Episode 62:Pruning a Very Old Bonsai Tree
Summary
Nick and Kai work through a listener question about when to kill off profitable but misaligned service offerings in a solo consultancy. They cover how to read signals, numeric and otherwise, to decide which lines of business to cut, and close on whether a solo practice should optimize for revenue or quality of life.
Highlights
- Kai dropped his SEO keyword research offering despite high demand and good positioning fit because he hated doing it, describing the work as wanting to ‘claw my eyes out’, enthusiasm is a valid reason to cut something.
- Nick’s slow-fade method: remove the service from your main website page but leave the page live and indexable. Deleting the page is the next step up if you want a harder break.
- Nick took dashboard design off Draft’s site to focus on A/B testing, then got a spontaneous paid order three weeks later anyway. His point: pruning is a communication decision, not a capability one.
- Kai’s positioning test, if a service doesn’t connect to the specific expensive problem your business is built around, set it aside even if it’s profitable. He stopped marketing SEO work when he shifted toward helping freelancers and consultants get more clients.
- Kai reads conference speaker lists and the volume of active industry debate as qualitative signals that a line of business is worth keeping, alongside revenue and inbound leads. Little debate, little discussion, likely a weaker bet.
- Kai frames the core question as: am I optimizing for revenue or quality of life? He says writing even two or three sentences answering it directly gives direction on what to cut.
- Nick’s take on accidentally becoming an agency: it doesn’t happen by accident. Raising rates, capping slots, and referring overflow to colleagues are all ways to stay solo without cutting an offering entirely.
Read the transcript
When I was in Hong Kong, we went to a garden across the street from the Chilin Nunnery, that is. The largest all-wood structure in the world. It’s like an enormous building that houses like a Buddhist temple and all these other things. And the garden was gorgeous. and they had a bunch of little trees just like around this one park, and I’m looking around and they look like l little really cute trees. And then I realized that they are bonsai trees. They don’t look like normal bonsai trees. So, you know, I can be forgiven for not knowing that. But they had like a little plaque in English somewhere that said these are bonsai trees. And then I realized they’re 2,000 years old. Holy shit. So I just did not touch the bonsai trees. No. I did not breathe on or really even try to look at the bonsai trees because I probably wasn’t worthy. But it got me thinking about how Bonsai works. And I don’t normally I’m not like a big bonsai guy, but when you’re presented with like I think this was like two dozen very, very old bonsai trees. You’re led to think about bonsai for 10 or 15 minutes. So, yeah, do you know how bonsai works? So, you have this tree and it’s growing, but it’s growing all wrong, right? And you want it to last as long as humanly possible and hopefully outlive you. And the way you do that is by very thoughtful and careful pruning. And so it becomes a practice of getting rid of things, right? And kind of pairing back. And one of the things that’s, I think this was, did somebody write it about this? Somebody wrote in about this. Somebody wrote in the spot that says, killing off minor lines of success to reach for major ones. We’ve talked a little bit in the past about how our business is basically feeling through the dark so that you can find something that works and then hammering away at that ceaselessly. But like what happens when you have something that works, but it kind of doesn’t work well enough? Because something working and generating money is kind of a gradient, right? It’s something where And I think it’s probably the most. I’m going to shoot my load on this episode and give one of the most valuable insights early on. But it’s success is not something that either happens or doesn’t happen, it can happen a little. It can happen a lot. You can be a respected indie artist. You can be Grizzly Bear. They’re a pretty big band. You can be Adele. She’s really big. You can think of all of the different gradiations of success in music. And map that pretty easily to any other kind of success that you end up experiencing. And I think there’s definitely something to the notion of recognizing the magnitude of success and then kind of questioning how it fits into the broader scheme that you have in your practice.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and it gets one thing the reader wrote in about is, or listener, I should say. How you identify what it is to kill off if they are experiencing some degree of success. You might have one offering that’s making you, let’s say, $1,000 a month, and another that’s making you $3,000 a month, and another that’s maybe making you $5,000 a month. And you’re like, well, which of these should I kill off. Does it make the most sense to kill off the $1,000 one? The $3,000 one? Should I double down on the $5,000 one? When and how do you make those decisions? If everything is kind of working pretty well. And you’re trying to hit that next level or figure out what to eliminate so you have space to determine what that next level is.
