What I Didn't Expect When Mike and Kass Lazerow Became My Partners

When people hear that Mike and Kass Lazerow are my business partners, they usually jump straight to Buddy Media.

The Salesforce acquisition.

The venture investing.

The startup ecosystem.

The book.

The podcasts.

The exits.

What nobody asks about is what happens on a random Tuesday afternoon when you're trying to figure out why a process isn't working, why a client relationship feels off, or why a strategic initiative that looked great in a boardroom suddenly feels messy in real life.

That's where I've learned the most.

I've spent much of my career operating businesses. Not talking about operating businesses. Actually operating them. Building teams, fixing processes, hiring people, dealing with technology, dealing with clients, dealing with the thousand things that happen behind the scenes that nobody sees.

And one thing I've learned over the past few years is that there are two very different versions of entrepreneurship.

There's the version that gets written about.

And there's the version that actually exists.

The version that gets written about is exciting.

Fundraising announcements.

Acquisitions.

Awards.

Press releases.

The version that actually exists is much less glamorous.

It's sitting in meetings trying to solve problems that shouldn't exist.

It's realizing that the thing everyone agreed would work isn't working.

It's making difficult decisions with incomplete information.

It's hearing "no" repeatedly and continuing anyway.

Mike and Kass call this "shoveling shit."

When I first heard that phrase, I laughed.

Then I realized it might be the most accurate description of building a business I've ever heard.

Because every company has its own version of shoveling.

Even companies that have been around for twenty-five years.

Especially companies that have been around for twenty-five years.

People sometimes assume that because Merraine has a long history, growth should be easier.

In reality, growth can become more complicated.

A startup gets to invent itself.

An established company has to reinvent itself.

That's a completely different challenge.

You aren't just building something new.

You're deciding what deserves to stay.

What needs to change.

What made the company successful.

What might prevent the company from being successful in the future.

When we acquired Merraine, we weren't interested in preserving a museum piece.

We wanted to build a company capable of thriving in an entirely different business environment than the one it was founded in.

Artificial intelligence wasn't transforming work twenty-five years ago.

Remote leadership wasn't the norm.

Private equity wasn't influencing talent decisions at the scale it does today.

Clients weren't asking questions about AI leaders, digital transformation officers, and organizational redesign.

The world changed.

Our company had to change too.

What I've appreciated most about Mike and Kass is that despite all of their success, they approach business like students.

They're incredibly curious.

They ask questions constantly.

Not because they don't know the answers.

Because they know that's where the answers come from.

Some of our best conversations haven't been about growth.

They've been about culture.

About trust.

About leadership.

About how organizations lose momentum.

About why some people embrace change and others resist it.

About how you build a company people genuinely want to be part of.

The irony is that many of the lessons that helped build one of the most successful startups of the last generation are the exact same lessons helping us build the future of Merraine.

Stay curious.

Move quickly.

Take care of people.

Tell the truth.

Fix problems instead of avoiding them.

And don't be afraid of the messy work.

Because the messy work is the work.

That's true whether you're launching a startup in a spare bedroom or helping lead a company that's been serving clients for twenty-five years.

And it's one of the reasons I'm so excited about what we're building together.

Not because of what Merraine has been.

Because of what it can become.