Standing Bear High School opened in August 2023.
No traditions. No alumni. No program.
Not even grass on the ground.
Hunter Boe was picked to be the founding vocal music director. He had to build everything — choir, show choir, musical, unified music — from a blank canvas with zero infrastructure and students who had never done any of it before.
In this episode, Jake sits down with Hunter to talk about what it actually looks like to build something from nothing. The chaos, the constraints, the early wins, and the mindset that holds it all together.
If you’ve ever started something from scratch — a business, a team, a brand — this one hits close to home.
Key Takeaways
- The decisions you make in year one set the tone for year ten. Build with the future in mind, not just what’s easy now.
- Community has to come before competition. If relationships get transactional, progress slows down.
- Recruiting isn’t marketing — it’s one-on-one relationship building. The biggest obstacle isn’t awareness, it’s fear.
- “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” Frantic effort feels productive but rarely compounds. Steady, intentional effort does.
- Culture isn’t a poster on the wall. It’s language, repetition, and daily modeling — visible and consistent.
- Start simple. Don’t over-program your first year. Focus on fundamentals, then expand.
Episode at a Glance
Hunter Boe built Standing Bear’s entire music program from scratch — choir, show choir, musical, unified music — starting with freshmen who had never sung in an ensemble. In two years, the Renegades were making finals, hosting their own invitational, and growing from 25 students to 120.
Action step: Identify the one thing your team or organization says it values most. Now ask: Is it on the wall? In the emails? In the daily routine? If it’s not visible and repeated, it’s not real yet. Put it somewhere people see it every day.
Main idea: Building from zero isn’t about getting everything right on day one. It’s about setting a foundation — language, values, community — that compounds as the program grows. The decisions that feel small early become the culture later.
Why it matters: Whether you’re starting a business, launching a new team, or building a brand, the principles are the same. Start with purpose. Build community before chasing results. And resist the urge to stack it so high it topples.
Quick tool: The STAND framework — Supportive, Tenacious, Ambitious, Novel, Disciplined. A simple acronym that became the ethos of an entire music department. Whatever your version is, codify it and make it visible.
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About Hunter Boe
Hunter Boe is the founding vocal music director at Standing Bear High School in Lincoln, Nebraska. He was hand-picked to build the school’s entire music program from scratch when it opened in 2023.
- Built choir, show choir, musical theater, and unified music programs from zero students and zero infrastructure
- Grew the Renegades show choir from 52 first-year students (49 beginners) to a finals-qualifying, invitational-hosting program in one year
- Previously directed established programs at Norris and Wahoo
- Created and hosted The Summit, Standing Bear’s show choir invitational
- Leads the school’s unified music program for students with exceptionalities
His mantra: “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”
Standing Bear Vocal Music: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook
Website: grizzlypaw.org
Highlights & Timestamps
00:00–03:00 — Building from Nothing
Jake introduces Hunter and the Standing Bear story — brand new school, no traditions, 52 students, 49 beginners.
03:00–09:00 — Day One and the STAND Framework
Hunter walks through the “hurry up and wait” of being hired before the building was finished, the pressure to get decisions right the first time, and how the STAND acronym — Supportive, Tenacious, Ambitious, Novel, Disciplined — became the department’s ethos.
09:00–13:00 — Systems, Language, and Repetition
Why intentional language matters in building culture. Hunter talks about codifying core values, making them visible on slides, emails, and walls, and the parallel to business leadership.
13:00–17:30 — Community Before Competition
How Hunter approached show choir with first-time students. The strategy: build safety, promote fun, let the skills come through osmosis. “If kids feel supported, they come back.”
17:30–20:00 — The Summit: Hosting Your Own Invitational
Why Hunter decided to host a show choir competition in year two — fundraising necessity, community-building strategy, and the shared experience that became a point of pride.
20:00–23:30 — When Competition Results Become the Thing
Hunter on the tension between competition and growth. Why results-driven thinking turns relationships transactional, and how “competing against our standard” keeps the program grounded.
23:30–27:30 — Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is Fast
The origin of the phrase, the gym analogy, and why steady leadership produces better outcomes than frantic energy. “What they need from me is to be in control, is to be really steady.”
