You are techY podcast

Ellen (00:00):

You are listening to the You are techY podcast, episode 157.

Voiceover (00:10):

Welcome to the, You are techY podcast where it’s all about growing in your techy-ness. So you can find the tech job of your dreams. And now your host technology learning coach Ellen Twomey.

Ellen (00:26):

So many moms returning to work have asked me how to get hired in a job that pays well, but also allows them to be the mom they want to be. And I’ve seen so many women make the mistake of taking a job teaching English at 3:00 AM for $15 an hour, and that’s just backwards because your skills are highly valuable and so is your time. That’s why I put together this free training to help you jumpstart your tech. By learning about the fields of UX design and front end development so you don’t waste one more side hustle that isn’t a career and doesn’t give you the flexibility and income your family needs. I only offer this training twice a year, and it’s available right now at the release of this episode. So sign up now for the helpful and interactive free training. Three strategies to jumpstart your UX design career, or three strategies to jumpstart your frontend development career. Sign up for one the. Or both. It’s completely free. Go to youaretechy.com/signup. That’s Y O U A R E T E C H Y.com/S I G N U P. I can’t wait to see you there.

Ellen (01:41):

Diane Bloodworth is the founder and CEO of scoutSMART predictive analytics platform that helps college football coaches efficiently find recruits that fit and stay in their program. She has 25 years of experience in the technology industry, including a successful startup launch and acquisition. And she has in-depth experience in analytics, software development, IT operation and process improvement through her past roles. At I b Diane is a thought leader in sports analytics and frequent speaker on the topic. She graduated with an undergraduate degree from the University of Georgia Go Dogs. And shehas an MBA from Miami. Diane lives in Atlanta with her dog, absolutely named Scout. Diane, welcome to the podcast. 

Diane:

Thank you Ellen. And, and thanks for the GoDog plug. Much appreciate it. 

Ellen

I mean, I’d got ’em here. They win a national championship, I’m getting converted, you know, that’s the way it

Diane:

Absolutely.

Ellen (02:36):

Well, let’s dive in and talk about scout Smart. So I’ve talked about this in my podcast before. I am actually one of those rare females who has played tackle football. So like to see a female c e O in this role of football analytics is so cool. I just, I love it. But why did you become the founder and, and what drove you to start scoutsmart? 

Diane:

Yeah, excellent. Yeah, and, and I love your background with that, Ellen, you’re, you’re one of the few women I met who has played a little tackle football, so that’s great. But kind of an interesting story, when I was at the University of Miami doing my MBA, working for I B M at the time, doing some things in expert systems, I got paired with the star running back on one of their national championship teams. Uh, and this was during the nineties.

So, you know, thinking about using technology and data in sports was just kind of crazy talk. But anyway, we developed a business plan in a class on entrepreneurship where we would predict the opponent’s strategy using an expert system and tendencies that we had collected about that opponent. And that idea just kind of stuck with me. It was way too early to do anything. I did start in the early two thousands talking to coaches, they still weren’t quite ready, did a prototype, went out and talked to some, they said, listen, we need help in recruiting. It’s not game planning. We are looking at, we need help in recruiting. And that’s when I did kind of a pivot and really started looking at Scout Smart and providing the predictive recruiting analytics. And one thing that helped us was, uh, that the performance analytics started to come out the wearable technology.

And so the coaches started using more data and they became more receptive to looking at recruiting in a little different way. 

Ellen: (04:27):

Interesting. Have you always been a football fan? 

Diane:

Always been a football fan. Grew up in rural Georgia. So kind of the given 

Ellen:

<laugh>, it’s like you’re raised that way, right? That’s the part of the, part of the growth plans to introduce you and and expose you to a lot of football. So that’s so fun. Can you give them a high level, tell us a little bit more in detail. What does Scoutsmart do and then how does it help your customer? 

Diane:

Yeah, certainly. So what we do is we collect as many data points on a recruit as we can. We have over 75,000 recruits in our database. We look at their performance, their stats, we compare them to other players in that position. We look at their academics, we give them a score on their academics and then we worked with the N F L Scout to also look at the skills for each position and which skills are the best predictors of performance.

And so we also have a skills analysis as well. All of this makes up a fit score that the college coaches can customize. 

Ellen:

Ooh, wow. Fascinating. That’s so interesting. And so from a coach’s perspective, they’re finding the right players for their program, but why should a player, why should an athlete sign up for Scout Smart and then also walk us through how they do that? 

