Failure Doesn’t Define You | Joe Grover on Growth, Risk, and Learning from Failure

Some people spend their entire careers trying to avoid failure. Joe Grover built an entire podcast around it.

This week on Welcome to the Winners' Circle, Cheri and Jason sit down with Joe Grover, Chief Growth Officer at Ampleo, a Utah-based firm that provides fractional executive expertise to growing businesses. Joe shares how his years as an operator in venture-backed companies prepared him to help other businesses navigate the complexities of growth. Since joining Ampleo, he has helped the company grow from a small team into a 400-person organization while navigating eight acquisitions in two years.

Joe opens up about what it takes to build a culture of “experts without egos,” how to balance growth through M&A, and why the hardest work of an acquisition begins after the deal closes. He also shares a lesson from earlier in his career about the dangers of scaling too quickly and investing ahead of growth. The conversation also explores how AI could reshape the role of a lean leadership team, what makes Utah’s entrepreneurial ecosystem unique, and why failure can be one of the richest sources of learning in business. Joe leaves entrepreneurs with a philosophy he lives by: failure shouldn’t define who you are, and neither should success.

What You’ll Learn:

• How the fractional executive model gives growing businesses access to experienced leadership without a full-time hire.
• Why “hyper-optimism” can cause businesses to scale before they’re ready.
• How to balance organic growth with acquisitions, and why the hardest work begins after the deal closes.
• What it takes to protect company culture while scaling from a small team to hundreds of people.
• How fear of failure can distort an entrepreneur’s decision-making.
• How AI can shift leaders away from production-level work and toward judgment, relationships, and leadership.
• Why neither success nor failure should define an entrepreneur, and what Joe believes matters more than either outcome.

Connect with Joe Grover and Ampleo:

• Ampleo Website: https://ampleo.com/
• Ampleo on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ampleo_hr/
• Ampleo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ampleo-solutions
• Joe Grover on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelgrover/
• The Real F Word Podcast: https://www.realfwordpodcast.com/ 

Want to Connect?

Cheri@MWCN.org
jason.roberts@protiviti.com

Meet the dedicated members of our podcast committee who curate content, organize interviews, and ensure the success of The MountainWest Capital Network Podcast “Welcome to the Winners’ Circle.” 

Cheri Waldron, MWCN Executive Director
Jason Roberts, MWCN President and Managing Director, Protiviti
Kevin Jessop, MWCN Podcast Vice-Chair and Chief Marketing Officer, IMA
Garit Lawson, MWCN Podcast Chair, Managing Director, Forbes Partners
Zachary Reed, MWCN Podcast Producer, Senior Associate, PwC LLP
Katie Brown, MWCN Business Operations Specialist
Amanda Wallman, Alpine Edge Marketing
The LaunchPod Media Team


The views expressed in this program are for informational purposes only and do not constitute investment advice. Any references to specific investments or outcomes are illustrative and not indicative of overall performance. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves...