Stop Chasing Revenue, Start Engineering Profit

Let’s talk about the most seductive lie in business, the revenue number. You see it plastered all over Twitter. '$1M ARR!' '$50k month!'. It is the ultimate vanity metric. It makes for a great headline, but it tells you absolutely nothing about the health of a business.

I know founders doing $1 million in revenue who take home less than a school teacher. Their business is a bloated, complex machine that eats cash for breakfast. They have a high revenue business, but what they really own is a high stress, low paying job.

Revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. And cash flow is king.

If you are optimizing for the wrong number, you will build the wrong business. It is time to shift your focus from simply making money to actually keeping money.

Your Business Is Not Your Family

One of the biggest profit leaks is emotional spending. You feel guilty, so you hire someone you do not really need. You have imposter syndrome, so you buy a flashy piece of software to feel 'legit.'

You have to treat your business finances with the cold, detached logic of an engineer. Every dollar spent must have an expected return. A business is not a family, it is a system designed to generate profit. That might sound harsh, but it is the mindset that creates freedom.

The Levers of Profitability

Profit is not an accident. It is engineered. There are only a few levers you can pull to increase it.

• Pricing: The fastest way to increase profit is to increase your prices. A 10% price increase drops almost entirely to the bottom line. Most founders are terrified of this, which is usually a sign they need to do it.
• Offer Structure: Are you selling your time, or are you selling a scalable outcome? One off projects are profit killers. A standardized, productized service is a profit machine because it becomes more efficient over time.
• Cost of Delivery: How much does it cost you (in time and money) to serve a client? Systemizing your delivery, using templates, and delegating low value tasks are all direct inputs to your profit margin.
• Overhead: Audit your subscriptions. Audit your contractors. Every dollar you cut from your overhead is a dollar of pure profit.

You do not need more clients to be more profitable. You need a better business model.

Build for Freedom, Not for Fame

A calm, profitable business that gives you freedom and fulfillment is a much greater achievement than a high revenue business that is burning you out.

The choice of what to optimize for is a strategic one. If you want to build a business that serves your life, you must make profit your North Star.

Our free audit can help you see where the profit leaks are in your current model, giving you a clear roadmap to building a more resilient, and ultimately more free, business.