Justin Weller on Politics and the Underprivileged’s Education

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/01/31

Justin T. Weller is the Founder of Urbana Tomorrow, and the Founder and executive director of Urbana Youth Center. Justin T. Weller is the founder of Urbana Tomorrow, a business group in Urbana, Ohio, that spans real estate, construction, event spaces, media and retail. A native of Urbana, advocate, community builder, entrepreneur, and member of the LGBTQ+ community, Justin’s business prowess and personal dedication to enacting change in his rural community have fueled the idea that a better tomorrow is always possible. In high school, co-founding the marketing and media company TrueChat led Justin to develop and host a podcast called The State of Us. The podcast focused on cutting through the noise to bring attention to pressing issues, and it was syndicated on AM and FM radio stations across much of the United States and Canada for 12 years. After studying psychology, political science, and public relations at Xavier University, Justin committed himself to entrepreneurship full-time. While continuing to lead TrueChat, he founded Urbana Tomorrow to manage an event venue at his family’s farm and invest in blighted properties in the Urbana area. Weller talks about his entrepreneurial journey at 14 with a cattle business and transitioned to media with TrueChat, aiming to elevate rural voices. His insights stem from hosting “The State of Us,” advocating for discourse over division. Weller discussed the decline of local media, its impact on community cohesion, and his efforts at the Urbana Youth Center. Serving over 700 members, the center tackles barriers like hunger and education gaps. Recognized as a Disney Magic Maker in 2021, Weller credited his team and emphasized small acts’ transformative potential, stressing the media’s role in fostering understanding.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are here with Justin T. Weller, a native of Urbana, Ohio. He is an advocate, community builder, and entrepreneur committed to revitalizing rural communities. You began your entrepreneurial journey at 14 with a beef cattle business, followed by the founding or co-founding of TrueChat. Two questions arise: what was the nature of your entrepreneurship in beef cattle, and how did that transition directly into marketing and media while you were still in high school?

Justin Weller: That’s a fair question, and many people would wonder the same. How does one go from ranching to media and marketing? It’s not a standard transition. This reflects a recurring theme throughout my life: from death comes life, and from doubt comes perspective. Running a cattle business teaches you invaluable lessons about perseverance, overcoming hardship, and managing a business.

When you care for animals that depend on you, their well-being directly impacts the success of your business. During that time, I committed to honouring the natural world as much as possible, ensuring animal welfare and health. Reflecting on those experiences, I see that everyone has a role to play in improving the world. Many industries have existed for generations, and it’s our responsibility to think about improving them. Often, we get caught up in the idea that we need to change the entire world, but sometimes, changing one person’s world is enough.

While the cattle company wasn’t massive, it was successful. We served several clients and directly contributed to their health and well-being through the products we provided. My transition to media occurred because, as I was growing up and managing this cattle business in rural America, particularly in the Midwest, a lot was happening worldwide. There always is, but this was during the financial crisis of 2008. Before, during, and after that period, I was learning and experiencing significant economic and political challenges. These events made me feel we were at an inflection point, and I believed we needed new voices, messages, and fresh perspectives.

This led me to the realization that in a hometown like mine—often overlooked and dismissed as “flyover country”—there was untapped potential. These are the states you pass over to reach places considered more significant, a misconception I strongly challenge.

Jacobsen: That is sometimes the sentiment. Sometimes, that’s the way people here feel. One of the places we see that is in the media market. Over the last two decades, the number of local media sources has reduced by more than half and continues declining. That’s a serious issue. One of the places this is evident is in schools. A very common occurrence used to be that local sporting events and extracurricular activities received a lot of media coverage.

Weller: They were a great way to encourage people to participate in extracurriculars and keep the community involved in what was happening at the school. Urbana is not a massive media market, as you may have gathered. As we saw less and less of that coverage, I am old enough to remember when we had a local access channel that people regularly watched on TV.

My best friend and I were asked to comment on a basketball game. We played football but weren’t involved in a sport during the winter season, so we agreed to comment. I said, “Sure,” just as a fluke, but we both enjoyed it. I immediately thought, “It’s a shame this isn’t available for more school events.” At the time, there were maybe one or two broadcasts a season, so the coverage was very limited.

We set out to figure out how to provide this service more regularly to the community in a way that intersects with the 21st century. That, of course, led to a media company. We started with internet radio, as we couldn’t use the word “podcast” since nobody knew what that meant. That was the transition from small-town media to creating something meaningful for the community.

Jacobsen: Oh, being in media, I did about 27 months at a horse farm—many stalls to muck. The worst was five days of cleaning 65 stalls back-to-back, followed by second pickings, about nine hours of work each day. It was gruelling, but one thing I noticed is that there are many similarities between so-called white-collar and blue-collar labour. The difference is the setting. In the barn, the “watering hole” or the water trough, whereas it’s the water cooler in an office. But people make up for those deficits in interesting ways. Did your interest in communication and media influence your decision to run as an independent candidate for mayor of Urbana in 2019?

