James Farnfield

Founder

LinkedIn is not the channel to be sleeping on in 2025 as a 7+ figure B2B CEO. You know it. I know it. 
(but I get it)

I am a multiple time founder and time is precious. 

IS THIS YOU ↓

“I KNOW I need to utilise LinkedIn”

and....

- “I am sitting on lots of underused media”
- “I’ve been sitting on a podcast idea for years”
- “I want to be a thought leader in my space”
- “I want to build brand exposure & inbound leads”

BUT MOST OF ALL ↓

“I do not have the time to post everyday”

So maybe it’s time to Shake it Up.

Building a process and powerful content engine is the answer.

HERE IS HOW SHAKE CAN HELP (you to the 1% of your industry) ↓

1. Craft content pillars, roadmap and LinkedIn strategy
2. Produces podcasts, thought leadership videos and webinar
3. Creates stunning copy posts for you to approve every day

Whilst taking up less than 2 hours of your time each and every month. 

If you are interested in seeing how we can get your started in the next 2 weeks then drop me a message today. 👋🏽

---------------

😆 About Me 😆

I have been on the entrepreneurial journey since I was 16 and have delved into multiple industries from events to web development. I founded Airbyte in 2020, growing the business to 7 figure revenues

Before realising I was sleeping on my LinkedIn. 

The conversations and revenue started flowing.

I knew I had to go back to my marketing routes. 

Shake Content was born in Q4 2023.

https://shakecontent.com/

🎙️ The Everyday Founder  🎙️

1% of professionals are founders, the 0.1% are the stories we glamorise. I talk with the everyday founders on how they are growing their businesses

Founder & CEO

In Q4 last year, we partnered with shipshape.vc to support their CEO, Daniel, with his LinkedIn strategy. Our collaboration headlined a 30% increase in signups for the platform.

The summarised results over the first four months:
• 60% increase in impressions
• 44% increase in engagements
• 13% follower growth
• 30% uplift in platform signups vs the 62-day period prior

Who is shipshape.vc? Well I will tell you because they are really cool. I like really cool clients. Who doesn't !!!

shipshape.vc isn’t another investor database. Over 4,000 companies have raised £1bn+ using the platform. They aggregate 25,000+ global funds and layer in private growth signals directly from management teams, which means founders can see where capital is actually moving rather than where it moved 18 months ago.

So what did we do with Dan to get these results:

Dan already had a strong LinkedIn presence. He wasn’t starting from zero. He had an audience, credibility, and a genuinely differentiated product. What he didn’t have was the time or headspace to consistently translate complex data into clear, compelling content that founders and institutions could instantly understand.

That’s where we came in  🎉

Instead of doubling down on feature releases, we stripped everything back to founder-led storytelling. We focused on why private growth signals matter in fundraising, how attribution and precision targeting translate into ROI, and how to make something technically powerful feel obvious and usable.

The content had to do two jobs at once. It needed to educate founders at the top of the funnel while also acting as a sales asset mid-cycle, giving Dan something concrete to anchor conversations with public sector bodies, banks and ecosystem partners.

Some great big number metrics, purely vanity though (not always a bad thing), however, the metric that matters: 30% uplift in platform signups vs the 62-day period prior to working with Shake.

A 30% increase in users is not a vanity metric. It’s behaviour change. It’s adoption. It’s proof that content, when done properly, drives commercial outcomes rather than just blah noise.

As Dan put it:
“We’ve seen a 30% uplift in users, and increased inbound from working with Shake. We’ve got relevant insights to share, but finding the time was always challenging. Working with Shake Content has made content easy and we’re now producing studio-grade video and tapping into new channels like YouTube.”

When shipshape.vc came to us, they didn’t need louder marketing. They needed sharper storytelling. They needed clarity, consistency and a narrative that did justice to the product they’d built.

I am proud of what we’ve built with Dan and excited about where shipshape.vc heads next.

If you’re a founder sitting on genuinely differentiated insight but struggling to articulate it consistently, we are a message, DM or email away.

CEO @ Shake Content | I turn CEOs, leaders, and elite performers into consistent, credible voices — with more high-quality content than anyone else globally.

Do you want to join the #1 LinkedIn Marketing agency?

At Shake Content, we are hiring for a couple roles across our London and Cairo hubs. In the UK and more specifically London area, we are searching for our founding account manager to sit within Harry's industry leading team. 

This person will not only have great exposure to both commercial and operational aspects of a growing agency, they will also have the opportunity to truly be a driving force in owning their space in the accounts team from day 1. 