Diane:

Yes, certainly you’re right. We really wanna help those coaches filter through all those high school players that are out there and really hone in on the guys that are gonna win in their program. We sell to the college program, so it is free for a recruit to be in our database. And so we feel like, hey, this is an opportunity for them to create a profile. We have a mobile app they can download web app where they can create their profile.

We’ll work with their high school coach if their high school coach would like to send us data. And then we’d like to give these guys a shout out on Twitter. We’ve had a couple of guys get their first D one offer just when we gave ’em a shout out on our Twitter account. We also send emails to about 300 coaches a week highlighting certain recruits and this gives them, you know, some really great attention as well. So for, to the recruit, hey, it’s a great way to increase your exposure at no cost. Excellent. 

Ellen:

Okay, let’s shift away from football a little bit and let’s talk tech. What technical skills do you feel have helped you the most in your career? 

Diane:

I think being able to talk to both people in the business and in the development or technology side of things. So I think having that ability to cross over.

Now what that means sometimes is I don’t quite have the depth of the, you know, a a hardcore developer in terms of skills, but I understand what they’re doing and it really helps me translate what I need to provide to a user, to the developers. I think the other thing it does is just managing technical projects has been something I probably have managed a hundred technical projects and you just, you learn a lot how to, what a pain with <laugh>. Cuz technology, what I’ve talked about this technology could be a little messy. So I’m, I, there’s been a lot of lessons learned and, and I still make mistakes sometimes, but I really think it helped me really learn how to deliver a technical project within the budget and within the expectations of the, of the client or the user. 

Ellen:Okay. So that’s a great segueway because, so you mean you’re, you’re a tech founder, but I would love to know, do you consider yourself techy?

Why or why not?

Diane:

I consider myself techy in that I understand quite a bit about what has to help and, and the development process. I think it makes me realistic about what we can do and what we can’t do. And it helps me really manage the development of efforts. So yeah, I would have to say I’m techy. I’m not the person that’s gonna go write off the code. So, you know, kind of, that’s kind of a different level of, of techy. 

Ellen:

Okay, that’s super interesting. So you kind of caveated, but, so what factors have been the most impactful in your decision to start a company? And I’d love for you to touch on too the fact that it’s a tech company and then why now? 

Diane:

Certainly. So right outta college I went to work for I B M and worked in a technical group. So that really wasn’t my plan.

Ellen (08:59):

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

Diane:

So, so my plan actually majored in finance because I had read that more CEOs majored in finance than any other major. So I really didn’t have that technical at that time. And quite honestly, it was a little bit early. There weren’t very many women in the technical field, but when I interviewed with I B M, they said they would train me in more technical skills. They were interested in investing and in fact they sent me to Chicago for three months, unfortunately in the, but other than that I love Chicago and I went through a three month intensive training, technical training session, kind of if you tested every week, if you didn’t pass, you went home. And so, 

Ellen:

oh wow. 

Diane:

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

I, I’m left brained, so it really kind of, I, I loved problem solving and figuring things out and, and initially I was in more of a mainframe support role, but it got me on that technical path and, and provided a, a lot of opportunities for me to, to get some of those skills that I, I wouldn’t take anything for that. Right. And that I worked on air traffic control systems and that was pretty darn interesting to realtime systems. So got some, got some pretty interesting things to do to kind of get me on that on that hat, but that was not the original plan in college <laugh>. 

Ellen:

But that’s interesting. But you did, and the inclination that you, you were at least using the filter of what do CEOs major in, so you thinking c e o even back then

Diane:

absolutely always had that ambition to run a company and at IBM realized I was never going to be the C E o.

I mean, you know, just kind of coming up through the technical ranks, that’s generally not the way they promote and move people. I did manage a pretty good size group that did all of the software development for the in route air traffic control center. Great experience that I decided to leave them and start my own company because I knew in my heart I wanted to follow a path of entrepreneurship. 

Ellen:

And, and, and so, you know, the question is why now? And I know you’ve done other things on your own with, with consulting and things, but why now for the SAS platform? 

Diane:

 Yeah, so originally went out on my own, started a company that company was acquired, then decided to look at doing something that was truly more in my area of interest. Not just what are you good at, but what’s your passion. And so that’s how ScoutMart was born was like combining that passion and that entrepreneurship and, and you know, some things are timing too, Ellen, right?

 So initially the coaches weren’t quite ready. I did some things in fantasy football that didn’t quite scale pivoted back to, to my original idea. So, you know, I’ve kind of learned about the pivot and perseverance through this whole journey. 

