Two founders who have been through it

Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas, CSP™

Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas has spent her career at the intersection of mental health and entrepreneurship, and she came to that work the hardest way possible. Her brother Carson was a natural-born entrepreneur, charismatic enough that people called him the Pied Piper, who built a national sales company from a couple thousand dollars and a lot of hustle. He also lived with bipolar disorder, and the same energy that fueled his success eventually became part of a struggle the family couldn't outrun.

Sally, a psychologist by training, channeled that loss into building an organization dedicated to suicide prevention, one that grew to reach communities internationally.

She has watched that work nearly come apart twice: once in 2012 and again in 2017, when a fast-growing nonprofit she'd built from the ground up collapsed under financial strain and internal conflict severe enough that she walked away and started over from a hotel room overseas. Both times, she rebuilt. By 2020, the small consulting practice she started with nothing had grown into a global organization, proof that she knows the entrepreneurial rollercoaster from the inside, not just from a clinician's chair.

Sally is a keynote speaker and thought leader in suicide prevention who has spent years teaching individuals and organizations how to talk about mental health without flinching. She brings that same directness, and that same hope, to Entrepreneur Aftershock, co-written with Susan Frew to give founders the permission and the tools to say the quiet part out loud.

Susan Frew, CSP™

Susan Frew has built and lost more than one business, and she'll tell you both stories with equal honesty. After returning to Colorado from an international post with AT&T Wireless, she launched a business coaching practice, only to watch her client roster disappear overnight when the 2008 recession hit. The financial collapse triggered a depression that would become a lifelong companion to manage, alongside ADHD, mild OCD, and a knack for building brands that outpaces her ability to do simple math in her head. She calls it her "neuro-spicy" brain, and she's learned, the hard way, that the traits she once saw as weaknesses are the same ones that let her build something that lasts.

In 2012, she and her husband William turned $25 toilet tune-ups into Sunshine Plumbing Heating Air, a company that would go on to win 43 awards and land a spot on the INC 5000. But success didn't mean the struggle was over. In 2018, a catastrophic hiring decision and a season of neglecting the business that funded her speaking career put the company a million dollars in debt overnight. Susan and William moved operations into their basement and went on medication just to survive the stress. She rebuilt anyway, and she's spent the years since turning what she learned into something other founders can use.

Today, Susan is a Google AI Certified keynote speaker, a former INC 5000 CEO, and an entrepreneur who has learned to compete on awesome rather than burn out chasing perfect. Through Entrepreneur Aftershock, she's turning her hardest seasons into a resource for the founders coming up behind her.