KNOW YOUR TRAINER

Susan Cooper

Without Susan Cooper, there would be no Impact Texting Team. As team leader, Susan developed this effort from the ground up, working with both INDIVISIBLE Sacramento and 2020 Coalition to find and train an efficient team. Working from her home base in Sacramento, Susan has pulled in folks from around the country to work together for a big win in November. Now, we are seeing the ways in which her work is paying off. With nearly 150 members, Impact Text Team is having what its name implies: impact.

Susan learned to text in October 2017 when a close friend from Petaluma introduced her to it. She learned the ropes by trial and error, texted for a blue wave in 2018, and started training people in September of 2019. “It was like pulling teeth to get anyone interested,” she says, “…until COVID-19 hit!” Now, her biggest problem is finding enough time to train all the people who are interested!

Susan says that she has learned a lot along the way about training people. “In the very beginning,” she says, “I wasn’t a very successful trainer, because we were only doing group trainings.” Rather than get frustrated and quit, however, Susan kept at it and basically learned how to train from her students in one-on-one sessions. “In those early days,” she remembers, “there was person who called me frequently, asking a million questions. That person, in her persistence, helped me find a way to train people to be more successful. From that early experience, she and I, with a great deal of trial and error, were able to develop a training program that worked.”

Now, Susan gets to enjoy the successes of her text team members as well as her own. “It’s a thrill to watch people I trained become successful texters,” she says proudly. “I love seeing them on the various Slack Workspaces, requesting texts, asking questions and interacting with the campaigns!” Having pushed her chicks out of the nest, she loves to watch them fly.

Susan’s message to her fellow texters? “Stay with it,” she advises, “And don’t over-think things.” This is the through-line of Susan’s story – persistence. Set your goal, keep to it, and don’t give way to fear or despair. With Susan’s help, that’s how we will win in November.