Ellen:

So you say why now, but it’s, it’s, it’s been a kind of a longtime journey for me. So you’re saying it hasn’t been just a smooth road of excelling all the, what? There been a few pitfall that then I’m hearing 

Diane:

Absolutely. Challenges, pitfalls. But you know, it’s a great way to really learn all about what it takes to build a business and get a get to market. It’s not an easy process, it’s not for the beta heart for sure. You know, that. 

Ellen: 

Was there, was there any challenge that you felt like was more required, more perseverance, like you really grew your resilience or grit or perseverance, whatever you, however you wanna say it.

Was there, was there one or that you can speak to that helped you grow maybe more than the others? 

Diane: 

Well, you know, being a girl from Flint, stem, Georgia, I kind of grew up with a lot of grit anyway and family businesses. So I, I would have to say hashtag scrappy from day one. And then, you know, when I was at I B M and then left them, I worked on, I had contracts with Euro tropic control system and then on nine 11 I saw my business just implode. I got phone call after phone call because they were, there weren’t any, you know, there weren’t a whole lot going on with flying airplanes at that time. And that kind of taught me a little bit of that perseverance. I was able to overcome that. I got a D O D contract and that really is what resulted in my business being acquired.

So I knew all about grid and resilience and then, you know, with the fantasy it was tough cuz you have to balance that perseverance and grit with sometimes it’s not the right thing to do. Right? Right. When do, when do you quit? Sometimes I think I’m better at perseverance than the knowledge of saying, you’ve done enough, this is what you need to do. And so kind of making that decision was very challenging. But the right decision, no regrets there. And then I think with Scott Smart, you know, it’s just taken the coaches a while and I think talking to some of the other companies in my spacing, listen, it took us several years of talking to coaches and getting them familiar with what we did before they really bought in and then it took off. So I think combination of grip, but you also gotta be, you know, pivot with a purpose.Don’t just keep doing the same thing and learn more about your space. Not every space is gonna be the same. Not every market is gonna be the same in terms of what that perseverance looks like. 

Ellen: 

I love that. That’s so interesting because you know, you are one of these rare people who was raised with the grit and persevered and then you just only grew that with some challenges in your, I mean you had really, those are really interesting projects and things that you’re doing in air traffic control. I’d love to touch on that a little, but you’re saying like I can persevere, like hi day, you can persevere through almost any day. The real challenge I have is like should I, should I actually, or should I make a different choice here? That is correct. 

Diane:

That is correct. So, you know, should I do something different?

Should I pivot with, you know, with some new ideas? Don’t, you know, I think that definition of stupidity is same, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting separate results, right? Sure. You’re really changing something and then some things, I mean let’s, let’s just be honest, not all things are successful. I think I struggled with failure and allowing myself to have a failure, but you learn a lot from failure. I think if you can learn from it, pick yourself up and move on. EL are the best entrepreneurs, right? I interviewed Denise Schul, she’s a, a coach for traders and she said I’m a fan of her. She wrote a couple books that I, I love and she said a great question to ask yourself is what mistake do you keep on making? And when you made that comment about like stupidity, it’s the same thing.

Ellen (15:49):

Okay, what mistake do you keep on making? 

Diane: 

It’s a hard question to ask ourselves but all of us are making mistakes all the time. It’s just a matter of do we wanna look at it? And and also to tag onto that with you said like your business failure sometimes be aligned with our personal, it’s a personal tech and the more we can separate and learn from it, then the more likely we are to grow and to be able to pivot like you’ve done so well. Right? Right. And then build on that for success. No, you’re absolutely right. I think you know, every strength you have can also be a weakness too. So yeah, grit, perseverance are great but in some scenarios that’s not the right thing to have. 

Ellen:

Yeah. We talk about with my kids, we talk about our secret sauce. It’s, I heard this definition once we’re your so your secret sauce, but you’re great at, it’s to the point where it can be an annoying to other people, it’s just you have to have it so much. So like I’m great at moving things forward, I’m great at that. But if you have to live with that, sometimes that can be, and just like you’re saying, it sounds like your secret sauce might be persevere. That can be a problem if you don’t pivot and learn quickly enough. 

Diane:

Exactly. Exactly. So anything to the extreme is not necessarily good. So you’re right, you gotta do that self-examination and that is why I like having folks like you around that you can bounce ideas off and talk to and because I think, you know, entrepreneurship is a long way journey, but if you have some other women advisors, people around you to kind of keep you honest a little bit, keep you accountable. Right. It’s a good thing. Yeah. 

