How Much Do You Invest In Growth?

Hello Predictable Revenue community,

Book update: I probably get a little too excited every time I see new reviews pop up on Amazon, it’s only a few every week but it’s rewarding to see others getting value from your work. We’re up to 15 so far, if you’ve read it and have time to post a review, I’d appreciate the help. Oh, and Forbes mentioned The Terrifying Art of Finding Customers on one of their lists this week, link below.

Community update: our next meetup is next Friday (930am PT) and our focus is going to be on 2026 planning & investing in GTM channels. Hit reply if you’d like to join, this one’s open to anyone.

Onto the newsletter…

Quick question for you: How much do you actually spend on growth as a percentage of revenue? And what happens when you stop making those investments?

I've got a story to tell that connects to something I've been wrestling with myself this week.

The Deal That Slipped

I had a prospect bail on me this week, they went from verbal (“yes, let’s do it”) to lost in 24 hours. If I'm going to lose a deal, I like to know ahead of time or at least be part of the conversation. But this one left me frustrated, mostly because I didn't see it coming. I don't mind losing deals, but I hate being surprised.

The reason? They didn't think outbound worked anymore. They were concerned about wasting their money.

Here's what made it interesting: This founder wasn't afraid to spend money. They had three salespeople on the team. Those salespeople hadn't closed much this year. Their only source of new revenue was referrals from existing customers. Their biggest challenge? Lack of top-of-funnel.

So they were spending a lot on salespeople, not growing, and growth was their number one challenge. Yet they weren't willing to make an investment (less than the cost of one of those salespeople) that could actually solve the problem.

I even showed them campaigns I was running for myself and my startup. All beating any cold email benchmark by a large factor. Didn't matter.

I think the decision was driven by fear. Not fear of doing outbound. Not fear of failing. Fear of wasting money.

Why Growth Feels Risky

There's a reason folks refer to growth as an investment. Just like investing, some bets work out and some don't, and it's hard to know exactly which ones will and which ones won't.

That's why I only invest in index funds. I don't have the time, tools, or expertise to pick individual stocks. Unfortunately for us founders, there's no growth index fund where you can buy a fraction of all these little channels and watch the aggregate result just work for you.

You're an entrepreneur. You want to grow. Growth requires risk.

If all you ever do is play it safe, you're going to sit at the poker table and fold every hand. You'll blind out without ever playing.* It's the same with growth. If you don't make any bets, you don't get any wins, and the blinds will just take you out eventually.

*In poker, blinds are forced bets that increase over time. If you never play a hand, these mandatory bets slowly drain your chips until you're out of the game.

A Channel Never Just "Works" or "Doesn't Work"

Coming back to my prospect, they were gun shy. They'd tried outbound before, heard everyone dunking on it, and it hadn't worked for them.

But when you look at why, you can pull apart the real reasons. Was it the targeting, meaning who you asked the team to go after? Was it the tactics, the specific things you did to reach that audience? Was it the tools? (Doubtful, but possible.) Was it the team, and whether they actually replied to emails in a timely manner? Was it the guidance, whether the founder pointed them in the right direction and helped the team learn?

It's not just "channel works" or "channel doesn't work." It's a project involving multiple stakeholders and multiple variables.

When I was running the sales development agency, we'd have competitive products as clients. One would go gangbusters, the other wouldn't work at all. Same process, same tech, same quality of person managing the account. 

The one thing that changed? The guidance from our client.

Client A would give us tons of feedback and helped our team understand the market and why they were reaching out. They got great results. Client B came to us with the attitude: "You're the experts, you figure it out." When they churned, they blamed us. And yeah, from their perspective, they hired a company that didn't deliver. But the real difference was their involvement in helping us test, learn, and iterate.

Nothing ever comes out perfectly the first try. The willingness to commit to testing and iterating, and giving a channel time to show some life, that's the real important piece.

My Own Confession

After my book launch, I slowed down the growth push and revenue slowed down beside it.

You'd think someone who helps other founders figure out how to grow would be more on top of this. Classic cobbler's kids situation. We had a couple good months with referrals, and I got lazy and took my foot off the gas.

So yesterday, I sat down in front of Instantly and built out a campaign. I'm recommitting to relationship-first prospecting, reaching out to accelerators to ask for introductions to founders who might give me feedback on VC List. Some of those conversations might lead to folks who need help finding their first customers or building their first sales team.

I'm also recommitting to spending a percentage of my revenue on growth. I've gotten complacent about it, so I'm sitting down with my controller for annual planning, and we're carving out a significant chunk of revenue to reinvest in growth.

And I'm going to make a couple of bets that probably won't work because if you’re doing the same stuff as your competitors, you can’t really stand out. 

Ask Yourself

Are you investing enough to give your business a real chance?

Think about what's the number one thing preventing you from hitting that next milestone. Then ask yourself: What percentage of your budget and what percentage of your time have you dedicated toward solving it?

Don't let yourself get eaten by the blinds. Pick an amount you’re comfortable investing, make some bets, stay in the game.

Collin

PS - If you're working through similar challenges with top-of-funnel or early sales, reply to this email. I'm always down to talk shop.

PPS - here are the recent reviews of The Terrifying Art of Finding Customers, grab your copy today. Please 😁.

Thank you Paul!

Thank you Verified Kindle Customer (probably not their real name)!