Seriously Don’t Do That™
Seriously Don’t Do That™ is a weekly show for founders making high-stakes growth decisions and trying not to learn the hard way.
Each episode focuses on one specific mistake founders make under pressure: U.S. market entry assumptions, emotional beachhead choices, premature sales hires, ICP chaos, compliance blind spots, broken pipelines, and board-level credibility gaps.
Hosted by Dan Griffith, the show brings pattern recognition from real founder situations across healthcare, fintech, insurance, and other regulated or institutionally complex markets. Guest episodes validate the reality. Dan explains what actually went wrong and what to do instead.
This isn’t hustle content. It’s not tactics without context. And it’s not agency advice.If growth feels harder than it should… you’re probably right.
Seriously, Don’t Do That!
Seriously Don’t Do That™
The Costliest ICP Mistake Founders Make in Regulated B2B Markets
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Welcome to Week 1 of a brand new 12-week run of Seriously Don't Do That™. We're opening with ICP Month - four episodes on your ideal customer, why they buy, and the choices you have to make to actually grow.
This is the episode Dan probably should have recorded a long time ago, because it covers the single most expensive mistake he sees founders make in regulated B2B markets.
The Don't: seriously, don't sell to everyone. Don't build a fuzzy ICP. Don't tell yourself your product is "for hospitals" or "for community banks" or "for insurance carriers." That's not an ICP. That's a TAM slide.
The anchor line of this episode: if you don't know the target you're shooting at, then everything's a target. Your sales team chases everyone at once. Your marketing produces content for everyone and no one simultaneously. And the founder becomes the only person who can tell, deal by deal, whether something's worth the effort - which doesn't scale.
- Tala Fakher (Medium, March 2026): 60-80% of sales and marketing budget at most B2B startups gets wasted on the wrong prospects
- Forrester (2025): 92% of B2B buyers start their evaluation with at least one vendor already in mind, and 41% already have a single preference before formal evaluation even starts
What ICP actually is (and isn't): not a TAM exercise, not a persona document. It's a strategic, written, shared choice about which buyers you pursue - and just as important, which you walk away from. Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) has written for years about how 70% of first VPs of Sales don't make it 12 months - largely because they inherit an undefined ICP, spend two quarters trying to figure it out, and get let go before they ever get traction.
A real ICP is documented and shared: which segments, which buyer roles, what triggers cause them to buy, what the buying committee looks like, where they hang out (the "digital watering hole"), and what language resonates. Once it's written, it becomes the foundation everything downstream depends on - hiring, marketing, CRM structure, conference strategy, and eventually, the founder stepping out of every single deal.
The objection Dan hears constantly: "But our product can help anyone." Narrowing your ICP is not the same as narrowing your market. Your market stays the same size - what changes is who you talk to first, when, what you say, and how compelling you sound saying it. A case pattern Dan's seen repeatedly: a B2B SaaS company selling broadly into "mid-market" ran 9-11 month sales cycles with mediocre conversion. They narrowed to a specific situational ICP - Series B companies that just hired their first VP of Sales - and cycles compressed to 3-4 months. You don't start broad and win narrow. You start narrow and win broad.
This week's homework: in your next leadership meeting, get sales, marketing, and customer success in the room (or whoever's doing GTM if you're early stage). Have each person individually write down, no discussion first, "describe our ideal customer in two sentences." Then read them out loud. The gap between the answers is exactly the gap costing you sales-focused conversations every week.
At Greater Gain Group, this is exactly what the ICP Sprint solves - a fixed fee, $7,500, two to three week engagement: structured market research, competitive review, real customer analysis (who's actually winning, not who you wish was winning), 3-5 prioritized segments with full buyer intelligence, messaging frameworks, buying committee mapping, and a market intelligence layer showing exactly where your buyers hang out. You walk away with a 30-35 page strategic document - but the real deliverable is shared clarity across your whole team.
Next week: Week 2 of ICP Month - the six predictable mistakes founders make when building their first real ICP.
Chapters:
0:00 Intro — Greenville, sprint triathlon training, and Samson
0:39 Welcome to ICP Month — a new 12-week run begins
1:05 Today's episode: the costliest mistake in regulated B2B
1:09 The Don't: seriously, don't sell to everyone
2:00 The anchor line: if you don't know the target, everything's a target
3:23 Why this mattered less 30 years ago at IBM
4:08 Salesforce 2026 State of Sales: buyers research before they call
4:55 Tala Fakher: 60-80% of budget wasted on wrong prospects
5:26 Forrester: 92% already have a vendor in mind
6:11 Why fuzzy ICP locks you out of consideration entirely
7:03 Composite case study: the post-acute care healthcare company
9:09 What "post-acute care" was actually hiding
10:18 Motion without momentum
10:33 Reframing what ICP actually is — not TAM, not a persona
11:11 ICP is a strategic choice, including who you walk away from
12:24 Jason Lemkin: 70% of first VPs of Sales fail in 12 months
12:58 What a real, documented ICP actually looks like
14:11 The shift from founder-led sales to team-run revenue
23:55 Closing
#ICP #IdealCustomerProfile #B2BSales #GTMStrategy #SeriouslyDontDoThat
