by MHolland | Jan 23, 2026 | Business Tips, Cash Flow, Systems
If you are not happy with the money and the things you have now, getting more will not change that.
Most owners assume growth will eventually deliver balance. More revenue, more profit, more scale—and then, finally, more time and peace.
That sequence almost never works.
If you’re not content with enough today, growth won’t fix that later. It will usually magnify the dissatisfaction.
Before asking whether your business should grow, there’s a more basic question that gets skipped.
Do you already have enough money and enough time? If the answer is yes, then you’re already wealthy in the only way that matters.
And that changes the entire conversation about growth.
Money and Time Are Separate Variables
Owners often treat money as the primary constraint. It usually isn’t. Time is.
You can have strong margins and healthy cash flow while still being exhausted, unavailable, and mentally crowded. That isn’t success. That’s just a well-funded form of stress.
From a first-principles standpoint:
- Money is an output of systems, pricing, and demand.
- Time is an output of leverage, delegation, and focus.
They don’t automatically move together.
Plenty of businesses make more money every year while the owner’s time shrinks. That’s not a growth problem. That’s a design problem.
If you already earn enough to live well, travel, invest, and sleep at night, then more money has diminishing returns. At that point, time becomes the scarce asset.
And no amount of additional revenue will buy it back if the business isn’t built correctly.
If Growth Isn’t for Money, What Is It For?
This is where things get uncomfortable.
If you already have enough money, then growth is no longer about security. It’s about something else.
Usually one of three things:
- Challenge
The intellectual and operational challenge of building something better, cleaner, or more durable.
- Stewardship
Creating opportunity, stability, and pride for the people who rely on the business.
- Momentum
Preventing decay. Businesses that coast quietly start to erode long before the numbers show it.
If you’re growing purely because you think more money will make you happier, you’re chasing the wrong lever.
Money solves money problems. It does not solve meaning, satisfaction, or restlessness.
The Hidden Cost of Growth Nobody Talks About
Growth always asks for something in return.
More complexity
More coordination
More decision fatigue
More people issues
More systems
More exposure to error
That cost shows up first in the owner’s calendar and headspace.
The question isn’t “Can the business grow?” It’s “Is the trade-off worth it for you?”
Only you can answer that.
There is no moral superiority in growing to $30M versus staying at $8M. There is only fit—or misfit—with your life.
And pretending otherwise is how owners end up successful on paper and quietly resentful in real life.
Your Team Changes the Equation
Here’s the part many owners underestimate.
Even if you are satisfied with the financial status quo, your team often isn’t.
Good people want to be part of something that’s alive. Growing. Improving. Moving forward.
A business that is purely coasting—even if profitable—tends to lose its edge:
- High performers get bored
- Innovation slows
- Standards soften
- Energy leaks out quietly
Worse, fixed costs don’t care about your lifestyle preferences.
Shrink past a certain point and the math turns against you. Overhead becomes heavier. Optional investments become impossible. One bad quarter suddenly matters a lot.
Businesses don’t really stand still. They either reinvest and adapt—or they begin a slow decline.
Like riding a bike: slow down too much, and you wobble. Slow down more, and you fall.
Growth With No Ego Attached
The real answer isn’t “grow” or “don’t grow.”
It’s find the rhythm.
Growth that fits your life, not growth that consumes it.
That means being intentional about how you grow:
- Replace yourself before you expand
- Build systems before volume
- Trade control for leverage
- Let go of tasks long before you feel ready
The milestone isn’t revenue. The milestone is optional time.
When the business runs well without your constant presence, growth becomes a choice—not a trap.
At that point, you can push forward because you want to, not because you’re chasing something you think you’re missing.
The Obvious Truth Most Owners Miss
If you’re unhappy with what you have now, you won’t be happy with what you get later.
That applies to money.
It applies to status.
It applies to scale.
Growth only amplifies who you already are and how your business is already designed.
So get clear first.
Enough money.
Enough time.
Enough life.
Then grow—carefully, deliberately, and without confusing motion for progress.
Thanks for reading…
by MHolland | Jan 16, 2026 | Business Tips, Cash Flow, Systems
Most owners believe this – To grow to the next level, we need more people.
It sounds reasonable. It’s also why so many businesses stall between $5M and $20M.
They grow revenue — and quietly destroy the economics underneath it.
