I was playing golf a couple of years ago. Random pairing on a Tuesday tee time. Nobody knew anybody.
Somewhere around the fifth hole, two of them started talking about their business. Manufacturing company in the Midwest. Good clients. Long relationships. The kind of book most people would trade their best year for.
But their margins were shrinking. Had been for three years. Revenue kept going up, and profit kept going down, and they couldn't figure out why.
More revenue. Less profit. The classic trap.
After the round, they invited me to lunch. I asked them to walk me through their customer base. Not the big picture. The specifics.
Who's paying what? Who takes the most time? Where does the actual margin live after you account for hand-holding, rework, slow payers, and accounts that chew up your best people for the lowest return?
They'd never done it. Not once.
Twenty minutes. That's all it took. Three clients were eating them alive. Looked great on the revenue line. Terrible on the margin line. They were literally paying to keep those clients.
The money was always there. They just couldn't see it.
This is what I've done for 50 years. Walk into a business, ask the questions nobody else thinks to ask, and find what the owner has been walking past every single day.