Island 06 of 07 · Santa Barbara, California · 2024–2026
La Cumbre
I took a job at a country club to meet people. It turned into mentors, golf, a consulting contract, and the path to Avoca.
At the start of 2024, my sophomore year, I took a job at La Cumbre Country Club in Santa Barbara as an outside service worker. Two reasons: to meet the members, and to play free golf.
The members were successful business owners, and over time a lot of them became mentors. We’d golf together. They’d talk to me about my career and my life. More than anything else, that’s how I got to where I am. It was through members at La Cumbre that I found out about Avoca.
In my last year the relationship changed. On November 20, 2025, I presented to the whole La Cumbre team on bringing AI into the club. Afterwards I signed a contract to do the work, and completed it.
Around the same time I worked with other small businesses: invoicing automations, knowledge-search agents, automated reporting, and much more. The most useful thing I did was sit down with owners one-on-one and teach them.