Key To Entrepreneurial Success: Pick the Right Partner

Intro 0:06  

Welcome to the Growth + Exit podcast, where owners of privately held middle market companies talk about founding, scaling, and exiting their businesses successfully. Learn how to maximize and monetize your business on your own terms. Let’s get started.

Heather Bennett  0:30  

Hello, I’m Heather Bennett, your host for the Growth + Exit podcast, featuring middle market owners and experts talking about founding, growing, scaling, and sometimes exiting their businesses on their own terms. Past guests include Julie Castro Abrams, founder and CEO of How Women Lead; Allison Cummins, founder and CEO of Blue Outcomes; and Beth Mazza, co-founder of Female Mavericks. This episode is brought to you by Newport LLC, a team of seasoned C-suite executives who help CEOs of privately held companies grow, de-risk, and exit their businesses successfully. Newport LLC is a winner of the prestigious Inc. Magazine Power Partner Awards, which is a list of elite B 2b companies from across the globe. To see the entire list. Go to inc.com/power-partner-awards to learn more about Newport. Visit us at Newportllc.com, or of course find us on LinkedIn. Before introducing today’s guest, I would like to thank Susan Kearney for introducing me to her co founder Beth, and you can find Susan on LinkedIn or on the Newport website. Today’s guest is Victoria Sivrais. Victoria is the founder of Female Mavericks, co-founder with Beth Mazza, and a proven entrepreneur with a track record of building, scaling high-impact advisory firms. As the co-founder of Clermont Partners, she helped grow the firm into a nationally respected strategic communications and investor relations consultancy. Ultimately, leading it through a successful sale and exit, she brings deep expertise in executive positioning, leadership communication, and reputation strategy, advising leaders on how to navigate growth, transformation, and high-stakes moments such as exits. Known for her sharp insight and steady guidance, Victoria has become a trusted partner to executives and founders, and is committed to leading with clarity and conviction. Victoria is also about to launch the book with her co-author Beth Mazza, called Entrepreneur Like a Mother. Victoria, welcome to the show.

Victoria Sivrais  2:46  

Thanks so much for having me. Excited to be here.

Heather Bennett  2:49  

Okay, so let’s get right into it. Tell me about founding Clermont, and I know that you and Beth started working in Clermont at different times, but tell me about the story of how that happened.

Victoria Sivrais  3:02  

Well, so I’ll go back maybe too far, but Beth and I have actually been working together for over 20 years. So I first met Beth at her first firm, which was Ashton Partners, an investor relations consultancy, and we quickly became very close in terms of how we worked together. I knew that she was this powerhouse entrepreneur mother, and I just knew that if I was close to her, I’d learn as much as I could possibly learn. And so, fast forward to she exited that first business to a larger consulting firm, where we grew that business into you know 100 100 million plus strategic advisory firm for communications. You know, after about 10 years and living back in the bureaucracy of big consulting company, we realized that you know we wanted to move on and try and do it again. And so we left, and I ultimately initially found Clermont Partners with two other partners because she had to go on a garden leave, but then she joined about a year later, and we realized for a whole bunch of reasons that to take that business forward and realize the vision that we had for it, it was probably just going to be her and I. So we bought out those partners, and fast forward over 10 years, we built it into a large, as you said, a very large strategic communications, invest relations, and ESG firm, which we ultimately sold. But like the the the evolution of our relationship during that time, and we’ll get into it later when we talk about Female Mavericks, is really why we started Female Mavericks. She was my mentor to start. She became my. She was also my boss, but she became my business partner, my work wife, and someone who I learned a ton from as I was building a business. And so, when we think about the go forward, how we can take Female Mavericks to the world, it’s really to help other women do the same thing that we did on our own.

