I ask many questions when I start working with new clients. One I ask almost every business owner early in our engagement is deceptively simple, and the answer often changes everything.
"Of everything your business does, what actually matters most?"
Not what you enjoy telling people you do. Not the full catalog of services on your website. Not the things you added because a client asked and you said yes. I mean the things that drive revenue, generate real profit, and get your people excited to come to work.
Most owners can’t answer that question off the top of their head. Not precisely. Not with data. And that gap between what a business thinks it does and what actually makes it thrive is where I do some of my most important consulting work.
Let me tell you about Richard.
Richard’s Business
Richard owned and operated a professional services firm serving clients in construction, utilities, and manufacturing. His team did meaningful, technical work: process documentation, site inspections, as-built analysis, and a range of related services. Ten service lines in total. He had built the business over time, and it was a solid operation.
He came to me with a goal that’s common among owners in their early sixties: He wanted to grow the business and position it for a strong exit. He wasn’t ready to leave tomorrow, but he wasn’t going to work forever either. He wanted to be out before 70. He wanted to leave on his terms, with a number that felt like it rewarded everything he’d built.
To get there, he figured he needed to expand. More services, maybe. More clients. More revenue. Bigger footprint.
That’s usually where the conversation starts. Bigger. More. Broader.
It’s almost never the right answer.
The First Week’s Assignment
I didn’t challenge his thinking right away. Instead, I gave him an assignment.
I asked Richard to take all 10 of his service lines and rank them in two ways: by the revenue they generated, and by their profitability. I wanted raw data, not gut feelings, not narratives about what should be performing well, but actual numbers.
We needed to identify which services were making money, and which ones were making real money after you accounted for the cost of delivering them?
He came back a week later with the rankings.
I looked at the list, nodded, and gave him his second assignment.
The Second Week’s Assignment
This time, I asked him to do something different. I wanted him to go back to his team – the people actually doing the work every day – and ask them a simple question: Which of these 10 services do you most enjoy doing?
I didn’t want to know which ones are most important to clients, not which ones look most impressive in a proposal, but which ones do you and your people actually like doing?
He looked at me a little sideways. I could tell he wasn’t sure what this had to do with growing a business or getting a strong exit valuation. But he went and did it.
We met again a week later.
The Moment That Changes Everything
When Richard walked in for our third meeting, he had a look on his face. It’s a particular expression, somewhere between surprised and relieved, like something that’s been slightly out of focus has suddenly snapped clear.
He told me what he’d discovered.
The top five services by revenue were the same top five by profitability. And those same five services were the ones his team loved doing most.
He was delighted to tell me. I was not surprised.
This is one of the most consistent patterns I encounter in consulting: In a business that has found its footing, the things that make the most money are very often the things the team is best at and most energized by. It makes intuitive sense when you step back.
People tend to excel at what they enjoy. Excellence attracts better clients. Better clients generate better margins. High margins produce real profit. The alignment isn’t a coincidence – it’s a signal. It’s the business trying to tell you something about itself.
What Richard had been doing – and what most growth-hungry owners do – was treating all 10 service lines as equal opportunities. He was spreading his marketing attention, his operational bandwidth, and his recruiting energy across the whole portfolio. Half of that effort was going toward services that were underperforming and that his team was less engaged by.
He was diluting himself.
What Focus Actually Looks Like
Once we had the data and Richard could see the pattern clearly, the strategic direction became obvious.
We focused everything on the top five.
That doesn’t mean he immediately stopped doing the other five things entirely. Existing client relationships don’t work that way, and abrupt pivots create their own problems. But it meant that every forward-facing decision pointed toward the top half of the list.
Marketing: The messaging, the outreach, the positioning – all of it was rebuilt around the five services where Richard’s firm had genuine strength and genuine margin. No more trying to be all things to all clients in all sectors.
Operations: Decisions were focused on where to invest in systems, process improvement, and capacity. The effort was focused on making the delivery engine better and more scalable. The answer was clear.
