Helping professionals launch another income stream in 2024. Click + Follow for posts and articles on business.

I work as a senior digital adviser and strategic sounding board for founders and entrepreneurs building online.My role isn’t to provide formulas, playbooks, or constant direction. Instead, I help people think more clearly about ideas, business models, and decisions — drawing on perspective shaped over decades of working across multiple internet cycles, from early email and web, through mobile, marketplaces, performance marketing, and now AI.Alongside this work, I write and research the business game — an ongoing exploration of how business actually works in practice: incentives, timing, leverage, and why many people lose by copying what looks successful without understanding the rules underneath.Some of this thinking is tested in public through a small working lab called Strategy with Danny, where founders pressure-test one clear offer and learn what actually converts before they scale systems, teams, or platforms.I’m not a coach or a traditional consultant, and I’m not embedded in execution. This work is best suited to independent founders who want a calm, experienced perspective to pressure-test ideas, spot risks early, and avoid scaling the wrong thing at the wrong time.Most of my value comes from pattern recognition, context, and judgment — helping reduce noise, fragility, and unnecessary complexity in how businesses are built.

Danny Mallinder

Very few people choose the business game.
They just start playing.

Most think they are struggling with execution.
They are not.

They are struggling with something earlier.
They never chose the rules they are living under.

Pulled in by confident voices.
Podcasts. Threads. Timelines.
Revenue goals and hustle norms borrowed from others.

Every business rewards something different.
Some reward speed.
Some reward depth.
Some demand constant presence.
Others reward quiet consistency over years.

None of these are wrong.
But they are not interchangeable.

Here is the pattern I keep seeing:
- depth thinkers stuck in speed games
- freedom seekers trapped by visibility
- misalignment blamed on tactics
- builders exhausted by volume

Most business problems are downstream.
They start before pricing or marketing.

I wrote a short essay on this idea.
Choosing the game before you optimise it.

Read it here:
https://lnkd.in/eKePpQBw

Are you playing a game you actually chose?

#businessdesign
#foundermindset
#longtermthinking

Most people pick businesses for money.

That is how they waste years.

A business is not just income.
It is a direction of travel.

Once something works financially, it locks you in.
The schedule.
The stress.
The identity.

People do not fail by choosing badly.
They succeed in the wrong direction.

The pattern I see every year:
→ money first, alignment later
→ identity built on momentum
→ success that becomes a trap
→ staying because leaving feels like failure

2026 will not be wasted by inaction.

It will be wasted by full commitment to the wrong game.

#businessdesign
#founderjourney
#strategicthinking

Your Sales Team Isn’t Broken. Your System Is.

If you're a founder, CEO, or sales leader still stuck in the weeds, chasing deals, or cleaning up after underperformers—it's not a "sales talent" issue.

You don’t have a repeatable sales system.

Here’s what I see every day:
❌ Sales is reliant on a few “closers” instead of a scalable team
❌ Training is disconnected from daily execution
❌ Forecasts feel like fiction—and reps aren’t held accountable
❌ Founders still carry the pipeline because the team can’t

That’s why I built the SmartScale 90 System™️ (S90™️)—a sales infrastructure built for scale.

We don’t "train" salespeople.
We install the system that makes sales consistent, coachable, and scalable.

🚀 What We Deliver

✅ 300% increase in win rates
✅ 20–30% higher rep productivity
✅ Strategic hiring and onboarding that sticks
✅ CEO out of sales—team into action

I’ve helped companies from early-stage to $1B+ build sales organizations that drive growth without guesswork.

👊 Ready to build a sales team that performs with or without you?

🔗 Book a strategy session: https://calendly.com/ken-lundin/linkedin-intro

#RevHeat #SalesOperatingSystem #FounderLedSales #SalesLeadership #ScaleSales #SalesTrainingThatWorks #B2BSales

Ken Lundin

You can’t close deals.
Coach reps.
Run forecasts.
Build systems.
And lead a company.

Pick one.

The founders who stall swear they’re “just temporarily involved.”
They’ve been temporarily involved for five years.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth.

If the business only works when you’re in it,
you didn’t build a business.

You built dependency with a logo.

The best closers make the worst CEOs.
Not because they aren’t smart.
Because they refuse to let go.

Growth doesn’t require more of you.
It requires less.

Stop operating.
Start architecting.

Founder @ RevHeat• $1B+ Closed | $4B+ in Client Exits • Scaled Clients From $3 to $18M in 18 Months, & $10 to $60M, $98 to 420M • 4 Unicorns • Bootstrapped to $78 Million • Sales Systems That End Founder Burnout

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You had the last 2 weeks off or mostly off. 