Heather Bennett  4:57  

That’s amazing, and so. Talk about the process, you know, and we’ll talk more about Beth a bit later. But those early years with Clermont Partners, what was it like doing the first? We’ll say five to 10 hires. Like, what were you thinking about as you were building

Victoria Sivrais  5:16  

it? I mean, the when I was thinking about when we first started building it, I was super naive. I’m not like I think I have to be very honest. That’s just who I am. If I always say now, if I would have known what I was going to go through as I built that business, I’m not sure I would have done it. But at that point, when I started it, you know, I was a young spring chicken, and I said, I mean, there’s no nothing but success from a business like this. I just went full force in the beginning. I really didn’t know a lot of like the mechanics of running a business. I knew exactly what I was doing when it came to strategic consulting with C suites, boards, board of directors, investor relations, ESG. That was not my issue, but the mechanics of building a business, the basics like cash flow management. You know, maybe you should pay. You should get your revenues, collect your revenues before you pay your vendors, or have a very clear budget that you’re trying to track towards, so you know how to make those those hires. So, like going back to your question, those first few hires we just made them because we were drowning, we didn’t necessarily have the best idea of how are those hires from a cost perspective and also a revenue perspective going to advance our business, and so we made some missteps in the beginning. Like we really we were looking for expertise, but not thinking about the vision of the business, and so it was really kind of worker bees that had really no idea what we had to really teach them again. You know, a worker bee that’s not invested in a business sometimes is what you need, but more often than not, it’s someone you want that you you need to grow with the business. So those in those early days, those first few hires were, I mean, we turned through them because they weren’t the exact right fit. We didn’t understand the vision. So, like when we started to get to higher five and six and seven, at that point we were a couple years into it. So we knew exactly what our vision was for the business. We knew what our runway and our and our goals were for the business from a financial perspective, so we were able to be more strategic with those hires to find the fits that we needed to support those goals. So, like, you know, it’s funny we talk to a lot of founders now in those early stages, and they’re just like, “I need help! I need help! And then we’ll say, “Okay, well, what does your budget say, or what is your what is your PNL say? Like, are you able to make those hires? And it surprises me how often they say, “What are you talking about? Like, I haven’t looked at that yet. And so, like, I think like running before you walk is probably the bigger mistake that I see with other other founders early in their businesses, which I made the mistake too. But thinking about the bigger picture is probably a more important piece of it.

Heather Bennett  8:14  

Well, and you know, it’s for those early days. What what do you think helped you get through the fact that you weren’t focused on like how to build a business. You were focused on just building the business. Yeah. Who, which experts or which type of of people did you go to to find out like when things started getting rocky?

Victoria Sivrais  8:36  

You know, we talk a lot about in kind of our playbook is this this idea of a kitchen cabinet? So, like, and we built it. We didn’t have the catchy title for it back then, but we built it in the idea that we needed three groups of people around us: connectors, compensators, and cheerleaders. So, the compensators are the people that you could rely on that filled the gaps from a strategic perspective that you didn’t have, so I didn’t understand how to build the budget. So I had a network of friends and family or past colleagues that really had that accounting and FPNA background to say, “Here’s how you think about building out the budget. Here is how you have to take into account seasonality, what have you? We also had legal experts and that compensator side. The one piece that we were really delinquent in was the HR side of it. Like as you’re building a team, understanding the aspects of kind of nurture, but also you know extract the what you need out of your team and support them is, frankly, it was just not a skill set that I had. I was like, let’s just run, you know, balls to the wall. Let’s just get this stuff out. But you know, a team needs to be taken care of. So that group of compensators within our kitchen cabinet was super important in the early days. I mean, also like the the cheerleaders, which I think, and the champions are the ones that really kind of kind of pick you up off the ground when you’ve fallen and you’re kind of worried that you’ve done the wrong thing. You know, I was very lucky, or we were very lucky, because Beth and I were each other’s cheerleaders, but we also had huge networks of people from our from that have been you know friends for 30 years that knew how to pick us up when we were falling down, and then that last piece is if you don’t have the compensators and you don’t have the champions yet, connectors really help you find those people too. They’re not always around, and so like that third group is really helping you to not only build out your own kitchen cabinet, but also think about how you build the business over the long term. So, like, I can’t, I can’t express more emphatically how important that network of however you want to call it-advisors, supporters, those three groups of people were incredibly helpful, and they still are incredibly helpful as we kind of do it again. Number three, so

