Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Diane Bloodworth. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Diane, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?

One of the most rewarding aspects of being an entrepreneur has been building a small and scrappy team. To keep costs low, I initially hired college interns. Predictive analytics is a newer field and there aren’t many experienced people available (especially on a startup budget). There are a lot of potential interns who want experience and love sports, so I have had outstanding interns. I give the interns a significant amount of responsibility with the support and mentoring they need. Since we learn more from our mistakes, I make it clear that there isn’t a penalty for a mistake if they are trying something new. This has fostered innovation and learning. I enjoy watching this next generation learn and grow in their skills and knowledge. I am amazed at what our team has accomplished.

Diane, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

scoutSMART provides predictive analytics for sports and predicts the fit of a recruit for a college football team. There are more than 1 million high school football players and an overwhelming amount of data on these players. scoutSMART helps college football coaches more efficiently and effectively find the recruits that will be successful in their program.

It is extremely rewarding to see a college program offer a recruit in the scoutSMART database. The recruit gets an opportunity to play at the next level, attend college, and contribute to a winning team. It is free for recruits to be included in scoutSMART and we believe the scoutSMART analytics result in a more level playing field for all recruits.

Have you ever had to pivot?

While the original idea for scoutSMART targeted college football, the initial market discovery determined that college coaches were not ready for recruiting analytics. A decision was made to pursue Fantasy Football where the users were interested in analytics for their draft and weekly lineup decisions. After a few seasons, we had a loyal following but were unable to scale and achieve sustainable growth. I had to make a difficult decision to shut down the Fantasy Football analytics site and focus solely on college football analytics which is a market where we can win. Yep, full circle. I have had to learn how to balance perseverance and the pivot.

Can you talk to us about your experience with selling businesses?

My first business was acquired. It was a consulting business, rather than a scalable business so my exit was nice, but not the “buy an island” type of exit. I learned a lot from selling that business, especially through the due diligence process. I learned a lot about myself as well. I am an entrepreneur and I must create and build. I can’t be an employee (I thought it would be so much easier).

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.scoutsmartrecruiting.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianebloodworth/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/scoutproff