Stairway to CEO

gatheredfoods.com

“As a leader, if you want that success, you have to make sure that everyone is working to the same North Star.”

“I really try to surround myself with people who are better than me.”

“I'm also very self-aware that I am not a founder myself. That's not my strength area. So really, what I can offer is kind of a skill set to help someone who has that ability to start up something. But I could be the one that can help scale it at that next phase.”

“It's not always going to be easy, but you really need to have a passion and a commitment and authenticity to what you choose to do.”

“Don't compromise on what you believe that you want. So again, you have to be self-aware about where you want to do, what you want to do, and why you want to do it.”

“I need to be inspired by my manager, and I also need to learn from my manager. So in turn, I feel like I have that obligation then to do that with my teams.”

“If you are in your silo and it's not working, and you don't ask for help, you're losing. But then you quickly spiral because you've got no one to help lift you out. But if you can reach out your hands, and you've built a team of trust and respect, there will be a lot of hands to reach out to help lift you up. And then together go find a win.”

“It's very easy to have self-doubt. It's very easy to feel a little bit lost, and I will tell you that's part of the journey.”

“There are going to be ups and downs for sure. But the broader picture is about choosing joy because life is just too short.”

“Everybody needs to play to their strengths. And that's how you win in the end. Remember to have fun, right?”

Airvet.com

“Saying ‘no’ is a learned skill and it's hard to do because there's nothing more important as an entrepreneur than being focused. And being focused means a lot of no.”

“There's a lot of problems in entrepreneurship with mental health. And I think a lot of that has to do with the inability to prioritize and time management.”

“There's so much that can be said about humility. And I think as you craft and fine-tune your skillset, knowing when you're drinking your Kool-Aid, when to sell and when not to sell.”

“One of the best skills that a CEO can have is getting excited around firing yourself from each one of those roles and hiring people better than you at that and smarter than you at that, at those particular areas.”

“If you're the best person on your team, you have not done yourself a service. If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room.”

“Humility is one of the best skills a CEO can have.”

“But you ask yourself, am I continuing because I so believe in our mission or am I too proud and do I have too much ego to allow myself to move on to the next adventure and tell people it didn't work out?’”

“Because as lonely as it is for me, if you have a family that doesn't get to interact with you or see you, but yet they live in the same house, it's really lonely for them too. And we don't realize often how much we need them.”

“You have to make sure you prioritize what you're not willing to sacrifice and stay true to that.”

“Stepping out of myself and my ego and my guilt and all of that and seeing the support system that I'd built and the people that still believed in me is what got me the confidence and excitement back to go quickly do the next thing and take that leap of faith again.”

“So much of being an entrepreneur is being willing to eat enough dirt until your dirt becomes caviar.”

“The wisdom that I'd impart on any future or current founder is not to forget your why and stay true to that because it's everything.”

“Passion alone is not enough. You also have to look and be honest brutally with yourself.”

Eatcaulipower.com

“I have always measured success by how comfortable I can get in things that are inherently uncomfortable to me.”

“I think the day you stop learning and the day you stop caring is the day you have to leave.”

“I think it's actually a reason why a lot of women, in particular, enter entrepreneurship because they want to create the work environment where they can thrive and be happy. And sometimes that doesn't always exist in corporate America. So we're forced to create it ourselves.”

“Women bring a lot to the table, but the corollary also has to be considered. What's missing when the woman isn't there? And quite frankly, I thought it was quite a bit.”

“I realized I wanted to do something more meaningful, something more long-lasting, something that would honor everything he gave me and everything he taught me, and what better way to do that than to follow in his entrepreneurial footsteps?”

“I always say starting a business is like having kids. If you wait for the right time, you're never going to do it. So you can't wait for the right time. You can't wait for that time when you absolutely know, because you don't.”

“There are people who graduate from business school and have an idea and have a plan and execute upon that plan and hire all the right people and all that. And that's great. And that is a fantastic and really smart way to start a business. That was not my way. I had a gut feeling.”

“When I think about the scariest part about starting CAULIPOWER, even today, I think it's how close I came to not doing it.”

“Sometimes you have to break rules. That's your job as an entrepreneur. You follow some, and you break some.”

“I also didn't know that the lows would be surmountable. That you have those lows, but you could also work your way out of them.”

“I think one of the wonderful things about having lows as an entrepreneur is it just makes the highs that much more wonderful.”

“I like how, to me, the dinner table or the lunch table, or any place that we eat together and share food is the most important place in the home.”

“You have to take risks. You have to. Otherwise, you're just going to be like every other company that's currently out there. So do things differently.”

