Friendships emerge in interesting ways, over coffee, across a conference table, through a friend of a friend. Brad Heizman and Travis Small’s friendship started over little league.
Years ago, their daughters landed on the same softball team. Brad had signed up to coach. Travis texted a coach he’d never met with an offer to help, however needed. Brad wrote back the more help, the better, and that was that. Two dads, two daughters, and a softball field started a friendship that’s been running the bases together ever since; through innings, seasons, school years, and catchups at their favorite watering hole, Putters. (Travis still has Brad’s contact saved as “Brad – Softball.”)
Neither of them set out to navigate a career change together. Between the two of them, they’d built real success in the corporate world, Brad at Cintas, Travis at Enterprise. But somewhere amidst the fly balls, cold beers, and conversations, something else was taking shape.
Batter Up: Brad Steps Up to the Plate
Brad spent 23 years at Cintas. He’s the first to tell you it was an excellent career, and he’ll happily brag about the strong professional development and business foundation it gave him. He treasures these experiences, and many of the friendships it built remain important in his life.
But putting his “coach” jersey back on for junior high softball brought on something unexpected. Being at the school, around the kids, leading young athletes on and off the field, gave him a fulfillment his corporate role couldn’t quite match. It wasn’t a total surprise. Teaching runs in Brad’s family, with parents and grandparents who were teachers, coaches, and nurses. Maybe it had been waiting for him the whole time.
Fortunately for his future students, Brad didn’t ignore the impulse. He made a plan, a measured, patient one. I’ll pursue my license, but there is no need to rush it. He talked to people in the field and assumed this would be a “home stretch” move. It was a significant financial shift, so something for down the road, once his youngest was further along in school.
Then, a curveball. Bob, a fellow softball dad and school counselor, shared two transformational things with Brad: an accelerated, online path that could have him certified in sixteen weeks while still working his job, and the fact that the business teacher at Lakota West was leaving. Was Brad interested? Now?
It wasn’t the timeline he and his family had envisioned. It was sooner, faster, and a little scary. But he recognized the feeling of things falling into place; a clear path, a chance to teach in his own community, time to keep coaching. He felt confident that, combined with the certification program, his years of sales training and product development at Cintas had prepared him well for this moment. After conversations with his wife, and with his daughter (a sophomore at the school, most excited about no longer riding the bus and getting to keep her things in Dad’s classroom), he said yes.
Clean-Up Hitter: Travis Goes for Home
Like Brad, teaching and coaching had always been part of Travis’ life. His wife has been a talented special education teacher for more than 20 years. Travis grew up an athlete and has worn “Coach” on the back of his jersey for most of his adult life. Teachers and coaches were simply the people he’d always been surrounded by.
Around the same time Brad was exploring his own transition, Travis was finding it harder to stay engaged and excited about his corporate role. Teaching and coaching full time had been simmering beneath the surface for years, but the path to get there felt like a fastball he couldn’t quite make contact with. So he kept the idea in the dugout. It never left the ballpark, but it never stepped up to bat either.
At one point, Travis seriously explored opening a baseball supply shop in West Chester, researching it in earnest, running the numbers, thinking it through from every angle, before deciding it wasn’t the right fit. Around that same time, catching up at Putters, Brad shared the news about his new position at Lakota West. As you are familiar, there’s no crying in baseball, so instead of letting the why not me feeling creep in, Travis leaned in. He seized the opportunity to have Brad share the playbook.
The rest is history. Travis got certified, started substitute teaching across Butler County, and found himself drawn back to Lakota East, his own alma mater. Travis’s path ran a similar course, a conversation at a baseball event with someone from the district’s central office jumpstarted his journey back to Lakota East, where he was able to earn the open Business Education teacher position. As one of his students put it best: Mr. Small, you’re an official teacher now?!
It wasn’t just a career shift for Brad, Travis and their families, it was a financial one too. As Travis’ wife put it plainly early on, you don’t make a move like this at this stage in your career for the money, it’s a real pay cut, one they went into with eyes open. But somewhere between the paycheck and the purpose, they’d decided a bigger bank account wasn’t the only thing worth building a life around.
A Confession
I’ll be honest with you: sitting across from Brad and Travis, I felt something I wasn’t quite expecting. Admiration, sure. But if I’m being fully truthful, there was a little envy mixed in too. These are two men completely lit up by their transition, and you could feel it coming off of them, an energy that was magnetic. That specific kind of joy that shows up when someone is finally doing exactly what they’re meant to be doing.
It took me back to college, when I considered a degree in education myself. Part of that exploration was sitting in on a junior high classroom my sister-in-law taught, and she’s one of the best. I remember it vividly, even 35 years later, because of what I noticed that day: when a teacher is genuinely passionate about their impact, the kids feel it. There’s a circular energy that passes between a teacher and a room full of students, each one filling the other’s cup. My own path pivoted elsewhere, but I’ve never forgotten how rich that exchange can be. Sitting with Brad and Travis, I saw that same energy again, and I was excited for their students.
Seventh Inning Stretch: Finding Their Rhythm
Ask either of them what the biggest challenge has been, and you’ll hear some version of the same answer: as new educators, they’ve been asked to evaluate the district’s existing business curriculum and combine it with decades of real-world experience to take the program to a new level. No textbook, no set curriculum, just the space and freedom to build something worth teaching.
That freedom turns out to be the thing they both love most. Brad describes it as ownership of his space, his content, his classroom, like being an education entrepreneur. Travis felt that same confidence the first time he was asked to teach an 85-minute block on customer service and retention with less than a day’s notice. Turns out he only needed to gather his thoughts, his 20-plus years of experience was the curriculum.
The shift has been everything they hoped for. Brad lights up talking about a student stopping him in the hallway to say Mr. Heizman, I signed up for your class. Both of them talk about how rewarding it is to teach a genuinely diverse classroom, students with different backgrounds, skills, interests, cultures, and perspectives. And both have quietly become the kind of teacher students trust with more than homework questions; they get requests for letters of recommendation, interview prep, and advice. None of it part of any lesson plan but, surely a meaningful part of the game plan.
Extra Innings: Why It Matters
Here’s the part of this story that goes beyond two guys who found something that fit. Together, Brad and Travis bring 44 years of business experience into classrooms that currently reach roughly 275 students a year. They collaborate on curriculum and both offer a business fundamentals class and a full-on student incubator class (think Shark Tank for high schoolers complete with mentors from the local business community). And they’re not stopping there. Over the next five years, they hope to grow the program from two business electives to four, maybe six.
Here’s what I love most about what they’re building: it’s not just teaching kids to read a balance sheet. Of course, business is about revenue, margins, customers and market share. But it’s the people inside the walls of any business, the ones building the products, delighting the customers, teaching and supporting each other, who make it work. Brad and Travis aren’t just handing students the mechanics of business, they’re handing them the people-centered stories and lessons behind it. And they’ll both tell you it’s just as valuable for a student to walk away deciding business isn’t for them as it is for another to find their spot in it. Either way, they’re learning something real.
That’s the kind of thing our community can be proud to hold onto: business leaders who’ve spent decades in it, choosing to bring all of that back to the next generation.
Thank you, Brad and Travis, for being bold, for leaning into what lights you up, and for being generous enough to spend it on our kids.
And if you know a Brad or a Travis of your own, someone quietly circling a big change they haven’t said out loud yet, send them my way. I’d love to tell their story too.
Check out more insights from your Neighborhood Guide, Lisa Daley.
Photos courtesy of Brad Heizman & Travis Small
