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75 episodes
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Dan GriffithExplicit
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Date created
2021/06/18
Latest episode
2026/10/08
Average duration
25 min.
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8 days
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Learn what not to do with your business as you grow!
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Check latest episodes from Seriously Don't Do That podcast
What Founders Get Wrong About Automation and Growth | Seriously, Don’t Do That.
2026/10/08
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In this episode, Dan Griffith sits down for a conversation about Capital BPM, automation, founder growth, sales patience, and what it really takes to build trust with customers.
The discussion covers how automation can free teams from tedious work, why the best use of technology is not just saving time but creating capacity for higher-value work, and how companies can uncover hidden value inside their operations.
The conversation also moves into the founder side of growth:
How humility helps build a stronger executive team.
Why founders do not need to be the smartest person in every room.
Why different sales plays mature on different timelines.
How trust can be built through a fixed-outcome SOW.
Why automation should create real operating value, not just sound impressive.
A key theme throughout the episode is practical growth.
Not hype.
Not vague transformation.
Not automation for the sake of automation.
Real process improvement.
Real customer trust.
Real business outcomes.
Real leadership lessons.
If you are a founder, operator, executive, consultant, or business leader thinking about automation, team building, sales trust, business process improvement, or scaling a company more intelligently, this episode is worth watching.
Topics covered:
▪️ What Capital BPM actually does
▪️ How automation frees teams from low-value work
▪️ Why tedious work blocks higher-value opportunities
▪️ How humility helps founders build stronger teams
▪️ Why results take time and multiple plays matter
▪️ How a fixed-outcome SOW can reduce buyer risk
▪️ Why trust has to become more than words
▪️ How to think about opportunity cost and “opportunity opportunity”
▪️ Why founders need patience, systems, and the right people around them
Watch the full conversation for a practical look at automation, leadership, and building trust in business.
#Automation #BusinessProcess #FounderAdvice #B2BSales #BusinessGrowth
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Innovator X: What Carriers Actually Think About Your AI | GGG × Scout InsurTech
2026/09/24
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Every InsurTech founder says "our AI is best in class." Every carrier on the other side of the table has heard it twelve times this month.
So Dan Griffith and Chris Luiz stopped guessing what the buyer thinks. They went and got one.
Innovator X is a senior insurance executive at an unnamed carrier. His face is blurred. His voice is altered. His answers are completely unfiltered.
In this GGG × Scout InsurTech episode, Dan and Chris interrogate Innovator X on everything InsurTech founders need to hear — and almost never do.
What's in the episode:
▪ Why "I sell to carriers" contains practically zero information — and what to say instead
▪ The AI litmus test: if you took the word AI off your homepage, would the buyer know what problem you solve?
▪ What actually lands on a carrier executive's desk vs. what gets auto-deleted
▪ The golden sales proposition: does your AI make them more profitable or help them write more premiums? If neither — it's a science project
▪ How to get your first carrier logo when you have no references — the co-build, the POC, and what "tighter relationship" actually means from the buyer's side
▪ Inside a top-ten carrier: how many people, how many committees, and the AI review trigger that adds months nobody warns you about
▪ Innovator X's conference truth bomb: "My calendar has been booked for six months. We send our junior people to the floor."
▪ Why the 24-48 hours after a conference is everything — and the follow-up mistake that wastes your entire spend
Timed for release the week before ITC Vegas 2026. On purpose.
Featuring:
Dan Griffith — Founder & CEO, Greater Gain Group
Chris Luiz — Co-Founder & CEO, Scout InsurTech
Innovator X — Anonymous Senior Insurance Executive (identity classified)
🤝 Work with Greater Gain Group: https://calendly.com/greatergaingroup/q1-revenue-pressure-test
🌐 Scout InsurTech: https://www.scoutinsurtech.com
🎙️ Seriously Don't Do That™: https://seriouslydontdothat.com
Chris Luiz on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-luiz
Dan Griffith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dangriffithsr/
Chapters:
00:00 — Welcome + why we did this
01:30 — "I sell to carriers" — why that statement is meaningless
03:45 — The AI litmus test: take the word off your homepage
07:00 — Innovator X enters the room
08:30 — What actually lands on a carrier exec's desk
10:15 — How to get your first logo with no references
13:00 — The golden sales proposition: profit or premium
16:00 — Inside a top-ten carrier: how many people say yes before you get a yes
22:00 — The conference truth: "my calendar's been booked for six months"
26:00 — The 24-48 hour follow-up rule
28:00 — Dan's five-point close + Chris's credibility take
(Note: confirm chapter times against the final edit before publishing)
#InsurTech #AI #InnovatorX #ITCVegas #GreaterGainGroup #ScoutInsurTech #CarrierSales #InsuranceInnovation #B2BSales #FounderLedSales
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Seriously, Don't Treat Europe Like One Market | Live with David Borinstein, Liberius
2026/09/17
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In this episode of Seriously Don’t Do That, Dan Griffith sits down with David Borinstein to talk about what American companies, U.S. scale-ups, SaaS founders, technology companies, and growth-stage businesses often get wrong when they decide to “go to Europe.”
