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You are listening to the You Are Techie podcast, episode

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157.

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Welcome to the You Are Techie

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podcast, where it's all about

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growing in your tech so you can find

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the tech job of your dreams. And

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now your host technology

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learning coach, Ellen Tomi

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.

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So many moms returning to work have asked

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me how to get hired in a job

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that pays well, but also

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allows them to be the mom they

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want to be. And I've seen so

0:37

many women make the mistake of taking a job teaching

0:39

English at 3:00 AM for $15

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an hour. That's just backwards

0:45

because your skills are highly valuable

0:47

and so is your time. That's

0:50

why I put together this free training to help

0:52

you jumpstart your tech career by learning

0:54

about the fields of UX design and front

0:57

end development so you don't waste one

0:59

more side hustle that

1:02

isn't a career and doesn't give you the flexibility and

1:04

income your family needs. I only

1:06

offer this training twice a year and

1:08

it's available right now at the release of this

1:11

episode. So sign up now for the

1:13

helpful and interactive free training.

1:15

Three strategies to jumpstart your UX design

1:18

career, or three strategies to jumpstart

1:20

your front end development career. Sign up

1:22

for one the other, or both,

1:24

it's completely free. Go to u

1:28

techie.com/signup . That's Y O U A R E

1:30

G E C H y.com/s

1:34

I G N U p . I

1:37

can't wait to see you there. Diane

1:41

Bloodworth is the founder and c e O of

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S Stout Smartt predictive analytics platform

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that helps college football coaches efficiently

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find recruits that fit and

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stay in their program. She has

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25 years of experience in the technology industry,

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including a successful startup launch and acquisition.

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And she has in-depth experience in

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analytics, software development, IT operation

2:03

and process improvement through her

2:05

past rules . At I b Diane is a thought

2:07

leader in sports analytics and frequent speaker

2:09

on the topic. She graduated

2:11

with an undergraduate degree from the

2:13

University of Georgia Go Dogs . And

2:16

Angie has an IBA from Miami. Diane

2:19

lives in Atlanta with her dog, absolutely named

2:21

Scout. Diane , welcome to

2:23

the podcast. Thank you Ellen.

2:26

And , and thanks for the GoDog plug. Much

2:28

appreciate it . I mean,

2:30

I'd got 'em here. They win a national championship,

2:33

I'm getting converted, you know, that's the way it Absolutely.

2:36

Well, let's dive in and talk

2:38

about scout Smart . So I've talked

2:41

about this in my podcast before. I

2:43

am actually one of those rare females who has played

2:45

tackle football . So like

2:47

to see a female c e O in this role

2:49

of football analytics is so cool. I

2:52

just, I love it. But why did

2:54

you become the founder and, and what

2:56

drove you to start outsmart

2:58

? Yeah, excellent. Yeah, and, and I

3:00

love your background with that, Ella , you're , you're one of

3:02

the few women I met who has played a

3:04

little tackle football, so that's great. But

3:07

kind of an interesting story, when I was at the University

3:09

of Miami doing my b a , working for

3:11

I B M at the time, doing some things in

3:13

expert systems, I got paired

3:15

with the star running back on one of their national

3:18

championship teams . Uh, and

3:20

this was during the nineties. So,

3:23

you know, thinking about using technology

3:26

and data in sports was just kind

3:28

of crazy talk. But anyway, we

3:30

developed a business plan in

3:32

a class on entrepreneurship where we

3:34

would predict the opponent's

3:37

strategy using an expert

3:39

system and tendencies

3:41

that we had collected about

3:44

that opponent. And that idea just

3:46

kind of stuck with me. It was way too

3:48

early to do anything. I

3:50

did start in the early two thousands

3:52

talking to coaches, they still weren't quite

3:55

ready, did a prototype, went out

3:57

and talked to some, they said, listen, we need help

3:59

in recruiting. It's not game planning.

