The Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous Podcast - Dirty Rush: Are Coaches B*llsh*t?

Episode Date: August 23, 2025

College rush is now a growing business. Are Rush Coaches the real deal or ridiculous? Are they worth the hefty price tag? Call us at 844-278-RUSH (844-278-7874) Follow Dirty Rush on Instagram and TikTok.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Welcome to Dirty Rush, the truth about sorority life with your host, me, Gia Judice, Daisy Kent, and Jennifer Fessler. I'm Daisy and I'm Jen. And this is Dirty Rush. Hi, guys. We're back. We are back.

And today we are talking about a new phenomenon. And it is called the Rush Coach. I paid for both of my kids for college advisors. Yeah. And that was expensive. I'm picturing my daughter coming to me and saying, Mommy, I need a rush coach. I think my response would be the fuck out of here, Rachel.

You're nuts. Literally. So you want me to buy the clothes. You got to get the tips. You got to get the hair, whatever. And now I should buy a separate human who's going to coach you through the process. I'm like, what do they coach you on like? what to talk about like what to wear who to be how to do your hair yes i think so yeah i feel like

it's almost like making you like somebody that you're not but i could be wrong i mean i guess we'll have to talk to them yes i mean at least maybe it's just bringing out the best version of yourself hi lori hi how are you we're very well it is so nice meet i'm daisy yeah it's a pleasure to meet you And you are a rush coach. I'm a rush consultant. And we want to know all about that. A rush consultant. Excuse us, a consultant.

No, that's perfectly okay. I'm the first person to coin and use that term. So I'm very proud of my work that I have done over the last 13 years. Are you the first person to do this? I'm not the first person to do this, but I am the first person to bring this to light and not make it very like hush, hush, we don't talk about this. Yeah. Which I love that because honestly, I'm kind of, I'm sorry, I'm confused on what, like,

it exactly is. Like, what do you essentially do to help these girls, like, get in a sorority or go through recruitment? Yeah. Yeah. And, well, how about first tell us, where did you go to school and I'm assuming you were in a sorority? I was a big sorority girl.

I am a Chi Omega from the University of Texas in El Paso. And I have always been involved in my sorority, whether it was, well, we don't call this anymore, but pledge educator. I was also chapter president. I had also been involved in the Alumni Association in Chicago here in New York City. And I was also the recruitment advisor for one of the. chapters in Chicago as well. So very involved. Yes, extremely.

Okay, we are talking to the perfect person about this. Quintessential sorority girl. Yes. Yeah, tell us, give us an overview. Tell us what you do. Yeah. So as a sorority consultant, I am here to just really help a lot of young women experience a positive, you know, coming of age kind of moment for a lot of these women.

They're stepping out from being like this high school girl and stepping into their first taste of, you know, becoming a woman and going to college and figuring life out on their own. And I'm here to provide a positive experience for them, but along the way, I'm teaching them some lessons. So a lot of things, my background is in human resources. I've worked for major companies such as the Discovery Channel, Autism Speaks, the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. and really helping with blending my expertise in human resources and sorority life and just have blended those two together to help them prepare for the chaos that is sorority rush. What made you think that this was something that you wanted to do? Was there an aha moment where you thought girls need me?

Or had you heard about it? How did you get here? Yeah. So when I was one of the recruitment advisors at DePaul, University in Chicago for the Chi Omega chapter, I was super involved and just noticed that the playing field wasn't that even when it came to the sororities and the potential new members, the girls wanting to join the sororities. And I noticed that the sororities had a little bit of an upper hand. And when I went through recruitment in the 90s, it was completely different.

I mean, the game, especially with social media involved, it has changed the narrative completely. And a lot of my girlfriends from back home in Texas would call me and say, I know you're still involved. Can you help me? My niece, my stepdaughter, someone is going through recruitment and I need your help. And I would just be on the phone for hours explaining how everything works now, how things are different. This is what they need to do. And my husband at the time was not in a fraternity or anything. He just did not understand any of this.

And he said, what are you doing? Like, what is this? I don't get it. I don't understand it. And I would explain it to him. And he was like, you should start a business. You're giving away free advice. And I was like, huh, I actually never thought about that.

