The Road to the Capital Championship Finals

On a dreary Wednesday in March, I downloaded the application to the Capital Championship pitch competition. As I scrolled through it, I was surprised at the length and the detail of the questions.

I knew that I needed a fresh cup of coffee before I buckled down to tackle the application. So I did.

About twenty open Chrome windows, two cups of coffee, and a granola bar later, I had finished the application. Even though I had to taken the first pass, I knew that it was just the beginning before submitting the application. So I sent it to Seamus, QwipIt’s fearless leader, for his editing pass.

Then there was another editing pass done by myself and our king of tech, Mike.

At this point, I was tired of reading the application. All of us were. So we deemed it good and worthy of submitting. Seamus uploaded it, and hit the submit button.

We celebrated with a round of beers!

Next came the waiting. At first waiting feels unbearable. Then, at some point, you just push it so far back into your mind that you “forget” about it. That’s the beauty. I was so busy forgetting, that when Seamus received an email about it, I was in shock. Shock because I then had to remember it. Shock because we weren’t selected as a regional semifinalist.

It felt like a failure. For all of us. A black mark on something we spent a lot of time and energy towards between doing the application and worrying about it.

Failure isn’t bad. It stokes the fire to figure out ways to be better. We embraced the fact that we weren’t going to be pitching. And asked ourselves a tough question: Should we take a break from pitching altogether? The consensus was a resounding ‘yes’.

Then one bright Saturday in May, Seamus received an email stating that we had been chosen as an online finalist.

We were completely floored.

We were chosen? As a finalist?

After we picked up our jaws, we celebrated with a round of beers!

And here we are… two weeks out from the big show. We may have been selected as a finalist, but we still have one more round of eliminations before we get to stand on the big stage in front of thousands of people.

I know that I can’t predict the future of this event, but I will say this: We have already won. We have already achieved more than 99% (ok, that’s my estimate) of applicants. We have already achieved more than we thought we were capable of. There is NO stopping this momentum as we barrel through the next two weeks of preparation.

So Capital Championship, I hope you’re ready for team QwipIt! Because we’re comin’ atcha!

Want to jump on this train to Successville?

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