Heather Bennett  11:08  

that’s awesome. I I know a lot of entrepreneurs I work with very very early on. I’m like, okay, number one, who’s your business attorney? And they’re like, why do I need a business attorney? I’m like, there’s so many reasons, and then the second, I’ll be like, who’s your accountant? And they’re like, what? And I’m like taxes. Okay, you need to worry about. I would love to work with you, but you’ve got to cover those two things first, because if your company’s not set up correctly legally and you’re not ready to pay taxes, you’ve got issues. What’s

Victoria Sivrais  11:35  

funny about it, though, too, is I think entrepreneurs will say, well, I don’t know where to go find those people. Like, I don’t need. I don’t want to hire someone necessarily. Like, in the early days of Clermont, like I had this amazing network of working moms. Like, it was actually one of the first women that I met when I moved into this neighborhood, and she walked over and she’s like, you know, we have this little working moms group, like that go out goes out to dinner once a month. That’s the first set of women that I got to know in my neighborhood, and they were lawyers, accountants. Like there were a lot of them had changed around, and they were raising kids, but they understood the corporate landscape that I needed to understand a little bit better. But also raising a family, so like, man, I would tap into them all the time and just be like, “Hey, can I just pick your brain about this? Like, we had to we had to fire someone early on, and part of that group was a woman that was very senior level in HR. And I was like, “So, what are the biggest things I have to worry about? Because I’d never fired anyone in my life, and I hadn’t. Like, it was the scariest thing in the world for me. And she helped me work through that. Like, now as Clermont grew, you know we found the right people to bring into the business. But like in the early days, like it’s amazing the network that you have that you don’t actually have the network, just friends and family that are around that have a skill set that you can tap into.

Heather Bennett  12:56  

Absolutely, and and there are so many resources, even even like your company, Female Mavericks, which we’ll we’ll get into later, that you know business owners can really tap into. At whip at which point, when you’re growing Clermont, because you said the beginning was a rocky and that that’s pretty normal. How many years in was it to the point where you’re like, “Wow, we have a business, you know? There’s like this is working.

Victoria Sivrais  13:20  

Yeah, I mean, you know what’s interesting is that, you know, we started with a million dollar book of business. Like, you know, a bunch of clients came over with us, which caused a whole host of other problems from the consulting firm that we had left. You know, they sued us and everything along those lines, which was not great. So, I would not suggest doing that, but like we had a pretty good business right away. It was actually the the profit side of it, like that was the challenge. So it it probably took us two years to get a runway of really starting to turn a profit. Like when Beth Joined, um, that that first book of business was largely my client. So, like that first 12 to 18 months, I was heads down making sure those clients were happy. Like they had left a huge consulting firm to come just based on our relationship. So I was, you know, 100 hours a week making sure that they had everything that they needed, so I was over servicing the crap out of them. Is another way to put that. So then the part one of the partners that we had had, he was running the financials. This is where I go back to this, like the just back to the basics of running a business. He didn’t understand cash flow management, so like when we got a bill, he would pay it out. So we had put money into the business, so we had a good kind of capital capital base to start it from. I mean, he depleted that within 18 months because he was not waiting for these big public companies to pay us. And like often, if anyone’s dealt with accounts payable at a big four. 500 company. They do not. They pay on their terms, not your terms. And so, when Beth finally joined, and she looked at the financials, which I had fairly not really looked at on a regular basis with a dashboard. I mean, we were about to go bankrupt. So, like, and not because we didn’t have mass revenues. Like, we were by that point, we were probably 1.5 million in in revenues, which on the face looks like an amazing business. So we had to slash our salaries. We had to make the absolute brutal. We had just put out an offer to hire another junior person. We had to rescind the offer, and we had to go heads down and get a budget and understand the business. So, like that was probably 18 months in. So, back to your question, it was about two years is when we started to get back on track. So, it was six months of absolute brutal pain. The salaries that we couldn’t even fathom. Like I was racking up credit card debt because at that point I had already had four kids, so it was a lot. So it took a while, but like that’s why when I talk about to any founder, I just could. I’m always just slavish to the back to the basics because I I feel like I just didn’t know that in the beginning. So two month, two years, just for us to get to break even and start to turn a profit. Now, I guess it was probably three and a half to four years is when we hit our stride. So it was just around COVID again, a really tough moment when we had to, everyone had to go hunker down at home. But we had done all the right investments. That when we came out of that, that’s when our business exploded, and so that last you know three or so years of the business, it was exponential 60% growth a year, 30% margins, which was amazing for a services company that kind of put us on the path for that exit. That’s

Heather Bennett  17:04  

amazing. Yeah, and the timing, you know, that is about right. Most most businesses, it’s five to seven years before they become financially stable. Yeah, and you know, there it’s very tough those first five to seven years, but you have to keep pushing and focusing, and and like you said, everything coming back to cash flow, and it’s not revenue; it’s it’s profit, and really like watching those numbers and the bottom line. Well, it’s funny. I have this.

