The Team
The SHIFT team is made up of experts from business and elite sport who have come together through a shared passion to help as many people as possible from elite sports take their business idea from concept to profit making reality.
TIM STOLLER
I've worked in senior marketing, commercial, sales and strategic roles, in every size and shape of company. From brand stalwarts (the BBC and Lindt Chocolate), through young upstarts (Innocent Drinks), to skin-in-the-game start-ups (The Happiness Index), before setting up my own businesses.
I am the co-founder of The Growth Edge, where I focus on helping people build a customer base, and grow revenue and profit. We have spent the last 5 years working with elite athletes starting their businesses, leading us to create SHIFT. I'm still an amateur athlete, representing England Masters at touch rugby.
JAKE HEENAN
My rugby career highlights include NZ U20s captain, Pro12 champion with Connacht, over 100 appearances for Bristol Bears, Challenge Cup winner (2020). My entrepreneurial journey wasn't always smooth having suffered two business failures before creating Burra - now an award-winning café group - which has has now given me financial freedom for my family. When transitioning from sport to business, I lacked guidance and learned expensive lessons the hard way. By applying my sporting mindset and systems to business, Burra thrived. That's exactly why I'm passionate about SHIFT, giving athletes the structure and support I never had.
CHRIS GOMEZ
As Cofounder of The Growth Edge, I specialise in design, branding, positioning and growth marketing for scale ups. I gained my experience with agencies, corporates and scaling new businesses. I have built brand equity for the likes of Publicis Groupe, OMD, JC Decaux, Metro and Eurosport as well as building a chain of franchised kids rugby clubs called Try Time Kids Rugby, and going through a raise to start an urban cycling business. For the last five years I have used my blend of entrepreneurial spirit and marketing experience to help people in elite sports launch and grow their businesses. I get turned on working with people starting something they care about!
STEELE BARKER
I am currently playing at Bristol Bears having made my way up through the RFU league system from playing in the 6th tier 5 years ago. I have always been business minded and have a degree in business, so when the opportunity came up to work with the SHIFT team to deliver programmes created specifically for elite athletes to build, launch and run start ups, it felt like the perfect way to combine my sport career with my interest. Helping athletes transitioning away from sport or, like me, looking to start something else felt like a no brainer. It’s shown me that having something alongside my sport career is extremely beneficial to my on pitch performance as well.
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