There's a conversation happening on social media right now about making data centers look better. Architects, venture capitalists, and armchair designers are generating AI renders of hobbit-hole data centers, medieval castle data centers, Parthenon-inspired data centers. Some of it is genuinely beautiful. And, I think they're onto something. Better looking data centers would be a massive positive. For communities. For the companies building them. For the broader public conver

You did everything right. You hired a reputable outbound agency. You went through onboarding, approved the messaging, signed off on the target list. Within a few weeks, meetings started showing up on your calendar. The agency was delivering exactly what they promised. And then something uncomfortable happened. The meetings weren't closing. Not because the leads were bad, necessarily. Not because your product doesn't work. But somewhere between "booked meeting" and "signed con

When I started building growth playbooks for agencies, I had a working theory. Agencies struggle with business development because they don't have the right systems. Build the systems and the pipeline follows. Straightforward enough. Four engagements later, the theory is still right. What I got wrong was which systems. I assumed most agencies needed some version of the same infrastructure: a tighter ICP, a better outbound process, a more consistent message. A generic version

In my last post I made a claim: most agencies misdiagnose their growth problem. The symptoms look the same — inconsistent pipeline, unpredictable new business, too much depending on the founder. But the root causes are different, and prescribing the wrong fix doesn't just waste time. It can actively make things worse. After four agency engagements I keep seeing the same split. Not four different problems. Two. The first problem: outbound infrastructure. This one actually is a

The first call with a new agency client almost always goes the same way. They want more leads. They want a better outbound system. They want to know what sequences to run, which tools to use, how many touches before giving up. They have already decided what the problem is before I ask a single question. Sometimes they are right. But more often, the thing they think is broken is not actually what is holding them back. I have built growth playbooks for four agencies over the pa

The conversation usually starts the same way. A founder tells me they're ready to scale sales. They've got a product that's working, a handful of clients who love it, and real conviction that the market is there. What they need, they say, is more pipeline. More reps. More activity. So I ask a few questions. And within about ten minutes, a different picture starts to emerge. This isn't a knock on founders, it takes real courage to build something from scratch and carry the sal

Last week I wrote about why first sales hires fail, and the feedback said something interesting. Almost nobody pushed back on the infrastructure argument. What they zeroed in on was messaging. One person put it simply: "It's the story, stupid." They're right. And it's worth going deeper on exactly what that means in practice, because "fix your messaging" is advice everyone gives and almost nobody explains how to actually do. So this week: what a Messaging Matrix is, why your

There's a story I keep seeing play out in B2B companies, and it almost always ends the same way. A founder has been carrying the sales function on their own for a year or two. They've landed a handful of clients through their network, through sheer force of will, through the kind of relationship-driven hustle that gets a company off the ground. Revenue is coming in. Things feel like they're working. So they make what seems like the obvious next move: they hire a salesperson.

My brother sent me a text message last week: "Have you ever listened to The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale?" I hadn't. He followed up with: "It's from 1956. Just listen to it. Trust me." I'm going to be honest, my initial reaction was I don't have time, but decided to listen while I read the bike and got a workout in and glad I did. Why I Wish I'd Heard This 20 Years Ago Here's the thing that hit me: Nightingale talks about how only 5% of people who start their careers

Here's something that took me way too long to figure out: sales isn't actually about sales. I know, I know. But hear me out. When most people think about "sales," they picture someone in a button-down shirt hammering away at cold calls, armed with a script and unrealistic quota. And sure, that's part of it. But if that's your entire sales strategy, you're leaving money—and relationships—on the table. Growth Is a Team Sport Here's what I've learned: growth is a mindset that f