Happy Tuesday!
I spent the last two weeks interviewing six professionals who are currently going through my Trust Lab program. Smart people. Accomplished people. People who have built real businesses and served real clients.
I asked every single one of them the same question:
Why now? Why did you finally decide to get serious about business development?
Here’s what I expected to hear: I didn’t know what to do. I needed someone to teach me.
Here’s what I actually heard: Not one of them said they didn’t know what to do.
Not one.
The Two Stories That Stopped Me Cold
One of my participants had been working toward building his fractional business for over a year. He’d gone through Freeway to Fractional. He understood the concepts. He knew the theory. And then he spent that year chasing side projects, exploring other ideas, doing the things that felt comfortable and exciting instead of the things that actually moved his business forward.
By the time he came into Trust Lab, it was make or break. His words, not mine. Go get a full-time job, or go all in on fractional. Right now. No more half-measures.
Then there’s another one. This one had been through Sandler training. He knew about pay-time versus no-pay-time activity. He understood the value of relationships. He was networking. He was having meetings. He was connecting with people.
And then he had to stop collecting his paycheck full-time because the revenue just wasn’t there.
Not because he wasn’t trying. Because none of what he was doing was connected to a system that actually produced results.
The Pattern I Couldn’t Ignore
Here’s what hit me after talking to all six of them.
Every single one was active. Meetings, networking, connecting, tagging contacts, showing up. They were busy. On paper, they were doing the work.
But busy isn’t productive. And when your income depends on the difference between the two, that’s not a strategy. That’s a gamble.
The thing that kept surfacing — across every single conversation — wasn’t a lack of knowledge. It was a lack of structure. And more than that, it was the absence of someone on the other side making sure the structure actually held.
One participant put it so perfectly that I’ve been thinking about it ever since:
“I knew what to do. I just had never organized it in a meaningful way with someone supporting me with implementation. It was always easier to do the things I was comfortable with. And that wasn’t sales.”
Read that again. It was always easier to do the things I was comfortable with.
That’s not a character flaw. That is the most human thing in the world. Of course you lean into your craft. Of course you do the work you’re good at and avoid the part that makes you uncomfortable. That’s not laziness. That’s instinct.
But instinct doesn’t pay the bills.
The Real Gap Nobody Talks About
We live in a world drowning in information. There are courses, books, podcasts, webinars, frameworks — more than any of us could consume in a lifetime. And most of them are good. The information is solid.
But information isn’t the problem.
The problem is the space between knowing and doing.
And that space? It’s not filled by more content. It’s not filled by another course you bookmark and come back to someday. It’s filled by structure. By accountability. By someone who sees what you’re avoiding and gently — or not so gently — says, that’s not where the work is.
Every single one of my six participants already had the knowledge. What they didn’t have was someone holding the framework while they did the uncomfortable work.
One of them put it so perfectly when I asked him what shifted: “It’s human nature. It is very easy to find any reason whatsoever to do the things I’m very good at and ignore the painful growth stuff I’m not good at — without that constant weekly check-in.”
Painful growth stuff. That’s where the revenue lives. And most of us will do almost anything to avoid it.
So Here’s My Question for You
You’re reading this right now. And I’m going to guess — if you’re being really honest with yourself — you already know what to do to grow your business. You’ve heard it. You’ve learned it. Maybe you’ve even taken a course or two about it.
But have you done it?
And if the answer is no — or not consistently — I want you to stop and ask yourself why. Because I promise you, it’s not because you’re not smart enough. It’s not because the market doesn’t need what you offer.
It’s because you’ve been doing it alone. Without structure. Without someone making sure you actually move.
That’s not a criticism. That’s just what happens when you don’t have the right support in place. And it’s exactly why I built the Trust Lab the way I did — not as another course to sit on your shelf, but as an implementation experience with live coaching, accountability, and a group of professionals going through the exact same uncomfortable growth work alongside you.
Ready to Stop Winging It?
If any of this landed — if you recognized yourself somewhere in any of these stories — then it’s time.
Not someday. Not when things calm down. Now.
Get on the Trust Lab waitlist here
We are preparing for our spring cohort, spots are limited, and the structure matters — which means we can’t just let anyone in at any time.
If you’re serious about turning what you already know into what you actually do, this is how.
To your success, Breandan
P.S. Here’s the thing nobody tells you about business development: the hardest part isn’t finding the right people or learning the right framework. It’s showing up consistently to do the uncomfortable work when nobody’s watching. That’s what the Trust Lab is built for. Come see for yourself.
