The Founder Files
An advance reader quit at chapter 4. Why we’re ecstatic.
Advance copies of Entrepreneur Like a MOTHER went out a few weeks ago. Most of what comes back at that stage is polite. Nice writing. Great stories....
The Email That Sat in Drafts for Six Weeks
Most founders price the risk of asking. Almost nobody prices the risk of staying quiet. Early on, we built a spreadsheet of every person we knew. We exported our LinkedIn contacts, painstakingly scoured our email boxes (pre-AI of course) and added the membership...
The client who changed how we price everything
The call came at 7:45 on a Tuesday night. Just one quick thing. It was a legacy account. One of the first clients we carried over from our old firm when we left to start Clermont, and one of the reasons we had the nerve to leave at all. To get them to sign with an...
How We Chose Our Co-Author (and How to Choose a Business Partner)
The smartest partnership decision we ever made happened at a kitchen table, interrupted every five minutes by shrieking toddlers. We were about to walk away from fat corporate paychecks to start Clermont Partners. Before we jumped, we did something most people skip....
The Week We Almost Gave Up
What Actually Kept Us Going (Hint: it was not grit) People ask us what the hardest part of building Clermont Partners was. They usually expect the sale process. Or a nightmare client. Or the first time payroll got tight. It was none of those. It was one week in our...
What I Wish I’d Known Before I Sold My First Company
The day I sold my first company, I didn't pop champagne. I signed the documents, took the congratulatory calls, and went home to make dinner for four kids. Sometime after putting the kids to bed, I took a peak at my checking account. It had a lot more zero’s than the...