--- feed: "DANIEL_ON_SLOPE" codex_section: "S15" source: VideoTranscript title: "IN_TipsSeries_Scotoma_Sales_Equals_Growth" conv_id: "video-IN_TipsSeries_Scotoma_Sales_Equals_Growth-20131126" share_url: "N/A - Private 2013 Recording (Tip Series)" created: "2013-11-26" message_count: 1 category: - "Business Growth Myths" - "Organizational Development" summary: "In this November 26, 2013 Tip Series episode, Daniel Comp dismantles the dangerous scotoma that 'more sales equals growth.' Using a hilarious fish-filling-boat video and Dr. Larry Greiner’s landmark Harvard Business Review framework 'Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow,' he shows that real growth requires painful, necessary transformations at each stage—new systems, middle management, leadership changes, and paradigm shifts. He shares raw personal stories of their own chaotic journey (warehouse living after divorce, child custody battles, moves to Texas, SBA awards, Apprentice 3, cross-country bike rides, and two world records) to prove that sustainable growth demands embracing crisis and transformation, not chasing shiny sales pitches." keypoints: - "The 'more sales = growth' myth is a dangerous scotoma; companies that chase fast sales without building systems and leadership capacity hit predictable crises and often collapse." - "Dr. Larry Greiner’s model shows every organization must pass through stages of evolution followed by revolution (crisis): garage → first employees → middle management → formal systems → matrix structures, with leadership and management changes required at each transition." - "High-growth industries (tech) have steep slopes and frequent crises; low-growth industries (healthcare, retail) have shallower but still inevitable revolutions that must be navigated." - "Real-world proof: 23andMe went from 'Invention of the Year' (2008) to 400,000 customers and FDA warning letters in 2013—classic phase-three chaos that comes with scale." - "Daniel and Angelina’s own journey (1997 warehouse living post-divorce, child custody moves, SBA awards, Apprentice 3, two cross-country bike rides, two world records) demonstrates that growth is possible only when you pay the price of transformation instead of being seduced by 'fishy' fast-growth pitches." tags: - "scotoma" - "sales-myth" - "greiner-model" - "evolution-and-revolution" - "organizational-growth" - "tip-series" - "personal-story" - "transformation" monomyth_stage: "09 - The Reward" gameboard_position: "Camp 4: The Reward / Summit" truth_score: 90 entropy_score: "Low" tone: sentiment: "Reflective" emotions: - "Earnest" - "Wise" - "Encouraging" sycophancy_level: "None" notes: "Daniel speaks with hard-won wisdom and refreshing vulnerability, blending humor (the fish video), rigorous research (Greiner model), and deeply personal storytelling. He ends with a direct warning against being 'duped by a shiny light or fishy pitch'—a perfect capstone to the entire Tip Series." related_events: - "video-IN_TipSeries_Farming_vs_Hunting-20131226" - "video-IN_TipSeries_Creating_a_Movement-Dancing_Man-20131127" - "video-IN_7_Points_on_Digital_Franchising-20140822" - "video-IN_7series_Introduction-20130203" - "video-FNLJ35kzHoE-20130215" - "video-oI371CrYz4Q-20140201" - "video-CX9vjqvDEkg-20140730" - "video-gsQxFMXw1KM-20140822" - "video-IN_Pre-Programmed_Demo-20050215" - "video-IN_Self-expanding_Demo-20050227" - "video-IN_Nano_BAT_Tour-20050503" - "video-IN_Content_Management_Demo-20050503" - "video-IN_Affiliate_Introduction-20040227" syndication_status: arnie: false chris: false redmond: false clint: false pilot: false ma5_inheritance: "None" pre_silicon: false voice_print: false codex_candidate: true phase: "Tip Series Episode: The Scotoma That Sales Equals Growth (2013) – Final Episode" enriched_date: "2026-04-19" --- ### Original YouTube Description November 26, 2013 In this episode I want to talk about a simple scotoma which is a blind spot, a misunderstanding or it could even be a myth that to grow a business you simply need more sales. --- ### Cleaned Transcript **Daniel:** In this episode I want to talk about a simple scotoma which is a blind spot, a misunderstanding or it could even be a myth—that to grow a business you simply need more sales. If you get a lot of sales you could really grow a business. There's a lot more involved in that and there's a big blind spot that you're going to run into if you just simply hire a guru for SEO or you do a massive campaign or you do some kind of a huge investment, you borrow money and you try to really grow your company by bringing on a bunch of sales—that you're headed straight for disaster. In order to really drive this home with a vivid image I have a little fishy story for you and then I'm going to back it up with some solid research to show you that it's not quite what we expect. Have a look at this video. [Funny video plays – boat rapidly filling with jumping fish while the fisherman struggles] I think it's really hilarious because I start thinking about all the companies that I've been approached with selling me their services and marketing that have deals just like that. I mean it might be real, it might actually happen that they can bring you a truckload or a boatload if you will of new fish, but the possibility is pretty remote. Otherwise you'd think there'd be a lot of fishing organizations that would take you out in the Amazon in the dark and have fish jump into your boat, right? So let's have a look at what we think is a more common experience for companies and it has to do with a lot more with struggling. The research I'd like you to consider comes from Dr. Larry Greiner and it's a print here that you can get at Harvard Business Review. It's called "Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow" and in this is a chart that you'll pretty much want to memorize. It's on how companies grow. So you can find out a bit more about that. Go to our website Intelligent Network. Go into the glossary. Dig down to evolution and revolution. Here's that illustration a bit larger. This illustration charts the size of an organization from small up through large. So small and also young