I made a point of being the first person in line after his session to tell him that I was starting a revenue-based financing firm that serves women and people of color, which I knew he was a big proponent of. I knew that I had only one opportunity to make a good impression on him. I had this idea of working with Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, aka Mr. The other, I kind of stalked to see where his next speaking engagement would be. The first person, I sent him a message out of the blue on LinkedIn saying that I would be in his area on a certain date and asked if we could meet for a chat. I didn’t know either of them personally but that didn’t stop me from working toward my goal. I had a vision of two people that would serve as my advisors that I could turn to for help when needed. An example of that is when I was setting out to create Founders First. You just have to keep moving forward toward your goal – persist and push through. The thing you need to remember is that it’s not the worst thing in the world if someone tells you no. I recently gave the commencement speech at the City University of Seattle graduation ceremony with my underlying message about “persisting and pushing through.” There are going to be failures and there will be wins. That’s the driving force behind the idea of perseverance. You really have to learn from all experiences, good and bad, and then adjust accordingly. One of the most important lessons I’ve taken away from my 25+ years of experience is that there’s no such thing as failure, it’s learning and recognizing the lessons. It might sound cliche but as I’ve gotten older, I feel that I’ve gotten wiser. Can you tell us about an important lesson you learned while working at a prior job? Alright, Kim thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We were lucky to catch up with Kim Folsom recently and have shared our conversation below.

Keep it moving kim