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What you’ll learn in this episode:
Most business owners say they want more revenue.
And on the surface, that makes sense. More revenue feels like growth. It feels like success. It feels like freedom.
But here’s the truth: revenue and wealth are not the same thing.
In this episode of It’s Your Offer, I’m continuing the Summer Shorts Series – a collection of shorter, straight-to-the-point episodes designed to give you a quick shot of clarity, perspective, and momentum as you move through the summer season.
And today, we’re talking about one of the biggest misconceptions in business growth: the belief that more revenue automatically makes you wealthier.
I have worked with hundreds of business owners making hundreds of thousands – even millions – of dollars who are stressed, overworked, underpaid, and completely chained to the business they built.
They are generating revenue, but they are not creating wealth.
They are making more money, but they are not necessarily keeping more money.
And that distinction matters.
In this episode, I’m breaking down why revenue alone can be misleading, where profit is often hiding inside your business, and why the fastest path to more wealth may not be adding something new – but uncovering the money already sitting inside what you’ve built.
Because true wealth is not measured by how much money flows through your business.
It is measured by what your business allows you to keep: your profit, your time, your energy, and ultimately, your life.
In this episode, you will learn to:
- How revenue can become a vanity metric when it does not improve your life.
- Why many high-revenue businesses are still overworked, overstaffed, overcomplicated, and under-profitable.
- The difference between chasing revenue and building true wealth through profit.
- Where hidden profit often lives inside your business, including customer relationships, delivery, offers, pricing, unused assets, and inefficient systems.
- How one client uncovered more profitable growth by focusing on what was already working instead of chasing more customers, more offers, or more complexity.
Mentioned in this episode:
Work/Connect with me:
Jessica Miller (00:01.208)
Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week’s episode of the It’s Your Offer podcast. I’m so excited to be here with you today for episode number two of our Summer Shorts series. The Summer Shorts series is a collection of shorter, straight-to-the-point episodes designed to give you a shot of clarity, perspective, and momentum as you move through the summer season. These episodes are a little different than our usual episodes. If you’ve been here listening to the It’s Your Offer podcast, we are up over 250 episodes.
And most of our episodes are a little bit longer, especially our guest episodes, because we want to have people, you know, sharing their brilliance and spending time with us. But I thought, you know, I think summer calls for a shot in the arm, some freedom, and some fun short episodes, just to remind you all of how to create growth with ease without sacrificing your lifestyle. And in the summer, things tend to shift and we have more time and we have more freedom. And many of us think that that equates
to our business slowing down and stalling our growth. But I am here to tell you, in this corner of the internet, we talk about how you do not have to choose one or the other. In fact, I would even argue if you do less better, you actually will create more growth and have a better life and lifestyle and a business that you love, even though that is very contrary to what most people think.
So before we jump into this, I just want to say if you have not listened to episode one of the Summer Shorts series, definitely go back to last week and check it out. It is awesome. And this whole series was actually created based on what I have uncovered and what I know now after doing 250-plus episodes on this podcast, winning awards, and coming to this mic for years.
What I’ve learned about growing a business and being a business owner that has a business that flows and that we love. And I will tell you, it is very, very different than what I would have recorded when I first started this podcast four years ago. And all of that uncovering that I did in episode 250 really informed what we’re talking about in this Summer Shorts series, where we just dig in a little bit more to each of these things that I’ve uncovered. And it’s really meant to give you kind of, again, this like shot in the arm to let you know that
Jessica Miller (02:20.152)
these levers, these things that you want to lean into, will make your business easier. It will make it more powerful. It will make it more profitable, and it will make you more money. And so we’ve kind of peeled out each one of those things and we’re baking it into these short episodes. And so episode 250 is that whole shebang. And it was a really fun episode. And I highly recommend that, if you haven’t listened to it, check that out. It’s obviously in the podcast feed. You could get it on all your favorite podcast listeners,
and that one again feeds into the Summer Shorts series. Okay, so here we are. So let’s talk about episode number two. Episode number two is really focused on this idea that revenue is not wealth. Especially in the online business world, we talk about revenue a lot. And most businesses say they want more revenue. I mean, you hear this all the time. And on the surface, that really makes sense, right? Make more money. Why not? Why wouldn’t you want to do that?
