Working at RevLocal for +7 years I sat down with hundreds of small business owners. I loved their stories and advice. I’ll never forget one of my earliest customers, Paul Thornburg, who owned an office furniture company. He made most his money doing software sales in the 80s. He told me, ‘I’ve always thought software sales was a lot like surfing – you paddle really hard to catch the right wave, then boom, you ride it. I would work so hard and sometimes it didn’t work out. But boy if you found the right company…you ride that wave all the way in. Listen Patrick – you gotta hustle, but make sure you find the right waves.’
I always remembered Paul’s surfing analogy as we paddled so hard to go from 5 to 15 to 100 to +250 employees one client at a time. I moved to Columbus in 2011 and poured my heart into scaling a start up with the sales team. I still believe in the company and I’ll miss our team, but it’s time for me to move on.
So why did I leave? The short version: a new challenge and a bigger opportunity. I’m joining Cultivate Advisors doing coaching and consulting for small to medium sized businesses. At RevLocal I always enjoyed working with owners on a digital marketing strategy, but then it was on to the next one.
At Cultivate I’ll be working more in depth on marketing, financials, recruiting, leadership, etc with proven systems. I’ve seen their work and it’s world class. Plus I’ll learn a ton and have a bigger impact with customers. And a few years from now, Cultivate will have a private equity arm to invest in businesses.
I will forever be grateful for the opportunity at RevLocal and Ohio will hold a special place in my heart. I’m excited and a bit nervous. I’ll share more about our work at Cultivate down the road, but for now it’s time to paddle harder and catch a bigger wave.
