The Comfort of the Uncomfortable

Jay Bland ’11 developed his approach to life upon arriving at Auburn.

“You don’t really know what kind of person you are yet and don’t really have a clue what you want to do. You’re just kind of waking up and you’re figuring it out,” Bland recalled. “And I love that challenge of not having a playbook—not having a rule book, even—but having a, hey, here are the tools you need—maybe. Go figure it out.”

Bland, a member of Auburn’s 20 Under 40 Class of 2024, is chief growth officer of GreenCourt Legal Technologies, a Carrollton, Georgia-based company formed in 2014 that uses software to make courts and government agencies more efficient. He had the benefit of being approached by a family friend to help launch the startup and learned to embrace uncomfortableness.

“I have had quite an advantage in this life, but I never want to rely on that advantage,” Bland said. “I’m going to work my butt off, kind of like the Auburn Creed says (“I believe in work, hard work”). I’m going to work so hard that no one will ever doubt why I belong here.

“And I did that. I said “no” to nothing, I said “yes” to everything. I pushed and pulled and inserted myself into situations so that I could learn. And I listened and I learned and I traveled and I was uncomfortable. And I found a way to be comfortable being uncomfortable. And that’s really when I unlocked the key for how you run a startup software company. I learned to embrace those moments of being uncomfortable.”

Bland’s first roommate at Auburn was a high school friend from Carrollton, Josh Harris, who has played 13 seasons in the NFL as a long snapper. Bland said his membership in the Sigma Nu fraternity “helped me go from boy to man.”

“You had to follow the rules, and it came at a good time for me because when I felt like there were no rules, and I could just figure it out on my own, that provided structure. That structure and learning how to work as a team.”

After surviving an econometrics course (“it might as well have been ‘How to Build a Rocket Ship,’ because it was so difficult”), Bland earned an economics degree at Auburn. He then received his master’s of business and law degrees from Samford University before joining GreenCourt.

His first job there was to drive around courthouses and law offices in Georgia trying to sell his company’s PeachCourt software, which allows for the filing and researching of court documents electronically.

“That may sound easy. It wasn’t. Convincing judges and clerks to move to technology was hard, because they’re very risk-averse and then convincing attorneys who have done something a certain way for 40 years to switch to something new was difficult,” Bland said. “I learned how to be uncomfortable, I learned how to be confident in conversation and I learned how to adjust on the fly. You may think you know how a meeting is going to go, but until you get in there, until you do it, you have no idea.”

Now PeachCourt is used in nearly every county in Georgia.

GreenCourt has also developed GovLink, which helps government agencies manage their workloads more efficiently. Clients include Georgia’s Office of the Commissioner of Insurance and Safety Fire, which licenses and regulates insurance companies, investigates reports of insurance fraud and inspects buildings to prevent fire.

GovLink is also used by local child-support enforcement agencies in six states. In 2023, one state saved an estimated 60,000 hours of work time using the software—nearly the equivalent of 30 full-time employees, said Bland, who is a board member of the National Child Support Engagement Association, which works to improve the collection of child support payments.

“That means more children received financial support faster because the state was using GovLink than if they weren’t using GovLink,” he said.

“I’ve been on a journey to become a leader and to develop the next generation of leaders. That’s really where I get my value today, is seeing success through other people,” Bland said. “So if I can give somebody on my team the advice and the tools and the confidence they need to go get the job done without me, that’s the greatest feeling in the world—watching people succeed that you know you’ve helped along the way.

“And I want more of that. That’s really what I’m hungry for now is the opportunity to be impactful with other people and to see success through their success.”

By Tom Kertscher