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 get-together turned into a product now selling in over 130 retail locations, with a soft launch on the West Coast underway.

Jacque walks through the full journey: testing recipes in crock pots at family holidays, walking grocery store aisles to study labels, tapping store managers on the shoulder to get a two-minute pitch, and building a sampling strategy that became the backbone of their retail success. She also gets candid about where they are right now, hand-making every jar while trying to scale production, managing viral momentum, and learning to hand their "baby" off to a co-manufacturer.

Whether you're in food, product, or any consumer business, Jacque's story is a masterclass in validating before you scale, selling before you pitch, and staying in front of your customer no matter how big you get.

Sometimes the most disruptive idea on the shelf is the one nobody saw coming.

Connect with us:

• Jennifer DiMotta on LinkedIn
• Mark Hasebroock on LinkedIn
• Jacque Burklund on LinkedIn
• CARINARA Website

About Dundee Growth Partners

Dundee Growth Partners provides E-commerce leaders with the strategy, systems, and tools they need to face growth challenges and scale with confidence. With deep industry experience and AI-powered platforms, we help leadership teams scale in a sustainable way. Interested in learning more? Click the link below to get started.

• Visit the Dundee Growth Partners website

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 explores how ego can prevent leaders from seeking outside perspective, why most companies wait too long to make changes, and how bringing in the right expertise can unlock the next phase of growth.

They also break down what actually makes outside feedback valuable, how to get real buy-in instead of forced consulting, and why the best time to bring in help isn’t when things are broken but instead it’s when things are going well.

Sometimes the difference between staying stuck and scaling comes down to whether you’re willing to let someone else challenge how you think.

Connect with us:

• Jennifer DiMotta on LinkedIn
• Mark Hasebroock on LinkedIn

About Dundee Growth Partners

Dundee Growth Partners provides E-commerce leaders with the strategy, systems, and tools they need to face growth challenges and scale with confidence. With deep industry experience and AI-powered platforms, we help leadership teams scale in a sustainable way. Interested in learning more? Click the link below to get started.

• Visit the Dundee Growth Partners website

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 shares the story of moving from a large national builder with massive purchasing leverage to running a small custom building company that suddenly had none. That experience sparked the idea behind CBUSA, a network that helps independent builders band together to gain real negotiating power with suppliers.

But the journey from theory to execution wasn’t simple. It required convincing builders to trust each other, suppliers to rethink how they sold, and an entire industry to reconsider how purchasing power works.

The conversation explores the challenges of scaling a network-driven business, navigating the housing downturn, and eventually selling the company during the COVID era.

One takeaway: sometimes the biggest advantage isn’t scale alone, it’s collaboration.

Connect with us:

• Jennifer DiMotta on LinkedIn
• Mark Hasebroock on LinkedIn

About Dundee Growth Partners

Dundee Growth Partners provides E-commerce leaders with the strategy, systems, and tools they need to face growth challenges and scale with confidence. With deep industry experience and AI-powered platforms, we help leadership teams scale in a sustainable way. Interested in learning more? Click the link below to get started.

• Visit the Dundee Growth Partners website

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 DiMotta talk about why that shift creates blind spots for founders. Data matters. Reviews matter. Metrics matter. But none of them replace hearing directly from the person buying your product.

A few short phone calls can reveal more insight than weeks of internal analysis, and this episode of From Grit to Growth deepens into it.

One takeaway: call your customers.

Connect with us:

• Jennifer DiMotta on LinkedIn
• Mark Hasebroock on LinkedIn

About Dundee Growth Partners

Dundee Growth Partners provides E-commerce leaders with the strategy, systems, and tools they need to face growth challenges and scale with confidence. With deep industry experience and AI-powered platforms, we help leadership teams scale in a sustainable way. Interested in learning more? Click the link below to get started.

• Visit the Dundee Growth Partners website

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 expanded into more styles. Then everything tightened up. Stores closed during COVID. Online ads got expensive. Investors became more careful. And Koio had to take a hard look at itself.

Chris talks about that stretch without dressing it up. Cutting back product lines. Letting people go. Admitting the brand had drifted. Getting back to what customers actually cared about. It was uncomfortable, but it forced clarity.

This episode feels like a real look at what building a brand actually requires once the early momentum wears off.

Connect with us:

• Chris Wichert on LinkedIn
• Jennifer DiMotta on LinkedIn
• Mark Hasebroock on LinkedIn

About Dundee Growth Partners

Dundee Growth Partners provides E-commerce leaders with the strategy, systems, and tools they need to face growth challenges and scale with confidence. With deep industry experience and AI-powered platforms, we help leadership teams scale in a sustainable way. Interested in learning more? Click the link below to get started.

• Visit the Dundee Growth Partners website

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 actually helps a company scale without burning cash, and how clarity around the P&L becomes a decision-making tool, not a report you avoid.

Connect with us:

• Jennifer DiMotta on LinkedIn
• Mark Hasebroock on LinkedIn

About Dundee Growth Partners

Dundee Growth Partners provides E-commerce leaders with the strategy, systems, and tools they need to face growth challenges and scale with confidence. With deep industry experience and AI-powered platforms, we help leadership teams scale in a sustainable way. Interested in learning more? Click the link below to get started.

• Visit the Dundee Growth Partners website

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 weight. They explore how effective CEOs take ownership when the results miss and move forward with conviction long before perfect information shows up.

The conversation weaves through moments every organization recognizes, like the decision that drags longer than it should, the weak link everyone senses, or the tension between gathering more data and having the courage to act. You’ll leave with a clearer picture of leadership accountability and why titles or visibility don’t define the role at its highest level.

Connect with us:

• Jennifer DiMotta on LinkedIn
• Mark Hasebroock on LinkedIn

About Dundee Growth Partners

Dundee Growth Partners provides E-commerce leaders with the strategy, systems, and tools they need to face growth challenges and scale with confidence. With deep industry experience and AI-powered platforms, we help leadership teams scale in a sustainable way. Interested in learning more? Click the link below to get started.

• Visit the Dundee Growth Partners website

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 to sustain the momentum. The conversation moves past org charts and titles and into how leadership teams actually operate day to day, how they make decisions, and how to show alignment when things feel uncomfortable.

Accountability, communication, trust under pressure, and warning signs that surface long before results slip. They reflect on all of this and how those signals compound over time, shaping whether a business keeps moving forward or slowly loses its edge.

Connect with us:

• Jennifer DiMotta on LinkedIn
• Mark Hasebroock on LinkedIn

About Dundee Growth Partners

Dundee Growth Partners provides E-commerce leaders with the strategy, systems, and tools they need to face growth challenges and scale with confidence. With deep industry experience and AI-powered platforms, we help leadership teams scale in a sustainable way. Interested in learning more? Click the link below to get started.

• Visit the Dundee Growth Partners website