The Simplest Way to Create Sustainable Profit (Without Chasing More Revenue)

Feeling stuck on the revenue treadmill—working harder, selling more, but taking home the same? We brought on Kelli Wise, strategic bookkeeper and CFO for online business owners, to break down how to build sustainable profit you can count on and finally pay yourself with confidence. Together we challenge the myth that growth alone fixes cash flow, and we show how expenses quietly swell to meet your sales unless you plan your margins on purpose.

We start by defining sustainable profit in plain terms, then map it to the season your business is in: growth, maintenance, or restructure. Kelli shares the TIP framework—Time, Intention, Predictability—so you can choose how much energy to invest, plan outcomes upfront, and create profit that repeats. You’ll learn how to spot the red flags of an unsustainable model: endless hours, flat take-home pay, reactive spending, and the urge to throw money at ads or hires without a clear strategy.

From there, we turn bookkeeping into a power tool rather than a tax chore. Kelli walks us through the five expense buckets—Owner Compensation, Team, Marketing, Business Health, and Operations & Delivery—and how to convert each into a percentage of revenue to see what’s healthy, what’s bloated, and what’s starving your profit. We dig into common pitfalls like over-indexing on ads, stacking subscriptions that go unused, and underinvesting in team support that would free you for sales and delivery.

If you want a 90-day plan to lift profit without adding hours, we outline three simple moves: run a 15-minute profit pulse, cut low-ROI recurring costs, and right-size your team so your time goes to high-value work. For owners not on payroll, we clarify how to pay yourself from profit and set aside taxes intentionally. To make it concrete, Kelli shares her Create Predictable Paydays calculator—a simple, visual tool to average your revenue, expenses, and profit, then plan how much goes to you, taxes, savings, reinvestment, or debt.

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Transcript

Why Revenue Chasing Fails

SPEAKER_00 0:23

That supports your money, not the other way around. If you're ready to move beyond trading time for money and build profit with intention, you're in the right place. If your revenue is growing but your bank account isn't, you're most likely on the revenue treadmill. And most online business owners don't even realize that they're on it. Today we're talking about sustainable profit. Why you when you are continuing to chase more revenue, it's actually what's burning you out and most likely making you feel broke. Hi, Kelly. Welcome to the podcast. How are you? I am great.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Thank you so much for inviting me, Jenny.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Of course. I am super excited about this conversation on the simplest way to create sustainable profit without chasing more revenue. But before we actually jump in, will you introduce yourself to my audience as well as, of course, your business?

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Absolutely. I am Kelly Wise, and I'm a strategic bookkeeper and CFO for online business owners. And my business is called Profit Positive. And you can find me at profitpositive.co. Excellent.

Defining Sustainable Profit

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Okay, so let's start off with a very straightforward question. How do you define sustainable profit?