Usually, this show runs in one direction.
A European founder sits down with Dan, and the conversation is about why the United States is not one simple market. It is a hundred markets wearing a trench coat. Different buyers, different states, different sales motions, different procurement habits, different legal exposure, and a very different commercial pace.
This week, the conversation runs in reverse.
David Borinstein is a California native who spent a decade in San Francisco commercial real estate, making 50 cold calls a day and building a business that could run over the phone and online.
When a U.S. company decides to “go to Europe,” what do they usually get wrong on day one?
David’s answer starts before day one.
Because many companies misunderstand what Europe actually is as a market.
Entering France is a project.
Entering Germany is a project.
Entering Belgium is a project.
Entering Brussels, Flanders, and Wallonia may each become its own project.
For American founders, SaaS companies, fintech companies, healthtech companies, legaltech companies, enterprise sales teams, and business development leaders, this matters.
Because the mistake is not only commercial.
It can be legal, operational, cultural, and strategic.
One of the biggest points in this conversation is that a U.S. company may already have European exposure before it officially “enters Europe.”
If you hold EU customer data, process European user information, work with European customers, sell into European accounts, or touch European personal data, you may already be dealing with European legal and regulatory obligations.
That changes the conversation.
Europe market entry is not only about hiring a salesperson, choosing a country, opening an office, or finding a few distributors.
It is about understanding the rules, the relationships, the regions, the buyer expectations, the calendar, and the dignity of the market you are entering.
David uses Belgium as the argument in miniature.
Belgium is a small country, but it has multiple regions, multiple trade agencies, multiple languages, and very specific local structures. Even within one country, you cannot always assume that one relationship, one agency, or one event gives you access to the entire market.
That is the point many U.S. companies miss.
They arrive with the posture that Europe should be grateful for the opportunity.
They assume U.S. speed will translate.
They assume capital creates access.
They assume a smaller country means a simpler buying process.
They assume if the product works in America, the market will adjust around it.
That is where things break.
In the episode, David shares a story about a major U.S. financial institution that came into Belgium with the attitude that a small country should be glad to work with them because they had money.
David also breaks down the European business calendar that many American founders are not prepared for.
What we cover:
▪️ Why “entering Europe” is not one project
▪️ Why each national and regional market needs its own strategy
▪️ Why U.S. companies may already be under European law before they officially enter Europe
▪️ How EU customer data can create exposure before a company has boots on the ground
▪️ Why Belgium is a perfect example of European complexity
▪️ How Brussels, Flanders, and Wallonia create different layers of business development
▪️ Why American confidence can become a liability in European market entry
▪️ What happens when U.S. companies assume money alone opens doors
▪️ Why July, August, and December matter more than U.S. founders expect
▪️ Why slower email response does not always mean lack of interest
▪️ How American companies should think about trust, dignity, patience, and local relationships
▪️ Where U.S. companies should spend money first if they only have one priority
▪️ Why local advisors, local context, and trusted people matter when expanding into Europe
David’s line that stuck with Dan:
“They may not make nearly as much money as you do, but they have a lot of dignity.”
That sentence is the whole episode.
It is the warning for every U.S. company trying to enter Europe with the wrong posture.
Watch the full conversation with Dan Griffith and David Borinstein on Seriously Don’t Do That.
🎙️ Seriously Don’t Do That
Hosted by Dan Griffith
Guest: David Borinstein
Firm: Liberius
Topic: U.S. companies entering Europe, European market entry, international business development, EU legal exposure, Belgium business culture, and cross-border sales strategy
#SeriouslyDontDoThat #EuropeMarketEntry #InternationalBusiness #B2BSales #GoToMarketStrategy
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Booking Meetings Before the Show: A Live Conference Planning Workshop with Insurtech Association
2026/09/09
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In this webinar recording, Greater Gain Group and the InsurTech Association discuss how insurance, insurtech, and B2B teams can book better meetings before showing up at a major industry event.
Hosted by Josh Hollander from the InsurTech Association, with Dan Griffith from Greater Gain Group as co-host, this session focuses on one of the most important parts of event strategy:
Do not wait until the show starts to build your pipeline.
Before the event, companies need a clear target list, a focused outreach plan, better LinkedIn positioning, and a follow-up system that turns conversations into real sales opportunities.
This session is useful for founders, sales leaders, business development teams, insurtech companies, insurance technology firms, and B2B teams preparing for conferences, trade shows, networking events, and industry summits.
What this webinar covers:
▪️ How to think about meetings before the event
▪️ Why showing up without a plan wastes the opportunity
▪️ How to prepare your target list before the show
▪️ Why event ROI depends on pre-event outreach
▪️ How to turn conference attendance into pipeline
▪️ Why follow-up needs to be planned before the first conversation
If your company is attending an industry event, the real work starts before you walk into the room.