Ellen:

And we didn’t mention this, I thought about that too. Diana and I sit next to each other at the coworking space and it’s so great cuz we’re always, we’re good.

We’re checking in with each other, you know, are you getting, as did you, we’re both Conard drivers. So it’s fun, it’s great. I don’t know if they did that intentionally, but they made us smart choice. I think putting us together that’s, it’s fun. 

Diane:

Absolutely. Serendipity is what they call it here at the village. 

Ellen:

There you go. There you go. Serendipity. So I would love to ask you, can we just dig into the air traffic control? Cuz that is a, 

Diane:

what’s so fascinating about that is like the realtime data transfer, I mean like there’s so, so much in tech and so much I teach is iteration and there’s room. You can always fix your mistakes. That that is not a scenario where you can make a mistake. It have to be perfect. 

Ellen:

So can you just speak to a little bit about what that was like and what was fun about that and maybe what was most challenging?

Diane (18:05):

Yeah, and it’s kind of interesting because I don’t know if you know, but this week there was an outage with the air traffic control system. So I’m always intrigued and I wanted to dig in. It actually was not a system that I had worked on. It resulted in a huge number of ization of flight. So you know, you’re talking public safety and you’re talking, you know, huge inconvenience and lots of money loss when you start dealing with those types of systems. You know, and in that case there was redundancy and things that we were testing. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, we could only test, I worked at the Miami en route center for three years and we could only test from, you know, midnight to 4:00 AM during the quiet times, the midships is what they called it. And if you ever walked to the control room and the system was down, it was just, you saw the impact of that and you were like, I do not wanna do anything that’s going to bring this system down. We are going to quality and verification and validation are so important for, for this mission critical system. So it really did, what a great way for me to really kinda learn at the highest levels the importance of a good process and good quality IT system systems. And that kind of then influenced, I mean, after that, when I had my own business, that’s what I did for the F FAA, was I really helped them improve their qual of their software development. 

Ellen:

Oh, that’s fascinating. That is so interesting. I love it. Okay, so one, thank you for sharing that with us. That wasn’t on the, I didn’t know you had done that. So when you mentioned that, I’m like, that is so fascinating. 

Diane:

It looks like I love the MEL dominated fields. I didn’t plan it that way, but right there there was very few women in air traffic control systems and, and at football too.

Diane (19:56):

So yeah. 

Ellen:

Great. And startup up <laugh> and startup. There you go. Diane, did you have to be on site from to four or was it automated testing? 

Diane:

You were right. No, we had to be onsite. 

Ellen:

You were working for I, that would not be a good shift. I could start at four, but the midnight to four would not be good. 

Diane:

It did though. Ditto. And you know, they would bring in Cuban coffee, it was in Ohio in Miami, and so they would bring in Cuban coffee, but then I wouldn’t sleep for three days. So it really didn’t serve me well. A healthy lifestyle, but a great experience of the lot of the work Bill. 

Ellen:

All right. So sticking of startup and tech startup, I’d love to close out here just hearing what advice you would give to a woman who’s she’s considering starting a company. Maybe it’s a tech company.

Ellen (20:41):

What advice do you have? 

Diane:

Certainly. So don’t be intimidated, you know, by, by technology. I think some of us in the tech field, we like to throw terms and acronyms around and you know, probably we were the kids that were bullied in middle school. So this is our opportunity to really, really show off. But don’t be intimidated. You can learn it. You can have a co-founder if you’re not technical, a co-founder or an advisor. Learn how to manage technical teams. You don’t have to be hardcore development, but learn how to manage so you’re not surprised with a project that doesn’t result in either the schedule or functionality or the cost that you expected. Be smart about that. I’ve seen, you know, a number of things go bad in that way, so, but hey, I think it’s a great opportunity and technology is changing and improving and becoming a little bit easier to develop and deliver. I personally think there’s nothing like entrepreneurship. I think you’ve gotta have that drive and that passion for it. I mean, there’s a lot of easier ways to make more money, but if that’s truly, if that’s truly what you wanna do, I’m like, go for it. 

Ellen:

Diane Blubber, thank you so much for being here today. 

Diane:

Thanks Ellen.

Ellen (21:59):

Hey if you enjoyed listening to this podcast you have to sign up for the You are techY email list. Imagine being in the tech job of your dreams. Join me to get the strategies training and never ending support to get hired. Sign up at youaretechy.com. That’s Y O U A R E T E C H Y.com. I’ll see you next time.