The BIG Story

Our story begins in an intense moment of fear for me, Mo Bunnell.

You'll have to watch the video above to hear about it, but I can tell you I was scared.

Really scared.

I had worked sooo hard to get to a specific role at work. I was now a Managing Consultant, in charge of leading some of my firm's largest worldwide relationships.

It was a pinnacle moment for me, a goal I had been working on for years.

I was very young for the role. It aligned with my long term goals. I loved my colleagues.

Getting that role felt like a huge win. I was overwhelmed with excitement. Nearly a decade of work paid off.

But there was a problem.

The new role required completely different skills than I had been trained to do. And in all my enthusiasm and years of effort, I had never considered how I would actually learn the new skills I needed.

I assumed I would be given a system. A business development playbook. A comprehensive manual for developing relationships and growing a book of business, all done with my client's best interests in mind.

That's when the moment of fear hit: I learned there wasn't one.

No playbook. No manual. Just fear.

I didn't realize it at the time, but that moment of fear was the beginning of my life's work.

Watch the video for details, but the short version is simple: I started writing the manual I wanted.

It started on a beautiful spring day in a coffee shop in Vinings Georgia. At first it was just me, writing in that shop, documenting the steps of something I was going to try. That manual started as my personal notes, and grew immensely.

As I started to get exceptional results, others wanted to learn the methods too. I kept documenting the things that worked (and many that didn't!) I was lucky to work with amazing people, and I augmented their approaches with reading hundreds of books, research papers and articles.

I love learning. And I love teaching.

It's funny. In the end, I didn't actually fall in love with business development like I expected.

I fell in love with teaching others business development. 

And man, do I love it.

Fast forward a couple decades and I couldn't be happier with that decision to type up some notes in that coffee shop. It set me on a path I'll be on the rest of my life.

Starting Bunnell Idea Group about 15 years ago was one the scariest decisions I've ever made. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was dedicating my life to helping others through the transition I had made.

I'm so grateful I took that risk. Starting BIG in my home's closet gave me the freedom to focus on my passion. My family teased me, but I'd talk about the latest behavioral science research at the dinner table. I'd share my client's successes. As my two daughters grew older, they each came through GrowBIG the summer before their senior year in high school. And now they're both love studying psychology. (They might be my favorite clients).

We still talk about the latest research at the dinner table, but now they're sharing it with me. I'm still continually tweaking and improving our system, every single day.

The difference is that now I have a lot more support. Our team at BIG is insane. They're some of the smartest people I've ever worked with. They're some of my best friends. And we're all committed to helping our clients love and succeed at business development.

We've trained over 15,000 experts so they don't have to go through the pain I did.

We've written and launched The Snowball System, winning amazing awards, expanding our impact to even more people.

But most importantly, we've seen the transition our clients go through.

I can't count how many people tell me something like this on the last day of training: "Before GrowBIG training I was thinking of quitting my job. After my recent promotion, I was on the hook for growing client relationships but didn't know how to do it. I hated the idea. I didn't join this profession to sell. But now I know exactly what to do, feel great about it, and can't wait to get started!"

Hearing from our clients fires me up.

It's why I'll be doing this when I'm 90 years old, walking with a cane and talking to anyone who'll listen to me share our message.

I believe business development skills can be learned, with science and steps to guide us.

I believe business development can be loved, with proactive caring, abundance and helpfulness at its core.

And I believe the people that pair business development skills with a deep, core expertise will be the ones making the biggest difference in the world, be the most financially successful and have the most fun doing it.