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Business MVP
From College QB to Software CEO: Hewitt Tomlin’s Bootstrapped Start-Up Framework | E6
00:26:41
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- [00:00]
A
A lot of people who sort of rode the COVID wave didn't stick it out. And it was a chance to kind of separate the real ones from the nots.
- [00:07]
B
Hewitt Tomlins, the former college QB turned CEO who saw a problem in his college locker room that nobody else was solving and built a software company to fix it. A lot of what I've heard about your story is that you chose to sort of bootstrap. What did that decision cost you and give you?
- [00:21]
A
I did the business competitions and the venture competitions. I applied to incubators, accelerators. But we did something more important, which was we became revenue positive. We celebrate when we get 400 plus. That's like a good month.
- [00:32]
B
Month.
- [00:32]
A
The month after Covid, we had like 900. It was just like, out of this world.
- [00:36]
B
Now you built a second company, right? Gym studio. What does it take to build a second business? And what did you know the second time that you didn't know the first?
- [00:44]
A
We did this at a point where our company was doing 8 million in revenue and we were starting to become a little bit more ambitious. And while strategically, I still believe it was the right choice, we certainly underestimated how much goes into.
- [00:59]
B
Today's guest is a former college QB turned CEO who still thinks like an athlete. Hewitt Tomlin saw a problem in his college locker room that nobody else was solving and built a software company to fix it. No investors, no funding, no blueprint. Just discipline and a bet on himself. Hewitt Tomlin, welcome to business. Mvp.
- [01:19]
A
Thank you for having me, Hewitt.
- [01:20]
B
Take me back to the locker room. You're a quarterback at Johns Hopkins and you noticed something that bothers you. What were you seeing? What made you the one who actually decided to do something, something about it?
- [01:30]
A
Well, I have to be clear about the timing of this. I happened to go to college when the iPhone came out my freshman year. So when the iPhone came out, I was less interested in building the business that I have now. I was more, you know, enjoying the iPhone. But luckily for me, I had a teammate who was a computer science major, and he was interested in building. And we always thought that we would have a business together. And we sort of thought to ourselves, well, if we're training on paper packets and we're using iPhones for everything else, shouldn't these things go together? And that was essentially the origin of the business.
- [02:06]
B
I love that. And I've actually heard of your app, which is pretty cool. So I was pretty excited to have you on. Yeah. So playing quarterback at any level teaches you to read the field, make Quick decisions, lead under pressure. How did those specific skills show up when you started building a company from scratch?
- [02:23]
A
I think the skills that you learn from being a quarterback, the important ones are when you're not on the field, you know you can get away with being really talented at quarterback and then you can be really reactive and quick. But off the field, you're not always, especially As a young 20s athlete, you're not always regulated. And some of the best moments were when the coach came to me and said, hey, it's important that your body language is up to the standard that you're leading while you're on the sideline in the film room. And that was the part where I really matured a lot. I probably, quite frankly, would have had a good quarterbacking career just by having the physical talents alone. But to have a really great one, I think came with the coaching off the field. And those are the ones that I think translate the best into running a company or being a good employee or having a career or a family person.
- [03:19]
B
Yeah. So body language, leadership skills, that stuff.
- [03:22]
A
Yeah. Showing up and understanding that leadership is not about being the loudest. Leadership is not even about performing the best. Right. I love the salesperson example. If anyone's worked on a sales team, your best salesperson is not always your best leader. They just might be really talented at sales, but they could also just be full of bs. Right. And be really good at that singular job. It doesn't mean they're going to be a good leader or a manager for your company. So it's about scratching past results in performance, individual performance.
- [03:54]
B
I love that. And did you have a coach or a teammate or a mentor that shaped how you think about performance and leadership?
- [04:00]
A
My head coach was a legend. He's the all time winningest coach in Maryland football history. He died a couple of years ago and he just had so much historical context to bring. I mean, he coached so many players. It really made you think beyond just where you were in the present, about the tradition of your program or maybe people who did this, you know, years before you. He was really impactful to me before that. My dad was really impactful. He. He helped me learn the art of focus in high school, which. That's when focus is the hardest. Focusing both on the grades and the athletics and having those two work together to put you in the best situation that you can be. So those two come to mind. And then even today I have a mentor. And for years I thought, I don't think I will have a mentor. I'm Sort of building this new business in this new space. People haven't really been doing this who can really teach me the blueprint. And then lo and behold, a mentor sort of comes out of nowhere and he's been really impactful to me.
