Little Cryptid Compass
How It Started (And Who Built It)
Little Cryptid Compass wasn’t built by one person—it was shaped by two people whose paths kept circling back to the same idea:
There has to be a better way to teach real-life skills.
The co-founders didn’t meet in a classroom or a workplace.
They met at a front door.
He showed up to visit a mutual friend—her roommate at the time. She was working at a restaurant. He was working a corporate job. It wasn’t a dramatic beginning—but it was the start of something that would eventually become both a family and a company.
Two Different Paths, Same Direction
The Founder’s Path (Structure + Experience)
His journey took a winding route:
Psychology → advised to switch majors
Education → too long, pivot again
Studio Art (Sculpture) → where he finished
From there:
Assistant Program Director for high-adventure camps
Business Analyst for a major corporation (~5 years)
U.S. Army service (~5.5 years)
Massage therapist and co-business owner
Master’s in Social Work → licensed therapist
His work spanned:
CPS
Psychiatric hospitals (adolescent & adult)
Intensive in-home services
Foster care systems
Children’s mobile crisis
School-based and outpatient therapy
Across all of it, one question kept showing up:
Why do the tools that work… feel so hard to use?
The Co-Founder’s Path (Creativity + Adaptability)
While his path moved through careers, hers anchored everything around it.
She:
Was working in a restaurant when they met
Became the steady center through every transition
Raised their two children
Home-schooled them through elementary years
When he joined the Army, she carried the weight most people don’t see:
Running the household
Raising and educating two kids (both neurodivergent)
Managing constant change and uncertainty
At the same time, she was building her own skills:
Earned a massage therapy degree alongside him
Co-owned and helped run their business
Left for the same reason—misalignment in values and direction
She later:
Home-schooled their children until middle school
Worked in children’s mobile crisis services
Built a flexible, multi-skill role that now includes:
Running the homestead
Freelance editing
Handyman work
Creative production
Her creative background runs deep:
Originally planned to attend film school
Edited published books (including during Army years)
Sold handmade jewelry and paintings
Plays multiple instruments—learning by ear, not sheet music
Taught herself piano while raising and homeschooling two young, dyslexic children
And all of that happened while navigating something often overlooked:
Long-term health challenges that were dismissed, misunderstood, or not properly treated for years.
She is also neurodivergent—bringing another layer of lived experience to how she sees learning, communication, and support.
What They Built Together
Their experiences weren’t separate—they overlapped constantly:
Therapy + homeschooling
Structure + creativity
Systems + adaptability
Clinical knowledge + lived experience
They saw the same problem from different angles:
Worksheets worked—but felt awful.
Clear, structured, easy to teach… but boring, clinical, and often triggering.
Storybooks worked—but fell short.
Engaging and relatable… but missing the “how.”
And both of them were already solving that gap in real life:
Through creative teaching
Through hands-on learning
Through adapting to neurodivergent needs
Through making abstract ideas tangible
