From Grit to Growth

Most great businesses start with a personal problem. For Jacque Burklund, it was heartburn in the pasta aisle. In this episode of From Grit to Growth, Mark Hasebroock and Jennifer DiMotta sit down with Jacque, co-founder of Caranera, a carrot based marinara sauce that's quietly disrupting one of the most crowded shelves in the grocery store. What started as a spin on a Bloody Mary at a winter...

A lot of businesses don’t fail; they stall. In this episode of From Grit to Growth, Mark Hasebroock and Jennifer DiMotta unpack one of the most common and overlooked growth killers, which is the plateau trap. When a business is still profitable and customers are happy, it’s easy for founders to assume everything is working. But that’s often exactly when progress quietly stops. Their conversation e...

At a conceptual level, most business owners understand that more volume should mean better pricing. In reality, turning that idea into something that actually works is a lot harder. In this episode of From Grit to Growth, Mark Hasebroock and Jennifer DiMotta sit down with Bill Smithers, founder of CBUSA, to talk about how independent home builders discovered the power of collective buying. Bill sh...

There’s a weird thing that happens as companies grow: founders start farther away from their customers. Early on, you talk to them all the time. You hear what they like, what annoys them, why they chose you in the first place. Then the business grows, dashboards appear, teams expand, and suddenly “customer feedback” shows up as a report instead of a conversation. Mark Hasebroock and Jennifer DiMot...

Chris Wichert didn’t set out to build just another sneaker brand. He and his co-founder wanted to take real Italian craftsmanship and make it accessible, modern, and wearable for everyday life. So they went to Italy, knocked on factory doors, launched pop-ups in New York, and slowly built Koio from the ground up. For a while, things moved fast. Retail stores opened. The team grew. The brand expand...

If someone asked you today how profitable your business is, would you have a real answer or a rough feeling? That gap is where a lot of growing companies get into trouble, even the ones that look successful from the outside. In this episode, Jennifer and Mark share a real client story that shows how missing financial visibility can drain a business while everyone stays busy. They break down what a...

CEO compensation tends to spark strong opinions, especially from the outside, but the reason it exists becomes clearer once you spend time inside the role itself. In this episode of From Grit to Growth, Jennifer DiMotta and Mark Hasebroock talk through what actually sits behind that paycheck, drawing from years of working alongside founders, boards, and leadership teams when decisions carry real w...

What would happen inside a business if a founder stepped away for 90 days? That question cuts straight to the health of a leadership team, and most leaders know the answer the moment they hear it: things would fall apart.  In this new episode of From Grit to Growth, hosts Mark Hasebroock and Jennifer DiMotta explore what they consistently see inside companies that grow well and those that struggle...

Founders talk endlessly about growth, discipline, and execution, but very few of them stop to ask a more personal question: where does your energy actually come from, and where does it disappear? This conversation explores how daily choices, stress responses, routines, and even the way leaders react in meetings can shape performance way more than ambitious goals ever could. Mark Hasebroock and Jen...

Picture this: you block off two full days for strategic planning. The room is booked, the decks are polished, energy is high… and by hour six, everyone’s half-present, half-checking email, wondering how much of this will actually stick. That frustration is exactly where this conversation begins on this new episode of From Grit to Growth. Instead of stretching planning across marathon sessions, the...

Most founders can point to a moment when the work stopped being about products, channels, or growth tactics and started feeling more personal and harder to explain, because it involved managing people, energy, conflict, and expectations, not just numbers on a dashboard. In this conversation, Mark Hasebroock and Jennifer DiMotta talk through a small set of books that have stayed with them over the...

Most founders think about the board only when a fundraising round forces the conversation. But that room can either become a real advantage or a constant source of tension, depending on how it’s built and how it communicates. In this episode, Mark and Jennifer walk through what they’ve learned from years of serving on public and private boards. They cover everything from setting expectations early...