“I bet everything that I had on a vegetable.”

NewAir.com

“Build in that leadership so that you don't just hit a wall, which some companies can definitely do because then they haven't built those competencies into their team.”

“Luckily, I've got a great group of friends. I'm in a really good CEO group, and I've got a bunch of other CEO friends. Having a network is huge.”

“I think having good guidance, and a great group of friends and mentors helped me, and I definitely would advise everybody to grab onto some good mentors.”

“Truly, we need to be a best place to work because otherwise, we can't attract the best people.”

“Marketing overall, it's not just social, it's also thinking about SEO and organic ranks and how you're going to rank on your retailers if you are selling through channels.”

“What I like about selling into these retailers is they're advertising for you. They're branding for you.”

“Build relationships, build your brand.”

“When you're an entrepreneur, you're going to have to deal with a lot of anxiety and stress. So people have to be able to deal with that.”

“You don't have to be one type of person to be an entrepreneur.”

“I think, as a CEO, probably the most important thing is being a good decision-maker, being curious, having a very open mind about things because the more we know that we don't know things, the better.”

“Everybody's talking about how we can make change in the world, change in diversity, in all of these different aspects. And I truly believe being an entrepreneur is a great place where young people should be looking. Because you can make a lot of changes as an entrepreneur.”

“When you start your day, think about what you're going to create instead of what you're going to consume.”

https://www.hawthorneadvertising.com/

"I do appreciate growing up in the Midwest and the values that I got from the Midwest and the work ethic that comes from that.”

“Many entrepreneurial paths are born out of necessity.”

“I never wanted to get a job or have an experience that anyone handed to me. I always wanted to do it myself. I never wanted to owe anyone, anything ever”

“We're always going to have problems… Nothing is ever easy. But it is how you approach everything in a way that you're coming to fix it. You're coming with solutions instead of just coming with complaints.”

“What is important within our culture is that it's not about the individual. It's about the client's best interest. And if we are growing their company and their campaign as a result, then we're all growing together.”

“It's really important to me that people work very hard, but that they have a lot of fun and enjoy what they're doing because we're spending more time at work than really any other parts of our life.”

“Those who do focus on personal and professional development are those who keep coming along with you on the ride and help drive the growth of the company and what you're doing.”

“Getting the execution and the operations right is absolutely critical to anything because you can have the greatest ideas ever, but they are absolutely worthless unless you can actually execute them.”

“You have to figure out how to execute and operate to be able to bring things to fruition. And it is about consistency.”

“I can really perform at a high level every day because I push myself to work and complete everything so that the next day I can start completely fresh.”

“Learn all parts of the business, start from the bottom. I'm a big advocate of starting from the bottom.”

https://liveouter.com/

“I'm still a very introverted person, and I'm an engineer, but I had to learn how to sell, get rejected a lot, and get turned away.”

“I think most startups fail due to founder fallout.”

“I think there's a lot of hesitation that entrepreneurs face with being vulnerable that prevents them from getting the help they need to potentially succeed.”

“We had to take the hard route of figuring out what is broken about outdoor furniture. When it comes down to the furniture, it's all about material.”

“We knew we had a product-market fit because people really love it and because they can't stop talking about it.”

“To truly let go, as a leader, is a lot easier said than done.”

“I don't get too over the top in my head and say, ‘Wow, we're going to dominate the world.’ I have to think about potential downturns that could come too.”

“Sometimes it takes a little bit of time to really get to know your own business while you're in the middle of building it. But once you find the true calling in that mission, it feels great.”

How growing up in California, playing varsity sports and running for offices like class president showed her that her personality was full of drive and fight

Why college in New Orleans with a study abroad in Spain became an eye-opening and important experience

How her internship at Ford Models and Susan Blonde Inc music company in NYC during college summers was both fun and informative

How her initial dream of becoming a publicist in LA was abandoned but eventually led to a job at E! True Hollywood Story

How her time at E! revealed her hidden talents of matchmaking and led to her toward being known as the “Resident Dating Expert”

Where she got the name for her company and how she first started as a blog

How her time in the incubator program at the Founders Institute led to a lesson on trusting yourself as the expert of your own idea

Why Three Day Rule’s time on Shark Tank was worth the risks and difficulties they endured to get on the show

Why Talia believes having a strong and healthy company culture is critical to success and how she and her team intentionally cultivate this

How fundraising as a woman with a growing family became a challenge for Talia during both of her two pregnancies and how, with grit and determination, she overcame that

Why her unplanned role of CEO helped her gain clarity

Her advice for other entrepreneurs and how she balances the stress of life, work, and family

threedayrule.com

“I'm such a strong believer that the best ideas don't have to come from the business team. You know, a lot of times they come from our matchmakers that are on the ground.”

