Have you ever hit a revenue goal that you were genuinely proud of, and then looked at your bank account and thought to yourself, Wait, why am I working this hard for this little? Or where is all of the money going? Or why does it feel like I should be further ahead by now? I see this a lot with founders at really every level, but who I work with is typically at 300k, 600k, even a million and beyond. And they're in this place where revenue is climbing, but the returns aren’t. And so maybe your expenses are growing faster than your cash, your workload is growing faster than your team, your business still feels like it's sitting all on your shoulders. And when that's happening, it almost always is pointing to one thing: your profit margin isn’t growing with your revenue.

And when I see that this is happening, it’s not because you’re bad with money or you're being careless. It’s because you’re in this tough spot in this messy middle of business where profitability becomes a real challenge. You’ve been successful, you have seen profit, but now as you try to grow and expand the business and you invest more into that growth, profit begins to shrink. It’s because of these sneaky operational and financial patterns that maybe you barely notice, but are quietly making your business more expensive than it needs to be.

Today, I want to help you fix that in a way that will actually last. So not just a temporary spike in profit, not a “slash everything and hope for the best” moment, and instead, a profit strategy that creates a healthier, cleaner business.

So let’s get into it. Before we talk about strategy, you first need a real understanding of what margin actually means in your business. Because profit margin isn’t just about a percentage — it actually shapes your entire experience of running a business. Even if your revenue is growing, if your margin is shrinking, your business is going to feel tight.

And tight looks like cash always feeling a little too close for comfort. Every decision feeling risky. Team payroll feeling heavier than it should. Delivery feeling harder than it used to. You wondering, “Why does this still feel like such a grind?” And a constant sense that the numbers should be better by now.

That’s just the emotional side of low margin. But with a healthy margin, things can feel quite different. Just shifting not your revenue but your margin — your profit margin — creates more stability, more predictability, more breathing room. A business that can absorb surprises without the need to panic. The ability to invest in growth confidently. The ability to have money left over consistently.

And this really matters because when margin expands, everything feels better. Everything gets better in terms of running the business. Your business becomes safer to grow. You can take risks without wondering if it’s going to wipe out all of your cash. And your decisions get sharper because you’re no longer choosing from fear or urgency. Your operations are cleaner because you can afford to fix the inefficiencies instead of just patching problems with short-term fixes. Your stress reduces because your business finally stops feeling fragile, and you’ve got that breathing room to test and try things without the over-reliance and the feeling like every little thing has to work.

And of course, your earning potential finally catches up with your revenue potential — and those are different. You stop having big revenue months with tiny take-home months.

This is the foundation that we need before we talk strategy, the understanding of the difference it makes in how you operate, how you lead your business day-to-day. So now let's talk about what those quiet patterns are that drain profit. They drain profit typically before you notice. And it’s not just happening from one big dramatic decision. It’s not just one contractor who costs too much or a software bill that got out of hand.

It's typically in the quiet things — the slow drifts, the small compromises, the things that seem fine until they’re not. They’re the tiny repeated choices that feel harmless in the moment but compound into profit erosion over time. These are hidden margin killers that drain profit before you even realize what’s happening.

Let's walk through three of the biggest ones.

The first one is the founder capacity trap. If the business relies heavily on you, then your costs are always going to rise faster than your revenue because everything routes back through you and to you. Decisions, delivery, problem solving, troubleshooting. The business just becomes high cost by default because you should be the highest-paid person in the business. And if you’re solving all of the problems and involved in everything, that makes everything really expensive.

Your involvement doesn’t just cost time — it creates a chain reaction of expensive problems. There’s slower delivery because work slows down anytime it needs your input, approval, or decisions. And slower delivery doesn’t just feel frustrating — it’s more expensive. The longer something takes, the more it costs to deliver.

Another problem is duplicated effort. When ownership isn’t clear, multiple people might unintentionally work on the exact same things. Two versions get created or two people are doing the work of one person. There’s double the labor but the same revenue — and that means a straight hit to your profit margin.

There are team inefficiencies. If the team can’t move without you, then they eventually stop trying to think on their own and they default to “Let’s just ask.” And your workload grows while their capacity shrinks. Your ROI drops.

There could be a lot of rework, and this one’s a huge profit leak. Anytime you jump in to fix it or redo it or “polish it up,” that’s a labor cost that eats your profit fast and silently.

There’s operational drag where the business starts to feel heavier than it should. Things just take too long, simple tasks get complicated, there are too many steps, too many questions, too much mental load for you and the team. And that heaviness, again, is operational drag.

You can also have inconsistent client experiences where some clients get a premium version because you’re involved, and others get a rushed one because you’re stretched thin — and inconsistency ends up hurting your retention, your referrals, and your long-term revenue.

All of those issues show up on your P&L. And when they do, it's because you're saying things like, “I'll streamline this when revenue is higher,” or “I’ll just push a little bit harder to get through this,” or “I’ll hand things off when things calm down or when I reach this milestone.” But the truth is that founder dependence is the most expensive line item in your business. And if you don't reduce that dependency, your margin will always struggle.

Let’s move on to the second margin killer: scope creep. This is another costly one, and it's very common.

Scope creep happens when your offer delivery expands quietly and unintentionally. Your offer takes on more than it should — not because you planned for it to, not because it’s strategic, but because small add-ons keep slipping in over time. One more call, one more touchpoint, one more quick thing.

