The Journey

What if business can, at its core, be philanthropic? What if everything a business does is entirely derived from the motivation to do good?

"We separate this idea of business and doing good in the world as two things that cannot be compatible with each other, but I think ... they can both exist. They should both exist together. You don't have to separate them. You shouldn't separate them. You can think about them as one. "

That’s Jesse Grothaus, an Army Veteran and the founder and CEO of Cloud Pathfinder Consulting.

Jesse has spent the last three years building a company that brings to life the idea that doing business and doing good do not — and should not — exist apart from one another. 

As he’s built his business, he has found that his philanthropic mission has helped guide him through many of the problems entrepreneurs typically face — from hiring, to retention, to securing the next contract.

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Learn more about The Journey at mission.org/thejourney.

The Journey is sponsored by our friends at Salesforce Essentials. We use Salesforce Essentials every day and it’s part of our own business journey. Essentials combines sales and service tools in a single app to help small businesses win customers and keep them happy. See how Salesforce Essentials can help you be your best business at salesforce.com/thejourney.

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You have a great idea for a product. It’s revolutionary, and it’s a project you need to bring to life. So, how do you build it?

Unless you plan to handcraft every product, your next step is to perfect the design and then find a manufacturer to mass-produce it for you.

But even when you find that “perfect” manufacturing partner, you still might want to hold your breath. All it takes is one bad shipment for you to be out of cash, out of product, and back at the drawing board.

“We went to reorder more product.. and I don't know why they even sent what they sent, but the products were mangled. On the outside, it looked fine, but if you looked inside, the pouches were sideways and upside down [and] completely ridiculously unsellable.”

That’s Robert Patton, an Army veteran and the founder of SHEATH Underwear. 

He has faced one manufacturing misstep after another. And while each stumble was tough to swallow — financially and personally — he’s persevered through the hard times, learned from failure, perfected his processes, and built a business that is growing every day.

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Learn more about The Journey at mission.org/thejourney.

The Journey is sponsored by our friends at Salesforce Essentials. We use Salesforce Essentials every day and it’s part of our own business journey. Essentials combines sales and service tools in a single app to help small businesses win customers and keep them happy. See how Salesforce Essentials can help you be your best business at salesforce.com/thejourney.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It’s no hidden truth that the lifestyle of an entrepreneur is in most ways a gamble. You’re risking finances, personal relationships, and often your own mental well-being. Yet it’s this BIG bet that so many smart, driven people are willing to make -- and it’s a gamble that today’s guest was willing to make more than once.

“There was doubt of being like, can I handle two products? And if I look back at my life, that was probably one of the best decisions… Listen to the market. What is the market telling you? Because I assure you, whatever you assume is not going to be right in some way, shape, or form.”

That’s Marissa Limsiaco, first the President and Co-Founder of Tenavox, and second the President and Co-Founder of Otso. She’s a West Point graduate and an Army veteran. And now, as an entrepreneur, Marissa has spent years in the weeds of product development, finding market fit, growing sales, and planning for expansion. 

She’s no novice to business and no stranger to hard work. But she will be the first to tell you that there’s absolutely no fighting the market. No amount of work will turn passion into dollars if the business model isn’t there. But on the flip side, when the market is telling you there is a need, your potential success can be limitless.

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Learn more about The Journey at mission.org/thejourney.

The Journey is sponsored by our friends at Salesforce Essentials. We use Salesforce Essentials every day and it’s part of our own business journey. Essentials combines sales and service tools in a single app to help small businesses win customers and keep them happy. See how Salesforce Essentials can help you be your best business at salesforce.com/thejourney.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When building a business, it is easy to be blinded by the big, flashy measures of success. And when your heart and mind are set on acquiring more customers, getting more investors, hiring more people, and scaling the business as fast as possible… you can quickly lose sight of the daily wins that lead to lasting growth with higher impact.

"Defining successes is fairly simple for us. The first step of that is number one, we have to operate safely. If we're not operating safely, we will not have customers. ... The next thing we have to do is make sure that people are happy. How do we make sure that people are happy? Listen to them, understand their needs, be compassionate, and empathetic to what's going on in their world, and make sure to be there."

That’s Glenn Gonzales, an Air Force Academy graduate, a Lt Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserves, and the founder and CEO of Jet It, a hybrid ownership program that provides customers with access to round-the-clock private travel.

In Glenn’s 40 years of aviation experience, he’s learned that finding long-term success isn’t about scaling and scaling fast, it’s about staying true to your core values and focusing on delivering an amazing customer experience, one plane ride at a time.

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The Journey is back for another season!

Season 8 focuses on the stories of veterans-turned-entrepreneurs. We’ll dive into the backgrounds of men and women who chose to dedicate themselves to service to their country, and then took on another difficult role when they re-entered civilian life and became entrepreneurs, business owners, and CEOs. 

Episode 1 of Season 8 drops on Veteran’s Day, November 11, with a new episode releasing every Wednesday thereafter. Subscribe and enjoy!

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We live in a diverse world full of different cultures, new ideas, fresh perspectives, and uniquely-themselves people. But oftentimes those who are seated around boardroom tables or walking up and down corporate halls don’t reflect this same level of diversity. 

In Kobie Fuller’s experience, this disconnect between what we see in our day-to-day lives versus what we witness in the antiquated world of business isn’t necessarily due to a lack of desire to bridge the gap – it’s more about the need for a more educated effort.

“There is this prominent corporate VC that I met with who had the aspirations to fund more black founders. And he then would say, ‘I have no idea where to find them.’ … Then I started rattling off names of people … that frankly, given someone whose mission [was to fund more black founders], he should've known. And he was like, ‘I have no idea who those people are.’ Well, the problem is that you're not spending time interacting with the black community and the networks by which you actually tap into these people.”