And I did a quick Google search. And I saw that there were two other people that had a website. One was for this woman in Alabama and blessed her heart. Her website was a little frumpy. It looked like a little church bulletin. And the other woman, you know, like, I looked at her website and I was like, I could do that. Like, this looks really easy. And I just put together a website and I had my first client in 2013.

She was a girl from the St. Louis area. She was going to school at Texas Christian in Fort Worth, which has a big Greek life. And she actually just got married two weeks ago. Very nice. So I'm curious. We're actually curious about so much of what you do. But how many clients do you have now? Let me ask you that.

Right now at this very second, I'm helping 30 young women go through recruitment. And is this your full-time job? It is now. Okay. Yeah. Got it. Wow. Well, we're going to get invasive, but we're going to try to.

But what do you charge for your services? Um, so I charge usually anywhere between, um, 1,500 and 3,000, depending on the level of services that the girls need. Um, I also have, um, colleagues. I've hired on coaches to help out at other universities because I can't be everywhere all at once. And then they have their own fee structure. Um, just because they're a little bit newer to the game, they are priced at a little bit of a lower rate, just because they're, um, just because they're a little bit of a lower rate, just because they have, because I've been doing this for so long. But, and then you can also pay to have me on call during recruitment, which is another added fee along with that. So.

How long do you typically have these girls? Is it just like from right before when they start recruitment till the end? or what's like the timeline you're with them? So usually I will start working with the girls. Usually the parents will contact me or sometimes the daughters will contact me in their senior year of high school. And I start working with them probably in about the springtime. So March right before they graduate high school. And then we work all the way up until pretty much right now because recruitment at a lot of these schools starts in less than two weeks.

Wow. Yeah. Do you find ever that there are girls that you turn down, that you think you're not really a sorority girl necessarily, or this is going to be an uphill battle for you, or do you have to set expectations? I believe that everyone could be a sorority girl. I don't feel that we are meant to be boxed into one specific thing. I feel like if you are the girl that loves Star Wars and a biochemical engineer major, and that's your jam, you can be in a sorority. If you're an emo goth girl and you listen to the cure all the time, like you could be in a sorority. You will find your place.

But yes, I've had to turn down clients, not based on the fact that I don't think that they'll fit into a sorority, but because of just personality differences, like I've seen girls be rude to their mothers on phone calls, and I'm like, no, not taking that on. I've seen girls who try to like I don't know like it's like this weird thing where girls think that they can like use me for some things but then go behind my back and try to do things

their own way and when I find out about it and I do because I have lots of little eyes and ears out there in the community I do find out about it and then that's when I say you know what I think we have to cut ties can you can you give us an example of that yeah like what do they like is there like a specific example you have where someone did that um like for when they try to go behind my back yeah yeah i mean and you know what the crazy thing is it's usually the moms honestly i kind of feel like that makes sense to me yeah and sometimes it's the mom and daughter that team up and do this kind of thing um no but honestly like i had just recently a mom who reached out to me asking for, hey, you know, and this happens all the time.

Like, do you have references of people who have used your services before? I'd love to talk to them. And I said, sure. And I gave her a few names with emails. And one of them happened to be an older girl who's getting ready to graduate from college. And the girl was super nice. I loved working with Lori. She was amazing.

I got into my top house. Working with her was a great experience. And then it turns out this girl was just really messaging her a lot to the point where my former client got super uncomfortable. And then it comes to find out that it wasn't the daughter. It was the mother that was messaging her over the text messages. And I came to find out about it. And it was just not a good look. And it put me in a bad spot, to be honest.

Yeah, definitely. Got it. Go ahead. Okay. So. So I am curious if I'm a girl finishing high school and I call you or my mom calls you and I need your help getting into my like top house. I was in alpha fee.

So say I wanted to get in like alpha fee. What would you do to like help me? Like what are the steps? What do you do to help them? Well, I first of all, I would say not to sell yourself short by only looking at one sorority because throughout this entire process, your mind is going to be going in so many different directions and your mind is going to change throughout the entire process. And quite honestly, you haven't even met these girls yet.

You don't know who they are. So you could get to the Alpha Fee house and meet them and be like, oh, I don't know. I met these girls. And they seem nice on Instagram, but now I've met them in person and they're just not my vibe. Yeah. So I think setting those expectations very early. on and making them realistic about what they're going to be encountering is really, really important in setting that relationship with the mother and daughter.