We think of revenue as really important because it feels like growth, it feels like success, it feels like more freedom. And it’s not to suggest that in some capacity it is all those things. However, revenue and wealth are not the same thing. I have worked with hundreds of business owners making hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions of dollars, who are stressed, they are overworked, they are chained to their business.
I would even go as far as to say that they are underpaid and that they are running a business that is extremely hard to continue holding up and to build. They have inadvertently created this thing in the name of wealth that is actually not leaving them wealthy. It might be making revenue, but many people will say that they’ve never worked harder than they have worked now, even though they’re making all the money they thought they ever wanted to make.
So today I want to talk about exactly why revenue doesn’t create wealth and what actually does. So as I mentioned, revenue can be misleading. Revenue is often the scoreboard that everybody focuses on. We are like comparing ourselves and how well we’re doing to this scoreboard of revenue. It’s a number people put out there that’s very visible. It’s kind of like this, you know, badge of honor that’s out there.
Jessica Miller (04:41.676)
It’s also something that, because everyone is talking about it, it’s very easy to celebrate. It’s like, yeah, you know, I made another $20,000 or I made another $100,000. But the problem with revenue is it doesn’t tell the whole story. You could have a business that has a lot of revenue, or you could see someone that seemingly has a lot of revenue, like, I made a million dollars. However, under the surface lurking are the things that nobody is talking about. And those are things like
thin margins, struggling cash flow, struggling with consistent cash flow, being overstaffed and overbloated, having a business that is so overcomplicated that it is slowing growth, which is something we talked about in the Summer Shorts series number one episode last week. And as I mentioned, people are working more than ever. Like we’re working long hours, we are chained to it, we can’t let go of the business. Now, in a way, it’s like it owns us.
And revenue is purely vanity if it does not improve your life. If your life is not getting better, if it is getting more complicated, if you are getting more drained, even though your revenue is going up, then it’s almost like how many followers do you have, or how many clicks did you get on this post? In reality, that is a fraction of the story and often isn’t the thing that is creating the conversion or the happiness on the back end. And that is true of revenue
as well. Just because money is moving through the business doesn’t mean that the business is working the way that you want it to. And this is so important on so many levels because we chase these elusive and somewhat arbitrary revenue numbers. I mean, you hear this all the time. I just mentioned, like, you know, someone’s crossed the million-dollar mark. I mean, people throw around making a million dollars like it is
the be-all end-all, or it is the number that is going to make the difference. But in reality, people have not really thought about what does that mean? What will it buy me? What does making that million dollars of revenue entail with the rest of my business? And sometimes you are simply creating a larger, more expensive version of the same problems or struggles that you have when you’re making less money. And that is not the point.
Jessica Miller (07:02.892)
And when that happens, the business starts to feel heavier instead of more free. It starts to feel like you are chained to it because you’re now having to hold this thing up that actually isn’t running optimally, isn’t running itself, isn’t paying you. And I mean that both in cash and sanity and energy and joy, the way that it was meant to. And that is because wealth and revenue are not the same. Wealth is about the money you get to keep.
And in this corner of the universe, if you have been listening to the It’s Your Offer podcast at all or heard any like words come out of my mouth, you will know that the money that we keep is called profit. And we are all here for it. We are here for it. So, profit, in our opinion, is one of the keys to creating true wealth. And that is because profitability creates so many different options.
And those different options and the things that you can do with the money that you keep, the money that you choose, is really — it is endless. And the freedom and the opportunity that provides is really incredible. So as I mentioned, profitability creates options. It creates freedom. It creates flexibility. It also gives you the opportunity to buy back your time. It buys you time.
And that is such an important asset for a business owner who wants to be truly wealthy, because you want to spend your time in a certain way. You want to be doing certain things. You cannot do that if you are chained to your business. And many business owners are focused on generating more revenue when the bigger opportunity is actually uncovering the money already sitting inside the business that you get to keep. And that money is profit. Profit is king, in my opinion.
