Ep. 60 The Stern Truth: How Business Development Can Help Your Business with Kelly Kennedy

Kelly Kennedy started his company, Capital Business Development, five years ago, and he hasn’t stopped since. As an expert in business development, he has the itch to talk about it—like so many of us podcasters, he started his own, the Business Development Podcast.

What is business development, though? Kelly says that it strategically brings in new revenue to your business by first focusing on the right opportunities. As he explains, it’s not the same as sales, which includes closing. It’s that valuable relationship building that comes before the sale.

In this episode, we also touch on getting ghosted. As small business owners and entrepreneurs chasing growth, we’ve all been there. Kelly says it’s all about the conversations with the right people - that, and follow-up, is what will open those opportunity doors. 

Kelly goes over the art of the LinkedIn request. First, identify the industry, then connect with the right people. After that, keep up the consistency of your connection requests. Connection is the name of the game for online growth.

Kelly is also a coach and started his own program, which, through some incredible connections, became what’s called the Catalyst Club. As he and I both know, leadership is lonely, and we welcome any space where leaders can help leaders.

There are so many golden nuggets in this episode – two that Kelly drives home are to manage your time and do a critical once-a-week follow-up with connections. Business owners, you won’t want to miss this incredible episode.

Connect with Kelly here:

Website: kellykennedyofficial.com
Business: capitalbd.ca
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kellykennedyofficial
Podcast: businessdevelopmentpodcast.ca 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Marshall Stern: I think we get confused with sales and business development, lead generation, account management, all that kind of stuff. And we think it's all the same. Well, it's not, and actually in today's episode we sit down with an amazing Kelly Kennedy, who is a business development specialist, and he dives into really what business development is.

[00:00:24] And what it isn't and how it can actually help you grow your business. So like I always say, grab pad of paper and a pen and get ready. Take some insights, golden nuggets from this episode with the amazing Kelly Kennedy and as always, ONtrepreneur Inner Circle. If you would like to be my guest, come check out the ONtrepreneur Inner Circle that's O-N, ONtrepreneur Inner Circle.

[00:00:45] Information's below. You can reach out to me if you're tired of doing it all yourself. If you're tired of being alone in your business. You want to get some support, and you want to be in a small group of other business owners who get it, come check us out. We meet every Tuesday on Zoom. Now, on with the show and the golden nuggets and insights here is the amazing Kelly Kennedy

[00:01:09] Hi, I'm Marshall Stern and I've spent over 35 years leading and growing multiple small businesses. I know firsthand the struggles of entrepreneurship, feeling isolated, lonely, overwhelmed, and feeling like you have to do it all by yourself. I've been through multiple recessions, and I have felt the highs and the lows.

[00:01:29] I've been there, and I get it. This podcast is here to change that. Every week I will bring you straight talking advice, real world strategies, and honest conversations about what it takes to succeed in business without the fluff, the gimmicks, or the sugar-coated. If you're ready to stop spinning your wheels and start making real progress, then you are in the right place. 

[00:01:52] This is the Stern Truth. 

[00:01:57] Marshall Stern: Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Stern Truth Business Unfiltered. My friends, I always say grab a pad of paper and pen, notebook, laptop, what have you, pad of paper and pen. Is that actually better? But I want to introduce you to a special guest. I have Mr.Kelly Kennedy. 

[00:02:13] Kelly, how are you? 

[00:02:15] Kelly Kennedy: I'm excellent, that – see, I, I never leave home without it. 

[00:02:20] Marshall Stern: But you are home. 

[00:02:20] Kelly Kennedy: That's right. That's right. Exactly. 

[00:02:24] Marshall Stern:  It's awesome having you here. Thank you. 

[00:02:28] Kelly Kennedy: It's cool being here. Thanks for having me. 

[00:02:30] Marshall Stern: I want to give a quick background. I want you to say like the who and the what, but I want to explain to the listeners what I know of you. 

[00:02:41] Kelly Kennedy: Sure.

[00:02:41] Marshall Stern: And how I came upon your amazing group, the Catalyst Club, and your amazing self, and why we're here today. I was actually introduced to you, I think a few months back, by a good friend of ours, Steven Langer, and he told me, I was in a, in a Zoom meeting with him, Zoom chat with him and he says, you got to meet Kelly.

[00:03:04] I have to introduce you to Kelly. You should join Catalyst Club. And I did. And I did meet you. And here we are. And I want you to talk a little bit about the Catalyst Club as well. This is not a promo necessarily for the Catalyst Club, but it's more a promo for community networking. Growth. Anyways, that's enough about me.

[00:03:25] And I just want you to, who are you? 

[00:03:28] Kelly Kennedy: Who am I, I don't know. I ask myself that question all the time. Marshall. I'm Kelly Kennedy. I live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, technically just outside Stony Plain. I've spent nearly 20 years in sales and business development and I started my own company, Capital Business Development five years ago this year, like, literally to the month.

[00:03:48] About two years into that journey, I realized that I wanted to do something, whether it be a podcast or a YouTube or something like that. It was about November of 2022 and me and Shelby, my fiancé, were at Boston Pizza. I had my goals list with me and we were talking about it, and I said, look babe, I don't know what I want to do here, but I know that in 2023 I want to do, like, a podcast or, like, a YouTube or something like that.

