Entrepreneurship rarely feels like a straight line. It feels like leaving camp in the dark, following a thin track through fresh snow, and realizing halfway up the ridge that the weather is changing.
That’s why Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” still lands so hard for founders. Campbell studied myths across cultures and described a repeating pattern: departure (or separation), initiation, and return. The hero leaves the ordinary world, gets transformed by trials, and comes back carrying something that benefits others.
If you’re building a business, you’re not just starting a company. You’re stepping into a story arc that keeps asking: Who are you going to become to earn the next mile?
For Dr. Robert Forto, that question isn’t theoretical. His leadership style has always been trail-forward: build systems, stay honest about conditions, don’t confuse motion with progress, and keep the team (human and canine) moving with purpose. “Searching for Lost Mittens” isn’t just a book project, it’s a lived example of the Hero’s Journey in the real world: long stretches of uncertainty, moments when things go quiet, and the decision to keep going anyway.
The voice in your head is not the enemy. It’s the guide.
A lot of entrepreneurs treat their inner voice like a problem to silence: the doubt, the second-guessing, the “who do you think you are?” loop.
But in the Hero’s Journey, that internal dialogue is part of the terrain. It’s the moment before the threshold. It’s the early warning system. It’s also the place where leadership is forged, because it forces you to decide what you’re committed to when nobody’s clapping.
Campbell’s model isn’t a motivational poster. It’s a map for why the work gets weird right when it starts to matter.
The Hero’s Journey, translated for entrepreneurs
Campbell outlined a classic set of stages (often summarized as 17), but he also emphasized the bigger three-part structure: separation, initiation, return.
Here’s what that looks like when the “dragon” is payroll, positioning, and your own standards.
1) Departure: when you stop living someone else’s plan
The Ordinary World: You’re competent. You can keep doing what you’re doing. It’s fine.
Call to Adventure: Something nags at you. A problem you can’t unsee. A mission that won’t leave you alone. A moment that makes you think, “I can build this better.”
Refusal of the Call: This is the honest part. You talk yourself out of it. You list the risks. You worry about the money, the optics, the timing. Campbell specifically names this refusal as common, even expected.
Meeting the Mentor: Sometimes it’s a person. Sometimes it’s a book, a training pipeline, a hard-earned framework, or a past version of you who survived something similar. In founder life, mentors often show up as “operators who tell you the truth.”
Crossing the Threshold: This is the moment you commit. You register the business. You ship the offer. You publish the first episode. You invest in gear you can’t justify yet because you’re buying into the future version of you.
If you want a clean test of whether you’ve crossed the threshold, ask: “Would I still do this if it stayed hard for a year?” If the answer is yes, you’re on the trail.
2) Initiation: the messy middle where you earn your leadership
This is where entrepreneurship stops being an identity and becomes a practice.
Tests, allies, enemies: You discover what your market actually values (not what you wish they valued). You meet collaborators. You also meet friction: competitors, algorithms, regulations, “we’re going with someone cheaper,” and your own tendency to overwork.
Approach and Ordeal: Every founder hits a stretch where the old playbook stops working. The business asks you to level up: messaging, hiring, systems, boundaries, pricing, quality control.
In myth, this is where the hero enters the cave. In Alaska terms, it’s the section of trail where visibility drops and you have to lead by feel.
Reward (the boon): You get something real: proof the offer works, a client result that changes your confidence, a community that forms around the mission, a process that finally clicks.
But here’s the twist: in entrepreneurship, the “reward” isn’t just revenue. It’s clarity. It’s competence. It’s the ability to make decisions faster because you’ve survived worse conditions.
This is why the Hero’s Journey fits leadership so well. It’s not about looking brave. It’s about becoming useful under pressure.
3) Return: bringing it back to your people (and making it sustainable)
In Campbell’s arc, the hero returns home carrying something that helps others.
Founders often skip this part and burn out because they never convert growth into stability.
The Road Back: You’re refining the offer. Building systems. Documenting processes. Training others. Turning one-off wins into a repeatable standard.
Resurrection (final test): There’s usually one more gut-check: a tough launch, a public critique, a key employee leaving, a personal crisis, a season that threatens everything you built. The question becomes: Are you leading from ego, or from mission?
Return with the Elixir: This is the most underrated stage. It’s when your work starts changing other people’s lives in a way that outlives your adrenaline. Your business becomes a vehicle for outcomes, not just a reflection of your hustle.
That’s also what a book does at its best. A book is the “elixir.” It takes lived experience, distills it, and brings it back to the community in a form others can carry. And that’s exactly why Robert’s project aligns so cleanly with the monomyth.
How to use this framework when you feel stuck
When founders say “I’m stuck,” they’re usually stuck in one of these three places:
Refusal of the Call
You’re still negotiating with the cost of becoming the person your business requires.The Ordeal
You’re in the messy middle, and the real lesson is: consistency, standards, and systems beat inspiration.Refusal of the Return
You’ve built something that works, but you’re afraid to slow down long enough to operationalize it. (This is where burnout hides.)
Here are three simple prompts that pull you back onto the trail:
What threshold am I avoiding crossing? (a price increase, a hard conversation, a narrower niche, a better schedule)
What “boon” have I earned that I’m not packaging? (a method, a checklist, a model, a training progression)
Who benefits if I finish this leg of the journey? (clients, listeners, readers, your own family)
The quiet moments are part of the story
In heroic stories, the world doesn’t always shout directions. Sometimes it goes quiet. That’s not a sign you’re failing. It’s a sign you’re far enough out that you can’t rely on noise anymore.
Entrepreneurship is the Hero’s Journey because leadership is forged the same way heroes are forged: by choosing the next right step when the outcome isn’t guaranteed.
And if you’re hearing that voice in your head again, the one that keeps pointing you down the trail, don’t treat it like an interruption.
It might be the guide.
