The Journey

Of all the milestone wins in the early stages of building a company, one of the most rewarding (and most scary) is the win of getting that first customer.

“There's nothing like doing. Before jumping into an adventure, there's fear. You go around asking questions, but there's nothing like selling to the first customer. That's the ultimate validation.”

Eugenio Pace is the founder and CEO of Auth0. For Eugenio, it was never a question of if his product was needed – he knew it was. Rather it was a question of if the right customer would be willing to pay for it.

And finding that ‘perfect first customer’ isn’t just an important part of Eugenio’s story, it’s a crucial step for any new business owner.

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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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Have you ever worked for a company where something was just… out of sync?

The goals of the sales department didn’t quite match the goals over in marketing. The hiring and firing process seemed to change a little every time. The values that the managers encouraged in their teams didn’t really align with the ones they held themselves. No matter the department, the team, or the process, everything seemed to operate apart from each other instead of in unison.

It wasn’t a sales problem. It wasn’t a product problem. It wasn’t a YOU problem… It was a mission problem.

“One piece of advice that someone shared with us early on that we really took to heart is if you're going to build a company, have a mission… Humans, especially today, want to be part of something.”

That’s Michelle Zatlyn, co-founder and COO of Cloudflare. In just nine years, Michelle has helped build the company from user number one to user number 2 million. But it’s not something she or her two co-founders could have ever done without a mission to bind them, their customers, and their growing staff together.

Everybody wants to be part of something bigger - in life or in business. We all want to understand our role in the greater machine. And as an entrepreneur or business owner, you are in a unique position to provide that understanding for your team - not just so your business thrives, but so that your people can thrive with it.

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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’ve all had that moment.

Maybe it was at your wedding, or during the birth of your first child, or when you happened upon that ‘revolutionary’ business idea.

It’s that moment when your mind and heart fall into sync and something just clicks - you know without a doubt what you need to do and who you need to be.

It’s this spectacular moment of clarity… that leaves you completely unprepared to face reality.

Marriage is hard, parenting even harder, and building a business is a struggle every step of the way.

It’s easy to be excited about the start of something new. But as Joel MacIntosh will tell you, there’s a BIG difference between starting something and following through.

“When we hire new people, I still take them through the training and ask them, ‘Hey, have you ever lived paycheck? Because this business at one point lived payroll to payroll.’”

Joel is the founder and CEO of WolfNet. He’s ridden the rollercoaster of entrepreneurship and knows that while there are countless paths to success, all of them are built on passion, focus, and a fierce drive to follow through.

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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.

Underdog stories are everywhere — in film, TV, the news, and all manner of books. They are classic heroic tales about the ones no one bet on (and many bet against) coming out on top.

And while they may be cliche, admit it… we all love a good underdog story.

“I weighed 85 pounds in high school, and no one ever saw me coming. It used to really annoy me, and then I began to realize that that was kind of a superpower being consistently under underestimated.”

Laurel Taylor is the Founder and CEO of FutureFuel.io. She learned to embrace being underestimated and treated that rejection as a catalyst for something more.

And that’s the difference between an underdog-soon-to-be-top-dog and everyone else; they take the pain in life, the rejection of the critics, the questioning of those close to you… and turn it into a fuel that’s unstoppable.

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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.

Year one is the hardest for a startup. From managing cash flow, to building a team, to creating a culture, to designing and iterating your business model… it’s a process most people never have to face and one that a handful go through just once.

But for Gregarious Narain, year one is something he is all too familiar with….

“The way I usually describe myself when people ask me my role is I'm an ideal year one guy. I love that first year when everything is in flux and we're really trying to coordinate all of these moving forces to try and bottle the wind. And that's what I love the most about a startup.”

Take a peek at Greg’s LinkedIn profile and you will see him listed as the founder or co-founder of more than ten businesses… That’s ten startups, ten new ideas, ten different teams, and ten year ones.

