Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

Dave Gulas
  • 5.0 (96)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Daily

What separates entrepreneurs who scale from those who stall? Every week, Beyond Fulfillment host Dave Gulas sits down with founders, CEOs, and business builders for raw, unfiltered conversations about what actually works — and what nearly broke them. You'll hear from leaders like David Meltzer, Susan Sly, Brian Esposito, Darren Jacklin, and Susan Bratton, plus the next generation of entrepreneurs quietly building remarkable companies. No polished PR answers. Just hard-won lessons, pivotal decisions, and strategies you can apply immediately — whether you're just starting or already scaling. If you're serious about entrepreneurship, leadership, business growth, and building on your own terms, this is your show. Follow now and never miss an episode.

  1. 21h ago

    He Closed Clients From a Bathroom Stall. Now He Runs a 40-Person Company

    Chris M. Walker was buried in debt, grinding in tech support, and dead sure corporate life would break him. Entrepreneurship wasn’t the dream; it was the only exit. Google crushed his first big break overnight. Desperation turned him relentless. Scraping by on affiliate clicks, Chris chased dozens of hustles—reselling Amazon junk on eBay, cold emails from an office bathroom, relentless trial and failure. The shift came brutal and sudden: a Google algorithm update wiped out his income. Forced to adapt, he launched a threadbare service, built a Facebook group, and by accident, channeled that chaos into Legiit—a freelancer marketplace that scaled out of pure necessity, not vision. Culture came first. Real revenue came fast. And every hire, every risk, was about surviving first, winning second. The hardest hit? Watching AI nuke a core revenue stream, losing a payment processor overnight, and choking down the urge to quit as fraud gutted the balance sheet. Rock bottom wasn’t an abstraction. He almost sold everything on Flippa. He didn’t. He just pivoted. Leaned deeper. Built back again. If you are building something from zero, scared you have no blueprint, or fighting to keep pace with a market that shifts beneath your feet—this conversation covers all of it honestly. Connect with Chris M. Walker: https://legiit.com/ https://chrismwalker.io/ ________________________________________ Learn more about our episode partners and support the show: 💼 Max Capital Hub: https://maxcapitalhub.com/ 🌊 Oceans Talent: www.oceanstalent.com/dave 🌐 Nord VPN: • https://go.nordvpn.net/aff_c?offer_id=612&aff_id=151748&url_id=14830 • https://go.nordpass.io/aff_c?offer_id=488&aff_id=151748&url_id=9356 ________________________________________ #entrepreneurship #founderstory #grit #aiimpact

  2. 5d ago

    He Stole Food to Survive. Then Built $450M in Revenue. Jerry Brazie on Street Smarts Over Degrees

    Jerry Brazie stole food to eat as a kid. At 15 he dropped out of school. At 17 he was living in a $25 a week flop house with heroin addicts and hookers, holding down a full-time job. He has been shot at, beaten within an inch of his life, and stabbed with a 10-inch screwdriver that he pulled out himself over a weekend and went back to work Monday morning. He has also built $450 million in revenue across a dozen businesses over 30 years. Transportation, commercial real estate, gas stations, car washes, convenience stores, investment companies. No college degree. No safety net. No conventional playbook. In this conversation, Dave Gulas and Jerry go through the whole arc. The transportation company he built to $4 million in year one and watched his partners fire him on the one-year anniversary. The moment he went to his six biggest customers and asked them to prepay him a quarter million dollars a month to fund a brand new company from scratch. He went six for six because he did not know that was an unreasonable request. The $14 million loss. The $10 million loss that took six years to climb out of. The $200,000 payroll due Monday with nothing in the bank Friday. And how he stayed even-keeled through all of it because the streets had already shown him what the actual bottom looks like. He also gets into why doing what you love is the wrong advice for most entrepreneurs, what actually drove every dollar he ever made, and the mastermind group a retired Fortune 500 CEO invited him into at 30 that changed how he thought about business entirely. Jerry Brazie is 57, married 30 years, three kids, still building. The bottom he crawled out of would have finished most people. It did not finish him. ____________________________________________________ Learn more about the Kronos Group: https://www.thechronosgroup.org Connect with Jerry: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerrybrazie/?skipRedirect=true Learn more about our episode sponsor, Max Capital Hub: https://maxcapitalhub.com/ #beyondfulfillment #entrepreneurship #founderstory #JerryBrazie #KronosGroup #entrepreneur #businesspodcast #smallbusiness #mindset #resilience