4:01

We are looking at, we need help in recruiting.

4:03

And that's when I did kind of a

4:05

pivot and really started looking at Scout Smart

4:07

and providing the predictive recruiting

4:10

analytics. And one thing that helped us was

4:12

, uh, that the performance analytics

4:14

started to come out the wearable

4:16

technology. And so the coaches started

4:19

using more data and they became

4:21

more receptive to looking

4:24

at recruiting in a little different

4:26

way. Interesting.

4:28

Have you always been a football fan? Always been

4:30

a football fan. Grew up in rural Georgia. So

4:32

kind of the given <laugh>,

4:35

it's like you're raised that way, right? That's

4:37

the part of the, part of the growth

4:40

plans to introduce you and and expose you

4:42

to a lot of football . So that's so fun. Can

4:45

you give them a high level, tell

4:47

us a little bit more in detail. What

4:49

does Scouts smart do and

4:52

then how does it help your customer? Yeah

4:54

, certainly. So what we do is

4:57

we collect as many data points on a recruit

4:59

as we can. We have over

5:01

75,000 recruits in our database.

5:04

We look at their performance, their

5:06

stats, we compare them to other players

5:08

in that position. We look

5:10

at their academics, we give them a

5:13

score on their academics and

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then we worked with the N F L Scout to also look

5:17

at the skills for each position and

5:20

which skills are the best predictors of

5:22

performance. And so we also have a

5:24

skills analysis as well. All

5:27

of this makes up a fit score that

5:29

the college coaches can customize.

5:33

Ooh , wow. Fascinating. That's so

5:35

interesting. And so from

5:38

a coach's perspective, they're finding the

5:40

right players for their program, but

5:43

why should a player, why should an

5:45

athlete sign up for Scout Smart and

5:47

then also walk us through how they do that? Yes,

5:50

certainly you're right. We really wanna help those

5:52

coaches filter through all those high school players

5:54

that are out there and really hone

5:56

in on the guys that are gonna win

5:58

in their program. We sell to the

6:00

college program, so it is free for a

6:02

recruit to be in our database. And

6:05

so we feel like, hey, this is an

6:07

opportunity for them to create a profile. We

6:09

have a mobile app they can download

6:11

web app where they can create their profile. We'll

6:14

work with their high school coach if

6:16

their high school coach would like to send us data.

6:19

And then we'd like to give these guys a

6:21

shout out on Twitter. We've had a couple of

6:23

guys get their first D one offer just when we

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gave 'em a shout out on our Twitter account.

6:28

We also send emails to about

6:30

300 coaches a week highlighting

6:33

certain recruits and this gives them , you

6:35

know, some really great attention as well.

6:37

So for , to the recruit, hey,

6:39

it's a great way to increase your exposure

6:42

at no cost. Excellent. Okay

6:44

, let's shift away from football a little bit

6:46

and let's talk tech. What technical

6:48

skills do you feel

6:50

have helped you the most in your career?

6:54

I think being able to talk to

6:57

both people in the business

6:59

and in the development

7:02

or technology side of things. So

7:04

I think having that ability to

7:06

cross over . Now what that means

7:08

sometimes is I don't quite have the depth of

7:10

the, you know, a a hardcore developer

7:13

in terms of skills, but I understand what they're

7:15

doing and it really helps me translate

7:18

what I need to provide to a

7:20

user, to the developers.

7:23

I think the other thing it does is

7:25

just managing technical

7:27

projects has been something I

7:30

probably have managed a hundred technical

7:32

projects and you just, you learn a lot

7:35

how to , what a pain with <laugh> . Cuz

7:37

technology, what I've talked about this

7:39

technology could be a little messy . So

7:42

I'm , I , there's been a lot of lessons learned and, and

7:44

I still make mistakes sometimes, but

7:46

I really think it helped me really learn

7:49

how to deliver a technical

7:51

project within the budget and

7:54

within the expectations of

7:56

the, of the client or the user. Okay.