And if there’s one thing he’s learned, it’s that the experience is different... Every. Single. Time.

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Be it from an app, instructor, or author - we’ve all heard it in one form or another: being in the here and the now matters.

But for Joe Chura, CEO of Dealer Inspire, “living in the moment” is deeper than just being in the moment. For him, it’s about taking action in every moment.

“Nothing great is easy. Whether that's losing weight or trying to complete a marathon or building a business. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. And it's these little bits of iteration over time, these little chunks of energy, and all of a sudden you can cash in.”

Your life and your career present you with moments. And as you’ll learn with Joe, these moments have the potential to be game-changers… but only if you choose to embrace them.

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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.

You hear it all the time - the heroic story of the ‘solo’ entrepreneur; the single founder who fought the doubters, went up against the odds, and built a business from nothing to billions.

The truth?

A lot of the times, that isn’t the whole picture.

In fact, we’d argue that most of the time, there’s an army of supporting friends, family, mentors, colleagues, and customers behind each and every small business story.

“It's been a personal struggle over the years dealing with all of the complexes that you develop around trying to be a great founder and trying to be a great mother, partner, and friend… And I have unapologetically relied on this village of people around me.”

Sonali Lamba, co-founder of Brideside, knows what it means to be an entrepreneur - the time and emotional commitments required to build a successful business. But she’ll also be the first to admit she can’t do it all... and she definitely can’t do it all alone.

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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.

Do you remember the 2017 DreamWorks’ animated film Boss Baby? The poster featured a serious-looking infant, dressed in a sharp black suit sitting underneath the words ‘Born Leader.’

Well, that’s kind of where our story starts today.

“I used to travel every summer with my dad. He put me in this little tux or some goofy oversized suit and I'd sit in and listen to him in boardrooms with manufacturers and reps and resellers and everybody in between.”

That’s Scott Kitun, preteen business tycoon-turned-CEO of entrepreneurial network, Technori. And as you might have guessed, Scott’s business journey started a lot earlier than most.

Over the years, he’s learned a lot about what to do - how to find investors, how to build a network, how to chase your dream. But through it all, he’s also learned a lot about what not to do, when to keep dreaming, and when to move on.

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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.

Life is volatile. Your closest relationships can end. Your promising business can fail in an instant. The highest highs pave the path for the lowest lows.

But these challenging, I-don’t-know-if-I-will-survive situations, present us with the opportunity to learn our most enduring lessons.

And for Ian Morris, CEO of Market Leader, one of those lessons hit hard in 2008, at the peak of the Great Recession.

“After years of success, I was driving layoffs and took a company down. We took it up from nothing to almost 600 people. After the real estate market collapsed, we took it to a low of 140 people… It was miserable.”

It was a scary time. There were layoffs and long, restless nights. Ian wondered if he was in the right position to lead the company.

But, Ian, now CEO of Likewise, learned something through that tumultuous period with Market Leader: He had to trust his instincts.

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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 are at our happiest when we have a job that's a size too big... I like to think of it as the way you would shop for shoes for toddlers—always a little bit bigger.”

When you picture an entry-level job for a recent college grad, what do you see?

Maybe an intern making coffee or filing an endless stream of paperwork? An assistant doing repetitive computer tasks and taking office calls. On a good day, maybe this intern or assistant has an opportunity to join a team meeting or chime in on small business decisions.

Sounds like a fairly relaxed, even boring, entry into the world of work - and it’s an entry most of us are familiar with. But this ‘pay your dues, put in the time, and slowly earn your way up the corporate ladder’ mindset isn’t for everyone… and it certainly wasn’t the path for Liz Wiseman.

Liz is the founder and CEO of the management research company, The Wiseman Group.

But long before she founded her namesake firm, Liz got her start as a technical trainer with Oracle, which was then just a medium-sized startup.

That experience taught her a valuable lesson about why the ‘perfect fit,’ may not always be the ‘right fit.’

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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.