Victoria Sivrais  17:32  

I have a close friend in the neighborhood, and she is she’s at that moment with her business. She’s got a couple million in revenue. She cannot. She like honestly has to turn away business at this point, and I’m like, you got to do all the things that I didn’t do right in the beginning. So like, go get the operational manager, go get the person to take those little menial tasks that you think that you have to do because you have to be in control. If you can put those out and you can get the right people to take care of that. You really can truly grow the business without as much pain as you know some of us have to go through to get there.

Heather Bennett  18:09  

So that last those last three years, you know, so that’s really I would almost call that a scaling time point. The way you were growing at that point. So what what was different? What did you focus on to make those three years successful. Like, did you know at at the beginning of those last three years that you wanted to exit? So, did you plan towards exit, or were you you just saying, all right, let’s just let’s just go for it and scale this business?

Victoria Sivrais  18:31  

To be fair, like we always knew we would exit. Like when I went into to founding Clermont, it was because I wanted to build it up for my family. Like that was the whole point. You can live your life in corporate and make a good living, but like it’s not a it’s not a point where I wanted to be home with my kids when they were older. So the goal was always exit. I think the timing of that exit probably accelerated for a couple reasons. I mean, I probably could have kept going a little bit longer. Beth is a little bit older than me, and she was ready, and that was her second business. And she knew she wanted to kind of take a step back, and I knew that I didn’t want to work with any other partner. So, like, we came to a crossroads. To be fair, that was like either I’m going to buy Beth out and I’m going to keep going at it alone, or we’re going to exit and we’re going to figure out the path for us in a in a bigger way. Like, she knew what her time frame was. I knew what her time frame was, and so ultimately we went down the path of the exit. Now, keep in mind. So we had our very core stable grower or cash cow, which was our investor relations business. We were on the precipice of change at that moment, especially from a public company reporting standpoint, as it relates to ESG. I feel like it’s super taboo to talk about ESG. Now, but like, it wasn’t then. Like, it was a huge component to public company reporting, and we saw it. And so, our cash cow investor relations and our network there funded our growth engine, which was our ESG business, ESG communications and reporting. And that honestly, it exploded. Like it, it doubled the business. Um, probably within 18 months, it doubled our business. And so, and it was all because right time, right place. Like we we were talking to investors, we knew what was out there, and so, um, yes, it was it was very significantly scaling the business, but it was also building a growth engine that got us to that point. And I think when we knew, there comes a point in every business where you either have to infuse capital to really put it on on high growth beyond what we were already doing, or you had to go into something else, and so that’s where we were. So we ran the process. We ultimately almost sold the business to the wrong suit. We ended up walking away at the last second, and God was it. And we were going to stick with it. We weren’t going to exit. And then all of a sudden, a month later, we got four different suitors that came, that led to just an amazing exit. But we had gone through that process, so at least we knew what to do the second time. So it was a lot easier.

Heather Bennett  21:33  

So, so talk about that because it is interesting. Most business owners, if if they’re lucky, have maybe one exit in their careers, and what was that process like at the beginning? Like when you you had like you hadn’t done. I know Beth had done it, but you hadn’t done it before. And what what surprised you, or what did you wish you knew?