[00:04:15] And she's like, oh yeah, you'd be really good at that. So, the plan was kind of born then. There was no like idea for a show or anything about January of 2023. I'd ordered, like, a ton of stuff. Marshall, like all, you know how it is when you get the, the podcast bug, you order your mics. And everything else.

[00:04:32] I had my interface and you name it, and I sat all this stuff in the corner of my room for a month, and I go to bed one night and she looks at me and she said, Kelly. I don't know what you're doing with all that stuff in the corner, but we either need the money because it's expensive or we need a show. So you figure it out.

[00:04:52] And that night, Marshall, I went down and I prerecorded the very trailer episode for the Business Development podcast and we released two episodes a week ever since. 

[00:05:03] Marshall Stern: That, that's awesome. And I highly recommend that podcast to all of my listeners. I do want to talk obviously about business development.

[00:05:10] because a lot of people are out there like, business development, I know what that is, but I don't think people really under truly understand – actually, why don't we go there? What is business development? 

[00:05:18] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Business development, you know, in 2026, is more so about strategically identifying the right companies to work with the growth goals of the company.

[00:05:29] And figuring out how do you bring in new revenue to your business? I think if you wanted to scale down what business development truly is in 2026 and beyond, it's new business. So once you have a customer that's no longer business development, that is now account management. So once they bought something from you or you've, you're on a vendor list or something like that.

[00:05:50] They are now an account to manage and technically there's another position for that called account management or sales. You might, you might have your sales team handling account management as well, but business development at its roots is new opportunities. It's bringing in new opportunity, opening new doors.

[00:06:07] Really, what we are is like door openers. And we're strategically identifying the right opportunities for the company. We're, you know, going through ideal customer profiling. We're figuring out how much new revenue the business needs to bring in. We're using math and statistics to figure out how many meetings it actually takes to get there.

[00:06:26] And then we are doing the reach out. We're shouting, you know, your company name from the rooftops, and we're getting those doors open. We're, we're booking those meetings. So really business development is about opening doors, booking meetings, and starting conversations. 

[00:06:39] Marshall Stern: Is that lead generation? Is that all part of it?

[00:06:42] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, you could call it lead generation, although we're not really using, you know, AI tech to do it. This is still very much when done properly a human job. 

[00:06:51] Marshall Stern: Okay. Okay. So you did mention sales and account management. So what's the difference then between sales and business development? Is business development, the before? 

[00:07:01] Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yeah. So if you look at, if you look at sales, sales is about closing, right? You can have a great business developer, you know, I'm, I'm a great example of this. You can have a great business developer, a guy who can open doors like no tomorrow. But I'm not a big fan of closing. I just don't like it.

[00:07:16] There's better people for that position at an organization where, you know, a smaller organization, usually the business owner. The president or you know, the VP is probably the better, closer, right? But you might have somebody else hired who can ultimately better open the doors for you. Start that conversation, lead it to next steps.

[00:07:36] That is business development. You know, I mean, we do lead it right up to proposals sometimes, but what I'm kind of suggesting is that's technically not the job. The job typically ends once the relationship is established and is an account to manage. 

[00:07:52] Marshall Stern: So for our, our listeners, let's say they're, it could be solopreneurs, they could have a small team of three, four people.

[00:07:59] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. 

[00:08:01] Marshall Stern: What would you suggest for them? Should they be doing, I, I know it might be on a case-by-case basis, but business development or like the opening or the closing or both? 

[00:08:11] Kelly Kennedy: Well, when you're a solopreneur, it's both, right? But you have to, you have to treat them like two different positions. 

[00:08:18] So what I always teach when I'm doing my coaching, Marshall, is that we ultimately want to spend is if we're solopreneurs and we're actually executing that work as well, we want to be dedicating about four to eight hours a week strictly to opening doors, because opening doors takes time.

[00:08:33] The other thing about business development is it's a long game. You might be reaching out for, in some cases, 20 weeks to get the meeting you want with the right company, especially in Alberta oil and gas country, the big, the big oil and gas companies, they don't get back to you immediately.

[00:08:47] Usually they get back to you once they have a need for your service. So you might find when you're knocking the door of a CNRL or a Nutrien or something like that, that if you reach out to them once a week, introduce yourself, introduce the company, they might get back to you at week 20.  you don't know when that's going to happen.

[00:09:02] So we have to make sure that we introduce business development into our weekly strategies, especially as solopreneurs. 

[00:09:10] Marshall Stern: Okay. So I want to dive a little bit in more into what you do and the business development side, because I think there's some – actually I'm, I want to just learn from you. I'm going to be a sponge today. Okay? 

[00:09:20] Kelly Kennedy: Sure. 

[00:09:20] Marshall Stern: So you talk about like the door opening. So you've opened the door to this company, email conversation, Zoom, whatever it's been like. You've op you, you're there. What about the follow up? What about how often? I always get this question from my coaching clients. 

[00:09:34] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. 

[00:09:35] Marshall Stern: Marshall, how often – or, you know, or you send a proposal. Okay. 

[00:09:38] Kelly Kennedy: Yep. 

[00:09:39] Marshall Stern: And you were ghosted. How often should we be following up with these new door opened opportunities? 