I am especially proud of the 8 incredible team members we have that have led to the tremendous growth of our business over the past years. We will soon be 10 and on-track to another 2x year and further progress into seven-figure revenues. 

If you or someone you know would be a perfect fit for our LinkedIn marketing agency, then click apply and lets see what we can build together. 

Come shake it up with us. 🚀

What Just Happened Podcast Bloopers.

Out Now....

Who will be shouted out on the What Just Happened podcast in Episode 2?

Find out in under 2 weeks.

But first… check out this clip from Episode 1.

In it, we talked about why entertainment content is quietly becoming one of the most powerful plays on LinkedIn right now, and why the founders who understand “long tail” content are building unfair distribution advantages without even realising it.

And no, despite Dani’s love for memes, this is not about low-effort viral bait.
We’re talking about entertainment with depth. With structure. With follow up. With a commercial brain behind it.

If you’ve been on LinkedIn recently, you’ll have seen, and if you haven’t you really need to, the Batman/Joker scene. Unreal.

Huge credit to Henry and Ian for committing to it properly. The makeup. The production. The timing. And yes, Henry is absolutely killing it right now, even if he is a massive Joker.

But the person who really caught Harry’s and our attention?

Jack Welham.

The videographer behind it all.

While the front-facing content racked up the impressions, Jack started posting something else entirely:
- Behind the scenes.
- How they filmed it.
- The colour grading decisions.
- The edit structure.
- The thinking.

This creates long tail authority with entertainment at the top of funnel, education in the middle and commercial credibility underneath it all.

At Shake Content, we are seeing this every single week with B2B founders. LinkedIn does not have to be the most serious place on earth. It does need a professional anchor, yes. But if you can be funny inside your industry, if you can poke it a little, if you can show you understand the nuances well enough to play with them, that signals mastery.It is not easy to be funny.

But if you can do it and still teach, you win twice.

We unpacked all of this in Episode 1 of What Just Happened.
And in Episode 2, we’re shouting out more creators who are getting it right.

If you’re a B2B founder, leader, marketeer or anyone trying to work out whether you should lean into personality, production, or pure education on LinkedIn… this series is for you.

Who do you think we should shout out next?

How do you show up on LinkedIn in a world full of AI slop?

Honestly, I think this is where a lot of founders are stuck right now.

You scroll for five minutes and everything sounds the same. Same structures. Same hooks. Same “5 lessons I learned building a 7-figure business” written by someone who didn’t. It’s all polished. All optimised. All empty af.

And you’re sat there thinking…

I don’t want to add to that.

But at the same time, you know if you don’t post, you’re slowly disappearing from the narrative around your own company.

A while ago I published a post called “How to avoid LinkedIn-xiety.” It’s a real thing. I’ve had the fortune of being around some of the most impressive, successful founders in Europe and the US, and they feel it too.

That internal tension of:

“I don’t want to look cringe.”
“I don’t want to look try-hard.”
“I don’t want to add to the AI slop noise.”

But let’s zoom out for a second. Businesses need to be honest about what modern day marketing actually is:

1. Modern day PR is done on LinkedIn.
2. Modern day marketing is done on LinkedIn.
3. No one is reading your annual strategy report.
4. No one is waiting for your perfectly crafted press release.

What are they doing?

They’re forming opinions about you, your business and your leadership based on what shows up in their feed while they’re in an Uber, waiting for a coffee or between meetings.

Can we stop pretending we’re not all scrolling? (Probably more than we should).

So how do you cure LinkedIn-xiety, own the narrative in your industry and actually show up properly?

1. You need to post more than once per month.
2. You do not need to post 5 times per week.
3. Quality over quantity has never been truer.

Try twice per week. 
One thoughtful written post. One video.

AI can mimic tone and it can structure ideas, but it can’t feel the pressure, it can’t replicate lived experience.

I would prioritise video as video accelerates trust faster than any other format, it shows who you are, it makes you recognisable offline.

We work across 10+ verticals in 4 regions globally, and I can tell you with confidence, videos are what get mentioned offline (e.g. at events). Not the perfectly formatted text post with clear AI input.

Now I do believe that if you can then scale your content, you will hit your targets faster, appear in LLMs more often and have more opportunity to solve your audiences pain points. 

So, once the quality is locked in, once the narrative feels clear and you’re starting to create real noise in your category, scale up, fast!

The biggest mistake I see right now is CEOs and senior leaders thinking the answer to AI slop is silence.

