DESIGN THE BUSINESS FOR YOU | DESIGN YOU FOR THE BUSINESS
Whether you're about to file your LLC or you've been working away for years, you've likely felt the truth: being a founder in today's trustbroken economy, overrun by quick fixes and tactical solutions, will require a different kind of leadership. Your capacity as the founder matters in a way we haven't seen for decades.
We can teach you and build with you the foundations required for you to be the leader you need to be and build the context-specific, attuned to you, operating system that validates your vision, frees you from building for the past, and positions you as a leader for the trust-made economy to come.
Doubling down where most launch programs fail
Programs that will shortcut the MBA-style principles and give you madlib forms to fill for your most critical decisions are a dime a dozen, and at that rate, often dangerously overpriced. Why? Because venture success—whatever that means to you—is deeply contextual. It ids defined, set in motion, and limited by the capacity and value understanding of the founder. In short, what matters to you and what you need to lead well is more important than almost any other thing.
But we're not here to just focus on finding some inner light.
A business that can thrive in this marketplace must be both pressure tested for the effective systems required to succeed beyond some early successes and they must be designed in ways that they reflect the priorities, values, and leadership capacity of the owner. Even if all you want is to be come a solo operator, you are still the owner (one incredible job) and the most expensive employee (often the reason the company fails) and you can't do either with the same mindset that made you a great VP or individual contributor.
The business world has all but abandoned the obvious connection between who a leader is and how they should operate the business. VentureStock reclaims that connection and teaches you the repeatable systems to apply that synergy over and over and over again.
How VentureStock build from strength for expansion
Early Bird Special Pricing is available for those who enroll by September 30th.
7 weeks to a venture you'll love
The Program Modules
Core Structure
- Two live group sessions per week (14 total, see below)
- Office hours with Nick Richtsmeier, Lead Foundry Instructor
- Interactive Business Design and Strategy with personalized feedback
- Additional training modules available for deeper dives on over 30 topics
- Weekly resistance and capacity coaching (for VS+ Participants)
- Private slack channel for engagement with the instructors and cohort
- 100-day access to the Rebellion Collective group with Nicholas Whitaker for mindset support
- 1:1 Executive capacity coaching so you can build without spending capacity faster than you can rebuild it
- 90- and 180-day Check-ins
WEEK 1
Entrepreneur Mindset
- Living by agreements
- Shift from worker/employee to business owner
- Decision-making waterfall
- Owning your capacity and limits
- The fundamentals of building, selling, & serving in a Trust-Made way
WEEK 2
Designing a Customer
- Choosing a psychographic
- Building for Client A
- Breaking the marketing mythology
- Choosing your favorite problems
- Negotiating a venture in open space
WEEK 3
"Line Around the Block" Offers
- Trust transactions and Trust-made selling
- Designing for a decision engine aka "the hamburger"
- "What value is needed here?"
- Painstaking clarity = CX
- Your bespoke value offer
WEEK 4
Pricing and Winning
- Competitive advantage
- Buyer readiness and pricing strategy
- Engagement structure and pricing strategy
- Contract recommendations and legal referrals
WEEK 5
Operating Model
- What "Solo" really means
- How to be your business' most expensive employee
- Financial modelling to $3M+
- Marketing, operations, and tech - what's needed and what isn't
- When and if to hire
WEEK 6
Go-to-Market to $3M+
- Funnels don't exist, networks do
- Escaping the digital entrapments from the jump
- Building a referral-ready business
- What happens after your network, and the path to $3M
WEEK 7
Leadership Capacity + Growth Map Design final week
Weekly executive coaching with Nicholas Whitaker of The Rebellion Collective, designed to help you stay on track, manage resistance to building big, and create real capacity as you step into your role as Founder and Leader of a growing venture.
Meet Your VentureStock Mentors
Lead Foundry Instructor
Nick Richtsmeier
Nick Richtsmeier is the creator of Trust-Made Growth® and the founder of CultureCraft®, a strategic advisory firm working with founder-led and relationship-driven companies. He’s spent 25 years at the intersection of culture, commerce, and leadership, long enough to
watch the Extractive Game and Trustbroken Economy it created claim otherwise good ventures run by otherwise good people.
