In December 2023, Chase Spencer graduated from Drake University with an American politics degree and some big questions.

“I didn’t really want to go to Washington, and so it was kind of – ‘Where do I fit in, and where can I start my career?’” he said.

The answer came soon enough when he landed a job as program manager in the Entrepreneurship Center at Drake’s Zimpleman College of Business, a role he started in August 2025.

He interned at the center as a student, and was given the opportunity to stick around as a contractor after he graduated, which included organizing the Great Plains Entrepreneurial Consortium Pappajohn Student Entrepreneurship Conference in 2024 that brought in students from private universities from all over the state to come to Drake and pitch their businesses.

“That was a lot of fun,” said Spencer, 24. “And I was able to play a smaller role in the business clinic and manage that. … In August, I got the opportunity to take over the programs.”

Under his purview are the Pappajohn Center for Entrepreneurial Outreach and the Buchanan Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. 

“[The] Pappajohn Center is very much for the outreach and the external in our communities and how we build entrepreneurship within the Des Moines area [and] the state of Iowa as a whole,” he said. “And then the Buchanan Center is very much our student base and our academic focus.”

One of the main programs of the Pappajohn Center is the Business Clinic, which invites 25 to 30 small business owners onto campus each semester to help them develop an idea or get to the next level in their business. Spencer said it has served over 800 entrepreneurs so far.

The Buchanan Center houses Drake’s entrepreneurship minor and all student programming, whether that be coaching or working with faculty members to implement entrepreneurship concepts into their courses, he said. 

It also holds various events like the Lorentzen Student Accelerator, where selected students get anywhere from $500 to $3,000 to start a business, he said. 

In addition to his program manager job, Spencer juggles two other roles. He’s running for a seat in the Iowa House and he has a business he started during an entrepreneurship class at Drake called Chasing Cars. The idea behind the business is that car owners get a free QR code window sticker that tells the story behind the car; it is monetized through advertising.

“My favorite part of the application is the story component, and it gives the owner an opportunity to tell a particular story with that car that they’ve had, whether that be a road trip or I built this with my grandfather,” he said. “That’s grown to almost 400 cars at this point in the database all across the country. We’ve run car shows with it. That was definitely how I got my appetite for entrepreneurship and testing those ideas in real life.”

The Business Record sat down with Spencer to learn more about his new role. 

This Q&A has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

You have this new full-time job, and you’ve got your business and you have your politics. How do you balance it all?

It’s a challenge, for sure. It’s a lot of personal growth, just in terms of how do you do all of these things? I’m very grateful to have a great team here at Drake that supports all of those decisions. And they’re able to help me out with the things that we have going on here at Drake. It’s honestly the people around me. With that, Chasing Cars has had to take a backseat a little bit, and that’s just just the way it is. I still fully believe in that business. But, there’s only so many things you can do. It’s just a matter of prioritizing and setting days aside. My 8 to 5 is here at Drake, and I’m fully dedicated to students and the community that we serve. And then the 5 to 9,10 p.m. is campaigning and talking to voters. 

How do you advise entrepreneurs who want to start a company? What do they need to know when they’re in that early stage, and they just have an idea?

Students will come to university and see a career path for them, and that is 100% legitimate, and we should 100% support that. I also like to introduce that concept of, ‘What if you were to work for yourself? What would that look like? What is the potential?’ And some people are OK with thinking that way, and some are not. What I’ll often say is, ‘Just try.’ As a student, you don’t realize how much time you really do have until after you graduate, and then you don’t have that time, so if there’s something that you want to start or something that you want to pursue, try it now. I think being OK with it failing the first time, being OK with having to pivot is a main component, and lay out what it means for you. What is that goal? What do you want out of this business? And that applies to students or community members that are starting their own businesses. What do you want out of this?

How do you cultivate an entrepreneur’s mindset in people?

There’s a lot of talk in this space of [whether] you’re born with the skills or you can develop them. I think you can develop. I think you can become an entrepreneur. I do think that there are certain entrepreneurship types and certain industries that lend themselves to certain mindsets, but I think it’s a matter of looking at a problem that you’re familiar with or something that gets you excited, and maybe you’re not familiar with it, but it’s something that you’re excited about, and taking that and being able to research that, and something that gets you out of bed in the morning and saying, ‘This is what I want to do, this is what I want to look at. This is what gets me excited.’ I think you have to have that. I think money is very capable of convincing people, but you have to have some sort of passion to get you there. I think that passion is what you need to have first. But then also laying that out of what does this business look like, and then, just honestly, a business model canvas is how you develop those skills. Being an entrepreneur should be able to break things down, manageable components, but also look at the big picture in that vision. 

What is your innovation process? 