It’s not.

Silence just allows someone else to speak to your audience.

Instead of opting out, raise the bar. In a feed full of generic insight, the edge goes to the founder who sounds like a human being thinking out loud.

Alper Yurder 🤝

Co-founder & CRO of Flowla, interactive deal rooms your buyers LOVE 👉 Follow our podcast #salestherapy by Flowla 🎙️ on spotify

We build and operate GTM systems for B2B startups expanding into new markets.



I've seen it over and over. Businesses hit the same wall after product-market fit. Outbound isn't landing. LinkedIn feels like shouting into the void. The first SDR hire can't sell what they don't understand. There's no strategy to execute trust building, visibility, outbound and inbound growth loops to scale.



Agencies deliver generic playbooks that go nowhere.I've been there. 



I started in strategy consulting at Bain and Accenture, then spent a decade in the trenches. Five startups. One IPO, one exit. $60M+ in revenue closed as founder and CRO. I co-founded Flowla and scaled it to $1M ARR with zero paid ads. Just founder-led growth, LinkedIn, outbound, content, marketing hacks and systems that compounded.



Now I run Forte Growth. We run GTM Sprints for B2B SaaS founders at $500K-$5M ARR who need to find their repeatable buyer and start booking meetings fast.In 12 weeks we build your founder brand, LinkedIn presence, outbound engine, and test message-market fit. Then we scale what works. No 6-month strategies. No generic playbooks. Just a system that compounds outbound with trust and content.



Last year we ran Sprints with 12 startups. 10 got to 15-20 qualified meetings in under 4 months.Results from recent Sprints:



OMMA: £1M pipeline in 90 days

Genifea: 20 qualified meetings by month 3

Wealt: £750K pipeline in 6 months



For founders and revenue teams who want ongoing GTM leadership after a Sprint, I also offer Fractional GTM and Advisory. But most people start with a Sprint, see results and go from there.



DM me "SPRINT" or visit fortegrowth.co" to learn more.If you are earlier stage, I offer 1-2-1 coaching sessions on a weekly basis, and I help VC portfolios such as Tenity, Antler, EIF, Natwest, EF among others.

Co-Founder

Hey there, I'm an ex-sales leader turned co-founder, and I spend all day sharing ideas, solving problems and having #salestherapy with sales professionals from every sector and level. If you're after sales and G2M advice, you've come to the right place! And believe me, I've been through it all - from building SDR teams to closing multi-million dollar deals and everything in between. So, let's have some fun and chat sales!

👉Leaving a well-paid C-suite job for the startup grind is terrifying. I know because I did it. And some days I think of going back.

Some days I ask myself why I don’t just go back. Take a C-suite role at a mature company. Well-paid. 9 to 5. No 24/7 start-up hustle. No weight of the world on my shoulders.

Then I remember.

I travel when I want. I work from where I want. I work with incredible startups, VCs, on my own terms. Every win is self-made. Full ownership. I get to hire who I want. Build my own team. Build my own legacy.

Then I say ok it’s incredibly hard but it’s well worth it.

To anyone considering making the move from employment to entrepreneurship.

It’s incredibly hard. But it’s the best.

I’ve been on early stage grind for 6 years now since leaving late stage well-paid C-suite jobs. 

First as a CRO for a seed stage startup, then co-founder from zero, and now as a solo founder building Forte, where we provide cofounder level gtm and growth service to other founders scaling their businesses.

So it’s a few times the stress of building one company as we build 2-3 at a time as a fractional service and even more when I take care of vc portfolios as an advisor. But the early stage energy is different! I love it.

✈️Now on my way to Istanbul for a series of workshops, client work, and a visit to my parents. If you’re around, let’s meet.

P.S. I try to fly at least once a month. Not just to travel. Turns out a plane is the best place for deep focused work. No interruptions. No notifications. No AI.

Just thinking. The kind we get less and less of.

Alper Yurder

Founder @ Forte Growth | GTM Strategy & Market Expansion for B2B Startups | VC Portfolio Advisor | Former SaaS Co-Founder & CRO (1 IPO, 1 Exit)

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👉 Just updated my 34-page playbook on how to audit your GTM and build a strategy that gets you to more leads and revenue in 8-14 weeks.

This is the exact framework I’ve used to help 16 startups from 2025 to date:
→ Create clarity across founders, sales, and product
→ Build roadmaps they actually stick to, to run 30 day test sprints
→ And in 2 cases - use the outcome directly in their fundraising decks

Normally I charge £3,5k to implement this in 2 full day workshops + write up.