Seasons: Growth, Maintenance, Restructure

The TIP Framework For Profit

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Absolutely. That's a great question because a lot of times we just talk about profit, and there's a big difference between what's sustainable and what's unsustainable. So first we need to know the basics, which is that profit is revenue minus expenses. Most of us know that. And so that's what we tend to focus on. So no fault of our own. It's really what we've been taught to do. But the problem that comes up is that when you are so focused on revenue and that's what you're chasing, you are just like running uphill after it and not realizing that that's not exactly what you're taking home. The profit is what you're taking home. So it's really more important to have your focus on how to generate that profit and reverse engineer to find out what revenue will get you there. So rather than being on this revenue, I just call it a revenue treadmill of running faster, working harder, but not necessarily taking more home. What you need to do is be really a lot more strategic to get what I call sustainable profit, which is what happens when you actually plan for it in advance rather than letting it be an afterthought or like, oh, well, here's what ended up at the end of the month. So you're planning it with intention. You know you can count on it month after month, and you're not burning out because you already have the plan in place. And I also think what's really important to think about is that profit gets to be what's the right fit for you. So you might be in a season of growth. And that means, yes, you are really trying to ramp up and increase your revenue. But you might also be in a season of maintenance. You may have found your sweet spot and you feel really good and really comfortable there. And I think we don't talk about that enough because again, I think the online space is full of gurus and coaches who are always about more and more and more. But it's really fine to be in a space of maintenance or even in a season of restructuring. Maybe you're pivoting, maybe you're coming out of a difficult season. 2025 was rough for a lot of businesses. So there's a lot of restructuring going on. So it's really about thinking about what is your season that you're in? Are you in growth? Are you in maintenance? Are you restructuring? And then what profit feels like the right fit to you? And revenue, again, is what you plan in order to get to that profit. So I like to think of sustainable profit with an acronym. I am a teacher by nature. I was a teacher in my former career. So I'm all about memory devices to help people remember. So I like to think of it as your tip. It's your time, meaning think clearly about how much time and energy you actually want to invest in your business because generating more revenue often does require more time and more energy. So, how much time do you actually want to give to your business so that you don't run beyond that? And then the I is for intention, and that's the careful planning it out beforehand rather than just seeing what's left at the end of the month. And when you're really um mindful of your time and your intention, then that combined can equal your P, which is predictability. So time plus intention equals predictability, and that's where you get that predictable profit, even if you are in a business where you know that there are fluctuations and you might have some months that are higher, some months that are lower, but you can predict when that's going to happen, and you can also look at averages, and then your profit actually begins to be sustainable. You're not burning out, you have it planned. You might not hit it perfectly. In fact, we usually don't hit it perfectly, but when you have a plan, you get so much closer to what you actually want rather than being left with, what on earth happened here? I worked so hard and I thought I was creating more revenue, but in the end, actually, I have the same as what I had before, or maybe even less in some cases.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

Just I'm so glad that you started off with the idea of the fact that not everyone needs to be at a place where they're continually trying to grow. It's okay to set what that standard is and reverse engineer it, which I talk a lot about as far as when you're creating products and how to price things and how to set up a funnel to actually market those things. So many people are used to hearing about reverse engineering. And I especially love your tip because as a former teacher myself, I love when you can have acronyms like that that can really make it memorable and be able to put it into practice. So thank you so much for that. So, at which point does chasing revenue actually hurt profitability?

When Revenue Hurts Profit

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Right. We tend to, again, I think naturally think that the more revenue I make, the more profit I'm going to make. But that's not the equation. Again, we have expenses. The revenue minus the expenses equals the profit. So revenue starts to hurt when as you're increasing and ramping up that revenue, you're also increasing and ramping up the expenses. This happens really naturally, and expenses are important. We do need to absolutely make investments in our business, but they need to be smart. They need to be intentional. We need to plan for them. And we need to be creating margin along the way rather than when you're on that revenue treadmill, not realizing that you're piling on expenses right behind you on the treadmill. So while you're, you know, increasing the incline on the treadmill and you're running faster, the expenses are also on the incline and they're also running faster with you. So many times the expenses catch up to revenue without you realizing it when you have your eye solely on the revenue and not paying attention to what the expenses are that are creeping up simultaneously. So we get into the habit of just thinking, I just need to work harder and I just need to make more money. And then all of a sudden we can very quickly feel burnt out and feel like we're broke because here we are working harder and harder, but we sometimes have less to show for it because we're not paying attention to those expenses that we think in the moment, you know, oh, I need this thing. And then we keep running after the revenue, and then, oh, something else comes up, or we see a competitor who's doing something and we think we need it, and we get very reactive. And then that's when it creeps up on us. And so that focus on revenue is not actually helping. But you could actually be making less revenue potentially with more profit if you're really intentional about how you're spending. Yes.

Ads, Team Costs, And Burnout

SPEAKER_00 9:49

And I think that a lot of times what I've seen with clients is when they are adding on those expenses, it's usually hiring new team members. They know that they're trying to do so much extra. Um, I know personally I hired someone to run Facebook ads. So not only was I piling on for someone to do it, I was also all that ad spent on Facebook. And at that time, it wasn't even the right audience. So that was a large loss when it came to expenses. I often will hear from clients. Should I add on Facebook ads? What am I looking at? And a lot of times they're not talking about actual Facebook ads. They're talking about boosting content on Facebook or boosting content within Instagram or TikTok, whatever it might be. And they're not actually having a strategy behind it that is going to result in income. So I just I've seen this so many times myself in my own business and also with clients. And I love that you're pointing that out so that we can really start thinking about like how can we make it so that it is sustainable? So, what are the first indicators that someone's business model isn't sustainable?

