Biz Coach Insider - 37th Edition (7/20/26) - The Mid-Market Coach Is Getting Squeezed Out. Here's How to Not Be One.

Look at what's happening to consulting right now. It's a warning shot for every service business, and most owners are going to miss it.

The consulting market is splitting into two ends. Global scale on one side. Sharp, specialized boutiques on the other. The top five firms now control roughly 40% of the whole industry. At the same time, lean boutiques are winning more work than ever, because they go deep on one thing and get paid for the outcome.

The firms getting crushed are the ones in the middle. Too big to be nimble. Too small to compete on scale. Rates on commodity work are soft. Rates on rare expertise are holding. The middle ground is getting squeezed from both directions.

✳️ This isn't a consulting story. It's a positioning story. And it's coming for your business next.

Every service business is drifting toward the same fork. The generalist in the middle, the one who does a little of everything for anyone who'll pay, is the one with no pricing power, no referral engine, and no reason for a customer to choose them over the cheaper option or the bigger one.

The middle feels safe. That's the trap.

The middle looks like the smart place to stand. You're not too narrow, so you're not turning away business. You're not too big, so your overhead feels manageable. You say yes to everything. You serve everyone.

That's exactly why the middle is dangerous.

When you do a little of everything, you're an expert at nothing a customer will pay a premium for. When you serve everyone, you're the obvious choice for no one. Your marketing has to shout, because your offer doesn't sell itself. Your price is always under pressure, because there's always someone cheaper willing to do the same vague thing.

I watched this play out early in my wireless retail career. The stores that tried to be everything to everyone got beaten from both sides. The big carriers had scale and pricing they couldn't touch. The specialty shops had depth and loyalty they couldn't match. The stores stuck in the middle competed on the only thing they had left. Price. And competing on price is a slow way to go out of business. As a matter of fact, that is why you no longer go to one wireless store that offers every option. The economics forced everyone to go one direction or the other.

The middle isn't a position. It's the absence of one.

Why this bites hardest from Operator to Optimizer.

➡️ The Operator, $250K to $500K, is where the middle first starts to hurt.

You got here by saying yes. Yes to every customer, every project, every request. That hustle built the business. Now it's the thing capping it. You're busy, you're profitable enough to survive, and you can't figure out why growth stalled. It stalled because you're spread across ten things and known for none of them.

The Leader, $500K to $1M, feels it in the margins. You've added people and overhead, but you're still selling the same undifferentiated service. Costs went up. Pricing power didn't. The gap between the two is your shrinking profit.

The Architect, $1M to $3M, hits the wall hard. At this size, "we do a bit of everything" stops scaling entirely. You can't build repeatable systems around a business that does something different for every client. The lack of focus that was survivable at $400K becomes structural at $2M.

By the Optimizer, $3M to $10M, positioning isn't a marketing choice anymore. It's the whole operating model. The Optimizers who win have picked their lane and gone deep. They own a specialty, a market, or a scale advantage that's hard to copy. The ones who never chose are the mid-market firms in that consulting story, getting quietly squeezed out while they wonder what changed.

Nothing changed. The market just stopped rewarding the middle.

This is a Financial Acumen problem before it's a marketing problem.

Financial Acumen, one of the 7 Core Competencies in The CEO's Playbook for Scale, means understanding your numbers well enough to control your own destiny. Here's the number most owners have never looked at.

Which of your services actually make money, and which ones you keep out of habit.

✳️ Pull your offers apart. Line by line. I'll bet a real chunk of your revenue comes from commodity work you're barely making margin on, work anyone can do, work you only still sell because you always have. That's the soft-rate middle, living right inside your own business.

The scarce, specialized work, the stuff only you or your team does well, that's where the margin is. That's the work the market still pays a premium for. Most owners bury their best, highest-margin capability under a pile of low-margin busywork they're afraid to stop selling.

You can't fix your position until you can see your numbers by offer. The spreadsheet tells you where you're commoditized. It also tells you where your real business is hiding.

