By Patrick Lee, President of Chesapeake Think Tank and CEO of Spark Business Institute
One of the most common phrases I hear when meeting with business owners is some variation of: “Things just aren’t working the way I want them to.” It’s usually followed by explanations pointing to external factors—market shifts, difficult clients, unreliable vendors, or increasing competition.
What I’ve discovered after years of working with entrepreneurs is that the problem rarely lies where they’re looking. When things aren’t working as expected, the natural tendency is to search for external causes, but the truth is often hiding in plain sight—in our own blind spots.
Each of us approaches our business through a particular lens. Some of us are marketing-focused. When revenue dips, our instinct is to launch a new advertising campaign. When competition emerges, we emphasize our differentiators or increase networking efforts. When we feel our edge slipping, we rebrand.
Others might view everything through an operational lens, or perhaps through financial analysis or customer service excellence. Whatever your primary lens, it shapes how you diagnose and attempt to solve virtually every business challenge.
Here’s the interesting part—if you’re constantly viewing your business through the same lens, you’ve probably become quite proficient in that area. The marketing-focused owner I described earlier? They’re likely doing a stellar job with their marketing efforts. They’ve optimized 80-90% of what’s possible in that arena.
Yet they keep returning to marketing solutions for every new problem, expecting dramatic results from the remaining 10-20% of potential improvements in that area. It’s like trying to squeeze water from a stone—there’s simply not enough untapped potential left to make the difference they’re seeking.
The real opportunity for transformation comes from looking at the areas you habitually ignore. If you’re marketing-focused but rarely examine your financial metrics beyond tax preparation, there’s an entire domain of insight waiting to be leveraged. Your numbers could be revealing early warning signs of downturns or indicating the need for increased capacity before a sales spike.
Or perhaps you’re financially astute but experiencing high employee turnover because you’ve neglected your personnel systems, benefits structure, or company culture. Maybe your marketing generates plenty of first-time customers, but operational inefficiencies prevent them from becoming repeat clients.
This is precisely where Chesapeake Think Tank provides exceptional value. We approach your business holistically, examining every interconnected piece without the biases that come from being too close to the situation.
We may not be specialists in every aspect of your business, but we understand how all the components work together as a cohesive system. We can quickly identify where you’ve been investing your attention and, more importantly, where your blind spots are creating drag on your progress.
When I sit down with clients, I often illustrate their business as a wheel with multiple spokes—finance, operations, marketing, personnel, leadership, and so on. Most owners have a few spokes that are robust and well-maintained, while others are weak or completely neglected. A wheel with missing or weak spokes can’t roll smoothly, no matter how strong the others might be.
The transformative moment for most business owners comes when they stop looking outward for explanations and solutions, and instead look inward at how they’re approaching their business. When they recognize their habitual perspectives and begin exploring their blind spots, new possibilities emerge.
I’ve seen marketing-focused owners discover that simple operational improvements deliver more growth than their last three marketing campaigns combined. I’ve watched numbers-oriented entrepreneurs transform their businesses by finally addressing company culture and employee engagement.
These breakthroughs don’t come from doing more of what you’re already good at—they come from having the courage to explore what you’ve been avoiding.
If things aren’t working the way you want them to in your business, I encourage you to consider what lens you’re viewing your challenges through, and what aspects you might be overlooking.
Copyright 2025 | Chesapeake Think Tank