- [05:00]
B
Yeah, I think that's important for our guests to hear too though, because I think a lot of people think once they've kind of become successful in their career, they don't still need that mentorship, that honest opinion in the background and it's really important. So appreciate you mentioning that. So you built the Team Builder prototype while working your first job out of college, is that right? That's what I read at least, yeah.
- [05:21]
A
The, the prototype, senior year of college, we maybe made our first sale a year out of college, but it was never a full time thing out of college.
- [05:29]
B
It just wasn't, you know, before you had customers, revenue, any of that guarantee it would work. So what made you take that leap and what was the moment you decided to go all in?
- [05:39]
A
You know, I have to be really honest here. I worked a couple of years in startups, which was really, really for me because I sharpened my teeth in sales and marketing and working for these early stage companies and I was learning a lot on the job that I would come back and leverage for Team Builder. So it was really synergistic in that sense. But in the third year of sort of doing this, I caught a bad boss. I shifted from sales where I was doing well, into marketing. It was supposed to be like a new step up and I just didn't get along with my boss that well. And that in combination with Team Builder progressively doing better was the catalyst. So I think, to be really, to be frank, I used to say, oh, I built up Team Builder to where I could, you know, quit my job. But the fact of the matter is I think I would have still have quit the full time gig, but it was accelerated because I got in a situation where I didn't get along with someone. Now it worked out for me in that case. But it's also a lesson for me in retrospect to realize that, you know, I'm not immune to having a tough relationship with someone and it was a good learning lesson.
- [06:52]
B
Yeah, that is, and I think it's interesting too because I think another takeaway from what you just said is sort of always having something else or even a hobby or something else you're kind of thinking about and having on the side. We see it over and over and over, but it really can pay off for people, right? When they're unhappy and what they're currently doing, just having options right into something else is really important. So definitely another example of that as well. Something I really want to talk about a lot today is that most founders in your position would have gone out and raised the capital first, per se. Right. And so a lot of what I've heard about your story is that you chose to sort of bootstrap. Right. So why? And what did that decision cost you and give you?
- [07:29]
A
I guess I fell into that trap as well. Luckily for me, I failed at the trap. I did the business competitions and the venture competitions and I put together pitch decks. I just thought it was what you were supposed to do. I applied to incubators, accelerators, without really reflecting on why I was doing it. It was just sort of, especially back then, to get the money. It was like, this is how you start a business. The Facebook movie came out when I was in college and it, I think, was really influential in terms of when you build a startup, you go out and raise venture money. Because we failed at it. No one really understood what we were trying to do. We never got any money and we never got into any incubators and accelerators. But.
- [08:13]
B
Okay.
- [08:14]
A
But we did something more important, which was we became revenue positive. I think we were doing like 100,000 in revenue when I quit my job, and then a year after that at 5x half a million in revenue, just by having me be full time. So we failed at raising money, but we succeeded at generating revenue. And that is exactly how it is supposed to be, in my opinion.
- [08:35]
B
Yeah. And so then you didn't need it at that stage and you could just
- [08:37]
A
keep moving and you have the optionality. It's nice to raise money if you choose to. I think it's not so nice to raise money if you have to.
- [08:46]
B
Yeah. And I. I think there's a silver lining there for you too. I was thinking about, like, it just gives you the freedom, right? You can make all the decisions. You have the freedom to take the company where you want it to go. You're not answering to anybody else. So for all those out there that are having a hard time raising money, I mean, it's not the end, right? Like, if you believe in the product, your software, whatever it is. Right. You can still go and do it and then catch up with the other stuff later. Being revenue positive is huge.
- [09:10]
A
I would add one more thing in there too, which is when you have investors as an entrepreneur or a founder, you have a mandate to steward their money. And Then hopefully provide a return on their investment. That's a whole other concept that competes with providing a product or a service to a customer. They can coexist. They could also, I think, conflict. And when we have a bootstrap company, our mandate is so, so simple. We're here to serve our customer, and then that's it. It ends. There's no sort of, you know, other. And it takes a lot of pressure and stress off of us as founders, and it just simplifies everything that we do, decision wise.
- [09:49]
B
Yeah. No, that makes sense. I love that. So walk me through those early days of team builder. What were you getting right and what were you getting wrong that the entrepreneurs listening could learn from?