[00:09:45] Kelly Kennedy: So are, are you saying you've already had the meeting or is this pre-meeting in some situations? 

[00:09:51] Marshall Stern: In this situation, let's say, well, both. Okay. Let's go first the pre. Sure. We haven't met yet. You've sent, maybe it's a LinkedIn request, connection request, or you've sent an email or you've left them a voicemail message.

[00:10:02] Kelly Kennedy: Yep. 

[00:10:03] Marshall Stern: Let's start there. The pre. 

[00:10:05] Kelly Kennedy: Okay, perfect. So, you know, what I always start with is a warm introduction. There's no reason anymore that anybody should be doing a direct cold call to a company you've never had any contact with before. We can find anybody on LinkedIn at this point. Like, it's actually incredible.

[00:10:20] It's the best tool for business development that we've ever had. And I don't think we really figured out how to use it until COVID. I know I didn't. COVID was a massive turning point for me and my business and, and the way that we did business development. Because before then, I would drive around, Marshall, to people's offices, grab business cards, drop brochures, right?

[00:10:39] Like same way it have been done probably for the better part of a hundred years, but COVID changed everything. We could no longer do that. So it freed us to find new ways to do it. And so what we do now is, you know, the starting point in any business development strategy has to be identifying the buying positions at the companies you want to work with.

[00:10:57] So we have to identify, obviously, the industry. I think most people. Are comfortable identifying what industry their product and service fits into best, right? But once you've identified that industry, the next thing you have to identify is who? Who gets it? If I reach out to this company, what are like the four to five positions?

[00:11:14] And that's the other thing. Some people get like roped in. There's only one position, but that's not true. There's probably about four or five or more different positions of an organization who understand why your product and service is valuable to them. Once we identify those positions, let's say that it's a president in our case.

[00:11:30] We start to connect with presidents in the areas that we want to do business in. So it's very simple. You hop onto LinkedIn, you hop onto your search bar, instead of searching for a company, instead of searching for an individual, search for a position president. Search, filter it by the location, filter it by the industry.

[00:11:48] Boom. LinkedIn presents you with a thousand connections of people who likely understand why your product and service is valuable to them. And so we just start connecting with those people. And I say, you know, on LinkedIn, Marshall, you get a hundred connections a week. It might be more now, but like historically, it's been a hundred connections a week before you hit that limit.

[00:12:08] So you can connect with 100 of these people every single week. You know, we're in Edmonton, Calgary area. Highway two is a great example, right? There's a big highway between our two big cities, and if you drive down that highway, there's a lot of billboards, right? Well, what do you think the odds are that that billboard resonates with, let's call it a hundred percent of the people who drive down that highway?

[00:12:29] It's pretty slim, right? But here's the thing, if you're connecting with, let's say, 100 presidents every single week, Marshall, and now you put a post up about your products and services on LinkedIn, how many people does that resonate with? 

[00:12:41] Marshall Stern: Okay, but so – sorry? 

[00:12:43] Kelly Kennedy: I was just going to say, we now have the ability to create the best billboard ever made that resonates with the people who understand why our products and services are valuable and we can show it to them once a week through our posts.

[00:12:56] Marshall Stern: Well that resonates with me because they used to have a sign company, so billboards. I understand, I understand that part of it. 

[00:13:01] Kelly Kennedy: You then, you know, the statistic of, of, you know, how many people that actually resonates with. 

[00:13:05] Marshall Stern: A hundred percent. So for our listeners, okay, we're talking on LinkedIn and I just, actually, I have to thank you because I was in one of your sessions, the Catalyst Club sessions, last week, and you actually walked me through what you do on LinkedIn.

[00:13:17] And this, this exact system when you are talking about connection requests, because look, this is the Stern Truth podcast. The Stern Truth is, there's a lot of crap on LinkedIn. There's a lot of people spamming us on LinkedIn. 

[00:13:30] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. 

[00:13:30] Marshall Stern: In fact, when I start to tell this story, this is, I don't know if I ever told you the story.

[00:13:34] I can tell you the story when I started the podcast because it's on YouTube as well as your favorite audio platform.  I had my first comment on YouTube, probably episode number three or something like that, and I was all excited. I went in, I checked out the comment, and it was this woman from, ended up being okay, doesn't matter overseas, saying, love the podcast.

[00:13:56] I could help you rank higher on YouTube. I said, okay. I get that. I, I, okay, fine. No, no, thank you. Kelly, within five minutes, I talked about this in an episode. Within five minutes, she sent me a LinkedIn connection request. No text, no copy, just LinkedIn connection request, Facebook connection request.

[00:14:15] She emailed me. This is all within five minutes, emailed me and she actually tried calling me on WhatsApp. 

[00:14:21] Kelly Kennedy: Oh wow. Wow. 

[00:14:22] Marshall Stern: That was a little creepy. A little creepy. So… block, block, block, 

[00:14:26] Kelly Kennedy: That's messed up. No, we don't, we don't do that. But you know what, let's talk about that briefly though, because as two podcasters, that's super annoying and you've probably noticed that like every time you put something out now, whether it's LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, you get like seven or eight of those people, you get the people trying to get like, you know, a hundred guests onto your show.

