Catch the Full Episode:
Overview
Victoria Sivrais and Beth Mazza join John Jantsch on the show to explain how they built a service firm designed to sell from the start. They dig into why so many consultants slide into a job instead of a company, and what changes once selling the business becomes part of the plan from day one.
The conversation covers Sivrais and Mazza’s Kitchen Cabinet framework (a champion, a compensator, and a connector who cover the ground a co-founder would normally handle), the shift from an expertise-dependent business to a system-dependent one, and the cash discipline that let their firm invest in growth without taking on debt.
This episode is for solo consultants, fractional CMOs, and service business owners who want a business that doesn’t depend on them for every deal, whether or not a sale is the end goal. Sivrais and Mazza also explain why they put money into cold outreach when most advisory firms lean on referrals alone, including the 10% of revenue they invested in sales and marketing from their earliest days as a two-person shop.
Guest Bio
Victoria Sivrais and Beth Mazza co-founded Clermont Partners, an ESG and investor relations firm, in 2015. The two advised S&P 500 boards through high-stakes decisions and grew the firm to profitability before selling it to Riveron Consulting in 2022. Sivrais and Mazza are also co-founders of Female Mavericks and co-authors of the new book Entrepreneur Like a Mother: Build a Company That Buys You Freedom, Not One That Owns Your Life, out September 22 from Wiley.
Key Takeaways
- Make sales the priority from day one. Building something you can eventually sell means chasing growth and brand-building early, not settling into a slower, lifestyle pace.
- Build a Kitchen Cabinet even if you’re working alone. A champion, a compensator, and a connector can fill the gaps a co-founder would normally cover.
- Track your margin as closely as your revenue. Sivrais and Mazza targeted a 30% margin, paid vendors at net 45, and collected from clients at net 30 to keep a cash cushion.
- Shift from an expertise-dependent business to a system-dependent one. Training a team to do what you do is what lets a service business scale past what one person can sell or deliver.
- Put money behind sales and marketing before the returns show up. Mazza and Sivrais invested 10% of revenue into sales and marketing when they were just two people, and paired cold outreach with thought leadership that built their SEO ranking and got prospects to pick up the phone.
Great Moments
- [04:44] – John asks whether one person can be the champion, compensator, and connector at once. Sivrais and Mazza explain why they built the roles out with different people over several years.
- [09:22] – Sivrais walks through all five Power Moves in the book, from sizing a total addressable market to scaling, and notes you can start wherever your business happens to be.
- [11:15] – John asks, half-joking, whether men can read a book called Entrepreneur Like a Mother. Mazza points out how many of their Female Mavericks community members are men.
- [15:05] – John and Sivrais unpack the case for cold outreach, a channel most advisory firms avoid, and how thought leadership made those calls land.
- [18:22] – Sivrais and Mazza trace their fast-decide-then-correct instincts back to their entrepreneurial fathers, and in Sivrais’s case, a grandfather she never met.
Memorable Quotes
- “Side hustles don’t give you financial freedom. They don’t pay for your kids’ college, they don’t pay for your house, and they don’t pay for you to retire early.” – Beth Mazza
- “As a small firm, we ran up some big marketing bills investing in thought leadership early on, but by the time we sold Clermont Partners, half of our business was coming from that effort.” – Beth Mazza
- “Unless you can put your expertise into a system, and then hire, train, and support a team that can do almost what you can do, you cannot scale.” – Beth Mazza
- “At Clermont Partners, we paid vendors at net 45 but collected from clients at net 30, so we always had a cash cushion in between.” – Victoria Sivrais
- “The point is, you can be both a business owner and a mother. We’re sick of the myth that says you have to choose, and we’re trying to break it.” – Victoria Sivrais
Resources
- Entrepreneur Like a Mother: Build a Company That Buys You Freedom, Not One That Owns Your Life (Book on Amazon)
- Female Mavericks (Website)
Beth Mazza, business scaling, Clermont Partners, cold outreach, Entrepreneur Like a Mother, ESG consulting, Female Mavericks, growth strategy, Kitchen Cabinet, small business finance, systems thinking, Victoria Sivrais