  3. Jul 14

    Failed Restaurants, Massive Debt, and an NBA Ring: Joel Steele's Unbelievable Comeback

    Joel Steele had a gun pointed in his face at 2 AM in Camden, New Jersey at 17 years old. The man holding it looked back and forth between Joel and his friend and said: which one should I put a hole in first? They got out. Joel decided that was the last time he was going to press his luck. What followed was a healthy fast food restaurant built from scratch with no experience, no money, and no restaurant background, three locations, national ambitions, and $850,000 in debt by the time he was 24. He walked the streets of Philadelphia envying the homeless people he passed because they had nothing left to lose. He did. Then he became a financial advisor on straight commission. He started at zero every single day. He paid off $850,000 in debt in less than two years. Then that stopped feeling like enough. In this episode, Dave Gulas sits down with Joel Steele, author of Life Switch and minority owner of an NBA championship affiliate, to go through the whole arc. The gun. The restaurant collapse. The debt payoff. The moment success stopped feeling like success. The three Ps from his book, Potential, Passion, and Purpose and how he applies them to help other people find their own life switch moments. And the NBA championship ring that showed up at his house after the Denver Nuggets won it all in 2023. That one he did not see coming. Joel's story runs through a gun in his face, $850,000 in debt at 24, and a championship ring he never put on a goal list. Each chapter built on what the last one cost him. __________________________________________ Connect with Joel Steele: linkedin.com/in/joel-steele-9685888/?skipRedirect=true Learn more about our episode sponsor, Max Capital Hub: https://maxcapitalhub.com/ #entrepreneurship #founder #lifestruggles #lifeswitch #businessowner

  4. Jul 9

    $30 in the Bank to Financially Free with Peter Skaggs

    Peter Skaggs did not plan to start a mortgage company. The 2008 financial crisis ended his W2 career and left him with a choice: find another job or build something of his own. He sold his family home to fund the start. Innovative Mortgage has been running ever since. In this episode, Peter walks through what those early years actually cost him, the sacrifices that do not make it into the success story version, and the steady grind required to build a business through one of the worst economic environments in recent history. He also gets into what came after the mortgage business stabilized. Real estate investing, the development of a passive income model through Investor Lighthouse, and the practical framework he uses to analyze properties, build cash flow, and manage risk without needing to be hands-on in every decision. This is a conversation about what it looks like to build not once but twice, and what the first build taught him that made the second one possible. Connect with Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petertskaggs/ Learn more about our episode sponsor Max Capital Hub: https://maxcapitalhub.com/ #entrepreneur #founder #founderstory #realestate

  5. Jul 8

    AI Phase 4 and Where We Are Headed with Jim Tompkins

    Jim Tompkins is a master of building businesses around supply chain. He did not ask for AI to change his playbook. It came for him anyway. The rules got ripped up in 2018 when Google put AI on steroids. Jim breaks down every AI leap—from tool to worker to partner, then a force so powerful it can restructure entire companies overnight. This conversation isn't about shiny gadgets. It's how you fire $2M employees because the machine gets smarter, and how companies shrink headcount while tripling firepower-by renting talent and tech, not buying it. The rawest moment? Jim doesn't blink when he says: resist change and you become the next Blockbuster. Ignore the bad data, pretend cyber-risks don’t matter, and you’ll be outflanked before you know it. The only thing moving faster than AI is the fallout from leaders who think the old playbook still protects them. If you are building teams in a world where AI kills yesterday’s job, wrestling with when to trust data versus gut, or staring down the barrel of restructuring your whole company-this conversation covers all of it honestly. Connect with Jim Tompkins: https://jimtompkins.com/ ________________________________________ Learn more about our episode partners and support the show: 💼 Max Capital Hub: https://maxcapitalhub.com/ 🌊 Oceans Talent: www.oceanstalent.com/dave 🌐 Nord VPN: https://go.nordvpn.net/aff_c?offer_id... https://go.nordpass.io/aff_c?offer_id... #supplychain #artificialintelligence #leadership #digitaltransformation

