The Founder Files
We Heard No (A Lot) Before We Hit Lucky #13
The first answer was no. We wanted to sell the book in bulk. Not as a vanity play. As the business model. Our whole launch plan was built on one...
180 No’s and a Best-seller list
We've sold two companies. We've sat across the table from buyers and negotiated the terms that decided what we walked away with. Those were hard. Selling a book was almost as hard. Some days, even harder. Entrepreneur Like a MOTHER came out on September 22. After one...
We Worked Christmas Week for Nothing
Both of us. Every day between Christmas and New Year’s. A full edit of the manuscript, front to back, one line at a time.Victoria gave up skiing with her family. I gave up the beach with mine. Our kids were home for one week and we spent it at a laptop. We had sworn...
The Least Sexy Thing You Will Do As A Founder This Week
We paid our vendors as their bills came in. We didn’t look at the due date and didn’t even think about considering whether we had the cash flow to pay them. Our recurring revenue was annualizing at over seven figures so we were much more worried about getting the...
How This Book Actually Got Written
The book did not start as a book. One of us was in the middle of a brutal personal stretch. The kind where the ground moves and you start auditing everything behind you. What did we actually get for that many years of work? Two companies built and sold, with nine kids...
The Year We Made the Most Money and Felt the Worst
Two years after COVID nearly took the legs out from under us, Clermont Partners had its best year. The ESG practice we had bet the farm on was finally paying. Retainers were up. New logos were signing. The pricing decision that had terrified us, moving our target from...