Travis Hevelone built Jobsology into a career-guidance platform used by colleges nationwide, sold it in 2023, then got laid off ten months later with zero backup plan. In this episode, he breaks down what the acquisition process actually looked like, why he burned through savings on a Facebook-ads t-shirt business that never worked, and how one conversation with Claude Code turned into his next company, Single Track Ops, using AI to automate the grunt work for small businesses like roofers and trades.
Episode 32: What Comes After the Exit? Building Again with Travis Hevelone
What happens after you build the company, sell it, and discover the next chapter is not waiting neatly on the other side? For Travis Hevelone, the answer involved an unexpected layoff, time to decompress, a failed business experiment, and a return to the work he does best: solving operational problems.
In this episode, Mike and Zach sit down with engineer and entrepreneur Travis Hevelone to explore the full journey from startup founder to acquired CEO and back to business owner. Travis shares how he co-founded jobZology in 2012 and built PathwayU, a science-based career-guidance platform that reached more than one million users across over 200 institutions.
We dig into the long search for a buyer, the moment private equity reached out, and the six months of due diligence that followed. Travis explains why inbound interest felt fundamentally different from chasing prospective acquirers, how he handled the process while still running the company, and what it was like to become an employee after the sale.
One of our biggest takeaways is that an exit does not automatically answer what comes next. After being laid off 10 months into the transition, Travis took time off before experimenting with a print-on-demand T-shirt business. The model generated sales but remained unprofitable and left too much control in the hands of a changing advertising algorithm.
You’ll also hear how that experience led to SingletrackOps, where Travis combines 25 years of operations experience with AI to automate repetitive work for trades and home-service businesses—helping owners replace disconnected apps and manual processes with lightweight tools that give their teams hours back every week.
“I’m a startup guy. I like to know everybody.”
“Sometimes you’re loyal to a fault.”
“All play is not good for me. My engineering brain needs to solve problems.”
“You can actually build real software that solves real problems just by talking.”
Travis Hevelone is an engineer and operations leader who loves solving problems. He has spent approximately 25 years in operations, running IT consultancies and a network operations center before becoming a technology founder.
In 2012, Travis co-founded jobZology and built PathwayU, a science-based career-guidance platform that grew to more than one million users across over 200 institutions. The platform also earned national recognition and an invitation for Travis and his team to brief officials at the White House.
Travis sold the company to PeopleGrove in 2023 and remained through a 10-month transition before being laid off. After taking time to reassess what came next and experimenting with a print-on-demand business, he recognized that his strongest advantage remained in engineering, operations, and practical problem-solving.
Today, Travis runs SingletrackOps, which combines his operations experience with AI to help trades and home-service companies eliminate repetitive work, connect fragmented processes, and give owners more time to focus on customers, sales, and the work they enjoy.
Find Travis Hevelone on LinkedIn, visit SingletrackOps, or email travis@singletrackops.com
For Investors & the Fund – Learn how the Fund works and book a call.
For Borrowers & Deals – Get funding and support for your next investment.
**Travis Hevelone** (0:00) We kind of had a 50-50 track record with employers, meaning half of them after a year were like, I don't know if it's working. There was false positives, false negatives, right? They were hiring people that we said were really good fits to the culture of the job and then they didn't work out. And there were people that we said were red to the culture and not a good fit to the job and they were great employees. So that's where we kind of went back to our roots and we had one of those big pivots, right? Airbnb a and uh startups has to pivot at some point in their life cycle. So we pivoted back to education. It was really only one way. You're just helping a individual understand themselves better to make better decisions about education and career. And then that really stuck. And so then we just double down on that. Stop doing all the employer stuff.
INTRO (voiceover) (0:46)
Most people think saving money is the answer, but the truth is saving only gets you to zero. Join Mike and Zach as they flip the script from saving to earning, from zero to unlimited potential.
Zach Richards (0:46)
Welcome to Save to Zero. Hey everybody, welcome to episode number 32 of the Save to Zero podcast. Mike and I are here with Travis Havone. He has been in operations for 25 years in IT. Travis started Jobzology which then sold to People Grove in 2023 and then ran into a part that you don't really expect which is a layoff and then figured out what he was going to do started another business which now uh uses AI for uh the trades business and uh we're going to hear all about it. So Travis thanks for uh coming on really appreciate it.
Travis Hevelone (1:40)
Yeah thanks for having me.
Zach Richards (1:41)
So Travis take us through you know what I just said there. explain explain a little bit more about that whole thing.