[00:14:45] My gosh. Yeah. Like I've basically gone to invite only. I won't even look at those requests, right? It's like if I want you on my show, I'm going to send you an invite. 

[00:14:56] Marshall Stern: No. Perfect. So, okay, so going back to LinkedIn, so the, to the, because I even, I, I screwed it up. When I was saying at the beginning, I was saying follow up and then you asked me the question, the pre meaning or, well, because it's two different things.

[00:15:06] Like once you've sent a proposal, that's not business development anymore, is it? 

[00:15:09] Kelly Kennedy: Correct. Now you're, now it can be technically a follow up, but at that point your account managing, hoping to close the deal. 

[00:15:16] Marshall Stern: Yeah. Yeah. The door's open. Now you're closing or trying to close. Correct. So two questions on LinkedIn or any kind of, we'll, we'll say connection requests. Okay. 

[00:15:25] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. 

[00:15:25] Marshall Stern: Do you have sort of, a ratio percentage? What's a good, let's say, you know, the close rate conversion rate. Acceptance rate, we'll call it. 

[00:15:33] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. 

[00:15:33] Marshall Stern: Yeah. 

[00:15:35] Kelly Kennedy: I would say, I would say initially it's about 50/50, like – 

[00:15:38] Marshall Stern: Okay.

[00:15:39] Kelly Kennedy: The next week. So if you send 100 invites, there's a solid chance you'll get about 50 connection requests before the next week. Right? 

[00:15:44] Marshall Stern: Wow. 

[00:15:45] Kelly Kennedy: So you can only send them weekly. But after that, actually you get what I call trickle in. So when you start to do this every single week, Marshall, you get the people who aren't on LinkedIn every single week. Like the reality is, I think we can get skewed and think, because we're on LinkedIn all the time, everyone is.

[00:16:00] But that's not the truth. There's some people who maybe only check their LinkedIn’s once a week or once every couple weeks, and so you start to get those people trickling in. And so the secret is consistency. And you know, we talked about this briefly before the show, but it doesn't matter what you're doing in life, business development, sales, podcasting, the, the secret to success is not quitting.

[00:16:20] You got to keep at it. You got to keep at it week over week, month over month, year over year. And so it's the same thing. Once we get into the habit of sending connection requests on LinkedIn, do it every single week. Because yeah, you might get that initial 50% hit, but then like I said, you'll probably get another 15, 20% of people accepting as time goes on, and that compounds every single week you do it.

[00:16:41] So you will get to a point where your LinkedIn is growing very consistently day over day. 

[00:16:46] Marshall Stern: So just for clarification, I know the answer to, to this, but for our listeners, when you're saying connection requests, you're not saying going on your iPhone or smartphone, just saying, connect, connect, connect, connect, connect.

[00:16:57] I can't even say it so many times because there's too many, right? You're not talking about that. You're talking about, well, tell me more. Your process. Like specifically. 

[00:17:04] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. I actually am somewhat talking that, but we're not just connecting with any Joe Blow. Right. We've done the work upfront. We've identified the buying positions.

[00:17:14] We've identified the industries that make sense for us, right? Once we go into LinkedIn and we search president, and then we search oil and gas industry. Yeah, not everybody in that list is going to be the perfect one for you, but I think it's pretty fast to identify that, you know what, like yeah, that company, that company, that company, this is the process, Marshall, and it can be done in 15, 20 minutes a week.

[00:17:35] Right. I, I am a huge advocate for time savings, and we're going to get into that, but you have to find a way to streamline every process in your business. And lead generation is no different. And so while we're connecting with these, let's say 100 people a week, and we are identifying it by industry, we are identifying it by location and position as these people, and I am saying connect, you don't need to send an intro message like we're past that point.

[00:17:58] People, if – people will check you out. If you seem valuable to them or if they're interested, they will connect with you. We also don't just send an immediate message. So AI sends an immediate message, you know when you connect with somebody on LinkedIn and you get that Insta message. 

[00:18:11] Marshall Stern: Yeah. 

[00:18:12] Kelly Kennedy: That's so annoying. And you know immediately that that is not the person that's an AI program doing that on their behalf. 

[00:18:18] Marshall Stern: Okay, so, so before we go further, so now for clarification for, for myself, when you're saying, okay, I understand search bar, the position or the title, and all that kind of stuff. Are you saying in the, when you we're pressing connect, are we adding a note, a message first, or we just connect?

[00:18:36] Kelly Kennedy: No, we're just connecting. 

[00:18:37] Marshall Stern: Interesting. 

[00:18:37] Kelly Kennedy: Speed, Marshall. Speed, speed. Keep in mind too, like I said, you're going to get about a 50% acceptance rate right off the bat. Right off the bat. And so you can send a note, but keep in mind, every time if you send an individual note for 100 messages, Marshall, that's going to triple or quadruple the amount of time it's going to take you to do it.

[00:18:55] And remember, the LinkedIn is not where the business is being done. It's where the personal introduction starts. It's where the warm connection is built. We are taking this old school, but we're starting out new school. So in the old days, we never did LinkedIn connections. We didn't know. It worked. Like I said, it was a strategy we learned later.

