The Clermont Partners acquisition wasn’t Beth Mazza’s first sale.
She previously built a crisis communications firm to $5 million in annual revenue and sold it in 2007 for 1x revenue, paid out over three years — an outcome she now calls “my expensive education in what buyers really value.”
“Every mistake here became a competitive advantage,” she wrote on LinkedIn. ”This experience taught me the difference between expertise-dependent and system-dependent businesses.”
So when Mazza teamed up with Victoria Sivrais in 2015 to launch communications consultancy Clermont Partners, they built it to sell from day one.
And that’s exactly what happened.
Building to sell Clermont Partners
Clermont Partners advised companies on environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategy and strategic communications. In other words, they advised C-suites and boards of public companies on communicating complex business issues to portfolio managers and other investors, Sivrais explained on her LinkedIn profile.
The co-founders designed the consultancy with one goal top of mind: to “prove small teams could consistently beat large firms for Fortune 500 clients, then sell for a premium multiple.”
Mazza and Sivrais invested $125,000 of their own money into Clermont Partners, which remained bootstrapped as it grew into a 43-employee firm. It eventually won 100 public company clients and an email list of 15,000 corporate executives.
One of the first steps was mapping out five target industries and four entry points. Once they had cash flow, they used it to spend $400,000 in proprietary research to understand their clients and build systems for every client interaction, Mazza shared on LinkedIn. The co-founders didn’t take salaries for around six months to fund this project, she shared with They Got Acquired.
One of their biggest growth levers was cold email marketing.
“From day one, 25% of our cash was plowed back into direct selling,” Mazza told They Got Acquired. “No one likes email marketing — I get it — but we would cold email public company CEOs, and 10% of the time get responses.”
They also leaned into thought leadership, which Mazza says they “cracked the code on” in an Entrepreneur article. The code? Share real-world how-to articles versus deep strategic musings.
“The majority of our marketing money went to web-based marketing to get more eyeballs on our thought leadership,” she shared. “Margins were higher, and we built more inroads into potential clients than simply cold sales leads.”
This strategy worked offline, too.
“Instead of buying conference sponsorships like our competitors, we used thought leadership research to earn speaking opportunities,” Mazza wrote. “While they spent $25K on booths, we moderated expert panels discussing our research findings.”
Although this was Mazza’s second company, growth wasn’t without challenges. The biggest: massive competitors, especially around deal work.
Once again, research became the answer.
“We overcame it by doing incredibly smart research and getting it into board members’ hands through a variety of investments,” Mazza told They Got Acquired.
For nearly two years, Clermont Partners curated small groups of “super smart people” and took them to dinner. “We got them to talk about our research, share their thoughts,” Mazza said.
Throughout Clermont Partners’ growth, every decision filtered through one question: “Does this increase sale value?”
Selling Clermont Partners: A magic number and a decade-old connection
Mazza and Sivrais didn’t necessarily have a sell-by date in mind. But they did have a target sale price: $8 million.
“We think service businesses have a ‘magic number’ where if you expand more, services degrade,” Mazza said. “For us, $8 million was the magic number.”
Initially, the partners worked with a banker to sell the business, but they were ultimately approached by their buyer, Riveron Consulting. The business advisory firm works with CFOs, private equity firms and key stakeholders to navigate complex accounting, execute M&A, address financial distress and more. Riveron’s CEO at the time, Julie Howard, spoke on a panel with Mazza a decade before.
Although this was Mazza’s second sale, it still proved taxing.
“It felt like you had to be on 100% of the time because the devil is in the details — noncompetes, holdbacks, earn outs and more,” she said. They did not use a banker or M&A advisor.
In June 2022, Clermont Partners was acquired for $30 million in cash, a 4x revenue multiple.
After the sale, Mazza and Sivrais led Riveron’s new ESG and strategic communications practice. Mazza left in December 2023, and Sivrais left in March 2024.
They went on to launch Female Mavericks, a community that helps aspiring entrepreneurs.
“What started as retirement became a mission to help 10,000 women start 7-figure businesses they love,” Mazza wrote on LinkedIn.
Mazza and Sivrais also co-wrote a book called “Entrepreneur Like a Mother,” a playbook for building scalable businesses without sacrificing the life you want. The book’s release date is September 2026.
“We did this while having nine kids between us,” Mazza told They Got Acquired. “All are still alive and talking to us!”
On LinkedIn, she shared: “We took turns at carpool, cheered at soccer games and still landed Fortune 500 clients our male competitors couldn’t touch. We proved you don’t have to choose between building something valuable and living the life you want.”
She signed off with four pieces of advice for founders building to sell:
- Make sure your target addressable market (TAM) is big enough and growing.
- Be cash flow positive — all the time.
- Always have a one-pager and clean financials to share.
- Start building potential buyer relationships very early.