Travis Hevelone (1:48)
Yeah, so I think I was 39 at the time. So I had probably I don't know 15 years in industry. Um I was with a couple engineering firms, turned IT guy around uh end of 1990s, right? Kind of got in it doing consulting. Uh ran a couple consultancies uh got into managed services um which was also very IT related. And I was just at a point where I was kind of feeling restless in my career. Um I kind of was going back into like 20 30 person companies helping them grow to hundreds thousands and then I don't know there's something about when a company gets to like several hundred into the thousands where I just can't do it. I'm like a startup guy. I like to know everybody. I like that uh smallknit personal connections. And so, you know, I had done that two or three times. And I thought, am I going to do this the rest of my life? And, you know, 39 going on 40, it's it's kind of one of those moments for for most guys, right, where you kind of take stock and you kind of go, what's the rest of my career going to be like? And so, I want to do something for myself, right? You hear all the glamorous stories about entrepreneurship, how uh how sexy it is, and you can make all this money. And so um I was approaching 40. I said, you know, I want to do my own thing. I want to be one of those founders. Um I had been in a company prior that they exited and I saw the founders like make real wealth and I thought, "Yeah, I want to do that." Um that's the way to make a lot of money is build your own company and sell it. Um I'm very uh founder oriented. I'm I'm like if I'm your employee, I'm still thinking like a founder. So I'm like, I might as well start my own company. So, in 2012, um, I came across an idea, uh, that was, uh, out of Colorado State University. So, I'm in Fort Collins, Colorado. That's kind of our flag, uh, flagship university here, Colorado State University. Go Rams. I'm also a Ram. So, I graduated in 1996 with an engineering degree. And I actually knew the guy that was the tech transfer uh, officer there and just talked to him about, hey, I want to start a company. And prior to this, I had not started a company. I wasn't even part of the startup scene. I had never really been in a true like startup startup. And so, it was definitely one of those, hey, I'm going to take a crazy uh crazy leap here and try to start my own company. Um, and he had two professors at CSU that were doing something with students. They were guiding them to education and career paths that fit them better based on their psychometric makeup. So things like interests, values, personality traits. And again, I was 39 going on 40. I probably still didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. And most of my friends were still struggling trying to figure out what is it that I really want to do? You kind of get swept into different occupations and you do that to make money, to support yourself, your family. But then you're always like, is this what I should be doing? And so I was still having those questions. I had two kids that were in their teen years and I knew they would both need help answering this uh question. And so we started Jobsology in 2012 and it was all around guiding people to better education to career decisions. Um and then we ran that to uh 2023. Uh we had a couple hundred clients all across the US. Um, in the end we basically built a online career guidance platform called PathwayU and it was primarily sold to colleges, universities all across the country and they would use that with entering freshman uh, you know, juniors that weren't sure if they picked the right major. They were having that crisis at 2 in the morning. they could go through our tool, come up with better answers, kind of better understand themselves and uh yeah, so we exited that in 2023 to uh people grow.
Mike Seidl (5:43)
Okay, that is a lot to unpack there.
Zach Richards (5:45)
There's a lot there.
Mike Seidl (5:45)
First of all, we didn't get a lot an opportunity to talk much before we started the recording. So, just so you know, I lived in Fort Collins on Gemstone Lane from uh 21 to 23. Okay. Um, and I moved out west because I'm a white water kayaker. So, I paddled up on the puddter multiple times. Uh, that was the local river. And then, um, I actually sold my first company to a public company back in, uh, 1998 was when I sold the first company. So, I hear what you're saying about uh, selling working for someone else is fine. Building a business and selling is absolutely the way to go. And I'm with you. Small uh is works much better for me. I can't do something something big. So I I feel you. I I understand completely. But you do live in God's country. Fort Collins is amazing. Yeah. I loved it there.
Travis Hevelone (6:46)
I've been here since 91. I came up here for college in '91 and I haven't left. So y felt very grateful. Uh I'm married. I have two children. We've been here the entire time. So great schools, great uh weather, great great place.
Mike Seidl (7:01)
Absolutely.
Zach Richards (7:03)
Yeah. So yeah, I was just going to say when you when you start at a smaller company, it's fun, things are nimble, and then as things grow and you add more and more people, it just gets cumbersome and clunky. And the same thing happened at the software company I used to work at. It was a lot of fun and then it got it got boring. It got slow and boring.
Travis Hevelone (7:19)
Yeah. Yeah. I think the sweet spot's like between 20 and 40. It's like you're big enough that you can create some real revenue, have a lot of good fun, but uh you're not too big where you start getting the group think and too much corporate structure, right? That sort of thing. Like once you start having dress codes and that kind of stuff, right? You've got too big, right? You've lost all the fun.
Mike Seidl (7:39)
It's interesting you say that because a lot of your big tech companies started out as just these nimble in somebody's garage, you know, HP, and then they become these big tech companies that, you know, they're just like IBM used to be. They're not big blue, but they're like IBM used to be and they're very corporate and they're not a lot of fun to work for and they lose their energy, which I think is part of the reason. You let me know since you're in the tech. Um, is why tech companies buy smaller tech companies. Obviously, they're buying the technology, but I think they're also buying the fresh energy. What do you think?
Travis Hevelone (8:19)
Yeah, I think so. I think that was a big part of our acquisition. Um although in the end I don't think they were able to really take advantage of that energy we were coming in with. Um like a lot of acquisitions I think you know they have plans they have thoughts but you know if they're of certain size they're not able to really capitalize on it but uh sure I think they're doing good now. I was there for about 10 months uh kind of just doing transitional stuff because I was the CEO of Jobsology. So once everything got transitioned, um they went in, let me go and um I think they're still doing pretty good and they still use our technology. So
Mike Seidl (8:56)
Well, let let me commend you. I lasted uh I think it was 60 days. Wow. And I said, "Nope, I'm out of here. I'm out." No, they offered me a permanent long-term position. And what threw me off was I was I needed to buy a fax machine. This was the olden days when people used fax machines. Yeah. And uh I wanted to buy a fax machine. So I just went and bought it. And then I got called by the VP of the company that you can't do that. You have to get authorization. I said, "Yeah, that's not going to work for me. It's been fun. I'll give you two weeks notice. I'm out of here. That's it.
Travis Hevelone (9:29)
There's that big corporate thing. We have to have eight people sign off on your fax machine."