Watch the full webinar to learn how to book better meetings before the show.
Presented by Greater Gain Group and InsurTech Association.
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SERIOUSLY, DON’T TRUST A FORECAST BUILT ON ACTIVITY
2026/09/03
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A sales forecast built on activity is not a forecast.
It is a story your CRM is making look like math.
In this episode of Seriously, Don’t Do That, Dan Griffith breaks down why healthy-looking pipeline can collapse under inspection, especially when the forecast is built on default close dates, rep-entered activity, vague stage definitions, and buyer movement nobody has actually verified.
The story starts with a founder preparing for a Series B board meeting.
The CRM showed 41 open opportunities and $4.3M in weighted pipeline.
It looked fine.
Then the close dates told the real story.
34 of the 41 opportunities were set to close on the last day of the quarter.
Same date.
Every one of them.
Nobody was trying to mislead the board.
The team was filling required fields and choosing the value that made the CRM turn green.
That is the problem.
The pipeline was driving hiring plans, cash conversations, and board expectations. But the number underneath it was not a forecast.
It was a default value with a dollar sign in front of it.
In this episode, Dan covers:
Why forecast accuracy is usually a process problem, not a rep honesty problem
Why CRM stages should come from the buyer journey, not the software default
Why “demo completed” and “proposal sent” do not tell you where the buyer actually is
How to rebuild pipeline stages around buyer evidence
Why compliance, legal, finance, security, and procurement are distinct buyers in complex sales
Why every stage needs entry and exit criteria
How to run the two-person test on a live deal
Why forecast categories like commit, best case, and pipeline need evidence-based definitions
Why deals stall and how to build for that instead of panicking
Why “Is it still closing?” is the wrong deal review question
Why “What changed?” creates a better forecast conversation
The key idea:
Activity data is bark.
Buyer evidence is the thermometer.
If your stages describe what your team did, your forecast will always be fragile.
If your stages describe what the buyer proved, your pipeline becomes something leadership can actually inspect.
This week’s assignment:
Review your last five wins and last five losses.
Write down how they actually moved and where they died.
Rewrite your stage definitions around buyer behavior.
Run the two-person test on one deal.
In your next deal review, stop asking “Is it still closing?” and start asking “What changed?”
A pipeline you cannot inspect is not a system.
It is a story.
Seriously, don’t do that.
🎙️ Seriously Don’t Do That™
Hosted by Dan Griffith
🌐 greatergaingroup.com
#SeriouslyDontDoThat #SalesForecasting #SalesPipeline
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Deals Don’t Die in Meetings. They Die Between Meetings.
2026/08/27
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Great sales meetings do not automatically turn into revenue.
In this episode of Seriously, Don’t Do That, Dan Griffith breaks down one of the most common reasons B2B sales deals, enterprise sales opportunities, SaaS sales conversations, and complex buying processes quietly die:
The gap between meetings.
A founder or sales leader can walk out of a meeting feeling like everything went perfectly.
The buyer asked real questions.
The room was engaged.
The champion said, “This is exactly what we need.”
Everyone agreed the conversation was valuable.
Then nothing happens.
No next meeting on the calendar.
No mutual action plan.
No confirmed go-live date.
No stage-specific nurture.
No presence with the buying committee.
No live proposal walkthrough.
No reason to show up again in the buyer’s world.
Five weeks later, the email arrives:
“We’ve decided to revisit this next year.”
That is not always a bad meeting problem.
It is usually a pipeline management problem, a follow-up problem, a sales process problem, and a deal control problem.
Deals almost never die inside the meeting.
They die in the gap between meetings.
In this episode, Dan walks through five ways to keep B2B deals moving after a strong sales conversation:
Book the next meeting before you leave the current meeting
Build a mutual action plan backward from the buyer’s go-live date
Attach nurture to your pipeline stages
Stay engaged with people between conversations
Walk the proposal through live instead of emailing it into the void
This matters for founders, CEOs, sales leaders, RevOps teams, enterprise sales teams, fintech companies, healthtech companies, SaaS companies, consulting firms, and any B2B company selling into complex buying committees.
Because your buyer is not going to carry your deal for you.
Not because they are difficult.
Because they have a day job.
Your project is not the only thing on their desk.
If you want better sales follow-up, stronger pipeline management, more accurate deal progression, better enterprise sales execution, and fewer deals dying quietly after good meetings, this is the shift:
Stop running your pipeline on hope.
Control the gap between meetings.
Seriously, don’t do that.
🎙️ Seriously Don’t Do That™
Hosted by Dan Griffith
🌐 greatergaingroup.com
#SeriouslyDontDoThat #SalesPipeline #B2BSales #SalesProcess #EnterpriseSales
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Seriously, Don’t Treat Conferences as a Lead Source
2026/08/20
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A conference isn’t a lead source.
And treating it like one is one of the most expensive beliefs a founder can carry into fall event season.
