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Welcome to a bonus episode of Cubicle to CEO, the podcast where we ask successful founders,

the business questions you can't Google. I'm here on campus at CU Denver's Jake Jabs, Center for Entrepreneurship, to answer student submitted questions for a live podcast recording,

moderated by the center's assistant director of operations and my best friend, Claire Seville.

Whether you're a student with aspirations to launch your own business or years into running your

own venture, you'll find timeless, actionable insights uncovered by the impressive depth and

diversity of questions these CU Denver students asked. Class is officially in session.

So to kick things off, just to reiterate, all of you submitted some incredible questions.

There were 280 in total, so it was a lot to sort through,

but it was a lot of fun as well. And from that, we narrowed it down. We're going to focus on 12

questions for Ellen. And then once we kind of get through those, we will open it up to the group,

and we will do an open live Q&A. So with that, we will just jump right in. You guys won't be surprised by this first

question. How big of a role has networking played in your growth and success? Claire was telling me

how she can't get through a single class without saying the word networking at least once.

So let's count. We're at one for today's session. O2 for me saying it. Networking has definitely

laid, I would say probably one of the biggest roles in my success. I really believe that

people are your greatest assets in business. And I feel that almost every opportunity when I'm

looking back, and I don't know if you've heard of that

Steve Jobs quote, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking

backwards. I think in the moment when I was meeting someone, I may not have immediately understood

...