Grab it while it’s free 👇

Please give a like & Comment “GTM” and I’ll send it your way.

Must be connected so I can DM.

👉 WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?

Most revenue teams get burned by outbound.

They launch channels. Spray messages. Burn budget.

Eventually, the realization hits:

❝We don’t need more tactics. We need a real strategy.❞

Because the unlock isn’t better copy or lists.

It’s alignment, trust, and clarity.

That’s what this GTM audit helps you build:

✅ Where to play (and what to ignore)

✅ What to say—and when to say it

✅ How to warm demand before you ever jump on a sales call

What you’ll get:

A GTM strategy audit you can run yourself

Or— if you need help, DM me and I’ll do the audit with you, and help you craft your roadmap

If you'd like to receive the playbook and start your own self-audit, please give a like, repost and comment

"GTM"

and I'll send it to you.

Happy building!

👉 No fancy visual, just the exact playbook that built our linkedin-first revenue machine at Flowla thru founder brand & what I now implement with founders I work with to scale GTM - use linkedin as testing lab then scale email and SEO.

1-Define your persona as the people who book a call fastest and close fastest.
2-Pick three main persona types to target.
3-Write down urgency signals that confirm someone is your persona (role, pains, triggers).
4-Re-listen to customer calls. What do they want, care about, want to learn?
5-Summarise what they most want to hear from you in a few sentences.

6-Pick five competitors and study how they and their founders post on LinkedIn.
7-Note what works: topics, hooks, formats, CTAs, comment style.
8-Do external listening on Reddit and elsewhere. Ask ChatGPT what your audience cares about.
9-Optimise your LinkedIn profile fully for this persona (headline, About, banner, proof, clear next step).
10-Make sure it clearly says who you help, with what, and what they should do next.

11-Follow 1,000+ people matching your persona and urgency signals to train your feed.
12-Build a core list of 20–30 ICPs and allies you engage with every week.
13-Comment on their posts daily. Specific, useful, on-topic comments (you or your SDR).
14-Share your tone of voice with your SDR so they comment like you.
15-Publish thought-leadership posts 2–3 times per week.

16-Focus on the problems, questions, and topics your personas care most about.
17-Mix TOFU–MOFU–BOFU: awareness, evaluation, and decision-stage content.
18- 70–80% core domain, 20% other things to stay human.
19-Before and after each post, engage with ICPs' content. Be in their feed and comments.
20-Occasionally post product/FOMO content with screenshots so they see what you do.

21-Connect with people from your list and commenters. No pitch in the first message.
22-Test two DM styles. Friendly/curious vs. direct. See which opens more conversations.
23-Use posts and assets in DMs. Send a relevant post or guide instead of a cold pitch.
24-Track who replies, books, and closes fastest. Refine personas based on real data.
25-Collect repeated questions from comments and DMs. Turn each into a new post.

26-Move into assets: carousels, checklists, guides, mini-playbooks on topics they react to.
27-Reuse assets in comments and DMs. They get saved, shared, and boosted by the algorithm.
28-Keep doing competitive listening. Fold new angles back into your content.
29-Ask for testimonials, quotes, or screenshots as you deliver. Even from small wins.
30-Publish social proof regularly so talking to you feels like the obvious next step.

👉 Save this. Come back to it when you're ready to stop posting randomly and start posting with intent.

👉 I've diagnosed 20+ startups' outbound in the last 3 months. These were the main problems and here's how we fixed'em - with detailed examples:

Before you tweak anything, run this simple diagnostic:

Step 1: Sent 50+ messages with the same approach? If reply rate is under 5% 👉 Change your message.

Example: Genifea was messaging real estate agents saying "we put AI into your customer communications." Sent 80+ messages. Crickets. Then we dug into the actual pain: agents were losing deals because calls went unanswered when nobody was in the office. We rewrote the message around that: 

"How many calls did your office miss last week?" Reply rate went from 2% to +20%. Same product. Same audience. Different pain. (+ we did some work around founder brand & landing page too - nevertheless...)

Step 2: Same objection 3+ times? 👉 Try different positioning & messaging.

Example: A dev tools founder friend of mine kept hearing "We already have something for that." Three calls in a row. The product wasn't the problem, the positioning was. They were selling a feature, not a shift. We repositioned from "automated testing tool" to "the reason your fellow engineers at X ship 3x faster." The objection eased down.

Step 3: 100+ messages, no leads? 👉 Try different ICP or channel.

