103. The 5+5 Rule That Took Me From £0 to £45k/Month in 9 Months

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I make 5 cold calls and send 5 cold emails. Every day.

This approach took me from zero to £45k/ month in nine months. I ended 2024 generating £350k in revenue.

That’s not luck. That’s BTN prospecting: Better Than Nothing, every single day.

After 30+ discovery calls with FM operators under £5m, I’ve noticed a pattern: 73% admit they make zero prospecting calls 4+ days per week. Most operators I speak to are busy, but they’re not selling.

They start the day with an email. Customer service. CRM admin. Operations.

Important work — but none of it fills the pipeline.

We start with easy, low-impact work. We save the hard stuff for later — where it never gets done.

Everything else is maintenance.

Two years ago, I stared at my phone for 40 minutes before making a single call. My pipeline was a mess. I was firefighting, not building.

Then I adopted the BTN Prospecting Framework — a daily discipline built around three principles:

My number one goal is generating revenue.

During the Golden Hours (first 90 minutes of the day), I focus on high-priority, revenue-generating activities:

If you spend your best energy on customer service or internal emails, you’re trading impact for comfort.

Ask yourself: Am I doing work that makes money, or staying busy?

I divide my day into Platinum Hours and Golden Hours.

Golden Hours = the first 90–120 minutes of the day. This is when I’m sharpest. I use this time only for prospecting — the hardest, highest-leverage work.

Platinum Hours = early afternoon blocks. I use these for advancing deals, stakeholder calls, demos, and proposal work.

Everything else — admin, emails, internal meetings — gets pushed to the end of the day or batched into 30-minute blocks.

I use 30-60 minute prospecting sprints with zero distractions. Phone off. Email closed.

I never start my day checking emails or Slack.

I start my day with at least 5 calls and 5 emails.

Some days I make 20 calls. Some days I make 50. But I never make zero.

BTN prospecting removes the question: “Do I feel like prospecting today?”. It’s non-negotiable.

Sales results come from three things:

To keep my pipeline full, I’ve adopted a “no zero” mindset. Never have a zero-day prospecting.

BTN prospecting isn’t sexy. It won’t give you a viral LinkedIn post. It gives you something better: a predictable, growing pipeline.

When I started hitting the phones again two years ago, it helped me overcome call reluctance. I built momentum. I got better at opening conversations. I learned what worked.

Over time, those small actions compounded.

That’s an average of 30+ dials per day — well beyond my BTN minimum. But it started with refusing to settle for zero.

Add LinkedIn, referrals, and inbound — and you’re building a prospecting machine.

A 1-page summary + the BTN Tracker I use to stay consistent are included in Growth Lab Pro → Upgrade here.

I used to waste the first hour of every day deciding who to call. By the time I started dialling, I’d lost momentum. Here’s what fixed it.

The BTN framework only works if you remove friction. The best prospecting happens when the decision has already been made.

Here’s the simplest productivity hack I use: I plan tomorrow’s prospecting list today.

Before I adopted this, I averaged 25 dials per day. After? 50 dials per day — with better opening lines.

Every afternoon (around 5pm), spend 10 minutes building tomorrow’s prospecting list.

Open your CRM and filter by:

Pull 20 names. Add them to your task list:

Save the list. Tomorrow morning, open it and start dialling. No decisions. Just execution.

Tonight, before you close your laptop, do this:

Then, tomorrow morning, make those 10 calls and send those 10 emails before you check your email or Slack.

Do this for one week. Track your results and reply with what you discover.

It’s shocking how much pipeline you can build with 10 minutes of prep and 30 minutes of execution.

I’ve had 4 deals stall at the same stage over 12 months. Strong discovery. Aligned champions. No decision.

One example: G15 Housing Association. 60-site pilot. Two champions aligned.

Nine months later, still no contract.

On a deal review call, I asked: “Why aren’t they responding?”

The response hit hard:

“They don’t have a strong personal incentive to push it forward. They’re not getting promoted or fired based on this decision.”

I’d been talking to users. I hadn’t engaged procurement or the executive team—the people who control the budget and feel the pain when KPIs are missed.

The Lesson: Champions love your solution. Influencers control the budget. You need both.

The Fix: Before you send a proposal, ask your champion:

Then build a one-page business case tied to their KPIs — not only your champion’s pain.

BTN prospecting fills the pipeline. Stakeholder mapping closes it.

That’s it for today. Hope you can put this straight to work.

— Matt

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