning to apply in the spring, if you're in the US feel free to apply anytime. Understand that, you know, 70% of those applications are denied. So, you know, think through that application, make sure that you're putting your best foot forward. Because you know, we have limited resources. And we we have to make sure we're intentional in that way. But yeah, you can find out all those details on the website for sure. Search for liberty.

Brian Nichols  
There you go. And also one thing that I thought was really cool, too, is that not only do you have all those resources, you have an entire library of books available for people to go download and to get more educated on the topics. And I mean, is it not cliche in many cases where we're like, Well, have you read this book whenever somebody asked a question about named libertarian topic, and and to your point in you know what we're talking about today. Sometimes books don't necessarily reach people where they're at, but rather it helps reinforce the issues that we're bringing to the table. So it is important to get more educated. I think the fact you guys have a resource there is great, but also you have a resource available for people if they want to go ahead and write so how can people go ahead and write for Students for Liberty?

Joshua Eakle  
That's a great question Brian, I appreciate you asking that. So we do have a blog. And you can check that out at the website as well. At the bottom of each the bottom of the blog page you can apply to become a writer and we are always looking for writers and content contributors especially from young people within the liberty movement across the globe. Our network is is very large, we have a lot of contributors from a vast amount of different cultures. But we are always looking to add to that we also are expanding some of our our operations in creating what you know short form video content to so you you may be a writer, we can help connect you with our get your your your content shared on our platforms, wherever you do that. We're also looking for people that say make Tik Tok videos short form stuff and it's a very growing platform right now. It's very condense it you know, it's very it's it's kind of I'd say it's kind of an art to be able to put together good content. So you know if you're interested in that too. You can you can argue You can shoot the info at email info at students for liberty.org Inquire on that and we'll follow up with you as well. But on our website, you can go to that bottom there, right for us and we're always looking for new submissions and new different diverse ideas to share my blog.

Brian Nichols  
See if I had a producer that was like on with me right now it'd be like, pull up that video The Tick Tock where it's a guy it's like it's a boss. Like he's basically a real life Michael Scott. And he's trying to explain to his I think it's an insurance company. What a tick tock is, and how they're gonna do the tick tock, it's so Boomer cringe worthy. It's, it's so great, because it starts out with his saying, tic TOCs are very difficult to catch their attention 1.5 seconds.

Joshua Eakle  
I, I'm a millennial. And the only thing that makes me feel old is when I get on tick tock, and I'm like, these people make, I mean, it's really simple stuff. It's, it is truly an art form to make this really great content. And it's really worth noting that as a platform, you can reach millions of people for, you know, completely organically by making good content. So if you have a skill with that, we would love to have you I can even pay you. There you go.

Brian Nichols  
Tick tock videos, and actually no, you're gonna get paid versus open. You're gonna get paid. Josh Echo can help you out there. How about that? How about that? Alright, folks, well, hey, if you enjoy today's episode, I'm gonna ask you to do me a favor, please go ahead and give it a share. And when you do, make sure you tag Josh SFL. And of course yours truly at being Nichols. Liberty. Josh. Any final thoughts or words of wisdom you want to leave the audience with today?

Joshua Eakle  
No, just I appreciate you having me. Brian, it's been it's been a pleasure to meet you in person the first time after all these years are residually I guess this is basically in person right now after COVID. But no, again, if your audience is interested in learning more students delivery.org Check us out on social opt in get those alerts and apply for that LC program. And I'll plug the hiring again. We are hiring for a lot of different positions. We're growing like crazy this year. So check out the Jobs tab on the website too, and see if any of those catch your fancy. Otherwise, Brian, thank you for having me.

Brian Nichols  
You got it. Well, folks, there you go. There's your call to action. So please go ahead. I'll make it easy for you to click the artwork in your podcast catcher. It'll bring it to today's episode, we can find all the transcript as well as all the links. So if you want to go ahead, yes and work for Students for Liberty. Well, there you go. But also want to go ahead and give Josh Wakko a shout. Please go ahead. And when you do, make sure you tell them The Brian Nichols Show. So with that being said, it's Brian Nichols signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for Joshua echo from Students for Liberty. We'll see you tomorrow.

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Brian Nichols  
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