CEO Spotlight: Janine Williams of Impulsify
Janine Williams: CEO & Founder, Impulsify
Janine has spent the past 15 years passionately pursuing the art and science of successful grab-and-go retail for commercial real estate operators and developers. She has worked with 1,000's of hotels and CREs to bring incremental revenue opportunities to lobbies and common areas with Impulsify’s proprietary self-service technology and data-driven retail design.
When she is not leading Impulsify’s growth and innovation efforts, she is also Co-Owner of Platte Street Mercantile – a self-service convenience store that serves the Platte Street community in Denver and functions as a lab on product strategy and end-user insights for Impulsify’s self-service technology.
In all her spare time, she is raising 4 incredible humans, volunteers for Sleep In Heavenly Peace and International Missions, and works on never-ending DIY home projects with her husband and best friend, Robert Williams.
Please describe what your company does today.
Impulsify provides the technology, data, and retail design commercial real estate businesses need to add a grab-and-go retail offering to their public space. With over 1,000 hotels, luxury residences, and glamping site deployments, Impulsify gives businesses everything they need to “Grab-and-Go for it!” while adding incremental revenue and a desired amenity to their common areas.
What aspect of your team or company culture are you most proud of, and how are you maintaining it?
Our core values, 100%! We are all committed to Above and Beyond Service to our clients, to each other, and to our community including our Crazy Giving commitment of donating from top-line revenue, not bottom-line “profit.” We give. We serve. Like Crazy.
What is the most important thing you're working on right now, and how are you making it happen?
We are launching ImpulsePoint 2.0 this year based on millions of transactions worth of learning and listening to both our customers and our team on what would be cooler, better, faster the second time around. It is an ambitious migration of 6,000+ B2B users in the middle of a massive growth initiative that will double our deployments as well. Prayers welcome.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve received as a CEO?
“Bootstrap it.” Prove your product in the market before you start selling off chunks of what you scraped, bled, and sweat to build. Still holding to that 8 years in. We are a rare breed!
What has been the most meaningful aspect of your engagement with the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network?
The relationships – hands down. It is a brilliant group of servant leaders who genuinely want to help Colorado businesses succeed. The combined knowledge, expertise, and willingness to serve each other make every single interaction an invaluable source of inspiration to CEOs of any stage company.
Before BEN, I was really quite stuck. As a first-time CEO leading a boot-strapped company with limited resources and no board to lean on, I was a bit lonely and a little lost at times. At my intro BEN session, I met 12 industry leaders who each looked at my business from a different perspective. They saw wins I couldn’t see, opportunities I had not thought of. Andy Shober became our advisor that day and has played an integral part in our success through the pandemic and on to AMAZING goals in 2022!
I was also insanely grateful for the remote sessions Kay arranged for CEOs in 2020. We had a safe place to share our fears, our challenges, our wins - no matter how small - that year. It was a lifesaver in the most difficult chapter any of us had ever faced in our businesses.
Forever grateful to BEN and to my CEO peer group for their support through it all.
P.S. Kay Henze is just the most inspiring human… all day long. Grateful for her friendship and support.