Zach Richards (9:33)
Yeah. Exactly.
Mike Seidl (9:33)
That's not going to happen. So let me ask, how long did the sale process take for you and what was that like?
Travis Hevelone (9:33)
I think the entire process was probably like six to seven months. Um we probably the year and a year year and a half before that we were trying to get acquired. So you know we were entering that 10th year of our business and we felt like we had done what we could. We were we had great clients but the goal of Jobsology was an exit in mind when we started um because we did raise money so we did had investors. We did have a board. So, we knew we needed to return their money um and plus some hopefully if we get a good deal. And so, we always knew we wanted to exit. So, kind of at that 10-year mark, we were talking to anybody and everybody. We were talking to VCs, we were talking to uh other companies doing stuff similar where they could use our technology and their plat platforms. And we really weren't getting anywhere. It started to really feel like everybody was basically uh saying they were interested, but they were just mining us for insights, mining us maybe for that youthful startup energy so that they could take it just start using it their stuff and then end up ghosting us. So we had a lot of conversations with a lot of CEOs, a lot of great uh business people, but they just weren't going anywhere. And so the interesting thing is I was just about to give up. I was literally like, "All right, we need to lock back in. We need to reapproach the market when we hit our next uh annual recurring revenue rate. I'm tired of wasting a bunch of time talking to people about possible acquisition when these things aren't going anywhere." So, as soon as I said that, literally the next I think it was like that next week, I got an email from Riverside, who was the private equity company behind People that was powering some of their rollup strategy. So, it's very common for a PE firm to buy a bigger company like People Growth and then they asked them, well, what do you need to, you know, 10x 20x our money and they kind of talked about career guidance platforms? Uh, Riverside did a bunch of research and our name kept coming up. It's one of the things I'm still very proud of. Wherever they went, they kept hearing PathwayU, which was our career guidance platform. U, so I think they were talking to a lot of our schools or people that knew about us. And so I just got an email out of the blue from Riverside and I literally was moments from just deleting it, not even replying because I I was so burned out. Okay, great. This is just going to be another series of conversations where they might way to waste my time and find NBA all this stuff. We have all these conversations that go no goes nowhere. But we had actually talked to Riverside two years prior about some other business that one of our investors got us connected to and nothing happened. But it was just because I recognized the name Riverside that I hit reply and I I wasn't dismissive, but I did kind of go, "Yeah, yeah, we talked to you a couple years ago. It was this deal." I dropped a few names and I just sent it thinking nothing of it. He fired back with, "Hey, we'd like to meet." We probably had a 35minute conversation and they sent us an II, which is an intent to offer. Yep. And so right there I was like, "Oh, this seems completely different than every other conversation we've had because I've got some paperwork here." And uh and then I think we had one more conversation and they had an LOI over to us. So when we did find that right partner that was looking for our size business for the specific need they have they had, it went really fast. Um but then then there was six months of due diligence, right? Yep. So everything went really fast and you know they you know all all the negotiation was pretty typical, right? Back and forth a little bit. Um but yeah, once we got into due diligence, I kind of argued that since we're so small and we're a simple company that, you know, the original spreadsheet they sent us, you know, it has like infinite tabs and so much information that didn't really apply to us. I tried to get them to pair it down and they said they did, but it was still an enormous amount of due diligence that they made us go through and I know some of that's just that's their process. You got to follow their rules. Um, but I pretty much handled all of that myself. Um, as a CEO, I pretty much had access to everything. I knew everything about the business. So, um, I pretty much did that solo. And that was six months of back and forth and talking to lawyers and uh submitting documents to them, having them um we'd get on the phone, we'd talk through some of the stuff they had questions, getting our developers on the phone to ask, you know, to answer questions about the technology. Um so yeah, it was six months of documentation, meetings, um board meetings. So I had to level a lot of board meetings on my side to get things approved and uh yeah so it it was six month six months of uh a lot of detailed work while still running the company right still doing my day job. Um so yeah it was it was a pretty stressful time for sure.
Mike Seidl (14:44)
Now Riverside reached out to you the other people that you were engaging with uh when you wanted to sell before Riverside. How did you go about connecting with them? Did they reach out or were you doing the uh the feelers?
Travis Hevelone (14:58)
Um, a lot of that was probably us doing the feelers. So, um, you know, we were just talking to people in normal business, right? We'd hear about new different technologies. Maybe one of our other partners would say, "Hey, you should talk to these guys." Um, so a lot of it was us sending out requests. Hey, we'd like to talk. We'd like to discuss. And so I I think that was a clear differentiator, right? when we were going chasing, we weren't getting a lot of traction. Uh we would get meetings and again we would have conversations with the executive team and they'd always walk away impressed. They'd always be like, "Wow, this is great. This is wonderful. Let's continue the discussions." And then they would just kind of drift away, right? Where you're just kind like, "Okay, well, after three emails, we're not getting anything back." Or they would do the, "Well, now's not the best time." And it's kind of just a way to say go away kind of a thing.
Zach Richards (15:51)
Yeah. nice way to say go away.
Travis Hevelone (15:53)
But yeah, most most the other ones were probably ones that we were trying to we were probably trying to force our way in and it probably wasn't the best strategic fit. Whereas when somebody went looking for something specifically that we did and they found us. Yeah. That that's where I think that's where it really really happened for us.
