Zach Neibert
My Story
I thought I would spend my life as a career athlete. Now I build and optimize systems.
Wrestling taught me consistency
I wrestled for fifteen years. For eight of them I trained under Jeff Jordan, one of the greatest high school wrestling coaches there has ever been. Wrestling looks like a sport of pure improvisation, but Coach Jordan had a system, and his system was the best.
Under him I won two high school state titles, several national titles, and went on to become a Division I All-American at Virginia Tech. Practice, diet, training, competition: all of it came back to consistency.
I found coaching by accident
When college ended, I did not know who I was supposed to be. I had always assumed I would be an athlete. I followed my now-wife to Arizona while she pursued her master's, and there a mentor named Brian Kelly introduced me to coaching.
I did what any analytical person does: I researched it, and I found iPEC, one of the most rigorous and complete ICF-accredited coach training programs in the world. I fell in love with the work, and I decided I wanted to build my future with iPEC.
Curiosity about systems became my career
My path to Director of Business Operations at iPEC came down to consistency, but curiosity was the engine underneath it. From an entry-level seat I never stopped asking: How does this work? Where does it go? What does it do? I have always enjoyed a good puzzle or building Legos, and ultimately I found a way to have fun doing work every day.
Coaching led me to the biggest puzzle of all: the human puzzle. Coaches do powerful work. They should not be stopped by the boring system in their way.
The thing I could never figure out, I finally built
I have seen entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes struggle with the same thing: the business structure. A retired wrestler starting a club wrestling program, a coach fresh out of training. Starting a business and growing a brand is an ever-changing environment, no matter who you are.
Over the last nine months I went from AI skeptic to AI enthusiast. I took the things that stopped me from starting my own business and turned them into a system anyone can follow.
This is where your journey begins.
Follow the blog to see step by step how I did it. Then go and do it for yourself.