16/10/2026
Most owners judge their business on revenue. That’s the wrong number. If you’re turning over $2 million and barely making a profit, you haven’t built a business, you’ve built a job you can’t leave. In this episode I break down why margin matters more than revenue, and the margin audit we run with every client to find where the money is actually going.
Here’s the thing. When you sell a business, it’s valued on a multiple of profit, not revenue. A $5 million business profiting $50k is worth a fraction of a $500k business profiting $250k. And if you’ve got 500 customers making you the same money as someone else’s 5,000, you’ve got less overheads, less team and way more room to move.
Here’s what I cover:
-What margin you should be aiming for. Online businesses should sit somewhere between 50 and 70%. Brick and mortar should be aiming for 30%.
-The $500 a week that halved a client’s profit. His fixed overheads jumped $500 a week out of the blue, locked in for two years. 1k overnight, and none of it was in his control.
-The agency doing $60k to $80k a month with no profit. They hired the team before they fixed the systems. Everyone’s double handling and doing things manually, so the margin is gone.
-The tradie call-out fee making 20% margin. When we ran the numbers, the call-out fee barely covered the time and fuel. Three of their four services made 70% plus.
-How much to raise your prices, and how many customers you can lose. We map out the margin on every service and every type of customer, then forecast what a price rise does. Maybe your one-on-one sits at 50% and your group at 80%.
If you’re a business owner doing $250k to $2m a year and you’re working flat out but not seeing the profit, book a free Leverage Audit with me. We’ll go through your systems and processes, work out what to automate, delegate or delete, and run the numbers on where your margin is leaking. Want the margin audit template? Send me a DM on Instagram or Facebook. Link’s in the description.
Find out how to get 20 hours/week back -https://leveragedceo.com.au/getyourtimeback1