About Jon Bostock:
I’m Jon Bostock, the co-founder and CEO of Truman‘s. In a former life, I was an executive with General Electric (GE) before taking a leap to restructure and sell a mid-size company with a quirky name, Big Ass Fans. After the successful sale of Big Ass Fans, I co-founded my direct-to-consumer cleaning products company, Truman’s, to flip the category on its head.
I currently reside in New Orleans, LA with my wife and two sons.
You can find me online at Trumans.com
Why did you become an entrepreneur, speaker, author, etc in the first place?
Observing companies moving slowly and without the drive to transform industries for the good of society, I became an entrepreneur so I could make a bigger impact.
How do you deal with fear?
I put fear in context; most of the things we face today are not nearly as challenging as obstacles faced by our ancestors. I also focus on the long-term positive outcomes I want to achieve, and spend less time dwelling on the speed bumps that are inevitable in any journey.
How do you deal with rejection?
Embrace it. You can either live your life refusing to accept rejection, or embrace it and understand why you or your plan/idea/concept was turned down. To understand rejection is to improve one’s ability to navigate circumstances in the future.
What’s the name of your company? What exactly does your company do, how do you help people?
My company, Truman‘s, delivers high-performance, non-toxic cleaning products to homes with less waste and clutter than traditional cleaning brands. We’re reducing waste through product design (i.e. not shipping water), packaging strategies and product assortment. If just 5% of consumers switched to Truman’s, we’d eliminate hundreds of millions of single-use plastic bottles and prevent billions of pounds of water from being shipped each year.
Name one of the biggest challenges you have faced and how did you overcome it?
Watching my mother lose her battle with cancer when I was a freshman in college was immensely difficult. I overcame it by relying on the support of people in my ecosystem, and by trusting there were people who would help me navigate.
What piece of advice do you wish someone had given you at the start of your career?
Starting a company can be incredibly difficult, and doing so at an early age is even more challenging. I don’t think I appreciated when I was younger the true power of experience (know-how, a network, perspective). I would recommend getting real world experience first, if possible.