8:00

So that's a great segueway because,

8:02

so you mean you're, you're a tech founder, but

8:04

I would love to know, do you consider yourself techy? Why

8:07

or why not? I consider

8:09

myself techy in that I

8:12

understand quite a

8:14

bit about what has to help and , and the

8:16

development process. I think it makes me realistic

8:18

about what we can do and what we can't do.

8:21

And it helps me really manage the

8:24

development of efforts . So yeah,

8:26

I would have to say I'm techy. I'm

8:28

not the person that's gonna go write off the code.

8:31

So, you know, kind of , that's kind of a different

8:33

level of, of techy. Okay,

8:35

that's super interesting. So you kind of caveated,

8:38

but, so what factors

8:40

have been the most impactful

8:42

in your decision to start a company? And I'd

8:45

love for you to touch on too the fact that it's a tech

8:47

company and then why now?

8:50

Certainly. So right

8:52

outta college I went to work for I B M and worked

8:54

in a technical group. So

8:57

that really wasn't my plan. And in

8:59

fact I just , okay , what was your plan? Yes , what

9:01

was your plan? So , so my plan actually majored

9:04

in finance because I had read that

9:06

more CEOs majored in

9:08

finance than any other major. So

9:11

I really didn't have that technical

9:14

at that time. And quite honestly, it was

9:16

a little bit early. There weren't very many

9:18

women in the technical field, but

9:20

when I interviewed with I B M , they

9:23

said they would train me in

9:25

more technical skills. They were interested

9:27

in investing and in fact they sent me to Chicago

9:29

for three months, unfortunately in the, but

9:32

other than that I love Chicago and

9:34

I went through a three month intensive training,

9:37

technical training session, kind

9:39

of if you tested every week, if

9:41

you didn't pass, you went home. And so,

9:44

oh wow. Yeah. Yeah. And,

9:46

and you know what? I founded out, I really liked it. I

9:48

, I'm left brained , so it

9:50

really kind of, I, I loved problem

9:53

solving and figuring things out and,

9:55

and initially I was in more of a mainframe

9:58

support role, but it got me

10:01

on that technical path and, and

10:03

provided a , a lot of opportunities for

10:05

me to, to get some of

10:07

those skills that I, I wouldn't take anything for

10:09

that. Right. And that I worked on air

10:12

traffic control systems and that was

10:14

pretty darn interesting to realtime

10:16

systems. So got some, got

10:19

some pretty interesting things to do

10:21

to kind of get me on that on that hat

10:23

, but that was not the original plan in

10:26

college <laugh>. But

10:28

that's interesting. But you did, and the

10:30

inclination that you, you were at least using

10:32

the filter of what do CEOs

10:34

major in, so you thinking c e o even

10:37

be absolutely always had

10:39

that ambition to run a company

10:42

and at B m I realized I was never

10:44

going to be the C E o . I

10:46

mean, you know, just kind of coming up through

10:49

the technical ranks, that's generally not the

10:51

way they promote and move people. I did manage

10:54

a pretty good size group that did all

10:56

of the software development for the in route air

10:58

traffic control center. Great experience

11:01

that I decided to leave them and start my

11:03

own company because I knew in

11:05

my heart I wanted to follow a path of entrepreneurship.

11:09

And, and, and so, you know, the

11:11

question is why now? And I know you've done other things on

11:13

your own with , with consulting and things, but why

11:15

now for the SAS platform?

11:18

Yeah , so originally went

11:21

out on my own, started a company that company was acquired,

11:24

then decided to look

11:26

at doing something that was truly

11:29

more in my area of interest.

11:31

Not just what are you good at, but what's

11:34

your passion. And so that's

11:36

how Gout Mart was born was

11:38

like combining that passion and that entrepreneurship

11:42

and, and you know, some things are timing too

11:44

, Ellen, right? So initially

11:46

the coaches weren't quite ready. I did some

11:48

things in fantasy football that didn't

11:51

quite scale pivoted back to, to

11:53

my original idea. So, you

11:55

know, I've kind of learned about the pivot and

11:57

perseverance through this whole journey.

