Building a Mission-Driven Business
with Ben Finklea
The Corvus Effect / Episode 42
Released: June 16, 2025
Overview
Ben Finklea built his digital marketing business — Volacci — around a non-negotiable: kids would be raised by parents, not handed off to daycare. He and his wife Beverly designed a tag-team system where one of them was always home; they crammed work into specific days and protected Sundays as sacred. This conversation is about why ‘my family is the main thing; my business is my side gig’ isn’t a slogan when you live it, and about the day Ben killed website hosting (which created constant emergencies) so he could focus on SEO and have a life that didn’t ring at 3am.
About Ben Finklea
Ben Finklea is the founder of Volacci Marketing and a fractional CMO for trade businesses through CMOX. He raised two Eagle Scouts on what he calls his ‘side gig’ while running a digital marketing practice that his clients chose to respect, boundaries and all.
Listen to the Full Episode
Key Takeaways
1. My family is the main thing; my business is the side gig
When Scott called raising two Eagle Scouts the side achievement, Ben corrected him on the spot — the family was the main thing, the business was the side. That wasn’t aspirational talk. It was operational: the Tuesday/Thursday teaching schedule for Beverly, the Thursday-through-Saturday crunch for Ben, sacred Sundays, and clients told upfront that 3am calls weren’t on the menu — most of them stayed.
2. You can do anything, but you can't do everything
Ben’s pivot was the moment everything changed: he killed the website hosting business that created constant emergencies, kept the digital marketing side that didn’t, and worked fewer hours with better outcomes. The fear he names isn’t lack of ambition — it’s grinding on the wrong things. With kids he knows the time is well spent; in business he had to get ruthless about what to refuse so the time was.
3. Treat kids like humans who haven't grown up yet
Ben and Beverly’s parenting philosophy was structural: kids are humans who just haven’t grown up yet, so treat them as part of the process, not as projects. The grocery store became a literacy lesson — find the can with a T on it, then later go pick the cereal you want from two aisles over. The result was two Eagle Scouts who grew up understanding contribution and responsibility, because they were integrated into the family’s life from the first cart push.