You Don't Have to Turn Away Business to Get Focused (Here's the Difference)

You can say ‘yes’ to any work you want, but do it strategically

If you've done any reading about marketing or listened to business podcasts, you've probably heard this advice: "You need to get focused. Stop trying to be everything to everyone. Narrow your niche."

And if you're like most boutique firm founders I work with, your immediate reaction is some version of: But what if I turn away good business? What if I make my net too small? What if I miss opportunities?

Here's what I tell every client who brings up this concern: You can say yes to anyone you want. Full stop.

But when it comes to investing your time, money, and talent to attract clients, you want to use those resources strategically to pursue the best-fit opportunities. There's a big difference between those two things, and understanding that difference is what separates founders who are reactive from those who are building strategically.

The Real Risk Isn't Missing Opportunities—It's Missing Focus

Let me share what I hear from focus-ready firm founders all the time:

"What's on our website today doesn't really speak to the bigger, better clients we're wanting to serve."

"Our message doesn't communicate the caliber of our work, and we're worried it's off-putting to those next-level clients."

"We're ready to focus on our best clients, but we're not sure how to attract more of them."

Notice what's happening here? They're not worried about turning away business—they're worried about not attracting the right business. The risk isn't that you'll miss opportunities; it's that you'll keep attracting the wrong opportunities while the right ones go to competitors who speak directly to what they need.

When you try to appeal to everyone, you end up speaking to no one in particular. And in a world where people make decisions quickly—just like they do with email subject lines—if your message doesn't immediately signal that you understand their specific problem, they'll move on before you get a chance to explain your expertise.

The Problem vs. The How: Where Most Consultants Miss the Mark

Here's where most consultants lose their audience: they lead with how they do their work instead of what problem they solve.

I see this constantly. Consultants spend time talking about their services, their methodology, their process—essentially, the mechanics of how they deliver value. But that's not what gets someone's attention initially. That's not what makes someone think, "These people get it."

To attract next-level clients, you need to speak to the problem you solve first. This is about the what, not the how. And it needs to be emotional and meaningful—the kind of problem that keeps them up at night or that they're excited to finally address.

Think about it like email marketing. The first rule is that you need a compelling subject line. Then your opening line has to earn their attention to drive them to the next line. If you expect someone to get to the end of your email and then decide if it was worth their time, you're not thinking about actual human behavior. If it's irrelevant, people discard it quickly.

The same principle applies to your positioning. If you can't speak to the problem they have in a way that makes them think "Yes, that's exactly what I'm dealing with," you'll lose them before you ever get to explain your brilliant methodology.

Your "How" Matters—But It Comes Second

Once you've gotten their attention by speaking to their problem, then your "how" becomes critical for why they should choose you specifically.

But here's something important: there are actually two different kinds of "how" that matter in positioning.

The strategic how: This is your systematic approach to moving clients through a transformation. It's process-focused and builds confidence that you can deliver results consistently. This is what separates you from consultants who tackle each engagement differently.

The tactical how: These are your specific deliverables and services. For our business, that means positioning strategy, messaging frameworks, and content development. For yours, it might be financial planning, organizational restructuring, or technology implementation. This level is important, but it can be commoditized if it's not part of a larger system.

Your strategic how—the way you systematically move clients from where they are to where they want to be—is much harder to replicate and much more valuable to communicate.

Strategic Investment Doesn't Mean Saying No to Everything Else

Here's the nuance that makes this approach so powerful: when you invest strategically in attracting your best-fit clients, you're not locking yourself into only working with those clients forever.

You're creating clarity about your ideal direction so you can make conscious choices about when to deviate.

Maybe a potential client isn't in your sweet spot, but you're thrilled about their mission and want to be part of it. Great! Now you can make that decision with full awareness of what it means for your team, your time, and your margins. You might choose to create a custom scope or do extra hand-holding—but you're doing it intentionally, not accidentally.

The difference is that you won't be surprised when the project ends up having a lower margin or doesn't become a killer case study. You know exactly why you said yes, and you can plan accordingly.

This Is Where You Firm is Supposed to Be

If you're feeling this tension between wanting to get focused and worrying about missing opportunities, you're exactly where you're supposed to be in your business journey.

Refining your positioning and messaging can only happen after you've been in the market, developed your approach, and gotten real results. You need that foundation of experience to know what you're actually best at and what kinds of clients benefit most from your expertise.

Now is the time to evaluate what's working best for your business and your clients, and double down on that direction.

The goal isn't to limit your options—it's to attract more of the opportunities you actually want while maintaining the strategic flexibility to make conscious choices about everything else.

When you invest your marketing resources strategically, you'll find that saying yes becomes a much more powerful position to negotiate from.

Ready to get strategically focused about attracting your next-level clients? Our Strategic Positioning Audit helps you identify exactly what's working in your current messaging and what's holding you back from attracting the caliber of clients you want to work with.