My whole thing is that I'm not here to promise you a certain sorority because I don't believe in the world of this is a top sorority or a bottom sorority or anything like that. I think it's all relative and it's about your own experience. But I'm here to make sure that you have a positive experience and finding the right sisterhood for you. I don't want buyer's remorse at all. Yeah, no, that sounds, that sounds smart because I'm guessing that a lot of the girls that hire you are looking to get into what's called now top tier sororities. And I'm curious, do you try to talk them out of that goal? Yeah, you know, I just don't buy into that whole level, like this popularity thing. And to be quite honest,

at a lot of schools, the people that deem these sororities as being top or bottom or whatever are the men. And I don't think that they have a role in saying who's top and who's bottom. And I do not talk them out of it, but I let them understand that they need to meet these girls firsthand in order to make that decision

for themselves. Yeah, that sounds definitely smart. You mentioned Instagram. I'm curious, do you go through the girls in their Instagram and have them scrub what is not working or what is not going to work? Oh, my goodness. If you could only see what I see sometimes. Oh, my gosh, I'm so intrigued. Oh, my goodness. And, you know, I always have to remember what I was thinking

when I was 18 years old. I was pretty insecure. I thought I was the ugliest girl in the world. I was just, you know, not like always positive thinking about myself. And I think a lot of girls today still have that mentality where they just don't think highly of themselves and it's about the clicks and it's about the likes. And if they take a hot bikini picture of themselves and it gets a ton of likes versus a really amazing picture that they drew for an art project, you know, I'm going to have to go in and tell them, like, listen, I understand that this is kind of like what you're going for and everyone does this, but you don't need to be one note. You don't need to be one's like just one thing like you want to see what your vibe is and if it's just

bikini picks or if it's just you lip syncing to lyrics that aren't nice or pretty then you know first impressions go a long way and that's going to stick with you so yeah you do have to go in and help girl scrub and you know sometimes I go through the comments um and I see some things on there. I'm just like how I would imagine their parents look at these comments and like some of them are not really nice or flattering or anything like that. But we go through everything. We go through their tagged pictures, their highlights, their repost on TikTok. Like I look through everything. And I go through and say, take this down, crop this out, change this picture, archive it. Like I'm probably their worst nightmare when it comes to their social media.

My question, though, is, you know, I think it probably is important for a lot of the sororities. They're looking for what does this girl look like, right? And let's just get real. They want their sorority to bring the boys in. I think that's just part of it. Not for every sorority, but I think for a lot of them. And I think that I'm picturing that these girls, if it weren't for you, would be, you know, showing their best selves physically. Yeah.

And I don't know, you, you're the expert, but I would think that that's necessary. I don't know if you say to them, you need a prettier picture. You do need a picture in a bikini. Do you also give them that kind of advice? So I always tell them this. I'm like, if you're going on vacation and you're going to post a bikini pick, make sure that if you're going to carousal your pictures, add in like a table pick of you and your family at dinner, add in a picture of you and your sister, you know, taking that.

surf lesson or I know you went scuba diving with your mom like add in some of those pictures along with your bikini picks like make it a little bit more versatile and you know show like you have a little bit more depth to you you know what I mean like I don't mind the bikini picks I just don't want it to be your whole grid yeah and you know like I understand like having that like look can be important to some people but it's not everything got it I love that I love that I didn't know what to expect like coming into talking to you because I honestly didn't know what a sorority what did you call it a sorority consultant consultant yeah um but i feel like you're like really helping them like be more themselves or like show more of who they are which

I really like that I think I'm probably a little more skeptical and again I'm curious if you get blowback from this position that you've taken on because this is, again, it's also new for me. And I'm thinking about the fact that for each one of my kids, I paid for a college counselor. And I was saying to Daisy beforehand, if my daughter had said to me, mom, I need a sorority coach. I would have told her that she's clearly lost her mind. and she should find a second job if that's something that she's interested in, I would never pay for it. Please don't think I'm trying to insult you. It's just, you know, where I'm coming from.

So I'm curious, do you have to deal with that? Do you deal with a lot of, you know, criticism in terms of what you're doing? Oh, absolutely, 1,000 percent. And listen, I've worked with girls who are like, I'm paying for this on my own. My parents won't help me pay for that. And I remember I did work. work with a girl who was from the Northeast, she was coming from the East Coast, was going to school down in Alabama, did not have a positive experience going through recruitment. She had nobody helping her. She did not know what she was doing and just had a horrible experience. And in return, just did not have a good freshman year.