In this episode of Seriously, Don’t Do That, Dan Griffith breaks down why so many companies spend tens of thousands of dollars on conferences, booths, travel, badge scans, dinners, and team time, only to come home with a spreadsheet of names and no real pipeline.
The problem usually is not the event.
The right buyers are often in the room.
The real problem is that most companies treat the conference like a one-time lead source instead of a sales sequence.
There is a sale you make internally before the show.
There is a meeting you sell before the show.
There is a next conversation you sell on-site.
And only after that does the product sale belong in the follow-up.
Most teams skip the front of the sequence, show up cold, and try to sell the product to a stranger in a hallway while they are holding coffee and watching the clock.
Seriously, don’t do that.
In this episode, Dan covers:
Why “bad show” is usually the wrong diagnosis
Why the room is not the problem
Why badge scans are not pipeline
Why a booth is optional, but the sequence is not
How to sell meetings before the event
How to use LinkedIn and the conference app before you arrive
Why the hallway conversation should close the next conversation, not the product
Why follow-up must happen within 24 to 48 hours
How to calculate real conference ROI
The 4-question audit to run before your next event
If you already paid for the booth, use it.
But do not let the booth become the strategy.
The booth is optional.
The sequence isn’t.
Run the 4-question audit on your next event before you fly:
Is there a written plan, and does everyone know what they are responsible for producing?
How many meetings are booked right now, and who is selling meetings between today and the show?
What is the exact sentence your people say to close the next conversation, and does it have a date in it?
Whose calendar has the follow-up block on it before the trip?
Most teams find the gap before they ever leave for the airport.
That is the point.
🎙️ Seriously Don’t Do That™
Hosted by Dan Griffith
🌐 greatergaingroup.com
Live Thursday at 9 AM EDT.
#SeriouslyDontDoThat #GTMStrategy #SalesPipeline
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Seriously, Don't Build Your US Go-To-Market Around Spend - with Chris Luiz, Scout InsurTech
2026/08/13
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Entering the U.S. market with a bigger budget doesn’t mean you’re entering it the right way.
Dan Griffith sits down with Chris Luiz, founder of Scout InsurTech, to break down one of the biggest mistakes international founders make when entering the U.S. insurance market: trying to buy their way into credibility.
They discuss why conference booths and badge scans rarely equal pipeline, why founders need to build relationships before scaling spend, and why selling into U.S. insurance means understanding an entire buying committee, not just finding one champion.
Dan and Chris also cover:
Why U.S. insurance market entry is a credibility problem, not a marketing problemWhere companies waste money when expanding into the U.S.Why founders should lead early market validationHow relationships outperform one-off conference interactionsWhy compliance, security, procurement, and governance can quietly kill a dealHow to build a focused target-account map before spending on market presenceWhat founders should validate before hiring a U.S. sales teamIf you’re entering the U.S. market, especially in insurance or another complex enterprise industry, this episode will help you avoid an expensive mistake: scaling spend before you’ve built the relationships and system to support it.
Seriously, don’t do that.™
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The Golden Toilet Rule: Don’t Ignore Your Cloud Infrastructure
2026/08/06
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Your product can look great and still be sitting on terrible plumbing.
Dan Griffith sits down with Tom Sas, a cloud infrastructure architect with more than 20 years of experience, to explain what he calls the Golden Toilet Rule and why founders should stop treating cloud infrastructure as something that simply “runs in the background.”
Tom breaks down a common trap: software developers build the product, keep the infrastructure working, and everything seems fine.
Until the company starts scaling.
Then costs rise, security gaps appear, systems become harder to manage, and nobody is quite sure who actually owns the problem.
Dan and Tom discuss:
Why “it works” can be a dangerous standardWhy developers shouldn’t automatically own cloud infrastructureHow poor cloud visibility leads to unnecessary spendWhy every company needs clear infrastructure ownershipHow regular audits expose unused resources, rising costs, and security risksThe difference between guardrails and roadblocksWhen it makes sense to bring in a DevOps or cloud specialistWhy backup, disaster recovery, permissions, and cost controls need ongoing attentionTom also shares a simple five-step framework founders can use to assess their cloud environment:
Assign ownership. Create visibility. Audit regularly. Build guardrails. Know when to call a specialist.
Because great software running on weak infrastructure is still a weak business foundation.
Seriously, don’t do that.™
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Is LinkedIn Outbound Dead in 2026? The B2B Sales Prob Nobody's Naming (And How to Actually Fix It)
2026/07/30
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Four hundred outbound messages. Eleven replies. Three of them were "no thanks."
A founder forwarded me the whole batch a couple of weeks ago and asked me one question:
"Dan - is LinkedIn dead, or is it us?"
Here's what I told him. It's neither.
It's the thing sitting underneath both.
So Thursday morning I'm going live on Seriously Don't Do That, and I'm going to prove it to you.