You drank a little too much and ate a little too much. 

You talked a big game about last year and the success to come. 

Knowing no one will actually remember it in April when they see you. Maybe you even believed it. 

And now…..

It’s the first work day of the year and 1 thing is obvious. You are alone and the only person who can deliver the success you claim to want. 

Here’s how you get it:

1. It is 100% a drill in change management. 

That’s it. No other secret pill or complicated matrix. 

2026 is about you knowing its discipline over motivation and you must show up when no one is there to pat you on the ass. 

Change management comes down to 2 things. 

1. Start something new
2. Stop something

What will you do?

If YOU disappeared for two weeks,
what would break first?

This question tells me everything about your stage.

If deals stall → sales process problem.
If decisions stop → leadership clarity problem.
If forecasts implode → systems problem.
If customers churn → proof problem.

The 99% try to hero their way through this.
More hours. More involvement. More stress.

The 1% build so the question stops being scary.

You don’t scale by being needed.
You scale by being optional.

The less you do, the more your company grows.

December 2011.
A stranger stood on my porch.

“I bought your house. You have 10 days.”

My seven-year-old daughter was holding my leg.

I’d done everything founders are told to do.
- Worked harder than everyone.
- Best salesperson in the company.
- Always available.


And I lost everything anyway.

Here’s what actually failed.
- Nothing worked without me.

Every deal. Every decision. Every problem.

I didn’t own a business.
I was the business.

Revenue went up.
Infrastructure didn’t.

And infrastructure always wins that fight.

That moment rewired how I think about scale.

If your company needs you everywhere,
it’s not strong.

It’s fragile.

Most founders don’t break at $10M.
They break because they never stopped being the answer.

Busy isn’t the same as built.

If you can’t step away from your business without feeling anxious...

you don’t have a work-life balance problem.
𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗹 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗴𝘂𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗶𝘁𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁.

I’m going to be real with you…

Most founders say they want balance.

What they really want is relief—
without changing how the company actually runs.

So they try:
• Better boundaries
• Fewer meetings
• “Being more present”

None of that works if you are still the system.

If decisions wait for you,
If deals stall without you,
If problems magically appear the moment you leave…

That’s not leadership.
That’s dependency.

And here’s the uncomfortable part…

Your team isn’t the reason you can’t unplug.
Your business is built to need you.

Think about it this way…

Every time you jump in to “help,” you train the company to stop thinking.
Every time you save the deal, you reinforce the bottleneck.
Every time you answer instantly, you become the process.

Busy feels productive.
It’s actually expensive.

The founders who have a life didn’t find balance.

They built businesses where:
• Decisions don’t require permission
• Systems answer questions before Slack does
• Leaders own outcomes, not updates

𝗠𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗳𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗼𝗺 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝘂𝗽 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗻𝘀.

If you disappearing for two weeks would break the business,
THAT’s the signal.

Not to work less.

But to finally build something that doesn’t need you to survive.

Work-life balance is a lie exhausted founders tell themselves.

Balance assumes two equal forces you manage with discipline.

But if your business implodes when you're gone for a week, you don't have a balance problem.

𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗮 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺.

Real freedom doesn't come from better boundaries.

It comes from building something that doesn't need you holding it together.

Most founders are trying to "balance" a system that was never built to stand on its own.

That's not sustainable.

𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗯𝗼𝗱𝘆 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝘀 𝗶𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀.

The insomnia. The stress. The fact that vacation just means anxiety in a nicer location.

These aren't discipline failures. They're structural failures.

You can't boundary your way out of a business that's architecturally dependent on you.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝟭% 𝗱𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗯𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿. 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿.

Stop managing tension. Start eliminating it by design.

Here’s what nobody tells you about breaking $10M.

Your problem isn’t revenue.
It’s founder dependency.

I’ve seen this movie hundreds of times.

- Revenue grows.
- Headcount grows.
- Complexity explodes.

And somehow… everything still runs through YOU.

👉🏼 Deals don’t close unless you’re on the call.
👉🏼 Forecasts fall apart when you’re gone.
👉🏼 Decisions wait for your opinion.

That’s not leadership.
That’s a single point of failure with a good title.

And here’s the interesting thing…

Most founders think this means they need better people.
Wrong.

You hired good people into a system that doesn’t exist.

So they borrow your brain.
Your judgment.
Your context.

Which means growth makes your life harder, not easier.

I learned this the expensive way.

I was the best seller.
The best problem solver.
The hardest worker.

And when things broke, I worked harder.

Until everything broke at once.

Infrastructure breaks in silence. Revenue breaks in public.

The companies that clear $10M don’t “let go” emotionally.
They build something concrete so letting go is possible.

