Not too little of it. Too much of it — deployed in exactly the wrong places.
Priscilla Khambatta puts it bluntly:
“The goal is not to work harder. The goal is to think better — and then deploy what you have more intelligently.”
That is leverage. And most entrepreneurs never find it because they are too busy working to stop and look for it. It can be – Financial Leverage, technology leverage, Team leverage, Strategic partnerships, Client Referrals, Systems and more…
A logistics company owner in Dubai was averaging eighty-hour weeks. Revenue was growing. Profit was not. He could not understand why.
He finally sat down for one uninterrupted hour with a single question — “Where is this business losing money that I am not looking at?”
Within forty minutes he identified that his three largest clients — the ones his entire team was built around — were generating less than 12% gross margin. He had been scaling a loss.
One hour of thinking time. One question. One decision to reprice and restructure those contracts.
Within six months his margin had tripled — without a single new client.
Tip: Schedule Thinking Time like a board meeting — non-negotiable, protected, and the most important appointment in your week.
A retail entrepreneur in Riyadh had a gut feeling that a new product line would transform her business. The numbers looked exciting. The supplier was pushing hard. She signed a twelve-month exclusivity agreement and placed a large order — without verifying whether her existing customers actually wanted it.
They did not.
She spent the next eight months discounting inventory she should never have bought — and the cash she lost funded nothing else for the rest of that year.
That is the Stupid Tax. Paid in full. On a decision that twenty minutes of better questions could have prevented.
Before any significant commitment ask: What am I assuming that I have never actually verified?
Tip: Never make a significant business decision on the same day you thought of it. Sleep on the question. The quality of your answer will always improve.
A professional services firm in Abu Dhabi had a sales problem. At least that is what the founder believed. He hired two new business development managers, increased the marketing budget, and pushed the team harder.
Revenue stayed flat.
Six months later — sitting inside Entrepreneurs’ Apex Circle — he finally looked at the real numbers. His average invoice was being paid in 94 days. His team was spending 40% of their time chasing payments from three clients who should have been fired two years earlier.
The constraint was never sales. It was cash flow strangled by the wrong clients and no collections system.
He fixed the collections process, exited two clients, and freed up enough cash to fund growth without a single new sale.
Tip: Ask your team — “What is the one thing I am doing that is making your job harder?” The answer will be uncomfortable. It will also be exactly what you need to hear.
A food and beverage group in Dubai was expanding fast — three new locations in eighteen months. The founder was watching revenue climb and assumed profitability was following.
It was not.
When they finally ran a location-by-location FinScore analysis they discovered that one location was generating 70% of the group’s profit — and another was actively destroying it. The expansion had been funded by cannibalising the one thing that was actually working.
They had been measuring revenue. They had not been measuring the numbers that drove it.
They closed the loss-making location, doubled down on the profitable one, and recovered their margin within a quarter.
Tip: Pick three numbers beyond revenue that you will review every single week. Not monthly. Weekly. The cadence of measurement determines the speed of improvement.
A manufacturing business owner in Sharjah had built a AED 40 million business entirely on his own decisions, relationships, and reputation. Nothing moved without him. No deal was signed without him. No problem was solved without him.
He thought this was a strength.
It was the ceiling.
When he was hospitalised for three weeks the business nearly collapsed — not because of any external threat but because every system, every relationship, and every decision lived exclusively inside his head.
When he returned he did one thing differently. He started asking one question at the end of every week — “What did only I do this week that someone else could have done?”
Within twelve months he had documented and delegated enough to reduce his working hours by half — while revenue grew by 30%.
The constraint was never the market. It was never the team. It was him.
Tip: At the end of every week ask — “What did I assume this week that I never actually verified?” The answers will change how you run the following week permanently.
Before you hire, expand, invest, or restructure — answer these four questions honestly:
Where am I working hard where a system should be working instead?
Where am I tolerating a people problem that is costing more than I am admitting?
Where am I making decisions based on hope rather than verified assumptions?
What is the one constraint I have been avoiding that is limiting everything else?
These are the starting questions of every Entrepreneurs’ Apex Circle engagement. Because the answers reveal more about a business in twenty minutes than most financial reports reveal in a year.
Leverage is not found by working harder. It is found by thinking better — and then acting on what you see.