Yeah. Yeah. And the number one thing that everybody tells you and that we’re going to tell you that you can be doing in your business is to focus. And it happens on every level, right? It’s not just in the offerings that you’re doing, but in like where you’re putting your time and attention every day and the kind of healthy lifestyle that you’re living and your capability to have enough willpower to say yes or no to various things. And so there’s always when something is successful a little, these minor lines of success, as this person says. There’s always a temptation to keep it going because it’s obviously generating money for you. So let’s go through and talk about why you might want to kill these off in the first place. Because why would you It’s making money. Don’t you like money? Kai, do you like money?
I’ve on occasion been known to enjoy it.
Yeah. You know, me too. I, um. I use it to go to Hong Kong and eat dumplings. And look at some bonsai.
Proof that money is valuable. I think when it comes to deciding when to kill off a product offering, I mean, the first easy I’ll go for the low-hanging fruit here, it’s the bit it’s positioning. Understanding, okay, if I’m trying to target a specific target market and I’m orienting my business around solving a specific expensive problem. Does it make sense for me to have this service offering, even if it’s successful, if it doesn’t quite resonate or if it’s not quite coherent with my other offerings? We’ll put my business on the table as an example of this. I have a number of search engine optimization offerings that I have offered in the past and I have slowly moved away from marketing or offering or selling, even though that they’re profitable, even though that I’m able to do them well, even though that I enjoy them to some extent. They just don’t fit with my overall positioning. I’m moving towards positioning of working with freelancers and consultants and helping them get more clients for their business. The search engine optimization offerings generate revenue when I market them, and there’s demand in the market for them. But They just aren’t quite coherent. It’s a little out of place with that overall positioning and the expensive problem I’m trying to solve. Maybe some modification better fits in, but To accommodate my new positioning or to give my new positioning that I’m testing the best chance of succeeding. Part of it is identifying those lines of business that are successful, but do not connect with that overall positioning and saying, well, This is a bit out of place. We don’t necessarily have to take Ol Yeller out behind the shed, but we could just set it aside, take down the page, say this is not something I’m going to actively market today. And or this year, and give ourselves space to focus on new offerings. If I had a client on retainer and it didn’t quite fit in, It would necessarily be firing that client, but it would be no longer accepting new clients for those lines of business. And by doing that, I give myself space to say, okay, what are the lines of business I want to create here? What are the problems I could solve? What forms do those solutions take?
Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s You know, I have a story. There was one time I was doing like dashboards for SaaS businesses and thought that was a good idea and put it out and I sold a couple and it was a fun project. It was good. And then at one point I wanted to double down on A-B testing and so I took a bunch of services off of my Consulting page. I wanted them to the dashboard, and I was a little bit sad, whatever. Do you want to know what happened with that? Do you want to know what happened to you? Three weeks later, somebody bought a dashboard. And just paid me. Just spontaneously gave me the money. And I’m like, well, I don’t know Well, no, I do like money, so I I gave him his dashboard. Like that ended up turning out okay. But like It’s more of a visibility question and a communications question than necessarily a, I’m capable of doing this. Because if you’re pruning something, clearly you’re capable of doing it, or you wouldn’t have launched it in the first place, hopefully. But there’s something deeper to it, right? There’s something like it’s a matter of choosing to not say that you do the thing that you can do. You know, I can cook a completely amazing meal for you. Do you see chef services anywhere on Draft’s website? If you do, please let me know so I can take them down.
That is an excellent point. Being intentional about what you aren’t communicating. And I think you’re absolutely right in that this connects well with a lot of the fear people have around. Specializing in niching down. I’ve talked with freelancers and consultants before who say, I’m afraid or hesitant to position my business because I enjoy the random one-off project where I get to learn a new skill. Positioning your niching down doesn’t necessarily mean you have to say no to that project when it shows up. It’s just being very clear and not advertising, I’m available for random one-off projects, and instead saying I’m available for one Two and three, or A, B, and C. And if somebody comes along and wants to buy something you’ve offered in the past, or some one-off project, and you’re like, that’d be pretty cool. I’d enjoy working on that. There’s nothing preventing you from taking it and maybe discovering a new direction in which you want your bonsai tree/slash consulting business to grow. But you’re being very intentional in not saying, I could do 100 different things for you, pick whatever you want. Instead, you’re approaching it with much more of a laser focus and saying, these are the specific things I could do to help your business achieve these outcomes. Which of these would you like to work with?
Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, this goes back to the P word, but it’s, you know. There’s a lot of stuff that draft says no to, and that is felt in everything that it does say yes to, right? Draft’s website is represented by the 10,000 things that I’ve said no to in my career. And so, what was the original question? Is it like tactics for doing this? Like, how do you slowfade it?
When everything is working pretty well, or sort of working, on the very small scale high-touch solo consultants often operate on, how do you decide which of these paths have the most promising growth trajectories? What are the signs, numeric and otherwise? And how does a solo consultant read those signs with an eye to staying solo versus expanding, which you want to know before it’s too late? So, I think there’s a couple of questions in here, and what I’d immediately pull out is: how do you decide which path has the most promising growth trajectory? Should I have stayed on SEO, gone outreach, focused on coaching, something else? Same with you, SaaS dashboard design or A-B testing. And the second important question, I think, are: what are the signs numeric and otherwise? So let’s talk about that first one. How do you decide which path has the most promising growth trajectory?
I think the same way that you come up with a new offering in the first place, which is by kind of researching your target market and coming up with a solution that meets their needs, right? you should be in the process of that research assessing the size of your addressable market. If you’re not doing that, start doing it. Go round forums. Talk to other colleagues. Assess like what whether or not it’s a hot space or not. you’re never gonna come up with that by yourself. And you need to trust that other people have your best interest in mind when they’re saying, yes, go for positioning on this axis.
Completely agreed. I think market research plays an incredibly important role here, even if it’s existing service offerings. Before the engagement, asking the prospect, why exactly this and not? Other thing. I find that to be an invaluable question to ask just to understand why they’re seeking out this solution and not another. Why A-B testing instead of getting more traffic? Why A-B testing instead of a new theme for your site? There’s a lot of interesting things you could get out from. Pre-engagement questions like that, or even post-engagement. You hired me to do this thing. Was it valuable? What was the value? What was the outcome? That helps validate whether it is something that’s really hot and needed or not so hot and not so needed. And I’m a huge fan of market research activities within any solo consultancy. I think you can’t spend too much time talking to prospective customers, researching your market, understanding the pains and problems that are Parent in these businesses and using that to inform which service offerings make the most sense. Yeah. One thing I’d add here is: you will not be right 100% of the time. You will. Trim off a line of business and then three months later be like, I’m going to bring that back or keep a line of business and realize, oh, this, I hate doing this, and nobody wants to buy it, and then decide to chop it off. The great thing about Fake internet jobs or solo consultancies, it’s really easy to bring an offering back. If I, you know, tomorrow wake up and say, I want to double down on SEO. I take the pages out of draft mode on my website and then say, I’m available for SEO offerings once again. It’s not that hard to relaunch an offering. So, you do have this nice ability to roll back or trim at will with no major consequences. Even a brutal positioning shift, you can always shift back to your positioning. The market is forgiving. The internet does forget. I don’t think there’s a lot of risk there, but I want to couch that in saying when you make a strategic decision to eliminate a line of business or add a new line of business, You won’t be right 100% of the time. Relishing the fact that you are trying something new and learning from it. Because even if you do five experiments in your business and each one comes back, nope, that didn’t work out. You will be further ahead than the consultant who made no experiments, who trimmed off no lines of business, who did nothing new in their business for a year because you’ve been out there trying and testing new things and developing a better understanding of the market.
Yeah, I mean, there’s an undo button on cutting out a positioning, and the best way to slowfade it is just remove it from the master list on your website while still keeping it available, right? Like it can be in textable by Google and people can find it. Then the level up is delete the page, right? Yeah.
