You’ve just had your best year in business. Revenue is up, your calendar is full, and your team is bigger than it was twelve months ago.
But you’re still breathless, still working evenings, and still not taking home much more than when the business was half this size.
What most business owners do is turn up the heat and hustle more: more launches, more sales, more clients, more hours.
Sometimes that’s the right answer. But often it’s not.
Because before you go looking for more of anything, you need to find out what’s happening with the money you’re already earning.
Your numbers have a story to tell. And when you understand what they’re telling you, you’ll be able to solve the right problem.
The catch is that you have to look at them.
Your numbers live in QuickBooks
For a lot of business owners, the financial numbers live in QuickBooks, Xero, or whatever software they’re using. Their accountant sees them, but they’re not paying close attention.
Here’s why that’s not good enough.
If you’re only reviewing the reports your accountant prepares for tax season, you’re looking in a rearview mirror. You see what’s already happened. You still need to decide where the business goes next.
Business financial management sounds like a job for your accountant. But the decisions that come out of it are yours.
Here’s what to look at, and what your numbers can help you fix.
Look at what’s left after the expenses
You’ve probably heard someone announce, “I made a million bucks this year!”
It usually means the business generated a million dollars in revenue. And it’s totally worth celebrating.
But let’s dig a little deeper. How much went to expenses and team? How much stayed in the business? How much did the founder actually take home?
I once worked with a husband-and-wife team whose coaching business was approaching a million dollars in revenue. They were paying for multiple software systems that did the same job, running expensive Facebook ads, and paying a sizable team. They were also carrying debt.
When we added it all up, the two of them together were taking home less than they paid their VA.
They were discouraged and despondent. They cared deeply about their clients and worked hard to serve them, but they hadn’t been looking closely enough at what it actually cost to run the business.
Review your revenue, expenses, and profit together. Make sure you understand whether the profit shown is before or after taxes, and how your own pay (salary, dividends, or owner’s draw) fits into the accounts.
Then track what changes over time.
If profit drops because you’ve deliberately invested in growth, you can assess whether that investment is working. If it drops and you don’t know why, it’s time to investigate.
Follow a sale from first inquiry to cash in the bank
Say your goal is three new clients a month at $10,000 each, and you usually sign half the qualified people you speak to.
Four numbers can help you see where you’re falling short:
- Leads. You need six qualified sales conversations to sign three clients. If only three people inquire, look at your marketing.
- Conversion. Six qualified people inquire and only one signs. Look at your sales conversations, proposals, and follow-up.
- Average sale value. Three clients sign, but the average is $8,000. Check your pricing, discounts, and which packages they’re buying.
- Cash collected. Three clients sign at full price, but the expected payments haven’t arrived. Check your invoicing, payment terms, and collections.
Each problem needs its own fix.
Posting more on LinkedIn won’t fix a pricing problem. It will bring you more clients to undercharge.
Track these numbers together before deciding what to change.
Find the expenses nobody is checking
Start with your biggest costs. For most service businesses, that’s team, contractors, and advertising.
For each one, get clear on what it’s supposed to produce and check whether it’s producing it.
Take the contractor you hired a year ago for twenty hours a month. The work has changed since then, but the retainer hasn’t. Or the ad campaign that brings in plenty of leads. Count how many of those leads became clients, and what each client cost you.
These are the expenses that decide how much you take home. They’re also the hardest to question. Cutting a contractor means a difficult conversation, and cutting ads feels like cutting sales.
Then look at the small stuff. Maybe you’re still paying for an account after someone left the team. Or you’re paying for two platforms doing the same job because no one finished moving everything over. A $500 renewal on something you opened twice is still $500.
Put renewal dates on a calendar and make someone responsible for reviewing subscriptions before the charges go through.
And when an unwanted charge slips through, ask about a refund. I was once billed for an extra team seat on Airtable that I no longer needed. I emailed them, and they canceled the charge.
Not every company will be so generous. But it’s worth asking.
You can decide to keep an expense. Just make sure someone has actually reviewed it.
Compare what each project earns with what it costs to deliver
A $30,000 website project sounds snazzier than a $5,000 one-page site.
But say the big project takes 200 hours across you and your team, with four rounds of revisions. That’s $150 an hour. The one-page site takes 20 hours. That’s $250 an hour, and you can start the next one on Monday.
Run that math on your last five projects. Make sure to include your own hours, too. The work you squeeze in after everyone else goes home (I see you) still counts.