SPEAKER_01 11:57

So, you know, I think of it kind of like you're going to the doctor with some symptoms like I have a headache, I have a sore throat, and they're diagnosing, like, well, here's the root of what's actually going on. So if your symptoms are something like you feel like you're working more, you feel like you're working harder, but the money at the end of the day, what's left in the bank account, what you're taking home, does not line up to that level of effort and it feels like you're not actually having more to take home, that's a really good indicator that your business model isn't sustainable and that some recalibration likely needs to take place. Also, if you're looking at your expenses and you don't know if this thing or that thing is actually strategic, you're just kind of spending because you think, like you said, about marketing, like I need to get more visible, so I should pour more into Facebook ads. Well, yes, maybe, but how strategic are you being about what those ads are or what platform you're on and who you're speaking to? And have you mapped out the strategy of how it's actually going to bring more revenue in? Because even though we know we need to spend on marketing, just spending on marketing for marketing's sake isn't going to get us the results that we want. So really taking a look and saying, does this make sense? Is this lining up with what I have created my business model to be? Am I seeing the results from it? And if you're not, then you know, it's time to kind of take a serious look at the numbers and figure out what about this is not sustainable and to make some changes and to not have any shame about that because we all, every single business owner that I know has expenses that they looking back would say, I would not have invested in that. So it's normal and natural, and we need to let ourselves off the hook, I think 100%, but to start to shift from being reactive to being a lot more proactive. Um, I've also found that when you have a structure in place and you know what expenses are appropriate for your business model and at what levels, um, that helps an incredible amount. People usually go into business not knowing exactly what they should be spending on or know that I should have some spend on marketing or some on team, but not really being sure how much. When you get clear on the how much piece, that helps a hundred percent.

Spotting An Unsustainable Model

SPEAKER_00 14:45

Yes. And I think too, part of this in when you're talking about being reactive, uh, we end up throwing expenses at things oftentimes when we don't have a plan. And I think that this is why I talk a ton about having a 90-day plan and sticking to it all the way through. Because you're less likely to add a new person onto your team if it's not part of your 90-day plan, or to decide that you're going to design an app and pay for it, yet there's no strategy behind it. Yep, did it, done it. Absolutely.

unknown 15:20

Totally funny.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Um, so it is like I think that when you can be less reactive and really have a plan in place, it's so key. And what you're talking about with your profit just makes it puts it all in line. So let's talk about if someone wants to improve profit without increasing workload, where should they start?

