Having More Options Is the Problem (Not the Advantage)
This clip explores a pattern I see often in service businesses: having too many options feels like opportunity, but it usually creates complexity, confusion, slower decisions, and diluted focus.
The post below goes deeper into why narrowing what you do often leads to clearer marketing, better operations, and a business that’s easier to run.
Many service business owners are stuck, not because they lack ability, but because they have too many options.
And that sounds like a good problem to have.
Until it isn’t.
Most of the people I talk to could succeed at almost anything they chose to focus on. If they picked one service, one offer, one direction, and actually committed to it, they’d probably make it work.
That’s not the issue.
The issue is deciding where attention actually goes when everything feels possible.
The buffet problem
If you’ve been in business long enough, you eventually reach a point where the buffet is in front of you.
You can offer more services.
You can expand into adjacent work.
You can chase custom requests.
You can try new marketing channels.
You’ve already proven you’re capable.
At that point, the question isn’t “What can I do?”
It’s:
What am I willing to focus on, and what am I willing to ignore?
Because having access to everything doesn’t mean everything is good for you.
Why narrowing focus actually increases profit
This comes up constantly in service businesses.
Someone offers nine or ten services. A few of them are highly profitable. A few are interesting. A few feel like “nice opportunities.” Some are custom, some are complex, some require special tools or one-off thinking.
Over time, the result is predictable:
installs get harder
scheduling gets messy
training gets complicated
margins blur
marketing becomes unclear
When you cut that list down, something interesting happens.
Time narrows.
Profit narrows.
But so does complexity.
And when complexity drops, everything else gets easier to manage.
Focus doesn’t just simplify operations. It simplifies marketing.
This is the part people underestimate.
When you only offer three or four core services instead of nine or ten, your marketing stops feeling like roulette.
You’re no longer trying to be everywhere, hoping something hits.
Instead, you can:
prioritize channels
define the customer you actually want
see what converts and what doesn’t
move effort from low-performing areas into the ones that matter
You don’t need to be everywhere.
You just need to be in the right places.
The hidden cost of growth without clarity
A lot of industries went through rapid growth over the last five to ten years.
Top-line revenue went up.
Marketing got more sophisticated.
Ticket prices increased.
Awareness improved.
But for many owners, something else happened quietly in parallel.
Energy went down.
Focus scattered.
Workload increased.
Decision fatigue set in.
And eventually the question becomes:
Where do I go from here?
That’s not a failure. That’s business.
The problem is waiting too long to clean it up.
Why waiting to “get paid later” is dangerous
I’ve seen this cycle repeat across industries.
Businesses grow fast.
A downturn hits.
They reset.
They rebuild.
They expand again.
Another disruption hits.
They reset again.
If that happens every ten years, you don’t end up retired.
You end up starting over multiple times in the same place.
The issue isn’t ambition.
It’s not planning for scale with intention.
If you’re delaying personal compensation or sustainability, that can be fine — if it’s quantified.
But if “scale” is just a vague idea with no clear destination, you’re not building toward something.
You’re just staying busy.
The difference between intentional scale and endless effort
There are businesses that operate at a loss early on for a reason.
They know:
what scale actually means
where the tipping point is
what has to be true for the model to work
The danger is trying to “get big” without knowing what big actually looks like.
If you don’t know what scale is for your business, you’re not moving toward it.
You’re just adding weight.
Where clarity actually comes from
Clarity doesn’t come from more options.
It comes from constraints you choose on purpose.
That usually means:
narrowing services
simplifying offers
prioritizing marketing
deciding what you’re no longer willing to do
Not because you can’t do it.
Because doing everything well is impossible.
If this feels familiar
If you’re reading this and thinking, “Yeah, this sounds like me,” you’re not alone.
This isn’t a motivation problem.
It’s not a discipline problem.
It’s an attention problem.
And attention is the most valuable resource in a service business.
Where it goes determines what actually works.