Hi. I'm Zach Gollwitzer 👋

I‘m a full-stack web and mobile developer based out of Cincinnati, OH.

Me in 1 minute

• I teach people how to plan, build, and leverage their business website for growth. For example, here's a video I filmed on how to build a Wordpress website in 20 minutes.
• I teach people how to code on Youtube. I made a free, 21 hour Frontend Developer Bootcamp that takes beginners from zero knowledge to writing their first lines of code.
• I help golfers improve their games at The DIY Golfer, a blog I started while playing collegiate golf. In 2019, I launched a training program called Break 90 in 90 Days, a 90 day program that teaches golfers how to gain consistency in their game and break 90 for the first time.
• I love to run, especially on a trail. It‘s my favorite reason to go outside and gives me a quiet place to think, debug, and reflect. I ran my first marathon in 2021 and although I didn‘t reach my goal of breaking 4 hours, it was one of those painful experiences that teaches you things you can‘t learn anywhere else. Will be back for another try soon!
• I‘m a shameless try-hard in my rec sand-volleyball league.
• I enjoy cooking, and most recently, smoking fish/meats on the Slow ‘N Sear. Even better if I get to share the meal with some friends/family!

My Story

For most of my childhood, I dreamed of being a professional golfer. I practiced every day, thought about it all day, and was lucky enough to land a full scholarship to play for The University of Akron’s mens golf team.

Turns out, my dreams as a kid weren't the most "calculated". College golf (and pro golf) requires you to be on the road nearly every week. The golf was tough, but the travel was exhausting (especially while keeping up with school work). Not just that, but the odds of making a significant income are one in a million. I loved the idea of who I could become, but had no interest in living the lifestyle it demanded.

By the end of my sophomore year, I had come to a shocking and disappointing reality–professional golf was not for me. Something I had fixated on for years was no longer my future. Furthermore, I was two years into a Finance degree, which I didn’t enjoy all that much. I felt cornered, nearly quit golf altogether (luckily, I decided against it), and knew I needed to scramble to figure out what I actually wanted to do with my life.

I couldn’t change majors. I couldn’t quit golf (would lose my scholarship). What I could do was start a side project. Out of this, The DIY Golfer was born.

The DIY Golfer quickly became my gateway drug to web development and entrepreneurship. After realizing how difficult it was maintaining a website without knowing the first thing about writing code, I knew I needed to dig in and teach myself.

Learning to code

After graduating college, I went to the 42 coding bootcamp in San Francisco and subsequently worked at a small startup as a contractor for a year. Here's a photo at "42 Coding Bootcamp", I had a blast there!

I drastically grew my skills during this time, but came to the harsh reality of the "real world"—it wasn't going to pay the bills. I used my corporate finance degree to land a job at a bank. While this solved my money problem, helped me grow professionally, and led me to some lifelong friends and connections, it did not satisfy my urge to work as a full-time software engineer.

So I kept working at it. I woke up early before work and continued to build things and sharpen my skills. At the day job, I jumped into anything that would give me the chance to write software whether that included writing a bunch of Oracle SQL scripts for custom financial reports or building VBA Excel macros to myself and coworkers time on repetitive tasks.

Breaking into tech

After 3 years at the bank and countless hours spent on side projects growing my skills, I felt pretty darn confident in my ability to write useful software.

After applying to a few jobs, I found what I was looking for and landed a role as a full-stack engineer at Maybe Finance, an early stage startup building a next generation personal finance toolset.

Over the course of the next 2 years, I led an AWS migration, built a data ingestion pipeline to handle hundreds of thousands of financial transactions per day, wrote financial institution integrations, built net worth and forecasting tools, and an in-house financial advising platform. I worked... A LOT of hours.

A portfolio of internet companies

Most recently, I made the jump into solopreneurship. This is an exciting, yet daunting new chapter and I'm sharing my journey here on this site!

Let's connect!

The best place to keep up with me is my "Road to $10k" newsletter where I share my journey trying to grow my revenue as a solopreneur. You can join my list below:

You can also find me on Twitter!