[00:19:16] COVID was the, was the big change, right? But what we realized was if you connect with somebody on LinkedIn, you do a warm introduction. Hi, I'm Marshall Stern. I'm a coach. We do XYZ, XYZ, XYZ. It's, it's a pleasure to be connected with you. Here's a little bit more about me. If you want to learn, attach a brochure.

[00:19:33] That's it. That's the end of your LinkedIn conversation, unless they want to continue a conversation there. But what you've done is you've introduced them to Marshall Stern, you've introduced them to your coaching, and you've given them something to take a look at. And when you do all those three things together, when you reach out to them by phone or by direct email, which is the next step, they're far more likely to book that meeting with you.

[00:19:55] Because now they're actually warmed up to who you are. They know who you are when you're calling. 

[00:20:00] Marshall Stern: Okay, so, but you're, you're suggesting just connect no message at the beginning? 

[00:20:04] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, just a hundred percent. 

[00:20:04] Marshall Stern: Okay. 

[00:20:04] Kelly Kennedy: Okay Because you're going to send a message the next week, right. So I, I'm not an advocate of necessarily reaching immediately out to people who connect with you.

[00:20:12] Usually it's a task for me on the next week. So if I'm connecting with, you know, let's call it 50 people on behalf of a client I'm working with, I'm not reaching out to them immediately. One, that's not human, right? That's not a human thing to do. And so you stand out more actually when you reach out the next week in a, in a more kind personal message.

[00:20:31] And like I said, I do recommend that you hand write those messages, that you create a template that works well for you, but is you, but is you, but is personal, right? Because, you know, people don't connect with robots. We connect with people. 

[00:20:42] Marshall Stern: Yeah. No, absolutely no, I love that. And that's where, like, the scary, the scary part of like the whole AI and automation comes in where a lot of people are like…

[00:20:51] Kelly Kennedy: It's not working. It's simply not working. 

[00:20:54] Marshall Stern: Yeah. What would you say, in your journey, okay – actually before we go there, what was the catalyst for Catalyst Club?

[00:21:01] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, so, you know, I mean, you know that I'm a coach as well. I have Business Development Mastery. I started off as a one-to-one executive coach in 2023.

[00:21:10] And that pushed into 2024. And by 2025, I wanted to do more. I actually wanted to start a group coaching program. So Accelerator was born, which you're familiar with. And Accelerator was amazing and we had people from all over the country, all over North America really. We had some people from UAE even, like, and all of these people were getting in the room and running through my Business Development Mastery program.

[00:21:32] But I was seeing these like incredible connections happening. We had people meeting up in Texas, we had other people meeting up in Toronto. We had people sharing business right in the coaching sessions. And I'm like, holy crap, this is amazing. And what was amazing about it was, is we had a bunch of leaders, a bunch of business development leaders.

[00:21:49] Business owners, things like that in a private room, getting to know one another and being vulnerable, sharing, hey, I, you know, I'm actually struggling with this. And then having people step up and be like, oh yeah, I can help you. And I was like, oh, wow. Okay. Okay. We're onto something here. And so Catalyst Club had been originally created to support my coaching students, to give them a hub, a place that they could go where it was private just for them.

[00:22:14] But then I realized, you know what, like this isn't just about business owners. This isn't just about business development people. This is leadership support. And if we could create a private space for leaders to get together where nothing's going to be shared outside of it. Like, obviously, the privacy is number one priority of Catalyst Club, but we don't share anything that's going on in there.

[00:22:33] But inside, if you can create a safe space, you can fill it with leaders. Leaders will help other leaders. And you know, you know as well as I do, the biggest challenge leadership leaders face is they can feel very alone at the top. And it, it might sound very counterintuitive because you might look at the CEO of your company and be like, oh, that guy's got it all together.

[00:22:51] You must have a thousand friends. He must know everyone. He must not be afraid of anything. And that's simply not the case. Usually, they actually have nearly nobody to talk to you because their friends are likely not at a similar level to them. Their wife or their husband is probably sick of hearing about things at home.

[00:23:07] They, they, they want to try and separate work and home. You might have like other colleagues who are looking up to them, so they don't want to look weak. You have employees looking up to them to keep the company going and you have co-founders who don't want to hear it. They don't want to hear it, they just want to know things are moving forward in a safe direction.

[00:23:23] And so leadership is actually insanely lonely. And so Catalyst Club is about bringing leaders together who are from different industries, different places around the world, and essentially giving them a safe space to share the challenges going on in their life. And instead of being met with animosity or like, what do you have to complain about, they're being met with compassion and it's, it's incredible.

[00:23:44] Marshall Stern: Awesome. And what we're definitely going to put a link in the show notes for that, for the Catalyst Club because it's cool. It's, it's cost effective. It's like, yeah, you just join, like there's, like, just join. I mean, I've, I've only been in, in it for a month and I've already met - in fact, after we finished this recording, I'm meeting with one of our fellow members and I've met with a few of them already, just having a Zoom, Zoom chat with them.

[00:24:07] Kelly Kennedy: Totally. 

[00:24:08] Marshall Stern: And, and what I like about it also, is that it's not like, my world's business owners, entrepreneurs, leaders. 

[00:24:15] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. 

[00:24:15] Marshall Stern: But who own businesses, right? 