Victoria Sivrais  21:54  

Even Beth’s first time was not the same. Like you know, she she was at a great point where like she just had people coming to her to sell that first business. This second one, this second time, we decided we hired a banker. We said, “Okay, we’re gonna go do it. We didn’t. None of the big guys would look at us. We weren’t that big of a business, so like it was kind of a you know middle market, if we’re being kind, firm that we hired, and I-I mean, honestly, it was a total shit show. Like, there’s no other way to say it. Like, I had no idea the level of work that would go into not only preparing for the process, but educating a banker that really didn’t know our world either. So, like, we had to do the sim deck. They didn’t really understand it. They focused on different aspects of it. Like there was some good pieces of it that he did, like but they didn’t really know the targets either. And so we and let’s just be really clear: when we started that process, we were like, “Oh, we are the cats in the app. Everybody’s going to want us. We probably had 25 meet and greets with people we know in the industry really well, and they said thanks, but no thanks. Like, and it was kind of crazy. And the first offer we got, I mean, a slap in the face is being kind. How it felt to us, like when we got that first offer, because we were like, we thought we had built a very valuable business, and you know, ultimately, it was not the right target that would fit, that would pay the value, like that would realize the value value of the business that we had created. And so, like you know, in retrospect, now you know, 20 hindsight’s 2020, like they just didn’t understand what we were offering and how we would fit with them, but still, it’s like it’s a it’s a hard thing when you grow a business and it’s your baby, and then to get an offer that you don’t think matches the value of what you built. So then the the next suiter that we ended up kind of going with an LOI with that we ultimately didn’t sell to. They were a way better fit, but Beth and I found they we found that target like that was not from the banker that was about to get many many percentage points on that deal. Like, and and when we got to the we had gone all the way to introducing our senior team to them, and our senior team, which we were very close with, close with, took us aside and said, “You guys, this is not the right fit. Like, I don’t know why. And we had already known it. Like, we we had met enough of the senior leadership that we knew it was not the right fit. That they didn’t understand how to integrate us with their current business because they were they were adjacent to us but not in the same place. But the senior team then went back to our kitchen cabinet to really because like Beth and I were fighting about it. We didn’t know what to do. We both in our guts knew it wasn’t right, but we didn’t know what to do. We would. Country cabinets. We went to the senior team, and ultimately, we walked away from the deal. So that was amazing. Now, fast forward, you know, a month or two after that, and we had people coming to us. We knew what we didn’t want that time, and so we had, you know, growth capital. We had a couple other consulting firms, and we knew what they were offering and what strategically would be best for the business and our team, and so it was a much easier process the second time around. Plus, we had all materials already, so we didn’t have to recreate that wheel. Well,

Heather Bennett  25:34  

and that’s a big part of it is the the how complicated the process is with due diligence and creating that set of files that has to be crisp and clean and perfect. It’s it’s a lot of it’s a full time job. I get I hear that a lot from business owners. They’re like, I had to basically have somebody else run my business so I could focus on this. I mean, I

Victoria Sivrais  25:57  

to be fair, when we were going through the due diligence process, I still had a full client load. I think I had 16 clients at that point. Like it was, it was insane. I mean, pre Ozempic world, I lost like 15 pounds. So I was like, yeah, this is awesome. But because I was working 150 hours a week plus trying to take care of my five kids, like in the middle of summer, so it was, it was a crazy moment. But like, gosh, what an what an experience to have gone through it for sure.

Heather Bennett  26:28  

Absolutely, absolutely. Okay, so successfully exited. What comes next? So you both what what happens basically after the exit? You sell the company. Do you did you guys have an earnout or did you just walk away?

