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Imagine promising yourself “just three months” to launch a business from scratch only to build a 20-person firm that spans the nation.
Eric Brotman never set out to be a company founder.
When his firm cut off smaller clients, he seized the moment and started his own practice. He borrowed money from friends and family and discovered that true growth comes from sharing both risk and reward with partners. Today his company is led by a balanced leadership team and serves clients all across the country.
Here is how each bold pivot reshaped Eric’s path and turned an accidental startup into a lasting legacy.
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The Train He Refused to Miss
Baltimore, 2003. Twenty-nine-year-old Eric Brotman is thriving at a respected advisory firm, learning the craft and enjoying a steady paycheck.
Then management announces a new edict: clients must already be wealthy to stay on the roster. Eric looks at the middle-class couples he loves serving and feels the floor drop. Either he abandons them or he abandons the firm. His gut speaks first. “Give me three months,” he says, “and I’ll open my own doors.”
In that instant the comfortable track he has been riding switches to an unmarked side rail.
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others.
A Dream Finds Its Owner
Eric never pictured himself as a founder.
Yet once the clock starts ticking, a hidden desire surfaces: the freedom to build a practice where anyone willing to work for prosperity can get guidance. Friends call him reckless; banks laugh at his loan requests. He drains savings, maxes credit cards, and borrows from relatives. The tension climbs with every statement that arrives in the mailbox. Failure now would not just bruise his ego; it would sink his family.
The accidental entrepreneur realizes a hard truth: wanting autonomy is easy; funding it is not.
Watch the full podcast:
When Perfection Gets in the Way
The doors open and clients come, but growth quickly stalls.
Eric insists on writing every plan, answering every phone call, and approving every email. Staff turnover spikes. Deadlines slip. Clients feel the bottleneck. His perfectionism, once a strength, is now sabotage. One late night he totals his hours and sees that seventy percent of his week is spent on tasks someone else could handle. Either he relinquishes control or the business plateaus at his personal capacity.
Control feels safe, but safety is starting to look suspiciously like self-sabotage.
🧠 Did you know? 💡
1) Founders are trapped in the weeds: the average entrepreneur spends 68.1 % of the week working in the business (email, admin, firefighting) and only 31.9 % on strategic growth—a pattern The Alternative Board calls the single biggest drag on scale. (learn more)
2) Two heads still beat one: a First Round Capital study found that start-ups with more than one founder out-performed solo-founder companies by 163 % in revenue. (learn more)
3) Succession = valuation: with 40 % of U.S. RIA founders nearing retirement, firms that neglect formal succession planning risk losing 20–30 % of client assets and slashing enterprise value in the process. (learn more)
Partners and Guardrails
The breakthrough comes with a single hire: a detail-obsessed operations lead who thrives on processes.
Soon after, Eric invites a client-facing planner into ownership, then a marketing visionary. The sandbox is no longer his alone. Meetings grow louder, decisions slower, but outcomes sharper. With seven shareholders today, disagreement is routine yet productive. Eric discovers his best contribution is vision and culture, not supervision. Guardrails built by complementary leaders let him sprint without veering off course.
Revenue triples, headcount reaches twenty, and clients now span the entire United States.
Passing the Baton Without Dropping It
January 1, 2026 will mark another pivot: Eric steps down as CEO to become board chairman and rainmaker.
The thought of sitting in the passenger seat unnerves him, yet excites him more. His metric for success is no longer personal income; it is watching Generation 2 leaders outshine him. He calls it the graduation mindset. Every founder’s final exam is letting the company thrive without their daily handprints.
Eric is already studying for it, knowing that legacy begins the moment you lift instead of lead.
Five Action-Level Takeaways
Define your non-negotiable. Write one sentence that captures the value you would quit a job to protect, then test every big decision against it.
Audit your calendar for ownership traps. Identify tasks that others could complete at eighty percent of your quality and delegate them within thirty days.
Map your leadership triad. Identify whether you excel at practice building, business building, or brand building, and recruit partners who cover the other two lanes.
Install a healthy conflict ritual. Schedule monthly “red-team” meetings where proposals are challenged by peers whose bonuses are tied to candid critique, not compliance.
Plan your own graduation. Set a target date when you will shift from operator to mentor, list the skills your successors must master, and track progress like a product launch.
Thanks for reading!
Talk soon,
Roman
Struggles? Good.
I help founders turn their story, values, and experience into a high-trust newsletter that attracts the right clients and drives consistent growth.
It’s all backed by real scars. I built and scaled a 7-figure nanotech business, sold over $10M in sales, lost it all, and rebuilt from scratch—twice.
If you’re ready to scale your business, let’s talk.
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