[00:24:16] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:24:17] Marshall Stern: And what I like about Catalyst Club is it's not just that they're leaders. But some of them actually work for companies. 

[00:24:25] Kelly Kennedy: Correct. Yep.

[00:24:26] Marshall Stern: Right. But they're in a leadership position and, but they're all growth, growth-oriented. That's what I really like. It's growth and it is lonely. It is lonely. They say it's lonely at the top. And that's why I do what I do. That's why I have group programs bringing owners together and leaders together.

[00:24:41] Because it's isolating, like yeah, you're, I mean, unless your wife or significant other, or your friends are in the same position, same business, what have you, they don't get it. 

[00:24:50] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. And, and even if they are right, even if they are, they might be too close to it being the other side of it. 

[00:24:56] Marshall Stern: Right Oh, for sure.

[00:24:56] Kelly Kennedy: The cool thing about Catalyst Club is you have people from completely different industries, different life experiences, it can kind of make you feel like, oh, okay, I'm not alone in this. Like, I think the thing that's surprising to most people is that the feelings are universal. The challenges are universal.

[00:25:12] It's not just you. You're not just isolated. And I think being able to be in a room full of people who are like, oh yeah, me too… man, that's empowering. 

[00:25:22] Marshall Stern: One of, one of my coaches, a coach, I had said, and this stuck with me, and this is what I would say about, like, what I, the programs I create, the group programs I curate.

[00:25:31] And the, definitely the Catalyst Club is – he says, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. 

[00:25:39] Kelly Kennedy: A hundred percent. 

[00:25:40] Marshall Stern: And most of us – and, and one of my big philosophies and for, for this year, for 2026 is to become more comfortable being uncomfortable, putting myself in uncomfortable positions, being comfortable with that for growth.

[00:25:54] And most of us stay comfortable and it's like, okay, I'm just going to stay in my little bubble. Or I might be the smartest person in the room, or the most important person in the room because I'm comfortable with that, or around people who are just like me. Whereas when we're surrounding ourselves – standard circle – surrounding ourselves with people who are maybe, maybe one step ahead, two steps ahead, we grow.

[00:26:14] If we can just think, especially in a group like that, we just, we can take from them, take, not take from them, take the knowledge from them, learn from them, stretch ourselves. 

[00:26:23] Kelly Kennedy: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And you know, when, if you look at like, you, you pointed me out as, like, a business development expert at the beginning.

[00:26:29] That's amazing. I appreciate that greatly. I think, I think I was just brave enough to stand up. Like I, you know, when you look at it, business development as a, as a, a position, it's been overlooked. For an incredibly long time. You know, like you said at the beginning of the show, explain to me what it is like. That's a common question nearly everywhere.

[00:26:47] And it was the same question that I asked myself the first time that I was offered a job in business development. And it's like, that hasn't changed, Marshall. You know, I've been in the industry now in, directly, business development for 15 years and there is still nearly nothing out there for us. And so when I started the BDP, it wasn't just about, you know, I have a BD company.

[00:27:05] I wanted to obviously show people I knew what I was talking about. But one of my goals with the show was also to educate and inspire the next generation of BD people and not leave, you know, a 23-year-old Kelly Googling what is business development and finding no information on how to actually do it.

[00:27:20] And so not only was it designed to, you know, showcase my experience, but it was designed to teach. And so if you listen to the business development podcast, we're always teaching business development in it. Not only is it interviews from, you know, executives around the world, but my shows are typically always about encouragement, support.

[00:27:41] How do you actually do something? What is business development? You can get a really great idea on how to execute it well by simply listening to the first 20 episodes. 

[00:27:51] Marshall Stern: No, and I, and I've been listening to your, your podcast. It's awesome. And, and it's interesting because I did, I decided to do a test, a research project after I started listening to some of your episodes. 

[00:28:01] And I went into, I asked a friend who's been in account management, I guess you would say, for like 40 years. 35, 40 years. But first I went into Indeed and I did a search business development, account management, sales, and it all came up to the same stuff. 

[00:28:18] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. 

[00:28:18] Marshall Stern: And I asked my friend, I had lunch with him a few weeks back, and I said, would you see your business development or account management, or, I knew he wasn't really sales like per, per se.

[00:28:28] And he goes, I think it's all the same. Right. And he's been in the industry. 

[00:28:32] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah.

[00:28:33] Marshall Stern: So there's a lot of, there's a lot of confusion with that. And I think people, I always talk, work with my clients and have them block time for the business development, so I know what it is. 

[00:28:44] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. 

[00:28:44] Marshall Stern: The business development. And a lot of people are like, you just even just open up your Facebook or your LinkedIn and you'll just see all this like closing and sales. Sales and sales. Right. And there's the, it's like the first part's missing. 

[00:28:58] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:59] Marshall Stern: The first part for most of this business. Okay. So – 

[00:29:01] Kelly Kennedy: Well, and I'll, I'll just, I'll, I'll explain it a little better as to why.

[00:29:05] Marshall Stern: Yeah, please. Yeah. 

[00:29:06] Kelly Kennedy: So when I worked in, you know, in oil and gas, I was actually dual role. I was doing business development and account management. But here's the thing. Here's the thing about business development and account management. Account management is probably the best job in any company. People always ask like, what, what co, what job would you want to work in a company?