Example: Wealt was targeting "anyone earning £500K+." Investment bankers, PE guys, corporate execs. 100+ messages, barely any bites. We rebuilt around behaviour signals : ex-founders with recent exits. Same wealth bracket, completely different buying psychology. Reply rate went from <5% to 40%+ in 3 months.

Step 4: Good replies but no meetings? 👉 Try another CTA.

Example: Simplisales was getting "looks interesting, thanks!" and then silence. Their CTA was "let me know if you'd like a demo." We changed it to "worth 15 minutes this week to see if this fits, got time in my diary tomorrow?" Meeting rate doubled. The ask was too big. Make it small and human.

Step 5: None of the above? 👉 Scale what's working.

Example: OMMA had 28% reply rate, meetings booking weekly, deals closing. So we stopped optimising linkedin DMs and started scaling email: double the list, keep the similar message, add a second channel. Pipeline went from $200K to $600K in 90 days.

GTM isn't sending 1000 messages hoping for a reply. 

That's spamming. And my inbox suffers from that garbage,

GTM is about clarity -> tests -> compounding.

Fix the signal first. Then scale it.

👉 This is literally Phase 1 of every Forte Sprint. We don't strategize. We diagnose. Then fix and run weekly tests to get there faster.

Founder @ Forte | GTM systems for expanding B2B startups | Ex-SaaS Co-founder & CRO (5X Zero to 1, 1 IPO, 1 Exit) | VC Portfolio Growth Advisor

💡 There are 50+ go-to-market channels in B2B. The average SaaS company ran 5 core and 5.5 experiments in 2025*

That's a lot when you're a founder doing it mostly alone.

Kyle Poyar published research on which channels B2B SaaS companies actually used in 2025. I mapped them by the job they do in the funnel:

👇 

A few things stand out:

- LinkedIn dominates at 66%. Nothing else comes close for B2B. If you're not there, you're invisible to your buyers.

- Founder brand is only at 37%. That's way too low. At $500K-$5M ARR, your company brand IS your founder brand. This is the most underinvested channel on the list.

- Warm outbound (48%) is almost 2x intent-based outbound (33%). The "warm" part is doing the work. That's your content, your comments, your presence before the DM.

- The fastest-growing experiments: intent-based outbound, AI discovery, B2B influencers, Reddit. These are the ones to watch in 2026.

👉 But the biggest insight isn't which channels to pick. It's that each channel has one job in the funnel.

✅ Awareness channels get you seen. 

✅ Trust channels get you believed. 

✅ Conversion channels get you meetings. 

✅ Compounding channels make it predictable.

Most founders/ marketing people - run 5 awareness channels and wonder why nothing converts.

The system: pick one from each layer. Go deep. Let them compound.

Which channels are you running in 2026? What's compounding?

👉 Your prospect list is your strategy. Get it wrong and the best message in the world won't save you.

I've always been against spray & pray. Unless your Total Addressable Market is everyone and their mother, you need to be careful with your outbound. The more targeted you are the shorter the sales cycle.

Which is why when we work with a client, we make sure our prospect lists are well curated. We start with LinkedIn outbound, which means you only get 100-120 connection requests and 20-30 messages to begin with.

So we don't spray and pray. We aim for high reply rates.

Unfortunately though, most B2B teams build lists the same way. Open a database. Filter by title, size, industry. Export 500 names.

Reply rate: 1-2%. Result is noise and pollution.

The reason our conversion is at 30% is because we don't filter by demographics. We decode the buyer and track their behaviour.

5 buying signals that work for most B2B companies 👇

1️⃣ HIRING SIGNALS Are they hiring for the role your product replaces? New leadership in your buyer's department? Team growing fast? Budget is unlocked and they're building.

2️⃣ FUNDING SIGNALS Recently raised. New budget cycle. Growth targets announced publicly. Money is available and there's pressure to spend it on results.

for this obviously Crunchbase or Clay  is best.

3️⃣ CONTENT SIGNALS Posting about the problem you solve. Asking for recommendations. Engaging with content in your space. They're telling you what they need. Listen. 

👉 Use a tool like Trigify.io for social listening to see what your buyers are posting.

4️⃣ EXPANSION SIGNALS Entering new markets. Opening new offices. Hiring in new geographies. The biggest buying window is when a company is growing into unfamiliar territory.

5️⃣ INTENT SIGNALS Visiting competitor websites. Reviewing tools on G2 or Capterra. Downloading industry reports. They've already decided they need something. Will they find you or someone else?