Yeah, very much so. So, in terms of how do you decide which have the most promising growth trajectories, market research Analyzing demand, looking at industry trends, seeing if it has a long life cycle or not, or if it’s like the hot new thing, or it was the hot thing three years ago and we’re sort of on the downswing now. Maybe you want to trim off that line of business because in a year or so it won’t be around. So why invest a year in building up your authority in something that won’t be as hot then? Yeah, absolutely. Science, numeric and otherwise, I think. It comes down to revenue, it comes down to leads, it comes down to interest, it comes down to what I’d almost think of as qualitative signals. Are people writing about this often? Do you when you look at the speakers list for conferences in your industry or in that target market, Do you see this topic being discussed? Are there multiple viewpoints on this, whatever this is, within this industry or target market? Some people saying yes, some people saying no, some people saying method A, some people saying method Z. a lot of active discussion like that, I take as a very positive sign that you do want to remain in that line of business because, okay, there’s a lot of debate, there’s a lot of discussion, there’s a lot of awareness. If there is not a lot of debate or discussion or Wherein is around it Chances are it might be a line of business that won’t be as fruitful as another one. So that’s sort of a back-of-the-envelope squishy analysis that I would use to assess whether a line of business made sense to keep around.
Yeah, and there’s also just kind of like your enthusiasm level for it. Like this is your consulting practice. And if you’re not having fun, why not? You know, like figure out why not and then change it. It is okay to change it. I’ve cut things that were insanely lucrative and I hated doing. Hated it. And I’ve never regretted it. And if you’re in a position where you can work from abundance, like totally do that.
Yeah, the number one when I was selling more search engine optimization focused offerings a few years back, the number one most requested service was, can you do keyword research for me and give me direction on the most valuable keywords to target with my website? Incredibly valuable because it’s super close to traffic, very close to revenue, can give a business a huge improvement. And I absolutely, absolutely, absolutely hated doing keyword research at that level. I would rather claw my eyes out. It was just Ah, terrible. I could not stand those projects. And even though they were very valuable, and even though there was a lot of demand, I was faced with them, and I just continually said. I would rather do anything else than this type of project. And so I rapidly eliminated that offering. Even though there was a lot of demand for it, even though it fit my positioning at the time. I just internally knew this is not the type of work I enjoy doing. It does not spark joy inside of me. I’m no longer going to do this.
Yeah. You need to have fun, right? Otherwise, make a new job for yourself.
There’s a third question asked here that I think is good. How does a solo consultant read these signs of an eye to staying solo versus expanding? What you want to know before it’s too late. And so I interpret that question as: how do you read these signs and grow your business in a way where you don’t accidentally become an agency, where you don’t accidentally Pursue new lines of business, bring people on, and you’re like, oh, whoa, I have three people on salary now. What just happened?
I don’t believe that for a second. You hire other people, and you’re not solo anymore, and you choose to do that. You know, like that’s if it grows too much, you can still find ways to prune your offerings. Raise your rates, you know, have fewer slots, send Incoming business to other consultants. There are a million ways to slough that off. You don’t accidentally sidle yourself with an agency. I’d love to see how that happens.
Yeah, whenever I’ve killed off an offering, it’s always turned into an opportunity for me to give referrals to colleagues. So when I stopped being very active with search engine optimization, I drew up a list of colleagues who were very active in search engine optimization. And as leads came in, I said, Great, I’m not, you know, I don’t have time for that project right now. Let me refer you to a couple of colleagues. And I go down the list and send a referral over, and it helped build up goodwill. And it helped the client connect with a consultant who would help them solve the problem they were experiencing and get to the outcome they were looking for. And I didn’t have to do the project I didn’t want to do anymore. And so everybody really won in that scenario. So I think. It’s easy to stay solo versus expanding. Maybe another way to read this question is: what happens if you accidentally pick a service offering that requires a larger team to Furnish, let’s say, or to deliver on. Okay, I’d say in that case, I’ll take that. Yeah. I’d say cut scope, dramatically cut scope until a solo was able to do it.
Set boundaries and cut scope. Yeah, I agree with that entirely. Because I think there’s something to the concern of that. Right, but there’s always a situation where you can part out a component, right? And figure out what the smaller thing is that you can be doing. And again, you are absolutely leaving money on the table when you’re doing that. But if you’re in a market that’s as wallet out and generous as the one that you’re theoretically talking about, then that shouldn’t have to matter. I think there’s an impression that you are missing out a little bit by niching down on scope. But when you’re doing that, you’re still making hopefully a decent salary for yourself.
Yeah, you’re still hopefully making a decent salary and you’re cutting the time. I mean, why would you need to expand to a larger team? Well, because it takes more time. Ideally, you’re cutting the time-intensive activities, but leaving the most Let’s say well-leveraged, most impact for least amount of time activities as part of the scope. And so you’re able to deliver 80% of the value in 20% of the time. Clients happy, you are happy, you don’t have to grow your team.
