Diane Bloodworth shares how her innate entrepreneurship, knack for data and passion for sports led her on a small business journey that was worth every twist and turn.
By FINSYNC
For Diane Bloodworth, entrepreneurship runs in the family. Even as a ten-year-old, this little girl from Flintstone, Georgia stepped up to the plate to help run her family’s grocery store, at one point even taking over for an entire season, but Diane always had her sights set on bigger things.
After working her way up the corporate ladder, Diane decided she wanted to create her own path. It hasn’t always been the easiest road to navigate, but she landed right where she belongs: running her own business.
Diane combined her technology and data expertise with her passion for football to found Competitive Sports Analysis, a platform to help college athletic coaches recruit the best possible talent.
“It’s been a pretty long journey to get to this point, which makes it worthwhile, when things start to move and happen,” she explains. “It’s very rewarding, but it has been quite the journey.”
Diane spoke with us about the challenges and rewards of being a small business owner, and how FINSYNC has made sure she’s always scoring touchdowns.
What are some basic challenges you think emerging entrepreneurs face?
I think anybody that starts a business is going to face challenges. That’s just the nature of entrepreneurship. But you know, when you’re going into a new or evolving market, I think you face challenges with timing. Is your target market ready for the type of capabilities that you can provide? I think a few years ago the answer was no. Now that’s turning to yes. So, I think timing can be challenging.
Do you have any advice for small business owners?
You need to be very passionate about what you do, but you also have to be willing to pivot, because sometimes you start doing something and you’re so determined, you don’t realize that you might need to take a step back and tweak or change. You’ve got to keep a certain openness to improving the way you’re doing things to really be successful. So I’m all about perseverance. I’m all about passion, but don’t forget that you might need to pivot.
What’s your favorite part of your job?
When a coach says, “This is great, this helped me find a recruit that’s really going to work out.” Or when a recruit says, “Thank you, I’m going to have a better chance of playing at the next level.” That just makes my day. It makes it worthwhile.
The whole recruiting system is just so broken and there are a lot of recruits that don’t even get a look because their high school coach may not know the right college coaches or their parents don’t know the recruiting process, which is not that unusual. A lot of these recruits are overlooked and don’t have an opportunity. I grew up in a rural area and I think some of those kids get overlooked.
How has FINSYNC helped you when it’s come to running your business?
My least favorite thing to do is accounting and bookkeeping, to be honest with you. FINSYNC is awesome, and I also love being able to work with another startup company in Atlanta. I think it’s great when startups can support each other.
I’ve used other systems and bookkeepers and all kinds of things, and when I hired a bookkeeper it was kind of costly and then she had to ask me everything anyway because I knew the business. FINSYNC allows the person who knows the business to go in and work through these entries very easily.
How has FINSYNC helped with efficiency?
They’ve made my business more efficient. They’ve made my time more efficient. Accounting and bookkeeping is something that’s very important to the business, but I don’t like spending a lot of time on it. So it’s helped make my time, and therefore the business, more efficient.
They really have just made my accounting and bookkeeping life so much easier, especially with payroll. I have a lot of hourly interns on payroll right now, so it just makes my life so much easier. I’m not an accounting person, and I find the system really easy to use. I’m very grateful for them.