Why Founder-Led BD Is Capping Your Growth | EP 182

All right.

So the first thing I wanna talk to you about, team, is founder-led BD feels productive.

Like, it feels good when you're doing the business development.

Um, and I'll talk about in a second, like, why obviously as you grow your business and start your business and, and start to, to elevate it, like, why it's gotta stay with you initially.

But it quietly-- what I wanna get through to you is it quietly ties your revenue growth and the growth of your business to your personal capacity, and that's where your growth's going to stall because, like, obviously, early on in your business, um, founder-led BD makes sense.

It might be just you, um, might be you and one other, uh, in your business.

Um, and it makes sense early on because you know the clients, you know the industry, you know your business really well.

Like, you can sell the value of your business, and you can build trust fast with your clients.

So it's really, um, efficient for you to do, obviously, the BD and the growth of your business initially.

But as I'm sure you've experienced, as delivery heats up, like, uh, again, as you, uh, jag the work and win the work but then bring it into your business to, to deliver it, as delivery gets busier, get-- it heats up, it's almost the last thing that you do, which is BD, to continue to push the business forward because you get stuck in delivery.

You've got, um, uh, commitments to clients.

You also think to yourself, "Holy crap, how am I gonna l- deliver the work that I've just won? I can't even think about going out there and winning any more work." But the problem with that is then the pipeline becomes lumpy because it's too dependent on your availability, and it's not a system.

So what happens is, is this feast and famine approach in terms of, um, you go out there, you win work, uh, you get busy delivering, you know, your BD activity drops off.

Uh, you have an oh crap moment and f- and look at your pipeline, and you're like, "I've gotta get back out there and win more work." It's a feast and famine approach.

And holidays or busy periods, like if you wanna take a break out of your business or busy periods or even, like, some personal stuff happens, um, or things happen in your personal life, um, what happens is BD drops.

You do the bare minimum 'cause clients are calling you, and they want the stuff delivered, and your revenue dips.

So what happens is, over time, the business becomes structurally dependent on you instead of resilient without you.

And so I'll say that again.

Over time, the business becomes structurally dependent on you to grow and your capacity and your time and your effort into BD instead of becoming resilient without you.