When we started Clermont Partners, we made a deliberate choice that most people in our industry thought was leaving money on the table.
High-priced crisis communications work was available to us. We knew how to do it. Clients would have paid for it. But crisis communications work mean a client calls on a Tuesday and needs you embedded by Wednesday, working around the clock until the fire is out. Victoria had young kids at home. We had kids, carpools, and lives we couldn’t (or wouldn’t) blow up for a sprint billing cycle. That kind of availability wasn’t something either of us could offer, and we knew it going in.
So we built a retainer business instead. Monthly engagements. Predictable scope. Clients who needed us consistently, not desperately. It wasn’t the highest-margin work in the market. But it was ours to control. And control, when you’re a mom building a company, is worth more than most people price it.
That’s how we chose our business model. Eyes open, trade-offs understood. Most mom entrepreneurs don’t get that chance. They fall into whatever came first, whatever someone asked for, whatever felt fastest to launch. Rarely by design.
Here’s what we wish someone had told us before we built the first business: the model matters more than the idea. You can have a great service, a real market, paying clients, and still build something that owns your life instead of buying your freedom. The difference comes down to three things. Most founders never ask them before they’re already in too deep.
1. Leverage: Are You Building Something That Works Without You in Every Room?
A business with no leverage trades your hours for dollars, one-for-one. You work, you bill. You stop, the revenue stops. That’s fine at launch. It can’t stay that way.
Leverage means some part of your business operates without your direct input. At Clermont, the shift happened when we built repeatable service packages our team could run without us in every meeting. We were still managing the client relationships, but we weren’t personally delivering every piece of work. That gap, even a small one early on, changed the math entirely. It’s what allowed us to grow without just stacking more hours on top of the ones we already didn’t have.
The question isn’t whether you can get to seven figures. It’s whether you can get there without adding seven more hours to your week.
Before you commit to a model, ask: Is any part of what I’m selling deliverable without me? If the answer is no today, can it be structured that way in year two? If the answer is still no: that’s not a business. That’s a very demanding job.
2. Margin at Scale: What’s Actually Left After You Deliver?
Revenue is vanity. Margin is the number that pays for school, retirement, and the ability to take a week off without the business unraveling.
We held a hard rule at Clermont: 30 percent profit margin, non-negotiable. When we launched, we had to discount for legacy clients to get them across the line. We couldn’t hit it. So we raised prices for every new client. We lost some deals. But the ones who stayed gave us a business we could scale.
The mistake we see constantly: a woman builds a business that earns real revenue but walks away with service-business wages because her cost structure eats everything. She’s managing contractors, tools, overhead, scope creep. At the end of the year, the margin is 12 percent. You can grow a business like that all you want. You just won’t keep much of it.
The margin question has to be answered before you set your pricing, not after. What does this cost to deliver at full capacity? What does it cost when you’re ten times larger? If margin compresses as you grow, that’s a warning sign worth taking seriously before you’ve built a machine running in the wrong direction.
3. Exit Optionality: Are You Building Something Someone Else Would Want?
We sold our first firm for a much lower multiple of what we got for Clermont. The difference wasn’t the market. It wasn’t timing. It was that Clermont was built intentionally, the second time, to be something an acquirer would want.
Exit optionality doesn’t mean you have to sell. It means you have the option. A business that could be sold is one with recurring revenue, documented systems, a team that doesn’t collapse without the founder, and a market a buyer believes in. That business also gives you leverage even if you never sell. You can bring in a partner, raise capital, take a sabbatical, or walk away when you’re ready.
The version of Clermont we sold had all of that. Our first firm had none of it. We were the business. When we left, the value left with us.
Build something a stranger would pay for. Even if you never want to sell it, that discipline changes how you build everything else.
The Model Is the Decision
We cover all of this in Chapter 2 of Entrepreneur Like a Mother, including the Mommy Mayhem Matrix, a tool we built to plot your business model against two axes: total return potential and level of personal chaos. The right model isn’t the one that earns the most. It’s the one that earns enough while keeping your life intact.
Most mom entrepreneurs choose by default. They fall into what they know, what someone asked for, what felt fastest to launch. Some of those businesses do fine. But fine wasn’t what we were after, and if you’re reading this, it probably isn’t what you’re after either.
The three questions above take an hour to think through seriously. That hour might be the most valuable one you spend before you commit to a model you’ll live inside for the next five years.
P.S. We’re letting 50 women read Entrepreneur Like a MOTHER early, for free. If you want an advance copy before the September 22nd launch, email us @ likeamother@femaleavericks.com