as the age of the organization through mature. So each of these are different industries. We have a high growth industry which has a very steep slope. We have a medium growth industry which has a medium slope and a low growth industry with a very shallow slope. This might be healthcare for example. This might be retail like restaurants and this would certainly be high tech. So let's take a little bit closer look at that and we'll consider in particular the slope of a low growth industry. What you should note is that there are over the development time of an industry there are stages. These happen to be stages of crisis when things have to be changed. Management gets changed and let's start at the far left. This is a startup. It's an entrepreneur working in his garage. This usually is getting your first employees. Then growth with the first employees into a crisis where things have to change and what this means if we zoom in a little bit closer into this. These are changes in the systems of an organization. This might be staffing. This might be the software. It might be the actual model by which you sell things like your sales pipeline. These are changes that have to go on and they're both positive and negative. So what happens in these times of upheaval is that you come out the other end of it with a completely new paradigm. A new way of growing. So these first are phase one in the garage. Phase two first of their employees. Now you're growing from let's say a handful, five to maybe 50 or 100 employees. All things have to change again because you have to get middle managers. Now you've got 150, 200 organizations start growing at to this level and they start becoming really threats. They're competitors and all sorts of major challenges happen here. And usually by this time there's all sorts of other issues that go on. Most of our clients are right in these first two transition points. Early growth need to put systems in place here or second tier need to put additional changes in place. So here's some current news for you. 23andMe—fabulous company doing DNA testing and featured in 2008 as the invention of the year. I think it's now a phase three company. You can go through the whole list of accolades and featured in Fast Company just recently for the news of $99 DNA revolution. That they now have some 400,000 customers. So watch the chaos in her life for making such a great thing happen. She's been married to Sergey Brin co-founder of Google and here they are living apart now. This was just August 28th of this year and just this past week FDA slaps an order on 23andMe—a warning letter saying that they don't think that they're complying and that they should stop testing immediately and stop marketing their materials. So is it because she has failed to do or their company failed to do the things or is it because someone that now that got 400,000 customers and they're the cheapest around at $99 that now their competitors are finding ways of getting at them? You decide. But I'm buying a kit. Angelina and I have had more than our share of experiences in the chaotic transformation of growing a company and they come at you from all different angles. You'll see that we have won two of the SBA Champion of the Year awards but what you may not grab right off is that I started our company in a warehouse right after a divorce in 1997. Actually had to live in the warehouse with our servers and on 99 Angelina and I met online at one of the very first challenges we had was explaining how you get to know somebody through the internet. We had to move our entire operation to Texas to deal with child custody battles. We built some of the functionality behind some name brands and got a fair amount of recognition focused on entrepreneurs, won the SBA awards and it was right at that time that Angelina was asked to participate in the street smarts of Apprentice 3 which you may recognize Donald Trump having started. That ended with her television show with a car accident that I then ended up pedaling across America in recognition. We rebooted, started a radio show, rode my second time across America and we did more philanthropic work. We've worked at growing our product line and this past year setting two world records for our production. My point in this episode is that growth is possible if you'll embrace the challenges that come with the transitions and the transformations that have to be made. The next time that somebody approaches you with kind of a fishy story about fast growth and lots of sales that will get you there immediately, I really hope that the stickiness of the story will call to mind the evolution and revolution documentation and evidence that would support paying the price to get your enterprise there. Rather than being duped by a shiny light or the fishy pitch of a fast growth contractor. Thanks for your time. --- **CODEX ENTRY** **Date:** 2013-11-26 **File:** IN_TipsSeries_Scotoma_Sales_Equals_Growth.md **Monomyth Stage:** 09 - The Reward **Gameboard:** Camp 4: The Reward / Summit **MA5 Domain:** None **Summary:** Daniel Comp exposes the dangerous scotoma that “more sales equals growth” and uses Dr. Larry Greiner’s Evolution and Revolution model plus his own raw personal story to show that real, sustainable growth only comes through painful, necessary transformations at each organizational stage—not through chasing shiny sales pitches. **Key Insight:** Every company must pass through predictable crises (evolution → revolution) that demand new systems, leadership changes, and paradigm shifts; those who embrace the chaos (like 23andMe or Daniel & Angelina’s own journey) emerge stronger, while those seduced by fast-sales promises usually collapse. **Narrative Significance:** This final Tip Series episode is the philosophical capstone of the entire 2013–2014 batch. It distills the hard-won wisdom from all the earlier technical BAT demos, marketing automation lessons, and movement-building talks into one clear message: growth is not a sales problem—it is a transformation problem. This is the exact mindset that later became the core of Initium and Scotomaville. --- **INITIUM.**