Leadership in Motion: What CEO Kristi Ross Taught Us About Growth, Confidence, and Building a Lasting Business

What does it really take to become a CEO?

Many people imagine that executive leadership follows a perfectly planned path: earn a degree, receive a promotion, move into management, and eventually reach the corner office. Kristi Ross’s career shows that the real journey is rarely that simple.

As part of our Customer Experience course at Washtenaw Community College, we were introduced to Ross’s interview on the Candid with Candidates podcast. Ross is the CEO of Three Dog Brands, the company behind Three Dog Bakery. During her conversation with host Jenn Hahn, she discusses her progression from marketing and sales leadership into her first CEO role.

Her story gave us more than a look inside executive leadership. It challenged us to consider how adaptability, mentorship, networking, cross-functional experience, and intentional decisions can shape both a career and a growing business.

Leadership Is a Journey, Not Just a Title

One of the strongest lessons from Ross’s story is that leadership development begins long before someone receives an executive title.

A CEO must understand more than one department. Although Ross built much of her career in marketing and sales, becoming a CEO required her to think beyond those individual functions. She had to consider the entire organization, including operations, company culture, employees, customers, financial performance, strategy, and sustainable growth.

This transition from functional leadership to enterprise leadership is important for small-business owners, too.

At Dee & Dee Brown LLC, we may not have a large corporate staff or several departments, but we still make decisions across many business areas. We manage product selection, listings, pricing, inventory, customer communication, order fulfillment, marketing, bookkeeping, content creation, and long-term planning.

Running a small business requires us to understand how these areas affect one another. A marketing campaign cannot succeed if inventory is unorganized. Strong sales are not enough if expenses are not tracked. A professional brand image means little if the customer experience is inconsistent.

Leadership means seeing the entire picture.

Why Cross-Functional Experience Matters

Ross explains the importance of gaining experience beyond one specialized role. Cross-functional experience helps leaders understand how decisions made in one part of a company affect everyone else.

This lesson speaks directly to Dominique’s background. Her mechanical engineering education developed her analytical thinking, technical knowledge, and problem-solving abilities. Her caregiving experience strengthened her patience, flexibility, and ability to respond when plans suddenly change. Her work with Dee & Dee Brown LLC now gives her experience in customer service, e-commerce, technology, operations, and business development.

Each experience contributes something different to her leadership ability.

Donnetta’s leadership foundation comes from military service, approximately 30 years of professional office-management experience, returning to college after more than four decades, and building a business while managing significant health and mobility challenges. Those experiences developed discipline, organization, persistence, communication, and the ability to continue moving forward under difficult circumstances.

Neither path followed a straight line. However, both paths created skills that can now be applied to our business.

The lesson is clear: an experience does not have to fit perfectly into a traditional career plan to become valuable later.

Speed Must Be Balanced With Good Judgment

Ross discusses how leading a private equity-backed company differs from working within a large, highly structured organization. High-growth environments often require leaders to make decisions quickly, adjust their plans, and act without having unlimited time or information.

Small businesses experience this pressure as well.

Online selling platforms change their algorithms, policies, fees, and promotional tools. Customer preferences shift. New competitors enter the market. Technology creates opportunities, but it can also make yesterday’s strategy less effective.

Dee & Dee Brown LLC cannot afford to remain stuck simply because every detail is not perfect. We have to test ideas, study the results, learn from mistakes, and make adjustments.

However, moving quickly does not mean acting carelessly. Speed must be supported by accurate information, a clear purpose, and an understanding of the possible consequences. A poor decision made quickly is still a poor decision.

The goal is to become decisive—not reckless.

Mentorship and Networking Create Opportunities

One of the most important themes in Ross’s career is the value of mentorship and professional relationships. People who understand a leader’s strengths may recognize opportunities that the leader has not yet considered.

Networking is sometimes misunderstood as collecting business cards or asking strangers for favors. Meaningful networking is about developing genuine professional relationships, learning from others, sharing resources, and remaining visible in the communities connected to your goals.

This lesson has already influenced how we approach Dee & Dee Brown LLC. We are building relationships through the Washtenaw Community College Entrepreneurship Center, veteran-business organizations, instructors, financial-education programs, and other community resources.

Each conversation may not produce immediate funding or a business opportunity. That does not make the relationship unimportant. A person we meet today could later introduce us to a mentor, recommend a program, explain a contracting opportunity, or help us avoid an expensive mistake.

Networking is not a one-time transaction. It is a long-term investment in relationships and knowledge.

Mentorship Requires Action From Both Sides

Having a mentor does not mean waiting for someone else to plan your future. The person receiving guidance must still ask thoughtful questions, follow through, and accept honest feedback.

