My first guest in the “Conversations” series is Graham Richmond, co-founder of Clear Admit, one of the leading MBA admissions consulting firms in the world. Graham, who is a Wharton MBA grad and former member of the Wharton Admissions Committee, launched Clear Admit almost a decade ago to provide help to folks who might need an extra push to get across the finish line in their MBA applications. As you’ll soon see, he was the perfect first guest because of his great story, openness, and fantastic advice. I don’t want to give too much away before showing you the video, but he had a lot to say about the MBA admissions game and his own story should serve as an inspiration to people who have worries going into the application process. Also, I found his path into the business world and into entrepreneurship to be really unique.

If you would like more information about Graham and Clear Admit, please visit the company website at ClearAdmit.com. If you are considering business school, you’ll find a wealth of information on the Clear Admit blog. In addition to the information on the Clear Admit blog, you can access their library of MBA admissions publications at http://www.clearadmit.com/pub. Finally, if you would like to have a free assessment of your MBA applicant profile, you can send the Clear Admit team an email at info@clearadmit.com.

OK, this is the point where I have to make a quick confession…I’m a huge fan of Graham and his organization. I’ve been following the Clear Admit blog for a looooooong time…way back to my early years in the business world…and Clear Admit is a big reason why I’ve maintained my blog for all of these years. Back in 2006, Clear Admit honored this blog as the best MBA student blog of 2005-2006 and, at that point, I realized that I had something really good going with this thing. So, i just kept writing and writing and writing and now this site has been going for seven years now. If I hadn’t received that Clear Admit Best in Blogging Award, I probably would have stopped maintaining this blog as soon as I graduated from the GSB. This is why I wanted to make sure that I included him in the mix and I was truly excited that he agreed to be the first one.

Before presenting the video of the interview, I would like to thank Graham once again for agreeing to be the first interview subject for the “Conversations” series. The video session turned out better than I could have imagined and I hope this is the start of a really interesting series on the site.

Note: Apologies for the echoes in Graham’s audio. I had some issues with my video capture software. I’m still getting the hang of this, but I don’t anticipate issues like this arising in the future.

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Interview video: