“I hope this email finds you well” is where business development gets real.
Hosted by Neil Barrow, this show brings you candid conversations with business development professionals and leaders who know what it takes to grow. No fluff, no endless theory — just practical strategies, stories of wins (and failures), and the unfiltered lessons that actually move the needle.
Whether you’re building your pipeline, closing bigger deals, or rethinking how you approach growth, each episode gives you tools you can use today.
Listen in, level up, and let’s make business development simple, sustainable, and successful.
Your Best Referral Source Already Works at Your Firm | with Nico Berrini
Today, I'm joined by Nico Berrini, who leads growth for client advisory services at Citrin Cooperman.
When Nico joined ORBA in the middle of busy season, he set out to meet thirty partners in thirty days. Within his first 30 to 40 days he'd closed his first client, and it didn't come from a campaign or a conference. It came from a tax partner who introduced him to a business owner whose personal returns he'd been doing for years. Once the other partners heard about it, they started bringing him in too.
We get into why the relationships that drive a firm's growth are usually buried in a partner's Rolodex, and what it takes to earn access to them: follow-through, showing partners exactly what happens after the intro, and making them look good. Nico also walks through how he helped grow a startup from 10 people to 130 almost entirely on introductions rather than cold outreach, why he'd rather tell a CEO there's a mismatch than take the wrong client, and why you can't confuse movement with progress.
If your best relationships are sitting with people down the hall, this one's for you. Let's get into it.
Chapters:
00:00:00 Cold Open and the BD Combo Meal
00:09:36 From Boeing to a Startup That Never Cold Called
00:17:03 Delivering Bad News and Building the Tax Flywheel
00:23:41 30 Partners in 30 Days
00:28:57 Joining Citrin Cooperman and Going External
00:34:07 Focus, and the Three Pillars
16 Sept 2026
How to Create Deals Instead of Bidding for Them | with Dana Compton
Today, I'm joined by Dana Compton, Director of Business Development at Ridgemont Commercial Construction.
Dana doesn't wait for the bid list. She's built a career on getting in before there's a project at all, knowing about land before it hits the market, bringing in the civil engineer and the architect and the developer herself, and being there when the whole thing was still just dirt. The alternative, she says, is sending the same brochure as everyone else in your industry, the one with quality and safety and integrity and on time and on budget, and hoping somebody picks you.
We get into how she does it. The relationship she started in 04 with someone who couldn't hire her, who called her sixteen years later from a role that could. Why she tells clients when not to hire her, and why that's the thing that earns the next job. How she researches a pursuit by talking to the architect who worked with them last, and what she asks. And the difference between being the person people are relieved to see walk in, and the person they're bracing for.
If you're tired of finding out about projects when everyone else does, this one's for you. Let's get into it.
Outline:
00:00:00 Cold Open and the BD Combo Meal
00:05:32 Deep Research: Why Everyone's Brochure Says the Same Thing
00:10:16 Your Life Is Bigger Than Your Pipeline
00:15:00 BD Person vs. Dealmaker
00:20:22 Making the Case, Making the Deal
00:26:31 Starting Over: A New Network From Scratch
00:32:23 A Third of the Day Is Research
00:37:15 Inside a BD Meeting That Actually Works
00:43:19 The Gift Basket That Got the Call Back
2 Sept 2026
Your Biggest Client Is Waiting To Give You More Work | with Jaime Hochhausen
Today, I'm joined by Jaime Hochhausen, Business Development Director at Ashurst Perkins Coie.
The story at the center of this one is a client who spent over five million dollars with a firm and had never once been asked about other work, never been taken to lunch, nothing. He wasn't unhappy. He said the partner did a great job and he'd hire him again tomorrow. The work was just sitting there and nobody had gone and got it. One lunch later, Jaime had an employment pitch.
We get into why partners don't ask, which is almost always fear of looking like a burden rather than laziness. We talk about the questions that surface the work, and why Jaime's years taking depositions turned out to be the skill that matters most, because there's always another question inside the answer.
If you're sitting on a book of clients you suspect could be worth more, or you're a firm leader trying to work out where a client-facing BD person actually earns their keep, this one's for you. Let's get into it.
Chapters:
00:00:00 Cold Open and the BD Combo Meal
00:06:13 Why the Work Dies in the Follow-Up
00:11:35 From Litigator to BD: What She Got Wrong First
00:18:17 Forty Slides and No Idea What They Needed
00:24:23 The $5M Client Nobody Ever Asked
00:32:11 The Meeting That Wins Work Without a Deck
00:37:27 Protecting the Time to Actually Go Ask
00:44:45 Why Firms Plan and Never Execute
00:50:19 Be the Connector: Where New Work Comes From
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