Raw, Real, and Relatable: Grit to Growth Podcast Tackles the $0–$5M Climb
- Aug 26
- 3 min read
By Jennifer DiMotta
The journey from an idea to a thriving business isn’t linear—and it’s rarely glamorous.
There’s a particular stretch in the founder journey that’s both exhilarating and brutal. It starts the day you make your first sale and doesn't let up until you’ve clawed your way to that elusive $5 million mark. It’s the stage where many founders give up, burn out, or scale too fast without the right foundation. But for those who make it through? It’s where some of the most transformative growth—business and personal—takes place.
That’s why we created Grit to Growth, a podcast dedicated to this intense and often under-discussed phase of entrepreneurship.
I’m Jennifer DiMotta, and I’m co-hosting with my longtime partner in business and life, Mark Hasebroock. Together, we’ve built, scaled, and invested in companies for nearly three decades. From launching businesses on a blank sheet of paper in the 1990s to helping today’s eCommerce founders hit their stride, we’ve lived nearly every version of the “how do we grow from here?” question.
Grit to Growth is for the founders in the middle of the climb.
This isn’t a podcast about startup launches or $100 million exits. It’s not about unicorn hype or viral moments. It’s about the stretch from $0 to $1 million, and then from $1 to $5 million—a phase that demands grit, clarity, and more evolution than most people expect.
This is where you shift from bandaids to systems.
Where doing everything yourself gives way to your first hires—and learning to lead.
Where gut instinct meets data.
Where warm intros start drying up, and cold outreach becomes your new best friend.
Where chaos has to give way to structure.
And where the founder has to grow just as fast as the business.
Some episodes are just the two of us, sharing real stories and raw insights from decades of experience—what worked, what didn’t, and what we wish we’d done differently. Other episodes feature founders in the thick of it, building in real time and offering unfiltered lessons from the front lines.
We talk about things most business podcasts skip over:
How to know when to let go of control
What it really means to “scale”
Why your pricing strategy probably needs a rethink
How your personal health and mindset directly impact your company’s growth
What to do when your team isn't keeping up
How to move from survival mode to strategic leadership
While our sweet spot is eCommerce, the lessons in Grit to Growth apply to any founder navigating the messy middle. Business is business—whether you’re shipping CPG or building a digital service. What matters most is learning how to operate with urgency, clarity, and discipline… without losing yourself in the process.
Our style? Unpolished, bold, and real. We’re not here to sugarcoat the founder experience or talk in theory. We’re here to dig into what it actually takes to grow a business when you're wearing 12 hats, chasing profitability, and trying to stay sane.
If you’re a founder trying to bridge the gap between hustle and scale, we made this for you.
You can listen to the first episodes of Grit to Growth wherever you get your podcasts. And if one of them punches you in the gut in the best way possible? That means we’re doing it right.
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