What I'll walk through:
▪ Why the merge field isn't the villain and neither is the rep who sent it
▪ The eight-seat buying committee blueprint every outbound sequence should be built against (screenshot-able)
▪ Why "advanced personalization" isn't a writing skill, read the actual research and it describes the output of an architecture, not a better sentence
▪ The 3-7-7 cadence that captures 93% of replies by Day 10 and why my founder was missing 93% of his own pipeline
▪ The four-point check to run on your very next message (two real elements beat four filler ones, every time)
▪ The one-role, one-week assignment you can start Tuesday
Two founders are showing up to this one.
The founder who's about to conclude the channel is dead.
And the founder who quietly knows it isn't and can't quite explain why nothing's landing.
If you're either of them, this is the eleven minutes you want on your calendar.
🔔 Register to watch live
Live on LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook. See you Thursday.
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You Didn't Get Scammed. The agency did exactly what you hired them to do. That's why you lost.
2026/07/23
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A health tech founder gets on a call with Dan last year. Good product. Real customers. Clinical workflow tool. About 90 seconds in, he says: "Dan, we've spent about $80,000 on outbound in the last year, and I have nothing to show for it."
Three agencies. Three.
First one: six months, $12,000 a month. Booked meetings - but with office managers when he needed the compliance officer and the CMO. Second one: cheaper at $5,000 a month. Burned his sending domain so badly his own sales team couldn't get emails delivered to prospects they already knew. Third one was still running when they talked.
And here's the part that stuck - he wasn't angry at the agencies. He was angry at himself. "I don't know what I did wrong."
He didn't do anything wrong, except one thing. He bought activity when what he was missing was architecture. Seriously, don't do that.
This episode is for two people:
One of you has the proposal open in another tab right now. Twenty meetings a month, guaranteed. It feels like relief because pipeline is the one thing keeping you up, and here's somebody offering to just handle it.
It's the same reason 70% of first SaaS VPs of Sales don't make 12 months - a stat Jason Lemkin has documented for years. Not because they're bad. Because they got dropped into a motion that didn't exist. No documented ICP, no message-market fit, no process. The agency fails for the exact same structural reason. Not a vendor problem - a physics problem.
A composite story Dan's seen play out ~40 times:
Company has real traction - $2-3M in revenue, founder closed most of it personally. Growth flattens, nobody can name why. So they do the logical thing and buy pipeline. Nine to twelve months, $50-100K across two or three agencies. What comes back: meetings with a director of ops who's genuinely interested and has zero budget authority, in a market where the compliance officer can kill the deal in a single email. Sales team chases it. Forecast fills up with ghosts. Everybody's busy.
Twelve months in, Dan asks one question: what did you give them on day one? The answer: a list. Names, emails, a one-page product overview. The agency's onboarding doc had twelve questions - who's your ICP, what's your qualification criteria, who else is in the room on a deal, what's the message for each of them. The company answered all twelve. Every single answer was a confident, articulate, completely unvalidated guess. Nobody had ever done the work to know.
If you're the one about to write the check - sequence it. Architecture first, then capacity. In that order, every time.
If you're the one cleaning up - the domain will heal. The work you skipped is a two-week problem, not a $100,000 one.
This is the whole reason the BUILT Revenue Engine starts where it starts. Buyer clarity first - before outreach, before install, before anybody spends a dollar on volume. Not because it's clever, but because everything downstream is built on it. You can't skip a foundation and then wonder why the house moves.
Next week: we build the architecture itself - the actual thing a future partner or future hire would execute on day one. Segments, roles, messages, sequence. The complete handoff document.
🎙️ Subscribe for weekly GTM strategy for founder-led B2B companies entering regulated U.S. markets.
📩 Connect with Dan Griffith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dangriffithsr/
🌐 Greater Gain Group: https://greatergaingroup.com/
📅 Book a discovery call: +1 (864) 278-5044
Chapters:
0:00 The founder who spent $80K on outbound and got nothing
0:57 Seriously, don't do that
1:01 Two people watching this right now
1:26 The agency is not the villain
2:00 What agencies can and can't supply
2:11 Why your first VP of Sales fails for the same reason
2:42 The composite story - 40 times, same result
3:07 Meetings with the wrong people
3:50 The 12-question onboarding doc - answered with guesses
4:35 $100K spent amplifying an untested assumption
4:57 Why outbound fails specifically in regulated B2B
5:03 Forrester: 22 people touch a B2B deal
5:25 Six to eight distinct fears in the buying room
5:57 The personalization data - 5% vs 18% reply rates
6:30 Gartner: 73% of buyers actively avoid irrelevant outreach
6:52 The domain damage problem - expensive twice, maybe three times
7:23 Dan's verdict: stop before you write the check
7:43 Architecture first, capacity second - always
8:14 Five questions, 20 minutes, no vendor needed
8:46 Question 1: segments from closed-won data
8:57 Question 2: 8 buying committee roles and their specific fears
9:30 Question 3: written qualification standard
9:44 Question 4: documented sequence with owners
10:00 Question 5: where does a reply actually go?
