In the highly competitive business landscape, scaling your business towards growth can be challenging. But to achieve long–term success, scalability has become not just a goal but a necessity for businesses. Building a strong team is a prerequisite for any business looking to scale. The fast–growing companies are prioritizing teams of diverse talent as a critical component to grow on a global scale. This is where Fortuna emerges as a pivotal contributor, aiding organizations with high–performing teams of diverse talent to help unleash the full potential of business.
Fortuna is a veteran–owned scaling optimization consultancy committed to help companies go from lagging behind their changing environment to scale towards new heights of success. Besides recruiting and staffing, Fortuna offers a variety of solutions including contact center solutions, staff augmentation, information security solutions, remote support services, enterprise resource planning solutions, advanced business analysis & IT consulting services, project management & implementation, and custom software development services. With an unwavering dedication and a relentless pursuit towards transforming workforce management and streamlining operations, Fortuna has strengthened its position as a trusted partner and leader in the field.
We are pleased to meet Jack Smith, CEO of Fortuna, to gain better insights into their business story.
What inspired you to start this business? What was your initial mission?
I had been on both the customer side and the tech lead side of the consulting world and felt like there was a better way to do business for both parties. I wanted to build a business that took care of the people who took care of us and who told our customers what they needed. to hear, not what they wanted to hear, so that they could get the change they wanted to see in the world rather than just spending their money.
Take us through the incredible journey of the company. What have been your most significant accomplishments and milestones so far?
We grew from 40 to 800 people in just nine months. That is something I am really proud of. We stabilized, normalized, and captured our capabilities, figured out how to run and operate in that world and grew to the next level and maintained success over the last few years.
We made it to the Inc. 5000 List three times in a row as well as to the Vet 100 List two years in a row. But running this service–disabled veteran owned business, I am most proud of the number of veterans, military spouses, and reservists that we have on our workforce.
The business world is highly competitive today. What approach do you take in building business strategies that foster growth and success?
We help companies understand and identify their needs, then explore strategies to tailor support, ensuring that their unique needs are met effectively. You can’t help someone who doesn’t understand their needs, so getting them through that step is of vital importance for them fulfilling their potential.
We focus on our people and on creating outcomes that are necessary for success. We win as a team, we lose as a team, and we learn as a team. Our focus is not always on getting every dollar out of every deal, but on making sure that every deal is good for everybody.
I’m an entrepreneur at heart, so I’ve tied entrepreneurship into every facet of who we are at Fortuna and how we run this organization.
What challenges and limitations have you observed in the industry, and how do you approach to them?
The key challenge that I am currently seeing in the industry is the lack of access to opportunities. We have definitely been feeling the rattles of a slow economy, but it’s starting to recover. We are finding other industries to support and seeking alternative ways of being useful to our current set of customers.
How does your company make use of technological advancements to improve operations?
We have a team of dedicated and volunteer leaders who are constantly on the lookout for emerging technologies that we can incorporate in our processes. We are currently engaging in nanotechnologies as well as the new space economy to employ veterans by putting their military training to work in these emerging fields. We were an early adopter of Al and leaned heavily into our use of ChatGPT and are very excited about the new relaunch with OpenAl, where we may be able to create some of our own customized APIs.
How your organizational values help underpin your workplace culture?
I’m an entrepreneur at heart, so I’ve tied entrepreneurship into every facet of who we are at Fortuna and how we run this organization. I encourage our people to always be nimble and figure out how to help our customers. That doesn’t mean we have to just perform the services we usually do. We got into the call center business because one of our customers was in need of that particular service and it now serves as one of our largest lines of business. We’re constantly in the emerging business space and help people get pathways to government contracts, all with the primary motivation of attaching or connecting veterans to purposeful employment in their post–military career.
What do you see as the future of the industry? How do plan to position your company to thrive in that future?
Automation and business services are going to drive the future of the industry. However, the focus will remain on merging business with technology. So, as new, emerging technologies come out, we are focused on building pathways that combine business and technology with employing veterans, their spouses, and their families.
Do you have any piece of advice for the young and emerging entrepreneurs who are about to embark on their new business journey?
I would like to share a few pieces of advice that I have lived by at different times during my entrepreneurial journey. First is to stay curious and even–keeled. Second is that nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems. Last is to embrace failure. Fail fast and celebrate the learning that comes from it.
