You can’t scale what you can’t predict
Get your pipeline right before you spend another dollar on lead gen
If your forecasts feel more like guesses than numbers, you’re not alone. Most founders I talk to struggle with the same thing: deals stall, budgets feel thin, and marketing takes more work for less return.
This week, we’re taking the guesswork out of growth.
Today’s agenda:
📉 How to make your sales forecasts reliable
💸 Marketing moves that work without a big budget
🤝 A faster way to get your content in front of buyers
💼 Briefly: AI is eating traffic, changing shopping, and shaping how we talk
💬 Quote of the week
📉 Why your revenue feels unpredictable
Struggling with inconsistent revenue and forecasts? That’s almost always a pipeline problem.
Most founders think they have a sales process, until we take a look inside their CRM and find a vague set of stages that don’t reflect how their deals really get done.
👇 In this clip from my recent appearance on the Sales Pop! Podcast, I walk through why your pipeline must reflect the real steps, decisions, and exceptions your deals go through—and how that clarity leads to predictability.
Key takeaways:
You can’t forecast what you haven’t operationalized. Map the real journey of your deals, including approvals and exceptions.
A “happy path” gives your team a clear playbook. Without it, every rep is improvising.
The best CRMs are decision engines, not just dashboards. Structure your pipeline to drive action, not just track deals.
Before you scale lead gen, make sure your pipeline can handle the weight.
If you or your team don’t know what happens next in a deal, you’re just playing a guessing game rather than following a real sales process.
🎧 Listen to the full podcast episode.
💸 Scrappy strategies for a startup budget
You don’t need a massive budget to make an impact. The best marketing moves for startups are scrappy, consistent, and focused on where your audience already spends their time.
Here are a few budget-friendly tactics that consistently work:
👥 Talk where your audience hangs out
Post, comment, and join conversations on LinkedIn, Twitter, or industry forums.
📝 Share what you know
Write simple blog posts, quick how-tos, or short videos that answer real questions.
📧 Keep in touch
It’s better to have a small, engaged list than thousands who never open your emails.
🤝 Team up
Partner with other businesses or founders—you’ll both reach new people without spending a dime.
🎨 Do something unexpected
A clever stunt, free workshop, or surprising piece of content gets remembered.
📋 I break down all 10 strategies here.
🤝 Borrow traffic before you build it
Building an audience from scratch is slow. A faster way to grow is by tapping into platforms that already have your buyers, and designing your content to ride their algorithms.
How to scale your reach without paying for ads:
Start with proven platforms: LinkedIn, YouTube, and industry sites already have the audience you want.
Create for the format: LinkedIn rewards conversations, YouTube rewards watch time—make content that fits.
Answer demand that already exists: Find the questions people are searching for and build content around them.
Work with the algorithm: The more engagement you spark, the more distribution you earn.
Win one channel first: Use existing platforms first, then expand once you’ve got traction.
Don’t waste time shouting into the void. Put your content where the traffic already flows, and let the platform carry it further.
➡️ Want help putting the right distribution strategy in place? Schedule a call with me and let’s map it out.
Briefly
📉 Website traffic is drying up. With nearly 60% of searches ending in an AI answer, old SEO tactics aren’t enough—start thinking about how your business shows up in AI engines too.
🤖 One-third of consumers now shop with AI. While buyers use tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity to guide decisions, nearly half of brands have no AI strategy at all. That gap is your opportunity.
🔗 Internal links aren’t just plumbing anymore. How you connect pages tells Google (and AI) what your brand should be known for—so use clear, consistent links to reinforce your authority.
🗣️ AI is changing how we talk. Words like “delve” and “intricate” are slipping from chatbot vocab into everyday conversations—a reminder that AI isn’t just shaping tech, it’s shaping culture.
Quote of the week
“The only thing worse than starting something and failing… is not starting something.”
- Seth Godin, entrepreneur and marketing expert