For us, effective mentorship means arriving prepared for meetings, keeping records, completing recommended steps, and returning with clear updates. It also means being willing to hear that an idea needs more research or that our business systems must improve before we pursue additional growth.

Encouragement feels good, but useful mentorship should also create accountability.

If someone gives us a strong recommendation and we never act on it, the information cannot help us. Leadership development requires us to turn advice into measurable action.

Trusting Your Instincts While Remaining Teachable

Ross also reflects on trusting her instincts and making intentional career decisions. This does not mean assuming every first impression is correct. It means learning to recognize when an opportunity fits your strengths, values, and long-term goals.

This lesson is especially meaningful to Donnetta. Returning to college after more than 40 years required trusting the belief that education could still create new possibilities. Starting a business required believing that decades of work experience, military service, resilience, and personal knowledge still had value.

At the same time, confidence must leave room for learning. Strong leaders do not pretend to know everything. They seek information, listen to other perspectives, and change direction when the evidence shows that a different approach would be better.

Confidence and humility are not opposites. The strongest leadership requires both.

Company Culture Starts Before a Business Becomes Large

Ross discusses building a company culture that supports performance and sustainability. This lesson is not reserved for corporations with hundreds of employees.

Culture begins with the behaviors a business repeatedly accepts, rewards, and demonstrates.

For Dee & Dee Brown LLC, our culture is being created right now through the way we communicate, divide responsibilities, solve disagreements, serve customers, manage records, and respond to setbacks.

As a mother-daughter business, we must be especially intentional. Family relationships do not automatically create clear business systems. We need defined responsibilities, regular planning conversations, accurate financial records, and mutual accountability.

We also need a culture that respects health, caregiving responsibilities, education, and the limits of what two people can realistically accomplish. Sustainable growth does not come from working until both partners are exhausted. It comes from developing systems that allow the business to operate consistently without sacrificing the people building it.

Thinking Like Executives at Dee & Dee Brown LLC

Developing an executive mindset does not require waiting until our business reaches a certain revenue level. We can begin practicing executive leadership now by:

1. Making decisions based on long-term goals.
   Every opportunity does not deserve a yes. We must consider whether it supports our mission and moves the business forward.

2. Reviewing our finances consistently.
   Receipts, expenses, settlements, inventory costs, and revenue must be tracked if we want to make informed decisions.

3. Creating repeatable systems.
   Listing products, fulfilling orders, managing inventory, producing content, and reviewing business performance should not depend entirely on memory.

4. Building professional relationships.
   Mentors, instructors, veteran-business advisers, financial counselors, and other entrepreneurs can help us see possibilities and risks that we might miss alone.

5. Learning across business functions.
   We both need a working understanding of marketing, operations, customer experience, technology, and finances.

6. Protecting our company culture.
   Growth should strengthen our business and family partnership—not destroy them.

7. Acting with confidence while remaining teachable.
   We can value our experience without assuming that we have nothing left to learn.

Two Perspectives, One Leadership Vision

Donnetta’s biggest takeaway is that leadership experience does not expire. Skills developed through military service, office management, education, health challenges, and entrepreneurship can be combined into a new chapter. Her path demonstrates that leadership can continue evolving at any age.

Dominique’s biggest takeaway is that a non-linear career does not equal a failed career. Engineering, caregiving, business operations, technology, and customer service may appear unrelated, but together they create a valuable and distinctive leadership foundation.

Our perspectives are different because our experiences are different. That is an advantage.

Dee & Dee Brown LLC is strongest when we combine Donnetta’s organization, experience, persistence, and relationship-building with Dominique’s technical thinking, creativity, research skills, and operational problem-solving.

Our Final Takeaway

Kristi Ross’s story demonstrates that becoming a strong leader is not about following one perfect route. It is about building useful experience, accepting challenges, developing relationships, learning how the entire business operates, and having the confidence to step forward when the right opportunity appears.

Our company is still growing, and we have much more to learn. However, we do not have to wait until Dee & Dee Brown LLC becomes a large company to begin leading like executives.

The habits we establish now will shape the business we become later.

That is what leadership in motion means to us: continuing to learn, making intentional decisions, strengthening our systems, and moving forward—even when the path is not perfectly straight.

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Listen to Kristi Ross’s interview, From Pet Industry Executive to Private Equity CEO, on the Candid with Candidates podcast.

Learn more about the Candid with Candidates podcast and Three Dog Brands.

About Dee & Dee Brown LLC: Dee & Dee Brown LLC is a veteran-owned mother-daughter business focused on e-commerce, entrepreneurship, education, digital content, and creating opportunities through resilience, experience, and lifelong learning.