“I went out two days after giving birth and closed nine investors.”

“I always say a determined woman is unstoppable. People just have to recognize that and move forward.”

“I should have followed what I was actually passionate about, but instead I was listening to the trends, and what I recognized, in the end, was that I was the expert.”

“I always look at everything like a pie where my husband gets a slice, and my work gets a slice, and my kids get a slice. And if I can get a little sliver for me, then my day is so much better.”

“I never thought in a million years that I would be a CEO.”

“I would say find something that you care very deeply about. And once you have that, do whatever it takes to make sure that it's successful. You're gonna hit a lot of bumpy roads, but be a fighter and you will get through it.”

“So I would say half my job is bridging the gap between people who actually like each other and don't know, and the other half is really helping people become their best dating selves.”

How Chris Tolles experience with art school at RISD built a foundation for his love for design

Why his international and humanitarian travel on a Thomas J Watson Fellowship ignited his entrepreneurial drive

How volunteering at an MIT D-Lab conference and sneaking into an event led to an invitation to join an MIT startup

How he turned an award-winning green initiative prototype into an impactful functioning product

Why Chris’ time with One Earth Designs led to the realization that he wanted to go to business school

Why leaving Hong Kong to get an MBA at Boston University was an important step in his career

How his time with Steelcase and IDEO, Innosight, and Emulate helped Chris prepare for the decision to become his own boss

How going from working for others to working for himself paid off and the pivotal lessons he learned on the way

How meeting Dr. Emilia Javorskky led to Crowdfunding and the unique and successful start of Sundaily

Why transitioning from a suncare company to a skincare company led to profound lessons as a first-time founder

Why the move to Grove Collaborative has been so successful and what is next for Chris and for Sundaily

getsundaily.com

“If I really cared about making a difference in people's lives, I needed to be as comfortable designing the business model as the object itself.”

"Maybe you're just not made to work for other people.”

“Emilia... I have a super vivid memory of this exact conversation. We're in this teeny little conference room, and she's like, "By the way, I got my own ideas, and the one I'm most excited about is ingestible sun protection."

“The beauty of entrepreneurship is that the answer is never obvious, and there's no answer that's ever like the best clearly. So it's a judgment call.”

“There are two main kinds of risk in any entrepreneurial effort. There's technology risk. Can it exist? And then there's commercial risk. Can you sell it?”

“If I won't die for the problem, it's going to be really hard for me to lead the company.”

“I was so fired up about the thing we were doing that I underestimated the likelihood that we could end up in a place very different from where we started.”

“It's kind of lame, but “know thyself.” If you don't know what you want in life, man, it's so hard to go get it.”

dailylook.com

“I think there's a lot to be gained in experience from working with great teams and great people.”

“I definitely recommend having and surrounding yourself with as many experienced mentors as possible.”

“People that didn't have positive experiences with other coworkers in previous jobs will still tend to give a mediocre or medium type of reference check.”

“When you start a business, I do recommend that, depending on the business of course, that you have a co-founder.”

“I think the mental game is a challenging one. And with time and experience, I've learned my ways of how I cope with things in challenging times.”

“As an entrepreneur, self-doubt can creep in from many different angles and places and times.”

“I try to maintain the perspective and mindset of being a lifelong learner and always intellectually curious and open to learning new things. Learn from new people around you.”

In this episode, David Greenfeld and I chat about his entrepreneurial journey from being a hip hop artist, to working for Tesla, to living in Italy where he became inspired to build Dream Pops. Dream Pops is changing the game in the ice cream world by providing a delicious, modern, plant-based frozen dessert that looks really cool, tastes incredible, and is good for you! They’re packed with superfoods, and they're dairy, gluten, and soy free. We talk about the spiritual side of building a business, his first partnership with Starbucks and more - so grab a Dream Pop from your local Whole Foods and tune in to hear David’s incredible story.

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:

Quotes:

“You’d be surprised how many people want to help you with no monetary gain.”

“When your back is against the wall, you’d be shocked at what you’re capable of accomplishing.”

“ Most people shouldn’t be entrepreneurs. There are huge sacrifices emotionally, financially, and psychologically. For me it makes sense. I like coloring outside the lines of the unknown. I can’t stand structure so it (entrepreneurship) makes sense for me. But that’s where self-awareness is so crucial and you know, I learned the hard way.”

“My advice is to go get the tools.”

“You really need to not hire your friends.”

“Understand how little you really need.”

To Find Out More:

https://dreampops.com/