- [09:59]
A
So one thing we did get right is we approached our customers with a lot of humility. We were in our young 20s. We're former athletes, but we weren't coaches, and we didn't have coaching experience. So instead of coming in and sort of saying, hey, we've got the greatest software. We'll show you how to do this. We didn't really try to come on strong like that. We really kind of came in and said, can you teach us about what you do? We're eager to learn and eager to help. And I think that was really helpful. It depends on what your market is, but how you approach your market as far as your brand and your brand's personality, I think does matter in terms of things that we got wrong. Well, I think in retrospect, we had the fundamentals in place to give us a foundation to probably fail more often. We were pretty cautious being young bootstrapped entrepreneurs. We took our time on things development wise and marketing wise. And I think we should have been aggressive, knowing that if we have outstanding customer service and we truly care about our company and the customers, which we did, then that's a good foundation to kind of move faster, fail more often, and do those things. We were kind of slow cooking, slow rolling, just really cautious about being bootstrapped. We thought we were more fragile than we were. But if you're truly passionate about what you're building, like, you can't do anything else. You don't see yourself doing anything else, then that's a good foundation that kind of gives you the leeway to make some mistakes along the way and move a little bit more quickly.
- [11:29]
B
Yeah. So I think what you're saying is, like, it's okay to kind of fail your way forward a little bit at a quicker pace. Yeah. And another thing that you said, I think is really important is when you said what you got. Right. And I want everybody to hear. This is being learning based and something we talk about a lot in my day job and leadership and consulting and all that stuff is, you know, a great leader. You know, people that really successfully run companies, they're learning based, they're always reading, they're always approaching it with what they don't know, and you're checking that ego at the door, and I think that's really important. So love that.
- [12:03]
A
I was just gonna say, doing podcasts 10 years ago, I probably would have done a lot more. I'm sorry, I did a lot more podcasts 10 years ago. I probably had a lot more to say 10 years ago. I really do believe that as you do things for longer, you definitely reflect more and think more about what you're going to say, knowing how much you really don't understand or know.
- [12:25]
B
Yeah, 100%. That's great advice. So now you've built a second company, Right? Gym Studio. And for everybody listening, what does it take to build a second business? And what did you know the second time that you didn't know the first?
- [12:39]
A
Oh, well, this is where it gets complicated. Gym Studio was technically an acquisition. We acquired the software product out of Europe. Okay, look, we did this at a point where our company was doing 8 million in revenue, and we were starting to become a little bit more ambitious outside of our existing platform and offering. And while strategically I still believe it was the right choice, we certainly underestimated how much goes into devoting your time and attention to two products, even if you plan on making them synergistic. It's made me very, very conscious of my ambitions as far as product goes. People come by bank bankers, entrepreneurs, and have these businesses that are sor. Scheduling and they're. Are you interested? Is this a good idea? If you do one of those things, then you start thinking a lot harder about doing it again. Because on paper is not the same as the actual work that it takes. Yeah. To make two products successful instead of one.
- [13:36]
B
Yeah. And I think that's a good point because you can have a bunch of stuff and then just be mediocre at all of it. Right. But to really devote the right kind of time so not diversifying too much, I think is a good takeaway there. Yeah. And I'm assuming, you know, having had pretty strong teams around both of those businesses is pretty important as well. So what's the hardest business decision you've had to make? And how did your background as an athlete shape how you handled it?
- [14:02]
A
Well, I think the hardest decisions come up to come with people. We've built a really tight knit company with our employees. What gets really difficult is if you do this exercise where, okay, I leave a CEO, a new CEO comes in and they're looking at this business and its people objectively, what would they do? It really creates hard decisions. And just as recently as a few months ago, I let someone go who had worked with us for five and a half years, and while they were doing a good job, the trajectory had flattened. It's not ever easy, but it's easier to say this person's just not working out, it's been six months or a year. It's very different to say this person's been here five and a half years and they're not necessarily doing anything wrong, but, you know, their department has plateaued and I need to fix this. That's always hard. And it's sort of like as an athlete, you know, you're not the coach cutting people or benching people. But if you've been an athlete and you've been benched, I kid you not, Sammy. I still have dreams where the coach comes to me and tells me I'm not playing the game, I'm not starting, and I'm like, distraught. I'm distraught in my dream. I'm sort of distraught when I woke up. And that's kind of like a similar feeling to dealing with people. Because you want to take it personally, but you can't.
- [15:26]
B
Yeah, it's just business.
- [15:27]
A
Yeah, it's just business. And as an athlete, you want to take things personally, but you can't. And that, that's probably the biggest connection is learning how not to take things personally and be professional about things.