He shares his Trust-Made Growth® Ecology in his book, The Damn Rules: How Vulnerability, Inefficiency, and Love Liberate Leaders from the Trustbroken Economy, through the Trust-Made Growth® Guild, with the growing lineup of Trust- Made Growth® Strategists, and with future entrepreneurs growing to $3M in VentureStock.
He’s on a mission to free trust-forward ventures from the extraction economy, rooting themselves in the timeless way ventures build, collaborate, and grow.
Nick lives with his wife and three teenage sons on a legacy acreage outside Des Moines, Iowa.
Founder of CultureCraft®
MA in Transformational Leadership
lead executive coach
Nicholas Whitaker
Nicholas Whitaker guides rebellious leaders and mid-career high performers as they reclaim their capacity to lead through Volatility, Overwhelm, Isolation, and Distraction.
His path here spans a career in media, tech, and coaching: running his own production company while teaching at the university level in NYC, then 13 years at Google across marketing, business operations, and learning and development. There he built training programs that reached 500,000 professionals.
Alongside the corporate chapter, he built a coaching and consulting practice. When a 3am layoff email ended one career, that practice became the work.
Nicholas has practiced mindfulness for over 30 years, trained in the Awake in the Wild lineage with Mark Coleman and Lori Schwanbeck and through the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach. At Google he helped grow the gPause program, bringing mindfulness to thousands of employees worldwide.
He has partnered with leaders from Google, Tesla, Amazon, Microsoft, and Coca-Cola, with nonprofits like United Way, and with journalism associations including RTDNA and IRE. In the Rebellion Collective, he guides rebels who are still delivering and running on empty, back to the capacity that made the work worth doing in the first place.
He lives in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains with Bex, his wife and business partner, and their two cats. When he's not online, you might find him deep in the wilds of the American West.
co-Founder of Rebellion Collective
executive capacity coach, acc icf certified
What Students of Nick and Nicholas Say
“
Our work with Nick Richtsmeier is the most important work we did this year.
Ron P.
Trivium Advisory
“
Taking the time to be a part of Nick Richtsmeier's cohort program is the best investment I've made in my own growth in a long time (and maybe ever).
DAn m.
Founder & Trust-Made Growth program graduate
“
When I first started coaching with Nicholas W., I was in a place of uncertainty, both professionally and personally. Nicholas helped me reframe a lot of things I was carrying, especially around anxiety and self-worth.
We’ve talked about everything from ageism in tech and job transitions to imposter syndrome and burnout. What I appreciate most is that he never tries to “fix” things. He helps you find your own footing. Our conversations blend the practical with the philosophical. We might talk about career strategy one minute and what it means to live with intention the next.
Nicholas has helped me reconnect with my sense of agency and purpose. I come out of every session a bit clearer, a bit lighter, and more aligned with who I actually want to be. He’s more than a coach. He’s a mirror, and I’m grateful for the reflection.
diego s.
Our No Trade offs Promise
Our program will never ask you to trade your well-being for business viability, your credibility with your customers for growth, or your integrity and commitment to your values for upward mobility.
We will show you the proven ways to grow both your psycho-social well-being and your business at the same time.
Enroll now - pay in full
$9,650
Early Bird Discount: The price above includes the early bird discount. Enrollment returns to the full pay in full price of $11,000 on 9/30.
enroll now - Pay in 3
$3,500/m
Early Bird Discount: The price above includes the early bird discount. Enrollment returns to the full payment plan price of 3 x $4,000 on 9/30.
Here are some reasons capable and experienced professionals wanting to grow to $3M+ choose VentureStock business accelerator:
- They want to build a bespoke business designed for their unique strengths and attuned to their values
- They don't want to waste time chasing gimmicks or in years of experimentation
- They have very specific revenue goals for the next 12 months beyond just "replacing income" from their corporate background
- They prioritize their social, emotional, and psychological well-being and refuse to exchange their life for the opportunity to be a business owner. They want both.
If this sounds like you, then you're in the right place and should apply for the program.
Graduate-level education isn't bad, it's just not what you need right now if what you need right now is to be profitable quickly.
A college program is:
- Not pressure-tested to build a venture from $0 to $3M+ within 24 months.
- Instruction only—no help with venture design, capacity-building, or capacity management beyond case studies and "what ifs".
- Outdated: not designed for today's constrained, trustbroken economy or the way people are buying premium services in the age of AI.