Mike Seidl (16:12)
So when it I understand that you were the front person for the company. Tell me what your team looked like. Did you have an accountant that understood PE uh for working for you, helping you set up the documentation and giving them what they need and put it in a language that they understand? And what did your legal team look like? Again, was it someone that focused on this or was it just your attorney that you used all the time?
Zach Richards (16:37)
He's laughing. Let's see.
Mike Seidl (16:39)
Yeah. No, I asked a question because what we did was when I sold, we went and found an attorney who worked with sales to public companies. We found an accountant who actually the attorney referred us to who sells company companies to public companies cuz we had no freaking idea what we were doing. I was 33 years old. We didn't know what we were doing.
Travis Hevelone (17:01)
Yeah. I didn't have any idea what I was doing either. Uh we did have good legal representation. So, this was a a law firm we had used pretty much throughout um our tenure. Um and so he was really good. Um and then um I just used our current bookkeepers uh CPA. They're kind of our bookkeepers and CPA and so they kind of helped me with some of that stuff. And then I had good lawyer uh representation. But I was I was definitely the front man interfacing between the two, asking the questions, hoping that they would have good answers on those calls. You know, we would have prep prep discussions beforehand, like how are we going to handle this? They're going to want more details on this. Are you comfortable talking about that? If not, we would figure out how to how to supplement that, etc. Uh, but I was pretty much the only one from my side with Yeah. a little bit of legal support. Uh, and then the bookkeeping for CPA. And then we did have one investor. He was with a large family fund. Um, and they they they kind of functioned like a micro VC. So, that gentleman was involved in a lot of different business deals, buying and selling. And so, I tapped him quite a bit too, just the, hey, you know, can you look at this LOI? What's good, what's bad, what should we ask? And so he was a very valuable resource because he had kind of been through the drill many times on both sides.
Mike Seidl (18:28)
Sure. Yeah. That's fantastic. Now, let me ask, were you ever surprised with the with the uh with the VC with the with the PE firm that was buying you that their staff wasn't some of their staff may not have been as qualified as your staff. And the reason I say that was because with my my attorney was negotiating with their attorney, we had to fly to New Jersey and he finally stepped out and said, "Listen guys, this is going to take me a couple days. This guy is just not very bright. I don't know how he got to be their in-house counsel and I've got to educate him on this stuff and I'm having to pull out statutes to explain it."
Travis Hevelone (19:03)
No, we were we were kind of the opposite. We we definitely felt like we were more the underpowered ones. Um Okay. I think they use like an outsource firm as well, you know, probably really big ones, right? So, I think Riverside's pretty big. So, uh they're dealing with pretty big funds and so I think they probably have 50 lawyers on the bench just ready to go. And um so more of it was me and my team saying, "Hey, like at that time we were literally like a fourperson company. uh co kind of made us, you know, shrink down to like the original four co-founders. And so we were like four people, right? Uh I had a chief revenue officer, myself as CEO, and we had two of the CSU professors that were co-founders, but they weren't working full-time in our business. They were still professors, but they were our chief science officer and chief, I think it was like chief principal officer, but they were basically the science of what we did. And so I said, we're basically two employees that are going to come into the new company. There's two people here, right? So more of it was us arguing that you don't need to apply the, you know, you know, this isn't a $20 billion acquisition, right? Cuz a lot of times we'd get on the phone with them and I think, you know, if it's an outsourced legal team, they're trying to bill as many hours to Riverside as possible, right?
Zach Richards (20:28)
Yes.
Travis Hevelone (20:29)
And so sometimes it felt like that, right? It's like, "Oh, we need to go through spin the meter. Just spin the meter through this huge process because they're probably billing them $500 a month." And I'm like, "Hey, let's conserve that money and put it back into the deal, right?" Um, so I think it was more the opposite. We were like, "Hey, this is simple. This is easy. Let's just get on the phone. Let's talk through this." Um, you know, instead of me filling out, you know, a spreadsheet with a thousand tabs, right? So, it was more the opposite way, but very, very professional. I don't think we ever had any issues like that with competence. They were all top-notch guys. Uh very thoughtful. Uh good follow through. We didn't have problems with that. Like what are these guys doing? You know, we haven't heard from them in a month. Like, you know, cuz every deal has a momentum to it, right? And if things start to slow down, that's when things fall apart. U we didn't have any of that stuff. But we did have to work through a lot of details, which just that did take time.
Mike Seidl (21:18)
Gotcha. So, switch gears a little bit. Tell us how you manage growth to over a million users.
Travis Hevelone (21:37)
Well, you know, a lot of the benefit of having a SAS platform is the software does the work. So, we were not supporting a million users, right? We were just supporting the software and it was housed at Amazon Web Services. We built it with um, you know, a backend, a front end that could support that many users. And so a lot of it for us was just making sure we had really good developers, uh, have good monitoring place and appropriately size our production environment to to to do the work. So um, you know, we didn't have day-to-day stress with load. And you got to think about it, it's cur counseling application. So this wasn't like mission critical. It wasn't like we were helping universities get paid, you know, getting tuition or something. This was, you know, students would come by the career center, they'd say, "Hey, go take this pathway assessments. They'd go through it, right, whenever they could, create an account, click through, take our assessments, get their results." So, you know, even if we did have some downtime, it it wasn't a big deal. Usually, our clients were so nice. Um, it was one of those things. We worked with career center directors all across the country. Um, they were predominantly female and they were just the nicest people. Like our clients were just if we had a problem they would call us and apologize like oh I'm sorry to call you but we notice there's a problem right
Mike Seidl (23:02)
now that's not that common.