Demographics = who exists. 

Signals = who's ready.

The difference between a 2% reply rate and a 20% reply rate isn't your message. It's your list.

When you find the right buyer, there's a buyer for every product.

At Forte we help you find your buyers and convert them fast when you enter a new market. If you're going through a similar exercise DM me, let's chat.

☀️2 days in Lanzarote and I feel like a human being again after 4 months of working with AI and turning into a 🤖. Afternoon run done and now responding to 100s of unresponded messages - finally. thank you sunshine, you always help me recover!

Founder @ Forte Growth | Revenue & Market Expansion for B2B SaaS | VC Portfolio GTM Advisor | Ex-SaaS Co-founder & CRO (1 IPO, 1 Exit)

👉 If you want to grow your business in the next 180 days, write down these GTM essentials and track them with a simple tracker👇

Without it, here's what happens:

One co-founder wants to update the website. Another wants to run five outbound sequences. The third is rewriting the pitch deck for the fourth time this month.

Everyone's busy. Nobody's aligned. Nothing compounds.

I've seen this pattern at every startup I've worked with. And at my own.

At Flowla, we burned months doing "a bit of everything." Content one week, outbound the next, partnerships the week after. We looked productive. We weren't.

The moment we got clear on ICP, channels, messaging, and priorities, everything changed. Revenue followed clarity. Not the other way around.

Now every engagement I run starts the same way.

Before we touch outbound. Before we write a single post. Before we open the CRM.

We build the GTM Clarity Tracker.

One document. 31 components. 30/60/90/180-day goals.

It covers everything:

✅ Who you sell to and why they buy now. 
✅ How customers find you and which channels actually work. 
✅ Your messaging, positioning, and proof stack. 
✅ Your content engine, LinkedIn rhythm, and visibility plan. 
✅ Your sales process from first touch to close. 

Your 3 mission-critical priorities - not twelve, three: product, sales, marketing. 

Revenue targets broken into a formula you can track weekly.

Every co-founder sees the same page. Every decision maps back to it. Every week has a clear priority.

It's not a strategy deck that sits in Google Drive. It's a living document you open every Monday.

When I built this for a legaltech startup preparing to raise, the founding team went from three different versions of "our GTM plan" to one page everyone could point to. They raised shortly after.

When I built this for a salestech company post-raise, the CEO stopped asking "what should we do next?" and started asking "are we on track against the plan?"

That's the shift.

From chaos to clarity. From scattered to focused. 

From "let's try everything" to "here's what matters this month."

I'll share the full playbook, 31 components. Description of each one. Examples. And the 30/60/90/180-day milestones to track against.

Comment "clarity" and I'll share the whole thing.

If you can't fill in a row, that's your priority.

👉 In the past year my SDRs created prospect lists for various clients from B2B SaaS to fintech, to edtech etc. These are the major sources we used across almost all engagements: (check the post for others) 

One source gives you volume. Three sources give you precision. Here are all 7, and when each one makes sense 👇

1️⃣ GENERAL DATABASES 
Apollo, Sales Nav, Prospeo. Your starting point for broad filtering. Everyone has the same data here, so your message has to be sharper. Use when you know your ICP and need volume fast.

2️⃣ LOOKALIKE SEARCH 
Ocean.io, Apollo lookalike. Feed in your 5 best customers. Find 50 more like them. Use when your ICP is proven and you want to scale what's already working.

3️⃣ GOOGLE MAPS 
Nobody talks about this one. If your buyer isn't on LinkedIn - local businesses, agencies, clinics - they're on Google Maps. Scrape by location and category.

4️⃣ VC PORTFOLIOS + DIRECTORIES 
Our secret weapon. We scraped Antler's portfolio page. 900 startups. Clay Chrome extension. Free. 4 minutes. Filtered down to 80 perfect prospects. Pre-qualified, funded, and actively building.

5️⃣ YOUR OWN AUDIENCE 
LinkedIn connections. Post commenters. Website visitors. Past customers gone quiet. The warmest list you'll ever build. Use this one first. Always.

6️⃣ PEOPLE PURSUING SOLUTIONS 
Competitor followers. G2 reviewers. Event attendees. They already decided they need something. The only question is whether they find you or someone else.

7️⃣ JOB POSTING SIGNALS 
Companies hiring roles that reveal priorities. "Preparing for IPO." Sales hire in a new geography. Intel no database can give you.

other sources include Claude enterprise (at 90 USD Claude provides great lists) - Facebook, specialist magazines, chambers of commerce for international expansion - these should cover the TAM at 80-85%

The list is the strategy. One source isn't a strategy, it's a starting point.

