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

**Hewitt Tomlin** (0:00)
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.

**Sammy Peterson** (0:06)
Hewitt Tomlin's 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?

**Hewitt Tomlin** (0:20)
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. The month after COVID, we had like 900 It was just like out of this world.

**Sammy Peterson** (0:36)
Now you built a second company, right? Jim 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?

**Hewitt Tomlin** (0:44)
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.

**Sammy Peterson** (0:59)
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.

**Hewitt Tomlin** (1:18)
Thanks for having me.

**Sammy Peterson** (1:19)
Hewitt, 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 about it?

**Hewitt Tomlin** (1:30)
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 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 the business together and we 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.

**Sammy Peterson** (2:05)
I love that. And I've actually heard of your app, which is pretty cool. So I was pretty excited to have you on.

**Hewitt Tomlin** (2:11)
Yeah.

**Sammy Peterson** (2:12)
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?

**Hewitt Tomlin** (2:22)
I think the skills that you learn from being a quarterback, the important ones are when you're not on the field.
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, 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.

**Sammy Peterson** (3:18)
Yeah, so body language, leadership skills, that stuff.

**Hewitt Tomlin** (3:22)
Yeah. It's 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 manager for your company.
So it's about scratching past results in performance, individual performance.

**Sammy Peterson** (3:54)