Yeah, find a way to productize the engagement and keep it closed-ended. That’s another tactic. If you’re doing these open-ended retainer engagements and then you find yourself indentured, we’ve talked about both productized engagements and whale clients in a previous episode. The fear of it getting out of hand, don’t let that hold you back from trying to do something. When it starts to get out of hand, wind it back.
That’s a good problem to have. Yeah, and if you start to wind it back and clients or prospects complain in a very negative fashion, to jump back way back into the archives to Brown MM’s client warning signs and client qualification. I think that’s a wonderful sign that they’re not a good client. If they come to you and say, We want the full package, and you’re like, I don’t offer the full package, I offer A and B, but not C, D, or E, and they’re like, We demand the full package. They’re not somebody you want to work with. It becomes, in a sense, a great test. You mentioned something earlier about leaving money on the table and positive or negative feelings about that. I think. To get philosophical for a second, I’m starting to wonder: is the primary job of running a solo business to maximize your revenue or maximize the quality of life that you enjoy? And for my life, I’m falling more on the second one. I’m saying I want my business to maximize my quality of life. By doing that, I know I am going to leave money on the table because I will say no to projects, I will say no to opportunities. I will say no to things that are out of scope but might pay a great hourly rate because it will diminish my quality of life in other areas. I don’t want to be working a 60 to 80 hour week. I want to be working a 20 to 30 hour week and do fun things like record this podcast. And so. There will always be some aspect of me leaving money on the table, but by leaving that money on the table, I now, to butcher this metaphor and make it completely terrible. I’m able to carry more joy and happiness in my life. I’m able to pick up more fun things, more activities with friends, go bike riding in the middle of the day. And that sometimes is a very okay trade to make. By leaving the money on the table, you give yourself capacity for other things. And there’s, I think, a fundamental question there that’s important for any consultant to ask. For this time period, be it a month or a year, am I focusing on maximizing revenue? Am I focusing on maximizing quality of life? Am I focusing on something else? Just asking and answering that question, even just a simple two or three sentence answer, can give clarity and direction as you grow your business. In the short or long term. So leaving money on the table might not necessarily be a bad thing if you’re killing off a service offering or saying no to a potential project because it gives you capacity for other aspects of your life.
Yeah, I you’re listening to a podcast where I think both of us optimize for quality of life. So if you want to optimize for revenue, that’s great. If you do that, it’s more likely to get away from you both in terms of burnout and in terms of you, quote, accidentally, unquote, having to hire an agency.
Um, so yes, yeah, they’re there, and I guess uh uh There’s a small parable I wish I could remember. I’ll try to tell it, but I’m going to butcher it horribly. A man goes on vacation and he meets this fisherman who’s sitting in a boat. And the band is a businessman and runs a big business. And he says, Well, hey, fisherman, what do you do all day? And the fisherman says, It’s great. I wake up at 10 a. m. , I go out and fish. I come back. I play my guitar. I go to the bar and I just rest and enjoy myself. And the man says, Well, why don’t you grow your business, hire more boats, expand, start selling internationally, manage a team? And the fisherman says, Well, What would be the point of that? And the man says, Well, you’d be able to make a lot more money. You’d have worldwide reach. You’d be well known. And the fisherman says, Well, what would be the point of that? And the man says, Well, just think about it. In 30 or 40 years, you’d be able to retire and spend your days fishing and playing the guitar and going to the bar. And the fisherman says, Well, I have that already. So, what’s the point? And I think. In this barely remembered parable, there’s a lot of value in recognizing that growth for growth’s sake is not necessarily the best choice. Understanding how and where you want your business to grow, like a bonsai tree, Is very important because it lets you say, well, no, I’m actually happy and comfortable here. Yeah, there’s a market opportunity. Yeah, I could charge forward and fill that market opportunity and grow my business or chop off these lines of business and focus over here. But will that necessarily make me happier? Will that give me more time? Will that give me a higher quality of life? Or if I’m making it for a monetary decision Will it give me the money I’m looking for at a stress level that’s acceptable? So there’s a lot packed in there, but I think asking yourself those questions provides a lot of insight.
Yeah, I mean, that Bonsai tree got to 2000 somehow, right? And it wasn’t by riding a hockey stick.
Slow, careful, day-by-day growth.