Travis Hevelone (23:03)
Yeah. No mess came from IT where it's was generally guys running data centers and they just call and rip your head off. So yeah right you know I think we we organized ourselves and supported everything like we were running an IT company and we had to be uh you know consultants right like very very uh fast response very professional response so I think that showed in our software and so we eliminated a lot of the problems up front you know we had a development staging testing environment we didn't just release code willy-nilly we did it with a lot of intention uh we built in, you know, knowledgebased support. Uh we had really good onboarding so that really the platform itself wasn't so overly complex and you're giving it to someone with a license, right? You know, career counselors typically have a master's degree. They know what this software is. They know what values, interests, they know what the assessments are, they know how to use it. And so once we gave them the keys to the kingdom, some of our clients would sign three, fiveyear deals, and we may not talk to them in that three years. Uh, wow. You know, we would reach out with the, "Hey, just wanted to check in and they were usually just like,"Yeah, it's great. We love you guys." And we're like, "Okay, you know, definitely let us know if you if you have any questions or feedback." Um, so I love that SAS model for that reason. Uh, because the software doesn't work. So, yeah, we didn't we didn't stress too much about um doing that support. We kind of automated everything we could into the platform itself.
Mike Seidl (24:39)
Awesome. Certainly ask your developers, were they onshore or offshore? Predominantly
Travis Hevelone (24:45)
we started onshore. So we had local people here in Fort Collins. So we met a gentleman uh he was kind of a front-end backend like full stack architect type. Um and then we later added a database architect because we started getting into um well when we started we our original concept was e-harmony for jobs. That was the plan. That was the plan. Germany for jobs. We were gonna connect people. We were going to connect people on mass through this algorithm, right? So there's all these jobs. There's all these people looking for jobs. We were going to connect people not on whether you could do the job, but whether you would enjoy the job and find meaning in it. I.e. if you love your job, you find a lot of meaning in it, you'll probably stick with it. You'll learn it. You'll probably be very good at it because you you like what you do and you find more meaning. So, we're going to try to take that, you know, e-harmony approach to like relationships with jobs, like find a job you love. So, that was our plan. And like Mike Tyson always says, right, it's great to have a plan till you get hit in the face. We started we're going to be Jobsology, e-harmony for jobs. And then as first- time entrepreneurs, we quickly realized we're trying to boil two oceans, right? like we need all these employers to post their jobs and we need all these people seeking to create accounts to like look for jobs. Well, if you don't have any jobs, who's going to sign up as a job seeker? And if you don't have any job seekers in your database, why are you going to post a job as an employer?
Zach Richards (26:18)
Yeah. Right.
Travis Hevelone (26:19)
So immediately we're like, oh, we're screwed, right? Uh but let's just focus on one side. And so we started working with employers to start with. they already have applicants applying to their jobs, so let's just put their jobs in and they just direct their applicants to go through our process and we'll do it that way. And so that's really where we started was with employers, helping them hire better, hire for people that actually fit your culture, fit your job, that kind of a thing. But we kind of had a 50-50 track record with employers, meaning half of them after a year were like, I don't know if it's working. like there was false positives, false negatives, right? They were hiring people that we said were really good fits to the culture of the job and then they didn't work out and there were people that we said were red to the culture and not a good fit to the job and they were great employees. So sometimes they scratched their head and couldn't figure it out and so that's where we kind of went back to our roots and we had one of those big pivots, right? ever been a and uh startups has to pivot at some point in their in their uh life cycle. So we pivoted back to education. It was really only one way. You're just helping a individual understand themselves better to make better decisions about education and career. And then that really stuck. Um um all of our schools just loved it. Great feedback from students. And so then we just doubled down on that. Stopped doing all the employer stuff.
Mike Seidl (27:47)
Gotcha. So, what was it like once you sold the company? You were there for x number of years and now you've sold it. You've given him the keys cuz you're done with the transition period. You wake up on Monday morning. What'd you do?
Travis Hevelone (28:03)
Um, I got to work. So, I I've got one of those like high work ethics, very loyal, honest. I'm a Taurus and um I was loyal to a fault. Um, they just bought my company. I want it to be very successful. I'm here. They're paying me good money. Let's go. Right. Um, and so
Mike Seidl (28:25)
what I'm focusing more on is once you were done as the CEO, so once you were done working with them during the transition period, what happened? I mean, you woke up on a Monday morning once you were done with them. What was that like?
Travis Hevelone (28:39)
Um, it was a little surreal. Um, I didn't think because I was so loyal and because I I thought I was going to be there for years. I was there for 10 months and then they laid me off and it was a bit of a surprise because we were talking about another job, another possible position I could do with inside People. And so we had a draft of a job description. I was working on that with my boss. So, I figured, oh yeah, we're wrapping up the transition transitional stuff, but I'm looking at a document that has this new role in it, and the person I was working with is like, yeah, I need some help. This was kind of a role that would help him. So, I I gave zero thought zero thought to what was I going to do after I left. Um, so yeah, the day after I got laid off, it was I probably just stared at the wall, right? Took a lot of walk. um little bit of soularching. I probably played some video games. I went on a mountain bike ride and I was like, well, now what? I didn't I I was starting that process of now what? Uh because I had not given that much thought. And I probably should have, right? But I don't know, sometimes, you know, you're loyal to a fault. And I I definitely think I fell into that. I was very loyal. I just figured it would all work out at that company. I wasn't I didn't create, you know, B and C plans and I wasn't starting a company in secret while they were paying me. Um some of that, you know, just part of my moral code and ethics. So, um yeah, I was really caught off guard and um you know, I think that first Monday afterwards was just like, all right, what the hell am I going to do now? Um I didn't know. I I had to do some soularching there for sure.