And we want to make sure that when you are running a wealthy business, you are optimally mining that money that is sitting there that you get to keep. So profit is hiding in many cases and being sucked out of your business in several places. And here’s where I want you to think about looking. So it’s hiding often in places like underutilized customer relationships. I see this a lot. People — like, they
Jessica Miller (09:21.336)
spend all this time and this money and energy, like all of this expense, costs up front, out, eat into your profit time to bring in a customer, and underutilize that relationship. Like, they come in, they drop out. It hides in places like inefficient delivery. It’s clunky. It’s complicated. It’s a big lift. It’s expensive. It hides in places like unclear offers, right? We’re looking at all these offers —
they’re not really overly clear. They are not optimized. So they are working, but they’re not working optimally. There are pricing opportunities where that profit is hiding. There are unused assets that are sitting in the business, taking up time and energy, but they’re actually not being used well. And maybe they’re not being used at all. I mean, sometimes there’s a graveyard of things that we just kind of forget about. They’re hanging out there. I mean, this could be your software. This could be, you know,
offers that are kind of legacy and maybe they’re not doing anything, but they’re still costing you something. It could be like bloated, you know, subscriptions and things like that, expenses that you don’t know are there. So the good news is that the money is often already inside your business. The bad news is you haven’t uncovered it yet. And so it is sitting there just waiting for you to mine it. The problem is in the interim, it’s actually heavy to hold. It’s costing you a lot.
However, when you start looking through this lens of profitability, those hidden opportunities become surprisingly obvious. And in this corner of the universe, we talk about this all of the time. I have stood on my soapbox here for 250 episodes, seriously, and told people you are not immune to this opportunity. There is money hiding in your business. And there is a lot of money hiding in your business. In fact, the more money that you are making, the bigger the business that you have,
the more money you are likely leaving on the table already hiding. Your next best opportunity is the most important thing for you to cash in on in order to make your growth 10X and your energy and input that you need to put into it a fraction of what you’re likely doing. Because when you have an asset that is not being utilized well, when we’re focusing just on that revenue and not on the profitability and not on the overall wealth, we’re missing it.
Jessica Miller (11:39.715)
And that is really important. And the stakes get bigger, the bigger your business gets. The good news is the upside is also bigger. So right there’s that balance. But that’s the great thing about not doing everything, but doing the next best thing. I’ve talked a lot about my clients that I work with in this capacity because this is something we go in with a scalpel. We’ve done this so many times. We are laser-focused and sharp at being able to find not just all the opportunities, but your next best opportunity that is eluding you. It’s sitting there, you can’t see it. None of us
are above this, by the way. When we’re close to our business and we look at it all day, you can forget, but it is there. And one of the clients I talk about a lot, we’re going to call her Susie. She owned a med spa and she was very much in this idea of like, we need to chase these revenue numbers and we need to add on all of the things. We need to bring on expensive products or expensive equipment or do all of these things because we want to grow our revenue.
The good news was she had revenue that was growing. However, things were chaotic. They were out of alignment. They were chasing making more money. And at the same time, they were creating a lot of costs within the business, both financial costs, but also energetic costs, sanity costs, which I like to call them, which is when people are running around like, you know, when things are not optimal, we are burning through our energy, our people, our time, our expenses very quickly.
So it looks like, you know, we need to add on more people. They had a very, very busy schedule. There were things, you know, happening. Their growth was plateauing because it was too complicated. The poor owner of the business was exhausted. And the weight of the overhead that they were carrying and the ability to not be able to see the end of that tunnel was crushing. And they really didn’t have clarity around where their profits were actually coming from.
