WODstack

In 2008 the markets crashed. It was bad. I was a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch and I had experienced some success. It was a hard climb from a rookie to sales manager but I learned a ton. That journey forever changed me and very much made me who I am today.

A story for another time would inform you about why I chose to leave a lucrative career and pursue being an entrepreneur but let pick up with me wondering what to do after my initial idea failed. It failed for a lot of reasons (I didn’t have enough money to take on the big guys, I was inexperienced, I was overly confident, etc.) but nonetheless I found myself holding my 9 month old son with his post-feeding vomit on my shoulder wondering what I would do next.

I was able to secure a great gig at that point at a big pay cut. I was thankful and I knew this feeling inside of me to create wasn’t satisfied yet. I spent my days working and my nights learning. At some point I found a tutorial about how to create a blog in 15 mins with Ruby on Rails. After putting my kids to bed that night I went to work. Shortly after I was hooked.

I found myself in an intoxicating ritual of working, being a dad, and wrestling with learning to code. It was frustrating, rewarding, humbling, and empowering at the some time. I couldn’t get enough. In a few short months I had somehow hacked together what was essentially a blogging platform that allowed multiple authors (think Blogger) . The kicker was I called it WODstack.

About 6 months prior to all this I had taken a picture of myself as the P90X intro video instructed me to. Sure I was a bit out of shape but it wasn’t the way my body looked that caught my eye but the look on my face. I was tired. I was tired from trying really hard at being a new dad and entrepreneur. Lucky right after that picture was taken my wife introduced me to CrossFit.

I showed up to my first workout and was completely humbled and hooked at the same time. The following weeks found me with a renewed passion for working out. I was surrounded by people who encouraged and challenged me everyday. It was that demeanor that met my obsession with coding and lead to the creation of a website for CrossFitters to log their workouts. WODstack.

In the following weeks and months my project gained popularity. Tens, then hundreds, then thousands of users signed up. I was equal part elated and terrified as with each new user there was a new error in the app that I didn’t know how to handle. Eventually I was able to bring on a partner and things smoothed out. We achieved sustainable. It was amazing.

In the coming two years we worked hard to find a way to monetize the app. It didn’t work. But along the way I made friends that lead me to my next step in life. It was amazing. I remember going to the CrossFit games and being dapped up when they realized I was the guy that created WODstack. It felt great and the whole experienced pulled me out of a pit of self-doubt.

Thought I didn’t know it I would soon get a job as a UX Consultant because of this project which would eventually launch me to a level of success that I didn’t see coming. We eventually sold WODstack for an amount that was way less than the value of the experience.

I haven’t talked about how much this project has meant to me in a long time. It feels good to relive it. Life has a funny way about it. Embrace your curiosities and the challenges they bring.