Pick your edge. Here's the order.

You don't fix this with a new logo or a louder ad. You fix it by choosing a position and pointing the whole business at it.

1️⃣ Separate your offers by margin. List every service. Put real margin next to each one. Not revenue. Margin. Find the commodity work and find the premium work. Now you can see the middle you've been living in.

2️⃣ Name the thing you want to be known for. One specialty, one market, or one outcome you deliver better than anyone nearby. If you can't say it in one sentence, your customers can't either.

3️⃣ Raise the price on your scarce work, cut or fence off the commodity work. Stop subsidizing low-margin busywork with your best people's time. Scarce expertise holds its rate. Sell more of that.

4️⃣ Rebuild your pitch around outcomes, not activity. The boutiques winning right now sell results and tie their fee to them. "Here's the outcome you get," not "here's the list of stuff we do."

5️⃣ Say no on purpose. A clear position means turning away work that doesn't fit. That feels terrifying at the Operator phase. It's the exact move that unlocks the Optimizer phase.

✅ Do this:

• Break your revenue down by offer and look at margin, not just the top line

• Pick one thing to be genuinely known for, and say it in a single sentence

• Charge a premium for scarce expertise and stop discounting it to fill the calendar

• Sell outcomes and tie your price to them, the way the winning boutiques do

• Turn down work that doesn't fit the position you've chosen

❌ Don't do this:

• Don't treat "we do a little of everything" as a strength. It's why nobody remembers you

• Don't defend low-margin commodity work just because it's familiar revenue

• Don't try to out-scale the big players and out-nimble the specialists at the same time. You'll lose both fights

• Don't wait for a slow quarter to choose a position. Choose it while you still have leverage

What the Operator has to let go of.

To move forward, you give up the comfort of saying yes to everyone.

Being the generalist feels safe because you never have to turn revenue away. But every yes to work that doesn't fit is a no to building a real position. The owners who break out of the middle make peace with a hard truth. Being the obvious choice for a specific customer beats being an option for every customer. Narrow and deep out-earns wide and shallow, every time the market gets tight.

You can be everything to everyone, or you can be the clear answer for someone. The second one is a business. The first one is the middle, and the middle is getting squeezed out.

✳️ The Coaching Corner

Coaches, consultants, and fractional leaders, read that consulting story again, because it's literally about you.

You are the mid-market service firm in that story. And most coaching practices are parked dead in the middle. "I coach business owners on anything." That's the generalist position, and it's the one getting squeezed. The market is separating the platforms with scale from the specialists with depth, and a coach who does a little of everything for anyone is on the wrong side of that split.

➡️ Depth is your only real advantage over scale. You're never going to out-market a big firm. You can out-specialize one. The coaches thriving right now own a niche, a phase, or a specific transformation. "I take home-service businesses from Operator to Leader." "I fix the founder-dependency trap at the Architect phase." That's a position. "I help businesses grow" is not.

This is also why I built My Biz Coaches around roughly 25 Coach Partners instead of one calendar. A single generalist coach is the classic squeezed middle, capped by their own hours and their own range. A team of specialists gives clients depth across every phase and every competency, with the scale to actually deliver it. I had to solve my own positioning problem before I could credibly help a client solve theirs.

And when you sit with a client this month, don't ask "how can I help your business." Run the margin exercise on their offers with them. Show them which of their services is commodity work bleeding their best people's time, and which one is the scarce, premium capability they've buried. Most owners have never once seen their business broken down that way. That single session is the difference between a coach who gives advice and a coach who changes what the business is worth.

That's the transformational result. It's also the most defensible position you'll ever build, for your client and for you.

Which of your offers is commodity work, and which one is the premium your market can't get anywhere else?

Pull the numbers this week. Your answer is your position, and right now the middle is the one place you can't afford to stand.

To Your Success,

Eric T. Whitmoyer, Business Growth Strategist
Founder & CEO at MyBizCoaches.com
Host of The Biz Coach Show
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