Revenue Is Easy to Add. Overhead Is Hard to Remove.
Let’s be precise. Revenue is optional. Overhead is sticky.
Once you add:
- salaried managers
- internal support roles
- fixed payroll commitments
- layered processes
those costs don’t scale down when demand softens. They sit there. Month after month.
This is why owners feel successful and trapped at the same time.
They grew — but now the business needs constant feeding just to stand still.
The Real Question Owners Should Be Asking
Not:
“How do we grow faster?”
But:
“What kind of growth does not permanently raise our cost base?”
That question changes everything.
Because sustainable scale is not about size. It’s about leverage.
A Simple Mental Model: Fixed vs Variable Everything
At this stage, the most important distinction in your business is this:
- What costs must exist every month
- What costs only exist because revenue exists
Healthy scale pushes costs toward the second category.
Unhealthy scale piles weight into the first.
Here are three leverage rules that consistently separate businesses that scale cleanly from those that don’t.
Rule #1: Add Throughput Before Headcount
Most teams are under-leveraged before they are under-staffed.
Common symptoms:
- Work moves slowly because of approvals, not effort
- Bottlenecks sit with one or two decision-makers
- Customers wait because handoffs are unclear
Hiring into that system doesn’t fix it. It just adds expense to dysfunction.
Before adding people, owners should ask:
- What work is stuck, and why?
- Where does decision latency exist?
- What steps add no customer value?
Often, one process change releases the capacity of two hires.
That’s not theory. It’s math.
Rule #2: Push Costs as Close to Revenue as Possible
The safest form of scale is when costs rise because revenue rises.
Examples:
- Contractors instead of full-time staff
- Profit-sharing instead of fixed bonuses
- Capacity-based fees instead of salaries
- Outsourced functions with clear deliverables
This doesn’t mean avoiding employees. It means being intentional about when costs become permanent.
If revenue drops, variable structures protect margin. Fixed ones don’t.
Rule #3: Scale What Is Already Working — Not What’s New
Owners often try to grow by adding complexity:
- new offerings
- new markets
- new customer types
That almost always increases overhead. Cleaner growth comes from deepening what already works:
- higher transaction values
- better pricing discipline
- tighter delivery systems
- fewer exceptions
These improvements increase profit without increasing headcount. They also make the business calmer to run — which matters more than people admit.
The Cost of Getting This Wrong
When overhead grows faster than revenue:
- pricing flexibility disappears
- owners lose optionality
- stress rises even when sales are up
- the business becomes fragile
That’s why so many owners say:
“We’re bigger, but it feels worse.”
They’re not imagining it.
In Closing
The next level of growth does not require a heavier business. It requires a smarter one.
Scale that lasts comes from:
- delaying fixed costs
- tightening systems
- aligning cost with revenue
- and saying no more often than feels comfortable
The goal isn’t to build the biggest company possible.
It’s to build one that grows — without owning you in return.
Thanks for reading…
by MHolland | Jan 9, 2026 | Business Tips, Cash Flow, Systems
Does that sound counter-intuitive to you? It isn’t.
Most owners believe profit is the primary scorecard of a healthy business. It’s tidy. It’s familiar. It’s also incomplete — and often misleading.
I’ve seen profitable companies miss payroll.
I’ve seen profitable companies panic every quarter.
I’ve seen profitable companies die.
They didn’t fail because profit was low.
They failed because cash arrived too late.
First-Principles Reframe
Profit is an opinion. 😉Did you know that? On the other hand, cash is a fact.
Profit lives on paper. It’s shaped by accounting rules, timing, and estimates. Cash lives in the bank and either shows up on time or it doesn’t.
Here’s the distinction most owners blur:
- Profit measures performance
- Liquidity determines survival
You cannot pay people, suppliers, or taxes with profit. You pay them with cash — today, not eventually.
When owners obsess over margin while ignoring timing, they are optimizing the wrong variable.
A Simple Mental Model
There are only three levers that determine liquidity in an operating business:
- How fast customers pay you
- How fast you pay others
- How much cash is trapped between the two
That’s it.
Everything else — growth, margin, overhead — flows through those three levers.
You don’t run out of cash because you’re unprofitable. You run out of cash because the timing isn’t working.
A Grounded Example
Let’s look at a $10M distribution business.
- Gross margin: 28%
- Net profit is healthy on paper
- Growth is steady at 12% annually
The owner feels good. The P&L supports that feeling.
But here’s what’s happening underneath:
- Customers pay in 72 days
- Suppliers demand payment in 30
- Inventory sits for 55 days
That means every dollar of new revenue requires financing for nearly four months.
Growth doesn’t help here. It worsens the problem.
The faster they grow, the more cash they consume.
Nothing is “wrong” operationally. The business is doing exactly what it’s designed to do — convert optimism into anxiety.
Where Owners Get It Backwards
When cash tightens, most owners pull the same levers:
- Cut expenses
- Delay hiring
- Pause marketing
Those moves feel responsible. They also miss the root cause.
Liquidity problems are rarely solved by trimming overhead. They’re solved by fixing flow.
Flow lives in:
- Payment terms
- Billing discipline
- Inventory design
- Approval friction
- Internal habits around money
None of those show up clearly on a profit statement.
The Hidden Cost of Ignoring This
When liquidity is unstable, it leaks into everything:
- Decisions get rushed
- Discounts get offered to “bring cash in”
- Bad customers get tolerated longer than they should
- Owners stop thinking long-term
The culture feels it first. Then strategy. Then morale.
Eventually, the business becomes reactive — not because the owner lacks discipline, but because the system demands it.
A Calmer Way to Think About It
Healthy businesses design cash to be boring.
Not dramatic.
Not heroic.
Not dependent on last-minute saves.
Boring cash means:
- Customers know exactly when and how they pay
- Invoices go out immediately after products or services are delivered
- Exceptions are rare and visible
- No one is “surprised” by the bank balance
This doesn’t require complex dashboards. It requires clarity and follow-through.
A Quiet Test
If you want a fast read on your liquidity health, answer this without opening your accounting system:
- How much cash will be in the bank 60 days from now?
- Which customers will fund it?
- Which vendors will consume it?
If that feels fuzzy, the issue isn’t profit. It’s visibility and timing.
What Actually Improves Liquidity
Neither hacks nor tricks will. Just fundamentals done consistently:
- Clear payment terms that match your business reality
- Invoicing that happens immediately, every time
- Fewer exceptions, not better excuses
- A short weekly rhythm focused on cash movement
These aren’t exciting changes. They are stabilizing ones.
Stability creates options. Options create calm.
Quiet Close
Profit tells you if the business worked. Liquidity tells you if it can continue.
Most owners don’t need more growth ideas. They need fewer surprises.
When cash behaves predictably, everything else gets easier — including growth.
Thanks for reading…
by MHolland | Dec 18, 2025 | Business Tips, Cash Flow, Systems
Most owners don’t have a growth problem. They have an ownership problem.
This sounds harsh. It’s accurate.
Most owners believe the next phase of growth will finally deliver relief. More scale. Better people. Cleaner systems. More margin. Less pressure.
Yet the pressure rarely lifts. It just changes shape.
That’s not a growth failure.
It’s an ownership failure.
The First-Principles Reframe
A business is not a moral obligation. It is an asset.
Assets exist to serve their owners. Not the other way around.
Somewhere along the way, many owners invert this relationship. They begin acting as if they exist to protect the business. Feed it. Sacrifice for it. Carry it.
That mindset quietly drives most of the frustration they experience later.
Here’s the clean distinction:
The owner’s job is to decide what the business must deliver for them.
The business’s job is to deliver it, predictably.
When that line blurs, everything else gets messy.
A Simple Mental Model: The Owner Test
Every decision should pass one test:
Does this make the business serve me better — or does it make me serve the business more?
There is no neutral outcome. Every decision tilts one way or the other.
More custom work?
More exceptions?
More “we’ll just handle it ourselves for now”?
Those decisions feel responsible in the moment. They almost always increase owner load.
Owners don’t burn out because they’re weak. They burn out because they keep choosing to carry weight the business should be carrying.
A Grounded Example
Consider a family-owned business doing $8–12M in revenue.
Profitable. Stable. Good people. Decent systems. The owner still works 55–60 hours a week.
Why?
Not because the business is broken.
Because the ownership model is.
Common patterns show up every time:
Reporting exists, but the owner still interprets everything personally.
Decisions funnel upward “just to be safe.”
Pricing is conservative to avoid friction.
Longstanding customers quietly dictate complexity.
The owner says things like:
“It’s just easier if I stay involved.”
“I don’t want to burden the team.”
