Hi Reader,
My Birthing of Giants Texas Cohort is officially starting on October 15th. A full day with 10-12 business owners dedicated to scaling, growing their business, and getting you, the owner, capital ready by design and not by accident.
In preparation for the cohort program (an 8-session, in-person program over two years), I've been hosting Texas business owners monthly at my Learn & Dine Event. We had another one last night with 10 like-minded, growth-oriented owners who live and breathe entrepreneurship. Side note: I always get a bit stressed about the turnout. Last night we had 100% show up, and the two before that were 90% and 100%.
What an impactful event.
You can feel it in the WINS everyone shares during the first round of the Learn portion. We make it a little competitive and I ask everyone not to be humble. This time I added some extra juice by turning it into an actual competition.
Dor won.
His business, Mod Bikes, is having its biggest year yet. Then, four days into a family trip, his store and part of his warehouse caught fire and burned to the ground. He drove straight there while lining up a new warehouse over the phone, and within a week his team had rebuilt operations across three temporary locations. No panic, no missed beat. He even turned it into a marketing moment, running a fire sale customers loved. Proof that the culture and systems he'd built actually held under pressure.
The next part of the event is sharing challenges vulnerably. Our "what keeps you up at night" round.
I won't go into details, but it shows just how meaningful it is to share challenges and headwinds with fellow business owners. When you put yourself in a room with a dozen other founders, plus someone who's seen a lot building his own company, it creates an environment that makes you question why you've been lone-wolfing it and trying to reinvent everything yourself.
The shares, the feedback, the empathy, the support, the questions, all of it was next level.
Here's what stood out to me about the WIN round. Most founders are wired to downplay their own success. It's almost a reflex, deflecting a big year, brushing off a hard-earned partnership, burying the number because it feels like bragging. So we flip that on purpose. We tell everyone at the table: don't be humble tonight. Say the real number. Name the win that took you five years to land. Let the room feel proud of you for sixty seconds before we move on.
What happens next is the interesting part. Once one founder owns their win out loud, it gives everyone else permission to do the same. A first-of-its-kind product now being copied by the biggest brands in the industry. A partnership that took years and multiple failed attempts to finally land. A business that just crossed into real profitability after a decade of grinding. A team that rebuilt itself from nothing in under a week. None of these stories get told at a normal networking event. They get told here because the room has already agreed that pride isn't the same as arrogance.
Then we shift into the second round, the challenges, and the tone in the room changes completely. This is where the real work happens. Founders talked about losing sleep over cash flow gaps that no one outside the business ever sees. About the strange grief of losing your identity after you sell the thing you built for fifteen years. About realizing, in real time, that the skills that got a business to eight figures aren't the same skills needed to get it further, and sitting with what that means about your own role in the company you started. About buying out a partner and discovering that the hardest part wasn't the buyout itself, it was everything that surfaced afterward.
Nobody in that room offered easy answers. What they offered instead was recognition. A nod that says, I've been exactly where you are. A story that says, here's what I tried, here's what worked, here's what didn't. A question that helps someone see their own blind spot for the first time. That's the part that can't be replicated by a podcast, a course, or a mastermind Slack channel. It only happens when people who are actually building something sit across from each other and tell the truth.
What business owners walk away with isn't a checklist. It's perspective they can't get anywhere else, a peer group that's actually in the arena with them, and proof that the problems keeping them up at night aren't unique to them. That combination is worth more than most consulting engagements, and it's free of charge to show up and be part of it.
Here's the pattern I keep seeing, night after night, dinner after dinner. Every owner in that room has mastered the day-to-day machine of their business. They know their numbers, their team, their operations cold. But ask them about capital, consolidation, or what their business is actually worth to someone else, and the room gets quiet. Not because they're not smart enough. Because nobody ever built them a real path to figure it out. Their honest reflex is some version of "if I don't understand it and I can't control it, I won't deal with it right now," so they go back to what they're good at, running the business, while the bigger game plays on without them. That's fine until the stakes catch up to them, an unsolicited offer, a partner wanting out, a health scare, a hot streak that suddenly makes an exit look real. Then the options narrow fast, and most owners are stuck choosing between a peer group where finance is one topic among many, a podcast host giving generic advice to no one in particular, or an advisor who gets paid whether or not the deal is good for them.
That feeling is exactly why I host the Birthing of Giants Cohort here in Austin. We offer a quarterly program where we meet in person, in a safe space, open and honest, with a mindset built around preparing your business to take advantage of the curriculum, experience, board of experts, AI tools, problem-solving sessions, and a structured program that builds on each session.
The goal is to get you and your business ready for the next step. If you're thinking about exiting, or preparing your business to eventually exit, it takes at least 2-3 years of preparation to do it well.
Join the program and surround yourself with like-minded growth CEOs and founders. The combined annual revenue in that room last night easily topped $150M. There are a lot of lessons learned, a lot of experience, and a lot of willingness to share it.
Here's what the cohort actually looks like, so you can get a feel for it before reaching out.
THE BASICS A two-year, executive-level program, capped at 10-16 CEOs per cohort, built around the same 6 Steps to a Bigger Business framework that's guided Birthing of Giants members for more than 25 years. One full day every quarter, eight sessions total over two years.
A DAY IN THE COHORT Morning: the 2-Year Growth Roadmap curriculum. Advanced business concepts, delivered in a practical, entrepreneur-focused way you can apply the same week.
Midday: strategic planning. You set clear priorities using our One Year From Today framework, benchmarked against your own historical performance so growth stays measurable instead of aspirational.
Afternoon: a deep dive guest speaker, an expert or post-exit entrepreneur we source and pay for, bringing a fresh perspective on building a more valuable, more profitable business.
Late day: peer-to-peer problem solving, the same format you saw in the win and challenge rounds last night, where the group tackles your most pressing issue in real time.
THE TWO-YEAR CURRICULUM Capital market readiness, market fit, competitive moat, financial discipline, leadership and talent, EBITDA growth, ownership seat and exit strategy, and how moneymakers become moonshots.
BETWEEN SESSIONS Access to our AI-powered platform, so you're never waiting three months for the next answer. For owners who reach the highest levels of readiness, there's also an optional path to liquidity through our founder-friendly M&A network, built for owners who want to maximize wealth creation without giving up control before they're ready to sell.
WHO IT'S FOR CEOs, founders, or majority owners of fast-growing private companies, generally $5M to $500M in annual revenue (or $2M+ for companies under five years old), who hold at least 10% equity and have a real willingness to learn from peers, not just from me.
What does this actually produce? One member, a B2B services company in the Midwest, tracked a 478% increase in company share price over three years in the program, using the same benchmarking tool we use with every cohort member to turn "how's business going" into an actual number you can watch move quarter over quarter. Another member put it simply: Birthing of Giants let him design a roadmap for his business that's at least 10x what it was before he started. That's not hype, that's what happens when owners stop guessing and start working a proven process alongside people who've done it before.
If you're interested in joining my cohort, DM me. You know where to find me.
Mathias Ihlenfeld | Entrepreneur | Coach | Advisor
P.S. If it's been a while since we talked, I'd love to catch up, no agenda, just to connect. Grab some time here if you're up for it: calendly.com/mathiasihlenfeld