10:45 If you're about to write the check
10:57 If you're cleaning up the wreckage
11:03 The BUILT Revenue Engine starts here — buyer clarity first
11:22 Next week preview: building the architecture itself
#OutboundSales #B2BSales #GTMStrategy #SeriouslyDontDoThat #FounderLedSales
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Seriously Don't Hire a Distributor and Call Latin America "Covered" with Franklin J. Perez
2026/07/09
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So, most founders think Latin America is one market with one playbook. It's not. And the part that surprises people most? The first move isn't picking a country — it's picking a channel strategy.
In this episode, Dan sits down with Franklin J. Perez — 25+ years of commercial leadership across LATAM and the Caribbean at Medtronic, Edwards Lifesciences, and Abbott — to unpack what companies get catastrophically wrong when they enter the Latin American MedTech market. The short version: they hire a distributor, disconnect, and treat the region as covered. Then they spend eighteen months wondering why the revenue never came. The product, as Franklin puts it, dies in the warehouse.
Franklin lays out his Three Parallel Channels framework — distributor alignment, physician adoption, and payer access, all running simultaneously from day one — and makes the contrarian case for Puerto Rico as the lowest-risk, highest-speed launch pad into the region: FDA-regulated, commercially Latin American, and small enough to let you make your mistakes cheaply before you scale into a 50-million-person Colombia or a 200-million-person Brazil. If you're a founder eyeing LATAM in the next 12 months, this one's a map.
Key Topics Covered
Why treating LATAM as one homogeneous market is the fastest way to lose 18 monthsThe distributor trap: why signing a distributor is step one, not the strategyThe Three Parallel Channels framework — distributor alignment, physician adoption, and payer access run at the same time, not in sequenceWhy the payer landscape in LATAM is more varied than founders assume (Brazil's 65M private-insurance market vs. Chile's single-payer system vs. Colombia's US-style mix)The Puerto Rico launch pad: FDA-regulated, commercially Latin American, and built for cheap, fast validationThe 30-year-old perception problem — and why Europeans and Asians already have a head startBuilding a three-year LATAM plan instead of a three-month oneMemorable Quotes (timestamps approximate — pending guest approval)
"If it works in Mexico, it should work here… that is not the case." — on the myth of one homogeneous LATAM market (~02:10)"The companies that are successful in Latin America work the three channels in parallel." (~06:40)"Puerto Rico affords you the luxury of making mistakes and correcting them without a high ticket cost." (~17:30)"The Latin American market is like a chess game. If you learn how to move every piece on the board, you're going to be very successful." (~29:15)"We're leaving money on the table by not going after these countries that are neighbors." (~26:00)Resources & Companies Mentioned
LATAM MedTech Growth Partners — Franklin's firmMedtronic, Edwards Lifesciences, Abbott — Franklin's commercial-leadership backgroundConcepts referenced: 3PL (third-party logistics coordinator), formulary systems, GPO (group purchasing organization), Colombia's former "tutela" appeals systemTimestamps (Major Segments)
00:00 — Welcome + Franklin's background04:00 — The distributor trap: the #1 first-90-days mistake11:00 — The Three Parallel Channels framework19:00 — Puerto Rico as the LATAM launch pad27:00 — The 30-year-old perception problem35:00 — When LATAM stops being a side bet40:00 — Three things to do this week + closeCall-to-Action
If you're thinking about the Latin American market — even if you're a year or two out — it's worth a conversation with Franklin now, before you sign anything. Connect with him on LinkedIn (link below) and tell him you heard him on Seriously Don't Do That. And if you're a founder eyeing the U.S. market, that's our home turf — reach out to us at Greater Gain Group. Either way, subscribe so you don't miss what's next
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Don't Map Just the Champion | Map the Whole Buying Committee
2026/07/03
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In this tactical episode of Seriously Don't Do That™ — Week 3 of the 12-week SDDT program and Episode 3 of the ICP Sprint month — Dan Griffith breaks down the single most common (and most expensive) mistake founders make in regulated B2B sales: single-threading a deal through one champion when 22 people decide.
Using research from Forrester, Gartner, HBR, HIMSS, 6sense, and Prospeo, Dan reframes the ICP itself: it's not a persona, it's a committee blueprint.
Then he walks the full 8–10 seat regulated buying committee — champion, economic buyer, IT/security, compliance, legal, procurement, finance, executive sponsor, and adjacent influencers — giving the objection pattern and the role-specific message each seat needs.
You'll leave able to re-map your next three open deals this afternoon.