[00:29:22] You want to be a CEO, A VP? It's like, no, make me the account manager. The account manager gets to go to Oilers games, gets to hang out golfing every weekend or every weekday. They're out there making friends. Literally the job of an account manager. Become the client's best friend by, by any means necessary.

[00:29:42] And ultimately any means necessary is the stuff that you would do with your friends. And so, if I look back at my time in oil and gas, I had a call last week with my very first client. My very first client, Marshall. We were just shooting the shit. We hadn't, you know, we talk, you know, a couple times a year.

[00:29:57] We're just friends. But this guy was my very first client, as you know, an account manager, business developer. And that's what it becomes. It becomes friendship. But here, think about it this way. If your choices are, go hang out with your friend for the day, golfing, shooting the shit, grabbing lunch, whatever, or, you know, make, make your 30 cold calls, what are you going to choose?

[00:30:21] Marshall Stern: Yeah. 

[00:30:22] Kelly Kennedy: That's why they have to be separated. 

[00:30:24] Marshall Stern: Yeah. Okay. No, I, I like that. I like that.  So again, most of our ,our listeners are, are owners leaders. What would you say, well, actually before we go there, in, in winding everything up, there's two questions I want to ask you. Number one, what would you say would be your biggest challenge, roadblock, something you've had to overcome in your business, something that maybe you didn't expect being an owner of the business.

[00:30:50] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I, I feel like I had to get really good at time management and I think maybe that's a great place to ultimately end the show because I know you talked about how with so many people, that is the hard thing to do, right? As solopreneurs, we're running the business, we're, might be running a podcast, we still have to do our business development.

[00:31:09] Right. So ultimately you need to become the best you've ever become at managing your time. And I know a lot of people will say, well, I don't have time to do business development. And I would argue you absolutely do. You just haven't learned how to manage your time effectively yet. And so the best tool that I would say, and, and you know what I mean, I'm still learning Marshall.

[00:31:28] I'm not the best person in the world at this, but I can't teach business development anymore without teaching people how to block their time. And so your cell phone, right? Everybody's got a cell phone, everyone's got an email account, everybody's got a calendar on that phone. I want you to start scheduling your life, everything.

[00:31:45] And I know it might sound weird, but I literally mean like even your lunches with your wife or your husband. Start to block off your day with tasks you're going to ultimately complete throughout that day, and you will be surprised at how much more effective you get.  I just challenge you to do it right?

[00:32:01] Try one week. Try one week of, of scheduling the things you're going to do. Schedule your cold calls, schedule your LinkedIn digital introductions, schedule if you have post time, your post schedule, the calls you're going to make to your clients. And then schedule your work time and start to just live by that schedule.

[00:32:16]  Everything. But you will be surprised at how much you can accomplish by simply scheduling your time. So if you're not doing it right now, that's the biggest change that will have the most, the most impact for you in 2026. 

[00:32:30] Marshall Stern: That's a great place to end, but I will continue with that because time blocking is massive.

[00:32:35] It is so – people think it has to be so complicated and trust me, and I'm not going to move the camera because I'll screw everything up, but I've got, I keep it, I have a stack of physical daytimers, beautiful daytimers, leather bound daytimers or whatever the phone, the calendar, Google Calendar, outlook calendar, whatever, whatever you use.

[00:32:53] Apple Calendar. Yeah, I, I’m just going to call it the Focus Five. So I have my five blocks every single day that are the same love that colour-coded. 

[00:33:02] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. 

[00:33:03] Marshall Stern: And that includes me time. 

[00:33:05] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. 

[00:33:05] Marshall Stern: And that includes family time. But then there's the business development stuff, the, what I call the proactive, right? And the, so,  and then there's the in it, so on it versus in it, the on it is that business development, it's the working towards the vision, it's building those relationships.

[00:33:21] And then there's data, which is like what we're doing now. 

[00:33:25] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. 

[00:33:25] Marshall Stern: Right. 

[00:33:25] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. And I know we didn't quite get onto it, but you had asked about cadence, right? Once you have the direct contact information for somebody, their, their phone line or their direct email, how often do you reach out? The answer is really simple.

[00:33:38] It's just once a week. That doesn't matter whether you're following up for a proposal or you're trying to book that initial meeting, once per week falls under the human baseline radar. You won't come across annoying anything more than once a week. It's too much. 

[00:33:52] Marshall Stern: So daily's not good. 

[00:33:54] Kelly Kennedy: Daily's not good. 

[00:33:56] Marshall Stern: I say that facetiously.

[00:33:57] Okay.  I'm just, I think that's –  okay. So you've already, you actually, you actually, I have two questions for you, and you actually answered them both because the second question was one gold nugget, a takeaway that you can give our listeners. And really it's managing your time. 

[00:34:13] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. And, and your once a week follow up critical 

[00:34:17] Marshall Stern: And the, and the once a week.

[00:34:17] Yeah. No, this, this is, this has been awesome. I'm going to have to have you back because I think people are going to want to know a little bit more, but of course they can join the Catalyst Club and get to know you more. And, and thank you. This has been awesome. 

[00:34:31] Kelly Kennedy: Thank you Marshall. Always a pleasure. Thanks for joining the club.

