Sizing a staffing niche with labor statistics, posting volume, fee norms and competitor density, plus the signals that should send you somewhere else entirely. Part One: Why Your Gut Makes a Lousy Market Analyst 1. Why does almost every new staffing firm pick its niche the same way? Because the hunch is free, fast and…
A Q&A for founders who are also the delivery team, the sales team, and the logo There is a particular flavor of tired that only arrives when you are the entire company. You end a client call at 2:15 and you were the deliverable. At 2:30 you are the sales department. At 4:00 a prospect…
A Q&A on audience ownership, algorithm risk, and why the advice you give every client is the one you never took. You tell every client to own their audience. Then you build yours on rented land, from a landlord who can raise the rent tonight, under a lease you never read. I have 28,000 followers…
Your first call is a product with no spec sheet, shipped differently every time, by people who are guessing. It is also where the deal is actually decided. Here is what 35,000 observed calls, 519,000 recorded ones and one 16th-century Italian scribe have to say about that. Continue reading →
Budget authority is seasonal. Most sellers behave as though every month is equally likely to produce a signature, which is why so many good deals die in the wrong quarter. Here is the evidence, the arithmetic, and one famous salesman who never learned any of it. Part One: Is the Year-End Spike Real, or Is…
What bootstrapper survey data says small founders spend on marketing, what it returns, and the habits that lead to a ghost town. Ten thousand dollars feels like a fortune until you open a Google Ads account. Then it feels like a tip jar. Most founders spend their first ten grand the way a teenager spends…
An honest triage note, including the sentence to say when the true answer is nine months. Somewhere right now a marketing leader is walking out of a board meeting with a pipeline number and six weeks to produce it. This is a field guide for that person, in questions and answers, with the receipts attached.…