Most Soft FM businesses aren’t losing contracts. They’re winning the wrong ones.
Revenue up 40%. Team growing. Pipeline healthy.
But something feels wrong.
Every deal still requires your involvement. Your team can’t close without you. Client retention is unpredictable. One bad quarter and the whole thing could collapse.
That feeling is the signal. It’s telling you something the revenue number isn’t.
What fragile growth costs
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2018, Athens Cleaning lost 25% of its monthly revenue.
Not from poor service. Not from catastrophic failure. Not from a market collapse. Client churn. A few contracts ended. Some accounts reduced scope. Nothing dramatic.
But it exposed what founder Josh Melton had been avoiding: the business had no structural identity.
It served anyone who’d pay. Retail. Construction. Medical offices. Banks. Whatever came through the door. The business ran on Josh’s ability to hustle — not on operational clarity about who they were or what they were building.
Revenue had been masking the truth: they didn’t have a business. They had a founder-dependent revenue machine.
Why this keeps happening
Growing without structural clarity creates three problems:
Client retention is random. You can’t predict which clients stay and which leave. You don’t know why they bought from you in the first place. Was it price? Relationship? Capability? You celebrate renewals without understanding what caused them.
Team capability doesn’t transfer. Your best people leave and take their client relationships with them. New hires can’t replicate strong performers. There’s no consistent, underlying system.
Churn hits harder. When clients leave, you scramble. No positioning to fall back on. No clear pipeline of similar buyers. No systematic way to replace what you lost. You’re back to hustling for whatever revenue you can find.
This happened to Athens Cleaning in late 2018. And it’s waiting for every Soft FM business that builds revenue without defining its identity.
The decision being avoided
After losing 25% of revenue, Josh Melton was furious. He sat down in December 2018 and wrote out everything broken in the business he’d been ignoring.
Then he did something most founders won’t: he stopped chasing new revenue long enough to fix the foundation.
He asked three questions:
Who are we built to serve? Not “who will pay us.”
What operational principles will guide our decisions? Not aspirational values — actual filters.
What specific business are we building? Not “successful.” What category. What reputation.
These aren’t strategy workshop questions. They’re structural decisions. Josh had been avoiding them for years because they required saying no to revenue.
Most founders avoid them for the same reason. Stopping feels like losing momentum.
Here’s what Josh discovered: momentum without foundation is just building toward collapse.
What he built
Josh inverted everything broken and built three operational filters.
Mission: “We go above and beyond to serve people.” Not “deliver quality service.” Go above and beyond — operationally, relationally, systematically.
Vision: “We are respected by our clients, appreciated by our team, remembered by our community.” Not “be the biggest.” Three specific reputation markers.
Core Values: Character. Care. Communication. Not 12 corporate values. Three decision filters.
Then he used them as actual operational filters — not marketing copy.
What changed
Athens Cleaning put Mission, Vision, and Values in their job ads, on their website, in client conversations, and in team meetings.
Something unexpected happened: people started leaving.
Team members who just wanted to clock in and clock out quit. They didn’t want to go above and beyond. They wanted to do the minimum and go home.
Good. That’s the point.
But other people — the right people — started applying. People who fit the culture that Athens Cleaning has finally defined.
Client conversations changed, too. Josh started saying, “We’re the Chick-fil-A of cleaning companies, not the McDonald’s.”
Some buyers didn’t care. They wanted the cheapest option. Athens Cleaning stopped pitching them.
But the right buyers leaned in. “That’s exactly what we’re looking for.”
Athens Cleaning started winning clients who valued what their service was, not just whoever said yes to the lowest price.
The result
From losing 25% of revenue in late 2018 to today, Athens Cleaning tripled in size.
Not from working harder. Not from better sales tactics. Not from geographic expansion.
From getting clear on who they were, what they stood for, and what they were actually building.
Josh calls it the best thing that ever happened to the business. Because it forced the decision he’d been avoiding for years: define the foundation or keep building on sand.
If you’re reading this and recognising your business — growing, busy, but not clear on who you’re actually building for — that’s exactly what the ICP & Commercial Focus Diagnostic is designed for.
In one session, you’ll get a decision-grade ICP, a revenue-quality snapshot showing where your margin and risk are actually coming from, and a 90-day commercial focus — what to stop, what to double down on, what to ignore.
This isn’t motivation. It’s clarity.
Book a Commercial Focus Diagnostic →
Three warning signs your foundation is fragile
Answer these honestly:
Can you explain why you win the deals you win? If not, you’re celebrating revenue without understanding causation.
If your best closer quits tomorrow, could someone else pick up their deals? If not, your commercial capability lives in one person, not the business.
If a competitor undercut you by 15%, could you defend on value? If not, you’re not differentiated. You’re just available.
Two out of three means your foundation needs work. Three out of three means the test is coming — and the only question is when.
The decision
Most founders wait for the crisis. A client leaves. A key salesperson quits. A procurement process asks “What makes you different?” — and they don’t have a clear answer.
Josh Melton got lucky. His crisis came early enough to recover from. He was angry enough to do the hard work. He had enough operational strength left to survive the clarity process.
You can grow to £5m, £7m, £10m on founder hustle and opportunistic wins. The market will eventually test your foundation.
When it does, proactive founders control the timing. Reactive ones are rebuilding under pressure.
Josh Melton’s test cost him 25% of revenue.
What will yours cost?
The ICP & Commercial Focus Diagnostic is built for exactly this moment — before the crisis, while you still control the timing.
£3–10m Soft FM operators. One session. Clear next action.
Book here →
That’s it for this week.
Matt Harris
The Growth Lab
If this sounds familiar, you have three decisions to make:
Decision 1: Get clarity. Book a 30-minute ICP & Value Prop Diagnostic. We’ll identify who you’re for, what they buy, and why your message isn’t landing. 👉🏾 Book diagnostic here
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Decision 3: Fix this once. Work with me as a Growth Partner. We’ll reset your commercial positioning and build the systems that win bigger contracts. 👉🏾 Apply here
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