- [15:39]
B
Yeah. Good advice. Yeah. So Covid hit, and suddenly every coach and gym in the country had to go digital overnight. Right. So team builder was already built for that moment. From what I understand. And for everybody listening, what does that tell us about the relationship between preparation and opportunity?
- [15:59]
A
It's just funny because when Covid hit, I was on vacation with my wife and I was getting calls from people at the office and they're like, dude, it's crazy. People are calling, we're getting emails. Like, this was a bad week to go on vacation.
- [16:15]
B
Yeah.
- [16:16]
A
I was just looking at our trialing leads and this is like on a monthly basis. How many people started a free trial? On our website, we celebrate when we get 400 plus. That's like a good month. That means our sales team will likely hit their revenue goal the month after Covid we had like 900. We've never come close to that number before. It was just like out of this world. So it really accelerated what I think was a trend anyway. I mean, people were going to find out about tools like Team Builder and Zoom and all the other things that we use, but it just kind of brought it to the forefront really quick. The second opportunity or bite at the apple was that all these tools sort of gained visibility and then it allowed the real ones to sort of move on. You know, a lot of people who sort of rode the COVID wave didn't stick it out and it was a chance to kind of separate the real ones from the knots. So I kind of look at Covid that way. If you succeeded after Covid, great. If you're still succeeding after Covid, years and years later, really great. Because, you know, you, you kept it going. And keeping going is one of the hardest parts of running a business.
- [17:22]
B
Yeah, for sure. And you've said that the athlete mindset is still how you operate as a CEO for the business leaders listening. What specifically does that mean in practice? What does thinking like an athlete actually look like when you're running a company?
- [17:36]
A
Funnily enough, I think about how to operate as an athlete, you know, using my, my retro, my retrospect. When I was 21, 22 in college, my prefrontal cortex being a male, it wasn't fully developed, so I wasn't the best athlete I could be. I think back a lot and think of, oh, of course, if I had had known what I know now, I would have eaten better, done some things differently. But there's no point in dwelling on the past now, you know, So I treat myself very well from a diet perspective, from training to self care and mental performance tools like an athlete would. But I do it because now's the time to do it. I have the opportunity, I know these things, I have the maturity to use it. So I think taking care of oneself for performance, for health, never ends. It's similar to being an athlete.
- [18:28]
B
Yeah. And that's important for a lot of CEOs, right. Because a lot of people at that level, they're so wrapped up in work, it's their one thing, they kind of let everything else fall by the wayside. But it is really important to think about those other things because it actually makes you a better CEO. Right. Mentally, health wise, all the different things. So that's definitely important. So what habit or principle from your athletic career do you think every entrepreneur, athlete or not, should adopt immediately?
- [18:54]
A
I've been really into this idea of regulation being regulated. There are many external stressors, especially in this day and age where your iPhone sends you so many notifications, there's such a flow of information regulating yourself, learning how to do that with yourself is super important. And the best athletes are just regulated in the big moments and the low moments. And some, you know, they, they have that, you've heard it said. They, they just have that gene. They can do it under pressure. Others, you know, go to great lengths to be able to do it. But I, I, I think I love that word because there are so many people here in my company, day in, day out, that are also dealing with, well, I'm the leader. I'm the one here that people sort of look to, whether they realize it or not, to sort of gauge the temperature of the company. And the old saying is be the thermostat, not the thermometer. And you want to set the temperature, not sort of reflect the craziness of it. So always think in terms of, am I regulated? What do I need to do to stay regulated? And that transfers to good performance, whether it's physically, whether it's at work or in your. I'm in a stage of life where I have young kids and this house is not very regulated. And I'm not always either. But it's not up to my kids to sort of do that. It's up to me. So I think it just has a lot of applicability across many aspects of life.
- [20:26]
B
Yeah. And what is your, if you don't mind sharing, do you have a personal performance routine that you do that helps you stay sharp?
- [20:32]
A
Yeah, I sort of keep a little bit a checklist on my fridge. I try to make sure that the big rocks, I call them big rocks, little rocks. I love meditating. I like the breathing and grounding. I like all those things walking outside, you know, all that stuff. But the big rocks are. You have to prioritize sleep, treat it like an activity, like a schedule. Right. You're dying.
- [20:58]
B
I'm psycho about sleep, so I understand.
- [21:01]
A
Good. I mean, it really matters. It's, it really does, you know, what you put into your body and what you don't. Right. That really matters. It has a lot to do with how you feel. And you take care of those two things and stay hydrated. You know, those are the three big rocks. And then you can start benefiting from the small rocks. Meditating, breathing and grounding. Being aware of your environment, you know, which friends or people are kind of taking away your energy. Whose energy additive. Who gives you energy? And then being intentional about how you spend your time with people.