“We’ve always done it this way.”
None of those are operational problems. They’re ownership choices.
Where Owners Get This Wrong
Most owners confuse care with self-sacrifice.
They believe:
If they step back, quality will drop.
If they simplify, customers will leave.
If they redesign roles, culture will suffer.
So they compensate with effort.
That works for a while. Then the business grows enough to expose the flaw.
At that point, the business isn’t serving the owner anymore. It’s consuming them.
The Hidden Cost of Getting This Wrong
This doesn’t just cost time.
It costs:
Decision clarity
Strategic patience
Emotional bandwidth
The joy that originally made the business worth building
It also bleeds into everything else:
Owners become reactive instead of deliberate.
Growth starts to feel dangerous instead of exciting.
Even success feels oddly hollow. That’s not a motivation issue. It’s a design issue.
What Ownership Actually Requires
Real ownership is not abdication. It’s not laziness. It’s not “letting go and hoping.”
It’s design.
Designing:
Roles that absorb decisions instead of escalating them
Pricing that rewards simplicity
Systems that reduce interpretation
Information that creates calm, not anxiety
Most importantly, it’s deciding — explicitly — what the business must deliver for you.
Time freedom.
Financial reliability.
The capacity to contribute meaningfully to customers, team, family, and society.
If the business isn’t delivering those, growth won’t fix it.
A Quiet Reorientation
Here’s the uncomfortable truth most owners avoid:
If your business needs you constantly, you don’t own it.
You operate it.
That may be fine early on.
It’s a liability later.
Ownership means the business works even when you’re not carrying it emotionally, mentally, or operationally.
That’s not selfish.
That’s stewardship.
A Closing Thought
You didn’t build a business to become its most overqualified employee.
You built it to support a life:
With margin
With clarity
With contribution
When the business stops serving that purpose, the answer isn’t more hustle.
It’s better ownership.
Thanks for reading…
by MHolland | Nov 21, 2025 | Business Tips, Cash Flow, Systems
A number, on its own, is useless. Your weight, your revenue, your costs — none of it means anything in a vacuum. The power comes only when you compare it to something else.
You step on the scale. The number is meaningless until you compare it to last year, last month, or the goal you’re aiming for. Business works the same way. Your financial statements are just noise until you anchor them against other periods.
Comparisons Give Your Numbers Context
There are a few “must-do” comparisons every business owner should track:
-
This month vs. same month last year
-
This month vs. last month (best for non-seasonal industries)
-
Year-to-date vs. last year-to-date
These comparisons turn isolated numbers into insights. But to make meaningful comparisons, your accounting has to follow one core principle.
The Matching Principle: Why Accrual Beats Cash
If you want to see reality, you need accrual accounting. Here’s the short version:
-
Revenue is recorded when it’s earned, not when you get paid.
-
Expenses are recorded when they’re incurred, not when you cut the cheque.
That’s the matching principle: match earned revenue to the costs required to generate it.
Cash accounting hides the truth. Accrual accounting reveals it.
The catch? Vendors don’t always send bills on time. You push them, you remind them — and sometimes they still miss the cutoff. Perfect matching becomes impossible, which leads to distorted month-to-month results.
That’s exactly why you need something more powerful.
Rolling 12-Month Figures: The Most Underused Tool in Business
If you want to see the real story — stripped of seasonality, noise, and timing issues — use rolling 12-month numbers.
Here’s how it works:
This eliminates seasonality.
This catches late vendor bills.
This shows true direction — not momentary bumps.
What to Track in Rolling 12-Month Format
Six categories will give you a complete view:
-
Sales
-
Cost of Goods or Cost of Services Sold
-
Direct Wages
-
Indirect Wages
-
Sales & Marketing
-
Operating Expenses
Put them on a graph.
Don’t bury them in a table.
You need to see the trend lines because trend lines don’t lie.
What Rolling Trends Reveal
The story becomes obvious the moment you graph it:
-
Sales creeping upward? Good.
-
Sales flat but labor rising? Productivity problem.
-
Sales falling but headcount unchanged? Overstaffing.
-
Operating expenses rising faster than sales? Your cost structure is drifting.
You don’t fix this with hope. You fix it with decisions.
If Costs Are Rising Faster Than Sales, You Have Three Levers
Only three. People fool themselves into thinking there are dozens. There aren’t.
