HI. I'M MICHELLE.

You had an idea, maybe based on a thing you were really great at - an expert, a master at - and you wanted to help others with that thing while maybe buying yourself some freedom and a chance at the life you want, not the life the man told you was yours.

So you followed some blogs, joined a Facebook group or 2 of 60, and cobbled a business together on your own.

And that worked. Until it didn’t.

Until you realized what you were doing looked a lot like struggling through a problem, following all those blogs and success stories and ways you’re supposed to do this thing and that thing, making tons of mistakes and losing a lot of time in the process, until maybe, if you were really lucky, stumbling onto a process that works for you.

Frustrating as hell, but you figured this was the way everyone did it.

Right? RIGHT?!?!

Or maybe, even worse, you blamed yourself when you didn’t luck into the solution, when it wasn’t working, because it sure as hell seemed to be working for everyone else. All those pink and glittery websites had to be raking in the cash, right?

WRONG.

I have news for you: none of the pink and the glitter is real.

What is real is that entrepreneurship is a long game that can be an insanely lonely and frustrating journey. And in order to make it less so, you need allies and mentors. Real allies and mentors who have been there and done that and who care about you.

You want - you NEED - to surround yourself with second and third-time entrepreneurs who have been through this before and are willing to openly share their experiences and wisdom.

Entrepreneurs who know that one size doesn’t fit all.

Who understand business at a fundamental level. Not in a ‘post this, write that, it worked for me’ kind of way, but in a ‘build this, not that, here’s why’ kind of way.

Who know that so much of the material on the interwebs is simply wrong, full of survivorship bias and only relevant to the very small few even though it’s thrown out to everyone as one-size-fits-all magic.

Who understand compounding success and revenue and that slow and steady is in fact sexy as hell and exactly what wins the race.

After all, there’s a reason why experienced entrepreneurs are so much more likely to succeed than a first-time entrepreneur.

We’ve learned our lessons and been humbled and then celebrated and then humbled again. We’ve been through the trenches and come out the other side, probably more than once.

We know all about what wasted months, wasted years feel like - and we have a trick or 13 up our sleeves to never endure those again.

We know that this is hard work, and that there will always be up’s and down’s.

We also know that hard work isn’t hard when it’s working, and that the up’s and down’s are more than worth it when the payoff is a life we love.

In short, we’ve lived the context, the stories, and the data you’re looking for, and we know how to share it with you and (this is the important part) how to make that context, that story, that data, that learning relevant to your specific business and your specific situation so your learning - and your path to success - is shorter easier and more efficient than ours was.

THAT'S WHERE I COME IN.

A Gen Exer with enough b-school loans to compete with the best Millennials out there, I was born in the Chicago area to parents who made it to the hospital with only minutes to spare. They quickly realized that fast arrival to this life was the first in a lifetime of rushing to be wherever next was, and overachieving every step along the way.

Founder of a multi-million dollar social venture start up, featured in University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business publications, Carrie Green’s She Means Business and Tara McMullin’s What Works, graduate of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business (the #1 rated business school in the world mind you #humblebrag), student of multiple Nobel Prize economists, and strategist to 100+ growth-minded entrepreneurs, my life is beautifully full.

I’m also a Chicagoan-turned-Colorado-mountain- girl-turned-Great Lakes-loving-traveler; a crazy dog mom to Watson, the best irish setter-black lab-golden retriever rescue that ever has existed; a sometimes foodie who finds chopping vegetables to be among the most meditative acts out there; a weekend surfer and backpacker; and an obsessive fan of all things compounding success.

When I launched this business more than 5 years ago my intention was to help entrepreneurs learn how to build businesses positioned for the long term. Short term hacks and overnight dreams don’t interest me, because I know exactly how long those businesses tend to stick around (spoiler: not long).

But come to me with a real desire to dig in, make lasting change and find some compounding success? Then I’m in. ALL. IN.

My business has taken on more than one iteration during those past 5 years, but the core remains the same -  to provide a forum and resource to talk about business building in a way that doesn’t make you want to burn down everything you’ve worked so hard for – with commentary and analysis and other bits of whatever’s needed to bring forward a no nonsense conversation about profit, focus, simplicity and compounding success.

Now, I’m not unbiased, I definitely have my opinions on what works and what doesn’t, and even I can admit that I’m not always right. But I can promise a pull-no-punches conversation about what profit and scale and compounding success really looks like, and what it most definitely does not look like. It might make you laugh, cry or scream (hell, I tend to do each of those at least once a day myself), and hopefully it also reminds you daily that you can do this. Because you most definitely, absolutely CAN. DO. THIS.