Revenue is Cool, But What About Profit?
The Power of Profitability is all about creating and growing profitable businesses. It is for bookkeepers and similar service providers as well as business owners. Profitability is the engine that powers business. Lack of profitability is one of the primary causes that kills business.
This podcast is bringing the focus back to profit – how to make more and keep more.
Let’s start with one of, if not, the biggest problem…Vanity metrics.
Revenue is not profit.
Followers, likes and FB group members are not profit.
Are they a requirement to get there? Maybe. It largely depends on the business model but that’s a topic for a different episode.
Businesses that focus on the topline or the other measures that don’t consider profit can miss the point of what will keep them going. That’s where the power of profitability comes in…and how this podcast can help.
As a bookkeeper, you see the nitty gritty details of the revenue coming in and the money going out. You know if there are patterns of feast and famine – lots of revenue but then suddenly a lack of cash. You know when the dollars are making sense with what your clients believe is happening in their business. You feel the frustration of knowing something isn’t working – and not knowing how to put it into words.
In my 30 years of experience – and especially my last 11 of working directly with clients on business valuations and seeing behind the scenes as a fractional CFO – I’ve learned that profit really is the key. Nothing can replace that on a long-term basis if you want to build a thriving business. That’s true whether it’s your business or your client’s business.
We can help you ditch the vanity metrics and get clear on the profit drivers – no matter what business or businesses you work with. We can help you focus on what matters AND communicate it to your clients. We specialize in profit. That’s it. All our programs at The CFO School – from the ABC’s of Profit through our Certified Peek Profit Specialist program – are built around profitability. Get profit right and lots of other things inside a business will become possible. And it applies to every business ever.
All that sounds pretty good, right? But who am I and why am I doing this work? And…really, why should you care?
First, let me introduce myself.
I’m Jennifer Peek – founder of Peek Advisory Group and The CFO School. I founded Peek Advisory 11 years ago after 20+ years in corporate to bring key financial options to small to mid-size businesses. We focus on business valuations and business acquisitions. We also work on a retainer basis performing controller and CFO functions for our retainer clients.
We offer highly value-added services and a personal touch at Peek Advisory…and we can only serve so many clients.
That led to the creation of The CFO School which provides profit training and certification to bookkeepers and similar service providers (as well as small business owners and their teams). We’re bringing the tactics, templates and strategies that we’ve been using with our retainer clients to you because it’s the best way to help experts like you help their clients with more value-added services AND build your own business at the same time.
Knowing what to focus on – profit and its drivers can be the guiding light you’ve been looking for to better help your clients. You get…
Happier clients
More value-added services for their businesses to help it grow AND to keep clients coming back
To move from commodity based business vs value-added advisor
And…with that you are also more likely to have a
Stronger and more aligned client base = less stress day in and day out – on the job, with friends, family, kids
Plus, there’s an even bigger picture that you are a part of
The backbone of the American economy (and many others) is based on small businesses. Small businesses need profitability to survive and thrive. They may not call it that but without profitability, there is no long-term cash flow. There is only surviving from payroll to payroll, rent check to rent check. There is no growing, no bigger impact, no legacy. YOU can be the catalyst for this bigger change – to keep small business owners doing their best work instead of abandoning the dream.
All of that fuels the episodes of The Power of Profitability and the current and future programs of The CFO School.
We help bookkeepers and similar service providers give their clients the profitability services and expertise they need to thrive in any economy. Whether you call yourself a bookkeeper, office manager, OBM or VA, if you work with (and LOVE) numbers, the CFO School can help you by providing tools and training to make you the value-added profit expert.
Let me give you a quick example of how this looks for one of our clients at Peek Advisory – and how that can translate into you helping your clients immediately.
One of our clients has grown by over 30% in the past year in topline revenue. They’ve added more new clients than they have lost in old ones. They also just landed a new opportunity that will help them grow at least another 5% next year.
And…
They have only been profitable in 4 out of the last 12 months. Four months.
Let me tell you a little secret about what happens in a business owner’s brain when they see that kind of result.
All the reasons why the profit wasn’t there. Things like:
The extra expenses that they chose which really were optional.
The times when the deliveries were behind or the machines went down.
The sales that got pushed to the next month.
All of those are facts. And they are rationalizations that keep profitability decisions from being made.
Here’s another little secret: Most business owners are optimists. They don’t want to dwell on the missteps – all of that is in the past. They want to focus on the next big set of opportunities. They want to believe (and often do) that the hiccups will fix themselves.
With this client, I went round this circle for more months than I can count. I also had a business owner that loved data – the more the better. So – I had a captive audience but one that didn’t always want to focus on a handful of drivers that would make all the difference.
Here’s what we did: we agreed on 3 drivers that could be focused on for the next quarter. That’s it. One quarter. Fix what mattered the most AND that could be done that quickly. Both of those things are key. Momentum is everything in business but especially in profitability.
How can you use this example with your clients (or maybe in your own business)? Grab our Profit Leaks checklist below. It’s free and will get you into action immediately.