- [21:34]
B
Definitely being intentional. Super important. We hear a lot about that these days, right?
- [21:38]
A
Yeah.
- [21:38]
B
Team Builder has changed how strength coaches train athletes at every level, high school to the pros, from what I understand. So when you look at the impact your product has had on athlete, how athletes are being developed, what does that mean to you? And was that something you set out to do or did that. Was that like, a secondary effect that surprised you?
- [21:58]
A
It's a secondary effect. Even at my gym today, I go to Lifetime. I'll see an athlete wearing their college stuff, a local college, and I'll ask, hey, do you use the Team Builder app? They're like, yeah. I'm like, oh, that's so cool. They're here in my gym using the app that I started 14 years ago. I really love that. But more importantly, when coaches come to us and they say, look, I've gotten so many hours back from your app, I can spend more time with my family on the weekends. That really matters to me because the athletes, they're having the time of their life. It's hard. They're competing. It's not easy. But the coaches, coaches, that's a tough career. It's long hours, Especially as a strength coach, it's very underappreciated. You're sort of in the back of the picture. So to make their lives easier, to improve their lives and advance their careers, that's the biggest honor.
- [22:46]
B
I think that's awesome. I love that. And then I think, too, you get a lot of young athletes that are getting tailored programs for them, so they're reaching a level quicker than they may have prior to your app, too. So there's just all this other benefit from just what you set out to do, which was just to make this easier, right?
- [23:04]
A
Yeah.
- [23:05]
B
Which I think is pretty cool.
- [23:07]
A
Super cool. I love hearing from college coaches about how the quality of the high school graduates that come in the college programs is so much better now than 10, 20 years ago, because high schools just have better access to coaches and better access to tools like mine. So overall, I love to see young athletes just get really proper strength and conditioning coaching at a young age, because it's not just about competing really well. I mean, the rest of your life, if you learn to love the weight room, if you get a coach that you really love, that's a great asset to have. It would break my heart if someone hated the weight room and then stayed away from the weight room the rest of their life. We who go to the gym and lift and take it really seriously know the benefits. It can be really life altering.
- [23:52]
B
Yeah. And definitely, like you said, it's a lifelong thing, right? Not just when you're competing at a high school or collegiate level. So I agree with that. So, last question. What does it mean to you to be a business mvp?
- [24:04]
A
Oh, it's a good question. I, like, I want to think about some of my high performers in my company, the MVPs. It really has to start with attitude. You know, your attitude, whether you know it or not, your energy impacts people. If you lack energy, you're going to drain others of energy. If you bring energy, people will feed off of that. My high performers, the people who I consider my MVPs, and the people who are entrepreneurs and founders, I think what they probably have in common is just this great sense of energy. They just bring it. And how are they able to do it? Why? I don't know. There's probably varying reasons, but the fact of the matter is, is that they're bringing a great attitude. They're pos optimistic, and people like to be around them. They're attracted to them. They have a magnetism. So an MVP for me is not necessarily results oriented. It's not necessarily about the optics. It's about if this person's in the room with me, do I leave the room a more energized, happier, more positive, optimistic person? That has to be it for me.
- [25:12]
B
Yeah. And I mean, that's important because then people want to get up and work every day in that environment. And it's invigorating. Right. Rather than dreading having the Sunday scaries, as we like to say so definitely can relate to that. Well, thank you very much. Is there anything else that you would like to touch on that I didn't ask you?
- [25:30]
A
Oh, I don't know. I don't think so. Like I said, I talk less now than I do 10 years ago. So I like to listen and observe as much as I do like to talk about things.
- [25:40]
B
Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. And that's how champions think. Here are the key takeaways from my conversation with Hewitt. When preparation meets opportunity, that's when everything changes. So do the work before anyone is watching. Not raising money isn't a limitation. It's freedom. It means you never have to compromise your vision. And if you want to know the secret to running a great company, think like an athlete. Reps discipline and showing up every single day with a great attitude. If you got value from today's episode, share it with someone who's ready to think bigger and compete harder and win in business. Make sure you're subscribed so you never miss an episode. And if you haven't, leaving a five star review goes a long way in helping us grow and reach more leaders like you. I'm Sammy Peterson. Thanks for being part of the Business MVP community and I'll see you next time as we continue building you into an MVP in business and in life.