👉 What other source do you use to build prospect lists in a new market? Share in comments and I'll check'em out.

🎉 Client Success story: Atria was one of our very first clients when we started Forte last year.

Technical founding team. Product gaining traction. But sales and marketing plan needed clarity to help them close the round.

We built their GTM one-pager - product, positioning, how they'll acquire clients and close them,

90-day roadmap, and founder-led sales and marketing playbook together.

They closed their +£700K shortly after.

This was the same formula I used before we raised our $1.5M round for Flowla.

Same equation every time: great founders, product somehow gaining traction.

But without GTM clarity, it’s hard to raise.

VCs don’t fund confusion. They fund conviction.

When an investor can immediately understand what you do, why now, and why you, conversations move faster. Rooms open. Rounds close.

A GTM plan isn’t a document. It’s a trust accelerator for the investor.

It creates alignment between cofounders, and creates focus for execution.

That’s why I start every engagement with creating a GTM one pager, all your GTM essentials, product, marketing and sales plan in one place. then we execute, test-iterate-update. but we have one point of reference to look at.

if you’d like to see an example DM me,

👉 When you work too much, your language changes first.

You get shorter with people. More agitated. Less patient. You're technically "fine" but everyone around you can feel it.

I see this around me all the time. Founders, managers, execs who look completely calm and collected on the outside. Then they share what's actually going on... Or they don't but it comes out in a team meeting, and noone understands where it's come from.

The stress is real. For everyone. At every level. I'm no exception. And noone truly is.

This AI craze. Staying on top of everything. Managing people for the first time. Running a business alone. None of it is easy. And no one is immune to it.

At Flowla, I had a rule: take a break every two months. A small escape. A day off. Whatever. Just reset.

Then I became a solo founder. Hiring. Delivering. Building product. Frameworks. Workshops. Client work. The rule quietly disappeared.

Last week I was catching up with an old friend. A growth manager who recently moved to Athens to work from there. She looked bright. Happy. Recharged. 

☀️ Luckily, I'm off for a much needed break. First in 8 months. I had no Xmas, no holiday no weekend these last months. Building, delivering. The balance lost.... 

So. Some much needed sunshine after the most horrendous rainy stretch London has seen in years.

Life isn't just about work. We all know this. We just forget it when things get busy.

The pipeline will still be there when you get back. The inbox will survive. Your clients won't disappear.

👉 But your energy, your patience, your clarity? Those need topping up.
If you're reading this and can't remember your last proper break, book one. 

Seriously. Even a long weekend.

I'm taking mine this week. Pics incoming. Something I haven't done in a long time. You should do the same.

"yes you have Nike as a logo but that's Nike Turkey, friend of your friend. a new market is a new game. no presence -> no trust = no sales!"

is the harsh truth I had to tell a founder last week expanding to the UK. $1M ARR. 50+ enterprise logos at home. real product, real customers. but the UK isn't working.

so I ran a quick diagnostic. here's what I found:
👉 ICP clarity (UK): 2/10. three segments identified from home market, none tested in UK.
👉 messaging: 2/10. product evolved but the UK pitch never got rebuilt.
👉 founder brand: 1/10. neither founder posts anything on linkedin. nobody in the UK knows they exist.
👉 lead gen: 2/10. one agency running linkedin outbound, stalled when the key person left.
👉 competitive positioning: 2/10. can't articulate why you'd pick them over the well-funded incumbents.
👉 growth tests/ non-scalable channels: non-tried so far, no podcast, no event presence, no industry expert interviews.
❌ paid ads: +10K spent on paid ads! most common mistake I see all the time. before message-market or channel market fit. 

home market score? 7/10. solid business. UK score? 2/10 across the board.
the product isn't the problem. the GTM is.

yes you have Nike as a logo but that's Nike Turkey, friend of your friend. a new market is a new game. no presence -> no trust -> no sales

this is the pattern i see over and over with SaaS companies expanding to the UK:

they assume what worked at home will work here. they hire an agency before 
they have message-market fit. no founder builds any visibility in the new market. they pitch features instead of positioning around a wedge.

the fix isn't complicated. it's just not obvious from the inside.
✅ pick a UK-specific ICP 
✅ rebuild the messaging for UK buyers 
✅ get one founder posting on linkedin consistently 
✅ test 3-5 angles fast on linkedin outbound 
✅ get 2-3 UK case studies at any cost
✅ balance earned vs. bought trust

we're starting a sprint together in march. so we can put the company back on track,

if you've cracked your home market but struggling internationally, the problem is almost never the product. it's always the system.