So we just changed this lens. Instead of asking, you know, how do we get more customers, the better question they started asking is where is the money already coming from and where is it hiding in this existing business? And what we found was that there were a handful of services that dramatically outperformed everything else, a handful of products that outperformed everything else. Existing customer demand was already there. They didn’t have to go and chase a bunch of cold traffic. They actually had people who were there
Jessica Miller (14:03.618)
buying and wanted to buy more. And when we dug in a little bit deeper, there were a few things that they were doing that were driving a bunch of their cash flow. And one of those things for this particular business was events. And it was specific to bringing people into their facility and then selling packages on the back end that were created, handpicked for them. So once we optimized this customer journey, we created strategic packages that connected to those events. We improved
the experience that customers were having, both when they were coming into the med spa, but also when they were coming to those events and they were buying those packages. And we focused on those most profitable opportunities, everything became easier. Yes, their revenue did increase, but they had dramatically improved profitability. When we put boots on the ground for a handful of hours on a Saturday, designed that experience for their customers,
led them through a very specific customer journey to a package that was optimized for those people on the back end, the amount of money that they made 10x’d anything that they had to put into actually making that happen. And that was in a matter of hours. Then they had a framework that every time they wanted to make more money, they ran that event, they ran that promotion, they ran that same customer journey, and rinse and repeat, they could make this money over and over.
And when I say money, I’m talking about tens of thousands of dollars of money that came in the door for a fraction of input, a fraction of time of their team, a fraction of expense. You know, it was literally almost pure profit at that point. So it made growth so much easier for them, and it improved the quality of life of not only the team — who felt empowered, connected to the outcomes, good about how they were running, you know, their business and the day, and they were very much connected to that mission —
but also for the business owner. It was huge. So the goal for them wasn’t simply to make money. The goal was to make the business work better and thus to create the growth with money that the business really wanted and the owner got to keep. And that is really where many business owners miss the opportunity, because again, we’re kind of conditioned to more, more, more. More revenue is better. More, you know, more things are better. And the truth is when you’re chasing a revenue number
Jessica Miller (16:27.638)
and your expenses in every sense of the word are increasing, you’re actually netting very, very little, sometimes zero and sometimes negative, which of course we don’t want to be. So we don’t want a business that actually needs to be sustained like that. We want to build a profitable ecosystem and not just focus on this revenue, because revenue without profitability causes pressure.
It’s just more things to run for a net, net little upside. And that’s not what we want. We want profitability that creates sustainability. And things like I was talking about with the med spa, where if they are crafting a customer journey or a package that they have clarity around how to sell, or an event structure or anything like that that is repeatable, that is really like money on demand.
And again, not just revenue. It is money that they get to keep. Because, as they have created it, it’s super efficient. And as they do it more and more, it becomes even more efficient. And that profitability margin gets higher. So sustainable, you know, growth in that way, and sustainable businesses, they don’t require the hustle because they are lasered in on, how do I do this really well? And how do I make sure that the goal is efficiency, and it’s high quality, and it’s creating
sustainable money. So that goal is really about intentional, intentional growth. So the fastest path to growth is often hidden in what’s already working and already in your business. And so I want you to think about a few things. And this is the shot in the arm I want you to think about. So what are the most profitable things in your business? Let’s pretend it’s like two of the most profitable things in your business. What is
actually happening with those things? Where are those people coming from? What is working as it relates to that? And what opportunities with those things may already exist in your current business? Another way to think about this is, if you had to grow by, let’s say, 20% to pick a nice number without adding anything new, where would that growth
Jessica Miller (18:49.614)
come from? Because that is where your profits are hiding. Revenue is important, but revenue alone is not the goal. The goal is building a business that creates profit, freedom, flexibility, and choice for you, your business, your team, everybody. Because wealth isn’t measured by how much money flows through your business. It’s measured by what the business allows you to keep.
Your profit, your time, your energy, and ultimately your life. Because for us business owners, we have built a business to build the life that we want. That is the way it should be. Sometimes it’s the other way around, which is not where we want to be. And the businesses that create the most freedom aren’t always the ones making the most money. They’re the ones that know how to keep more of what they already have. And that is amazing profits.
So I hope that you take this. If you go back and listen to it again, I want you to remember revenue is great, but wealth is built off of true profitability, where your business is growing intentionally, where it’s growing with ease, where it’s growing clearly, and it is creating money that you get to keep. And that is how you create an epic summer. And frankly, that is how you create an epic every season of your business —
where you get to run a business you love and that feels aligned with you and your life. I can’t wait to hear about all the breakthroughs until next week, where we do the Summer Shorts series episode number three. I hope you all have an amazing week. Take care.