12:00

So you say why now, but it's, it's,

12:02

it's been a kind of a longtime journey for

12:04

me. So you're saying it hasn't

12:07

been just a smooth road of excelling

12:09

all the , what ? There been a few pitfall that

12:12

then I'm hearing Absolutely.

12:14

Challenges, pitfalls. But

12:17

you know, it's a great way to

12:19

really learn all

12:21

about what it takes to build a

12:24

business and get a get to

12:26

market. It's not an easy process,

12:28

it's not for the beta heart for sure. You know

12:30

, that. Was there,

12:33

was there any challenge that you felt like

12:36

was more required,

12:39

more perseverance, like you really grew

12:41

your resilience or grit or perseverance, whatever you

12:43

, however you wanna say it . Was there, was there one or that

12:45

you can speak to that helped you grow maybe more

12:47

than the others? Well, you

12:50

know, being a girl from Flint, stem , Georgia, I

12:52

kind of grew up with a lot of grit

12:54

anyway and family businesses. So

12:57

I, I would have to say hashtag scrappy

12:59

from day one. And then, you know, when I

13:01

was at I B M and then left them, I

13:03

worked on, I had contracts with

13:05

Euro tropic control system and then on nine

13:07

11 I saw my business just

13:10

implode. I got phone call after

13:12

phone call because they were, there weren't

13:14

any , you know, there weren't a whole lot going

13:16

on with flying airplanes at that time. And

13:19

that kind of taught me a little bit of that perseverance.

13:21

I was able to overcome that. I got a D

13:23

O D contract and that really is

13:25

what resulted in my business being acquired.

13:28

So I knew all about grid

13:31

and resilience and then, you

13:33

know, with the fantasy it

13:36

was tough cuz you have to balance that perseverance

13:38

and grit with sometimes it's not the

13:40

right thing to do. Right? Right.

13:43

When do , when do you quit? Sometimes

13:45

I think I'm better at perseverance than the

13:47

knowledge of saying, you've done enough, this is

13:49

what you need to do. And so kind

13:52

of making that decision was very challenging.

13:54

But the right decision, no regrets there.

13:57

And then I think with Scott Smart , you know, it's

13:59

just taken the coaches a while and

14:01

I think talking to some of the other companies in my

14:03

spacing , listen, it took us several years of

14:05

talking to coaches and getting them

14:08

familiar with what we did before they really bought

14:10

in and then it took off. So I think

14:12

combination of grip, but you

14:15

also gotta be, you know, pivot with

14:17

a purpose. Don't just keep doing the same

14:19

thing and learn more about your space.

14:21

Not every space is gonna be the same.

14:23

Not every market is gonna be the same in

14:26

terms of what that perseverance looks like. I

14:29

love that. That's so interesting because you

14:32

know, you are one of these rare people who was

14:34

raised with the grit and persevered and then

14:36

you just only grew that with some challenges in

14:38

your, I mean you had really, those are

14:40

really interesting projects and

14:42

things that you're doing in air traffic control. I'd

14:44

love to touch on that a little, but you're saying like

14:47

I can persevere, like hi day , you

14:49

can persevere through almost any day . The real

14:51

challenge I have is like should

14:53

I, should I actually, or should I make

14:55

a different choice here? That is correct.

14:58

That is correct. So, you

15:00

know, should I do something different?