Zach Richards (29:54)
And how long did you did it take before you decided to start another business? Like how long did you stare at the wall?
Travis Hevelone (30:33)
It was probably I don't know. It was probably like couple months.
Zach Richards (30:38)
Okay.
Travis Hevelone (30:39)
Um I definitely think I'd earned the right to decompress a little bit.
Zach Richards (30:42)
Oh, for sure. Yeah.
Travis Hevelone (30:43)
Because you know we sold it and then like we sold on a Friday and the next Monday we were we were employees of the new company and it was you know meetings about this and that. So, we didn't really get a lot of, you know, I wish they would have said, you know what, take two weeks or 3 weeks. We don't want to see you, you know, cuz they weren't really ready to start doing a bunch of integration. They weren't really really ready for us to do a lot of stuff. I wish they would have said, "Hey, take two weeks, decompress, come back in fresh, but they didn't. We just started right in." Um, and so, yeah, we we didn't get that. So, I probably spent a couple months I love video games. I love to mountain bike. So, I was probably getting up, going on a long mountain bike ride, coming back, playing video games, um, repeat for, you know, weeks on end. Then I was like, all right. And then something happens. My my engineering brain, I have an engineering background and I need to solve problems and, you know, I'll play is not good for me. Like, it sounds wonderful, but it's really not. My brain, it just it's not good. So, then I started thinking about, well, what kind of problems could I solve? And you know, you're watching YouTube videos about different business models. So, it's probably two, three months later, I found print ondemand t-shirts as a business model. And I thought, oh, cool. I could do that from my house. You're using AI to create all the designs. I could never create a t-shirt design myself. Like, if I drew a penguin and showed you guys, you guys would both fall on the floor. I mean like picture in my house is my whole family's terrible picture in my house is just we're just laughing at each other's what we what we draw. So we do not have the drawing skill. We're not artist but enter AI. This was probably let's see 2023 uh kind of middle of 2023 and that's when a lot of the new like midjourney and idiogram or ideoggram however you say it these AI art engines started to be produced and so I found a YouTube video was the guy that built like five or six stores exit for six seven figures right and I thought I could do that I could generate AI images and put them on t-shirts. That would be that'd be so easy. That would be great. So, I gave it a real try. I created single track tees. So, being a mountain biker, I picked mountain biking as my niche.
Mike Seidl (33:13)
Sure.
Travis Hevelone (33:13)
So, you know, I was in an accelerator. Um, and there was probably 300 other people in there. So, like Zach might have like a a a plant store. Mike, you have the bald guy store or something, right? like everybody had their niche or skiing or whatever, right?
Mike Seidl (33:31)
I'm just kidding.
Travis Hevelone (33:32)
Biking because I was passionate about it. What ended up happening is I thought I I thought I was making shirts for people like me, guys that mountain bike. So, I came out with my first 200 designs because that's what they tell us in the accelerator. Don't launch without 200 designs. You got to have enough volume there. Everything is going through Facebook, well Meta, so Facebook and Instagram ad platforms. You got to give the algorithm enough products to sift through. And so I launched out of the gate and of course, you know, no one is buying any shirts because no one knows who my company is. I don't have any reviews, right? So, you know, there's probably like a two, three months slog to just get some reviews to let the algorithm find the people that will buy your shirts. Then you start getting some reviews and then off you go. So u that was the business I started right after was single track te's.
Mike Seidl (34:25)
How did that go for you? How did that uh progress? Where are you now with that?
Travis Hevelone (34:30)
I think in the end I I think I did close to $50,000 in total sales. Um but I I couldn't make it profitable. I was just I was putting all this money into Facebook, you know, cranking the cranking the casino lever and just hoping Facebook would do the sales. And some weeks it would, some weeks it wouldn't. Same product, same ad. And so what I really what I really started to hate about that is it doesn't feel like I have much control. It seems like the Facebook algorithm, which changes almost hourly.
Zach Richards (35:04)
Yeah, Mark Zuckerberg has the control over a lot of money, right?
Mike Seidl (35:14)
He's sitting there and he's like, "How can I mess with Travis today?" He thinks he's an IT guy.
Zach Richards (35:19)
I swear they do that cuz sometimes No, they like once they see that you're willing to spend some money on ads, they make them perform worse so that then, oh, maybe he'll spend some more money. And
Travis Hevelone (35:29)
we had we had a whole accelerator community of people, right? Hundreds of people doing this. And some people were doing like two months in like 100,000 a month. And that was my dream. If I could do 100,000 a month, take like 15% 15K as like owner draw, I could like live the rest of my life, travel the world. I just have this job. And so some people were doing it like three months in. And so we had real successes. But I think it's like one of those things, right? Out of 300 people, there's going to be two people that do that. Everybody else going to be in the middle, you know?
Zach Richards (36:03)
And those are the people you hear the most about, those couple people that are doing well.