She ended up hiring me. I found out that she was working two jobs. And she took a job at Jay Cruz so that she could use her discount to buy a lot. all her rush clothes and then I found out that her father was very ill and when I found all of this out I was like you don't need to pay me anymore like I want to do this for you because I personally experienced my father passing away when I was a senior in college so he never got to see me graduate and I wanted her to not have to stress about that money piece to it and have her enjoy her time with her father over the summer.

And she got into her dream sorority after all of that. And yes, there are people who are very critical thinking like what I do is silly or it's vapid or it's unnecessary. But like I had mentioned before, I'm teaching them a lot of skills that they will use in college for internships, in leadership positions in their sorority and beyond. So it's putting together a resume, networking, putting themselves out there, talking to women and asking for a letter of recommendation, rather than just being like, Mom, do it for me. Ms. Stephanelli, can you do this for me? And I'm like, no, you are 18 years old. This is something

that you need to learn to do. I'm going to give you all the tools and resources in order for you to be successful, but this is something that you need to learn to do. And what about when one of your clients doesn't get in to a sorority? It happens. I'm not going to lie. I'm not a 100% success rate. I have had girls that were unhappy with what had happened, but I always have a plan. You know, we talk about what are our next steps. Let's decompress. Let's take a step back. And I want you to just relax a little bit.

I want them to just get out of that element for a little bit and out of that headspace. And then in a few days, let's come back. Let's look at everything. We got a game plan. let's look at the sororities that you did enjoy, okay? Are you eligible for continuous open bidding? If not, can you rush next year? If so, what clubs can you join in your freshman year that you can network with sorority

women that will help you get connected to them? Because that is what it's going to be about is her connecting to these women in order to get herself into a sorority in that next year. Yeah, I love the part you said about, like, helping them, like, gain skills for, like, their future. I think that's so important. I think that's great as well. Yeah. What a pleasure to meet you. Yeah. Thank you so much for talking with us. And congratulations. I mean, you're an entrepreneur and to even have this idea that this is something that young women need. That is pretty

creative. Thank you. I appreciate that very much. Thank you for coming on. Thank you, Lori. Good luck to your girls. Thank you. Okay. Bye. Bye. All right, Miss Daisy, what did you think? I don't know. I'm like a little confused. I mean, she's looking back, so you didn't know anything about rushing. Would you have,

without it been helpful? Would you have wanted to hire her? No. Like absolutely not. But I kind of think, I mean, I'm sure it's, I wonder if it's like the schools in the south

that are like huge and like the girls think like this is like my only, like this is my life now getting in a sorority. But I also think that's not like, I don't think girls should look at like this is going to be. be my life. Like, my life is going to revolve around my sorority. For me, I think that's the wrong way to look at it. Like, if you're not going to be in a sorority, like, you're still going to be okay. You go, girl. I'm with you there 100%. What did you think? Not for me. From like a mom's perspective, too. Not for me. And I like a lot of what she said about, you know, coaching young girls

and for the future and, you know, how to really speak with, like, resumes and your colleagues and I love all of that, not for me. Yeah. I am, I am not her because she seemed lovely, and I wish her lots of success. Yeah. But the idea that you have to pay money to have someone help you be who you are or alter who you are, right? To change it. To become accepted.

Yeah. And not only that, guess what? I mean, all of that, that, let's say there's the rejection and you don't do well during rush, that's okay. Yeah, it is okay. Part of life. Rejection's part of life. This, again, I said, I paid for a college coach.

I don't know how worth it that was. Yeah. This would not have been on my dime. Yeah. But lovely woman. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.

I'm sure a lot of people are very grateful to her. Yeah, for sure. Right? Yeah. And if they get in those sorority, they want. And if they don't, they want them. be bad. I know. I'm, I'm like sure. You imagine. Here's $3,000.

She got in nowhere. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money. I'm very open to the fact that a lot of girls are very grateful for her and that she makes the experience more seamless. Oh, for sure. However, I am constitutionally opposed to everything about that. But listen, I'm wrong a lot of the times. Yeah. This is an IHeart podcast.