✅ Clear ownership.
✅ Defined systems.
✅ A cadence that runs without them.

Busy isn’t the same as built.

If your business can’t operate without your constant involvement,
you don’t have a scale problem.
You have an 𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺.

The ceiling isn’t effort.
It’s what you’ve refused to build.

Let’s kill the myth.

This isn’t about “logging off at 5.”
That’s not real for founders.

This is about building a company that doesn’t require you to bleed every week to survive.

If your only growth plan is sacrifice,
you don’t have a plan.
You have a countdown.

Here’s what I’ve seen over and over.

Founders who never slow down don’t win more.
They just lose later.
Health. Relationships. Clarity.

And then the business follows.

The best operators I know aren’t balanced.
They’re disciplined.

They protect sleep like revenue.
They train their body like a system.
They design weeks that don’t rely on heroics.

Not because it feels good.
Because it works.

If your company needs you exhausted to function,
the problem isn’t your work ethic.

It’s the way the machine is built.

Busy isn’t the same as built.

Working harder is usually the thing keeping you stuck.

I know that sounds backwards.

It’s also the pattern I’ve seen in 150+ CEOs and $1B+ in revenue.

Below $10M, effort hides bad infrastructure.
Above $10M, effort exposes it.

When revenue grows, one of two things happens:
Either
• Systems carry the load
• Or you do

Most founders choose option two without realizing it.

More deals. More people. More meetings. More Slack.
Same brain running everything.

And here’s the deal.

You don’t hit the ceiling because the market changed.
You hit it because the business is still wired to you.

If you can’t step away for two weeks without deals stalling,
forecasts slipping, or decisions waiting…

You don’t have a scaling problem.
You have a design problem.

Infrastructure breaks in silence. Revenue breaks in public.

The 1% stop asking, “How do I sell more?”
They ask, “What should never need me again?”

Busy isn’t the same as built.

If you're stuck between $5M - $15M, the answer isn't effort.

You're not lacking drive. You're lacking infrastructure.

👉🏼 Here's what actually breaks the ceiling:

𝗔 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂'𝗱 𝗯𝗲𝘁 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘆 𝗼𝗻
Not a spreadsheet full of optimism.
A system with leading indicators, conversion math, and deal stages that actually predict close rates.

𝗔 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂
If your best deals still need you on the call, you don't have a process - you have a dependency. Build the playbook. Transfer the judgment.

𝗔 𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝘄𝗶𝗻𝘀
Stop hiring on gut and hoping it works out. Build scorecards. Define what "good" looks like. Make performance predictable, not a lottery.

𝗔𝗻 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝗵𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗿𝘂𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗿𝘆
Weekly check-ins shouldn't require you to remember what matters. Build the cadence. Automate the questions. Let the system drive accountability.

👉🏼 Here's the move:
Pick one. Build it properly. Don't half-ass all four.

Infrastructure compounds. Effort doesn't.

Most founders at this stage are working harder inside a machine that's already broken.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝟭% 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗲.

Hope is not a forecast methodology.
Hustle is not a hiring system.
And busy is not the same as built.

Stop pushing. Start building.

If you can't step away from your business, you didn't earn flexibility.

You postponed it.

Those 80-hour weeks aren't commitment. They're a tax.

A bill you're paying for decisions you didn't make earlier:

→ Hiring late
→ Documenting never
→ Delegating halfway

Every shortcut you took to scale faster is now slowing you down.

𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵:

Work-life balance isn't something you negotiate with your calendar.

It's something you architect into the company.

Otherwise, the company takes it anyway - from your health, your sleep, your sanity.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝟭% 𝗱𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗯𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀.

They have better infrastructure.

Systems over stamina.
Design over discipline.
Architecture over adrenaline.

Stop treating exhaustion like a badge of honor.

𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝘁.

Your forecast is lying.

91% of companies miss their forecast.

Not because of the market.
Not because of bad sellers.

Because hope is doing the math.

If your forecast changes based on how confident someone sounds,
you don’t have a system.
You have a mood ring.

Real forecasts come from three things only:

• Clear stages with non-negotiable exit criteria
• Historical conversion rates by stage
• Pipeline that’s reviewed the same way every single week

Anything else is gut feel wearing a spreadsheet costume.

Infrastructure breaks in silence.
Revenue breaks in public.

Your forecast is telling you exactly how mature your systems are.

Most founders just don’t want to hear it.

Hiring more salespeople won’t fix your sales problem.

It just gives you more people doing the wrong thing faster.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you.

Most sales teams don’t have a talent problem.
They have a transfer problem.

What your best rep knows lives in their head.
What everyone else does is guess.

So you hire.
Hope it averages out.
And call it “scaling.”

