Regarding “retaining control” there are a number of stakeholders that almost never “retain control”.

• customers have no direct control over your strategic direction, but they have indirect vote with dollars. Companies will often hire a “FP&A analyst” to try to guess the trends and the ways that a customer will need to be, but often you need straight up contact with customers (interview a random 25 customers each quarter about questions key to your competencies and areas of frustration before the FP&A guy starts crunching numbers and saying that “this is where the market is” in a garbage in and garbage out manner)
• employees (not management) have no direct control over your strategic direction, but they have an indirect effect on productivity and profits. In my opinion, there should be a benefit like “donation to a office worker union” that represents employees but does not actually make them salt/unionize in your office unless you start the path of enshittification.
• regulators have no direct control over your strategic direction, but they can dry up your supply or your demand with hurdles to jump over. Spending a little bit of money to have a seat at the table in regulations that are directly applicable to your business is an important civic duty of businesses. If you have legal counsel on a retainer, then they should be able to give you a summary of laws and regs that are being considered so you can make your voice heard.
• vendors have no direct control over your strategic direction, but they can produce synergies or referrals if you treat them right. Keeping a pulse on your vendors and being willing to take an insurance policy out incase a crucial vendor will cause you to lose revenue if they fail is a good business.
• Hedge against stupid risk - try to match your variable revenues to variable expenses. Also try to match your fixed revenues to fixed expenses. Example: if you have a lease on a building that costs a fixed amount no matter what monthly, then try to have that office serve recurring contract customers at least equal to the cost of rent. You can then spend the rest of capacity on Variable revenue that correlates closer to the variable expenses like salaries of salespeople.