27:30–33:00 — Unified Music, the Website, and Celebrating Success
Hunter talks about the joy of unified music, how grizzlypaw.org serves as the program’s hub for recruiting, fundraising, and storytelling, and why celebrating wins publicly matters more than you think.
33:00–End — Recruiting, the Middle Chapter, and What’s Next
How one-on-one relationships win the recruiting conversation, the challenge of scaling from 25 to 120 students while keeping culture intact, and what Hunter’s most looking forward to.
Building from a Blank Canvas
When Hunter was hired in the spring of 2022, he didn’t even have a building to walk into. The choir room walls were unfinished. The whiteboard was on the floor. Class started in a week.
That’s the reality of building from zero. The dreaming and scheming phase is fun. Then you hit what Hunter calls “the realities of what it actually means to build something from scratch.”
No templates to follow. No traditions to lean on. No seniors to model behavior.
Just decisions. And the pressure to get them right the first time — because in a school, those decisions become precedent. They become tradition.
“You want to make choices that are sustainable and just gonna be good for you in three, five, ten years.”
The Language You Use Becomes the Culture You Build
One of the first things Hunter and his staff did was choose their words.
Not slogans. Not marketing copy. Core language — the words that would define what it means to be in the Standing Bear music department.
They landed on STAND: Supportive. Tenacious. Ambitious. Novel. Disciplined.
It’s on every slide. Every email. On the walls. In the daily routine.
“We try to be really intentional with the language we use,” Hunter says. “Not only what we want them to learn, but how we want them to learn it.”
This isn’t decoration. It’s infrastructure. The same way a business needs a clear mission and visible values before it can scale, Hunter built the language first — then let everything else grow around it.
John made the connection to business leadership: “The very first section before you get to sales and marketing and all that fun stuff is leadership and the core purpose. Why are we here? Why does it matter?”
Community First. Results Second.
Hunter waited a full year before starting show choir.
Not because he didn’t want to. Because his students needed identity and ownership first. Freshmen who’ve never done this don’t have that yet. So he spent year one building the foundation — basic skills, daily singing, community, trust.
When show choir launched in year two, the summer rehearsals weren’t about technique drills. They were about building a place where kids felt safe enough to try something new.
“If kids have a place where they’re feeling safe and welcome and like they’re part of a team and they’re getting better and enjoying what they’re doing — they’re gonna come back.”
It sounds overly simple. It’s not.
Hunter spends more time than he’d sometimes like on community-building — three minutes at the start of rehearsal with kids in small groups just chatting about their day. But he knows: centered kids perform better. Connected kids stick around.
“That brings out a familial sense of cohesiveness.”
When Competition Becomes the Thing
Hunter is direct about this: when results become the goal, relationships get transactional. Progress hollows out.
“I’ve just seen a natural hollowness occur when that becomes a thing.”
It’s easy to chase. Competition results are public. They’re measurable. They feel like proof.
But Hunter’s approach is different. The Renegades compete against their own standard. If the process is right, the results follow. And if you hang your identity on placement? “You’re going to go crazy. There’s always a bigger fish.”
The business parallel is obvious. Chase vanity metrics — followers, awards, competitor rankings — and the work suffers. Build something real, hold yourself to your own standard, and compound.
Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is Fast
Hunter first heard this in basketball. He felt it again as a young teacher, desperate for everyone to think he was really good, pushing programs at a frantic pace.
“Your wheels are spinning, and I feel like you don’t actually make the progress.”
Every program he admires — the ones he wants to model Standing Bear after — took time. None of them happened overnight.
“If you’re trying to build something that’s sustainable, that’s not just a flash in the pan, that it’s built with really strong foundations — you’re just really intentional about those steps.”
He admits it’s hard. He’s naturally competitive, impatient, goal-oriented. But the moments where he’s taken more time, made choices with the future in mind? Those always made up for themselves.
“What they need from me is to be in control, is to be really steady.”
One percent better every day. Stack the wins. Let it snowball.
Call to Action
Want help building a website that tells your story, builds community, and grows with your program?
Start here: https://artillerymedia.com/contact/
Show Credits
Host: Jake Kramer
Guest: Hunter Boe (grizzlypaw.org)
Produced by: ARTILLERY, Lincoln, Nebraska
Slow & Steady — A Podcast by ARTILLERY 🎧
https://artillerymedia.com/podcast/