And here’s the interesting thing.
The companies that break through $10M don’t hire their way out of chaos.

They build a way to transfer judgment.

Clear stages.
Clear exits.
Clear standards for what “good” actually looks like.

Busy isn’t the same as built.

If new hires need you to explain things every day, you didn’t scale.
You multiplied dependency.

The ceiling isn’t headcount.
It’s infrastructure.

If your health is declining as revenue grows, something is broken.

Founders love to separate business and health.
Bad idea.

I’ve never seen a burned-out founder with great infrastructure.
And I’ve never seen a well-architected company wreck its owner’s body.

The 99% push through stress.
The 1% remove the source of it.

Health isn’t discipline.
It’s design.

Busy isn’t the same as built.

The best closers make the worst CEOs.

That statement makes people uncomfortable.
Especially if you built the company by selling.

Here’s the thing.
Closing deals and building a company are not the same skill.

Closers win by being involved.
They feel the room.
They adapt on the fly.
They rely on instinct and pressure.

CEOs win by removing themselves.
They design systems that work without heroics.
They trade instinct for repeatability.

When a closer becomes CEO, one of two things happens.

They stay in deals.
Forecast becomes opinion.
Managers become messengers.
And the business only moves at the speed of their calendar.

Or…

They try to scale what made them successful.
“Just do what I do.”
Which sounds helpful.
And quietly destroys consistency.

I’ve analyzed 12,744 salespeople.
The top performers are monsters at execution.
They are not wired to slow down and institutionalize judgment.

That’s not a flaw.
It’s just physics.

If revenue depends on you closing, you don’t have a company.
You have a very stressful job with upside.

Real scale starts when:
• Deals close the same way without you
• Forecasts don’t change based on your mood
• Leaders make calls you would have made

The less you do, the more the company grows.

That’s not delegation.
That’s architecture.

Busy isn’t the same as built.

Discount requests mean the outcome isn’t clear enough.
When buyers understand the cost of NOT hiring you, price stops being the focus.
Clarity beats concessions.

Your calendar tells me more than your revenue.

Quick founder audit:

• Still on most calls?
• No real time off?
• Constant low-grade stress?
• Exercise optional, not protected?

That’s not drive.
That’s fragility.

The 1% build businesses that give energy back.

Here’s what nobody tells you about growth.

Growth doesn’t create chaos.
It exposes it.

Revenue goes up.
Stress goes up.
Decisions slow down.
You’re in more meetings than ever.

And you tell yourself, “This is just the phase.”

But here’s the deal.

If growth makes your life harder, your infrastructure is already failing.
It’s just failing quietly.

The 99% respond by working harder.
The 1% respond by building.

Systems before scale.

Leaders before headcount.

Proof before optimism.

Infrastructure breaks in silence.

Revenue breaks in public.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you.

More reps don’t create leverage.
They multiply whatever already exists.

If your process is sloppy, you just hired people to run sloppiness faster.
If your forecast is fiction, you now have more fiction.
If deals live in your head, you just scaled founder dependency.

I’ve seen this movie hundreds of times.

Founder hits $6–8M.
Feels the strain.
Hires 3 reps.
Revenue bumps… then chaos shows up.

Missed numbers.
Blown expectations.
Churn you can’t explain.

And here’s the interesting thing…
The problem was never capacity.

It was infrastructure.

You don’t scale by adding bodies.
You scale by raising the floor.

Busy isn’t the same as built.

Most founders are playing the wrong game.

They think the path to $10M is effort. It's not. It's infrastructure.

Here's the difference between the 99% and the 1%:

The 99% are Operators. They work IN the business.
❌ Growth means longer hours
❌ Hiring means more people running the same chaos faster
❌ They are the answer to every question
❌ Success makes life harder

The 1% are Architects. They work ON the business.
✅ Growth triggers system-building, not overtime
✅ Infrastructure comes before headcount
✅ They build machines that answer questions without them
✅ Success creates freedom, not exhaustion

👉🏼 Here's what separates them:

Operators respond to a broken sales process by jumping on more calls.
Architects build a repeatable system so calls convert without them.

Operators hire hoping talent will solve structural problems.
Architects fix the structure first, then hire into clarity.

Operators vacation and come back to fires.
Architects vacation and come back to growth.

👉🏼 The brutal truth:

Less than 1% of companies break $10M.

Not because the other 99% lack drive. Because they're optimizing the wrong variable.

Working harder inside a broken system just gets you a faster breakdown.

Operating harder isn't the solution.

Operating harder is the ceiling.

The companies that scale don't grind more. They architect better.

Stop being your business. Start building it.

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