Travis Hevelone (36:03)
There was a lot of people that, you know, like from week to week, they were doing like 20K a month and then it went to zero. Oh, and then they'd find out Facebook made some update, right? So, I didn't like that. I didn't like the BTOC aspect. I mean, you're dealing with the general public. Up to that point, I'd always been B2B. You're dealing with professional business people. Oh, it's brutal. Now, you're dealing with everybody. You know, it's it tight on my armpits. It's too big. It's just
Zach Richards (36:33)
Oh my god. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Travis Hevelone (36:33)
Yeah, they'd buy like 10 shirts and then say, "Oh, they're too small." It's like, "Well, why don't you buy one shirt, not 10, but the way that the internet works, you have to be 30-day money back guarantee. We want you have to offer that." So, you're just sending out free shirts and just eating it. And so, yeah, hard to make a profitable. Towards the end, I had like 700 individual products.
Mike Seidl (36:58)
Wow.
Travis Hevelone (36:58)
And my real problem was I wasn't finding like I had two or three good bestsellers. I had one called the biker chick and it was a little chickity on a bike and it said biker chick above it and I started to catch on with women in their 4050 60s7s. So I sold more shirts to that demographic women than anybody. And what the accelerator teaches you to do is do more of what's working. So once I had the biker chick that gave the daisy pedler. So now the bike wheels are daisy pedals and it's a chicken on, you know, I kept start doing all these like, you know, biker chicks and chickens and daisy riders and all these different designs and then those started to do good, but I never I never could get like a true like standout bestseller like
Zach Richards (37:48)
a home run.
Travis Hevelone (37:49)
This shirt is going off and then I never could replace it with another one and another one. And the people's stores that took off, they were able to do that. It could have been total luck. Could have been the algorithm just shined on them. I have no idea. But I just I would get something that's kind of doing good and then it would just fall off. The ads would just fall off slowly.
Mike Seidl (38:11)
Well, I think what happened was people were researching you and they're saying, "Who's this guy selling biker chick shirts?" I think what you need to do is hire an awful redener because a red barker doesn't exist. He's just a spokesperson, his face. So, I think you needed to hire some granny somewhere who was a biker or something, a dirt biker.
Travis Hevelone (38:32)
But back but back to the Facebook thing, I I swear to God, like there's something in that algorithm that is gifying it to some doubt.
Zach Richards (38:43)
For sure.
Travis Hevelone (38:44)
Like it started to learn like every Tuesday is when I do my adjustments. And so I started using AI for that. I would upload all my ad data, images of my shirts and just tell I think at that point I was using chat GPT analyze my ad data tell me what to do with my budgets right and I'm also giving it all the curriculum from my accelerator and you know we would up my budgets on Tuesday I get a few more sales and then always like Monday I would sell a bunch of shirts and so I'd up my ads again and then the rest of the week I'd get nothing and then all of a sudden Monday or Sunday, it would give me just enough to make me go, "Well, maybe it is working." And I' I'd increase my right and then every time I decrease my budget, it seems like I'd have a little flurry of sales. And so I I just started to like I don't know. I just, you know, I just started to disbelieve that I I really had a say in this. It seemed like it was more luck. It seemed like it was more, you know, algorithm manipulation, but no one knows the algorithm. It's like this black box, right? So, that that turned me off. But I did it for probably 10 10 months to a year. Did about 60k. Uh, but yeah, not profitable. So, now I'm I'm burning I'm burning down the savings, right? So yeah, I did get a little bit of a windfall with the sell jobs, but sure, I was the, you know, I was the one that made money in the house. Um, and we're just burning right right off the top. If you had my savings and checkings together, they're just, it's just slowly going down. So that gave the next idea. Okay, I'm using AI for everything and anything, and I'm amazed by what it can do. January of this year, I got into Claude Code and I just started talking to it and it just built applications for me in like 10 minutes and I almost fell out of my chair. And it's a moment that I think a lot of people have had since where you start to realize, oh my god, like you can actually build real software that solves real problems just by talking and having a, you know, a methodical uh prompt sequence to these AI engines and they'll build software for you. And so at that point, I was like, okay, I think that's what I want to do. I want to use my 25 years of operations, AI experience, and my engineering background to go into small businesses and help them automate. It's it's usually just the manual repetitive grunt work that they hate um and give them more time in the field. So, that's what I'm doing now. And that company's name is Single Track Ops. So, I kept the single track from my mountain bike uh days. Um, and then I just switch it to ops because it's more operational AI consulting is what I'm doing. So, it usually just starts with a business conversation, right? What are the problems? What are the manual repetitive tasks that are driving you nuts? You talk to a business owner. What are your goals? What are objective this year? And I don't think a lot of people ask these business owners some of these questions and actually care and listen and ask probing questions. So when I started doing that, these owners just started opening up and they've got all these crazy apps that don't talk to each other. They're touching work five times. Uh they're using paper forms or PDFs that they overwrite. It causes all kinds of chaos. They know there's probably a better way, but I've been working with a lot of roofers and they're not on cloud code. They're not, you know, writing Python apps on the weekend. They hate they hate computers. So, but all of the benefits that they can get in applying AI to their business is probably learning those sorts of things. So, um that's what I've been doing. I've been going in there talking to these amazing business owners and having them just dump all that grunt work that they hate and then I automate it, build little lightweight apps for them and um give them back hours in their week and now they're using that to do more sales, do more things that they that they enjoy. So
Mike Seidl (42:55)
now, are you doing it just locally in Fort Collins or have you moved or will you go anywhere in the country? Have you got anything out of Fort Collins or Colorado?