[00:34:33] It's been awesome having you there and, looking forward to see what you're building. You know, why don't you, before we wrap up today, why don't you bring me into the community you're building? 

[00:34:42] Marshall Stern: Absolutely. Okay, I will do that. I will do that. We're, we're building, so one thing we are building is my, my group is the ONtrepreneur Inner Circle.

[00:34:52] Kelly Kennedy: Okay. 

[00:34:53] Marshall Stern: And it's going to be an amazing, it's - I'm curating a small group of high – I, I don't want to say high achievers. High visionaries, passionate people, passionate visionaries, who want to build something, who want to grow from each other and learn from each other. And so, I'm curating that in in 2026. 

[00:35:12] Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Amazing.  

[00:35:13] Marshall Stern: And yeah. 

[00:35:15] Kelly Kennedy: 2026 is absolutely going to be the year of community, and there's going to be lots of communities to choose from. The secret is simply, find one that aligns with you. And I would say if you're listening to Marshall's show, that's probably his community. 

[00:35:28] Marshall Stern: We all have. Yeah, no, thank we all, we all have communities.

[00:35:31] And it, it's interesting before we go, like there are, like, even Facebook, like I manage, I run a couple of Facebook groups and I jump into other Facebook groups and there's so many Facebook groups which call, like for business owners, which are called community groups. All it is. And same thing with LinkedIn.

[00:35:46] LinkedIn's not as bad though. All it is, spammy. All it is, is, buy from me, buy from me. It's like a typical, I used to – when I had my sign company, I used to go to different, like, Chamber of Commerce events, like trade shows. And display. And there would be like 40 of us there with our little booth, 10 by 10 booth and our banner display and whatnot.

[00:36:05] And the only people that would come to these events, first of all there was free food. So free admission, free food. You get - everyone was people trying to sell you. 

[00:36:14] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. 

[00:36:15] Marshall Stern: We're there promoting our services, being of service, and all we would get is either people looking for jobs, which I didn't understand whether, but okay.

[00:36:24] It was free and people try and sell us. 

[00:36:27] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. 

[00:36:28] Marshall Stern: Everyone's trying to sell something. So I love what you do with the, with I resonate and I'm in your community because, and I'm staying in your community because it aligns with my values and where I want to take my business. 

[00:36:41] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. 

[00:36:41] Marshall Stern: And it's the, and, and the other thing. It's a safe space. 

[00:36:45] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, we, we have found that, you know, when you have a community of leaders like that. I, I did get multiple requests. because initially we weren't going to essentially have a marketplace area, but you know, when I kind of thought about it and we have a lot of people in there with amazing things to offer.

[00:37:03] And so, you know, literally just this week we did open the Rockstar Marketplace and it's just a place in the club, off the main pages that people can talk about what they're working on, you know, and, and, and I think it will be very valuable over time, but I think the secret is you really have to have a space for it.

[00:37:21] You – otherwise it will pop up all over the place. 

[00:37:24] Marshall Stern: No, absolutely. Yeah. No. Having a space, that's fine because we're all in business for business. 

[00:37:29] Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. 

[00:37:29] Marshall Stern: That's a, but having a separate space for it, and a lot of these Facebook groups talk about they're there to build community, they're built to support each other and they're supporting each other.

[00:37:37] But all it is, is just ads after ads after ads, like for companies. And no one's really giving anything of value. Whereas I know in the Catalyst Club community, definitely there were people there giving it tons. And I just started, so I can't even imagine what, what's going to do with 2026 has in store.

[00:37:52] So I'm very excited. 

[00:37:53] Kelly Kennedy: You know what, it's been incredible. And communities are nothing without the people in them, right? Yeah. And it's people like you, Marshall, who make our community great. So, thank you for, for being part of it. 

[00:38:02] Marshall Stern: No, well, thank you. Thank you for everything you do, and all the best in 2026, but we're going to be seeing each other quite a bit, I have a feeling. 

[00:38:08] Kelly Kennedy: That's right. That's right. Yeah. Have an amazing Christmas and a happy New Year. 

[00:38:13] Marshall Stern: Thank you. Same, same to you. And for everyone else, I want you to check out Kelly's stuff. It's going to be in the show notes. Check out the Catalyst Club, gang. Just join like you'll see. Just join like if you think it's for you, take a look at it.

[00:38:27] You know, if you want to grow, if you want to be around other entrepreneurs, other business owners, other leaders, yeah, absolutely. Join the ONtrepreneur Inner Circle, that's a little bit different. But the Catalyst Club is, there's so many different resources there. Just, just join like – 

[00:38:41] Kelly Kennedy: I, I appreciate that, Marshall. Thank you. 

[00:38:42] Marshall Stern: Okay. Take care. We'll see you again next week in another episode of the Stern Truth Business Unfiltered.

[00:38:50] Thank you so much for tuning in to the Stern Truth. If you found today's episode helpful, we would love to hear from you. Please like, share and leave us a review. Also, if you'd like to be a guest in an upcoming episode or join us in one of our Moment Accountability Group sessions, simply email me to marshall@marshallstern.net.

[00:39:10] That's marshall@marshallstern.net. And don't forget to hit the subscribe button so you never miss an episode. Until next time, keep pushing forward and leading with confidence.