Clients start receiving more than what was promised. And yes, you want them to have a great experience, so you go above and beyond. But above and beyond quietly turns into “This is just what we do now.”

Maybe customization is increasing, and instead of following standard processes, you begin to tweak the deliverables, adjust the workflows, bend the offers a little for each customer. One custom change becomes three, then it keeps growing, and suddenly nothing is ever the same twice. That means exceptions become normal. You make a special case for one client, but that becomes a new pattern. And now the team doesn’t know what standard even is anymore. Everything is an exception.

It’s harder to delegate because delivery is dependent on knowledge instead of systems. Everything is different by each client. So the team begins to get stretched thin or wait on you to do things.

In the end, you and your team start doing all of this extra work to be helpful because you want your clients to be happy. But these small favors, extras, or upgrades carry a cost. They might seem small, but they add up — time, energy, labor, extra communication. Suddenly, the offer that could be simple — maybe that used to be simple and profitable — now takes twice the effort to deliver.

Here’s what you need to know: an offer becomes more profitable by becoming more consistent, not more complex. Anything that makes delivery messy, heavy, or unpredictable is draining your profit margin.

The third margin killer is hiring to survive instead of hiring to scale. This one feels logical in the moment. You're tired, you're underwater, you’re stretched thin, and your brain says, “I just need someone, anyone, and I need them right now.” So you hire quickly without clear role expectations, responsibilities, outcomes, measurable KPIs, clear ownership, clear priorities, clear structure.

And that means that even though you’ve hired, you’re still the person plugging the holes. You're still the one fixing mistakes. You're still the one carrying the load. Because you didn't hand off the actual responsibility. And that means your expenses are higher, but the results aren’t.

Hiring is one of the most powerful ways that you can increase margin — but only if it’s strategic, not reactive.

So those are three very common profit margin killers. Let's look now at something that can change everything. If you know where your margin is leaking, then now we need a sustainable profit formula.

Profit doesn’t just grow from panic cutting of expenses or team. It doesn’t come from running a tighter ship. It doesn’t come from making changes out of fear. Profit grows when your business becomes easier to run — cleaner, lighter, more predictable. And your future self is absolutely going to thank you for what we’re about to walk through.

Because these are the shifts that make your profit not just bigger, but sustainable — the kind of profit that actually sticks.

So let’s get into what this takes. There are three core moves that make your margin stick.

First, you need to tighten up delivery without adding more. Most founders try to increase value by piling things on — more access, more calls, more customization. But “more” is usually the exact thing shrinking your margin. Like we talked about with scope creep, tight delivery means a clear promise where everyone knows what's included and what’s not. A clear process that’s a repeatable path and gets clients results without having to reinvent the wheel. Clear boundaries that protect your team’s capacity, margin, and client experience. Clear simplification — removing the pieces that add cost without adding value.

A clean offer is a profitable offer. But a heavy offer will drain money and morale. So we need to keep things simple and tight with delivery.

The second thing that we need to focus on to make margin stick is reducing owner dependence. If the business can’t function without you, your margin is always going to stay small.

So here's where you've got to start. Make a list of what would financially break if you stepped out for two weeks. Not what would feel uncomfortable, not what you prefer to control, but what would actually break if you weren’t there. That list becomes a roadmap for what you need to hand off.

You don't have to do this all in one dramatic sweep. You can do it in layers — starting with what's simple, the low-risk tasks that clog up your mental bandwidth. Then hand off the things that repeat the most. Anything that repeats is margin leverage. Then move to the work that costs you the most — the tasks that drain you or prevent you from taking on higher-value responsibilities.

Every time you remove yourself from something the business shouldn’t depend on, you increase your margin. Because the business becomes less fragile, less reactive, less bottlenecked. And when you're not that operational choke point, the whole system moves faster and more profitably.

Third, you need to build a team structure that protects margin. A disorganized team is expensive, but a structured team is profitable. Your team can become a profit driver when they know exactly what their role is, what they own, how to communicate, what lane to stay in, and how the hierarchy works.

When team structure gets clear, work gets done faster. Mistakes drop. Rework disappears. Ownership increases. Your involvement decreases. And your profit margin stabilizes.

This is where your team stops being a cost center and starts becoming a profit driver.

Profit margin is what makes growth safe. Most businesses that I work with don’t have a revenue problem — they have a profit margin problem. Yes, they want to grow revenue. But they are already making money. They want to keep more of what they’re making. And margin problems take away the stability you need to grow.

But when profit expands, you're able to scale because your decision making improves, your team gets stronger, delivery becomes cleaner, your stress level drops, your growth becomes more sustainable.

This is what real scaling feels like. Not chaos, not hustle, not just one more big month — but a business that actually supports you, the life that you want. A business that you can rely on instead of feeling like the business is reliant on you.

If you can see where your margin is leaking from listening to this, then good. Awareness is where this starts. And now I want you to start small and pick just one margin killer to clean up. Go tighten it. Go simplify it. Make it lighter. Make it more profitable.

Because your next level of revenue, your next level of freedom, your next level of ease is only possible when your profit margin grows. You deserve a business that pays you well, that supports you well, and that gives you a return worthy of the work that you put in.