If you’re a founder, your #1 job isn’t raising money.
-It’s not building the perfect product.
-It’s not hiring a rockstar team.
Your first job is selling.
Here’s the truth no one tells founders early enough:
You can build the best product in the world—but if you can’t sell it, you won’t survive.
Most founders are taught everything except how to sell. You're trained in accounting, finance, management, and product development—all essential skills.
But selling? Actually having conversations that turn strangers into paying customers? That gets treated like an afterthought... or something you’ll “hire for later.”
That’s why so many startups fail.
One entrepreneur summed it up perfectly:
"We didn’t sell anything. We didn’t sell anything. We didn’t sell anything."
I’ve seen it first-hand—both as a founder myself, and while coaching hundreds of entrepreneurs.
- We’re scrappy, smart, and stubborn.
- We tell ourselves, “I’ll figure it out.”
- We think needing help means we’ve failed somehow.
But selling isn't about figuring it out alone—it’s about learning, practicing, and getting better faster than your competition.
If you are a founder who wants to find and convert more paying customers
—and build a business that lasts—join me at INBOUND25.
I’ll be leading Founder Led Sales: Best Practices to Find and Convert Paying Customers, where I’ll share the exact methods I use to help founders master the sales skills they need most.
Register now — your future customers are waiting.
Early in my own journey, I believed that if I just worked hard enough, people would see the value I was offering.
(They didn’t.)
I believed that my passion would “sell itself.”
(It didn’t.)
Things started to change when I treated sales like a discipline—something to be studied, practiced, and coached—things started to change.
Here’s what every founder needs to hear:
✅ Selling is a skill.
✅ You can learn it.
✅ You must practice it.
✅ You’ll need feedback and coaching to get good at it.
The founders who succeed don’t just build great products.
They learn how to sell the vision, sell the solution, and sell the future.
And they start doing it long before they ever hire their first sales rep.
If you loved this post:
Please do me a favor and share it with someone who will also love it. And don't forget to subscribe for more insights like this!
Thanks!