In this Strategies & Tactics edition, Neil Barrow distills the single most important takeaway from his conversation with Kate Hall: The shift from "Employee" to "Owner."

Neil challenges every business development professional to stop waiting for permission and start treating their territory, network, and pipeline as their own personal business. He breaks down exactly what "Thinking Like an Owner" looks like in practice - from refusing to let leadership dictate your success, to adopting the "Break Glass in Case of Emergency" mindset that forces you to take extreme ownership of client outcomes.

Outline:

• 00:00 Strategies & Tactics: The Kate Hall recap

• 00:45 The "Break Glass" Strategy (Taking extreme ownership)

• 02:00 Why "doing whatever it takes" is an owner trait

• 03:00 Scheduling your outbound call block (The owner's discipline)

• 04:00 Reviewing your losses to fix your business

• 05:45 The 2 non-negotiables: High Motor & Point of View

• 07:00 Drive = Mastery + Purpose + Impact

• 07:50 "This Is My Business" (The entrepreneurial mindset)

• 09:00 Creating clients for life by reinforcing credentials

• 10:45 The 2026 Challenge: Pick up the phone

About the Guest (Featured in this Analysis):Kate Hall is a Business Development Principal at Embark. She transitioned from Big 4 accounting to recruiting and finally to high-level business development, helping her firm achieve 12x growth through a relentless "entrepreneurial" work ethic and a "fire extinguisher" service philosophy.

In this episode, Kate Hall, Business Development Principal at Embark, joins Neil and breaks down her unconventional path from a Big 4 accountant to a high-volume recruiter, and finally to a top-tier business development leader helping drive Embark’s massive 12x growth over five years.

They discuss the gritty reality of building a network from scratch, why "doing the work" is the only networking hack that matters, and the critical difference between being a "hunter" and a "farmer" in professional services. Kate also shares her "Fire Extinguisher" philosophy: how to position yourself as the first call clients make when things go wrong, even if you aren't the one fixing the problem.

Outline:

• 00:00 From Big 4 to recruiting

• 05:12 Running away from accounting roles

• 10:45 The reality of 100 daily calls

• 16:20 Realizing recruiting is actually sales

• 22:15 Winning a massive deal

• 28:30 Transitioning to Embark before COVID

• 32:10 Pivoting strategy during the pandemic

• 36:45 Delivering value to your firm

• 40:15 Managing different sales performance buckets

• 43:50 The Fire Extinguisher business philosophy

• 46:30 Scaling 12x through strategic farming

  
  

About the Guest:

Kate Hall is a Business Development Principal at Embark, a new kind of business advisory firm. Starting her career in audit at KPMG, she pivoted to recruiting where she honed her sales skills before joining Embark as employee #100. She has since helped the firm expand across multiple markets by combining deep industry knowledge with a relentless "high motor" work ethic.

Join Neil Barrow for this Strategies & Tactics edition as he unpacks key takeaways from his conversation with Alissa Kolm. Neil dives deep into two specific areas: defining what it actually means to "add value" and the mechanics of the old-school, but highly effective, "drop-in" strategy.

Neil breaks down the "3 I's" framework for cultivating new relationships (Invites, Insights, Introductions) and shares his own war stories from his ADP days about mapping out drop routes. He challenges listeners to stop overcomplicating outreach and start using simple, low-friction tactics like joint COI calls and cookie drops to crack open doors that emails can't.

Outline:

• 00:00 Cultivating relationships with the 3 I's

• 01:25 Defining value as a connector

• 02:07 The strategy of joint COI calls

• 03:02 Executing old school drop-in tactics

• 04:25 Planning joint drop-off days

• 05:49 Cold outreach to build referral networks

• 06:46 Invites, Insights, and Introductions deep dive

• 08:40 Creating accountability with calendar blocking

• 10:06 Summary of practical BD tactics

About the Guest (Featured in this Analysis): Alissa Kolm is a Business Development professional and Relationship Manager who specializes in activity-based selling. She built her career by launching new markets from scratch, leveraging high-volume activity and strategic partnerships with COIs to drive long-term growth.