👉 Here's the playbook we use to source the right buyers for our clients.
Go to market is figuring your way to revenue. Revenue starts with knowing your buyer. Next step is finding those buyers: sources, signals, list building.

Before the list building, let me set this straight, this is step 3 of the 24 step process we use as part of the Forte Growth System:

1) Set your GTM one-pager. Revenue architecture. Execution plan. Which channels to acquire, build trust and credibility, how: Done by me.

2) Define the right buyers. Where they live. What message converts. Done by me and our content lead.

3) Source them. In the AI age, the sources are endless. Boris our SDR does this himself. We review then he launches campaigns. Then we test-review-improve every week. That's how we get more SQLs that convert faster in time.

Source them well, we help our clients get to revenue faster. 

Source them badly, we lose time.

This is the playbook we use for prospect list building and lead sourcing:

✅ Why demographic filters produce 1-3% reply rates and signal-based lists produce 10-30%.

✅ 7 places to build prospect lists. Most teams only use 1.

✅ 5 buying signals that beat any database filter.

✅ The AI scoring system. How to research 30 companies in 45 minutes with the exact Claude prompt.

✅ The 6-phase process from zero to 200 qualified prospects.

✅ Tools by stage. £0/month through £750+/month.

✅ 6 things your first SDR needs from you before they start.

✅ Weekly checklist. Signal scoring quick card. Everything in one document.

✅ 20+ engagements compressed into one playbook.

👉 Comment PROSPECT and I'll send it to you.

p.s. You can check our previous playbook, the Full 34 page - GTM Audit playbook at https://lnkd.in/ehsBttdv

❌ You have no idea how many founder calls I have where they've just let go of a sales hire in a new market. 
Same story. +10 times last year alone. 👉 I've made the same mistake myself. Now I'm obsessed with helping others avoid it!

Raise money. Decide to expand. Hire a country manager or BD person in the new market. Give them a target and say "go get meetings."

3 months later: zero pipeline. The hire quits or gets fired. Back to square one.
The problem wasn't the hire. It was what they walked into. A blank slate with no system.

🤯 Mind you. I've been the leader told off for not being fast enough. Then been the leader or founder telling people off. Same story repeats!

6 things you owe yourself and your first hire before they start 👇

01 REBUILT ICP Your home market ICP won't transfer. At Witco, French property managers bought on relationships. UK buyers bought on ROI and case studies. 10 buyer conversations in the new market before you hire anyone.

02 TESTED MESSAGING 50 messages sent by you personally. 3 angles tested. See what resonates. Your hire needs proven templates. Not guesses from a brainstorming session.

03 CHANNEL STRATEGY What works HERE. Not what worked at home. In France, events drove 80% of deals. In the UK, LinkedIn content and targeted outbound converted faster than any event.

04 AI SCORING Claude scores every prospect 1-10 against signal criteria. Nobody under 7 gets a message. Quality over volume from day one.

05 WARM PIPELINE 5-10 conversations already started. Meetings already booked. Your hire walks into active pipeline. Not a cold market where nobody's heard of you.

06 DOCUMENTED PLAYBOOK What worked. Every objection you heard. The full sales cycle mapped. Your hire needs your brain on paper. Not your hope that they'll figure it out.

Founder-led first. Handover second.

I've done the Turkey to UK journey twice. Built two companies past £1M ARR in a new market. The playbook is different here. The buyer is different. The trust signals are different.

If your board is pushing expansion and your instinct is to hire first, you're starting at step 6. Start at step 1.

👉 Save this. Comment EXPAND and I'll send you the full expansion Sprint checklist.

💡 Hiring a GTM lead costs £80-120K a year if you're lucky!
You still have to manage them. Ramp them. Hope they figure out your market.
Here's what a Revenue Sprint gets you instead:

✅ GTM strategy locked in week 1-3, not month 3 
✅ Messaging written and tested before you spend a penny on ads 
✅ Target list built from your actual ICP, not a job description 
✅ First meetings booked by month 1 if you're post PMF
✅ A system your team can run after we're gone

A full-time hire is the right move. Eventually.

But not when you're still figuring out what works.

The Sprint is how you figure out what works.

👉 If you're between £500K and £5M ARR and expanding into a new market, DM me "Sprint" and I'll show you what 90 days looks like.

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