15:02

Should I pivot with, you

15:04

know, with some new ideas? Don't,

15:06

you know, I think that definition of stupidity

15:09

is same, doing the same thing over and over again

15:11

and expecting separate results, right? Sure

15:13

. You're really changing something and

15:15

then some things, I mean let's, let's just

15:18

be honest, not all things are successful. I

15:20

think I struggled with failure and allowing

15:23

myself to have a failure, but you learn a lot

15:25

from failure. I think if you can learn

15:27

from it, pick yourself up and move

15:29

on. EL are the best entrepreneurs,

15:32

right? I interviewed Denise

15:34

Schul , she's a , a coach for traders

15:36

and she said I'm a fan of her. She

15:38

wrote a couple books that I, I love and she

15:41

said a great question to ask

15:44

yourself is what mistake do you keep on

15:46

making? And when you made that comment about like stupidity,

15:48

it's the same thing. Okay, what mistake do you keep

15:50

on making? It's a hard question to ask ourselves

15:52

but all of us are making mistakes all the time.

15:54

It's just a matter of do we wanna look at

15:57

it? And and also to tag onto that with

15:59

you said like your business failure sometimes be aligned

16:01

with our personal, it's a personal tech and the

16:04

more we can separate and learn from it, then

16:06

the more likely we are to grow and to be able to pivot

16:08

like you've done so well. Right?

16:10

Right. And then build on that for success.

16:13

No, you're absolutely right. I

16:15

think you know, every strength

16:17

you have can also be a weakness too. So yeah

16:20

, grit , perseverance are great but in

16:22

some scenarios that's not the right thing

16:24

to have. Yeah.

16:26

We talk about with my kids , we talk about our secret

16:28

sauce. It's, I heard this definition once we're

16:31

your so your secret sauce, but you're

16:33

great at, it's to the point where it can

16:35

be an annoying to other people, it's

16:38

just you have to have it so much. So like I'm

16:40

great at moving things forward, I'm great at that.

16:42

But if you have to live with that, sometimes that can be

16:44

, and just like you're

16:47

saying, it sounds like your secret sauce might be persevere.

16:49

That can be a problem if you don't pivot and learn

16:51

quickly enough. Exactly. Exactly.

16:53

So anything to the extreme is

16:56

not necessarily good. So you're right, you

16:58

gotta do that self-examination and

17:00

that is why I like having folks like you around

17:02

that you can bounce ideas off and talk

17:04

to and because I think, you know, entrepreneurship

17:07

is a long way journey, but if you have some

17:09

other women advisors, people around

17:12

you to kind of keep you honest a

17:14

little bit, keep you accountable. Right . It's a

17:16

good thing. Yeah. And we didn't mention

17:18

this, I thought about that too. Diana and I sit next

17:20

to each other at the coworking space and it's so

17:22

great cuz we're always , we're good. We're checking in with

17:25

each other, you know, are you getting , as did

17:27

you , we're both Conard drivers . So it's fun,

17:29

it's great. I don't know if they did that intentionally, but

17:31

they made us smart choice. I think putting us together that's,

17:34

it's fun. Absolutely. Serendipity

17:36

is what they call it here at the village. There you

17:38

go. There you go. Serendipity. So I

17:41

would love to ask you, can we just dig into

17:43

the air traffic control ? Cuz that is a , what's

17:46

so fascinating about that is like the realtime

17:48

data transfer, I mean like there's so,

17:51

so much in tech and so much I teach is

17:53

iteration and there's room. You can always fix

17:55

your mistakes. That that is not a scenario where

17:57

you can make a mistake. It have to be perfect. So

18:00

can you just speak to a little bit about

18:02

what that was like and what was fun about that and maybe

18:04

what was most challenging? Yeah, and it's

18:06

kind of interesting because I don't

18:08

know if you know, but this week there was an outage with

18:11

the air traffic control system. So I'm always intrigued

18:13

and I wanted to dig in. It actually was not a

18:15

system that I had worked on. It resulted

18:17

in a huge number of ization of

18:20

flight . So you know, you're

18:22

talking public safety and you're talking,

18:25

you know, huge inconvenience

18:27

and lots of money loss

18:30

when you start dealing with

18:32

those types of systems. You know, and

18:34

in that case there was redundancy and

18:36

things that we were testing. Mm-hmm <affirmative> , we could only test,

18:39

I worked at the Miami en route center for

18:41

three years and we could only test from, you know,

18:44

midnight to 4:00 AM during the

18:46

quiet times, the midships is

18:48

what they called it. And if you ever

18:50

walked to the control room and the system was

18:52

down, it was just, you

18:55

saw the impact of that and you were

18:57

like, I do not wanna do anything that's

18:59

going to bring this system down.