Travis Hevelone (43:03)
Um, everything's been um kind of in our uh we kind of call it the Fort Collins, Loveland, um Windsor Triangle up here. So there's three pretty goodiz uh cities. So everything's been there. Um I did do some stuff down in Denver, but at the end of the day, I don't want to drive to Denver. Mike, you probably remember uh it's like it's like probably 90 minutes to get anywhere down in Denver and I25, our major north south highway is just a mess right now. So I said, you know what? I'd rather impact my local community. There's plenty of businesses up here. So why are you going to try to drive down to Denver all the time and meet with these guys? You got plenty of businesses up here. So I am focusing um kind of in my local area for now. But it is something I could do. I could help someone in Florida just as easy. Uh because you could do everything over Zoom. And uh it makes it a little bit easier for some of the relationship, you know, creating the relationship, maybe going to their office, seeing how things actually flow and function. Sometimes it does help to be in person, but it's not required.
Mike Seidl (44:09)
Gotcha. Okay. So, the last thing I want to ask because these thing these episodes are anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes, and we want to be respectful of your time. We're pulling up on 45 minutes. tell us about this invite that you had to the White House and did you go and what was it like?
Travis Hevelone (44:25)
Yeah, so that was during Jobsology. So we had uh created our Pathway U product and so we had um an employee, her name was Amy. Uh her nickname was Miss Fantastic for a reason. She was an IO psychology major. She came into our company. She was in charge of all of our operations um which was basically doing a lot of the delivery with our clients. And so she found a it was like a National Science Foundation contest for the career compass. And so she thought, well, we're we're kind of like a GPS for your career. So she actually applied to it. She uh shot a video. Uh she worked through different scenarios on how they could use it for this career compass challenge. And so, yeah, it was a National Science Foundation uh comp competition and one of our employees, Amy, submitted to that and she won. And so, we got like $75,000 cash award.
Zach Richards (45:27)
Wow.
Travis Hevelone (45:27)
Got recognized. And then it was probably like a week later. I remember like yesterday, we used to we always had our standup meetings, our weekly meeting on Friday. And so, the whole staff was there. We were probably I don't know 12 people at that time. And Eric, our chief revenue officer, got a call during the meeting and he just put it the voicemail, but then he was listening to it like a good sales guy should, right? That could be that could be money. So he was listening to the voicemail. We were finishing our meeting and he's like, "Hold on everybody." And he put it on speaker and it was this guy Kel Kelvin Drogan Meyer from the White House. And so he's like, "Yeah, this is Kelvin Drogenmire from White House and blah blah blah. and we'd like to have you come out here and brief our officials on what you're doing with your career compass winner. We were like, "Wait, did he did he say White House?" And so we listened to the voicemail like 20 times. We thought it was a good joke. We're like, "Ah, who do we know would do this?"
Zach Richards (46:27)
Of course. Yeah.
Travis Hevelone (46:28)
And so Eric called him back. He said, "Yeah, we'd love to have you come out." We were like, "Oh my god, like what what what did what what is this?" Right? So yeah, they just basically wanted us to come out there, you know, because we won this National Science Foundation award and briefed some White House officials. So I took the four founders, we took Amy and we went out there and we met. It was just a 30-minute meeting, but you know, we had our I had to buy a suit because I didn't have any I didn't have anything. I'm a startup. I'm not wearing a suit. It's the first rule about a startup is we can wear shorts. So um yeah, I had to buy a suit. We went out there. We get into the meeting. Uh we just kind of told them who we were, what we were doing, you know, the kind of what led to building this platform and they all shook our hand, had a few questions and we kind of got to tour a little bit of the White House and then we were back on the street and we were like, "Oh my god, that just happened." We were just in the White House and so that was that was that story. A great great great experience for sure.
Mike Seidl (47:33)
Fantastic. Yeah. I've always thought it would be fun to go to the White House. Um, yeah. You know, I want to sit I want to stand in the Oval Office. I don't care if who the president is. I just want to stay in the Oval Office just for all the history.
Travis Hevelone (47:44)
Yeah, we saw it. It was like literally like I could have took like 20 paces. I could have been in the Oval Office, but the president wasn't there. I think it was Trump's first term, but he wasn't there. So, it was really quiet. And we were kind of like, can we just walk in there? But they guided us to this different room. But, you know, it's funny because they give you like a cup of like, "Do you want some water?" But you get it in a cup that's like they got the official seal of the president and you're literally thinking, "Do I need to save this styrofoam cup for the rest of my life?" In the end, we did. We threw them away. But yeah, really cool. Really cool experience.
Mike Seidl (48:21)
That's funny. Well, good for you, man. Um, well, go ahead, Zach.
Zach Richards (48:26)
Yep. Going to say, Travis, thank you for coming on. This is awesome. this great great conversation going through your your background and getting acquired and really really really interesting. So thanks for uh coming on and if people want to get a hold of you find out more about uh Singler Ops, how can they do that?
Travis Hevelone (48:43)
Yeah, you can uh hit my website. It's just singletrack ops.com. Uh you can also send me an email that's just travis t r a v i s single ops.com.
Zach Richards (48:54)
Awesome. We'll put those in the show notes.
Travis Hevelone (48:56)
All right.
Mike Seidl (48:58)
Awesome. Thanks, Travis. Appreciate you having me on.
Travis Hevelone (49:00)
Yep. Thank you, guys. Good talking to you.