Crossing the Finish Line
You set a big goal. You put in the serious effort and discipline to see it through. Time passes. That moment arrives. You cross the finish line.
Now what?
I ran my first ever half marathon a couple weeks ago. Six months of training. Ever-increasing distances, cross-training, recovery days where my legs had a lot to say about the whole arrangement. Mental prep. Early mornings. The kind of commitment that starts to feel like its own identity before the race ever happens.
Then the day arrived. I faced my longest run ever. After close to two and a half hours, the finish line appeared. I dug deep, picked up my pace, raised a fist, and crossed it. My family was waiting. I spotted the medals and felt genuine pride putting one around my neck. I did that. I walked through the food tent, grabbed a banana and some water, and went to find the people who showed up for me.
My youngest daughter pulled up my time. It landed almost exactly where my training had predicted. When someone asked if I’d do another one, I didn’t hesitate.
Yes.
Here’s what surprised me: the moment I finished, the information started coming in. How my time compared to the overall field. My age bracket. Men my age. Suddenly I had a new standard; one I hadn’t been chasing when I signed up, but one I couldn’t unsee now that I had it. The goal was complete.
The journey was just beginning.
That’s what a well-designed goal actually does. It doesn’t just give you a finish line to cross. It gives you enough data, discipline, and self-knowledge to set a better one next time.
Too many organizations and leaders treat goals like destinations. Hit the revenue number. Reach the multiple. Retire on schedule. But if the goal is the whole story, you’ve missed the most valuable part of the race.
Value isn’t a finish line. It’s a direction.
For a business owner or founder, goal focus only serves you so much. A revenue target, a retirement vision, an exit - these are useful north stars. But the real work is in what you build on the way there.
When you’re genuinely value-focused, you’re not just chasing a number. You’re finding ways to operate more efficiently. Empowering your organization so the business runs without depending entirely on you. Building more predictable revenue instead of fighting for every sale. Finding the unique voice and positioning that makes you the obvious choice in your market. Creating the kind of alignment where you can step away and trust that your team has it.
Or maybe you’re earlier in the journey - in a period of hyper-growth, trying to get ahead of the chaos before it gets ahead of you. That’s a different race, but the same principle applies: you didn’t start a business to lose all your freedom. Structure isn’t the enemy of growth. It’s what gives growth somewhere to go.
Let your goals be the north star. Let the journey build the value.
What the training actually taught me
Looking back, the half marathon gave me a framework I didn’t expect. Here’s how it maps onto what we see with the business owners and founders we work with at Leadership In Focus:
Start with reality. When I began training, I hadn’t run in two years. I was starting from scratch, and I had to be honest about that. No point pretending I was further along than I was. For businesses, this is where the Elephant Blueprint™ begins: with an honest look at where you actually are, not where you wish you were. What’s working. What’s quietly broken. What hasn’t been addressed.
Build a plan that’s incremental and adaptable. I followed my training schedule with real discipline - but weather happened, life happened, my body had opinions. The plan had to flex. The commitment didn’t. For a business, this means your growth plan needs structure and room to respond. Rigid plans don’t survive contact with reality. Disciplined ones do.
Consistency is the whole game. There were stretches of training that weren’t exciting. No breakthrough moments. Just showing up, putting in the distance, going home. That’s most of what building business value looks like too. The compounding effect of doing the right things consistently, even when it doesn’t feel like progress, is what creates something genuinely defensible over time.
Learn to embrace the sucky parts. A lot of my training genuinely sucked. Cold mornings. Rain. Heavy legs. Runs I didn’t want to start. But the hard stretches were where the real adaptation happened. For businesses, the periods that feel like survival mode - the uncomfortable conversations, the restructuring, the pivots - are often where the most durable value gets built. The suck is part of it.
Know what a realistic stretch actually looks like. My goal was to finish the half marathon. Not to win it. Not to qualify for anything. I knew what a meaningful challenge looked like for where I was, and I ran my own race. Business owners who chase metrics that belong to someone else’s business - or someone else’s timeline - tend to either burn out or build the wrong thing. The Value Builder framework helps clarify what a real stretch target looks like for your business, based on where you actually are.
Know what makes you uniquely valuable. By the end of my training, I understood my body better than I ever had. I knew my pace, my endurance edge, what I needed to hold back and where I could push. That self-knowledge changed how I ran the race. For a business, this is about understanding where you genuinely create value that your competitors don’t — and building around that, instead of trying to be excellent at everything.
What’s next?
The finish line is worth celebrating. I’ll wear that medal proudly. But it’s the six months before it, and the question I couldn’t stop asking afterward - what’s next? - that actually moved me forward.
That’s the work. And it’s worth doing.
Kurtis Graham is Co-Founder of Leadership In Focus. Together with co-founder and certified Value Builder advisor Curtis Scaplen, they help founders and business owners build businesses that are worth more and work without them. Based in Milton, Ontario and Halifax, Nova Scotia.
At Leadership In Focus, we help business owners and founders get a clear picture of where they are, what’s driving their value, and what it would take to build something that lasts, and that could run without them. Start with your free Value Builder Assessment and find out where your business stands today.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Value Builder Assessment?
The Value Builder Assessment is a free tool that helps business owners understand what their business is worth today and what’s holding that number back. It takes about 13 minutes and gives you a scored baseline across eight key value drivers; the factors that determine how attractive your business would be to a buyer, investor, or successor. Available at leadershipinfocus.ca.
What is BrandTruth Alignment™?
BrandTruth Alignment™ is a methodology developed by Leadership In Focus that helps founders and business owners align their brand, culture, and operations around a clear identity - so the business can grow, and eventually run, without depending entirely on them. It is built around seven core principles, including Reality Check, Eliminate Complexity, and Install Operating Discipline.
How do I know if my business is ready for a Value Builder assessment?
If you are a founder who has set revenue or exit goals but is not sure what is actually driving - or limiting - your business’s value, the Value Builder Assessment is the right starting point. It works at any stage of business, from early growth through to exit planning.
What does it mean to build a valuable business versus hitting a revenue goal?
Revenue is an output. Value is what someone would pay for your business, or what it could sustain without you. Building value means improving the systems, team, predictability, and positioning that make the business worth something independently of its founder — the difference between a business that sells and a business that simply closes.
What is the difference between goal-setting and value-building for founders?
Goals are directional — they tell you where you are headed. Value-building is what happens on the way there. The founders who exit well, attract strong successors, or build something that outlasts them are almost always the ones who focused on what they were becoming as a business, not just what number they were chasing.
Keep Reading
Your business is making money, but is it actually building value? Understanding the value drivers of your business
The Problem With Hitting Your Numbers How to measure your business and make better decisions
The Secret to Growth Isn’t More Leads—It’s More Focus. Focus on who you serve, and do it well