Kobie is the co-founder of Valence and a General Partner at Upfront Ventures. He’s been involved in venture capital since college, and he regularly comes face-to-face with this problem of “I want to hire black talent, but I don’t know where to look.”

It’s a multi-pronged issue that requires a multi-pronged solution, which is what Kobie is working toward at Valence, a network that he is helping build which connects, showcases, and empowers the global black professional community.

Building this community is not a typical nine-to-five job, though. It’s a massive undertaking that he’s putting on his shoulders while still working as a full-time VC. So how does Kobie do it all –  balance all the work needed to achieve this big vision with his daily responsibilities all the while also prioritizing being a great husband and father? 

As Kobie shares today, it's all about mindset and focus.

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Learn more about The Journey at mission.org/thejourney.

The Journey is sponsored by our friends at Salesforce Essentials. We use Salesforce Essentials every day and it’s part of our own business journey. Essentials combines sales and service tools in a single app to help small businesses win customers and keep them happy. See how Salesforce Essentials can help you be your best business at salesforce.com/thejourney.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Embracing a certain amount of delusional optimism is the hallmark of every entrepreneur.

But what separates the dreamers from the doers? What differentiates those who would like to reach their goals and those who do reach their goals?

“At that point I had three children, and staying the course was really me dedicating myself to not going back to work for anyone. … There's nothing about it that makes logical sense, [but] as an entrepreneur, you are always operating with this level of delusion.”

That’s Shelly Bell, the Founder and CEO of Black Girl Ventures.

Over the course of her nontraditional career, Shelly has listened to one playlist on repeat: test, iterate, pivot. And while each pivot seemed like an impulsive decision to her peers, at the heart of every choice was a system. And as Shelly shares today, it's that system which draws the line between those who say and those who do.

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Learn more about The Journey at mission.org/thejourney.

The Journey is sponsored by our friends at Salesforce Essentials. We use Salesforce Essentials every day and it’s part of our own business journey. Essentials combines sales and service tools in a single app to help small businesses win customers and keep them happy. See how Salesforce Essentials can help you be your best business at salesforce.com/thejourney.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Many of the institutions that we rely on every day have been built on decades-old infrastructure and outdated business philosophies. There are countless industries with roots in the past that have yet to face disruption or embrace innovation.

One such institution is our legal and justice system.

Great legal representation, education on the laws and your rights, ease of access to legal advice… all of these things have historically been trapped in the marbled hallways of expensive lawyers’ offices.

Charley Moore is on a mission to change that.

“If you look at the core of how justice is rendered around the world, it's a very in-person, physical process,” says Charley. “It's just completely antiquated. [But our world is] all digital and … everything that can be digitized will be digitized. Most legal services can be digital, so they will be.”

Charley is the founder and CEO of Rocket Lawyer, an online legal tech company making access to legal services easy and affordable.

The legal system has long been due for disruption, and using the power of great customer experience, Charley's building the momentum needed to push that disruption forward. 

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Learn more about The Journey at mission.org/thejourney.

The Journey is sponsored by our friends at Salesforce Essentials. We use Salesforce Essentials every day and it’s part of our own business journey. Essentials combines sales and service tools in a single app to help small businesses win customers and keep them happy. See how Salesforce Essentials can help you be your best business at salesforce.com/thejourney.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How much of our destinies do we control? How much is predetermined? And how much do the environments around us play a role in who we can be or what we can do?

As entrepreneurs, we like to think that we own our destinies, that we are 100% in charge. But the real world has a habit of reminding us that dreams are just that – dreams – and not everyone will see the same vision that we do.

“I walked in [to SMBA] and I was ready to apply for a loan and made my pitch to score, and the woman said to me, ‘Yeah, I don't think this is going to work. You have three strikes against you: You're a woman, you're in debt, and I don't know any successful black women in financial services, so I think you should do something else.”

That’s Melissa Bradley, the cofounder at Ureeka, a company on a mission to democratize economic opportunity for underrepresented entrepreneurs. 

She has always dreamed big. But it wasn’t until her dreams started to expand beyond what traditional society could offer her that she realized in order to create her personal destiny, she’d have to change reality for everyone else in the process.

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Learn more about The Journey at mission.org/thejourney.

The Journey is sponsored by our friends at Salesforce Essentials. We use Salesforce Essentials every day and it’s part of our own business journey. Essentials combines sales and service tools in a single app to help small businesses win customers and keep them happy. See how Salesforce Essentials can help you be your best business at salesforce.com/thejourney.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We do weird things to fit in… buy the new Nikes, cave to the Kombucha, even try goat yoga. Fads come and go all the time, but what happens when these “passing fads” don’t pass, and they bleed into our cultural definitions, instead? When they become destructive or harmful – all in the name of an arbitrary beauty standard that exists only in our heads?

“My hair ended up falling [out] because I wasn't really taking care of it. My mom was like, ‘No, you're not going to [perm] you’re hair because you nine. You need to wait.’ And for me, it was an accomplishment if I were to perm my hair because only then I’d feel like I was pretty enough.”

That’s Widline Pyrame, the founder of Fusion Dolls, a company creating diverse and ethnically correct toy dolls. Since she was a child, Widline has given in to fads and lost sight of who she is. Today, she is changing that – not just for herself, but for girls, boys, women, and men everywhere.

Building a business requires connection, but before we can connect with those around us, we first have to connect with and accept ourselves.

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Learn more about The Journey at mission.org/thejourney.

The Journey is sponsored by our friends at Salesforce Essentials. We use Salesforce Essentials every day and it’s part of our own business journey. Essentials combines sales and service tools in a single app to help small businesses win customers and keep them happy. See how Salesforce Essentials can help you be your best business at salesforce.com/thejourney.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.