Building a great company from the ground up isn’t easy, but it is something that Trava takes pride in. We are lucky to have a great and hardworking team. As most of our team is behind the scenes, and not customer-facing, we wanted to take the opportunity to introduce ourselves through Trava Employee Spotlights.
Meet Trava CEO & Co-founder, Jim Goldman.
In your words, what is your role at Trava?
In some ways it’s like I do whatever needs to be done at any point in time. At one time I was the only salesperson, I was the only service delivery person. I’ve been the customer support person. So I just do what needs to be done.
Describe Trava in 3 words.
So the three words that come to mind for me, and I suppose they’re in a specific order, one is passion, two is fun, and three is professional.
Those are almost like, to me, three points on a triangle. So we’re very serious about what we do. We do what we do because we’re passionate about the problem we’re trying to solve, but we just as passionately believe in having fun while we do it.
Where is your happy place?
Well, professionally, in terms of Trava, it’s when I feel like I’m enabling Trava employees to be able to do their job more easily, more effectively, and have more fun doing it. So I feel like my job is to open doors and kick down roadblocks. That’s sort of my professional happy place.
Outside of work, I would say it’s anytime I’m spending time with my grandchildren. That’s my happy place.
If you could give your 13 year old self advice, what would it be?
Don’t be afraid to try new things. Don’t necessarily take other people’s advice about the path you should take or the things you should do. Take chances, it’s sort of like trust your gut, trust your instincts, and don’t follow in someone else’s predefined footsteps.
What is your favorite motivational quote?
So I don’t know that I would call it motivational, but one of my favorite quotes in terms of leadership is from Dwight Eisenhower. And he said something to the effect of,
“I think plans are a waste of time, but planning is indispensable.”
What has been your favorite project at Trava?
Wow. So, the most memorable thing probably was when I closed our first sale, and it wasn’t big by any means, and we didn’t even have a product yet. But I sold some consulting, like a little bit of consulting time to a company and it was incredible. It felt like okay, now we’re actually legit because we have a contract and we’re going to be able to send an invoice and somebody’s actually going to pay us for something.
Cats or Dogs?
Oh, dogs all the way. Dogs, yeah. For the past 30 or so years, yeah.
What advice would you provide to someone interested in your field?
What comes into mind is a little quote related to the dog question. So I have this little banner on our back porch and it says,
“Be the person that your dog thinks you are.”
The most wonderful, perfect, most honorable, highest integrity, loving person in the world. So it’s like, be the person that your dog thinks you are.