Stop Adding Services. Start Cutting the Ones That Drain You.

"We should add plumbing." "We should start doing commercial." "We should offer 24/7 service."

Every contractor I work with has a list of things they want to add. New services. New markets. New capabilities.

Almost none of them have a list of things to eliminate.

That's backwards. The biggest risk for contractors doing $3M-$8M isn't lack of opportunity. It's lack of focus. Too many services. Too many customer types. Too many jobs that "seemed like a good idea" but quietly drain profit, attention, and energy.

Most hard goals aren't actually hard. They're crowded.

Why Contractors Keep Adding

It feels safe. A customer asks "do you do X?" and you say yes because you don't want to lose the relationship. A competitor starts offering Y, so you add it too. Revenue is flat, so you look for new services to juice the top line.

But every service you add brings overhead:

Meanwhile, your competitors who specialize are getting better at the one thing they do. Their estimates are tighter. Their crews are faster. Their reputation is clearer.

You're a generalist competing against specialists. That's a losing game.

The Elimination Mindset

What if, instead of asking "what should we add?" you asked:

"What should we stop doing?"

Look at your job profitability report. (If you don't have one, that's problem #1.) Which types of work consistently underperform?

Every hour your team spends on low-margin work is an hour they're not spending on high-margin work. That's not a scheduling problem. That's a strategy problem.

Elimination Creates Speed

Here's what happens when you cut the work that doesn't pay:

Your team gets better at fewer things. Instead of being mediocre at six services, they become excellent at two. Estimates get tighter. Execution gets faster. Callbacks drop.

Your marketing gets clearer. Instead of "we do everything," you become "the commercial HVAC people" or "the service agreement specialists." Clear positioning beats broad positioning.

Your cash flow improves. High-margin work means more dollars per hour of labor. You can be more selective about which jobs you take.

Your decisions get faster. When focus is clear, you don't waste time debating whether to bid something. It either fits or it doesn't.

The Three Questions

Before you add anything new, answer these:

That third question is the killer. Most contractors spread improvement efforts across a dozen initiatives. A little bit on marketing. A little bit on training. A little bit on systems.

Nothing gets enough attention to actually move.

What if you picked one thing and went all-in for 60 days? The same outcome that takes a year of diluted effort often collapses into a month of concentrated focus.

A Real Example

An HVAC contractor I worked with was doing residential installs, commercial service, new construction, and duct cleaning. Four service lines. $4.2M in revenue. 6% net margin.

We ran the numbers by service line:

He was doing $600K in new construction work at 3% margin. That's $18,000 in profit for months of headache, slow payments, and GC drama.

The duct cleaning was actually costing him money once you loaded in the equipment, marketing, and time.

He cut both. Refocused on residential installs and commercial service. Revenue dropped to $3.4M. Net margin jumped to 12%.

He made more money doing less work.

What to Cut This Quarter

Pull your job profitability data. Sort by margin. Look at the bottom 20%.

Ask yourself: "If I stopped doing this entirely, what would happen?"

Usually the answer is: "I'd have capacity for better work." That's not a risk. That's an opportunity.

Don't wait for a planning retreat or a new year to make changes. If you see a better path, take it now. Elimination creates clarity. Clarity creates speed. Speed creates momentum.