The 90-Day Plan Vs Reactivity

Bookkeeping As A Profit Tool

The Five Expense Buckets

SPEAKER_01 15:42

So the first place absolutely to start is with bookkeeping. If you don't have that in place, you absolutely need it. It's a non-negotiable. Um, for one thing, it's there for tax compliance. But for me, it's also a very strategic move because a lot of people are just doing their bookkeeping just to have the numbers for taxes. And I want everyone to know that there's so much more insight and planning that you can get out of understanding your numbers and what to do with them beyond just thinking it's like drudgery, it's just to get the taxes done, it feels like this thing that you don't want to do. You can really shift that when you know how powerful those numbers can be. So, number one, if you haven't gotten bookkeeping in place, even if you're doing it on your own, absolutely do that. That's the first place to start, is to understand what your numbers are. You're really flying blind if you don't have that in place. Then the second thing is if you do have the bookkeeping in place and you're just kind of like looking at here's my top revenue number, here's my total expense number, here's my profit, and letting that be the end of the story, I really, really encourage you to get more strategic and start using it as a tool to help you make decisions in your business. So one thing that I like to do with my clients is I call it a 15-minute profit pulse. And this is something that you can do that's going to make a difference in your profit without increasing any of your workload because it's just about understanding what these numbers are telling you and making some smart decisions based off of that. So what you want to do, just basically in a nutshell, is take your profit and loss. And I would say just take the one from the most current month. And yes, you do want to look at what's your total revenue, what's your total expenses, but here's where you get more strategic is if you have a kind of a laundry list of here are all of the expenses, and maybe your bookkeeping shows you you have 30 different line items of expenses, that's not really helping you because your brain just sees this gigantic list and it's very overwhelming. So, what I highly recommend is that you actually group those into buckets. So, what I have found for online business owners is that there are five buckets that you can categorize every expense into one of these buckets. And then when you're looking at five things instead of 30, it's a lot easier to see what's working and what needs to be adjusted. So those five buckets are, and if you're not driving and you want to take notes, you can write these down. They are owner compensation, and that is only if you are on payroll. So if you are getting salary wages from your business, that's a bucket for you. If it's not, then you don't need to even worry about that bucket, then you have four. The next bucket is for your team. So I include every expense that includes employees and contractors. The third bucket is for marketing. Fourth is for business health, is what I call it. And business health includes any professional development you're doing. So trainings, coachings, masterminds, things that are improving you go in that bucket. And then anything that's a professional service that you need, like your tax professional, your legal fees, legal services, bookkeeping, CFO, things like that also go in that bucket. And then everything else is in the last bucket, which is operations and delivery. So everything to run your business. When you have those five buckets, then you begin to see things more clearly about where the expenses are going. So you add up the totals for each of those five buckets and you turn them into percentages of revenue. So you do that by let's say if you spend$2,000 on marketing and your uh total revenue that month's month was$10,000, let's say. So you take$2,000 divided by$10,000 times 100. So you get a percentage, and that would be 20%. So that's showing you that you're spending 20% on marketing. And 20%, I will tell you right off the bat, that's pretty aggressive. So you only want to be hitting 20% of your revenue on marketing if you're in a growth phase and you're really, really trying to increase revenue by pouring more into marketing, for example. Um, so you do that with all five of your buckets to see what percentage of your revenue is going to each of those five buckets. That is going to give you so much clarity right off the bat to see where that money is going. And like you said, Jenny, a lot of times, team, probably in most cases, is gonna be the biggest bucket. And that's okay. We do want to have team to support us, but sometimes we invest even more than what we should. And then that is what helps contribute to that like unsustainability. So that's where we have to be careful. So if you don't have your bookkeeping in place, first get the books in place. And then when you do, if your PL isn't organized like that, you can just open up a quick Google sheet and take all those line items, put them in there, organize them, sort them. Yeah, it's gonna take a few minutes, but those few minutes are gonna be worth it to start to see how your revenue is breaking out into those expenses. And if you have a really savvy bookkeeper, you can get them to organize your PL to do that automatically. So it's not even 15 minutes. So I have mine set up for my clients this way. So they look at it in an instant and they can see those buckets. And then they also have this is going to the next level, but we have a dashboard where they can see how their percentages actually match up to industry standards. So they can see if they're in a healthy range or if they're on the lower end or the higher end. And that's incredibly helpful. So you can start to see here's where I might be overspending, here's where I might even be underspending. In some cases, if you're feeling like you're burnt out, you're working too much, and you see that your team expense is actually under what's healthy, then that might be an indicator like, oh, actually, if I hired some team, I would be less burnt out and my business would be healthy. And so it's not just the overspending, it's also the underspending. So just by making one adjustment to those buckets, you can see a lot of improvement in your business overall.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

So I know a question that my listeners are going to be asking for those that are not running payroll for themselves, how does it work as far as the profit that? Able to take out of their business. Let's say they're a sole proprietor or they're even still set up as a 1099. What is that going to look like?

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Yeah. So then your pay, your take-home pay is coming out of your profit. So it's extremely important for you to be planning for profit because that's where you're paying yourself. You're also needing a lot of business owners forget this as well, is to be paying your income taxes out of your profit. And that's not just for sole proprietors. That's also if you're taxed as an S-corp. Everyone who is, you know, a business owner typically that's sole proprietor or taxed as an S-corp, you're going to be having to plan, you know, if you have 10,000 in profit, that's wonderful, but don't assume that the 10,000 is for you. You really need to be setting aside, and this is where I advise people to definitely have a conversation with your CPA about how much makes sense for you. And there are a lot of different factors involved there. Um, one kind of like standard average is if you don't know where to start for setting aside some of that profit for income tax, I say just start with at least 25% and then have a conversation with your CPA later. Um, but just so you kind of start getting into that habit. It's so easy when you're a W-2 employee and it's already happening for you and those taxes are being withheld and it's kind of like out of sight, out of mind. But for a business owner, we we have to get in that habit, or else it is really easy to think like, oh, that 10,000 in profit, that's what I get to take home. Uh, unfortunately, it's not. So, sole proprietors, yes, uh absolutely everyone, but sole proprietors especially, you're getting paid out of your profit 100% out of your profit. So you really need to reverse engineer, like we talked about before, about how much revenue do you need to make, what expenses are gonna be taken out, and then what is left for you to take home.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

Absolutely. Okay, I love that answer. So helpful. So if someone listening wants to improve profit in the next 90 days, what are the three simplest actions they can take?

