Episode 51: Success through Hustling and Resiliency
Guest: Jilliene Helman

Hello and happy spring! I am so excited to welcome my guest this week. She is a young entrepreneur who has been a game-changer in the real estate and finance industries. At 28, she made the Forbes magazine 2015 list of 30 Under 30 Rising Stars of Enterprise Technology and has underwritten over $5 billion of real estate.

Jilliene Helmen, the former Vice President of Union Bank quit her job to start RealtyMogul.com in 2013. Her team’s mission is to simplify real estate investment through crowdfunding, allowing entrepreneurs and investors to get in the game. Sitting on the RealtyMogul.com board, Jilliene is responsible for the company’s strategic direction and operations. Today, her company is a leading online real estate capital marketplace with over 73,000 members and 65 employees.

Working in financial services as well as technology, Jilliene is no stranger to the male-dominated industries. Having grown up in an entrepreneurial and real estate savvy family, she found that she had a passion for both. After working in the banking circle for several years, Jilliene found it was stifling and decided as a result to become an entrepreneur. Knowing that her company needed investment to be successful, Jilliene went through the process of securing venture capital (VC). She had to work extremely hard, and hold plenty of meetings but as a result was successful in raising $45 million in capital across the company.

Jilliene attributes hustle and resilience as the keys to being a successful entrepreneur, especially in male-dominated industries. Even if she doesn’t know the path, she knows her destination and works towards that every day. Through hustling, Jilliene has built a strong network that she can reach out to and leverage to her company’s advantage.

An avid reader, Jilliene has found that she reads books based on the life stage of her company. If you’re starting a company, Jilliene recommends reading “Topgrading: The Proven Hiring and Promoting Method that Turbocharges Company Performance” by Bradford D. Smart and “The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter” by Michael Watkins. Several other books that she recommends include “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon” by Brad Stone, “Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal” by Nick Bilton, and “Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel” by Russell Moore.

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