Weller: Oh. When I started TrueChat, I had no idea what it would become. I was in high school, and our ambitions were modest—we just wanted to do something good for our hometown. But it quickly grew into something more. My best friend and I were committed to addressing the anger and frustration in America, which felt like it was reaching a boiling point. It was very unclear what would happen next.

We strongly felt that young people’s perspectives must be shared. We wanted to advocate for more common sense and less cruelty, more respectful discourse, and less hatred. This led me to spend the next 12 years hosting a podcast called The State of Us, which ultimately became a nationally syndicated AM and FM radio show. When we stopped, we were reaching 20 U.S. states. The show focused on perspective—discussing the issues and having conversations that no one else was willing to have.

Jacobsen: So what ultimately led to this philosophical pondering of your awakening?

Weller: It came from spending so much time researching everything happening worldwide that mainstream media wasn’t covering. I said, “Gee, some of this is important, and I didn’t even know it was happening.” At the same time, I was trying to figure out what I thought about it and having those conversations.

If anybody spends 2,000-plus hours trying to learn about something and understand the issues that impact this nation, you’re bound to come up with questions—and probably some ideas about how you’d do things if it were up to you. So yes, that program I ran for 12 years was probably the greatest educational experience I’ve ever had. It gave me perspective not just on the state of the world but also on the state of the Midwest, rural America, and small towns.

It all culminated in the 2016 election when I told listeners during an episode, “If you don’t like the way the table is set, you have to turn over the table.” In other words, you have to be part of the solution. You can’t just complain from the sidelines. Later that day, as I listened to the episode before release to make edits, I had a “smack myself in the face” moment. I heard myself say that and thought, “Here I am, sitting in downtown Cincinnati, in a skyscraper overlooking a professional sports stadium, as far away as possible from my cattle days.”

I had to ask myself, “What are you doing? You left your hometown. You left everything behind because you didn’t want to deal with it, and now you’re not trying to improve it.” That realization marked the beginning of my journey to move back to my hometown and try to make a difference. I tried to do that by running for mayor as an independent against a two-term incumbent Republican in a place that votes about 80% Republican 80% of the time.

Some people called that crazy—and they were probably right—but it started some important conversations here.

Jacobsen: How would you describe the feel of media in Urbana? When talking about radio, television, or podcasts hosted out of Urbana, would you say they’re influenced by the “cultural soil,” so to speak? Do they have a particular character?

Weller: Yes, and part of what bothers me most about the decline of local media is that it often translates into the death of the community. Local media talks about the culture, the undertones, and the unique way a place feels when you’re there. We forget how much of that revolves around what’s happening where you are.

As local newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations consolidate, voids are created in places like Urbana. We’re fortunate to have a local newspaper still. Still, we’re a community that serves about 25,000 to 30,000 people, and only about 1,100 subscribe to the paper. That’s a major issue because most of the population doesn’t have access to a unified source of information about what’s happening.

The closest thing to that is Facebook, but I don’t need to tell anyone that there’s nothing unified about the information on Facebook. More than anything, the flavour is disconnection—of being adrift. People feel disconnected from what’s happening, which leads to many cliques, groups of people relying on what they can gather from each other. There’s value in that, but the problem arises when we don’t all start from the same facts.

It becomes very difficult for different groups to interact positively when this group’s facts and that group’s facts aren’t the same. They might not even be talking about the same story. Our local newspaper does a good job of maintaining a journalistic approach to what they write. However, if they had more than two reporters, they could do even more.

They used to have, I believe, 20 people in the newsroom alone—though that was years ago. Now, they have two: the managing editor and someone for the sports section. It’s a tough job to cover all the happenings in Urbana and Champaign County with so few resources. They do a solid job of staying down the middle, but I’m not sure people here want “down the middle.” Sometimes, that approach challenges what a group is telling or advocating for, which makes things even more complicated.

I continue to advocate for and press for a resurgence of local media. It will likely need to look and feel different. Still, the decline of local media has contributed as much to our division as a nation as anything else.

Jacobsen: How is the work at the Urbana Youth Center progressing in terms of providing evidence-based, ethical programs to help kids and students who may not have the same access to resources and education as other families?

Weller: The Urbana Youth Center is a perfect story. Its origins are a perfect example of the concept that “from death comes life.” I had run for mayor and came closer than anyone thought I would—possibly even closer than I believed myself. But when you don’t win, you’re faced with a choice: what will you do now? Is it over? Am I done trying to make a difference, or is there more to be done?

That’s where new life emerged from that defeat. I decided that as long as I knew there were people in this community who needed help, I had a responsibility to do something about it. That perspective came from overcoming self-doubt. Anyone considering running for office knows those doubts: Am I good enough? Can I do it? Will I do a good job? Can I win?

And then, after losing, more doubts emerge: if I didn’t win, am I meant to do anything? The answer is yes. Maybe I wasn’t meant to do that particular thing. Still, I can now do something else—perhaps even more important.

