Brian Wolf’s road to leadership had plenty of turns. He spent his childhood in Sacramento and North Dakota, served as a combat engineer in Iraq, sold Corvettes and even cemetery property, and ultimately found purpose in digital manufacturing.
From tearing apart trucks and restoring a ’71 GMC with his dad to leading hundreds of employees and scaling new CNC services, Brian shares how resilience, reinvention, and passion matter more than any paycheck. His story is a reminder that fulfillment comes from building something meaningful, not following a perfect plan.
This episode of Just Gonna Send It features host and SendCutSend co-founder Jim Belosic in conversation with Brian Wolf, VP of Operations at SendCutSend. Brian’s path to leadership wasn’t a straight line, it wound through farm fields, military deployments, Corvette showrooms, cemetery property sales, and finally into the world of digital manufacturing. What emerges is a story about resilience, reinvention, and finding purpose in unexpected places.
Brian grew up splitting time between Sacramento and rural North Dakota, where summers spent cutting hay and working the land instilled a sense of grit and independence. His passion for cars started young, restoring a ’71 GMC K2500 with his father and learning firsthand the problem-solving mindset that fabrication demands. Those skills gave him confidence, but his life took a dramatic turn when he enlisted in the Army in 2004.
Brian’s Army service sent him from carpentry school to combat engineering in Germany, Kuwait, and Iraq. At the height of the Iraq war, he spent 15 months escorting senior officers through IED-ridden roads, where survival depended on staying calm in chaos. The experience shaped his leadership style, decisive, collected, and focused on supporting those around him. Compared to convoy security under fire, the stresses of a broken laser or delayed order in manufacturing feel far more manageable.
After leaving the Army, Brian studied mechanical engineering but soon found himself chasing opportunities outside of fabrication. He sold Corvettes as one of the youngest managers in the business, then moved into an unlikely but lucrative career selling cemetery property in the Bay Area. At the peak, his income approached seven figures, yet he found himself unfulfilled. Money alone wasn’t enough, he missed building, creating, and solving tangible problems.
Through a connection with longtime friend Josh Denison, Brian was introduced to SendCutSend in its scrappy early days. He joined as employee number six at $25 an hour, leaving behind enormous paychecks for a shot at purpose. From assembling racks in leather shoes to scaling operations across hundreds of employees, he’s now VP of Operations, leading teams and driving expansion into new services like CNC machining. For Brian, fulfillment came not from financial upside but from building something meaningful with people he trusts.
Brian’s story emphasizes that execution matters more than having a perfect plan. He believes passion without action goes nowhere, and his career demonstrates the power of saying “yes” to opportunities, even when they don’t make sense on paper. His Army background instilled resilience and calmness under pressure, traits he now applies to managing teams and production. He also underscores the importance of personal accountability, when a job feels stagnant or unfulfilling, it’s often on the individual to change course rather than wait for opportunities to appear.
In this episode of Just Gonna Send It, Jim Belosic talks with Brian Wolf, VP of Operations at SendCutSend, about his winding path from farm fields and restoring trucks to serving as a combat engineer in Iraq, selling Corvettes and even cemetery property, before finding purpose in digital manufacturing. Brian shares how his Army experience taught him resilience and calm under pressure, why chasing money alone left him unfulfilled, and how joining SendCutSend as employee number six, despite a huge pay cut, ultimately gave him the chance to build something meaningful. His story is a reminder that fulfillment comes not from a perfect plan but from passion, accountability, and taking action.
