The Fastest Way I Grew This Business? Letting Go.

The first three years of this business, I said yes to everything.
 

Executive leadership retreats. Building out sales leadership teams. Business consulting for owners across half a dozen industries. I loved a lot of it — until I didn't. Somewhere in year three, I looked up and realized I'd become the exact thing I now warn founders about: the overbooked expert, juggling so many topics and client types that “growth” had quietly become exhaustion wearing a nicer name.

I see this constantly in people who left corporate to build something of their own. You can do a lot of things well. That's exactly the trap.

What the 42 Dive taught me about my own business

Way before any of this, I was a sportscaster covering the NDSU Bison — a program that won national championship after national championship on the back of a core play, run over and over: the 42 Dive. Three yards, time and time again. Not flashy. But run consistently enough, against a defense forced to respect it, and it's what opened up the big plays.

I went looking for my own 42 Dive. What was the one thing, underneath everything else I was doing, that I solved for that made the biggest impact? Revenue growth. Leadership, personal development, business consulting — all of it was in service of that one outcome. I focused on founders and CEOs of small professional service businesses — and let the rest go.

That's the part nobody warns you is required: growth asks you to release what you already know how to do, and are probably good at, so you can go all-in on the one thing that has the highest potential to scale in a way that works for you.

It takes courage. It also flat-out works

I watch this play out with cohort participants, clients, and I lived it myself. In a recent cohort, midway through a founder realized some of what she was delivering wasn't going to get her to the revenue growth she wanted, and that included a long-standing client. She recently shared the relationship was able to come to a natural conclusion.

That release didn't create a gap in her business. It opened one — for clients who are aligned with the business she's building now.

Where this shows up in your funnel

A qualified lead for the business you're building now doesn't look like a qualified lead from three years ago. If your qualifying questions haven't caught up to your focus, you're still screening leads against a version of your business you've already outgrown — which is how a full funnel and a flat year happen at the same time.

Once you're clear on your one focus for the majority of your business — the questions change:

• How are you qualifying leads against that one focus, instead of against everything you're capable of?
• What's the valid business reason a lead would take a meeting with you, specific to that focus?
• How is that different from the way you've been building your funnel up to now?

Answer those three honestly and you'll see it fast: which leads in your funnel can turn into qualified prospects, and which ones are just familiar.

Weeding out your funnel could be the best thing for your revenue growth this year. The discomfort of letting go of a pile of maybes clears space for fewer, more targeted leads who can say yes.

Think about it

What's the thing you're still saying yes to that isn't part of your 42 Dive?

You don't need the whole plan yet. Just name it.