1. Raise Prices — But Tie It to Value
Never raise prices because your costs went up.
No customer cares about your problems.
You raise prices when you improve value:
-
Faster turnaround
-
Better service
-
Guarantees
-
Higher quality
If you haven’t earned the increase, don’t take it.
2. Increase Volume Without Increasing Cost
Classic scalability:
-
Better processes
-
Better marketing
-
Better tech
-
Better throughput
More output with the same cost base.
3. Improve Productivity or Supplier Performance
This is the operational grind:
-
Better labor allocation
-
Better training
-
Better suppliers
-
Better pricing
-
Cutting dead weight
Rolling trends will show you exactly where the rot is starting — long before the fire starts.
The Real Power: Early Warning Indicators
Rolling 12-month numbers give you a 30,000-foot view of your business. They smooth out seasonal bumps and compensate for imperfect matching. They reveal direction — the thing every owner needs most.
They won’t just tell you what happened.
They’ll tell you what’s coming.
And if you’re serious about running a healthy, profitable business, that’s priceless.
Thanks for reading…
by MHolland | Nov 14, 2025 | Business Tips, Cash Flow, Systems
Business owners mix up cost and value all the time — and it’s wrecking their pricing strategy.
Costs go up, and the default reaction is predictable: “We need to raise prices.”
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Your customers don’t care about your costs.
They care about what something does for them.
And nothing drove this home for me more than a chair.
The $2,200 Chair I Actually Want to Buy
I was shopping for an office chair the other day and found one that was insanely comfortable — like, life-changing comfortable. Sleek design, perfect ergonomics, the kind of chair that makes you think, “Okay… maybe my spine is worth investing in.”
I asked the price.
$2,200.
For a chair.
My first reaction?
“Are you out of your mind?”
So I asked why it was so expensive.
The salesperson didn’t flinch: “Made in Germany.”
That got my attention. German quality usually means engineering, durability, pride of workmanship. I went home and researched the brand. Turns out they hand-build their chairs, obsess over quality, and back it with a 12-year guarantee.
Suddenly… it didn’t feel crazy.
It felt earned.
My perceived value skyrocketed because nothing else I tried came within a mile of the comfort and build quality. And because I work from home, this wasn’t a splurge — it was an investment.
And here’s the kicker:
It’s still just a chair.
This family-owned German company isn’t competing on price. They’re competing on value.
Design: One of the Most Underused Value Levers
Stunning design is value. Full stop.
Furniture with beautiful lines, materials, and craftsmanship always costs more because beauty itself is a feature. When you combine that design with high build quality, you carve out a category where competitors simply can’t touch you.
That’s what premium pricing looks like.
So How Do You Raise Prices Without Losing Customers?
Simple: Increase value, not excuses.
Your rising costs are your problem, not your customer’s.
Your value proposition is their reason to pay more.
Here are the levers that actually move the needle:
1. Create a Unique Value Proposition
If you build products, where’s the value?
Your value prop should be something people can feel immediately.
2. Bundle in a Way No One Can Copy
Bundling works when the bundle itself becomes the differentiator.
Not “three things in a package.”
But a curated combination that solves a problem in a way your competitors can’t replicate without overhauling their whole business.
3. Offer a Guarantee That Means Something
A real guarantee is a value booster because it tells the customer:
“We stand so firmly behind this that we’re absorbing the risk.”
A strong guarantee forces operational excellence.
If you underperform, the guarantee will bleed you.
So you raise your quality, your consistency, your standards — and pricing follows naturally.
4. Deliver Service That Makes You Untouchable
This one is massively underrated.
A business recently impressed me through WhatsApp, of all things:
-
Fast responses
-
Detailed answers
-
Professional tone
-
Deep product knowledge
I checked Google reviews later — almost all 5 stars, and not a single person mentioned price.
All the praise was about service.
Contrast that with most businesses today:
Try phoning them. Good luck.
Try messaging them. You’ll age a decade waiting.
Too many companies treat phone calls or WhatsApp messages as an interruption, not an opportunity. Meanwhile, the customer with the most money — the one who could’ve become your biggest buyer — leaves before you even knew they existed.
The Bottom Line
You can’t raise prices because your costs went up.
You raise prices because your value went up.
That German chair didn’t get to $2,200 by accident.
It got there because:
That’s how you escape the race to the bottom.
Thanks for reading…