What you'll get from this episode:
✅ Why "they loved us" deals stall in 40–60% of B2B sales conversations
✅ The 22-person stat that should change how you build every deal strategy
✅ The 8–10 seat regulated buying committee, role-by-role
✅ The objection pattern and message each seat needs
✅ The 2–3x close-rate lift multi-threaded deals deliver vs. single-threaded
✅ Your assignment: re-map your next 3 open deals (20 minutes per deal)
⏱️ Chapters:
00:00 — Cold open: Greenville, Samson, and why "everybody's best friend" kills deals
01:15 — The Don't: single-threading your champion
03:45 — Why "no decision" is now the default — Forrester, Gartner, HBR, HIMSS data
07:15 — The reframe: your ICP is a committee blueprint, not a person
08:45 — The 8–10 seat committee walkthrough — objection + message + proof for each
17:45 — The multi-threading payoff: 2–3x close rate (Prospeo)
19:15 — Your assignment: re-map your next 3 open deals
20:45 — Week 4 tease: the hidden influencers most ICPs miss
🤝 Want help building your real, evidenced ICP — the full committee blueprint — for your market?
That's exactly what the ICP Sprint does inside our Revenue Growth Program — a 2–3 week, fixed-fee engagement where we build your prioritized segments, buyer intelligence, buying triggers, and your full buying-committee map. The whole room, not just the champion.
Capital-efficient. Practical. You walk away owning it.
Work with Greater Gain Group → https://calendly.com/greatergaingroup/q1-revenue-pressure-test
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Your ICP Is Probably Aspirational, Not Real | Build It From Evidence
2026/07/02
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Dan just got back from training for a sprint triathlon and realized something uncomfortable - he's not the athlete he thinks he is anymore. The video doesn't lie. The times don't lie. And that gap between who you think you are and who you actually are right now? That's the entire episode.
Last week was about founders with no ICP, just a fuzzy guess. This week is harder. These are founders who have a written ICP. It's in the deck. It's on the website. It's everywhere. And it's wrong - not sloppy wrong, aspirational wrong.
Two real examples:
A healthcare founder insisted his ICP was Enterprise Health Systems. When Dan asked him to pull his most recent closed-won deals, every single one was a regional payer under 300 employees - driven by a compliance deadline they didn't have the internal team to handle. Enterprise systems already had that team. They were never actually the buyer.
A fintech AI founder insisted his ICP was Tier 1 banks. Closed-won said otherwise - small local credit unions and community banks under $5 billion in assets, facing the exact same KYC scrutiny as the giants, with none of the internal compliance staff to handle it.
Both were winning deals. They just refused to look at who they were actually winning with.
This mistake has a name - writer João Fernandes calls it confusing your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) with your ACP (Average Customer Profile). Your ICP is the wish list, the ego logo. Your ACP is who you actually win with, repeatedly and profitably. The fix is building your ICP from your ACP - reverse-engineering from evidence, not ambition.
The data backs this up:
- Go to Market Playbook (March 2026): 80% of early-stage founders treat their ICP as aspiration rather than description
- Kalungi (January 2026): vague personas turn ICP into a horoscope - "a forward-thinking innovator who values efficiency"
- Salesforce 2026 State of Sales: ICP should come from real CRM data - revenue, sales cycles, product usage — not vibes
- 6sense Buyer Experience Report (2025): the buyer's pre-contract favorite wins over 80% of deals — meaning if you're not it, you're walking into a fight you've already lost
- Forecastio (2026): companies that scrapped their ICP and reverse-engineered real win triggers cut forecast variance from 25-30% down to under 10% in three quarters
That's not a marketing win. That's predictable revenue.
Your 4-move audit for this week:
Move 1 — Pull all your closed-won deals from the last 12-24 months. Lay out the hard attributes: company size, vertical, sub-segment, employee count, revenue band.
Move 2 - Find the cluster. It's almost always tighter and more boring than your deck admits.
Move 3 - Don't skip this one. Interview the customers you actually won. Ask what was happening the month they decided to buy. That trigger is your real ICP.
At Greater Gain Group, this is exactly what our ICP Sprint does - a fixed fee, $7,500, two to three week engagement covering stakeholder interviews, closed-won analysis, a full buyer committee map, and a 30-35 page strategic document with prioritized segments, buyer intelligence, triggers, messaging, and where your real buyers actually hang out. Not a persona deck in a drawer - revenue clarity.
Your ideal customer isn't the one you had in your head. It's the one who already said yes.
Chapters:
0:00 Intro — sprint triathlon training and a hard truth
0:54 The gap: chasing who you wish you were
1:11 Recap: Week 1's fuzzy ICP mistake
1:32 This week's harder problem: a written but wrong ICP
1:55 Story 1: the "Enterprise Health Systems" founder
2:24 What closed-won actually revealed
2:51 Story 2: the "Tier 1 banks" founder
2:59 What closed-won actually revealed (again)
3:23 Naming the mistake: ICP vs ACP
3:51 ICP is the wish list. ACP is who you actually win with.
