Travis Steffen, bestselling author of Viral Hero, is a serial entrepreneur with 7 successful exits (and some crash-and-burn failures) to his name. Travis is the CEO of GrowFlow, a cloud-based software suite for cannabis businesses. With customers ranging from growers to retailers, GrowFlow is the market-leading cannabis software solution in several states.
Travis is a life-long athlete with a Masters in Exercise Physiology from the University of Northern Iowa. Outside of his professional life, he is an NPC physique athlete and an ultra marathoner. He enjoys poker, space, fantasy football, film, and a good rack of ribs.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Travis’ background and how he became the CEO of GrowFlow
- Travis’ transition from the finance and fitness industries to the cannabis industry
- GrowFlow’s work and what sets them apart from other players in the cannabis industry
- How Travis attracts quality talent for GrowFlow
- Travis talks about societal shifts in the acceptance of cannabis and recent developments in the industry
- The strategies GrowFlow uses in recruitment and how the company maintains diversity in the workplace
- Travis shares his advice on improving employee performance and explains why the company uses surveys in the hiring process
- Where to learn more about Travis Steffen and GrowFlow
In this episode…
As more people embrace the legalization of cannabis, the sector continues to expand with growers, processors, and retailers joining the industry. This growth means that new people have to be hired, which can be a challenge for startup companies and new employees.
For Travis Steffen, the transition from finance and fitness to the cannabis industry was exciting because the field is not as highly regulated as other industries. He had to adapt fast. Attracting quality talent for his company has had its unique challenges, forcing him to think outside the box to ensure growth and diversity in the workforce.
In this week’s episode of Elevate Hire, host Greg Toroosian interviews Travis Steffen, CEO of GrowFlow, about building teams in the cannabis industry. They discuss recent changes in the industry, the strategies GrowFlow uses to attract and maintain quality talent, and Travis’ advice on improving employee performance. Stay tuned.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
- Elevate Hire
- GrowFlow
- Travis Steffen on LinkedIn
- Travis Steffen on Instagram
- Viral Hero: How To Build Viral Products, Turn Customers Into Marketers, And Achieve Superhuman Growth by Travis Steffen
- Viral Hero
- TDC Capital Advisors
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by Elevate Hire, a talent acquisition firm which provides leadership and senior level recruiting services for early-stage companies. Elevate Hire also offers advisory and consultancy services for select clients.
Elevate Hire was founded by Greg Toroosian after more than a decade in the Talent Acquisition space, working with startups, globally recognized brands and recruiting agencies, because I found that too many early-stage companies were struggling to recruit and retain top talent during crucial times of growth.
Because recruitment and talent retainment are keys to having a successful company in today’s fast-paced economy, Elevate Hire is committed to helping you recruit the right top tier talent, at the right time, can differentiate the most successful companies from the rest of their field.
If your company needs assistance with talent search, hiring process improvements, choosing and implementing recruiting tools, team training, or if you’re in need of an advisor, get in touch with us today to find out how we can make this work so that you can start building the company of your dreams.
Click this link to learn more about us and the services that we can provide for you and your company.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:04
Welcome to the Elevate Hire podcast where CEOs founders and executives of early stage companies talk through their experiences and building teams.
Greg Toroosian 0:16
Greg Toroosian here, founder of Elevate Hire and host of the Elevate Hire podcast where I talk with CEOs, founders and executives about the challenges and successes they’ve had while recruiting for their teams. In this episode, we will be discussing how a co-founder and advisor thinks about building teams, his raw skill set or industry and domain knowledge more important, and what it’s like changing industry focus. This episode is brought to you by Elevate Hire, a talent acquisition advisory, consultancy and execution firm who recruit leadership and senior level team members for early stage and rapidly growing companies. We believe that recruiting and retaining talent is key to having a successful company in today’s fast moving and currently uncertain economy. Being able to recruit the right top talent at the right time can differentiate them from successful companies from the rest of their field. If your company needs assistance, recruiting key team members improving your hiring processes, choosing and implementing recruiting tools, structuring and training your team or if you need an advisor then we can help. For more details visit elevatehire.com.
My guest today is Travis Steffen, CEO of GrowFlow, and best selling author. He’s a serial founder and active advisor. And interestingly enough, he actually started with GrowFlow as an advisor to the CEO before moving into the actual CEO position. So welcome to the show, Travis. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you for making some time in your very busy schedule and extremely long day that you just shared with me. When I start the show, I like to actually hand it over to the guests to give us more information about themselves, their background, and in your case, how you manage to become the CEO
Travis Steffen 1:48
at GrowFlow. Sure, well, I’ve been starting scaling and selling companies in Silicon Valley in Los Angeles for the last 12 years. In that time, I’ve been fortunate enough to have seven successful exits. And more than my fair share of companies that I started to have not had a successful exit. So I don’t want to paint my entire career as just this upward trajectory there. It’s the entrepreneurial roller coaster that a lot of serial founders experience but it is starting companies and scaling companies is definitely in it’s deep seated part of who I am. And I’ve done so in a variety of different industries for the sole reason that I’ve every time also one I’ll get non competed in that industry for a little while. So I’ll be forced to flex my muscles in other ways and in other industries and so forth.
Greg Toroosian 2:42
You answered one of my questions already.
Travis Steffen 2:45
Sure. Yeah. Yeah, my education is traditionally my graduate degrees in exercise physiology and biomechanics. So has nothing to do with it today. But I’d have sold to fitness companies when I sold the business First one I competed for three years in the industry and so had to just get into other industries and repurpose that knowledge elsewhere. But since I had no traditional business education, it was a series of you know, failing to a lesser and lesser degree until I figured some things out and and then from there just tried to from if, the way I tried to frame it, I used to play professional online poker player poker once upon a time, and the way that they explain the game is in the short term, poker is luck, you have no control over the cards that you’re playing fundamentally sound you’re, you’re making sound decisions over and over again. Over time, poker becomes a game of skill of luck evens out. And so my intent as an entrepreneur is to play as many hands as I possibly can. sure you’re going to get people like Mark Zuckerberg who get completely lucky on the very first shot, yeah, and create some incredible sensation, and is able to just build his leadership and executive skills through that one venture basically forever. For many others, it doesn’t for most others, it does not go that route. So, that kind of brought me to today. I had been an advisor or an investor to a number of early stage startups. I’ve been a mentor at a number of accelerators, and advisor to a number of venture capital funds. One company that had gone through an accelerator program that I was a mentor at was GrowFlow. And so I started to work with them every week for about two and a half years. The founders both realized they did not want to actually be the leaders of the company assets scale that was their first tech company and they were still getting their feet wet and learning. But they wanted to bring in more experienced leadership. They wanted to go be creative and focus on building the product. I had just raised a little money for another company I had started. So it took a good several months of them working on me in order to get me to jump in, but since I did the team was absolutely incredible. And I was able to bring on a number of experienced leaders that I’ve worked with, or co founded companies with previously, and it’s just been a heck of a ride since
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