To Scale Don’t Just Focus On Revenue

Bigger is not always better for your bottom line.  

Chasing revenue as a success marker is tempting when you're running a growing business. But here’s the truth: not all revenue is good revenue. If growth costs you more than it’s bringing in, you’re scaling your workload—not your wealth.  And that’s a one-way ticket to burnout with a final destination to the poorhouse. 

What You Should Focus On Instead 

Hyperfocus on growing top-line revenue often overshadows profitability, but the healthiest businesses know that profitability is far more critical to long-term success.  Profits fuel sustainability, resilience, and founder freedom. Every dollar of revenue comes with direct costs- the costs of delivering your product or service.  Direct costs are things like labor, materials, and inventory that cannot be avoided. If you’re not carefully evaluating these costs against your prices, you risk overextending your resources for little or no financial return. 

An Often Overlooked Cost

When it comes to scaling profitably, the most overlooked cost is opportunity cost.  Like direct costs, opportunity costs accompany every dollar of revenue you earn.  An opportunity cost occurs when you choose one thing over another.  Opportunity costs are unavoidable in life and business.  When preparing to scale, you must make good choices between your available opportunities and consistently choose the most profitable ones.  You do this by considering what resources you are tying up to service unprofitable customers or sell lower-margin goods and services when you could allocate those same resources (labor hours or inventory dollars) to more profitable sales. 

The Gap

Where you might be right now: Celebrating revenue milestones but feeling strapped for cash or resources and maybe a little burnt out and frustrated. 

Where you want to be: Confidently growing profits while reducing stress and maintaining financial stability, avoiding burnout, and building your bank account while building your business.

Business Coaching Question: How would your decision-making change if you prioritized profit over revenue growth?  How might you reallocate your resources to maximize profit?

CFO Advisory Question:  Do you have access to the necessary information from your financial system to know which of your offers, customers, team members, etc. are the most profitable and deserve the highest allocation of your limited resources?

What’s Your Next Step?

Want to get a handle on your profitability so you can scale without burnout?  Schedule a FREE 30-minute discovery call with me to see how I can help. Click here to schedule now - SCHEDULE