4:34 The real trigger behind both stories: compliance deadlines
5:56 "If you don't know the target, everyone's a target"
6:14 Go to Market Playbook: 80% treat ICP as aspiration
6:26 Kalungi: vague personas are a horoscope
6:38 Salesforce: ICP should come from CRM data, not vibes
6:52 6sense: pre-contract favorite wins 80%+ of deals
7:34 Forecastio: forecast variance drops from 25-30% to under 10%
8:04 Move 1 — Pull your closed-won deals
8:30 Move 2 — Find the cluster
8:56 Move 3 — Interview the customers you won
9:18 Move 4 — Run it on closed-lost too
9:31 Firmographics = who. Triggers = when and why.
9:48 This week's challenge
9:54 Week 3 preview: mapping the buying committee
10:17 What the Greater Gain Group ICP Sprint includes
10:57 Closing: do the audit
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The Costliest ICP Mistake Founders Make in Regulated B2B Markets
2026/07/01
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Welcome to Week 1 of a brand new 12-week run of Seriously Don't Do That™. We're opening with ICP Month - four episodes on your ideal customer, why they buy, and the choices you have to make to actually grow.
This is the episode Dan probably should have recorded a long time ago, because it covers the single most expensive mistake he sees founders make in regulated B2B markets.
The Don't: seriously, don't sell to everyone. Don't build a fuzzy ICP. Don't tell yourself your product is "for hospitals" or "for community banks" or "for insurance carriers." That's not an ICP. That's a TAM slide.
The anchor line of this episode: if you don't know the target you're shooting at, then everything's a target. Your sales team chases everyone at once. Your marketing produces content for everyone and no one simultaneously. And the founder becomes the only person who can tell, deal by deal, whether something's worth the effort - which doesn't scale.
- Tala Fakher (Medium, March 2026): 60-80% of sales and marketing budget at most B2B startups gets wasted on the wrong prospects
- Forrester (2025): 92% of B2B buyers start their evaluation with at least one vendor already in mind, and 41% already have a single preference before formal evaluation even starts
What ICP actually is (and isn't): not a TAM exercise, not a persona document. It's a strategic, written, shared choice about which buyers you pursue - and just as important, which you walk away from. Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) has written for years about how 70% of first VPs of Sales don't make it 12 months - largely because they inherit an undefined ICP, spend two quarters trying to figure it out, and get let go before they ever get traction.
A real ICP is documented and shared: which segments, which buyer roles, what triggers cause them to buy, what the buying committee looks like, where they hang out (the "digital watering hole"), and what language resonates. Once it's written, it becomes the foundation everything downstream depends on - hiring, marketing, CRM structure, conference strategy, and eventually, the founder stepping out of every single deal.
The objection Dan hears constantly: "But our product can help anyone." Narrowing your ICP is not the same as narrowing your market. Your market stays the same size - what changes is who you talk to first, when, what you say, and how compelling you sound saying it. A case pattern Dan's seen repeatedly: a B2B SaaS company selling broadly into "mid-market" ran 9-11 month sales cycles with mediocre conversion. They narrowed to a specific situational ICP - Series B companies that just hired their first VP of Sales - and cycles compressed to 3-4 months. You don't start broad and win narrow. You start narrow and win broad.
This week's homework: in your next leadership meeting, get sales, marketing, and customer success in the room (or whoever's doing GTM if you're early stage). Have each person individually write down, no discussion first, "describe our ideal customer in two sentences." Then read them out loud. The gap between the answers is exactly the gap costing you sales-focused conversations every week.
At Greater Gain Group, this is exactly what the ICP Sprint solves - a fixed fee, $7,500, two to three week engagement: structured market research, competitive review, real customer analysis (who's actually winning, not who you wish was winning), 3-5 prioritized segments with full buyer intelligence, messaging frameworks, buying committee mapping, and a market intelligence layer showing exactly where your buyers hang out. You walk away with a 30-35 page strategic document - but the real deliverable is shared clarity across your whole team.
Next week: Week 2 of ICP Month - the six predictable mistakes founders make when building their first real ICP.
Chapters:
0:00 Intro — Greenville, sprint triathlon training, and Samson
0:39 Welcome to ICP Month — a new 12-week run begins
1:05 Today's episode: the costliest mistake in regulated B2B
1:09 The Don't: seriously, don't sell to everyone
2:00 The anchor line: if you don't know the target, everything's a target
3:23 Why this mattered less 30 years ago at IBM
4:08 Salesforce 2026 State of Sales: buyers research before they call
4:55 Tala Fakher: 60-80% of budget wasted on wrong prospects
5:26 Forrester: 92% already have a vendor in mind
6:11 Why fuzzy ICP locks you out of consideration entirely
7:03 Composite case study: the post-acute care healthcare company
9:09 What "post-acute care" was actually hiding
10:18 Motion without momentum
10:33 Reframing what ICP actually is — not TAM, not a persona
11:11 ICP is a strategic choice, including who you walk away from
12:24 Jason Lemkin: 70% of first VPs of Sales fail in 12 months
12:58 What a real, documented ICP actually looks like
14:11 The shift from founder-led sales to team-run revenue
23:55 Closing
#ICP #IdealCustomerProfile #B2BSales #GTMStrategy #SeriouslyDontDoThat
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