I love thought experiments. I am one that loves to ruminate on an idea and run it through its paces. If I actually took seriously every business idea I’ve ever had, I’d have so many. I’ll see a problem and I think of a solution. I’ll use the example of talking to a food processing company here in Des Moines, and they were saying how they don’t have anybody that processes and packages food in cold storage. There’s no facility here within the state of Iowa at all, but even the region, the closest one is Indiana. We have a lot of smaller operations that obviously don’t have the funds to build their own warehouses. But there’s probably enough of them that could operate one of those. And not just from a Des Moines perspective, but also rural, like how many towns have their baked goods stands, or their fresh produce, fresh meat, things like that that could benefit from something like this to get to a national, even international, audience?  So that’s my process, is just finding a problem. And to me, that’s the most fun, is finding that problem, coming up with a solution. And if it gets to the next point, then the business model canvas comes out.

I’m always fascinated with new businesses and the learning curve that people have to go through. 

There is a lot to learn. I’ll use a Chasing Cars example. The platform I always intended to be free so that means revenue needs to be made up through advertising. My initial thought was, because I was a small business, because I want to support other small businesses that are doing really cool work in the classic car field, is those were going to be my advertiser base. Those like the car shops, the aftermarket performance, that was going to be my base. They don’t have the advertising budget. These restoration shops, they’re small enough operations that they had work lined up for the next two years. They didn’t need to advertise. It was one of those things. I’m not needed in the community that I thought would be best, so that became a conversation of, ‘OK, so who do we pivot to?’ We pivot to the next level up, right? Those little bit larger, more regional operators that do need those that are going to other events and need that little bit of extra advertising. That conversation started with who do we need to go to, creating a new contact list and going from there. That wasn’t easy. What I thought was – this is a sure way to hit millions of people across the country. Not true. And so that was a learning experience. … I thought I knew the industry pretty well. 

How do you help students navigate through pivots and failures?

It’s just a learning experience. I really do try to frame it that way. Think about what you’ve learned and how you can apply that to the next time you go. Not every business idea is going to be a thing. But I think if you really like that process, what you learn now and why this business failed, or why this business needed to pivot, will make you better for your next venture, your next idea. I mean, whether or not Chasing Cars becomes the full business that I intend it to be, I’ve learned so much that the next opportunity that I find, or the next business I want to start, or the next business I want to help somebody else start, will be 10 times better. I think there’s always something to learn, and particularly with students, if entrepreneurship and starting their own business isn’t the direction for them, the skills that they’re learning in problem-solving and pivoting and failure will make them one of the best employees a company could ever hire. Especially with AI and all those things, being able to problem solve, and that human intelligence and critical thinking isn’t something that, at least yet, AI hasn’t taken over. 

How would you describe your leadership style?

I work really well in the strategy space. I like to see what we are capable of, and then, where do we start? I have big visions for Drake entrepreneurship, not just within the College of Business, but the campus as a whole, and our impact within our community and our students in our state. But where do we start? That’s fun to think that we’re going to have innovation funds and we’re going to have innovation centers where we bring in people. I think my leadership style is breaking that down and delegating and being OK with not knowing something. One of my gaps is fundraising. That’s part of this game, this is part of entrepreneurship, so who do I need to lean on? We’ve got great teams here at Drake that are really good at that, so being able to delegate and be able to ask for help when we need it, and grow that way. This is a team effort. We have to work with other people, and we have to make those relationships mean something and work together.

What are some of your big visions?

What I really think is an opportunity is a venture fund of some sort that supports Drake business, or Drake alumni, Drake students. If we can play a role in that and help give Drake students a leg up, we should be doing that. I have big visions for the business clinic and our impact in our community. Right now we’re serving that 25 to 30 mark, but there’s no reason we couldn’t expand that to have a larger cohort, or even just more cohorts. I see an opportunity to invest in long-term businesses that way, in terms of education and resources. Right now, they come through our program, and we’re able to help off and on throughout, but I think we need to be able to extend that runway, and whether that be relying on our partners like the various organizations here in Des Moines, or within ourselves. What is that through an academic lens, through a resources [lens] that we can provide and build for them. And then students – how do we build that entrepreneurial community here at Drake? And that’s a tough one. I must say, I don’t have a grasp on that one yet, but getting students to see the benefits of entrepreneurial thinking is definitely a priority for me. And how do we make Drake an entrepreneurial campus, whether that be through making better employees, whether that be through starting companies or just flexing creative muscles? And through different events that are geared more toward journalism or more toward the music department, various ways to connect to various parts of the campus.

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At a glance

Hometown: Monroe

Resides: Monroe

Education: Bachelor’s degree in American politics from Drake University

Hobbies: Classic cars. NASCAR fan. Disney fan.

Email: chase.spencer@drake.edu