Most businesses accumulate. Over the years you add products, services, offerings — each one made sense at the time. But you rarely subtract. And so you end up with a sprawling range where a handful of things drive most of the profit, and the rest quietly drain time, attention and energy for very little return.
The 80/20 pattern shows up here as reliably as anywhere: a small share of what you offer usually generates most of what you earn. The rest isn't free to keep — every product or service carries a hidden cost in complexity, inventory, training, support and focus. Keeping a poorly-performing offering "just in case" isn't caution; it's a tax on the things that actually work.
Pruning feels like losing something. It's the opposite. Cutting the offerings that don't pull their weight frees you to do the profitable ones brilliantly. Apple famously did this — slashing a bloated product line down to a focused few, and the focus is what saved them.
Look at your range honestly: which offerings would you not bother launching today? Those are your candidates to retire.
Focusing the business on what actually works is part of the Grow course.
Free first step: the free Business Stage Assessment.
Annie
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