Big News
Our founder-led group coaching cohort beginning on September 10th is now open and filling up fast. It’s built for one purpose, to turn uncertain, early-stage sales into a predictable growth engine.

Over 10 weeks you’ll:

• Identify and validate PMF in the field

• Build a repeatable customer acquisition motion from lead to close

• Gain the confidence and certainty to close deals with predictablity

This is not a course. It’s a hands on, high-intensity group coaching cohort.
Only 10 founding teams will be accepted. When the cohort is full, it’s closed.

If you’re interested, please do not wait. Go ahead and apply here!

Title: Revenue Is Not The Problem. Your Net New Is.

Read time: 3 min


Today, we’re talking about a founder problem that never shows up on dashboards, but will absolutely kill your growth silently: spending all your time trying to close what’s in front of you, while neglecting net new demand.

I see and hear it weekly. Your product is good. Your current deals are close. You just need one or two to close and you’re good for a little bit as you start to work closely with your new customers.

This is the trap.

Founders get tunnel vision. They focus only on what’s in motion, the warm intros, the pipeline deals, the promising buyers who “just need to loop in legal,” so you stop prospecting. You stop creating. You stop driving new conversations.

And then those warm deals stall, or ghost, or churn before they sign. Now you're in panic mode. And boom, the pipeline’s empty, again.

This is one of the most dangerous places for a founder to be. Not because you’re failing, but because it feels like you’re close.

In this issue, we’ll break down how to build a simple outbound rhythm, how to create deal flow without sounding desperate, and why this single behavior unlocks everything else.

Your calendar is a better leading indicator of growth than your pipeline.

~ Jason Lemkin (SaaStr OG)

A lot of founders struggle here because they often confuse motion with momentum. Staying busy feels better than looking at an empty calendar. Building" feels productive, but I promise you nothing matters if no new conversations are starting.

Do not overvalue what’s warm and undervalue what’s next. Do not get stuck waiting, hoping, and checking in on deals that probably weren’t real in the first place.

Here’s a tactical breakdown of a simple outbound rhythm to make sure your pipeline never runs dry.

1. Pipeline is a Lagging Indicator. Calendar is a Leading Indicator

Do not obsess over pipeline dashboards. Deal stages. Forecast numbers. None of that tells you what’s actually happening right now.

The most accurate snapshot of the health of your sales motion is simple: your calendar.

Open your calendar for the week. How many new business calls are on it? Not check-ins. Not existing customer convos. Not investor updates. Just net new conversations with qualified buyers or referral sources.

If the answer is one or two, your sales engine is already breaking. You just don’t feel the effects yet.

Here’s what to do:

• Start every Monday by reviewing your calendar, not your CRM. If you don’t have at least five new business calls lined up, your number one task is to fix that. Nothing else matters more at early stage.
  

• Build a simple spreadsheet with one row: "New Conv Started." Log the number of cold messages, referral asks, or inbound convos you initiated daily. Do this every week. Treat it like your personal KPI.
  

• Create a rolling 2-week forecast of first meetings. It should always be at least half full. If it drops below that, shift your energy from closing to prospecting immediately.

Deals don’t just appear. They start with a calendar invite.

If you’re not booking those, nothing else in your pipeline matters.

2. Track One Number: Net New Conversations

Every founder should track this weekly: How many new sales conversations did you start this week?

Not intros you received. Not demos scheduled. Just cold emails sent, referrals asked for, ghosted leads re-engaged, anything that starts a new thread.

If that number is under 8, you’re not selling, you’re waiting.

Keep it simple:

• Open a spreadsheet

• Log your daily outreach

• Review it every Friday

No fluffy BS. Just volume and intent.

3. Founders Who Start Conversations, Win

Your job isn’t to chase warm leads all day, it’s to create heat.

That means these things are non negotiable:

• Sending 10 personalized outbound messages per day

• Reaching out to customers with expansion signals

• Sharing wins, clips, product updates on LinkedIn

• Following up with closed-lost deals after 30 days

• Asking every advisor for 3 intros

• Turning 1 customer call into 3 referrals

Not doing this daily is why you don’t know where next month’s revenue is coming from. This is a long game that compounds and produces huge results over time, but you have to the things everyday.

4. Don’t Fall in Love With Your Pipeline

Most early-stage pipelines I see are padded with wishful thinking. If someone hasn’t replied in two weeks, never introduced you to a decision-maker, or hasn’t confirmed budget, it’s not a deal, because its most likely not qualified. It’s a maybe. And maybes kill momentum.

Be ruthless:

• If there’s no movement after a set time, close it out

• If they ghosted, follow up with a cadence, then move on

• If they’re “interested” but vague, force a decision

Clean pipeline equals clean focus. The more honest you are about what’s dead, the faster you’ll get to what’s real. When I open a pipeline and look at opps, I should be able to say I’m 70%+ confident that these deals will close, and know exactly what the bottlenecks are, if any.

5. Schedule Your Prospecting, or It Won’t Happen

Block 90 minutes a day for outbound. First thing in the morning. Before Slack, email and before you start reacting to the day.

You don’t need a list of 1,000. You need 10 you can reach out to directly, clearly, and personally.

Back when I was a stockbroker (a lifetime ago), I built a simple rule:
5 cold calls before I took off my jacket. 5 more before I left for the day. No exceptions.

That’s 10 extra calls a day × 5 days a week = 50 calls.
Do that every week for a year, that’s 2,500 extra touches.

Do you know how many deals closed? How much AUM was raised, just from that discipline alone? Tons.

Consistency compounds. Always. Be consistent.

Key Takeaway

If you're constantly stuck refreshing your CRM or waiting on three warm deals to save the quarter, you're playing the wrong game.

The best founders we coached and who win don’t just close what’s in front of them, they’re always creating what comes next.

Pipeline is not something you manage. It’s something you manufacture. Daily.

It starts with a simple, brutal commitment, talk to more people than you’re comfortable with. Every week. No exceptions.

The founders who do that don’t worry about warm leads going cold.

They’ve got 10 more ready to go. 💪



That’s it for today folks.

See you all next week!

Darren

P.S. If you’re a venture-backed company interested in coaching, book a call here.