From College QB to Software CEO: Hewitt Tomlin’s Bootstrapped Start-Up Framework | E6

Hewitt, take me back to the locker room.

You're a quarterback at Johns Hopkins and you notice something that bothers you.

What were you seeing? What made you the one who actually decided to do something about it?

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 sorta 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.

I love that.

Um, and I've actually heard of your app, which is pretty cool, so I was pretty excited to have you on, yeah.

[laughs] 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?

I think the skills, uh, that you learn from being a quarterback, the, 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, uh, regulated.

And the, some of the best moments were when the coach came to me and said, "Hey, it's important that your body language is, you know, up to the standard, that you're, 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've had a good quarterbacking career just by having the physical talents alone.

But to have a really great one, I think came with the, 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.

Yeah, so body language, leadership skills, that stuff.

Love that.

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, the salesperson example.

Um, if anyone's worked on a sales team, your best salesperson is w- not always your best leader.

They just might be really talented at sales, but they could also just be full of BS, right? And, and-