The Backstory

The foundation of any company has a good story to tell. It's what can move us to support or give us hope through their perseverance against challenges and allow us to see into their thought processes. We hope on how Sidelion was created may create some support, inspire others to take on their goals and understand the mission for what we have. My name is Zach, founder and owner of Sidelion and here is our story.

Myself, I am a coach at heart and realized it even more once I left the career. At the time I left, I was coaching as an assistant at Milligan University. I was not ready to leave, but the common thing happened. Man finds girl. Man marries girl. Then husband and wife find out about their first child. I am sure many can relate or have heard it's hard to raise a family on a coaches pay. Well a job offer presented itself to me and I was not willing to find out how true that previous statement was. This new job brought in a lot more pay, brought us back home to our families, but I had to give up coaching. I thought I saw all the positives to agree to give up what I wanted to do.

What do they say? For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Those positive thoughts I had quickly went away. I was good at the new job, but missing the coaching. During work on one cold day, I reached into my coat pocket and I happen to pull out this crumbled piece of paper. It was a practice session I wrote down months ago. I caught myself reminiscing and then had the thought of wishing I kept all the practice sessions I have done in the past. Justifying in my head why I didn't because I did not want to carry a notebook around on the field or how time consuming it was to try and do it on a computer. How cool it would have been to have a library of all those sessions I made. At this point I wanted to solve the problem of carrying nearly nothing to the field and to build a library of practice sessions. This was the start of the "Original".

The Original is the notebook that has the unique ability to allow you to write once and have two copies of the practice plan. One sheet stays preserved in the notebook and the other is ripped out to take to practice. The first design of this was made on that cold day in the office with an 8x11 sheet and torn out carbon paper from a receipt book. Now when this happened, I did not immediately say million dollar winner or anything of the sort, but I was intrigued. I allowed this prototype and the concept to stew in my head for the next couple months. Then Christmas happen. My beautiful wife gifted me a competitors set of notebooks dedicated to creating practice sessions. I admired the company a lot and was really excited to receive them. Though once I opened each one up the criticism came. Either if it was the layout, size and the fact I would still have to carry it around. At that point I knew I could make something better and different.

I went on for the next 5-6 years creating, designing and finding every flaw possible. I reached out 2 years ago with many on Linkedin to throw the concept out there and the response was fantastic and positive. Since then the wife has given the encouragement and support to try this. She has helped in the rebranding to Sidelion, the design, feel and website of this product. All while I have been working on designing new products, marketing, selling and creating a full mission for Sidelion. We will build avenues and products for coaches to help support them in their craft and one day financially because we want coaches to have the ability to have a family and live life without having to give up what they are passionate about.

To keep up with everything we are doing, follow us @sidelion.co on Instagram. Visit our website Sidelion.co (Yes, .co is not a mistake)

We look forward to supporting you.