The last meeting should be a formality. It almost never is. A founder's diary on the cruelest stage of any deal — the price you'd settled comes roaring back, and a stranger who was never on a single call appears to blow the whole thing up. Why it happens, and what a decade of closing taught me to do.

Nobody warns founders that selling your own product is lonely. That you'll be the only one in the room when the rejection lands. A sales consultant's honest diary of the 4pm doubt spiral, the ghosting, the awkward follow-up, and the Friday call that makes it all worth it. With a survival checklist for the hard days.