Hi Reader
You know when someone says something to you but their body language screams that they’re bracing for a reaction?
I went quiet. Just looked at him for a second. He held it. Didn't flinch, didn't qualify it.
"Yeah," he said. "You heard me."
We were about forty minutes into a conversation about why the sales report & pipeline looked the way it looked.
They had a really good product with a decent team. And a founder who hadn't slept properly in four months.
Somewhere in the middle of our chat, he'd pulled out a name; someone from LinkedIn, an ‘accelerator’ figure, if you will. A guy with a beautiful studio and a sharp suit and a post that had tons of ‘Likes’ & “100% agree” comments. And this was the advice he laid on the table between us like it was evidence.
The advice was the polar opposite of what I'd been saying.
I didn't argue. I asked one question instead.
Had that guru ever had to close his first ten sales himself? Or was he the visionary who hired sales later and now retrofits a narrative that sounds smart & profound?
Anyways, our founder guy thought about it.
"I actually don't know," he said.
In a nutshell, that's the problem right there.
There's a specific type of content that founders are drinking down right now. Posts and threads and what-I-wish-I-knew wisdom from people who speak well, look great, and have the engagement numbers & vanity metrics to prove that a lot of other people find them convincing. It's everywhere. It's seductive. And consuming it feels like learning something valuable.
It isn't. Not usually.
Consuming that content is, and I'll be direct about this, a lot like swapping real sex for porn. You get the dopamine hit. You feel like something happened. But it's a highlight reel; frictionless, consequence-free, completely disconnected from how things actually work when a real buyer is sitting across the table from you and doesn't give the faintest f&ck about your MVP story or your presentation.
Real startup life, especially the commercial side, is messy, awkward, sometimes genuinely demoralising, and almost always better when there's actual communication and actual effort.
Ah, but no guru is filming that version. Nobody's getting ten thousand likes for posting about the deal that fell apart at procurement stage four months in, or the salesperson who could sell ice in January but couldn't document a discovery call to save his life.
So the polished version becomes the reference point & true north And then people like me have it quoted back as almost irrefutable evidence.
The authority of the LinkedIn expert is worth looking at for a second.
They built something once, maybe. Raised a round, possibly. Got lucky with timing, almost certainly (not that timing gets mentioned much in the retrospective posts.) Their wisdom is marinated in survivorship bias & audience validation. Everyone claps because they're the person at the top of the room. That's not the same as being right…..not even close.
And when I ask, as I do now, every time, whether they've actually run the plays they're prescribing, the answers get creative. “That's not really my role anymore.” or “My value is the bigger picture.” or “Enterprise sales is table stakes.”
Which are just sophisticated ways of saying “no”.
The gap between giving commercial advice and actually closing under pressure, navigating procurement red tape, holding price and knowing how to negotiate , well that gap is enormous. Most LinkedIn wisdom never gets near it.
Here’s a phrase to mull over: revenue market fit.
Product market fit gets all the attention. The market loves your product, users engage, the feedback is super and feels great. Founders plant a flag there and feel like something significant has been achieved. And yeah, sometimes it has.
But revenue market fit is the country-cousin nobody introduces at the party. It's the difference between the market saying this is valuable and the market saying this is valuable and here is our money in a way that makes your business model actually work. No BS. just repeatable and profitable. Without the founder personally closing every deal or the economics quietly falling asunder behind the scenes.
So many startups close the gap on product market fit and then run out of road chasing the revenue side that was supposed to follow. We all know it…they buy customers and/or they discount, heavily. They rely on founder-led heroics that don't scale and can't be documented. So, the engine looks like it's running but it's running on fumes and personal force.
The LinkedIn content, almost without exception, lives entirely on the product market fit side of that line. The revenue side, the part where someone has to hand over money before you run out of time, doesn't support content that performs well. It’s messy and too specific and too uncomfortable. And certainly doesn’t offer enough universal wisdom to extract.
And that’s exactly why it's the part that actually matters.
By the way, I'm not saying stop reading. I'm not saying the people producing this content are frauds, every single one of them. Some of it is useful. Some of those people have done the real thing and have something worth hearing.
But go talk to five real prospects this week instead of five thought leaders. Build the muscle that actually produces revenue instead of the one that makes you feel like you're learning about producing revenue. The real commercial life of a startup is harder, slower, and infinitely less Instagrammable or LinkedInable
It's also the only thing that gets you off the ground.
A question to finish. How much of what you believe about selling e.g. about what works, what buyers respond to, what a good commercial function actually looks like, came from someone who's genuinely done it?
Not presented it. Not written about it. Done it.
Another Newsletter you might find useful....
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See What Others Miss. Lead Where Others Won't.
Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel | Leadership Speaker & Strategist | Creator of Master the Unseen™
DeDe Halfhill is a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel, keynote speaker, and leadership strategist who helps leaders Master the Unseen™—the hidden forces shaping their teams, decisions, and cultures. With 25+ years of high-stakes leadership experience, including two combat tours in Iraq and advisory roles to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, she understands what it takes to lead when uncertainty is high, stakes are real, and trust is non-negotiable.
DeDe equips leaders with the tools to recognize hidden leadership dynamics, step into hard moments, and sustain real impact. Because leadership isn’t just about strategy—it’s about recognizing what’s shaping the moment before it happens and having the courage to act on it. She has spoken to executives across industries, from Fortune 500 companies to military leaders, helping them see what others miss, lead with clarity in high-stakes moments, and build lasting leadership cultures rooted in trust and accountability.
Her work challenges conventional leadership wisdom, proving that the biggest threats to success aren’t always external—they’re often the unseen undercurrents, blind spots, and emotional forces leaders fail to address.
👉 Learn more at dedehalfhill.com |
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Thank you for being part of this community.
The work on how to lead better is something you have to do alone.
But you don't have to do it on your own.
Onward and Upward,
Paul Clarke
https://www.paulclarke.ie
Connect with me at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulclarkeperform/
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