To cope with sudden changes in their environment, bacteria can use a bet-hedging strategy by dividing the population into cells with different properties. This so called bimodal or bistable cellular differentiation is generally controlled by positive feedback regulation of transcriptional activators. Due to continued turnover of the cytoplasmic content, it is difficult for these activators to reach an activation threshold concentration when cells are growing exponentially. This is one reason why bimodal differentiation is primarily observed from the onset of the stationary phase when exponential growth ceases. An exception is the bimodal induction of motility in Bacillus subtilis, which occurs early during exponential growth. Several mechanisms have been put forward to explain this, including double negative-feedback regulation and the stability of the mRNA molecules involved. In this study, we used fluorescence-assisted cell sorting to compare the transcriptome of motile and non-motile cells and noted that expression of ribosomal genes is lower in motile cells. This was confirmed using an unstable GFP reporter fused to the strong ribosomal rpsD promoter. We propose that the reduction in ribosomal gene expression in motile cells is the result of a diversion of cellular resources to the synthesis of the chemotaxis and motility systems. In agreement, single-cell microscopic analysis indicates that motile cells are slightly shorter than non-motile cells, an indication of slower growth. We speculate that this growth rate reduction can contribute to the bimodal induction of motility during exponential growth. Overall design: We used reporter strain bSS339, containing the gfp gene under control of the strong SigD-activated flagellin promoter Phag. Cells were grown until an OD of ~0.5 after which the culture was subjected to fluorescence-assisted cell sorting (FACS) and separation into GFP-on (motile) and GFP-off (non-motile) cells. RNA-seq was applied to GFP-on and GFP-off subpopulations respectively with ERCC spike-in RNAs as internal controls and transcriptomes between motile and non-motile was compared. Two independent biological replicates were performed.