Victoria Sivrais  26:41  

We did have an earnout, and we bought like our intention was to stay with the company that bought us for a long time, like probably me more than Beth, just because of where we were in our lives. But like, I had no intention of leaving, to be honest. I, but what I found was, and I won’t speak for Beth personally. What I found is, a I’m not great with boss, so I’ll take that responsibility on me. But the other thing is, like, corporate America hadn’t changed in the 10 years since I had left it. Like, it was still pretty bro oriented. It was still pretty not friendly to, even though they have a facade that they’re friendly to kind of working moms. It’s still not like I think ultimately that that company bought us with a certain set of assumptions about how we would work and how they might change the structure of how we work with our clients because they were in a consulting firm, but again adjacent. So the way that they work with their clients was very different. The way that we worked, our first strategic counsel, we were C suite, we were board. Like you cannot put a junior person on that, and walk away from it to get a better margin off of it. Like it’s just not how our business works, and so I think that there was a lot of push pull, and just like culturally, it didn’t work for me. And so we, I, I think Beth lasted 18 months. I Lasted almost two and a half years, and then honestly, we just you know there comes a point in your in your life where you have to weigh like being at home working like how does it how do you want to prioritize your life and that was not a way I wanted to prioritize my life, and to be fair, like I missed being an entrepreneur. I missed building something amazing. I missed talking to other women trying to do what we’re doing. And so, you know, Beth had had the runway before me, so she was already kind of thinking about what we might do again. So when I left, I mean, I think it was 30 days, and we started Female Mavericks, and it was really about how do we support other women founders, but not just women founders, women founders who also want to be present and build a family. Because I think that that is what probably I’m not going to say it’s seven. Like I think Beth and I are different from that perspective. We really wanted to be there with our family and have big families, and also big businesses. Like we didn’t want to give up ambition because we wanted to be moms and and have a family. So, you know, I I talked about it earlier, but like I was very lucky early in my entrepreneurial journey to have a woman who had already done it, I think a lot of women out there were doing it on their own, and they don’t have that network. They don’t have that that awesome work wife to be able to rely on. And so, like the whole idea of Female Mavericks is to be that work wife for other women who don’t have it. So,

Heather Bennett  30:02  

so tell me about Female Mavericks. What do you guys do? How do you do

Victoria Sivrais  30:07  

it? I mean, you know, it. Our mission is to see 10,000 women build seven-figure businesses. That’s our goal. the The ebb and flow of Female Mavericks over the last two years has been like a lot of entrepreneurial journeys. We have pivoted, we have changed, we have tried to figure it out. But at the core, what we do is work with other women founders who want to build scale and scale businesses. I mean, I think where we have kind of gotten a little bit more focus is, you know, in the beginning we said we want to be everything to everyone. Our real expertise is on the services side, like that’s what we; those are the businesses we really know. So those are tend to be the businesses and the women that we work with the most. It’s not to say that we won’t work with other businesses, but that I think is where our expertise lies. And so, you know, like I said, I mentioned a friend of mine. Like we do the same kind of consulting. We talk to other women. Okay, what’s your budget look like? What’s your vision? What are your what are your five year goals? What are your stretch goals? What are your next three month goals? Like, how does that all translate and put together? What is what is your runway to break even? So like, we have this financial freedom calend calculator that we created, which is take all the inputs when you’re trying to think about whether or not you want to start a business. So it can be kind of used in a couple different ways. But what are the what are the things that you cannot live without in your life? What is the income that you will be able to have when you’re not actually making an income. So, like, do you have a partner that you can rely on? Is there a savings account that you can rely on? What are the startup costs? What does the business P and L look like? And then put those all together and say, okay, here is your number that you have to get to, and here is the runway you have to get to it. So, six months, nine months, whatever it is, but this is the financial framework that you need to think about before you start a business. Because I think that that is again, we’ve talked about it a couple times, but I think that is where a lot of women that we have spoken with are falling short. They have this awesome idea and they want to go out and run and do it, but like there is a bit of practicality that you have to think about, and like I would say, all of this is again born from the mistakes that I’ve made, that Beth has made, because we want to make other women not make the same mistakes.

Heather Bennett  32:34  

I think that’s amazing, and I mean that’s exactly the purpose of this podcast. Is we’re hoping that people will listen to it and and learn from all these amazing founders I get to talk to, like you and okay, so more ways that you guys help. I know you had mentioned a course that you guys have.

Victoria Sivrais  32:50  

Well, so we have we have our book coming out in September, Entrepreneur Like a Mother. That is really centered on five power moves. Again, born from our experience about when you’re thinking about starting a business. So that talks about is it the right idea or is it just a passion project? You know, understanding all the money aspects that we’ve been talking about: how to build your kitchen cabinet, how to how to think about the pivot, how to grow the business and scale the business. All of those aspects are covered in the book. But knowing that that is a little bit further out, we created a course that is along the same structure, but in a way that someone like me, who has five kids, that are I’m in, I’m absolutely 100% in the thick of it. So I’m not going to pick up a book. Like I am going to go watch some videos while I’m either on my walk or driving carpool or something like that. So, like, we have created the course that has a workbook that goes along with it, as well as a shorter ebook that could kind of help guide you as you start to think about creating your business.