- Designed to give you "proof of education" like a certificate, badges, and even college credit, but not a profitable venture you'll love and which will bring in $300k/month.
The real cost of doing it yourself:
- "Good Founder Tax" —you'll spend hundreds of hours of free work given away in year one because you don't know how to package the offer and sell it while maintaining your values and customer commitment.
- You'll underprice your initial offer by 30-50% because you don't know how to sell like a business owner and you'll likely depend on subscription/retainer pricing in the most anti-monthly invoice environment in a decade
- You'll recreate your job without any of the upsides while living on 40% of your previous income.
- Using AI to help will result in a generalist offer that is like thousands if not millions of other offers but wrapped in convincing wording and tons of AI output so it feels like a competitive business... but actually isn't.
Expect to reserve 3-5 hours each week for VentureStock, split between two live weekly sessions and assigned venture design work.
AI tools can help you brainstorm, but they won't help you move through the somatic vulnerability which comes from launching your own venture. Nor are AI outputs going to give you uniquely tailored advice based on decades of hands-on experience doing the actual work of building ventures from startup to $100M. As a student in VentureStock, you will.
The cohort starts the week of Tuesday, October 13th, 2026.
The best thing you can do, other than bring your best self, is to make sure that you received and can access the links we'll send you in the first week of October. If you didn't receive an email you think you should have, please email team@culturecraft.com and we'll get you squared away.
Welcome! Email us at hello@culturecraft.com to get a special purchase option which reflects your existing coaching relationship, so you aren't double-paying for your coaching.
Yes! With only 18 spots in this cohort, we care as much as you do that your goals and our business accelerator align. You can schedule a short call with Nick Richtsmeier here.
Here are some reasons capable and experienced professionals wanting to grow to $3M+ choose VentureStock business accelerator:
- They want to build a bespoke business designed for their unique strengths and attuned to their values
- They don't want to waste time chasing gimmicks or in years of experimentation
- They have very specific revenue goals for the next 12 months beyond just "replacing income" from their corporate background
- They prioritize their social, emotional, and psychological well-being and refuse to exchange their life for the opportunity to be a business owner. They want both.
If this sounds like you, then you're in the right place and should apply for the program.
Graduate-level education isn't bad, it's just not what you need right now if what you need right now is to be profitable quickly.
A college program is:
- Not pressure-tested to build a venture from $0 to $3M+ within 24 months.
- Instruction only—no help with venture design, capacity-building, or capacity management beyond case studies and "what ifs".
- Outdated: not designed for today's constrained, trustbroken economy or the way people are buying premium services in the age of AI.
- Designed to give you "proof of education" like a certificate, badges, and even college credit, but not a profitable venture you'll love and which will bring in $300k/month.
The real cost of doing it yourself:
- "Good Founder Tax" —you'll spend hundreds of hours of free work given away in year one because you don't know how to package the offer and sell it while maintaining your values and customer commitment.
- You'll underprice your initial offer by 30-50% because you don't know how to sell like a business owner and you'll likely depend on subscription/retainer pricing in the most anti-monthly invoice environment in a decade
- You'll recreate your job without any of the upsides while living on 40% of your previous income.
- Using AI to help will result in a generalist offer that is like thousands if not millions of other offers but wrapped in convincing wording and tons of AI output so it feels like a competitive business... but actually isn't.
Expect to reserve 3-5 hours each week for VentureStock, split between two live weekly sessions and assigned venture design work.
AI tools can help you brainstorm, but they won't help you move through the somatic vulnerability which comes from launching your own venture. Nor are AI outputs going to give you uniquely tailored advice based on decades of hands-on experience doing the actual work of building ventures from startup to $100M. As a student in VentureStock, you will.
The cohort starts the week of Tuesday, October 13th, 2026.
The best thing you can do, other than bring your best self, is to make sure that you received and can access the links we'll send you in the first week of October. If you didn't receive an email you think you should have, please email team@culturecraft.com and we'll get you squared away.
Welcome! Email us at hello@culturecraft.com to get a special purchase option which reflects your existing coaching relationship, so you aren't double-paying for your coaching.
Yes! With only 18 spots in this cohort, we care as much as you do that your goals and our business accelerator align. You can schedule a short call with Nick Richtsmeier here.