19:02

We are going to quality and

19:04

verification and validation are

19:06

so important for , for

19:09

this mission critical system . So it

19:11

really did, what a great way for

19:13

me to really kinda learn

19:16

at the highest levels the

19:19

importance of a good process

19:21

and good quality IT system

19:24

systems . And that kind of then influenced, I

19:26

mean, after that, when I had my own business, that's

19:28

what I did for the F FAA , was

19:31

I really helped them improve their qual of

19:33

their software development. Oh,

19:35

that's fascinating. That is so interesting. I love

19:37

it. Okay, so one, thank

19:40

you for sharing that with us. That wasn't on the , I didn't

19:42

know you had done that . So when you mentioned that , I'm like, that is so

19:44

fascinating. It

19:46

looks like I love the MEL dominated fields . I

19:48

didn't plan it that way, but right there

19:51

there was very few women in air

19:53

traffic control systems and, and

19:55

at football too. So yeah. Great . And

19:58

startup up <laugh> and startup . There

20:01

you go. Diane , did you have to be

20:03

on site from to four or

20:05

was it automated testing? You were right . No,

20:07

we had to be onsite. You were working for

20:10

I , that would not be a good shift. I could

20:12

start at four, but the midnight to four would

20:14

not be good. It did though . Ditto . And

20:16

you know, they would bring in Cuban coffee, it

20:19

was in Ohio in Miami, and so

20:21

they would bring in Cuban coffee, but then I wouldn't sleep

20:23

for three days. So it really didn't serve

20:25

me well. A healthy lifestyle, but a great

20:27

experience of the lot of the work

20:29

Bill . All right . So sticking of startup

20:32

and tech startup , I'd love to close

20:34

out here just hearing what advice you would give to

20:36

a woman who's she's considering

20:38

starting a company. Maybe it's a

20:40

tech company. What advice do

20:42

you have? Certainly. So don't

20:44

be intimidated, you know, by,

20:47

by technology. I think some

20:49

of us in the tech field , we like to

20:51

throw terms and acronyms

20:53

around and you know, probably

20:55

we were the kids that were bullied in middle

20:58

school. So this is our opportunity to

21:00

really , really show off. But don't be

21:03

intimidated. You can learn it.

21:05

You can have a co-founder

21:07

if you're not technical, a co-founder

21:09

or an advisor. Learn

21:12

how to manage technical teams.

21:14

You don't have to be hardcore development,

21:17

but learn how to manage so you're not

21:19

surprised with a project

21:21

that doesn't result in either the

21:23

schedule or functionality or the cost

21:26

that you expected. Be smart

21:28

about that. I've seen, you know,

21:30

a number of things go bad in that way,

21:33

so, but hey, I think it's a great

21:35

opportunity and technology is changing

21:37

and improving and becoming a

21:39

little bit easier to develop and

21:41

deliver. I personally think there's nothing like

21:44

entrepreneurship. I think you've gotta have that drive and that

21:46

passion for it. I mean, there's a lot

21:48

of easier ways to make more money, but

21:50

if that's truly, if that's truly

21:53

what you wanna do, I'm like, go for

21:55

it. Diane Blubber , thank you so

21:57

much for being here today. Thanks Ellen.

21:59

Hey, if you enjoyed listening to this podcast,

22:01

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22:03

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22:05

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22:13

That's Y O U A R E

22:15

T E C H y.com . I'll

22:18

see .