A few weeks ago, a CEO called me the day before we were scheduled to sign a contract. Yes, a call, an old-fashioned live call on the phone. Not a message through an assistant, not a quietly rescheduled meeting that never gets rebooked, not a ghost. A call. I want to acknowledge that specifically, because it says something about who they are as a leader when it comes to communicating difficult news. And because the conversation stayed with me long after it ended.

They had come to us because their business had a concentration problem. Nearly all of their revenue flowed through one client relationship, a large organization with multiple divisions, but one entity at the centre of everything. They had never needed to build a profile beyond that relationship before. The work had always come in, the quality was high, and the business had grown comfortably within a familiar orbit. What they needed now was a market presence in places that didn’t yet know them. We had spent several weeks working through exactly what that would take, and we were ready to begin.

Then six new projects came in. The pressure lifted. The CEO called to let me know they’d be good for now and would circle back when the time was right.

I’ve made a version of that same call myself. I’m not writing this to criticize the decision. I’m writing it because I spent the next hour thinking about everything that doesn’t actually change when the pressure goes away.

The structural problem that brought us together was still there. Six new projects don’t fix a concentration risk. They make it easier to set aside. Those are two very different things.

Getting known in a new market is a specific and genuinely difficult problem. It requires understanding where your firm creates distinctive value and who, outside your existing relationships, actually needs it. It requires honest positioning work, the kind that forces clarity about what you are not as much as what you are. And then it requires a sustained, resourced effort to enter the right conversations and demonstrate the calibre of thinking that earns referrals and retained mandates. That work takes months to build into results. We were ready to start it.

The Absence of Pain Is Not the Presence of Strength

There is a pattern in growing companies consistent enough to function almost like a rule. Strategic growth work, the kind that changes how a firm is known and what conversations it gets invited into, requires three things:

• Time
• Focus
• Cognitive space

Those three things are precisely what disappear when a business is under pressure.

When revenue is thin or the pipeline is quiet, leadership becomes reactive. Every conversation is about managing the immediate situation. The decisions made in that environment tend to be tactical and short-cycle, which is rational, but it compounds the underlying problem. You cannot build a real market presence from a defensive position.

There is also the pipeline math that most executives know intellectually but rarely apply to their own situation.

The projects being celebrated today were seeded months ago. A conversation, a referral, a piece of thinking that got shared, a relationship someone had the time and intention to build. The work happening right now is what determines what the pipeline looks like six months from now. Not next week. Six months. Starting when you’re hungry is not a strategy.

Why Strong Conditions Produce Better Growth

When the business is strong, the conditions for this kind of work are actually ideal. Not in spite of the fact that you don’t urgently need it, but because of it.

The leadership team has the mental margin to engage properly with the positioning questions that drive everything downstream.

Who are we actually for? What do we know that our market doesn’t? What is the problem we solve that no one else is framing correctly?

These are not questions that get answered well at the end of a difficult quarter. They require a kind of reflective thinking that only happens when there is room for it.

There is also a confidence dynamic that is easy to underestimate. The conversations that open new markets land differently when they come from a business operating from a position of strength. Clients and prospects can sense whether you need them or whether you are choosing them. That distinction shapes the entire commercial relationship that follows.

Growth built from a position of strength tends to attract better clients, close at better terms, and create less dependency than growth built from necessity. The work is the same. The conditions in which it happens are not.

This Is Not Communications Work

Building a presence in new markets is not a communications exercise. It is not a matter of posting more content or refreshing the website.

It begins with rigorous thinking about where your firm creates genuinely distinctive value, and who specifically has that need but cannot yet find you. It requires positioning clarity, message discipline, and a deliberate plan for entering the conversations where the right decisions get made.

Strategy without execution is a document. The firms that actually change their market position treat this as an operational priority. They resource it, hold themselves accountable to it, and give it the same leadership attention they would give any other revenue-generating initiative. It is not work that can be delegated to whoever has spare capacity this week.

Build the Pipeline Before You Need It

I genuinely hope those six projects go well. I hope the business continues to grow from the relationships that have always sustained it.

And I hope that at some point, while things are still good and there is still room to move, there is a serious conversation about what it would take to make the next difficult period less acute. To be known in markets that don’t yet know you, on your own terms, before you need them to. To have a pipeline that makes the next quarter a choice rather than a crisis.

The phone will ring again. It always does.

The only question is whether you’ll answer it from a position of strength.