I was a sprinter in middle school. There were a LOT of people faster than me.
Then I tried long jump. There were a LOT of people who could jump farther than me.
Then I tried triple jump. And there were at least fewer people who could jump farther than me. But still a lot.
Then I tried pole vaulting. And by 9th grade, there were exactly two people who could jump higher than me in my high school. Pole vault it was.
The pool of talent (or people that wanted to do it) was tiny. I would actually place on our team and score the team a point or two.
I found an obscure side door onto the varsity team that nobody really wanted to go through or maybe didn’t have the patience to learn, practice, and execute.
There are pole-vault opportunities everywhere once you start looking for them. Ways to score easy points instead of lining up against millions of sprinters.
- It’s weird. It evolved as a practical way to navigate rivers for the ancient Greeks. Now it can earn you a gold medal.
- It takes a lot of practice. To bend the pole and actually get any kind of leverage requires a unique combination of strength, repetition, and persistence. Learning is super awkward.
- You can’t practice in your backyard or at the local YMCA. There are no pick-up pole-vaulting games. You need access to a friggin’ pole vaulting pit.
So that’s what I did. I learned to bend the pole just enough to jump over 7 ½ feet. Which was apparently high enough to place third at most track meets. I scored the same amount of points as (dozens of) kids that ran WAY faster than me at any distance because I did something very few others could … err … would.
Track is an insanely accessible sport. A pair of running shoes. And most high schools have equipment for you: pole vaulting pits and all. Track shoes get the job done.
In the business world and in my professional career, I found myself in the equivalent of a 100M dash.
Top-tier business people, venture capital-backed entrepreneurs growing 10X month after month. Marketers using statistics and forecasting formulas to predict lifetime value and track attribution across omnichannel platforms and CGV and WTF?
It could have been intimidating to be surrounded by sprinters, but I’d been there before.
A small bootstrapped SaaS product in Missoula, Montana was my side door; my pole vault in a world of sprinters, my path into becoming a startup founder.
Here’s how I scored pole-vaulting points in the metaphorical track meet of entrepreneurship and business ownership.
I Wasn’t Competing Silicon Valley: Famous venture capitalist Bill Gurley advises folks to “go where the action is”. San Francisco is where all the sprinters went. Montana was a perfect climate for bootstrapping a startup.
- Lack of venture capital meant that was never really an option.
- If you want to stay in Missoula and stay in higher education, you’re working at the University of Montana. If the job you want doesn’t exist or is currently occupied, you’re kind of stuck. This is true in a lot of verticals in Montana. As a result, people turn to entrepreneurship.
- Montana has a culture of self-reliance and hard work. This is pretty critical when starting a business.
Start Small. Keep Expenses Ridiculously Low. Missoula at the time was actually affordable. I know, disgusting to think about. I just got married. We bought a duplex. Lived in the basement studio and rented the upstairs three-bedroom. We drove one car. Runway at this point for the business could have been measured in decades.
Boot Strapping GeoFli
I Found Like-Minded People to Work With. You can’t find co-founders on Craigslist. I found a co-founder for GeoFli through five years of working at the University of Montana and upholding a reputation as someone who liked to solve problems, cared about the work, could figure things out, and enjoyed operating at technical frontiers. A pole vaulter – not a sprinter.
Skills + Sales: I was green in the world of SaaS sales, but I knew enough about presenting and working with thousands of families during my career in higher ed to know how to meet people where they are and be super helpful. I also came to the table with real marketing skills. I could pitch software and then set up a real-time executive dashboard in Data Studio. And have it in their inbox the next morning. (see below).
I understood college admissions marketing and the pain points: for a few reasons, higher ed enrollment was not a place Ivy League graduates found themselves. I don’t usually put “Ex-Rockford University” on my LinkedIn bio, but maybe I should. Sending under-employed entrepreneurs into the world of job hunting after college is a perfect way to find pole-vaulting opportunities.
Full Circle:
So the Overlapping Circles Look Something Like This
- 2X Bootstrapped SaaS founder (GeoFli + RevelForms)
- Seven Years Higher Ed Career Experience.
- Built a Marketing Agency Engine That Powers and Fuels Growth
- Higher Ed Focus (I speak the language of yield!)
- Focus on consultative sales to acquire new business. No easy buckets.
- Montana-based. 978 miles from San Francisco.
And that’s how you do something nobody else can do. Keep overlapping those Venn diagrams until you’re one of one. And then lean into that.
Key Learning:
First place in the pole vault is the same number of points (and the gold medal is made of the same gold) as the 100M dash.