The Urbana Youth Center is the most important thing I’ve done to contribute to society. I didn’t fully realize that at the time. It was part of my campaign platform to establish a youth center, and I was aware of the stats: one in two kids in this community is classified as disadvantaged by the state of Ohio. That means they’re not set up to have the same opportunities as the average kid.

In Ohio, most kids were on free or reduced lunch programs. We also knew that about one in three didn’t have either of their biological parents living with them at home. So we understood the numbers, but the numbers don’t convey the human element of situations like that.

The human element became clear once we did all the work to start the youth center. These kids began showing up in droves—to hang out and be in a place where adults genuinely cared about them. However, the students had to overcome much doubt because so many have lived lives where trusting adults has proven dangerous. It doesn’t work out in their favour when someone promises them something.

Naturally, the students approached the youth center with skepticism. We provide them with a new perspective. We operate with open hearts, open minds, and open doors. We meet them where they are and work to build trust. We can only talk to them about new opportunities and connect them with programming to improve their world.

That ties back to something I mentioned earlier: for those who feel called to make the world a better place, there’s often this overwhelming focus on doing something grand—changing the entire world. But “grand” doesn’t always mean large-scale. It can mean a dramatic change for just one person. A grand act of kindness doesn’t need to affect millions to matter.

Changing one person’s world is just as significant. And the truth is, you don’t know how many other lives that single person might go on to affect. If one person destined to live in a cycle of poverty manages to break that cycle, their impact could ripple outward. Beyond their increased earning potential—contributing an additional half-million to a million dollars to the economy—they could lift others, changing even more lives.

We must not undervalue the importance of helping just one individual. Of course, the youth center aims to do this on a larger scale. We serve over 700 registered members, meeting them where they are with spaces to hang out, homework and study assistance, and pathways for dropouts to earn their high school equivalency diplomas, known as GEDs in other states.

We also provide books, art programming, food, and hygiene products. We aim to address the full scope of barriers that can hold these kids back from success. Education understandably takes a backseat when you’re hungry or don’t have proper clothes to wear. That’s just a basic reality of being human. Suppose you don’t have food or feel unsafe. In that case, your priority isn’t going to be your education or your future—it will be figuring out how to get through today.

Jacobsen: I understand you received Disney’s Magic Maker recognition in 2021. Can you tell me more about that?

Weller: Yes. There have been three or four moments in my life that I can only describe as truly extraordinary.

There are moments of humility—things you never expect to happen that do. I was nominated for the Disney Magic Maker recognition. So were, I don’t know, 30 or 40,000 other Americans. It’s great to be nominated, and that matters, but it’s one of those things where you think, “Oh, I’ve been nominated,” and then you don’t think about it again.

They were only choosing 50 people, and I thought, “There have to be 50 people out there who are making magic happen in ways I can’t even imagine.” But then I got an email from Disney’s Corporate Citizenship team. They said, “We’re going through the applications and narrowed it down. We want to schedule a time to talk with you and learn more about what you’re doing at the youth center and with Urbana Tomorrow.”

So I set it up, and we spoke. I didn’t know—because they wouldn’t tell you this—that they had already decided before that call. As you’d expect from a company like Disney, they extensively researched my background and work. They had already spoken to many other people before reaching out to me.

At the end of the call, they said, “We’re pleased to inform you that our team has reviewed everything, and we’ve selected you as one of 50 Magic Makers across America. In recognition, we’d like to bestow this award upon you and offer you a complimentary vacation to the Magic Kingdom. We’ll cover your airfare, hotel, and entry to all the parks for a week.”

They asked me what I thought about that, and I just had to sit there for a moment and think, “Is this happening?” Of course, it was. I felt incredibly grateful. I told them I would give more credit to the team at the youth center than to myself. No one person can do what we do there. It takes a team; it takes a community.

We’re fortunate to have amazing people at the youth center who work tirelessly daily to help these kids. Many do this work for substantially less than they could earn in private-sector jobs. So, yes, it was a humbling honour to receive. It also motivated me to work even harder to live up to that recognition at the youth center daily. We’re continuing to make Disney proud of their selection.

Jacobsen: Justin, do you have any final thoughts or feelings about today’s conversation?

Weller: Well, I want to thank you. We talked about the media, and we need good people dedicated to spending their time, energy, and passion on responsible journalism. It’s important to get the word out—not just about urgent things, but also the important things.

I’ve tried to keep those items in perspective this year. Urgent matters are often in your face, and you feel critical because they happen now. Sometimes, they are important, but we often sacrifice what’s truly important to address the urgent.

What you’re doing—keeping attention on the important things—is valuable. We need people doing that. We need them to do it in a trustworthy way that brings attention to issues that might otherwise go unnoticed. So, I appreciate that you’ve taken the time and believed I might have something important to say. It means a lot.

Jacobsen: Thank you, Justin. I appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation.

Weller: Thank you.

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