Heather Bennett  33:56  

Awesome! I love all of that support. I I think it’s it’s so important with the way people are have differentiated learning styles to be able to come, you know, basically come to them with here’s the options on how you could you could gain wisdom from this and you could plan using our our experience and we’re going to give it to you in so many different ways that you can pick the one that’s going to resonate most with you. So I love that you’re you’re going at that approach because it it is a lot of work to create all of those resources. I’ve walked a number of CEOs and business owners through the that exact process of the book and the course and the and it’s it’s a lot of work. But if you can do that, it really opens up your mission and being able to actually help people, which is what we’re trying to do.

Victoria Sivrais  34:42  

No, Beth likes to make fun of me that I don’t read a lot of books, but it’s just like I don’t have them all the time in the world. So like, but she’ll send me podcasts, she’ll send me videos, like because that is just the way that I digest it in in a short shorter form format.

Heather Bennett  34:58  

Oh. I have a few questions left. I know we’re running out of time, but what are and I would love to hear this because I can only imagine what are some of the daily rituals that you have to help yourself as as the person running everyone’s life, basically. What are the daily rituals that help you succeed at that.

Victoria Sivrais  35:23  

I it’s my color coded calendar. Let’s be honest. You know, I I live and die by my weekly planning, like as it relates to my business and as it relates to my personal life. So, like I have on my Outlook calendar, and I always I one of these days I just need to show the picture when I get on one of these conversations, but is the personal side on one side, the business side on the other. And I sit down every Sunday and I say, okay, where do I need to be? When do I need to be? Where should I block out time for work or the kids or whatever? How do I need to run the car pools to make sure everybody gets where they need to be? But I also can do what I need to do, but that is I am super slavish to that. There’s no way I could survive without it. The other thing is is my to do list. Like honestly, I we talk a lot about this one hard thing a day. So like I will write out and everything I need to accomplish for this upcoming week, and then I say, okay. What’s my one hard thing on Monday? What’s my one hard thing on Tuesday? It’s the thing that you are absolutely dreading, but it’s the thing that I start every day with. I do the hardest thing first because I think it creates just a sense of accomplishment that then is able to kind of push me forward to the rest of that that long, long list that I have. So, I mean, those are the two things that I think about probably every week, religiously.

Heather Bennett  36:48  

Okay, so I have I have one last question, but before I ask it, I want to point people to your website at femalemavericks.com, or of course to reach out to you on LinkedIn. So, final question: Thinking about your mentors and your, it sounds like you’ve had quite a few amazing people. What what was one of the best pieces of advice that they’ve given you?

Victoria Sivrais  37:12  

You know, it’s funny. I well, there’s two there’s two pieces of it. So there’s Beth, which is funny that I always talk to her about like, but she was my mentor. Like she helped me kind of with so many things as I was kind of growing professionally, and that was learning to let go. I’m actually really still bad at it, but like you know, when you have a tough loss with a client or a tough conversation with an employee, like go home, feel it. I like to have a glass of wine and kind of just digest it. But then next day, come back and understand that it’s a new day and you got to fight on. So, like, I think that is the piece. Let it go, but also feel it. So that’s number one. And then the other thing that I bring up all the time, and I still bring it up to my kids, is because they, you know, they’re in the stage where they know. They think they know everything, and my dad would always be like, “The second you think you know everything is, the second you’re dead in the water. And so every time someone’s like, “Yeah, I know how to do that, I was like, “Well, really? Like, let’s talk about it a little bit, because I, I think a healthy level of desire to learn makes you a better entrepreneur. Period.

Heather Bennett  38:27  

Absolutely, we we talk a lot. One of the things I love about my Newport Partners and is that we’re lifelong learners. Yeah, there’s always something to be learned. There’s always something to be gained, and to never give up that desire to learn more and and that ability to to be self aware that there is more to learn for sure love that I’ve been talking with Victoria Sivrais founder newsletter editor of The Founder Files We didn’t even get to talk about that and co author of Entrepreneur Like a Mother Victoria, thank you so much for sharing your story, your experience, and your advice.

Victoria Sivrais  39:07  

Thanks for having me. It was awesome.

Outro 39:15  

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