GOTURSIX Origin Story

OPPORTUNITYISNOWHERE.

Opportunity is nowhere.

Or…

Opportunity is now here.

Same letters. Different perspective.

In 2014, my friend Mandy taught me a phrase from the military: “I’ve got your six.” It means, “I’ve got your back.”

That idea became the basis of our friendship. Years later, we started talking about how we could take what we had learned through work, service, leadership, Army doctrine, and life and use it to help other people.

On Veterans Day, November 11, 2023, I bought the domain name and started GOTURSIX.org.

At first, we thought we knew what that would look like. We wanted to help veterans impacted by PTSD.

In 2025, we leased 20 acres here in Wright County, Missouri. We imagined a tiny-home community where veterans could receive holistic support and support one another.

We planned. We wrote grants. We fundraised. We invested our time and our own resources. And after the first year, we had barely moved the funding needle.

Then life changed.

Mandy’s health declined. Both of our federal careers, which had been the primary funding source for the nonprofit, came to an abrupt end.

Suddenly, insecurity wasn’t something we were trying to solve for somebody else. We were experiencing it ourselves.

When your foundation gets shaken, your priorities change. For us, that meant figuring out what it really takes to move from surviving to thriving.

So we started with chickens. Really. Chickens.

Chickens meant eggs. Eggs meant food. If we had enough, we could feed ourselves. If we had more than we needed, we could share them.

Next came raised-bed gardens, helped along by generous seed donations from local producers. Neighbors offered us pigs to help work the land. We bartered labor for food.

Somewhere along the way, food became foundational to building trust.

It introduced us to farmers, growers, bakers, canners, coffee roasters, and other people who were really good at making things. The more time we spent with them, the more we noticed something: being really good at making something doesn’t necessarily mean knowing how to build a sustainable business around it.

That was territory Steve and I understood.

We both started our working lives in restaurants. Collectively, we brought more than 40 years of front- and back-of-house experience, along with more than two decades in education, workforce development, and business leadership.

COFFEE BROUGHT US THE CHANCE.

Then coffee gave us a chance to put that experience together.

We first met Kristi, owner of Heritage Coffee Roasters, at a homesteading festival. Over time, we got to know her as more than somebody selling coffee. She was a small-business owner with entrepreneurial dreams who was also a mom, wife, homeschool teacher, daughter, and sister.

We respected what she was building, and she trusted us enough to ask what we thought.

So we sat down and looked at the business together. We saw a few simple opportunities: raise the price, reduce the number of brews, and focus the effort.

And then we had her six. We showed up.

We put on her business T-shirts. We brewed coffee. We assembled orders. We talked with customers. Two days later, we were celebrating her most profitable event ever.

That was a clue.

We hadn’t created a program for her or walked in with an answer. She invited us in. We brought what we knew. She made the decisions, and we showed up.

As we met more producers, we started seeing the same thing. The producers were different, but a lot of the barriers weren’t.

Some needed cold storage. Others needed an oven. Some needed startup capital. Others wanted help figuring out whether their pricing worked. Many were trying to navigate food-safety regulations or cottage law. Most needed better access to markets. And some had figured all of that out and were asking a different question: What’s next?

That changed our perspective.

Instead of asking, “How do we help the producer?” we started asking, “What does this producer need to move forward?”

We began thinking about what happens when you strengthen the people producing the food. What could become possible for someone making something amazing at their kitchen table if they had what they needed to turn it into a viable business?

That’s where GOTURSIX and Hellbender Coach started to make sense together. GOTURSIX can help remove barriers around the producer. Hellbender Coach can help the person build the business.

In July 2026, we got the chance to put that idea to the test when Vital Farms awarded GOTURSIX our first significant grant: $15,500 to begin building cold-storage infrastructure and a headquarters for what we’re calling the Wright County Farm Stop.

Suddenly, we had resources to build something, which meant we had to decide how we were going to build it. We could take the money and create what we thought producers needed, or we could ask them.

We decided to ask.

That decision also forced us to confront something about ourselves. For much of GOTURSIX’s early development, Steve and I had been carrying the relationships, ideas, projects, and decisions ourselves. That might work when you’re trying to get something started, but it isn’t how you build something that lasts.

So the question changed again: How do we build this so it doesn’t depend on us?

That question is shaping what comes next. We’re learning to listen before we build, work alongside people instead of assuming what they need, collaborate with people who already know things we don’t, and recognize when our role is simply to make a connection and get out of the way.

Because the goal isn’t to make GOTURSIX bigger. The goal is to build the conditions for success.

And in a way, that brings the story right back to Mandy and something she taught me more than a decade ago: “I’ve got your six.”

When we started GOTURSIX, we understood having someone’s back primarily as helping people when they needed it. We still believe in that. Sometimes someone needs food today. Sometimes somebody needs a hand, and you show up.

But our understanding has grown.

Having someone’s six can also mean standing beside them while they figure out what comes next. It can mean removing a barrier, sharing what you know, making the right introduction, or asking a question that helps someone see an opportunity differently.

And maybe that’s the simplest way to explain what GOTURSIX has become.

We aren’t trying to bring opportunity to the Ozarks as though it doesn’t already exist here. The people are here. The ideas are here. The skills, knowledge, land, businesses, relationships, and determination are here.

Our work is about helping create the conditions that allow more of that opportunity to grow into economic mobility.

Which brings us back to where this story began:

OPPORTUNITYISNOWHERE.

Opportunity is nowhere.

Or…

Opportunity is now here.

Same letters. Different perspective.

GOTURSIX
Rooted in the Ozarks. Growing Opportunity.