This is also where scope creep shows up. The client wants another edit. And another one. And another one…
Decide ahead of time what’s included, how many revisions you’ll do, and when an additional request becomes a paid change. Put everything in writing before work begins.
For bigger projects, start with a paid assessment. No orthodontist quotes a price for braces over the phone. She looks at the mouth first.
For more on connecting delivery costs with your operations, read Business Automation: 7 Mistakes That Create More Work for You.
When the numbers say raise your prices
My client Sarah had a successful business and a great name in her field. She was also working twelve to sixteen hours a day and close to burnout.
When we looked at her finances, we made two changes.
First, Sarah slowed down enough to review her billing history. She discovered a ton of work she’d delivered but never invoiced. She’d been so busy fulfilling orders that she hadn’t stopped to bill for them.
Just invoicing completed work brought six figures into her business.
Next, we raised her prices by 25% and added an express fee for clients who wanted a faster turnaround.
Sarah felt like she was going to vomit. But her best clients didn’t push back. She was that good at what she did, and they knew it.
With the cash from those unbilled projects and the new pricing, she promoted her assistant to project manager and brought on two more team members. She cut her hours by about 30% and made more money.
Knowing you need to raise your prices doesn’t always make it easy to do.
The couple who took home less than their VA had met young, among friends who wanted to live off the grid and avoid selling out to capitalism. Years later, those beliefs still influenced what they felt comfortable charging.
You may have your own version. You worry clients will think you’re greedy. You’ve already charged “a lot.” You want to help people, and charging more feels at odds with that.
Those thoughts won’t go away by themselves. So do the math first.
Work out what the price needs to be for the project to pay your team, pay you, and leave a profit. Then quote that price to your next new client.
Sarah survived. So will you.
Plan for the months when no money comes in
Profit and cash are different things. You can have a profitable year on paper and still struggle to make payroll in March.
Years ago, I worked with a commercial real estate firm in the Midwest. They closed a deal every eighteen months to two years. They did appraisal work between deals, but it wasn’t enough to keep them going, so they borrowed money.
When a big deal closed, they paid off the debt. Then they were back near zero.
We reworked their finances so they could keep paying themselves while waiting for the next closing.
Your payment cycle may be shorter, but you still need to plan around it. Look at when clients pay, when bills fall due, and what happens during quieter months.
Build a cash reserve that reflects those gaps and your ongoing expenses. If most of your money arrives in a few large payments, it needs to last longer than the month it lands.
I recommend three to six months of operating expenses.
A 2016 JPMorgan Chase Institute study of nearly 600,000 small businesses found that the median business had enough cash to cover just 27 days of typical outflows if no more money came in.
That’s a scary number.
Now work out your own. Take the cash in your business account and divide it by what you spend in an average month. That’s how many months you could keep going if payments stopped.
And when cash is tight, you’re more tempted to take a client you know is a poor fit, lower your prices, or run a sale you hadn’t planned. Those decisions bring in money this month but can cost you later, in resentful team members and projects priced below what they take to deliver.
When there’s money in the bank, you get to say no.
Use your numbers to decide what happens next
You don’t have to prepare every report yourself. Hire someone who’s good at it, and ask them to explain anything you don’t understand.
A monthly review should show you revenue, expenses, profit, available cash, and what clients owe you. Bring your sales numbers into that conversation, too.
You can also work backward.
Decide what you want to take home next year. Work out the revenue needed to support that, along with your business expenses, taxes, and reserves. Then calculate how many clients you need, at what price, and how many qualified inquiries usually produce those sales.
Check whether your team can deliver that work without everyone working longer hours.
Now you have something useful to plan around.
Start with the question that’s bothering you most. Why aren’t you taking home more? Which projects are profitable? Why is cash always tight?
Find the number that answers it. Decide what needs to change, and put someone in charge of changing it.
You’ve already done the hard part. You built a business that makes more money every year.
Now make sure more of it comes home with you.
🎧 For more examples, listen to episode 198 of The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast.
Grow your business without working more hours
If your revenue keeps growing and your take-home doesn’t, let’s look at where the money is going.
Book a free 30-minute mini consult, and we’ll discuss what needs attention so the business pays you properly.
About the author
Debbie Sassen is a Founder Advisor & Leadership Coach who helps established service business owners grow revenue and profit without working more hours. A former Goldman Sachs derivatives broker and Bank of Israel portfolio manager, she brings financial experience to her work on pricing, business decisions, and leadership. She’s the author of The $1K Investor and host of The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast.