Jules Pieri built The Grommet at a time when big-box retail was crowding out the makers creating the most interesting products. Instead of accepting that trend, she paid attention to small signals: creators experimenting on their own, customers craving discovery, and the internet reshaping the way to build trust. Her curiosity became a platform that launched thousands of products and gave underdog...

Jewels Burdick never set out to build a beauty brand. She was trying to help her mom, make sense of a health scare, and clean up her own routine, but one small decision to learn more turned into weekends spent experimenting in her kitchen, long nights reading ingredient lists, and eventually a quiet but steady stream of people knocking on her design studio door asking for “more of that cream.” Sim...

As the year wraps, Mark and Jennifer have the conversation most founders avoid: how the business actually performed — not how it felt. They unpack the three areas that never lie in a growing company: people, cash, and focus. Through a practical, operator-level lens, they explore how loyalty blindness quietly stalls growth, why it’s so hard to confront, and how integrity — not comfort — is what ult...

The early days of e-commerce were chaotic. No Shopify, no Klaviyo, no attribution dashboards. In this conversation, Jennifer turns the tables and interviews Mark about the path that began with a phone call from a man selling hammocks in Washington and eventually led to Hayneedle’s sale for hundreds of millions. Their story was built inside a Barnes & Noble, fueled by instinct, trial-and-error,...

FrostBuddy didn’t start with a pitch deck or a perfect plan. It started with two brothers in a small Illinois town who were curious enough to chase an idea and resilient enough to keep going when the market got crowded. In this conversation, Brock and Mitch Mammoser walk through the early days, the decisions that shaped their momentum, the people they trusted along the way, and the mindset that he...

When Julie Cole left the courtroom to start making waterproof name labels in her basement with three other moms, she didn’t know she was building a category-defining brand. Twenty years later, Mabel’s Labels has become a household name, helping millions of families stay organized and inspiring countless entrepreneurs along the way. In this conversation, Julie shares how a simple frustration in her...

When Amy & JJ Stone founded GURU Pet Company in 2023, it was like stepping out from behind the curtain to take center stage in a play. After more than a decade inventing pet products for some of the biggest pet brands in the world, the Stones decided it was time to step into the spotlight.  GURU was a hit almost immediately, but their growth journey was not without its mistakes. From too much...

Founders fail for a variety of reasons, and it’s almost never because of a bad product. Over the years, Mark and Jennifer have had front-row seats to a multitude of startups, and they’ve spotted patterns that separate the successes from the failures. From poor cash flow management to hiring mistakes to overestimating marketing, in this episode, we walk through the five most common reasons founders...

Cash is king. No one knows the truth of that statement better than a startup founder who suddenly finds himself owing his suppliers, his employees and his landlord all within a week of each other. Growth is exciting, but it’s easy to lose sight of your cash flow and end up “growing yourself into a hole.” In this episode, Mark shares the hard stories from his time at GiftCertificates.com and Haynee...

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” It’s a common saying in the business world, and it’s also one of the most important truths that the most successful startups understand. Too many founders think that culture is as simple as putting a ping pong table in the breakroom or taking the team out for drinks once a quarter, but it’s so much more than that. In this episode, we discuss the role culture...

More often than not, when we ask founders how they’re implementing AI in their day-to-day, we’re met with blank stares. Artificial intelligence is changing the landscape for businesses everywhere, so why aren’t more founders leveraging it to make their companies more scalable and profitable? In today’s episode, we’re sharing our favorite ways business leaders can use AI. Whether it’s gaining small...

Welcome back to “From Grit to Growth,” where we discuss what it takes to be a successful founder. In this episode, we’re talking about health. While many people don’t make the connection between physical health and success at work, we find that the founder’s personal commitment to health can be a pretty good predictor of a startup’s success level. In short, the healthier the founder, the healthier...

In this episode of “From Grit to Growth,” we’re back with our thoughts on cash.  Mark shares a story about a founder who wanted $1 million for desks and “probably a CTO” and a few other things. Mark’s response: “If I gave you that $1 million today, how would your business look different in a year?” What followed was an eye-opening discussion that left the founder with a totally different understan...