You closed your first 20 customers yourself.

Every deal felt different, but you made it work. Scrappy research. Personal outreach. Calls that went long because you cared. Follow-ups you remembered because the list was manageable.

Now deal #21 is stalling for reasons you can't diagnose. #22 slipped through because you forgot to follow up. #23 went cold after what felt like a great demo.

This isn't bad luck. You've hit the ceiling.

As Scott Hindell puts it: "Movement is associated with process. Spinning your wheels is an opportunity to look more closely at where you feel stuck."

You're not stuck because you're bad at sales. You're stuck because what worked at 10 customers breaks at 25.

The Invisible Transition

At 0-15 customers, sales is pattern recognition happening in your head:

• You remember who needs follow-up
• You know intuitively which prospects are serious
• Mental notes work because volume is low
• Everything feels manageable

At 20-30 customers, your mental RAM maxes out:

• Can't track 15 active deals plus 30 prospects simultaneously
• Following up becomes reactive (they ping you) not proactive
• Losing track of who's where in the pipeline
• "Just checking in" becomes your default because you can't remember context

The problem: Your sales process exists—it's just invisible. Living in your head, not in a system you can scale.

The areas that really need attention are the things we aren't really good at describing yet. You can't systematize what you haven't made explicit.

The 5 Diagnostic Signals

You've hit the founder-led sales ceiling when:

Signal 1: Mental Follow-Ups Failing

Lost deals because you forgot to circle back. Prospects "went cold"—they didn't, you dropped the ball. Using personal reminders instead of systematic triggers.

Signal 2: Can't Explain Why Deals Close

"They just got it" isn't a repeatable process. No documentation of what actually works. Each deal feels unique, but patterns exist—you just haven't mapped them yet.

Signal 3: Spreadsheet Pipelines With No Predictive Value

Can't forecast next quarter with confidence. Board asks for revenue projection, you guess. No visibility into what's actually progressing versus stalled.

Signal 4: Considering Hiring But Have Nothing to Hand Off

"Just do what I do" isn't a playbook. Can't articulate your process clearly enough to train someone. Fear that hiring won't help because the process lives in your head.

Signal 5: Spending 20+ Hours/Week on Sales

Should take 8-10 hours if systematized. Time consumed by research, follow-ups, pipeline updates, context switching. You know you're doing manually what should be automated—but don't know where to start.

The pattern: These aren't separate problems. They're symptoms of the same root issue. Your sales process needs to be externalized before it can be systematized.

The Cost of Staying Here

What happens if you don't systematize:

• Growth stalls at current founder capacity (you can't scale yourself)
• Competitors with worse products but better systems start winning
• First sales hire fails because they inherit chaos, not process
• You become the bottleneck in your own business

What happens when you systematize:

One Elite Founders member at $1.8M ARR hit this exact ceiling. Couldn't scale past it manually. After systematizing: grew 130% in single month, reached $2.8M with the same founder time investment.

The difference wasn't working harder. It was making the implicit explicit, then automating what's repeatable.

The Path Forward

Over the next 15 weeks, we're covering the complete systematization roadmap:

• Documenting your invisible process
• Building lead qualification systems
• Automating research and outreach
• Creating the playbook your first sales hire will use

This week's question: Which of the 5 signals are you experiencing right now?

Most founders have 3-4 before they recognize the pattern.

In Elite Founders, we help you systematize before you hit the wall completely. We map what's invisible, document what works, build what scales.

Reply "Elite Founders" if you're hitting any of these 5 signals and want to systematize before hiring.

We're starting our January Elite Founders cohort this week—helping post-PMF founders build sales systems before they hire. Space for 1-2 more if you're ready now.

​

Alessandro

​

Here’s what we’ve been writing about

Flow Engineering vs Prompt Engineering: Why Single Prompts Fail Complex Tasks - Read Article​

How to Hire AI Automation Talent (Or Why You Shouldn’t) - Read Article​

​

​

​

Empowering Your Quest: How We Help

​

Did someone forward you this email? Join the newsletter

Thank you again for signing up for this newsletter and the Founder Membership. I look forward to embarking on this exciting journey with you! ​ Alessandro Marianantoni Founder/Director at M Studio ​Check some of my recent LinkedIn posts on Startups, Investors, etc​

824 S Los Angeles St #400, LOS ANGELES, California 90014
​Unsubscribe · Preferences​