  6. Jul 7

    She Built a Business by Accident (Then Sold It) with Sarah Jeanneault

    Sarah Jeanneault started as a schoolteacher. She did not plan a career in fintech. An unexpected life change pushed her toward a side project. The side project found an audience. The audience became a business. In this episode, Sarah walks through what that transition actually required: listening closely to early followers before the product was fully formed, building community through blogging and early Twitter before either of those was a recognized growth strategy, and staying honest about what was working and what was not in a way most founders avoid. She covers the moment she realized her original customer was not her real customer, what it cost her to make that shift, and how the business changed when she finally built for the right person. She also gets into what happens after an exit, the emotional reality most founders do not talk about until they are on the other side of it. If you are building something from scratch, figuring out who you are actually building for, or trying to understand what comes after the thing you built is gone, this conversation covers all of it honestly. Connect with Sarah: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iam-sarah-potter/ Learn more about our episode sponsor Max Capital Hub: https://maxcapitalhub.com/ #entrepreneurship #startupjourney #fintech #growthmindset

  7. Jul 2

    Fired From Corporate. Now He's Disrupting a $6 Billion Industry.

    Craig Taylor spent two decades in corporate cybersecurity watching companies train employees the same way, fear, compliance checklists, and the assumption that scaring people into good behavior actually works. It does not. He left to build CyberHoot, a cybersecurity training platform built around positive reinforcement and gamification instead of punishment. In this episode, Craig walks through what that shift actually required: keeping his day job while building, finding a co-founder who filled the gaps he could not, and iterating through multiple versions of the product before landing on what works. He is honest about the moments he almost quit, what psychology taught him about how people actually learn, and why a decade in he is still in the trenches building rather than coasting. If you are building a business in a space dominated by incumbents doing it the old way, this conversation covers what it takes to stay in long enough to find the model that works. Connect with Craig: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigmtaylor/?skipRedirect=true Learn more about our episode sponsor Max Capital Hub: https://maxcapitalhub.com/ #cybersecurity #startups #entrepreneurship #gamification #leadership

  8. Jun 30

    From Recess Monitor to Top-Rated Etsy Seller: Kira Hartley Klinger's Accidental Empire

    Kira Hartley Klinger never went to college and never took a business class. She started reselling auction finds out of necessity and turned it into two thriving shops on eBay and Etsy. In this episode, Kira walks through how she scaled from side gigs to a sustainable business by experimenting with products, adapting fast when online marketplaces got more competitive, and developing a selling style that customers actually remembered. She talks about what built her customer loyalty: handwritten notes in every order, real relationships with local communities, and product descriptions that read like stories instead of listings. That same instinct for authentic connection eventually turned her into a self-published author and a sought-after speaker, despite a long-standing fear of public speaking she had to work through first. This episode covers the financial pressure of scaling without outside funding, the decisions that came with growing two shops at once, and what it actually took to put herself in front of an audience for the first time. If you are building something without a traditional background or a clear roadmap, Kira's story is proof that creativity and persistence can build a real business from nothing. Connect with Kira: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kira-hartley-klinger-319a68a5/ Learn more about our episode sponsor, Oceans Talent: https://oceanstalent.com/dave #entrepreneurship #etsy #creativebusiness #smallbusinessjourney

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5
out of 5
96 Ratings

About

What separates entrepreneurs who scale from those who stall? Every week, Beyond Fulfillment host Dave Gulas sits down with founders, CEOs, and business builders for raw, unfiltered conversations about what actually works — and what nearly broke them. You'll hear from leaders like David Meltzer, Susan Sly, Brian Esposito, Darren Jacklin, and Susan Bratton, plus the next generation of entrepreneurs quietly building remarkable companies. No polished PR answers. Just hard-won lessons, pivotal decisions, and strategies you can apply immediately — whether you're just starting or already scaling. If you're serious about entrepreneurship, leadership, business growth, and building on your own terms, this is your show. Follow now and never miss an episode.

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