I like doing the hard stuff…
I was recently asked, “What skills do you need to be a great entrepreneur or business person?”
Skills?
Of course, there are “skills” needed as an entrepreneur, but most of what I’ve found makes a great entrepreneur are inherent attributes: insatiable curiosity, unshakeable resilience, relentless passion, unquestionable integrity, steadfast execution, and a quiet confidence in the quality of one’s own thinking—all bounded by extraordinary humility.
Hi, I’m Colton.
I was born in a small Mormon colony in Mexico, descending from fascinating, brilliant, & unimaginably strong people on both sides of my family.
#thisisnewinformationtomesopardonthebragging
Why Mexico? My Mormon ancestors.
Fresh of the boat from Ireland and near penniless, my great grandmother pushed a handcart every step of the 1200 mile trek to Utah, barely surviving—the remarkable story is documented in this movie. Incidentally, she was asked to speak at the dedication of the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City.
#thatskindofabigdeal
My great grandmother, a doctor later revered by locals as “La Doctora”, was sent by the church to minister to the LDS and native communities in Mexico. She met my great grandfather there and stayed. She delivered more than 800 children—without losing the life of a single mother; unheard of in the late 1800s—all while living in a foreign frontier, fending off the little things like rebels, and dealing with Pancho Villa and Mexican Revolution.
Many of the actual accounts are here.
On the other side of my family, my grandfather piloted one of the very few planes to get off the ground at Pearl Harbor earning the Purple Heart and testifying in front of Congress about the incident. He went on to become an insanely successful entrepreneur, as did my uncle.
I was here illegally until I was 10 or so, growing up in monstrous situations alongside my siblings, and was an honest-to-god bull-riding, roping cowboy until I broke my back in a bull-riding accident in Taos, New Mexico.
[Oh yeah, Chuck Norris kicked my ass once. Ok, he let me throw a kick at him, then held me up in the air by my foot when I was 5-6 years old—while filming Lone Wolf McQuade in El Paso (my mom is a prominient extra in the movie)]
#ihavenoideahowitsa6.4onIMDB
After turning down the opportunity to attend the USAF Academy, I married my then girlfriend and left El Paso for Phoenix with a baby on the way, no jobs, support system, and $600 of saved tips hell bent on making it with my band.
Admittedly a questionable decision, but had I not, I wouldn’t be here with my two, fully grown, extraordinary kids who remind me every day how much better I can be.
#wellsee
It only took about a year before the stark realization that a struggling musician can’t support a kid and a wife to slap me upside the head.
So, I began my adult career answering customer service calls for Chase Credit Card Services in Tempe, AZ—a job I took after I was forced to quit my previous Scottsdale bartending job when the FBI tried to force me to wear a wire when interacting with my owner, who’s mafia family—in true OZARK-on-Netflix style—was laundering money through the business.
#truestory
I quickly worked up through Information Technology and the local communications team, where I was recruited for the Corporate Communications team in Wilmington, Delaware working for CEO, Rich Srednicki.
A former boss at Chase lured me away to fill the same role for Washington Mutual, where I was again recruited off the local communcations team to work on the Corporate Communications team under CEO, Kerry Killinger.
During this time, I stumbled up Adam Curry and the genisis of Podcasting. I enlisted a friend in San Diego to start the Tim & Tony Show, a pioneering (1 of the first 10 or so) podcast eventually reaching a listenership of 50K+ listeners weekly and was sought by Adam to be included in a deal with SeriousXM.
#iturneditdownlongstory
A short time later while serving as the lead worship drummer playing for top Chrisitan music artists at Oak Hills Church—home to one of America’s great pastors and my friend, Max Lucado— I was recrutied by 4 local dentists/entrepreneurs to run operations for Voxelogix—a ground-breaking dental startup.
The economic crash of 2008 made short work of the startup, but I quickly found myself in medical device sales for Acelity, where I became an expert in pulmonary care, high-dollar, high-scruitiny sales and quickly became among the top in the nation—frequently tapped by CEO, Steve Seidel for ride-alongs, insight, and sales strategies.
It was incredibly rewarding helping save lives on a sometimes daily basis, but the greatest honor was my time spent working with the world’s most respected burn unit and home of cutting-edge research—the US Government’s Institute of Surgical Research—where I was a trusted member of the team taking care of our troops hit by IEDs in Afghanistan and Iraq—a position unheard of for vendors.
I left Acelity after 8 years, and while on a business exploratory trip to Dubai was asked to serve as CEO of a marketing startup in San Diego employing some of the world’s best internet marketers. I left a year and half later.
#askmeaboutthestoryinperson
The next year or so was spent building a new marketing company with my two business partners in San Antonio. I was eventually introduced to the founder of a struggling, but potentially brilliant environmentally-friendly chemical startup, NewChem whose products were capable of pretty revolutionary things in the oil & fracking fields of South Texas. I negotiated an ownership stake for my partners and myself in exchange for trying to save the company. My partners continued to run the marketing arm and I took over at operations/sales/marketing for NewChem.
This was my second experience learning how damn crazy founders can be.
#illtellyouthatoneoveradrink
I was also giving talks and advising businesses as a founding member of the San Antonio Mastermind group.
A family situation required abruptly leaving San Antonio to move to Vancouver, Washington in the Portland Metro Area, and after a few difficult conversations, my partners and I shut down the last of our ventures.
Prior to moving, I was recruited by my former employer ARJO—who purchased the Critical Care devision from Acelity—to help create and manage a 24/7 Critical Care support support team of nurses for our life-saving device, Rotoprone. (<-me training nurses on it)
It’s a program I still run and is recognized as a model of innovation & efficiency; often cited as a source of pride for the organization, preventing patient injury and mitigating potential financial catastrophe.
Within a few months of moving to Vancouver, I was asked to help run a local startup accelerator—The Bridge—where I helped mentor 5 different startups— including an market-creating mushroom jerky company, Pan’s Mushroom Jerky, who Mark Cuban invested in on SharkTank.
#moreonthatlater
Shortly thereafter, my wife of 25 years and I were divorced.
After the startup accelerator ended I accepted a consultant/COO role for my former employee’s marketing company in New Zealand, later accepting the same role at Pan’s Mushroom Jerky with my former mentee—both while still running my team of nurses.
#imustentrepreneur! #ihadalotoftimeonmyhands
As you can imagine, divorce after 25 years was hard as hell no matter how amicable—something I underestimated when taking on such large roles. So, looking back it’s no surprise why I ultimately failed in both, but as all failures do, they became invaluable learning experiences.
#theybothdeservedbetter
My next entrepreneurial gig was an intentionally short-term role helping innovative education startup, ClassHero, develop their sales pipeline and strategies for the difficult EdTech space.
My current moonshot is Oili which I co-founder in 2021.
I life and business coach several wonderful people and will forever suffer from a horrible affliction—I LIKE PEOPLE.
All this is just the beginning—and barely the the tip of the iceberg.
#bethechangeandofservice
#theobstacleistheway
#thiswasthehighlightreelobviously
You can watch me boulder, play the drums, contact me, and so much more on the IG: @coltontelford