Percentages And Healthy Ranges

SPEAKER_01 25:15

So the first thing I definitely recommend is doing that 15-minute profit pulse. You're gonna sort your expenses into the five buckets, you're gonna calculate each bucket as a percentage of revenue, and then you're gonna evaluate where am I overspending, where am I underspending, and just pick one or two places to make a change and you will feel it. You know, you're gonna you're gonna feel the results of that. And you're gonna see it in your profit as well. Um, the second thing is if you find that you are overspending, look for something easy to cut. Usually I find that it's gonna be a tool or a subscription, a membership, something that you bought that sounded like a great fit in the moment, but you forgot about. And especially those monthly recurring charges that are just happening over and over again and you don't realize it, they're the ones that are just eating away at your profit without without you um kind of giving them monthly permission. They're just doing it in the background. So that's a great place to look. And then the third thing is if you find that you're underspending on team, this is an indicator of maybe why you're feeling so burnt out and overwhelmed. So it's not always about overspending. Sometimes it actually is about underspending. And so you might really want to consider a part-time VA or a contractor for something that you do that you could actually very easily train or hire someone else to do for you. And that will free up your time to do more of those revenue generating activities so you can, in the end, boost your bottom line.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

Excellent. I love those. Now, tell me about your create predictable paydays guide.

Paying Yourself And Taxes

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Sure. So I have found that a lot of business owners really have inconsistent revenue. It's just it's not the same month to month. So it's hard to plan how much you are actually going to be able to pay yourself. So this is a really, really simple calculator, and it's pretty because spreadsheets usually aren't fun for anyone. And if I can make a spreadsheet look pretty, I'm all about it. So it looks like a really nice calculator, and all you have to do is plug in some simple, really easy numbers into only the white cells. And what it's gonna do is help you find your average monthly revenue, expenses, and profit, which helps kind of even out those higher months, lower months to give you the average. And then when you can see it on paper, then you can, well, on your screen, because this is not paper, the Google Sheet. But when you see it, then you can know, okay, this is the kind of profit that I can bank on if I stay at this level. You can adjust it. So, like, okay, if I, you know, have been having an average, let's say 10K a month revenue, but what will this look like if I keep my expenses roughly the same, but increase my revenue to 15,000? So it'll give you a view of that average profit. And then at the bottom of the calculator, this is the part I think a lot of us miss again when we think that profit is what I'm taking home. Actually, there are a bunch of things that you want to do with your profit, not just for paying yourself and paying your income taxes, but you also want to have some profit that you can potentially reinvest in the business. You might have some profit you want to use to pay down debt. You might have some profit you want to set aside for savings for any emergency fund or a buffer. You might have something you're really passionate about that you want to set aside for like extra travel for the business or something like that. So at the bottom of the calculator, I have a section where you can plan out if I have, let's say, 5,000 in profit, how much is gonna come to me, how much is gonna go to taxes, how much do I maybe want to set aside for savings, et cetera, et cetera. So it's really important to know that just like revenue gets split up into expenses and then there's profit at the end, the profit at the end is also gonna get split up into other purposes as well. And the more you plan for them, the more you're gonna see you really want to plan for profit. So you have as much as possible to meet all the goals that you want to do with it. Oh, and there's a video. I have a video that explains how to use the calculator so you won't be lost, I promise. The typical teacher.

Three Moves For 90-Day Gains

SPEAKER_00 30:06

Exactly. I love it so good. Well, we're gonna make sure that that is linked to you in the show notes as well as the blog post, as well as the video, so that you all can go and grab that. Uh, Kelly, I appreciate you so much for taking the time to speak with me and my audience. Just share your knowledge. I truly appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

Thank you so much, Jenny. It's been so much fun.