(Photo by Joseph Haeberle Photography– http://www.josephhaeberle.com/)
Name: Tabitha Briscoe
Age: 21
Major: Accounting with a Ceramics Minor
Year: Junior
Hometown: Casper, WY
I met Tabitha freshman year when we lived on the same floor in White Hall. Now that we’re juniors, one of us has opened her own small business while going to school full time, and one of us watches stupid cat videos in her free time. You can probably figure out who’s who.
This last spring, Tabitha competed in and won the University of Wyoming John P. Ellbogen $30K Entrepreneur Competition. She received $10,000 to help get her business, Cruxx Climbing, off the ground. Her inspiration for her company actually came from a very millennial source, an Instagram photo from one of her friends in Texas. “She had posted a picture of her out on a climbing trip with a crash pad, a piece of climbing equipment which is basically a giant foam rectangle you carry on your back, and she had gotten completely turtled. She was completely on her back and couldn’t get up because the crash pad was too big and I was like, ‘Hey, I think I see a niche market that could be approved upon’ and it just spiraled out from there.” After months of vigorous organizing to get her business up and ready for the final presentation, she finally got the reward she was hoping for. “It was a mixture of panic and joy…I was just completely overwhelmed. It was one of those things where you’re just running around in a circle freaking and calling your mom just bawling because you’re so happy.”
But as we all know, being a full-time student is hard enough without having a new small business to run. Tabitha is basically super-girl by being an entrepreneur and full-time Accounting student. “It’s definitely the biggest challenge, trying to make time for both. There’s plenty of caffeine involved.” That’s not her only challenge, though. Being a young, woman entrepreneur can be hard, especially when she’s not taken seriously as a business owner.
“I find it the hardest when trying to get information. When I need specs and prices of materials. I’ve actually had more success saying I’m working for someone else, it’s pretty sad. It makes me kind of bitter. People, especially as a small business, they don’t take you seriously, and they especially don’t take you seriously when you’re just a little girl on the other end of the phone.” Especially when the manufacturing industry is so male-dominated, she finds it hard when she is taken as just a high-pitched voice on the other end of the phone.
The last thing Tabitha said to me was some advice she has for budding entrepreneurs in college. “The advice I would give, hands down, is to start now while you’re here. As a student, male or female, there are so many opportunities available to you. There are so many people that have the knowledge, tools and experience to take you where you want to be. The only thing you have to do is ask and work for it. All of these people are there for you and want to see you succeed, so start now. Do not wait, because you will never be this young, this free, and we will never have this kind of energy, passion, and lack of responsibility again in our lives to able to make this happen.”
Tabitha is making some big waves in not only the climbing community and the UW community, but the small business community as well. You can check out her website at (www.cruxxclimbing.com) and can catch her longboarding around campus with bright blonde hair and some killer boho fashion vibes.
Does the Ellbogen Competition sound like something you’d be interested in? Well, the deadline for applications is today, Monday October 5th. All that is needed is for you to submit an application at o www.uwyo.edu/business/ellbogen‐30k and have a short pitch video saying what your big idea is. Rules and guidelines are all on that same web page.