The dinner table that changed everything.
Growing up, Mike Ronca had a habit of sitting quietly at the dinner table — not because he had nothing to say, but because the conversations happening around him were too valuable to interrupt. Business deals, real estate decisions, financial strategy — absorbed over years, one meal at a time.
It didn't look like an education at the time. But that dinner table was, in many ways, a better classroom than anywhere else.
From hating school to practicing law.
Mike hated school growing up. He argued with teachers, questioned the point of most of what was being taught, and at one point considered the military over college entirely. School felt disconnected from anything that actually mattered.
Then in 11th grade, something clicked — an economics class, then physics. Subjects that connected to the real world. Senior year, a Tony Robbins disc set changed his trajectory. By graduation he had made two decisions: he would start college, and he would get his real estate license first. He was 18.
College opened more doors. A required finance course at Penn State made him switch his major on the spot. A business law professor in his senior year convinced him to apply to law school. The kid who couldn't stand sitting in class ended up with degrees in both finance and law — and a career built on understanding how money and systems actually work.
The twin brothers moment.
For years, Mike had been teaching his twin brothers the things school never covered — how credit scores work, what longing and shorting a stock actually means, what a Roth IRA actually does. When they were freshmen in high school, he spent a week walking them through concepts most adults still don't fully understand.
At the end of that week, he had one thought: I should just write this down.
That thought became What They Should Have Taught You — Book 1 of the Clearwood & Co. series.
📘 What They Should Have Taught You
A financial and life skills guide for high schoolers — covering bank accounts, credit scores, credit cards, every path after graduation, and the money mindset that changes everything. Written for the kid who deserves to start life ahead.
The mission.
Clearwood & Co. exists because financial knowledge shouldn't be something you only get if you grew up with the right dinner table conversations. Whether you had that or not, the information should be equally available to you.
We publish books that actually teach. We create content for people who want to understand money as a practical tool — one they can use to build the life they want.
The name "Clearwood" comes from that spirit: clearing the path. Cutting through the jargon and giving you a clean way forward.