The morning I almost cried before an offsite

It was 7:00 AM. The client’s leadership team offsite started at 8:30. My slides for the day weren’t finished, and I was sitting there nearly in tears.

How did I get here?

It wasn’t for lack of caring. I had spent an incredible amount of time preparing — thinking about this team, what they were up against, what would help them have a breakthrough. And there I was, having a breakdown ninety minutes before I was supposed to spend an entire day with them.

How had I gotten to the point where I couldn’t focus on how I was going to show up and deliver my best for a team that deserved my best?

I’d love to tell you that was a one-time thing. It wasn’t. There was a stretch in my business where that morning kept repeating itself. Say yes to the opportunity. Customize everything from scratch, on a variety of business needs. Deliver it. Walk away knowing I could have done it better.

That was my referral-dependent stage. Sell it, then figure out how to build it.

The business grew exponentially. And it cost me personally.

Scaling doesn’t come from offering more. It comes from offering less to more.

I want to be clear about what I mean by less. Not less quality. Less surface area. More specificity.

After a year of delivering over 400 individual coaching sessions and 47 different team offsites and workshops, I knew the business could not keep growing in that model. People knew me as someone who could do a lot of different things — which sounds like a compliment until you realize what it really means. I wasn’t controlling the narrative. I was just saying yes.

So I started saying no (gulp). I completed contracts and referred them to others who were focused on what they needed. This was scary as shit but I stopped saying yes to everything and started claiming the one problem I solve – revenue growth (ironic, I know. I started following what I worked with some clients on to build a business focused supporting all clients).

Just because I can doesn’t mean I should.

I call the work of finding that one thing the 42 Dive Principle. Named after a single play that one of the winningest programs in college football ran flawlessly, it demonstrates how one play, one solution, creates more opportunity. More on why in a minute.

Here’s what this looks like in your business

As professional service founders, the emphasis is almost always on the service, the solution you’re providing. It’s why you started the business, right?  

Along the way you said, “Yes, we can do that.” And you added another way you could help clients get better outcomes even if it was a little off the core of what you wanted to be doing. I get it, cash flow matters.

But when you take a step back and look at your business objectively, you start to see it. There are services on your list you don’t truly enjoy or you’re not best at. They don’t bring you joy. They aren’t strong revenue builders. And when you get honest, the only reason they exist is that somebody asked and you said yes.

When I take clients through the 42 Dive Principle, they’re often surprised by how many different things they’re delivering — some personally, some through their team. Underneath the surprise is usually recognition. Deep down they already know which one problem they want to be solving at the highest level. They just haven’t decided to claim it.

Deciding is the whole thing. Getting clear on the one or two ways you help clients solve their biggest problem is the day you stop being referral-dependent. The specificity doesn’t just make it easier to tell your network what you do and who you serve — it tells you who you should be targeting, and where the next lead comes from.

When I made that shift, the 7:00 AM panic stopped. The panic was briefly reassigned to saying no to opportunities the year prior I would have said yes to. I said goodbye to clients. Initially it felt harder and there was some second guessing going on behind the scenes. But clarity brought back focus and the next year revenue went up 25%. The bigger number, though, was the 10 hours a week I got back and what I finally did with them: went after new business deliberately, instead of waiting for the next referral to find me.

Think about it

When was the last time you took inventory of everything you’ve created and delivered for your clients? Count them. Every service, every offer, every one-off you built because someone asked.

If you could only deliver one, what would it be?