Meet Cody Sudmeier of VEBO in RiNo

Today we’d like to introduce you to Cody Sudmeier.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Cody. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I first became an entrepreneur when I was 26 and I co-founded a Denver-based consulting firm called Agility Solutions. Agility specialized in helping large companies (mostly Fortune 500 clients) find lost revenue and cost savings opportunities. Agility’s revenue model was that we would take a percentage of the profit improvement that we generated.

Agility Solutions was twice recognized as Denver’s fastest growing private company. I was personally recognized as one of Denver Business Journal’s “40 Under 40”, which celebrates 40 outstanding professionals under the age of 40. We grew Agility to nearly 50 professionals before I sold my ownership to my co-founder in 2014.

I’ve also launched a clothing line and a real estate investment portfolio. My main focus today is on VEBO, a company I co-founded in 2014 with Jamie Regehr.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The growth of VEBO has been incredibly challenging. We have obstacles on both the supply side (identifying and recruiting experience partners) as well as the demand side (building a recognizable brand and acquiring customers cost-effectively). We are self-funded so we have had to make the dollars stretch.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the VEBO story. Tell us more about it.
One of our team members attended a wedding where the couple had chosen a traditional household goods registry. Because of her procrastination in buying a gift, the last item on the registry was a $110 set of salt and pepper shakers. After reluctantly buying a gift that wasn’t very heartfelt, she commented, “There has to be a better registry.”

A few months later, another team member gave his friends money toward “swimming with the dolphins” on their honeymoon registry.

When the couple returned, he was excited to see pictures of their aquatic adventure, only to find out that they had decided to save the cash to help pay off the wedding. He summed it up by saying “this left me feeling cheated… like I was just paying a fee to attend their wedding.”

Based on these cases, the idea was born to create a wedding registry for experiences. VEBO partners with thousands of real experience providers including activities such as couples massages, skydiving, wine tasting, even goat yoga!

VEBO’s slogan is “collect moments, not things.”

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Some people call it luck or blessings or karma, but I can assure you that a lot of my success has happened completely outside of my control. One of my favorite quotes is “jump and grow wings on the way down.”

We work our hardest and take calculated risks, but sometimes success versus failure comes down to a single event. This happened a few times in building my previous firm (Agility Solutions). I remember describing to a friend that we repeatedly survived when faced with events that had a 50% chance of failure. I told him, “imagine flipping a quarter and ten times in a row it landed on heads… that is the best way to describe how we arrived here.”

With VEBO, we are closing in on the biggest partnership opportunity of my life. This partnership only came about because of a fortuitous introduction. We recognize the importance of that chance of opportunity. However, we also take ownership of the fact that when the opportunity came up, we were ready to seize it.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.vebolife.com
• Email: info@vebolife.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vebolife/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vebolife/
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/vebolife/

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