Recruiting: When it was time to bring on talent, the question was no longer “Who can help us do more things?” but “Who can help us do these five things exceptionally well?”
This is what focus looks like in practice. It’s not a single dramatic decision. It’s a sustained reorientation of attention, resources, and energy toward the things that actually deserve them.
I worked with Richard for several months. We didn’t need years. The work wasn’t complicated – but it required discipline, because the pull toward diffusion is strong. Clients ask for things. Opportunities appear. The temptation to say yes to everything is constant. Focus requires the willingness to say a thoughtful, strategic no.
Richard had that willingness. That’s why it worked.
The Call, Several Years Later
Several years passed. I moved on to serving other clients who needed me. Then one day my phone rang. It was Richard.
He had sold the business.
The sale price was higher than he had expected. Not a little higher – meaningfully higher. He had negotiated an earn-out provision as part of the deal, a two-year arrangement that’s common in professional services transactions, where a portion of the purchase price is contingent on the business continuing to perform after the transition. That went well too.
And then Richard cruised into a retirement he was genuinely happy with. He’d left on his terms, with a number that reflected what he’d built, before he turned 70.
That’s the outcome. What produced the result?
Why This Works: The Buyer’s Perspective
When a buyer evaluates a professional services firm – whether that’s a private equity group, a strategic acquirer, or an individual looking to step into an ownership role – they are fundamentally asking one question: “How predictable is this revenue, and how defensible is this business?”
A firm that does 10 things reasonably well is hard to evaluate. The revenue is distributed. The expertise is diffuse. The operational systems are stretched across a wide surface area. The people are generalists by necessity. It’s hard for a buyer to look at that business and see a clear, ownable position in the market.
A firm that does five things exceptionally well is a different story entirely. The expertise is concentrated. The client relationships are likely deeper, because the firm has been delivering in a focused area rather than spreading attention. The operational systems are mature and refined, because investment has been concentrated. The team is expert, not adequate. The market position is legible.
That’s a business a buyer can understand, can underwrite, and is willing to pay a premium for.
Richard didn’t just grow his revenue by focusing. He made his business more comprehensible, more defensible, and ultimately more valuable to the people who would want to acquire it. He built toward an exit in the most literal sense – by making the thing he was building into something worth buying.
The Harder Question
The lesson of Richard’s story is not complicated. Focus on what you do best, what generates the most return, and what you and your people are most energized by. Align those things, and then build everything – marketing, operations, talent – around that aligned core.
But here’s the harder question, and the one I want to leave you with: Do you actually know what those things are in your business?
Not what you believe, not what feels right, not what the narrative in your head says. Do you have the data? Have you ranked your services, your clients, your revenue streams by what they actually produce – in dollars, in margin, in energy? Have you asked your team what they actually enjoy? Have you looked to see whether those answers align?
Most owners haven’t done this work. Not because they’re not smart or not motivated, but because it requires sitting down with uncomfortable information. Sometimes you find out that the service you’re most proud of is a margin drain. Sometimes you find out that the client you’ve had the longest relationship with is pulling resources away from better opportunities.
That’s hard to see clearly.
This is where finding the right advisor is key. Seeing things clearly is the beginning of everything.
Richard and I worked closely to figure out the game plan. Then he and his team did the work.
He looked at the numbers without flinching. He listened to his team. He found the alignment, and then he had the discipline to build toward it.
That’s why his phone call, years later, sounded the way it did.
Take a Practical Step
If you’re an owner thinking about an exit, this work is especially urgent. Buyers don’t pay premiums for complexity. They pay premiums for clarity.
Usually we’re all too close to our situations to navigate this kind of territory alone. That’s where a trusted advisor can help. It pays to work with an advisor to review your business, parse through the noise and get the right focus. It’s essential to get clear first. Then you can start shaping your company into what you – and your future buyers – want.
Chuck Hall, MSOD, is a business advisor and coach with nearly two decades of entrepreneurship experience. He works with founders and CEOs of small to mid-sized companies through his practice, Bizinuum.
chuck@chuckemail.com | 267-640-5932